What if YIIK was a Marvel Film? Let's Dunk on Dustborn

[Timrod]

Dustborn is a 2024 game developed by Red Thread Games and published by Quantic Dream (yes, that Quantic Dream). It is simultaneously a ripoff, an anti-redemption story, a bad game, a bad comic book, a bad musical, and an attempt by a director to defy gravity and fix his declining career. It’s also a shame because it feels like everyone who developed it (except the director, who is also the lead writer) deserved better.

I should start by mentioning that the developers of this game were the targets of a harassment campaign by the American right wing, namely over the (mistaken) idea that they received US taxpayer funds to develop Dustborn. This is incorrect - while Red Thread DID get government grants, they were NOT from the United States (one was from a fund called Creative Europe and I think the rest were from the government of Norway, and in any case they were a fraction of the production budget).

I also want to make it abundantly clear that while I believe Ragnar Tornquist (the director, writer and CEO of Red Thread) got exactly what was coming for him in terms of his career being over, I do NOT believe that the other people on the development team deserved to lose their jobs or that anyone involved in the making of this pile of shit deserved a harassment campaign, because I KNOW there are people who will accuse me of this. I believe some very talented people worked on this game and were stymied by a lack of directorial vision and a chaotic development process loaded with feature creep. I simultaneously believe that this is one of the worst games ever created.

With that said, it’s time to dunk. There was a time when I believed I would not see a second YIIK in my lifetime. Clearly, I was wrong.

Will this be a 100% LP?

No. There are multiple reasons for this, but the biggest is that the game does not allow you to manually save or load, presumably because it’s trying to ape Telltale with the “choices matter but actually don’t” thing. The other reason is that there are multiple endings depending on how you interact with the game’s morality system, and I am not playing through this three times to see that - especially without manual saves.

Which morality route will you be taking?

I will most likely be going for the “Librarian” route, which is the “good” route. This is because the other routes require you to abuse the hell out of superpowers and I plan on skipping most of the combat because it’s a carbon copy of the Batman: Arkham games.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Before we start this dunk, I need to talk about this idiot. His name is Ragnar Tornquist, and he’s a game director with right around 25 years of experience at the time Dustborn released.

: Now, I don’t know Ragnar. I’ve never met him, and I probably never will given that he lives in Norway. But I can tell you two things about him: the first is that he’s not a good writer, and the second is that he’s not a good director either.

: Ragnar started out at a Norwegian developer called Funcom in the mid-90s, where he took on his first project as a director on 1999’s The Longest Journey (seen above). This is the peak of his career.

: He has the sole writing credit on the game, which had a team of over 200 people and a relatively huge budget behind it. The game got near-universal acclaim at launch, with IGN calling it “the Doom of adventure games”.

: I played it myself a long time ago and don’t remember much about it at all, which usually isn’t the hallmark of a good game. I do remember it being a buggy mess.

: In 2006, Ragnar directed a sequel to The Longest Journey called Dreamfall. Dreamfall is pretty indicative of what the rest of his career is like: it released to 6/10 and 7/10 reviews. I have it on Steam, and remember that I had the game glitch out on me a few hours in and didn’t feel like replaying.

: Dreamfall was the start of Ragnar’s “experimental” phase and wasn’t so much a point-and-click game as it was a game about walking around and talking to random people until the plot advanced. It had combat, which most reviewers decried as frustrating and pointless, and was generally not a great game.

: By the time Dreamfall released, Funcom had pivoted hard into being an MMO company, and this is where Ragnar works on his biggest project yet: an MMO called The Secret World.

: The Secret World is a weird hybrid of puzzle game, ARG, and standard-ass WoW clone. It also got middling reviews, and most places only scored it as high as they did (by which I mean they didn’t give it a 3/10) because of the weird puzzle-ARG content. All the reviewers, even the ones who liked it, agreed that the combat and core MMO gameplay was trash.

: I think the game is still up in some form, but fucked if I’m ever touching it.

: In 2013, Ragnar Tornquist leaves Funcom and starts Red Thread Games, which he is the CEO of. Their first project is a Kickstarter-funded episodic sequel to Dreamfall. I wonder why they’d choose to do that.

: Total mystery. Dreamfall Chapters releases in 2014, gets dunked on by reviewers for being a blatant Telltale ripoff, and once again scores the dreaded 72/100 Metacritic score.

: Ragnar, buddy, you peaked in 1999. Give it up. You’re done. You’ve got a wife, you’ve got kids, go enjoy your life.

: Instead, he persists. Red Thread’s second game is 2019’s Draugen, a first-person walking sim written by our buddy Ragnar. What does almost every review about it say? The art style’s great, the music’s good, the writing sucks and weighs the whole thing down. 7/10.

: The twist is that the main character is schizophrenic and Ragnar is ripping off A Beautiful Mind. Saved you $20.

: So now, let’s sum up Ragnar Tornquist’s career. He’s worked on a total of six games, five of which he directed. Three of those games are point-and-click adventures, one is a walking sim, and one is a failed MMO. The sixth game is the failed 2001 MMO Anarchy Online, which is still around and still charges a subscription despite being in maintenance mode for probably 15 years.

: It’s safe to say at this point that Ragnar Tornquist is an industry veteran who should know better. Keep this in mind as we go through Dustborn, because he’s about to make a bunch of mistakes that would be inexcusable by rookies and cost his entire studio their jobs.

: Just like the Allansons, Ragnar Tornquist never learns anything. Now that we’ve got our history down, I am going to rip Dustborn to fucking shreds.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Welcome to Dustborn. This is what you wanted. That’s why you clicked. Right?

: We’re going to start with an option that isn’t currently on the main menu, which is the option to view the prologue comic. For some reason, this option unlocks after you complete the first “comic book” in game (roughly 15-20 minutes in) even though that’s not what a prologue is.

: Right away, you can see that the artist for this game clearly knows how to design a comic cover. Keep this in mind for later.

: I looked them up, and Delio Diaz and Frank Alpizar both work for Marvel now. Again, these are talented artists who were clearly good enough to be hired elsewhere and I’m glad they were.

: I know one other person who should definitely be hired by a comic studio, and that’s dominussart on Discord. He’s great.

: I sent my grill in to be fixed and they added a button that vaporizes your burger into its component atoms.

: We can see here that even though the source material sucks, Delio Diaz and Frank Alpizar made it work and everything is extremely on-model.

: By the way, you’ll notice a poster for Draugen in the background. Draugen is Red Thread’s previous game - it’s a first-person walking sim where the twist is that your character is schizophrenic. It got 6/10 and 7/10 reviews across the board with the complaints being the same every time: the writing sucked and weighed down the visuals and music.

: Let me explain who these characters are by interweaving some introduction shots from the game itself.

: Pax is our player character. Even though it says her vocals “provoke strong emotions”, she’s a direct ripoff of characters like Jesse from Preacher or Banshee from X-Men (or, if you prefer, that one character from My Hero Academia or Lelouch from Code Geass): she can mind control people with her voice.

: Noam is Pax’s ex and also has voice-based mind control. It’s not really clear how Noam’s superpower is any different from Pax’s.

: Noam also sucks for a multitude of reasons, chief among them that they’re an attempt at non-binary representation that falls flat because of the voice casting.

: Noam is voiced by a female voiceactress despite the game outright telling you they’re biologically male, and the end result is something closer to Dr. Girlfriend in Venture Brothers than actual representation.

: Sai is the worst character in this game. She’s annoying, constantly screaming, and her dialog feels like it was written with the goal of breaking the record for most swears in a video game.

: Her superpower is that she can turn her body to stone, which immediately made me wonder if the vitiligo was stolen valor. She is a direct ripoff of Colossus from X-Men.

: Theo doesn’t talk much and generally feels like he’s 72 and not 42.

: This is vaguely reminiscent of the start of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5, where Giorno scams people at the airport. It’s also dumb (from a writing perspective) because the game will establish that using mind control is a bad thing and you should feel bad.

: Reminds me of Miles Morales if that kid had no moral code.

: We will hear this song later in the update. It is not good.

: I think this is the only significant difference between Pax and Noam: Noam needs to touch people, while Pax can just scream at them.

: This is pretty clearly meant to be Kamala Harris. It’s funny they think Kamala would’ve changed the status quo if she’d won the election in 2024 - she’s an establishment corporate Democrat.

: Also, picking “Pacifica” for the name of post-apocalyptic California is a terrible choice that Ragnar Tornquist lifted directly from Cyberpunk 2077.

: The Raid is a minigame that unlocks at roughly the halfway point, because we’re not allowed to have anything more interesting than people sitting around and talking.

: Now let’s start a new game.

: Holy mother of fuck what happened? This is easily the worst comic cover I’ve ever seen. The characters are way off-model, there’s no action at all, and it’s like 80% beige.

: It’s so bad that they had to add the fake Marvel publisher mark and the red textbox because otherwise you’d look at this and go “What the fuck is this supposed to be?”

: If you tried to run this cover past Marvel or DC’s editors, they’d laugh at you. If you tried to run it past Weekly Shonen Jump’s editorial board, they’d toss you out on your ass.

: You know what? Let’s look at some covers for the comics that Ragnar Tornquist is obviously ripping off, the biggest one being the 1980s X-Men story Days of Future Past.

: Look at that shit. No beige anywhere. Lots of colors even for a night shot. Even though there’s no direct action, you have the implied action of Wolverine trying to threaten someone off with his claws.

: I think those pink pants were outlawed in 1985.

: Here’s another one. You have direct action, lots of colors, Wolverine getting his dick blasted off by a laser. You also have a random Spiderman in the corner for no apparent reason.

: He’ll live.

: Now, you might go “Well, those are comic books aimed at kids. Comics aimed at an older audience, which this clearly is, don’t usually do that” and you’re wrong.

: This one even does the car shot better, because the artists figured out that they needed to make it a convertible to show off the characters properly.

: There’s one other argument I suppose you could make, which is that both Watchmen and Transmetropolian are young adult comics and not truly aimed at adults. Here’s my counterpoint.

: Reiwa no Dara-san is a seinen slice of life comedy manga. It’s extremely good.

: Same for Hatarakanai Futari. But what if we assume it’s one of those Silver Sprocket comics about depression or being gay and doing crimes? After all, the cast of Dustborn are gay criminals.

: Uh-oh! There’s no counterargument for that Dustborn cover. It sucks.

: This one I want to chalk up to both a failure of directorial vision AND a bad development process. There are a few things that aren’t in the picture that should be: Pax’s shoulder should be bleeding, as should Noam’s head.

: My guess is that this was done before they had the story nailed down (a mistake) and they didn’t have the time (or more likely the budget) to touch it up.

: At the same time though, this feels like when I went to someone for a commission and realized halfway through giving them references that my idea sucked.

: The game has an option to show who’s speaking and color the subtitles, and I don’t know why it’s not on by default. I wind up turning it on a bit later in the recording.

: “SHIT. Shit! Shit. SHIT. God DAMN this shitting SHIT…”

: Calling that Vivziepop dialog would be wrong. Even she’s not that bad.

: I’m working on getting Mara re-designed to not be a Hellaverse OC.

: “Are you okay, Sai?”

: " ‘Am I okay?’ You’re the one who got us into this, you.. you fuck!"

: “Theo’s just trying to help, no need to yell at-”

: " ‘Help’. Not dragging us into this would’ve been helpful. No, I’m not okay. I’m the opposite of okay. I’m - WE are FUCKED!"

: You would think from the way the game capitalizes random words that the voiceactors would emphasize them, but they don’t.

: At this point, we can press 1 to stop the dialog. I should probably do that, but I’m going to let it go on just a bit longer.

: Okay that’s enough, I just wanted to get across that Sai is a whiny bitch and I wish she’d catch a bullet to the skull.

: “Stop bickering! PLEASE. I know we’re pretty shaken up, emotionally AND physically. But we got out, we’re alive, we have the CARGO.”

: “Tomorrow we’ll be out of the country and on our way to Nova Scotia. We’ll be fine. Better than fine. We’ll be FREE. But if we keep fighting, we won’t make it through the Republic. We need to stick together. We need to be a CREW.”

: “Anyway, that’s all. You can talk again.”

: “Well, that was uncomfortable.”

: “I HATE it when you do that.”

: “What’s going on?”

: “Pax used her Vocals to BLOCK us. I can feel my adrenaline spiking.”

: “Fascinating. I didn’t notice a thing.”

: “Sai. Your hands. They’re --”

: “I know! That’s what happens when I get agitated, PAX.”

: “I’m sorry. But you really need to chill, because if anyone sees-”

: “Thanks, I KNOW. Shut up!”

: “I believe the kids call it ‘K-pop-music’. It stands for ‘Korean popular music’.”

: “It’s K-pop! Just K-pop!”

: K-pop sucks.

: “Right, ‘K-pops’.”

: “It’s.. nice. But.. maybe turn it down a notch, Sai?”

: “How’s your arm, Pax?”

: “Stings. But I’ll survive.”

: “What if I…?”

: “Okay.”

: The concept of having a healer whose ability to heal is entirely a placebo is admittedly interesting, but that’s not what gaslighting is.

: At this point, we need to talk to everyone else in the car. I am going to skip this because this is already boring as sin.

: Ahem.

: You’re not a sin. Anyway, this is where we get those intro cards I showed off earlier.

: To progress, we need to turn the radio off.

: “Leave my music alo- oh shit, I LOVE this song! Come on, guys! It’s a ROAD TRIP, you have to sing along!”

: I feel like whoever wrote that yellow box needs a taser to the balls. Looking at you, Ragnar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AY7jamiFfM

: I have a lot to say about this. The first thing I want to talk about is what you’re seeing in this video. What you’re seeing is pure, unrestrained hubris.

: You are watching Ragnar Tornquist standing on the edge of a tall cliff, leaning over and shouting “Fuck you, gravity! I’m going to fly today!” as he jumps off.

: This song has four different singers in it. I tracked down their IMDB pages: Pax, Sai, Noam, and Theo. What you’ll immediately notice is that all of them had bit parts, mostly in live-action TV, until they got cast in this game. You’ll also notice that none of them have prior singing roles.

: That’s right. Ragnar Tornquist took four inexperienced actors who can’t sing and cast them for a scene that requires all four to sing. Ragnar Tornquist is trying to defy gravity. But I mean, it’s not like Ragnar Tornquist had any experience with that. He was only the director on 5 games over 25 years.

: Uh-oh. I mean, that’s just one game, right? It’s not like there were more..

: Oh no. Ragnar, buddy, this is not looking good for you. At least it was only two games. Two out of five, that’s not bad. Right?

: By Dreamfall Chapters, he was smart enough to not credit a voice director at all, but we all know he did it. Unfortunately, I got banned from MobyGames after literally three searches, so we’ll never know if he was the voice director on Draugen or not (he was).

: Anyone who has ever worked with voice talent knows that finding a voiceactor who can also sing is hard. You can find a singer or voiceactor easily, but someone who can do both well is the voiceacting equivalent of Shohei Otani.

: That’s why usually when you see a character in a voiceacted game sing, they’re a side character like Scylla in Hades 2 or Raphael in Baldur’s Gate 3 where the studio can cast a singer who doesn’t need to voiceact much, or a voiceactor who only needs to sing one song. Voiceactor-singer combos usually command a much higher salary, which is why they’re rarely used for main characters.

: I did have a few people (thanks to TuyuVT, Meowtroid, and Madison;Notes on Bluesky) who suggested exceptions, like the Ryu Ga Gotoku / Yakuza series and Hades.

: The distinction there is that Ryu Ga Gotoku didn’t really have singing until Yakuza 3, and even then Kiryu only had one karaoke song. By that point, RGG Studio and Sega had the budget and a proven franchise to justify doing that.

: Hades is also different because Supergiant realized they hit the jackpot with Darren Korb when they made Bastion, and they never have him sing with anyone else.

: There’s one other part of this that is unrestrained hubris, and that’s having four people singing on top of each other when it’s pretty clear they did not have a voice director or anyone who knows what audio mixing is. That’s a bold fucking move.

: The best part is that Ragnar Tornquist realized this song sounds like shit because the later rhythm game segments (yes, there will be later ones) use only the backing music without the VAs singing the way a normal rhythm game would.

: On top of all that, it’s a bad rhythm game song because it lacks a strong beat. I did this by using visual cues rather than listening to the music, which is a hallmark of a bad rhythm game.

: “They’ve got their lights on. They’re after us. Oh shit oh shit oh shit–”

: “Sai? Calm down.”

: You would think that Doctor Girlfriend over here would use their emotion-dulling superpower or whatever, but no. That would make sense.

: “Take a deep breath, Sai. Let’s pull over, we can handle the police.”

: “Pax, maybe put the CARGO in a SAFE place?”

: They stole a pink monster toy?

: “Handle the police HOW exactly? You know what cops do to people like us!”

: Normally I’m against police brutality, but if a cop decided to “accidentally” unload his entire service weapon into Sai, I would not complain.

: “Sai? PLEASE listen to me.”

: Oh no, not OUR COMIC BOOK. As far as I can tell, the choices don’t matter in this game at all.

: We get two choices that don’t make any sense. I picked 2.

: Sai manages to fuck up driving somehow, even though (as we’ll learn in a minute) they’re in a self-driving car.

: I chose this route because it gives you this Aidyn Chronicles-level cutscene direction where they opted to make the camera clip through the unrendered inside of a truck. Yes, this is noticeable in game.

: If you pick the other option, the car stops and the cop gets run over by oncoming traffic. It’s very stupid.

: “That was WAY too close for comfort.”

: “Are they okay?”

: “What, the police? Uh… I don’t think so, Sai.”

: “I caused that to happen! I just MURDERED people!”

: This is the worst depiction of someone having a breakdown over killing someone I’ve ever seen. There was an indie Game Maker game called Iji like 20 years ago that did a better job than this.

: “Not your fault, Sai.”

: “Do you think the vehicle had time to report the accident before it went BOOM?”

: “FUCK!”

: I have to wonder if Sai’s VA gave Ragnar Dipshit any kind of feedback on how utterly shit her lines are.

: Like, when I hire creative types, I almost get worried if they DON’T give me some kind of pushback.

: “The Pacific Authority will know something’s happened.”

: “You know what cops do to people like us. We’re dead!”

: That’s the second time you’ve said that in the past minute and a half.

: “We need to stay calm. Getting caught speeding won’t do us much good.”

: “We don’t know if they were actually chasing us. You still got the CARGO, right?”

: “All of THIS for that.. FUCKING THING. It better be WORTH it, Pax. You know what? I’m letting this thing drive itself from now on. In fact, I’m never driving again. I’m done. Done!”

: So I have questions. Why are you letting the emotionally fragile lady who has been shown to be able to snap metal with her bare hands drive? Why are you not using the auto-drive in the first place?

: “We’re less than twenty minutes out of Sacramento. We’ll make it.”

: “This is just the WORST. And do not tell me we’re lucky to be alive. I’ve had it up to here with being alive.”

: We get yet another incredibly boring comic that tells us nothing we don’t already know. Yes, we just sat through a 15-minute car cutscene with zero action in a superhero game.

: She’s wearing a shirt that says “Flashback” in a flashback.

: We have control over Pax, but this is more cutscene.

: One problem with hiring two British people to play Americans is that no American would ever say “She’s finally out of the toilet”. We’d say she’s off the toilet or out of the bathroom.

: We can look at a couple of the objects in Noam’s apartment, but there’s only one I care about because I need to show that Ragnar Tornquist is a fucking hack.

: That object is this book.

: Dustborn takes place in an alt-history setting where JFK was never assassinated. The fact that the world is now a dystopia makes this a DIRECT FUCKING RIPOFF of the Steven King novel 11/22/63.

: 11/22/63 is about a guy in Maine who finds a magic basement door that time warps him to something like a year before the JFK assassination. He starts a new life in the 1960s, eventually winds up saving JFK, and then returns to the present to find that the world ended.

: What a damn jimla.

: “So what do you guys think?”

: “I don’t know, man. The whole thing feels incredibly RISKY.”

: Sai’s shirt is a war crime.

: “Riskier than being a DEVIANT in Pacifica?”

: “Why are YOU of all people so hot to trot? You’re RICH, Noam. LOOK at that fucking VIEW! You don’t need the money.”

: I don’t know what the deal with the icons in the top-left are. I guess it’s to signify party member storylines?

: “Well, I have GOOD reasons for taking the job. I’m dirt poor and work for table scraps from tech bros. Not to mention that of the three of us, I’m the MOST likely to be outed. You KNOW what happens when I get STRESSED…”

: “Did you finish your discussion?”

: “Not yet, Theo! Jeez, man, hold your fucking horses…”

: “What about you, Pax? I mean, do the RISKS outweigh the BENEFITS?”

: I picked 3, but I honestly do not care.

: “What’s my FUTURE in Pacifica? Even if I COULD get a real job, instead of hustling for shitty gigs that play table scraps… and even if I didn’t have to worry about one wrong WORD spoken in the wrong place at the wrong time.. there’s nothing here for me. No papers, no prospects, no FAMILY. It’s not LIVING, just.. EXISTING. Yeah, it’s WORTH the RISK. We won’t get another chance like this.”

: So what you’re saying is that your life is like a ride on a freeway? Dodging bullets while you’re trying to find your way? That there’s more to living than only surviving, baby you’re not there but you’re still trying?

: “When you put it like THAT…? I’d ALSO like a big payday, a ticket out of Pacifica, AND to not have to worry about being thrown in JAIL. Or WORSE.”

: “You think we can trust HIM?”

: “Theo? He’s odd.. but GOOD odd, like a dorky DAD. I think he’s legit.”

: “What’s HE getting out of this? Dude has a job with the PURITANS. I’m sure it comes with BENEFITS.”

: “Whatever his motivations, Theo’s the real deal. And so’s this job, Sai.”

: “…okay? So it’s settled?”

: “YO! THEO! We’re READY!”

: Next time, we’ll do Issue 1. This cover also sucks, but slightly less than the first one. How hard would it have been to at least get the characters on-model?

: I’d also like to point out that we just sat through twenty minutes of absolutely fucking nothing. Will the game improve? Nope!

[Timrod]

Summary

: And we’re back with even more of this heinous bullshit. Trust me when I say this game is about to get so much dumber.

: “You sure this is the right dome?”

: “This is it. La Torre.”

: “Thank GOD…”

: “Wait, is that…?”

: I obviously can’t re-tread this part.. at least, not easily. There is a way, we’ll see it later. In any case, it doesn’t seem like they should be able to see the bus that easily from this angle.

: “You’re looking at a refurbished 1986 Cougar Cruiser. Isn’t she beautiful?”

: “I LOVE it.”

: What kind of mechanic is this lady? Why does she have the jack outside of the bus while she’s underneath it? It makes no sense!

: Note the giant yellow text reading “HELP HER”. The game will do this constantly, even when there’s no reason to do it. You’ll see a good example of that in a minute.

: I’m not saying that signposting is a bad thing, but this feels insulting. This isn’t “yellow paint”, this is yellow paint with a giant glowing sign reading “OBJECTIVE” next to it because the game thinks you’re as dumb as our buddy Ragnar Tornquist.

: “What’s going on?”

: “There’s lady-legs poking out from under that bus!”

: The only time that line should ever be said is if this is Fuck Bus: The Bus that Has Sex. I don’t think this is Fuck Bus.

: And no, I didn’t get anyone to draw Fuck Bus. I probably should’ve thought of that. It sounds like something the Oglaf artist would do.

: Come to think of it, this is kind of an apt visual metaphor for this game. Ragnar Tornquist is the mechanic crushed under the bus by his own hubris and the robot is the team of professionals desperately trying to save it. The bus, that is, not him.

: It also makes no sense for several reasons. Why is this mechanic in a building without a maintenance pit? You know, the thing literally every mechanic shop has specifically to stop this exact thing from happening.

: “Luna? Luna! Are you okay?”

: “I’m stuck! The jack won’t respond!”

: “Stop! STOP! My arm’s caught, you’ll break it! I can’t breathe! You need to do something!”

: Well yeah. First you’ve got to get your phone out and take photos so you can email them to the Darwin Awards people.

: Then you call your attorney and send them the pictures as well because there’s no way in hell you’re driving that car again.

: And then you get on top of the car and start really slamming your weight into it. Every car loves human sacrifices.

: “Pax, she’s freaking out! What do we do?”

: This is a tutorial for the “crew button”, which is Q by default. It’s also INCREDIBLY FUCKING STUPID.

: “Noam? Keep her calm.”

: “Working on it. Hey, uh, Luna? How are you doing?”

: Noam really is the Rory of Dustborn. What a useless dipshit.

: We then need to go to the back of the bus and command Sai to use her super strength to lift the bus. I can believe that Sai wouldn’t figure this out on her own because we already know she’s only sapient for some definition of the term.

: “We need to raise this bus higher. Sai!”

: Sick soyface. I actively hate her as a character. She’s not quite at Alex YIIKesman levels of annoying, but damned if she’s not close.

: “I’m still stuck! Can you get it any higher?”

: “Lady, I’m barely able to keep it level. We need that jack, Pax!”

: “Try rebooting the Yuyu hub! That piece of crap voice activated box ALWAYS bugs out!”

: It’s funny because noted Australian streamer Yuyu (https://twitch.tv/tuyuvt) rarely bugs out.

: Theo is supposed to be the Hackerman of the party, but he’s apparently too dumb to figure out that the giant teal terminal sitting ten feet away from him is broken.

: “I’ll check it out.”

: “That explains why the jack’s not working!”

: “Luna, where’s the wireless router?”

: “I have no idea!”

: Hahaha oh look it says “Thanks Karen”. What a funny joke. This is Anthony Burch Borderlands-tier writing. I’m half expecting Claptrap to appear around the corner.

: Fortunately, it’s a different stupid robot. Come to think of it, if you have robots that are clearly small enough to fit under a bus, why aren’t they doing the work?

: We need to kick the robot to find that it has somehow detached the antenna for the router. I uh.. I don’t think antennas detach that way.

: And then there’s a minigame where you have to adjust the antenna to get signal for some reason. What the fuck is the point of this?

: I mean, I get they’re making fun of “smart” tech, but this feels like Stephen King doing his “old man yells at technology” routine.

: “I think we have network access again!”

: “Thanks, I’ll give it a try.”

: Points of Pythagoras, that’s not what you’d use to lift a bus! I’m sure all of you have realized that, of course. What you’re looking at there is a floor jack that supports somewhere between 3 and 6 tons.

: Like that one! I’d prefer it in red myself. One of these will cover almost anything you’d need to jack up in your garage.

: Remember - for safety, you want a jack with a weight rating of half your vehicle’s weight plus a 10% margin. That’s because you’re almost never going to jack a car’s entire weight up at once.

: It wouldn’t hurt to get two, either. Sure, they’re $200 or so each, but it’s worth the peace of mind knowing that if one fails, the other will be there and you won’t need to call your wife to lift the car off you.

: Of course, a 6-ton jack isn’t going to cut it when you’ve got a bus that weighs well over 20 tons. So what do you do in those situations? Don’t say you use ten of those 6-ton jacks. That’s not how it works.

: This is an industrial toe jack with a lift capacity of over 22,000 pounds. They’re $1,000 each, but they’re meant for industrial settings, not for your garage.

: And how long did that take you to find?

: Ten seconds with a Gorgle search.

: Don’t you mean Google?

: No, I mean Gorgle. He lives next door and has a voice-activated alien supercomputer I can shout at from my living room if the window’s open.

: And this is why I ride a demon elephant.

: Ragnar Tornquist really is an idiot.

: Even though the bus is jacked up, we still need to pull this lady out for some reason. This whole scene is beyond bad writing. It’s a violation of common sense done entirely to say “Big tech bad”.

: The thing is, I can tell you exactly how I’d fix it. You have the mechanic in a pit like an actual mechanic. The party walks in, and one of the industrial-grade toe jacks holding the bus up fails, causing it to roll backward and block the ladder out of the pit.

: The mechanic’s stuck in there and needs you to get them out, which you do by having Theo hack some robots to help Sai push the bus forward and get a new jack underneath. This obviously doesn’t fix Noam and Pax having nothing to do with their powers, but that’s fine given we just saw them get used.

: That’s still a little unrealistic because most mechanic shops that work on big vehicles like that don’t use pit ladders - they have an entire basement underneath the garage accessed from a staircase - but it’s far closer to being within suspension of disbelief than this shit.

: If you’re Ragnar Tornquist, you owe me a $500 consultant fee for that. Get on it. You can also put me in the credits - my name is Alan Smithee.

: “That’s the last time I’m ever trusting the YuYu voice assistant with ANYTHING. Welcome to the Castle. How was the trip?”

: “The officer walked into the road and–”

: This save was from my second recording where I had the cop get run over. I didn’t actually record that part.

: You actually can save the cop, but you have to use Pax’s power on him twice and honestly, I’m not replaying that first part again. I think I might have an aneurysm if I do.

: I would rather play through Aidyn Chronicles again than do that. By comparison, Aidyn Chronicles really wasn’t that bad of a game.

: This writing is a whole new level of bad, and it’s absolutely fucking crazy that it’s coming from a guy with more writing experience than I have.

: You know what this means? If you’re writing a fanfiction, or an original story, or whatever, you are less bad than a guy who has done fiction writing for over half his entire life. I guarantee you that no matter how bad your work is, it’s not worse than this.

: “A Pacific Authority officer was killed-”

: “Accidentally squashed by a robot truck.”

: “KILLED, after waving down YOUR car. If they weren’t looking for you before, they definitely are now.”

: “The car’s off the grid. It can’t be tracked.”

: “We can’t risk it. You need to leave Pacifica TODAY, if you plan to make it to the Republic.”

: You can interrupt their conversation, but doing so prevents you from getting the good ending (in the sense that it’s a happier one, not in the sense that it’s well-written).

: There’s a scene in Chapter 6 that requires you to have interrupted a conversation fewer than three times. I don’t know if the one in the car counts.

: “That wasn’t the deal, Luna.”

: “Neither was the dead cop, THEO.”

: “You’re kicking us out? Seriously?”

: “That’s - you think I wanted this? I’m grateful for the help, and I’m doing everything I can to ensure your mission is successful, but it’s too risky. We need to get you across the border today. Nova Scotia will understand.”

: “Theo, there’s a Weave terminal downstairs. You can make contact with Nova Scotia there.”

: “What about the bus? Will it be ready?”

: “I don’t think there’s any damage. The robot will do a full check-up and we need to load it with supplies for the libraries. As for you, Yellow Hat, we need to get you patched up. You won’t make it across the border wearing that shirt.. and the open bullet wound.”

: We could have Pax go full on bitch mode, but I don’t feel like going through the save reloading process because I’d be forced to replay a big chunk of this.

: “I’ve been telling her that since this morning. She’s stubborn.”

: “Finish your drinks, folks. I’ll get the elevator.”

: “Is this going to be a problem, Theo?”

: Here’s another opportunity to interrupt. You can potentially lose the good ending in Chapter 1. I think they intended for this to be for replayability, but it kinda sucks if for some reason you care about the story.

: I mean, it’s kind of like those games you’d see in the PS3/360 era where they had collectibles but no level select so you’d have to replay the entire game to see them.

: “I don’t think so. I just have to check in with Nova Scotia and then we’ll be on the road to Nevada. We have the bus, we have the cargo, we’re just starting our journey east a day early.”

: “We’ll be fine, Sai.”

: “Are you doing your thing now? Are you mollycoddling me?”

: “Mollycoddling? What does that even mean?”

: I pick Option 3 here.

: “Do you think we have a choice here, Theo?”

: "Unfortunately, no. Luna’s probably right, it’s risky to stay here long. I trust her. And if the bus is ready, we might as well get an early start.

: Each character has three different endings depending on how you interact with them. Pax also has an invisible morality meter that originally never became visible at all.

: There was a patch to the game that lets you see where you are on the morality meter if you have a clear save, but what’s the point if the game is meant to be played without manual saving?

: So here’s the thing: I don’t give a shit how any of these characters end up. I’d actually prefer if all of them die, but I don’t think that’s a possibility.

: Remember how I talked about the yellow text being insulting? You have a scene here that, while the dialog and writing suck, has decent cutscene direction.

: The camera turns around and you see Noam and Sai start walking toward the elevator, which is the only thing in the room that isn’t the bus. It’s not like there’s much else to see here.

: The elevator already visually stands out, being the only blue object in a room full of grey. That, plus the breadcrumb trail of Sai and Noam slowly walking over there, is really enough signposting.

: The yellow text is just straight-up insulting my intelligence, and I can imagine Ragnar putting it there and saying something about how dumb gamers these days are.

: “Couldn’t your people have used their powers to DEFUSE the situation with the cops?”

: “I don’t think that’s - ah.”

: “My VOCALS turn my body to literal STONE. I’m not sure how that would’ve helped.”

: “I did try to ‘defuse the situation’, but my GASLIGHTING didn’t really help.”

: I’m gonna stop you right here. There are three of you with superpowers. Of those, two of you have powers that boil down to “We can mind control people.”

: “Not true.”

: “Right. We’ve all learned to keep our Vox under wraps. If anyone knew…”

: “End of the road. Even in Pacifica.”

: “Okay. I apologize for making assumptions. That’s not what I - what happened happened. Now we have to get you guys out of here before the cops come looking.”

: Oh boy, this part. I hate to be one of those people who overanalyzes things, like all those women who went after that Love and Deepspace game and made some very weird claims about it that were kind of a stretch, but I have to do it.

: I want to start by saying I get what’s going on here. Ragnar Tornquist sees all those articles out there about there not being a lot of games with pregnant protagonists and he wants to go for the high score on the Overwatch Diversity Chart instead of making compelling and well-written characters first and then figuring out where he can fit in diversity, which is the correct way to do it.

: The thing is, in doing so, he’s inadvertently playing directly into right-wing talking points. Horseshoe theory is real and it’s exploding directly in Ragnar’s face. I’m actually kind of surprised no one at the studio stopped him, but I guess this is what happens when the CEO of your company is also its only credited writer.

: I mean, think about it for just a second. Pax is non-white. She’s pregnant. She’s trying to cross the border into Canada without documentation. This is what the American right wing calls an “anchor baby” situation, and there’s almost no way Ragnar was completely ignorant of it no matter how dumb he is.

: Now, I want to stress that anchor babies aren’t real because the American immigration system doesn’t even work that way. Don’t think I don’t see the YIIKheads out there just waiting to start a Twitter mob on me and call me a nazi. I know you’re there, especially the one with the My Little Pony OC that was just Alastor from Hazbin Hotel. I knew I stopped liking Hazbin for a reason.

: Ironically, we just saw a line about “Keeping Vox under wraps” when doing exactly that would have saved Hazbin. Well, that and rewriting season 2 entirely. Seriously, Christian Borle can’t sing - look up the Broadway version of “Vox Populi” where he has to lip sync while Jeremy Jordan demolishes him on stage.

: I also want to stress that there is nothing wrong with a pregnant person coming into the United States and giving birth. In fact, I think we should make it far easier to come into the US if for no other reason than to stop 90 Day Fiance from existing.

: “Sure. Just.. sure.”

: “It’s PAX. And give me a minute, I need the toilet.”

: “Down the corridor to your right, through the kitchen.”

: “I’ll go with you. I REALLY have to pee.”

: “Very much the same. I haven’t peed since San Francisco! Hey, what do you think of that Luna lady? Can we trust her?”

: “Can we talk about it later?”

: “Oh sure, yeah, sure, sorry, definitely.”

: What compelling dialog. You know what this reminds me of? That one Persona 4 comic where Yosuke runs around screaming about how he has to piss. That was a good comic, unlike this one.

: And now we get a shot of Pax vomiting while two people in the background argue about tech companies. Riveting stuff.

: If you ever vomit so hard that you start seeing road signs for Lebanon, you probably should seek medical attention.

: What the fuck is this cutscene? This feels like something you’d see in one of the really bad Silent Hill games.

: “What was THAT? Kid, we need to SLEEP soon.”

: “You okay in there?”

: “I’m fine. I’ll be right out.”

: Why was any of this necessary? If you want to reveal that Pax is pregnant, you could do it when she sees the stupid auto-doc for her arm. Have it just kinda bleep out that she’s two or three months in while no one else is around to hear it.

: “What can I say, I’m a magnanimous bitch.”

: “All yours.”

: “Did you even wash your hands?”

:As it turns out,

: There’s a table here with some stuff we can take.

: There are a few items we can take here, and this is where I have an epiphany about why this game is like this. We’ll get to that in a minute, because first, I need to point something out.

: The “cargo” is a glorified USB stick. But you know, I feel like I’ve.. heard this story somewhere. It was about traversing a post-apocalyptic United States that was actually Norway, the main character was pregnant and had a keychain full of USB sticks.. I just can’t remember it. It’s like the thought is stranded somewhere in my brain cells. They should have a name for that phenomenon, maybe something like “BCs” for “Beached Cells”.

: Oh, right, I remember now! It was called Norman Reedus and the Funky Fetus. How could I forget a title like that?

: It’s funny, though, how Norman Reedus’s plot only worked because the country was so fucked up that they had no internet connection, and so there was a compelling reason for Norman Reedus to be carrying a USB key on foot instead of sending it over BitTorrent. You know, that thing that actually exists that people use for transferring large files over spotty internet connections.

: There’s also a good reason why most “escape” stories like this have the “cargo” be a person, and that’s specifically to avoid these very basic questions.

: Anyway, about that epiphany. We have an inventory bar, just like a point and click adventure game. I also know this game has combat in it, but we won’t see that for a while.

: You know what else was a point and click game with bad combat made by Ragnar Tornquist? Dreamfall. I feel like this game is just him trying to sell Dreamfall again and hoping it sticks this time.

: Keep in mind he’s done that twice before, and neither time stuck. This is not the cure for his declining career - the cure is retiring, or maybe taking an indirect oversight role and passing the torch to people with actual ideas instead of “Let’s make Dreamfall again”.

: These items can be given to the party members to increase your reputation with them.

: We can eat a piece of pizza for no good reason, and there’s one more item we can pick up.

: You can tell this dialog was written by the most insufferable douchebag alive. Ragnar strikes me as one of those people on Bluesky who unironically responds to a joke with “You’re laughing, but what are we going to do to stop Trump in the mid-terms?”

: He’s a cuck chair who made a wish to be a real boy.

: There’s an optional event where we can have Pax stare wistfully into the water or talk to Noam. Staring into the water is part of a game-spanning cheevo if you care about those.

: I don’t know why the game is so hung up on the whole cop thing. I might just do a new recording run and save the cop. We’ll make that a side update.

: If you talk to Noam you can either put them on the, uh.. wears sunglasses and chainsmokes path or the “I’m going to make a horrible decision and have sex with you again” path.

: I would rather watch Yani Neko (Eng: Chainsmoker Cat) than this shit, and that’s saying something.

: “Nova Scotia hasn’t replied yet either.”

: “You sent a message through the Greenland number? Might wanna try the computer.”

: “Why would the Weave be quicker than satellite? You said there were connection issues.”

: “Both channels have been spotty, can’t hurt to cover all options.”

: We can pick up a copy of the same book on JFK we saw in Noam’s apartment. This time, I realize you can flip it around and see the back cover.

: So yes, this is an alternate timeline where Jackie Kennedy dies and JFK marries Marilyn Monroe. It’s also a DIRECT RIPOFF of the X-Men story Days of Future Past.

: Days of Future Past is a story written in 1981 that takes place in 2013. The plot goes something like this: in 1980, a group of supervillains assassinates a U.S. senator, along with Professor X, shortly before the election.

: The U.S. government responds by putting anyone with superpowers in a concentration camp and building giant robots to guard the camps. The robots go out of control and take over the country. Wolverine sends Kitty Pryde back in time to stop the assassination.

: You might see this and go “Wait, isn’t that just the Marvel Civil War?” and the answer is yes.

: We can also pick up a copy of 1984, because of course we can.

: Luna will progress the plot, but let’s talk to Theo because I want to show how dumb this is.

: Okay, so.. I have a lot to say about this design. First, you’ve got this 1980s-looking Apple II knockoff sitting in the same frame as a modern PC.

: The design makes no sense - it looks like someone glued a coffee maker to the world’s smallest CRT. I have never seen a CRT in my life that looks like that. It has a wired, chunky Apple II mouse but a wireless keyboard for some reason.

: And don’t forget the built-in floppy drive and the 1980s BBS on the screen. What the fuck is this shit? Is Ragnar so senile he forgot he set his story in 2030? He’s only in like, his late 40s. That’s some really early onset Alzheimer’s he’s got.

: None of this shit makes sense! None of it! This takes place in 2030! Do you have any idea how hard it was to find a working CRT even in 2015? It wasn’t fucking easy! I’d know!

: “What are you doing?”

: “Contacting New Jerusalem. We need to know their library is still online before we leave Pacifica. So far.. nothing.”

: Yes, the rebel bases are libraries because of course they are. I get that libraries can be great, but the one I worked in once was so bad that I haven’t been to one in over a decade.

: The auto-doc machine is a blood pressure cuff. Incredible. How does that even make sense for like, if you have a wound to a part that isn’t an arm?

: “Where’d you get a DOC?”

: “Same place that’s helping you across the Republic. Nova Scotia pulled some strings or paid some bribes. I don’t know what we’d do without it. We get a lot of people coming across from the Republic, and some are in a BAD state.”

: “I’ve seen kids as young as four or five, tragic stuff. The DOC’s a literal lifesaver. There’s mostly tissue damage, with some vascular trauma. Bone looks intact.”

: Maybe this is like Resident Evil where the zombies don’t bite anywhere that isn’t the shoulder. Seriously, go look at any RE game where someone gets bitten, and you’ll notice they only ever bite the shoulder.

: The only time this isn’t true is Resident Evil 8, where Ethan has half his hand bitten off. That’s how you know RE8 isn’t a real Resident Evil.

: “Will my arm recover?”

: “Should be good as new. This machine’s top of the line, Puritan tech. Soon as we’re done here, we need to load the bus with supplies for the libraries.”

: “The librarians will be happy to see you. It’s lonely, being a safe harbor in a fascist storm. Sorry about making presumptions earlier.”

: “We don’t see a lot of DIVERGENTS these days, and that leaves a lot of room for conspiracy to grow. I wish there was time to talk, I’d like to learn more about.. you know. About what you can do. All of you. But.”

: “We prefer Anomals.”

: “I apologize. Anomals. I think the last one to pass through was two, three years ago. He was like you, could make people bend to his will with just words.”

: Ragnar? What are you trying to do here? Are.. are you trying to compare your knockoff X-Men to trans people? Because that’s what it sounds like to me.

: Now sure, you certainly could make a narrative game about the challenges faced by trans people, but this isn’t the way to do that. This feels like a Mr. Jambo moment except taken entirely seriously instead of being a blatant parody.

: I’d also like to point out that this is three for four on superheroes with the ability to use mind control. That line about it being an incorrect generalization is looking dumber and dumber.

: “That’s not how it works. I can make people DO things, but it’s not exactly SUBTLE. It’s like negging, but.. more brutal.”

: Again, not beating the allegations.

: “I don’t know a lot about Divergent - about ANOMALS. Sorry. Again.”

: “Most people have no idea what we can do. So they fear us instead.”

: God this is so fucking painful to read it isn’t even funny.

: “The wound’s been cleaned and sealed, we just need to give DOC enough time to close it up properly and make it look-”

: There’s an alarm blaring in the background.

: “Could be a false alarm, could be trouble. You folks stay here, don’t go ANYWHERE. Pax, let DOC finish up. And PLEASE get yourself a shirt from the breakroom table. You can’t cross the border looking like a serial killer.”

: We need to talk to Theo again before leaving.

: We could interrupt him, but we don’t want to do that apparently. I hate this game for that.

: “Where’s the car?”

: “Dismantled and removed.”

: “They’re just talking.”

: " ‘Asking questions’. If they SUSPECTED anything, they’d have this place surrounded. This does not look like a raid. If they even suspected we were here, they’d have brought an ARMY."

: Way to repeat yourself there, fuckface.

: “What do we do?”

: “We stay calm and we stay put. We knew this might happen. If they decide to search the place, we’ll be safe in the library. La Torre’s designed to hide fugitives.”

: Yeah, there’s no way the cops are going to go down the big blue elevator in the otherwise completely grey room, or be able to hear the blaring alarm going off. Cops wouldn’t do that.

: “Maybe let the crew know what’s happening? Soon as the cops leave we should be on our way.”

: Now this, admittedly, is a decent use of the yellow text. Of course, part of the problem is that this is a circle full of samey corridors with little organic signposting in it.

: I just realized looking at this that these last two screenshots are basically the first two panels of Loss. Just something to think about.

: “No, things are NOT okay. Just – just let me stay in here.”

: The correct answer is obviously 1, but.. god.. I need to pick option 3. You don’t understand. This is where I figure out how to roll back saves and stop my recording.

: “Am I.. hungry? You’re asking if I’m HUNGRY?”

: “I have jerky. Strongman’s-”

: The game autosaves if you do this, by the way.

: As it turns out, the game keeps a few backup saves. All you have to do is turn Steam Cloud off and delete the most recent one.

: I tried listening, and as it turns out all it makes her do is complain about the same shit she’s been complaining about. I don’t think there’s a way to get her out without using mind control.

: This time, we get points toward Sai’s other route. There’s no reason for us to care.

: “OW! Seriously?”

: “You’re STRONGER than this. I expect MORE from you.”

: “You’re being a real DICK, Pax. You think THIS is going to change my mind?”

: We get the option of either having Noam handle her or trying to have Pax do it herself. I don’t know why anyone cares about Sai. She’s clearly got issues and isn’t fit for this dumbass escape plan.

: “I’m sorry for being rough on you, but..”

: “You PUSHED me. That’s FUCKED UP, Pax. I mean, YEAH, I was spiraling. I probably needed to get out of my HEAD.. but you didn’t need to ASSAULT me. But whatever, now I’m too MAD at you to have a panic attack, so.. THANKS, I guess?”

: So honestly, I want Sai to die the most brutal death possible. She’s an unlikable cunt with no redeeming qualities. If the game intends for me to feel sympathy, it has failed.

: “Hey. Hey? Is this thing on? Can they hear me down - okay. Folks, Luna here. I shut off the alarm, but we need you on your way.”

: We can take one of two shirts. I pick the pink one because it’s closest and because it looks ridiculous with Pax’s dumbass skull moth tattoo.

: This one moment right here shows that Ragnar really didn’t care when it comes to writing, and let me tell you why.

: I can guarantee you that he never looked up how long it takes to drive across the US or did even the most basic research on this - but I sure did.

: According to Rand McNally, driving cross-country with a group that can do 600 miles a day (10 hours at 60 MPH) would take about 5 full days to cross the country.

: You’re telling me these people were coordinated and competent enough to pull off a heist but didn’t pack even as much as a go bag for a trip that’s going to take multiple days even if they’re driving for their lives?

: But that’s okay, there are other ways you could show you cared. Maybe you could’ve had it so that the shirts don’t fit the same as Pax’s original one, because she’s picking them off a thrift table at a farm commune.

: Or, maybe have it so that the bus is being loaded with spare outfits as part of the supplies they’re providing, but they had a hard time finding stuff on short notice.

: It’s the little shit like this that makes a difference.

: On the way out, we need to take a plastic box. I have all my consoles in boxes right now because the area I keep my PC in is getting renovated.

: I was going to end the update here because I’ve been working on it for almost a full day, but fuck it. I’m no Ragnar Tornquist. We’re almost at the end anyway.

: We come upstairs to Dipshit and Doctor Girlfriend playing around on instruments when they’re supposed to be loading the bus.

: Please note the line about “touring band cover story” because it’s time to strap the fuck back in.

: This entire thing is clearly “inspired” by two different things: the 2012 movie Argo, and the actual “Canadian Caper” of the 1970s that the film was based on. I say “inspired” because at this point we’re pretty close to crossing the line into an out-and-out ripoff.

: Now, I get that this line is Ragnar admitting his own premise is ridiculous: the Canadian Caper was done with the full backing of two major world governments, the people involved were issued real Canadian passports and had two experienced CIA agents with them who had thoroughly researched a cover story.

: Also, the Canadian Caper was meant to get six people (eight, with the CIA agents) from the Canadian embassy in Tehran to the airport and get past exactly one inspection before the people being extracted were safely on a plane out of the country. It wasn’t meant to get them through a multi-day land excursion.

: There’s a lighter in the corner we can pick up, so I do that.

: Pax opens the bus door, and I’m sure she’s not going to have a fucking meltdown for no particular reason like everyone in this cast keeps doing.

: Of course she has a fucking meltdown! I feel like if the CIA was in this plot, the CIA agents would’ve killed all these people by now and escaped with the USB stick themselves.

: “You mean your driver?”

: “Our-- we’re supposed to have a HUMAN driver, Theo!”

: “Luna?”

: “She won’t be here until the morning.”

: “So one of us drives the bus, it’s not rocket science.”

: “You won’t be allowed into the Republic.”

: “Ma’am, I’ll be happy to serve as your driver.”

: “I want to assure you that I’m fully capable of operating this vehicle. My software is also approved for transportation inside the Republic, unlike yourself.”

: “I don’t mean that you have software, of course. You lack the paperwork, but I don’t need any. My software contains instructions for over one thousand one hundred vehicles. I’m perfectly capable of driving this bus.”

: “Look, I’m - I’m sorry, it’s the robot or nothing.”

: To not have a temper tantrum, all we have to do is wait. You know what’s always fun in games? Sitting around and waiting.

: “The robot saved Luna’s bacon earlier, it can’t be THAT bad.”

: We need Noam to force Pax to take her meds. Pax really reads to me like those people on reality TV who play up being absolute psychopaths because they want to be on TV.

: I also feel like there’s something maybe slightly racist and misogynistic about the black girlboss needing a white guy to tell her what to feel, but what do I know, I guess.

: We get one last chance to make Pax have a melty. Seriously though, can you imagine what she’d be like as a mom?

: “This is not just about you. It’s about the LIBRARIES and keeping the WEAVE operational. Without it.. the resistance is dead.”

: “I understand.”

: “Good. Get your cargo out of Pacifica and through the Republic to Nova Scotia, and your name will be in the history books.”

: “We’re not out to make history. We just want to do this job and get paid for it.”

: I can tell that what Ragnar is going for is something like a Squall in Final Fantasy 8, where he starts out as kind of an asshole but grows as a character. The difference is that Squall was never this annoying or incompetent.

: One other thing I should point out that I haven’t, and maybe I’ll upload one of my backup recordings to show this: the voiceacting in this game sucks. Pax speaks in a borderline monotone even when she’s supposed to be pissed off.

: In fact, most of the voiceacting is wooden, but you’d expect that given what we know about the voice casting. I’ll upload one of my backup recordings at some point.

: Before we get on the bus and end this godawful chapter, we can see that Sai is playing a fucking Guitar Hero controller. What the fuck?

: If I was writing this, I would have had them be one of those electronica bands that doesn’t have a vocalist: something like The Chemical Brothers, Underworld, The Crystal Method, The Prodigy (kind of). It’s an easy cover story because you can pre-program synths with beats and no one needs to know how to play a physical instrument.

: Plus, have you seen how big a synthesizer is? You can hide a ton of shit in a synth case.

: We can thank Luna for the help and then talk to Theo for some of the worst dialog I’ve seen yet.

: “You got everything?”

: “Papers, passports… we’re just missing the popcorn.”

: “Why though?”

: “Couldn’t think of anything else starting with the letter P.”

: We can chide him for making a “dad joke”, which.. that’s not a joke. Where’s the fucking joke, Ragnar? You ARE a fucking dad, and I can guarantee you this is not a thing you’ve ever said. Or you know what, maybe it is. Maybe you’re as bad at talking as you are at writing.

: The fucked part of this by the way is that I looked up his Bluesky and somehow, Red Thread is making another game despite the fact that this one sold like shit. I have no idea where he’s getting the money. I feel like that kind of thing is usually a sure sign the person you’re dealing with is a grifter.

: Let’s get on the bus. It’s time to go. Next update, we’ll wade deeper into this absolute cesspool of a game. I don’t believe we’ll see combat (I’ve been told that’s like 5 hours in), but I’m sure I’ll have a lot to scream about.

: Wait, hold the fuck up. Three weeks? You’re telling me they knew they were going on a THREE WEEK JOURNEY and didn’t pack a fucking go bag?

: Ragnar better hope his ass doesn’t show up at Magfest this year because if he does, I’ll be there with a printed copy of this entire LP ready to shove it in his face.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Welcome back to hell. I thought Chapter 1 would end once we got on the bus, but apparently that’s not the case. This endless nightmare has just begun.

: “Not sharing?”

: “Plenty of room, no reason to sit on top of each other.”

: “I’m not hating this. So what do we call her?”

: “Call what… the BUS?”

: “They need a name.”

: “Bus?”

: “You do that on purpose, don’t you.”

: “Nova Scotia won’t be happy about this, Pax.”

: “So we let them know we’re taking a different route through-”

: “To do that, I need access to the Weave. And that won’t happen until we get to Salt Lake. We had a PLAN.”

: “YOUR plan. And it’s not like you’ve been forthcoming on everything. Like the contents of our CARGO.”

: I figured out while doing some research why this thing looks the way it does. It’s a dumbass callback to a backer reward from the Kickstarter campaign for Dreamfall Chapters.

: If you paid a ridiculous amount of money (I think the baseline was like $150) you got the game on a USB stick designed to look like their badly-designed mascot.

: The USB sticks didn’t ship until I think 2020, when the Kickstarter for Dreamfall Chapters was fully funded in 2013. Also, their mascot sucks. It looks like a Temu version of Bonzi Buddy.

: “I told you, I don’t actually KNOW what’s in the DATA we hijacked from Purity. Nova Scotia’s been tight lipped about that.. for GOOD reason. The less we know, the better.”’

: “You know what our mission is. Transport the cargo to Nova Scotia, ask no questions.”

: Now, I get suspension of disbelief, but this is dumb on a level that kind of defies common sense.

: I haven’t bothered looking up what happens during the heist, but I imagine it’s one of two things: either they go into Not-Google to steal the USB stick, or they go into Not-Google to download the data onto a USB.

: If you don’t know what’s on it, how do you even know it’s the right one? You might say “Well, the cops are after them”, but the thing is that if you do the version of events where you stop and talk to him, the cop has no idea who these people are.

: “What happened to being in charge? You can’t be one of us AND be the one to call the shots. If we’re REALLY in this together, it means taking a different route across the Pacifica border into the Republic.”

: “Informing Nova Scotia about the detour is not our ONLY problem.. given what happened this morning, the longer we stay in Pacifica, the RISKIER it gets.”

: Hold the fuck up, now this REALLY doesn’t make sense. You had time to book shows, but didn’t have enough time to pack a go bag or any kind of equipment?

: Second, you booked shows despite having two people who can’t sing or play an instrument. How the fuck is that going to work?

: There’s a lot you can do to hide a weaker performer, especially in a studio setting with a team of audio engineers. They don’t have that. Even with a team of audio engineers, hiding a bad live performance is almost impossible without, you know, having a good singer for the bad ones to hide behind.

: In case you’re curious (I was), Winnemucca is a town with a real-world population of around 7,500 in northern Nevada.

: “We MUST get to Chicago by the 23rd, or we’ll risk being stranded in the Republic. This detour could cost us EVERYTHING. And you KNOW I’m as much in the dark about our cargo as you are.”

: You just said that.

: “We’re ahead of schedule, so why not make an extra stop on our way to Nova Scotia? We’ll still make it to Nevada on time.”

: “Maybe.. but I planned this route weeks ago. Now I don’t know where we’re going, or WHY. I’ve accounted for unforeseen delays, but this one didn’t have to be. You could’ve told me earlier, we could’ve discussed it.”

: “Fine. I’ll tell you all why we need to go north. Just go sit down.”

: “All right.”

: This part is really dumb. We have to get everyone’s attention, but then not say anything because doing so would be interrupting.

: “Yo, Theo! What are you up to, my man?”

: “Perusing the map.”

: “Perusing?”

: “What’s with the old-timey paper map? We’re still in Pacifica, don’t you have your mobile?”

: Stop doing that! You’re playing an American! How many Americans do you know refer to a cell phone as a “mobile”? That’s a fucking British thing!

: I know this is definitely Ragnar’s fault because we know he was both the writer and the voice director, but I don’t know exactly why.

: There are two explanations, both equally bad: either he wrote the line that way and the VA read it, or the VA (who is British) did that on their own and he failed to correct it. Either way, it’s directorial negligence.

: “I destroyed my mobile yesterday.”

: This one makes me lean toward it being the writing. Jay Rincon (who voices Theo) has a larger resume than most of the cast and has actual roles post-Dustborn. Whatever the case, it’s Ragnar’s fault.

: “Wow. Okay. Hard core. You can borrow mine? I still have some data left.”

: “None of us should be using a mobile.”

: “It’s a burner, they can’t trace us.”

: “They can trace everyone. Throw that thing away. You too, Noam.”

: “Fine, Mr. Buzzkill. You’re not the one with over forty followers on Squibble, but whatever, no big deal.”

: What is this writing? Apart from bad, that is.

: We have to wait for some more incidental dialog before Pax can say anything. This feels less like character development and more like Pax being a human doormat.

: “I know the ORIGINAL plan was to cross the border east into Nevada, and from there on to Utah and the Rockies. But we’ll be taking a different route north, through Liberty, Oregon before we -”

: “Liberty?”

: METAL GEAR?!

: “I would actually like an explanation.”

: “Your SISTER? Did you know she had a sister?”

: “I did not.”

: “Ziggy’s.. she’s one of us. ANOMAL. I - we can’t leave without her. So we’re going to Liberty to get her.”

: I checked how long of a detour this is, and the answer is about 16 hours. But that’s not important.

: What I want to know is this. She’s saying she has a sister.. named Ziggy. Does Ziggy play guitar? Does she have screwed-up eyes and a screwed-down hairdo like some cat from Japan?

: Ragnar, you leave David Bowie the fuck out of this. Even the bad game he was in is better than this trash.

: “Why didn’t you tell us this earlier?”

: “Why didn’t you tell me you had a sister?”

: “What else have you been keeping from us?”

: “So THEY didn’t know either?”

: “We did not.”

: “We didn’t.”

: Well, that was three lines of unnecessary dialog. You have two characters go “We didn’t know”, a third character ask “So you didn’t know?” to which they go “We didn’t know” again.

: “I didn’t think you’d agree to it, Theo.”

: “If you’d told me it was because of FAMILY, I would have.”

: “Hey, NONE of us have been home in AGES! What makes YOU so special? If we’re detouring for Pax’s family, why not drop in on MY parents at the same time?”

: It’s because if there were three Sais in this game, it would be classified as a crime against humanity.

: “You know that’s not the same, Sai. This is my last chance to say goodbye to moms. We’re just picking up my sister, and then we’ll continue the journey.”

: “We transport the CARGO across THE REPUBLIC to NOVA SCOTIA, we get our money, and then it’s up to each of us to decide what’s next.”

: I already know what’s next: the recently-translated Kamaitachi no Yoru on the SNES. I’m having Salty Vanilla do all the art for that in advance.

: “No.”

: “Fine. Fuck it. Let’s go to ‘Liberty’. At least ONE of us gets to go home.”

: Why is she saying that in quotes? Liberty, Oregon is a real place - it’s an unincorporated community outside of Sweet Home with a population of around 900.

: “What about the plan? We’re just abandoning that? Whatever, it’s not like anyone is listening to me.”

: We’ve got a musical segment coming up, and for some reason the game chooses right now to calibrate an input lag offset. I will say that’s an excellent feature to have that I wish earlier rhythm game devs (looking at you, whoever it was that made Gitaroo Man and Ouendan) would have done.

: If this was actually Ragnar’s idea, that’s genuinely not a bad idea.

https://youtu.be/VJalWlV1tLA

: Hoo boy. There’s a lot to say about this song. First, yes, I get it, they’re intentionally having the VA act like she’s workshopping the lyrics. That’s not my complaint.

: My complaint is that the singer is bad. I want to make clear that it’s not her fault: she had no singing experience, shouldn’t have been thrust into a singing role, and was given nothing to work with. It is entirely Ragnar’s fault for fucking her over like that.

: There are a lot of right-wing videos of the full version of the song up that say it’s Ragnar calling for the “great replacement” (a white nationalist conspiracy theory that is 100% bullshit), but that’s done entirely in bad faith. I don’t believe he’s doing that. What I do believe is that he’s a tone-deaf idiot making a ham-handed political statement.

: I also think the lyrics may have been intended to be bad on purpose, but then.. why? Why even pay for this shit if you’re going to waste it on lyrics like “We’re the Dustborn / we’re airborne / we’re the new porn”.

: It’s like all those people who want the Commanders to tank once they’re out of the playoffs. Why play football if you’re just going to lose on purpose?

: We then get another flashback for no apparent reason.

: “Anotheer day, another dollar for a weird science experiment.”

: “It’s not a ‘science experiment’, it’s a linguistic test!”

: “Dude, I have wires strapped to my head. I think this counts as weird science.”

: “Fair point. Ready any time.”

: “So you just want me to pick symbols again?”

: “Same procedure as last time. When you see a prompt, push a button.”

: “Okay. Let’s do this.”

: I pick number two purely at random.

: “I pressed some buttons. What am I supposed to feel?”

: “That’s what we’re here to find out. It’s mostly about those electrodes, not so much the buttons.”

: One thing I happen to know here is that a real brain activity study using an EEG (which is presumably what they’re doing here) would not use separate buttons like that. They’d have you hold a pad. Why? Because EEGs are extremely vulnerable to “artifacts” from movement.

: Am I going to hold that against Ragnar? No, because it’s not something I’d have even thought to look for unless I already knew about it.

: “So what are the electrodes telling you?”

: “I don’t know yet. We’ll have to run this data through… okay, I deserve that look. I’ll tell you more once you’ve studied the screen and pushed one of the buttons.”

: You can just kinda hold buttons down during this entire thing at any point, but I didn’t because Pax is a good girl who never speaks out of turn. Dolls are best when they are loved.

: “We’ve talked about the Protolanguage before, how it helps you VOCALIZE. I’m gaining insight into HOW your Vocals work, how you’re instinctively using the Protolanguage to circumvent mental barriers, effectively bypassing the ears to get to the brain.”

: There’s a book Ragnar stole this from, and I know because I read it, but I can’t remember what the name of it was.

: It was a sci-fi story about the Not-Illuminati discovering that you can mind control people with words and that each person has a unique activation phrase like Gunther from Deus Ex.

: The main character is a woman who gets caught up in the Not-Illuminati, wants to leave and gets mind controlled out of it, and eventually kills them all by writing a symbol on a wall that makes anyone who looks at it die. I remember the head of the Not-Illuminati got the idea from reading Finnegan’s Wake, which was where I dropped it.

: “What’s even more fascinating is how every Anomal has access to different has access to different Protolanguage stems, giving them, YOU, different abilities.”

: “We know that’s because of The Broadcast, but we have no idea why it only happened to a tiny percentage of those who were exposed.”

: “Have you ever.. do you know of any Anomal who’s learned NEW Vocals?”

: I have to press the button again.

: “New Vocals? You mean, post-Broadcast? I don’t think that’s possible. According to our research–”

: “It is. When I was a kid, I had.. a device that let me record ECHOES and mess around with the recordings until it played this strange CHANT, and then-- it’s how I learned to BLOCK and TRIGGER people.”

: I learned how to trigger people by doing dunk LPs. I was not aware doing dunk LPs was a superpower.

: “That’s-- if what you’re saying is true, it would change EVERYTHING. This device would be EXTREMELY valuable.”

: “I don’t have it. But I might be able to GET it.”

: “Pax.. if it works the way you describe it, Nova Scotia would pay a FORTUNE for it. I’m glad you trust me enough to tell me. And I’m happy you agreed to participate in these tests.”

: “I came for the money and stayed for the company.”

: What the fuck is this cutscene?

: You ever just press buttons so hard that magic internet jellyfish emerge from your monitor?

: “I know that TREE. I’ve seen it before, in the STILLNESS. And now I’m DREAMING about it? Which makes SENSE, I guess…”

: You obviously can’t hear it, but the background is full of voice samples of people who are very clearly trying to be Fox News anchors.

: There are a TON of towns named Lebanon in the US. There’s one in Connecticut, and the only kid I knew from there was an asshole.

: “Uh, I’d like to wake up now.”

: Okay, I need you stop you right there, Ragnar. Why is someone mentioning Pizzagate in a world where the US was taken over by fascists decades ago?

: This shit would’ve been cringe in 2016, let alone EIGHT YEARS LATER.

: You’re supposed to fight these things, but I was too busy running around grabbing screencaps of the background dialog.

: This pose was cool when Richter Belmont did it in Symphony of the Night. Here, it looks dumb.

: I’d probably have the same reaction if I woke up and found out I was written by Ragnar Tornquist.

: “Attention everyone. We are approaching the Pacifica-Republic border control.”

: “Are we sure there’s no warrant out for our arrest?”

: “We’ll soon find out.”

: “That’s.. reassuring.”

: “If they thought we had ANYTHING to do with that cop getting - they would’ve caught up with us already, Sai.”

: “Passing through the Pacifica border check.”

: “Hey, why did we STOP?”

: “Automated border control. Normal procedure.”

: “Is that-- OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK”

: “Driver? You may want to, uh, DRIVE.”

: “We’re still being scanned.”

: “Fuck that, let’s just GO!”

: “Gate won’t open until the scan’s complete, but as long as the vehicle ID isn’t flagged in the system, it should let us through…”

: “Even if we make it past the gate, won’t they catch up with us? They have FLYING SHIPS!”

: I have questions. Question one: if California has seceded from the US and is at war, why is traffic even allowed through the DMZ?

: The Korean DMZ doesn’t allow traffic through for obvious reasons. Plenty of people go into it - mostly tourists and soldiers - but no one goes through.

: Question two: Where is the fortified border? There should be barbed wire and guard posts everywhere. Did Ragnar.. oh, who the fuck am I kidding, of course he didn’t do any research.

: “And the Puritans can’t follow?”

: “They’re banned from the Republic. Like I said, it’d be an act of war to even enter no man’s land. Justice has no love for the Puritans. And the feeling’s mutual.”

: “But won’t the REPUBLIC border guards wonder why a PUNK ROCK BAND on a TOUR BUS is being pursued by PURITANS?”

: We have the option of moving seats, but it doesn’t really matter. You can’t see much of anything either way.

: “It might just count in our favor.. but we’ll soon find out. As far as they’re concerned, we’re just a band touring the Republic-”

: “And not a crew of dangerous criminals making their daring escape from Pacifica.”

: “Nice scenery.”

: “That’s no-man’s land. Trespassers are shot.”

: By who? The nonexistent guards? The snipers on the sniper posts that don’t exist? The biggest danger in the Korean DMZ by far is landmines.

: “WHAT? Are they going to SHOOT at us?”

: “We’re not trespassing.”

: “As long as we stay on the bus, we’re safe. I think.”

: “We’re entering the American Republic.”

: I feel bad for Tolkien’s ghost.

: “I’ve been hailed by Justice border patrol. I’m required to stop the vehicle.”

: “Oh, fuck.”

: “Normal procedure. Let’s not give them a reason to detain us. Remember our cover. We’re a punk rock band touring the provinces.”

: One thing I’d like to point out that happened in the movie Argo (but didn’t happen in the real-life Canadian Caper as far as I know) is that there’s a scene at the end where a soldier stops the fake film crew just as they’re about to escape and asks them what their film is about.

: Someone in the group steps forward and gives them a plot that is a thinly-veiled version of the Iranian Revolution with the ayatollah as the hero. My point is, why a punk rock band? Why not hide among the fascists?

: There’s another “escape” story that came out in 2024 that did this really well: the novel James by Percival Everett. It’s a re-telling of Huckleberry Finn told from Jim’s perspective, and he does this to great effect by pretending to be uneducated and subservient in public.

: “We are SO fucked.”

: Oh, there’s the border. It’s still way less built up than the Korean one.

: Oh, and here we have our first Sentinel ripped directly from Days of Future Past.

: “I’m transmitting the requested information now, sir.”

: “I need to speak with a human.”

: “What’s up with the corporate motorcade back there? Are you associated with the PURITANS?”

: “No. No sir. I think there was, uh, some sort of BORDER inspection. Nothing at all to do with us.”

: What the fuck is this writing? Theo’s supposed to be the mastermind and he’s doing this shit. You know how I would write this? The same way Breaking Bad did.

: “No, we’re not.” and then he shuts his mouth.

: “Uh-huh. Your purpose for entering the Republic?”

: “We’re a band.”

: “A.. band?”

: “Music. Punk rock.. music? We’re touring the Provinces.”

: “Uh..huh.”

: “You’ll find that it’s all been approved by the-”

: “One moment, sir. Everybody off the bus.”

: “What’s the problem?”

: “NOW.”

: So you’re telling me they pulled the group out of the bus.. to make them play a song? Gee, sure would be helpful if they’d, you know, rehearsed or had any kind of plan.

: “I regret every choice that led me here.”

: “What do we even play? We haven’t practiced!”

: “What the fuck does that even mean?”

: “Whenever you’re ready.”

: If I was writing this, I’d have probably put in a line to make it clear this is the guard being corrupt, because this procedure makes no sense for a border you actually expect people to cross.

: Let’s watch the video.

https://youtu.be/7SdEkVo_iQQ

: There’s a lot to unpack here. Let me start by telling you what it is we’re looking at. Ragnar has just jumped off the cliff and is now realizing he can’t fly. This is what he wanted. That’s why he jumped.

: This song is so bad that a good singer couldn’t save it. I don’t care who you put on it, the lyrics are not salvageable.

: Now, there are options that Ragnar could use to save this, but due to the way he cast the voiceactors, a lack of budget, hubris, and general incompetence, he can’t use any of them. He could, for instance, hire a sound-alike to do the singing. Or he could see if he could get two or three good samples out of his existing VAs somehow and use those, since he’s already using an electronic backing track.

: Speaking of which, why show two characters playing on electric guitars if you’re going to use an electronic backing track that sounds nothing like a guitar?

: He could also hire a band, or use licensed music, or even just have the songs be instrumental. He could cast a singer as a minor character and use them just for songs without having a huge speaking role.

: I understand that all of these things cost money, and that this game’s budget was probably somewhere south of $3 million in an era where AAA games have a budget 100 times that.

: However, I’m also convinced that if he’d had the right voice director and a composer who could write an easy enough part for her, he could have gotten a decent performance out of Dominique Tipper. Ragnar has failed his own staff.

: The note placement is sorta kinda okay but it was clearly done by someone who didn’t fully understand the assignment. The visuals in the background are.. bad. They’re no Ouendan or Ouendan 2, that’s for sure.

: If you get most of the notes (but not a perfect*) the guard gives you a warning for being “too political” and says politics don’t belong in music, because Ragnar is a hack who loves doing that cringy bullshit.

(* Perfect in the sense of hitting every note, not in the sense of the song being good, which it isn’t.)

: “You know, I often feel that way myself. People passing through here see the uniform but not the person INSIDE the uniform, you know? What’s the name of your band?”

: “We’re THE DUST BORN.”

: “Oh, and, uh.. if you come back this way, we’d.. we’d love to hear more songs.”

: How is this chapter not over yet? How long is this game, anyway?

: Oh dear god. That’s at least 16.5 hours too long.

: “That went surprisingly well.”

: “I’m in shock.”

: “It was okay, but we need more practice.”

: “Okay, DAD.”

: Oh yeah, you may have noticed in some of these shots that Noam doesn’t have the band-aid on their head. That’s a bug that randomly happens when you load the game.

: “Maybe we should tone down the lyrics a bit, Pax? You’re basically telling them we’re Anomals.”

: “No one listens to the lyrics.”

: Ragnar, are you calling me ignorant? That’s a bold thing to do to your audience unless you’re doing it as an obvious joke, which this isn’t. It’s also funny because I quoted song lyrics earlier in this very update.

: There are times where I wonder if he’s got some kind of humiliation fetish. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

: “You’re SURE the Republicans can’t get to us, Theo?”

: “VERY sure. The Republic may not be SAFE, we’re in Justice territory, but we’ve seen the LAST of the Puritans.”

: Sure we have. Spoiler alert: we haven’t.

: “Okay, well, you’re the EXPERT.”

: I mean, given that they just convinced someone they were an actual band despite being four people who can’t sing playing a song one of them made up just before falling asleep, you’d think they’d be more excited than that.

: “Sheer, silly luck. We should probably practice. But hey, we made it past the border.”

: “What are you reading?”

: “The Marilyn Monroe story.”

: “Who’s that?”

: How do you not know who Marilyn Monroe is? This is terrible dialog and terrible worldbuilding all in one.

: “Who’s – seriously? Seriously!? Jesus, Pax. Movie star? JFK’s second wife? America’s First Lady? MADAM JUSTICE?”

: “I try to avoid Justice history.”

: “I..I don’t even know what to say. She’s only one of the most important figures of the 20th century!”

: “She dead?”

: “Is she - no! And that’s not the point! She’s actually still alive, 104 and ticking. And she looks fabulous.”

: In case you’re not aware, nothing about this makes sense. Marilyn Monroe killed herself in 1962. JFK was assassinated in 1963, meaning even if he had survived, she’d still be dead!

: There’s an undertone here that’s fucked up if you think about it. Even if you have an alt-history setting where she didn’t die in 1962, Marilyn Monroe still had lifelong drug issues and persistent, severe depression, which were a big part of who she was as a person. By removing that, you’re effectively replacing her with someone else entirely.

: I also think it’s maybe a little fucked up to imply that the only reason she survived was because she married JFK.

: “I hate you.”

: I made a mistake here and didn’t realize that all of this dialog is optional. The game gives you a prompt to press the movement keys, but I assumed that was for camera movement.

: To progress, we need to look at the map. Before we do, though, there’s another “reflection point” at the front of the bus.

: I did all the options here, and by my count there’s roughly 55 lines of monologue here that say very little.

: Effectively, Pax is one of those people who goes “I will move to Germany (or really, anywhere that isn’t where they currently live) and this will fix all of my problems and change me for the better” only to realize after they’ve spent a ton of money that no, it doesn’t.

: We also learn that she was exiled from Oregon sixteen years ago, which would make her 17 at the time.

: We can briefly check in on Dumbfuck over here to see her drawing of Noam.

: When we look at the map, Pax does a sequence detailing the route. I’m sure there’s no plot reason for Lebanon, Kansas (a tiny town with a population of 218 that would not appear on any real map) to be marked prominently on a US map in the middle of what appears to be a Chernobyl-style exclusion zone spanning Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.

: “Here we go, kid. Our ROUTE. So we’re going from PACIFICA… through Oregon and Nevada, where we have our first booked gig…”

: “To New Jerusalem, Utah and one of the Weave’s secret libraries. After that, we play another gig before crossing the Rockies..”

: One other thing I thought of just now: if the country has been fucked up like this for at least twenty years, why does the map not show all this shit? Why did Pax (or whoever) have to draw it in?

: There’s one glaringly obvious problem with this route. Let’s assume you need to get into Canada as fast as possible, and the Canadian government can’t just open a hole in the border wall.

: There’s a bridge from Michigan’s upper peninsula to Ontario. It’s called the Sault Ste. Marie International Bridge, and is in a far less populated area than trying to cross the border near Toronto.

: I haven’t played ahead but I guarantee you Ragnar never thought of this. Also, why is Toronto on the US side of the border? Willing to bet that’s not a plot thing either.

: There are games that would put a ton of thought into this shit, but this was not one of them.

: We can now select our next destination. This chapter is still not over yet. How is it not over yet?

: “It’s a CAMPSITE, Noam. Not the Embarcadero.”

: “As soon as we’ve parked, I’ll start preparing dinner.”

: “I’ll take care of the fire.”

: “And I’ll.. watch?”

: You.. have a microwave right there.

: “Primitive.”

: “Rustic.”

: “Cozy. Cozy’s the word. This is cozy.”

: “Isn’t rustic the same as primitive?”

: “Rustic is romance. Primitive is an insult.”

: “Primitive is sexy. Rustic is your dad’s man cave.”

: “I’m telling you, the word’s cozy. Cozy is like.. comfortable socks.”

: This dialog sucks. It feels like Theo’s entire role in this plot is to misunderstand words that literally everyone knows. You could have probably cut him and replaced him with someone who can sing.

: What’s the point of this scene, though? It’s not advancing the plot, and it’s not really teaching us anything about the cast we don’t already know.

: “We didn’t play too badly earlier, but it wouldn’t hurt to practice a couple of sets after dinner. Remember, we’re booked to play Pete’s Pool Hall day after tomorrow.”

: Oh no, not Pete’s Pool Hall. I’m sure all three people there will be mortified if your performance isn’t great.

: “I think Pax is writing some new material. Maybe we can try that out? That smells SO good. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m STARVING.”

: This entire scene is just the cast making dick jokes. Let me give you some of the.. erm.. “highlights”.

: “How do I tell when my sausage is done?”

: “The locals call it a ‘dog’, Sai.”

: Says the moron who didn’t know what k-pop was.

: “I prefer sausage.”

: “Oh, we know.”

: “What does that - OH. Funny.”

: “I don’t get it.”

: “You sweet, innocent man.”

: Wow. What riveting and necessary dialog. It’s not even funny! Your dick jokes aren’t even funny!

: This is easily some of the worst dialog I have ever read.

: Sai also makes a “is this sausage halal” joke, which is the single most overdone thing in any piece of media featuring a muslim or jewish character.

: That’s not how you cook a hot dog, either. Those are way too far back from that tiny little fire to cook properly.

: I get why Ragnar is doing this. It’s because, in theory, Europeans might not know what smores are. I suspect they probably do.

: But the counterpoint is this: first, it’s not plot-important. Second, they can look it up! I watched a Canadian TV show recently where someone makes nanaimo bars. These are something most Canadians would recognize, but I didn’t because I’m not Canadian. So what did I do? I googled it!

: Anyway, I promise we’re almost done. Soon, we’ll get to see how bad combat is. We have the option to sit with each party member. Each one has around 50 lines of dialog. If I was to transcribe all of it, it would nearly DOUBLE the length of this update and bring our exposure to Ragnar Tornquist’s terrible writing to unhealthy levels.

: The party member dialogs are split into four sections: each of them will comment on the cop dying (or lack thereof), will comment on Pax’s shirt, and will comment on whatever personal storyline they’re on. I’ll skip all the shared dialog.

: “It won’t take long. I just – I need to talk about it. With someone.”

: The Amazing Digital Circus did this kind of dialog a lot. I swear half that show is a character going “Do you want to talk about it?”

: “What’s up?”

: “My MELTDOWN…”

: This is the “character path” dialog.

: “I overshare. I make myself vulnerable. And that’s not always healthy. I should learn from you and Noam. Keep my cards closer to my chest, put on a mask, and stop caring so FUCKING much about EVERYTHING.”

: Couple of things here. No one hates Sai because she ‘overshares’ and ‘is vulnerable’. They hate her because she’s fucking annoying is constantly having breakdowns.

: Have we ever at any point seen her do either of those things? We barely know anything about her other than that she works for Not-Amazon and is mentally unstable.

: It’s definitely possible to write a character who does those things and have the viewer feel sympathetic rather than annoyed, but Ragnar Tornquist is not a skilled enough writer to pull that off.

: “Sorry for being so SELFISH earlier. I’m HAPPY you get to see your family… even if I can’t.”

: “Why can’t you go back?”

: “LONG story. My dad thinks I’m a MONSTER. My mom’s – she never stands up to him. And my fucking siblings…? Dude, it’s just too much. I don’t want to think about my Justice worshipping [sic] family right now.”

: So wait, why do you even care then? It seems like you hate your family, so why are you having a fucking breakdown over it?

: We can also give her the beef jerky from earlier without her freaking out this time.

: Okay, I fucking get it! Your life sucks! I wish this would have taken a cue from Digital Circus and let me bully Sai into suicide like we did with Rory in YIIK.

: Noam wants to go back to Hong Kong. What the fuck are they even doing in the US if it’s run by nazis?

: “Where did you GET this? This is actually RARE. I HAD a copy of this. My father bought it, shortly before he.. he left for England.”

: He went to get milk in England and never came back.

: “This was basically how my collection started. I’d scour the shops in Hong Kong for new comics, and spend all of my allowance. Mother HATED it. I kept my collection a secret from her.”

: Theo has no interesting dialog because he’s a nothing character. We can also talk to the robot, but the only thing we learn there is she hates robots because she’s religious and also because she can’t mind control them.

: Oh look, it’s our friend the yellow text again.

: This horrible creature also has a female voice, and I don’t think it’s any of the existing VAs. This means Ragnar DEFINITELY had the budget for a singer and just went “Nah, I don’t need that.”

: It also talks without moving its lips, and.. wait a second, this is just Eleven from Stranger Things. Ragnar, you fucking hack!

: Welcome to the combat tutorial. This will be our last act of Issue 1. Going by the achievements for this game, nearly 60% of people who have played it have never gotten this far.

: “We have visitors. I believe they’re–”

: “Horned Riders. ‘Not in Oregon’, Theo?”

: “They don’t usually come this far west.”

: “Where’s Sai?”

: “I don’t know. I just woke up.”

: “No, I don’t think so.”

: I, uh, don’t think that’s how the biker gangs in Mad Max worked.

: So here’s how combat works. Combat is nearly identical to the Batman: Arkham games, in that you run around hitting people with the bat.

: And here’s what I hate about this. Batman has a reason to not kill people, as dumb as it is. Pax is a fugitive who will probably be killed if she’s caught. She has no reason NOT to kill people.

: Anyway, you mash left click until you unlock the SHOUT METER. What is that, you ask?

: Oh god, this line. This line is SO FUCKING BAD. Compare that line read to this one.

https://youtu.be/5_fTDX220vw

: At full Shout, you can, uh.. blatantly rip off Skyrim and launch enemies into walls for an instakill. I believe using this slowly pushes Pax to the bad end route.

: You can also hit Q to “taunt”, which is effectively the Fear Multi-Takedown from Batman: Arkham Knight. There’s a QTE to pull it off.

: Eventually, Sai comes storming out of a toilet and uh, “helps”.

: I nearly get killed here because I get stuck in the bandit boss’s fire breath. Yes, the bandit boss has fire breath.

: I preferred when this move was called Bloody Summer and was accompanied by Grandpa going “Give 'em a taste of the bloody!”

: We get another moral choice, but don’t “knock out” the boss because that would be interrupting. I think Pax should go take some tylenol and enter into an arranged marriage.

: This UI sucks. I will be putting the combat on Story because unlike Ragnar, I learned my lesson about bad combat in games after I played Ni no Kuni 2.

: It was fun seeing Level 5’s CEO make an absolute fool of himself with his AI-generated vtuber and AI-generated remake of Professor Layton.

: “That’s right, STAY down! Sorry, always wanted to say that.”

: “I really didn’t think Horned Riders came this far west. Justice must be losing control in the Provinces.”

: “Hey, are we sure these bozos are okay? I mean, they tried to kill us, but..”

: “Broken bones and bruised egos. They’ll survive.”

: Game, where are you going with this? You’re fine with Pax killing a cop, but apparently killing people who are trying to kill you is a red line?

: That shot in the lower left still looks like Pax is high on something and/or shitting herself.

: I think the bandit leader being named “Patsy” is a dumbass JFK assassination reference. Anyway, we’re done! I’m free!

: I have never seen a more rushed drawing before. Look at how off-model everything is. Why is Theo suddenly Kim Katsuragi from Disco Elysium?

: I’m sure there will be plenty more to dunk on in Issue 2. For now, I’m going to try and play something that isn’t considered a form of torture.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Before we start this update, I have one piece of errata from the last one. As it turns out, I missed a reflection point. The reflection point is this bench.

: Did we miss anything actually interesting? No. Pax just muses about how much she loves being outside.

: Pax strikes me as one of those people you see on dating sites who have a profile that talks about their hidden depths when they’re actually so basic you could use them to clean a grill.

: I hope you’re ready for some of the cringiest dialog this game has to offer, because I’m not.

: You might notice that Pax is wearing a new shirt. What was the point of her taking the shirt off the table at the weird farm commune if she already had spares?

: “How long’s it been since you were here last?”

: “2014, so… uh-”

: “Sixteen years.”

: I’d like you to consider that when we were on the bus near the end of the last chapter, Pax knew exactly how many years it had been.

: Now admittedly, the bus scene was optional - but if you’ve seen it, this makes no sense. This tells me Ragnar either did the script and then never revised it, or wasn’t keeping track of continuity. Either way, that’s not a good sign for two scenes that happen this close together.

: “Ma’am, the signs say ‘STAY OUT’. Should we-”

: “Keep going. It’s not like they have GUNS. Or robots.”

: “That barrier’s new.”

: “A lot can change in SIXTEEN years.”

: “We can walk, main gate’s just past those trees.”

: “You’re right, I feel it too. And it’s CHILLY. Aren’t you freezing?”

: “I’m fine. Do you guys hear SINGING?”

: You can hear children singing in the background, which.. did Ragnar get that off a CD or something? If you’re telling me he paid for that while having mainline musical segments with four VAs who can’t sing..

: “I hear it. Oh, that’s fucking CREEPY.”

: You obviously can’t hear it because this is a screenshot LP and I’m not posting a video just for this, but just imagine the LALALALALA WATCHERS song from Drakengard and you’ve got it pretty much dead on.

: We can just get up and move at this point, but the game wants us to look at the sign so fuck it. It’s only two lines of dialog.

: “This used to be a Justice re-education camp.. for children.”

: “Camp Cedar. Sounds deceptively INNOCENT.”

: Here, we’ve got to wait until the party walks over to that big rusted-out mascot head on the right.

: “What are they singing?”

: “It’s like a, uh, a FOLK song of some kind.”

: “Is this normal, Pax? Is this what people did when you lived here? Sing creepy folk songs?”

: “NOW I hear it. It’s nice. I wouldn’t call it ‘creepy’.”

: “Really, Theo? You think this is NICE? Dude, you haven’t watched enough horror movies.”

: “I don’t watch horror movies.”

: The only real horror movie I’ve seen is Event Horizon and I thought it was dumb as fuck. I know people will disagree but horror is the lowest form of film. Or anything, really.

: “You’re DEFINITELY missing out. AND it makes you less prepared for a situation like this.”

: “Next, there’ll be effigies and bonfires and chanting.”

: That was one movie! That was The Wicker Man. Not the Nicolas Cage one, the original one. Even I fucking know that.

: “Do THOSE things count as effigies? They are creepy.”

: “Junior Justices! They’re not creepy at all. They’re SUPER cute.”

: “Uh, I mean..”

: “I’m with Theo on this one, Sai. They’re definitely contributing to the whole folk horror vibe.”

: What Ragnar’s trying to do here (and it becomes really obvious if you walk away mid-conversation) is to do what Uncharted 4 did with the walk-and-talk segments.

: The thing is, it was novel when Uncharted 4 did it. By the time Monster Hunter Wilds came out, everyone fucking hated it.

: I built my current PC specifically for Wilds and I am so fucking disappointed.

: Bad dialog ahoy!

: “What do you mean by ‘a western movie’?”

: “As in, not Asian or African or South American..”

: Fuck you, Ragnar! This is the most contrived fucking dialog I’ve ever seen outside of a political ad!

: “WESTERN movie. As in a Western. You know, with cowboys, Indians..”

: “Hey, I’m the Indian here! You mean indigenous peoples.”

: God fuck who even talks like this? Who doesn’t know what a western is?

: This feels like something Hilary Clinton would write. This is a political statement written by a fucking husk of a man who doesn’t actually believe anything.

: When you write something with a political message, you typically write your plot specifically around that message. Ragnar is already doing this (if you consider Dustborn as having a plot), but this feels more like..

: Shit like this. This page is where almost everyone drops Fables. It’s the author’s shoehorned opinions on Israel (granted, the entire comic is technically that) and sucks.

: This is why when Telltale adapted it, they had to make Bigby a different person entirely from who he is in the comics.

: “Fair.”

: “All I meant was, that fort looks like something from ‘She Wore A Yellow Ribbon’.”

: In case you haven’t seen it (neither have I), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is a 1949 film starring John Wayne as a 60-year-old Army captain tasked with stopping an army of natives from attacking a town.

: I am amazed Ragnar had the self-control to not have Theo break down in tears, look at the camera and go “Oh god I’m so sorry it was wrong then and it’s wrong now”.

: “She wore what?”

: “Who’s wearing a yellow ribbon?”

: “What’s a ‘fort’?”

: Is this supposed to be funny, Ragnar? Is that what you’re going with? You’re a fucking horrible comedy writer.

: “It’s bolted shut.”

: “I guess it’s a warning of some sort.”

: “Welcome to Summerisle.”

: “I’m sorry?”

: “It’s from an English horror movie from the nineteen - never mind.”

: She’s referencing is the 1973 version of The Wicker Man.

: We get the choice of using all of our party members on the gate, but it’s pretty obvious which one we want.

: “You made a hole.”

: “Sorry.”

: “It’s a GLORIOUS hole.”

: I should have done a “WHERE’S THE FUCKING JOKE” counter. I really should’ve.

: There’s a bunch of stuff we have to look at to progress. If we look at the robot:

: “They’ve got a ROBOT.”

: “I thought you said there were NO robots here?”

: Oh look, it’s THE WICKER MAN from the 1973 film THE WICKER MAN! What a creative and funny reference! I hope Ragnar’s daughter disowns him.

: “Where?”

: “I just remembered. Our SECRET entrance. It’s right over there.”

: Here’s the dumb part about this: you have to trigger the gate cutscene even if you know this is here. I tried on my re-recording and it didn’t work.

: I also had the combat tutorial glitch out on my re-recording and this guy got stuck behind the billboard. Fuck this game.

: “A TOLBOI unit. Perhaps it can assist me with the tools I need to repair our vehicle.”

: Is the joke that this robot is so incompetent that it damaged the bus somehow?

: “Didn’t I tell you to stay with the bus?”

: “What do you mean, ‘repair our vehicle’?”

: “I’ll do what I can, but I’m a SOFTWARE guy. If there are mechanical problems..”

: “So much for ‘no robots’, eh? Pax?”

: “Can you fix it?”

: “Not sure. We’ll bring it back to the bus and take a closer look at it there. Sai, would you mind giving me a hand? Or two?”

: “Sneak out to do what?”

: “You know.. TEEN stuff.”

: “Sex, drugs, and alcohol?”

: “We’d hunt cottontails and grey diggers.”

: “She has a GUN, pointed at ME. I need you here, RIGHT NOW.”

: You have mind control powers! Make her put the gun down! This is almost as dumb as that one X-Men comic where the cops give Magneto a plastic gun and he’s immediately convinced he’s lost his powers despite there being a dozen metal objects in plain view.

: Pax can apparently use her powers on herself, and I have no idea how this makes sense. Like, how would you not use them on yourself all the time by accident?

: What the fuck is that outfit? Why is this lady walking around barefoot wearing a pair of camo yoga pants and a midriff shirt?

: We get the option of either letting Noam handle it, mind-controlling her, or talking to her.

: Now, I want to tell you what I’m thinking about as I record this. It’s very simple: I’m thinking about playing literally anything else. The fact that I’m doing so means the plot has failed to engage me at all.

: “Are you with the government? With JUSTICE? Are you JUSTICE agents?”

: “What’s your name?”

: “You can’t - I’m the one asking the questions here! Who are YOU?”

: “I’m Pax. I used to live here.. a long time ago.”

: “PAX? You’re Annie and Rosa’s Pax? For REAL?”

: “In the flesh.”

: What kind of trigger discipline is that? If she intended to shoot, she should’ve already done it. Would’ve saved us all a lot of time.

: “If you really ARE Pax, you must have something to say for yourself. That one NEVER shut up.”

: “I remember you, Fred. It’s been a while. Now please let us in? You know me, you can trust me.”

: “TRUST you? You were a fucking bully. I hated you. Why should I let you back in after, what, fifteen YEARS?”

: “Sixteen, but who’s counting? Like I said, I’m here for Annie.”

: “Did Annie ask you to come? Is this part of her plan to destroy Liberty?”

: “Destroy? What? I just want to speak with my Mom. Do you know where she is?”

: “I’m not going to let you and your friend here just wander around camp.”

: “I’ll do the wandering. Noam will stay here.”

: “If you hurt them, I’ll break every bone in your body.”

: “I’m not hurting anyone. I’m just trying to keep my people safe.”

: “With a GUN? You’re putting more lives at risk. What are you even doing with that thing? Moms would’ve never allowed it.”

: I didn’t think it was possible to write a scene where someone gets held up at gunpoint and have it be boring, but here we are.

: This scene is easily twice as long as it needed to be, and it’s kind of infuriating how little respect Ragnar has for the player. What part of this is supposed to be interesting?

: “You’ve been gone a long time. And it’s not like we ASKED for the guns, but thanks to ANNIE, we’re STUCK with the damn things.”

: “Up by Rosa’s grave. It’s her birthday.”

: “I know. I’m her damn daughter.”

: There’s a brief cutscene where you have to open the door for Sai and Theo, but I’ll skip it because I’m bored as fuck and I’m sure you’re bored as fuck too.

: The town is apparently a cult? Why do I care? Are we going anywhere with this?

: There are a bunch of reflection points here and all of them are time limited. None of them have any important dialog.

: Yep, needed that yellow text. Don’t let me explore or anything.

: This lady is very difficult to get a good facial shot of because of how the camera works.

: “I can’t stay long. I’m still dealing with that damn BELL, and the girls are being.. obstinate.”

: “She was SO sure she’d live to see it. She made plans, but then..”

: My first thought upon seeing Annie was “This is Storm from that one X-Men movie where everyone is old and Professor X has Alzheimer’s.”

: I mean, if you’re making an obvious X-Men ripoff and you have a black lady with white hair, you’re going to have people making the comparison.

: “What the hell are you wearing? You’ll catch a cold. Did you forget we have weather up here?”

: What are you writing? You’ll lose your career. Did you forget your game has to sell?

: “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for the funeral. I wanted to.. without papers, I couldn’t leave Pacifica. And even if I’d managed to get out, I’d never be able to get back in.”

: “So why are you here now?”

: That’s a good question. Why are we here?

: “We’re not going back.”

: “You’re not going – shit. I need to sit down.”

: “What do you mean you’re not going back? You’re staying HERE?”

: The camera does this annoying thing where you can freely move it, but if you drop the mouse for even a second it locks back into position behind them.

: “We’re just passing through. But I wanted – I NEEDED to come home. For Ziggy. And to say goodbye to you and… Mom. To say a proper goodbye to Mom.”

: “It’s too little, too late, Pax. Rosa always thought you’d come home.”

: God this whole segment feels like a fucking soap opera. I watched part of an episode of Days of Our Lives with Ryan a couple weeks ago and the acting quality is about the same.

: “I’m not going to fight with you. I just need to see Ziggy, and I need to.. get something. Something I left behind.”

: “I don’t know where your sister is. She goes off on her own, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days.”

: “Okay. Well, I’ll look for her. You greet ALL visitors with a loaded gun these days?”

: “Times have changed. People are scared. I’ll talk to Fred. Not that she’ll LISTEN.”

: Winifred is a blatant stand-in for Trump voters.

: “The girls.. at first they HATED the idea of having guns. But now…? They’ve grown used to them. Given the current mood, I’m not sure it was the right choice. But there’s no going back.”

: What are you even talking about? They’re inanimate objects. This lady is about as effective a leader as Ragnar Tornquist is a CEO.

: “Zee’s so busy all the time, especially after we bought the robots. She keeps them running.”

: “Why are people so hostile? And I don’t just mean the GUNS. Liberty doesn’t feel like HOME anymore.”

: “I don’t know what happened. It’s gotten worse in the last year or two. The girls are frightened, unhappy. ANGRY. I guess it’s a reflection of the world outside Liberty. No one trusts ANYONE anymore.”

: There are some more dialog options that are like ten lines of nothing, so I’ll skip them.

: “Most of them. They’re still in your - well, it’s Zee’s cabin now. She keeps it locked. There’s been.. THEFTS. The key’s in that arcade machine she keeps out front.”

: We can hit.. wait a second, that’s not the right button. It’s F to pay respects. What the fuck, Ragnar?

: Pax’s VA almost shows emotion in this scene. Ragnar must’ve forgotten to voice direct it.

: There is a shitload of beer around this camp, and I was desperately hoping there’d be an option to just start chugging a few.

: What the fuck is this arcade machine? It has no buttons, one stick.. yet has a two-player option?

: This isn’t a background asset. This is something people are going to look at because you’re forcing them to look at it, and it looks like shit.

: I know there were real-life arcade games that only used a trackball, but that’s a trackball, not a stick.

: You see that broken 70s-style CRT right there? At first, I thought “Oh, that must be a re-used asset, and that’s why it’s there. It’s a lack of budget.” Nope, it’s because Ragnar doesn’t give a shit.

: I searched longplays of both Dreamfall Chapters and Draugen, and even though I did not watch the entire thing (Dreamfall Chapters is like 15 hours long, I’m not watching that shit), this TV isn’t an asset from either one.

: This is the TV they clearly used as a reference. They were cheap pieces of shit sold under the K-Mart brand and don’t have hookups at all as far as I can tell.

: You.. have a Pong machine. Why? That shit’s piss easy to emulate. If I had a cabinet, I would get (in order of preference): Sega Chihiro, Atomiswave, Sega Naomi 2. Why?

: Simple. Anything prior to those will run on most FPGA consoles (MiSTer and its various knockoffs), but those won’t because there are no FPGAs large enough to run them. People have speculated that there may never be an FPGA large enough because of how FPGAs work.

: And of course Ziggy has a Ziggy Stardust poster. Fuck you, Ragnar. Leave David Bowie out of this.

: That’s an Atari 2600 controller on the ground and an ancient wood-panel CRT, also from the 1970s. No retro enthusiast would use those.

: You might see them on like, “retrocore” enthuiast channels where people buy a wood-panel TV as like, a furniture item. No one does that to use them.

: The reason is that up until the 1980s, TVs usually only had a single RF input in the back. RF input is bad because it’s vulnerable to interference and generally looks like shit.

: Ragnar had someone model not one, but TWO of these godawful TVs for this game and I do not know why. They’re completely out of place in game taking place in 2030.

: I will not comment on the record player because I own one that I used exactly once. Don’t do vinyl, it sucks.

: I will, however, say that’s terrible vinyl handling. You do NOT want to leave your vinyls uncovered like that, because they collect dust that creates interference when playing them.

: There is yet another reflection point here that we have to use before picking up the box underneath the bed.

: We pick up Pax’s old jacket, which.. that absolutely does not fit. She couldn’t even zip that thing up.

: “You gotta talk INTO the microphone, Zee, like this. See?”

: “Hello?”

: “Yeah, just like that. Okay, so. We’re recording this SECRET recording on, um–”

: “Saturday.”

: “We need a date, not a day of the week! What’s the date?”

: “2009.”

: The “child” voiceactors are even worse than the regular ones. I’m going to skip a lot of this because it’s fucking pointless.

: The girls fight over the dumbass handheld and then Pax uses her dragon shout.

: Where’s a killable children mod when I need it?

: “You’re not supposed to use your VOX on me. Or ANYONE. I’m telling MOMS!”

: We have now sat through at least 30 minutes of this shit. Imagine if this was a TV show. I’d have turned it off by now.

: The point is that we can move the record box and find the cartridge for the handheld under the floorboards. It took all that pointless bullshit.

: Imagine how much time and money could’ve been saved by simply having Pax walk into the cabin and discover this on her own.

: There’s a lady on the right playing Pax’s guitar with gloves on. This is almost as laughable as the baguette boy scene from Bioshock Infinite.

: Ragnar could be bothered to make two different unfitting 70s CRT models, but couldn’t at least re-texture the guitar. I don’t think he gave a shit.

: I GUARANTEE you that at some point in development, someone (probably whoever did the modeling work) came to him and said “Ragnar, we’ve got assets the player can walk right up to that look like background shit. We’ve got a random model playing a guitar with work gloves on. This kind of thing makes us look bad.”

: He probably assumed that “gamers” are too dumb to notice.

: “Hey, what are you doing–”

: “SHHH. They’re talking about US.”

: “We wouldn’t NEED an early warning system if we stopped INVITING trouble into our community. First the OPIUM, now we’ve got DEVIANTS running around spreading their verbal VIRUS.”

: “I’m telling you, one of them’s going to go NOVA and kill us all. You saw what the BIG one did to our gate. Punched a hole right THROUGH it!”

: “A fucking BELL isn’t going to solve ANYTHING. We need to return to what made Liberty GREAT. Our TRADITIONAL VALUES.”

: Don’t get me wrong, the RANDOM CAPITALIZATION still pisses me off. It’s just the least of this game’s problems at this particular moment in time.

: “They REALLY don’t like us.”

: “This used to be a refuge for anomals, and now..? It’s disturbing. All this paranoid BULLCRAP.”

: “What are YOU doing here?”

: “Meeting your mum. She’s a delight.”

: “Did you find what you were looking for?”

: “Could you give us some space?”

: “Pax! Don’t be rude.”

: This game has far too much writing. At this point, the last time I pressed a button was to get Sai to punch the gate.

: That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if the plot was interesting, but it just.. isn’t. There’s nothing interesting at all about this.

: We get to tell Annie if Pax is romantically interested in Noam. I say no.

: Pax tries to pull the bell but can’t. We need to call Sai over. It’s great how no one in this town of idiots thought to have multiple people pulling.

: You know what I love in a game? Lots of pointless flashbacks. This one’s also getting summarized.

: We join Pax in the middle of doing something stupid.

: Ragnar, you’ve been ‘setting the scene’ for FOUR HOURS. There isn’t a fucking good part! There isn’t even a fucking plot!

: The game tasks us with picking up 8 toys. You can skip this entire thing if you want, but there’s a cheevo for getting them all.

: And that’s all of them.

: I don’t know why I’m even bothering, given that as I’ve said before, getting 100% achievements requires playing through the game three times.

: “Zee? ZIGGY! Where did you GO? Hello..? Are you hiding in here, Zee?”

: I’m glad I turned around because that is a VERY unfortunate person to quote given the abuse allegations and the fact that she founded a cult.

: For a moment I almost thought Ragnar was saying something, but I genuinely think he’s so ignorant he somehow hadn’t heard of this news that broke in 1995.

: “What’s - what’s that SOUND? Whispers… oh NO. The GHOSTS are BACK. I have to use the ME-EM to.. SHOOT. Where is it? I must’ve left it-”

: “We were still haunted by ECHOES of the NOISE. That’s what we called the BROADCAST. Over a decade later, there were still WHISPERS that spread like VIRUSES.”

: STOP with the fucking CAPS.

: “I was the only one who could SEE them for what they were. ECHOES from the PAST. And I was the only one who could get RID of them.”

: “If Zee wasn’t inside Liberty, she’d be out THERE. In our SPECIAL PLACE.”

: Is this Silent Hill now? Are we in Silent Hill?

: “There you are, you SPAZ.”

: “I could be SO mean to Ziggy, say the WORST things. I’m not proud of it. But I was a kid.”

: Ziggy spouts gibberish and teleports away.

: This unlocks the path to progress. Before we go, there are three more reflection points. Trust me when I say this game is about to go from merely bad to HILARIOUSLY bad.

: The first one is near this stage. I want to transcribe the line here for.. reasons.

: “We didn’t have a TV growing up, kid. But we had our live shows.”

: Then where the fuck did the CRTs come from?

: We can also reflect on the swingset..

: And on this bench by their drug fields. None of the dialog is remotely interesting.

: “Uh, it’s me. Pax. I, ah, I’m back…”

: “I know. You look.. you’ve grown up. So.. the runaway comes running BACK. I guess talking to ME wasn’t high on your list of priorities?”

: Would you believe that the reason Ziggy is a bitch is because she has the Woke Mind Virus? No, really. I’m not making that up. That is an actual plot point.

: “You had time for Mom, for FRED.. but talking to your own SISTER? TOO much work for a con artist. If you can’t make a quick buck, it’s not worth your time.”

: “What are you TALKING about? I’ve been looking for you this whole time!”

: “And you didn’t think to look HERE? I mean, you’d think with all the hours we spent together in our ‘castle’…”

: “You could’ve looked for ME.”

: “No. No, I’m done with this shit. And I’m on kitchen duty. The girls will be expecting dinner.”

: We can watch Winifred and Not-Storm argue. I’m going to skip most of this except for two lines.

: It’s these two, and they’re funny because Ragnar Tornquist is trying to sell Dreamfall a third time.

: We need to get into the kitchen and can’t use the front door for some reason. You have options to get this open: you can use Theo to lockpick or Sai to break the door.

: Ziggy teleports around the kitchen. The game wants you to catch her and use the mind control button, but you can also just shout at her until she relents.

: “You know what’s unfair? Running out on your fourteen year old sister. THAT was pretty fucking unfair.”

: “Wait, you actually think I ran away? Zee.. I didn’t. Moms SENT me away.”

: “Bullshit.”

: “No! It’s true. I-- they had their reasons. I.. messed up, used my Vox when I shouldn’t have. They sent me away to protect me. You. ALL of us.”

: “I HATED it, but I didn’t have a CHOICE. I was sixteen! But you KNOW this already. They TOLD you. Right?”

: “They told me you ran away, because you DID. I don’t know why you keep on DENYING it.”

: “Zee, I’m telling the TRUTH.”

: “How can I believe anything you say? You’re a con artist, a liar. Always were. And why would Moms LIE to me? No, that’s – you’re full of SHIT, Pax.”

: “Why did you come back? I don’t understand why you couldn’t just STAY away. Would’ve saved us a lot of heartache and misery.”

: “And to think I used to dream of the day you’d return. How PATHETIC is that?”

: “I came back to give us all CLOSURE. I never had the opportunity to say goodbye. To ANYONE. And since I’m not planning on returning…”

: “What the FUCK are you TALKING about? No, Pax. I’m good. This is my home. My LIFE. Annie needs me, I’m staying here.”

: “Why? Liberty’s not what it was. You must see that, there’s no future here for–”

: “Just because it’s CHANGED doesn’t mean it’s not HOME. If you stopped clinging to the past, you’d see that.”

: This dialog is bad, but I don’t give a fuck because we’re about to run into something that’s going to make me unleash the fucking fury.

: Ziggy gets pissy if you look at the not-3DS and gives it to Pax before teleporting off. I hope she gets stuck in a wall and gibbed.

: Yes, this thing has a dumbass face on it. You can customize it, but I don’t think the game ever saves it.

: Hell yeah, the “I’m taking a piss” face.

: We run into the She-Trump, who is needlessly bitchy.

: Guess what time it is?

: This part didn’t record properly. For some reason, my screenshot tool doesn’t work if you’re holding CTRL or ALT, and I didn’t have my backup recording going because I accidentally stopped it.

: By holding down Control, you go into what I’m going to call Infowars Mode. Infowars Mode lets you detect the WOKE MIND VIRUS. No, I am not fucking joking.

: These little red balls start playing the same pseudo-Fox News clips that we saw when Pax went to the piss dimension a few updates ago when you get close to them.

: You then need to play a minigame that is effectively capturing ghosts in Luigi’s Mansion - you have to move the mouse to keep the WOKE MIND VIRUS in the circle.

: In the flashback, you need to do this five or six times before it’ll let you progress. This minigame sucks for more reasons than one. I’m going to get to that. Trust me, I’m about two minutes from screaming.

: After you capture your first WOKE MIND VIRUS, you get teleported to the school. You can hear Ziggy spouting gibberish.

: If you look under the stairs with Infowars Mode on, we can see that Ziggy is infected by the WOKE MIND VIRUS, presumably because she wasn’t drinking her Hogwater.

: I want to unleash the fury at this point, but I’m honestly tired. Fuck you, Ragnar. I’ll get to it next update.

[Timrod]

Summary

: The last update took a lot out of me. I’d been thinking of exactly how I wanted to word this, and now I think I have it.

: As you can probably tell, the reason everyone in Liberty is a paranoid MAGA cultist is because they’re being taken over by the Woke Mind Virus.

: This is a political statement Ragnar is making directly: Fox News (and other right-wing media) are a direct path to MAGA.

: You know, I feel like I’ve heard this before.

: No, it wasn’t that. I’ll get to that. What was it again..?

: Oh right, this asshole. This is Jack Thompson. If you were online at any point between 2000 and 2008, you probably know who he is.

: Jack Thompson is a disgraced former attorney (he was disbarred in 2008) who spent roughly eight years trying to prove a causal link between video games and mass shootings.

: In theory, he was doing this because he believed something. In practice, he was a racist asshole who was trying to build evidence for a neverending class-action lawsuit that would turn into asbestos 2.0 and make him rich.

: Ragnar is taking the Jack Thompson “murder simulator” theory and trying to apply it to right-wing media. If it wasn’t true for video games or rap music (another frequent target of Jack Thompson’s) or movies, why would it be true for Fox News?

: Do I think Fox News can enable people who already think that way? Sure. Do I believe it’s some kind of magic demon brainwashing? No.

: There’s a song I’d like to quote here just to show Ragnar that I do listen to the lyrics. It’s from a kind of cringy “nerdcore” rapper called MC Lars, who put out a song called “Guitar Hero Hero” in 2008. He was trying to make a different point than I am, but the lyrics still work.

Grand Theft Auto doesn’t make you a player
Playing Sim City doesn’t make you a mayor
Beating Rock Band doesn’t mean you rock
Beating Tony Hawk doesn’t make you Tony Hawk
American Idol won’t make you a star
Beating Guitar Hero doesn’t mean you play guitar

: Then there’s the part about the Woke Mind Virus being magical ghosts that possess people. That shit’s enabling people.

: People go MAGA because it’s an easy way out. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve lost friends to it. I guarantee Ragnar never has.

: And you know, it’s a lot easier to believe that your friend or loved one was brainwashed by propaganda than it is to believe they were probably always like that and you just didn’t know because they were afraid to come out with it.

: It’s a lot easier to believe that than it is to actually fucking do something.

: So you know what? Fuck you, Ragnar. You’re an insipid, ignorant fuckhead who should keep the fuck out of commenting on politics, especially those of a country you don’t even fucking live in!

: I hope you never get another dollar of public funding. I hope your entire studio abandons you, Ed Sheeran style, until all that’s left is you and your washed-up excuse for a career. People will remember you the same way as Joe Lieberman holding up that light gun on CSPAN.

: And just for fun, here’s a prediction: your next game will be on the Concord Timeline just like this one was. And so will the one after that, assuming you can still find money between the couch cushions to fund it. Eventually, Norway’s going to get sick of your bullshit.

: Next time, I’ll continue demolishing this pile of shit until there’s nothing left. I’m fucking pissed now.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Welcome back to this pile of shit.

: “So make them stop! They’re in my thoughts!”

: “I got rid of them all, there were no Echoes left. I don’t understand why-- hold on, Zee. I’m going to check something.”

: “Make it go AWAY! I don’t WANT it there!”

: “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. No GHOST messes with MY LITTLE SISTER.”

: This is the other, easier half of the WOKE MIND VIRUS minigame. If it’s inside a person, you just move your mouse away from them and it automatically captures.

: “Zee? Are you okay? Can you hear me?”

: “I.. I can hear you. The whispers.. they’re gone.”

: “The Echo got into your head somehow. Never seen THAT before. But I fixed you.”

: “Thank you.”

: “Anything for my little sis. No matter how bad you smell.”

: “She has a fucking - we see how it is, Annie. You’re on THEIR side. We won’t forget.”

: “Oh, do SHUT UP, Fred. You’re not yourself. None of you are. Go cool down, leave my daughter and her friends be. They’re GUESTS.”

: “They’re fucking DEVIANTS, is what they are. And their sickness is CONTAGIOUS.”

: As you’ve probably guessed, Winifred is infected with the WOKE MIND VIRUS.

: “You saw what happened. People are on EDGE.”

: “Liberty has an ECHO problem.”

: “So the GHOSTS are back. I thought so.”

: “They’re not GHOSTS, Mom.”

: “GHOSTS. DEMONS. Whatever you call them, they’re unnatural. I don’t see them like you do, Pax. I just.. FEEL them. I hear the whispers. And they’re EVIL.”

: Oh look, it’s an “old lady that calls every game console a Nintendo” joke that ran thin in 1998.

: “She also said that’s the ONLY reason you came back.”

: “It’s not a ‘magic box’.”

: I’m cutting out some of this dialog because again, it’s boring as fuck and it would make the update insufferable if I left it in.

: “Liberty can be FIXED, and you can help, by using your MAGIC box to- Sorry. Your THING, to HUNT those GHOSTS down. Once they’re gone, things will return to normal.”

: We now need to find three WOKE MIND VIRII and eat them.

: This is a slow, annoying process unless you know where the WMVs are.

: Anyone with superpowers will show up yellow on the WMV scanner. I wonder if this means they’ve also got the WOKE MIND VIRUS (they do).

: If you look into the distance, you can see the Erdtree from the hit 2023 game Elden Ring. It’s funny how Ragnar stole that - I forgot Elden Ring came out in 2023.

: If you look closely, you can see a red dot floating near that sign. Once you’ve detected a WMV, it will appear as a red dot even if you’re not using the scanner.

: I capture the WMV and then get softlocked because it makes the boxes go fucky. Great job, Ragnar.

: Assuming you capture the WMV without a softlock, you can take this fox necklace off the now-opened bulletin board.

: Reminds me of Astra.

: It would almost be cute if it wasn’t in this game.

: There’s another WMV over here by the kitchen that unveils a bag of coffee beans underneath a wheelbarrow. Not sure who’d drink coffee from beans that have been sitting outside on the ground.

: A bear would.

: The final one is by The Wicker Man from the 1973 film The Wicker Man.

: When we go to capture it, something swoops by and breaks through the gate to the stage.

: So yes, there are also Metroids eating the WMV. This is fucking Metroid Fusion. This is exactly what Metroid Fusion was.

: We have to fight the squid by doing a QTE. Riveting gameplay we’ve got going on here.

: Sai comes over and has another mental breakdown, because Ragnar has decided that now is the time for an exposition dump regarding the Woke Mind Virus.

: This part made me cringe. You’re using a handheld that ABSOLUTELY does not look like it was made in the 1990s to exorcise the Woke Mind Virus.

: You know how many non-emulator handhelds, even ones made post-2000, have two sticks? Exactly two: the Switch and the Steam Deck. The PSP had one stick, the DS had none. The Vita and 3DS had one each. I know because I own all of them (except a Steam Deck).

: Sai refers to whatever dumbass apocalypse event gave everyone superpowers as THE DISORDER, but it’s the same thing as THE BROADCAST.

: I used to think that people in a story who have never met each other all having the same Proper Noun for a plot event was kinda dumb, but now I have seen the error of my ways. Unlike Ragnar, I can learn things.

: There’s one other thing I hate about this, and I kind of covered it in the bonus dunk, which is that Ragnar seems to fundamentally not believe in the concept of free will.

: “So when you say Echoes ‘mess you up’…”

: “They’re pure DISINFORMATION, designed to induce fear, pain, resentment, confusion… Echoes can make infected people do CRAZY stuff. Believe the WORST things. Spiral into a maelstrom of conspiracies.”

: I’m sure the Woke Mind Virus is what made Ragnar do such a shitty job directing this game. It wasn’t his fault (it absolutely was).

: “I THINK I’m starting to get it. So what’s happening here in Liberty-”

: “Echoes, messing with people, reappearing after DECADES. I thought I got rid of them al when I was a kid, but they’re back.”

: We can see two more WMV “victims” here and need to “cure” them both. It’s kind of funny how just like noted shit writer Katsura Hashino, the game never really reflects on whether mind controlling people out of choices they made is a bad thing.

: “I don’t know. But there are more of them now.”

: “And the Camp-Karens are… ‘infected’?”

: “Making them susceptible to conspiracies, superstition, emotional manipulation, fear and anger..”

: “Do you think this is why that FRED lady is so messed up?”

: “It would make sense. She’s saying crazy stuff, like Vocals being ‘infectious’. Things you’d hear from lunatics.. and Justice propaganda.”

: “Well, you know what SOME people say, Justice was BEHIND the DISORDER in the first place.”

: Apparently, the WMV also causes depression.

: “That’s it. We’ve got enough ECHOES stored in memory. Now we can mess around with the recorded audio to make new VOX.”

: “Uh, what?”

: “Well, not COMPLETELY new. And it only works on me. My VOX are still all about the BAD FEELS, but I learn new ways to mess with people.”

: …Why do you need superpowers for this again?

: We get one of those “match the waveform” minigames for some reason. Usually, this kind of thing is something corporate demands to artificially inflate gameplay length.

: I’m sure the Woke Mind Virus made Ragnar do it.

: The minigame controls like ass and demands insane precision. This line you see here? That’s not considered good enough to clear it.

: This whole fucking game is like reading a kid’s book report where they copy-pasted some definitions from the dictionary in the middle to meet the word count quota.

: This is the dumbest plot point I think I’ve ever seen.

: We’ve learned DISCORD, so I’ll need everyone reading this to please verify their age to continue. On an unrelated note, this LP is now sponsored by Dalton Heights International Casino and Sportsbook, located in a sunny undisclosed jurisdiction not subject to extradition to the United States. Gamble irresponsibly on sports today!

: And just in time, too! This unruly mob looks underage.

: You know what might’ve been good writing, even though the whole WMV thing is dumb as fuck? If Winifred didn’t have it. If that’s just the way she is.

: Trigger and Push do nothing, so we need to Block, then Push, and then remove the WMV. My backup video cut out for some reason, but it’s no different than any other time we’ve done it.

: “I told you, she’s using her FREAK weapons to CONTROL us! Wh - what did you do to me?!”

: “Your mind was.. infected with disinformation. I just..”

: “She’s messing with my mind again! She’ll do the same to you if we don’t stop her!”

: “You can’t always save everyone” - Bloober Team, The Medium (2021). There is a surprising amount of overlap between Dustborn and The Medium. They’re practically the same thing, just packaged differently.

: Talking does nothing but give us more dialog to ignore. We need to TAKE ACTION. We need to POKEMON GO to THE POLLS.

: “What? No-”

: “None of this is Annie’s doing. It’s Fred. All of it. She’s LOST it. She’s been poisoning you with her paranoid delusions. Do you REALLY believe what she’s been telling you?”

: A good writer would have made it so that using this option causes the other lesbians to kill her in front of you, maybe by burning her on THE WICKER MAN from the 1973 film THE WICKER MAN.

: Pax watches in abject horror as Fred is burned at the stake and she’s powerless to do anything. I suppose you could also have them almost do it and Not-Storm steps in and stops it somehow, but who’d want that?

: I’m going to use a few screenshots in a row here because we’re about to run into some weapons-grade cringe.

: We get the option of either telling her that Fred is a lost cause or not. I pick option 2 because at this point I know my recording is fucked up and I’m going to have to reload.

: At what point does personal responsibility kick in here? At what point can we admit that these people had a choice and made it?

: So I don’t sound callous, I understand that there are certain conditions (mental illness, drug and alcohol addictions) that might take that choice away - but this isn’t any of those.

: “They’re-”

: " ‘Echoes’. But what they do to people is demonic. They twist their thoughts, make them forget who they are.. I don’t blame Fred. She loved the idea of Liberty, she was just unable to come to terms with the reality of it."

: That’s a lot of words for a statement that says nothing. But you know, I’d like to turn that statement around for a minute.

: If what Ragnar’s trying to say is that Fox News causes MAGA, then what does that say about people who don’t fall for it? Was that an intentional choice, or just fate?

: Does anything have meaning at all?

: We get another non-choice that even further undermines this game’s poor excuse for a plot. What you’re telling me is that the WMV can’t outright possess people who don’t already believe in it, but then wouldn’t believing in it be a choice?

: “You’ll have to learn to trust Fred and the others again.”

: “And they need to be able to trust ME. When Rosa died, I knew I could never be the leader, or mother, that she’s been.”

: And how does this make any sense? You’re dealing with people who could at any point be infected by the Woke Mind Virus and turn into uncontrollable idiots.

: “The changes I made weren’t all for the common good. I wanted to leave the ghosts of the past behind.. for my own sake. But I forgot to bring everyone else with me. They weren’t ready.”

: “I know I can’t blame everything on the Echoes. Ill feelings need fertile soil to grow in. I invited those feelings.”

: YOU JUST FUCKING SAID THAT!

: “We need to square things between the two of you, and I need to tell her.. everything. She needs closure, too. Go find your sister, and we’ll talk. She’s in her workshop, down on the field, fixing your robot.”

: Ziggy is down this staircase that I believe was previously blocked by one of the WMV-infected.

: Speaking of the Woke Mind Virus, there’s one down here.

: We get near the workshop and something very fucky happens.

: I hit 1 here, and the game softlocks.

: The camera can still move, but no one’s talking and I think a script broke. I have this one on video.

SOFTLOCK COUNTER: 2

: Two softlocks in the same update. Fucking unbelievable. Let’s reload and try again.

: “Hey, there you are. Mind running a quick system diagnostic for me?”

: “My core systems are operational. A full runthrough of all subroutines will take approximately..”

: “Don’t bother. If you can walk, talk, and DRIVE, we’re done here.”

: “Oh, hello Pax.”

: I don’t think this is meant to be a reference to The Room, but if it is, that’s a bold fucking move. Even Tommy Wiseau is a better director than Ragnar is.

: “Annie asked me to get you. We need to leave. This place is broken, and-”

: I’d sure say it’s broken given the two softlocks in the same recording session.

: I had my backup recording turned off because I didn’t think I’d need it given there’s no WMV segments in this conversation. I had to alt-tab out and close the game to restart it as soon as I heard this line.

: The voiceacting here is ATROCIOUS. Ziggy’s VA is Ioanna Kimbook, another no-name whose primary roles prior to this were an “additional voices” credit in Diablo 4’s DLC and Jianxin in Wuthering Waves. I knew nothing about Wuthering Waves prior to this, and it seems to be the videogame equivalent of Days of Our Lives where they’ll take just about anybody regardless of acting talent so long as they’re non-union.

: She’s the kind of rookie VA who needs strict voice direction and multiple takes. Ragnar gives her neither. She has since been in a couple of Apple TV originals, mostly as minor roles. Let me get the recording started up again, and…

: “I waited and waited. I repaired your ME-EM, kept it in perfect order. I was SO broken, I thought I was the reason you left. My only hope was that you’d come back for that THING. Like, if I fixed it for you, maybe you’d love me again? How sick is THAT?”

: That is.. some line delivery, alright. It’s a good thing I kept the recording on, because..

: We’ve got a fight on our hands.

: “What are they doing?”

: “Torching the crops.”

: “They’re here for the opium.. did you -”

: “You’ve been selling DRUGS. Did you really think Justice wouldn’t notice?”

: “I – shit. SHIT. What do we do?”

: “We get the hell out of here.”

: “It’s trouble, is what THAT is. We need a weapon.”

: “Electromagnetic fields. With that glove on, you can control the bat. Throw it.. and it comes back.”

: I’m pretty sure you’d need a much bigger magnet to pull a baseball bat even that far.

: We now have the ability to throw baseball bats at people. This is primarily used to hit flying enemies.

: The game gives us the option to skip this, and I probably should’ve. Here’s a video of the fight.

: The “Combots” aren’t honestly much of a threat. We can’t use Pax’s dragonshout on them because they’re robots.

: They are still vulnerable to the Q button thing, but as I find out pretty soon, the Q button thing can be interrupted. Enemies don’t freeze while you’re in the QTE.

: This helicopter is a fucking clown car. I need to show you how bad the animation is on this. Most people would have the enemies rappel down on ropes.

: My first thought on seeing this animation was the Pumaman episode of MST3K. I don’t think it’s meant to be a reference, but holy FUCK this is a bad animation.

: This fight is meant to be a tutorial on “combos”, which consist of using Pax’s dragonshouts and then pressing Q to have someone follow up.

: Sai’s combo is worse than useless. Block stuns enemies in place, and you’d do way more damage hitting them with the bat than having Sai do this shit, which does minimal damage and scatters them.

: If you’re using dragonshouts, Trigger is by far the best one. I didn’t land the combo, but this increases Pax’s melee damage and lets her oneshot the Pumamen. That’s what I’m calling the blue guys. Pumamen.

: By the way, all the comic sound effects and giant yellow text? That’s something they added in a patch. The game didn’t originally have that.

: We get another wave of Pumamen and a “tank” that somehow fit in that helicopter.

: We can use Discord to force them to submit age verification selfies.

: If you watch the video, the tank grabs Pax during her Q move. Great game design there.

: I use Push, which combos with Ziggy. This does a surprising amount of damage and kills the tank, who gets launched into some convenient explosive barrels.

: Gotta love that sign that’s hovering for no reason. We have to deal with a sniper. How?

: Another QTE. This one took me a couple of tries because I didn’t immediately understand that it’s a rhythm game thing and not hitting the ball on visual cues like every baseball game ever made.

: You know what would have made way more sense? We saw Theo with a gun in the promo for The Heist. Why wouldn’t you have him come out and shoot the sniper?

: Of course, it’s not over. As soon as the helicopter goes down, the robot out front activates and we get to fight that too.

: The robot is a big, tedious blob of HP. You’re meant to use Trigger because it can’t be hit by Push or Block. It has three attacks. The first is this short-range AOE.

: Like the tank, it also has a throw. This is a lot harder to dodge.

: And finally, it has a missile barrage that will probably never hit you if you have a pulse.

: “This bat is the BEST. Can I PLEASE keep it?”

: “NO. But you can BORROW it.. until it’s finished.”

: This is our introduction to the upgrade system. Most of these upgrades are pointless. There’s one on the right tree that makes the Q attack heal you, and one on the left that makes the QTE longer.

: The upgrade currency is machine parts, and there is an achievement for unlocking all of the upgrades. I’ll see what I can do.

: I’m going to skip most of the next few scenes because they’re recaps of shit we’ve already seen. Just keep that in mind.

: We have a painfully long scene where Not-Storm explains why they had to send Pax to a farm upstate and couldn’t tell her.

: “We were in Deer Falls. Market day. How old was I.. fifteen?”

: “Sixteen. You’d just turned fourteen, Zee.”

: “I remember that day. We, uh, ‘found’ some baseball gear. I helped open the door from inside, we grabbed the gear and ran. That’s the same bat you used to fight Justice. I also remember you being WEIRD about it. A few months after that… you left.”

: “Some kids saw you in the dugout, they were going to come after you.. so I voxed them.”

: “You.. what?”

: “I PUSHED them. They ran off scared, told others, rumors started going around…”

: “They were going to come for her. Neither of you were safe. So we sent Pax south, told everyone she ran away. Told YOU the same story, Zee.”

: “Oh god. I’m so, so sorry, Rosa.”

: “Rosa isn’t here, mom. She’s in your heart. She’s with us, wherever we go.”

: The game acknowledges this is terrible dialog, but the only glimmer of hope I have for this world is that Dustborn will be tied to Ragnar forever.

: He’ll show up at Gamescom or some other trade show to show off his new game, and people will point at him and laugh. “There goes the Dustborn guy,” they’ll say.

: “But you’re right.. Rosa will always be with us. She’s not bound to this place. And neither are you, Zee. You need to go with Pax.”

: If I was ever at a party and had some moron come up to me and introduce themselves as an “anarcho-primitivist”, I’d give them one warning and then punch them.

: It sounds like something you’d hear from a guy who works for Google’s esteemed Enshittification Division.

: “So now you’re sending ME away, just like-”

: “Just like we did with Pax. For everyone’s sake and with the very best of intentions.”

: You know what this game really needed? A second whiny little bitch. One wasn’t enough, we needed two.

: “Don’t worry, no more opium poppies. We’ll stick with carrots and potatoes. THIS one, on the other hand.. she’s coming with you. She’s small and fits anywhere.”

: The game is really trying to get us to feel for this stupid robot. You know who did a really good sad robot story? TKMIZ. His newest manga is called Fragments of the Layered City and is VERY good.

: “Headed for Liberty.”

: “Why are we going so SLOW? Step on it, Robot!”

: “Do NOT step on it. last thing we need is to get caught speeding.”

: You’re telling me the fascists, who have near-unlimited police power, wouldn’t pull over the bus on a pretext?

: “You’re worrying over nothing. It’s all in your head.”

: Before we move on, there’s one final reflection point for this chapter. I feel like if Ragnar had reflected half as much as the game does, he might finally give up his job.

: Am I transcribing all this? Fuck no I’m not. It’s almost entirely a recap of stuff we’ve already seen or done in this very update. There is ONE line I want to show.

: Fuck you, Ragnar. Longest Journey sucked. If it wasn’t $10 on GOG (for a 27-year-old game!) I’d probably buy a copy and dunk it. I’m not giving Ragnar any more money.

: If you look over here, you can see the bulletin board starting to fill up.

: Our next destination is another copy-pasted camp site. Clearly there are no motels or RV parks anywhere on this route.

: Is that another unfunny dick joke?

: “I can attest to that.”

: Ragnar, I have an OC who is based off a literal penis demon. I don’t think I’ve made this many bad dick jokes with him in any of the LPs I’ve done using him.

: “They weren’t looking for you. They came for the DRUGS. They must’ve received a tip from somewhere. Or SOMEONE.”

: “Maybe one of the Camp Karens? Right, Pax? They were all infected…”

: That hijab makes Sai look like fucking Grimace. I saw it and immediately thought of this:

: We can attempt to give anyone the fox pendant, but only Theo will accept the coffee beans. As you can tell from the top-left, we need to talk to him to progress.

: At this point, I set my foot down. I said “I’m not even going to bother recording any of the optional dialogue because I think we’ve all seen enough of Ragnar’s bullshit.”

: Then I said “Well, what if one of them says something stupid? Maybe I should at least record it so I can screenshot the dumb lines specifically” and made the mistake of talking to Noam.

SOFTLOCK COUNTER: 3

: Yep, that’s our third softlock in one update. The screen isn’t meant to be black here.

: The conversation with Theo is over 20 lines long and the only thing that happens in it is Pax explaining her stupid handheld for the sixth time.

: We can also write a new song here (click for video). I think you can get through the game with just “We’re the Dustborn” but I don’t want to listen to that again.

: “I’ve been drinking the synthetic Pacifica stuff for SO long, I can hardly remember what real coffee tastes like. Hard to come by, with the climate changes. Soon as I find a grinder, I’ll make us all a cup.”

: This game takes place in 2030, but it feels like it was meant to take place in like, 2230 or some shit. Now that we’ve given Theo his coffee, we can do a practice run of Influence Apocalypse so you can hear the whole thing.

: Here’s the video. Dominque Tipper more like Dominique Tripper over her own lines. This sounds like a really, really shitty Green Day song, like what would happen if you shot Green Day’s songwriter in the head just right so it wasn’t lethal but did as much brain damage as possible.

: Let’s go to sleep before the game can softlock a fourth time. Surely this chapter ends here.. right?

: Oh no. Thankfully, all I have to do is play a song (any song) one more time.

: See that poster in the middle, the “RED DIRECTION” one? That’s Ragnar in the bottom-left. I’m unsure who the other three people are.

: I feel like being in a photo with Ragnar Tornquist is a lot like being in a photo with Jeffrey Epstein. You’re never really clean after that.

: Pax’s model looks HORRIBLE under that lighting.

: I do the song a second time and accidentally fuck up right after this. It makes Pax choke, which is kinda funny.

: Yeah no, I think I’m good thanks. I’ve had enough torture.

: And.. end.

: Wait, you can get Noam shot?! Fuck! How?! I’m guessing “Noam meets Annie” being in red is because Noam can get shot. Fuck I wish I had captured that.

: Also, that picture of Sai in the top-right is the definition of QUALITY.

: According to Steam, 29.8% of people who have ever played this game have gotten past Issue 2. I have no idea how many copies this game actually sold.

: There are (unofficial) estimates of between 35,000 and 45,000 copies sold - the game was in a couple of bundles over the years and it’s likely most of its sales were not at full price. However, those are unofficial figures and are unlikely to be accurate. I’d ask Ragnar himself, but uh.. no.

: Next time, we’re going to suffer even more as we reach Issue 3. What’s in Issue 3? Fucked if I know.

[Timrod]

Summary

: That almost looks like a real comic cover. There’s colors on it that aren’t beige and the characters are almost on-model.

: It’s kind of like the artist I hired to re-design Mara who did not in any way understand the assignment and tried to turn him into a Helluva Boss OC.

: I’m also incredibly pissed because I got an email at 12:17 in the morning that made my phone wake me up. It was from some guy with a Norwegian name. The email was AI generated.

: It was addressed to me, mentioned finding me on Bluesky, and asked me to consider buying this guy’s game (which is unreleased on Steam and has no demo) and making stuff from it.

: The game had an AI disclosure stating that everything in it was AI-generated. I think maybe it’s time to ban Norwegians from making games.

: That is easily the least appetizing grilled cheese I’ve ever seen. That is not how grilled cheese is meant to look.

: “You’ve been avoiding me all day.”

: “I’ve already said my piece. Maybe I just don’t want to talk?”

: “Going back to rebuild Liberty is a noble IDEA.. but it’s too late.”

: What ideals did Liberty represent, though? It was a bunch of women living in a commune on the site of a former concentration camp who thought technology was the devil.

: I mean, I suppose they kind of had the Ghibli “War bad, environment good” thing going on. Baby’s first politics shit.

: Pax’s shirt describes how I feel about this game.

: This seat has one of just two reflection points in this chapter. I will be skipping the monologue because it’s uninteresting.

: We can tuck Noam in back here to find out they’ve probably overdosed on tranquilizers.

: We can also do the dishes and watch Pax’s hand clip through the plate. How hard would it have been to not do this?

: The robot calls us over to tell us it’s experiencing technical difficulties. I’m sure that won’t be a thing. By the way, there’s like 30 lines of dialog here I’m cutting. No, you’re not missing anything. Yes, the fact that I’m cutting 30 lines of dialog without changing the meaning means that Ragnar is a shit writer.

: We can talk to Theo to find out that he knits. I get exactly what Ragnar is trying to do here: he’s trying to do a “oh look how non-toxically masculine my character is” moment, presumably because he gets Overwatch Diversity Scale bonus points if he does.

: The thing is, a character like that isn’t going to have a dumbass “Look how manly I am” patch on his bag. Having that makes it seem like he’s ashamed of his hobby, which is kind of what toxic masculinity is.

: This, by the way, is how you know Ragnar doesn’t believe in any of these political messages (apart from his apparent disbelief in free will), because if he gave a shit it wouldn’t be put across like this.

: “Did you detect any problems with our robot driver when you fixed it up?”

: “Why?”

: “It just told me there was some ‘abnormal code’, maybe due to the injuries it suffered the other day.”

: “You’re saying I did a bad job putting it back together?”

: “I didn’t say that. I was only asking, because -”

: “Whatever’s wrong with it, it’s not on me. Okay?”

: “There is a Standard Energy station coming up on our right. Refueling will take about ten minutes.”

: “We should resupply while we’re there, maybe get something for dinner.”

: “DINNER? From a SERVICE STATION?”

: “Yes…?”

: “No, Theo. NO.”

: “We should look for sun screen.”

: “Or even better, stay OUT of the sun completely.”

: “I can literally feel my skin melting.”

: This tells me Ragnar has never been to the western US in October, when this game supposedly takes place.

: “I hope the station’s open. It looks a bit-”

: “Awesome?”

: “Abandoned.”

: She can teleport but can’t teleport into the bus?

: “HEY.”

: “That’s our RIDE, man!”

: “Oh, this isn’t good.”

: "It’s going to stop.. right? It’s stopping. The robot’s just playing with us. Any second now.

: “I don’t think it’s stopping, Sai.”

: That mural is some Dwarf Fortress shit when you look just to the left.

: “They’re on the bus.”

: “Well.. that’s GOOD, right? Noam can just bring the bus back when they wake up? Right?”

: We can’t open this door until the conversation trigger is over. Let’s go in and meet yet another character. I wish Ragnar would stop making characters.

: “Welcome to Standard Energy, folks!”

: “Another ROBOT. Great.”

: “Afraid not, ma’am. Unless you count the wreck in the garage, and that’s run its last mile. The closest dealership is probably in Reno or New Jerusalem, and there are no buses around here. Except for the one you arrived in, that is.”

: “The only folks we see on a regular basis around here are Riders.. and the occasional Justice patrol. Usually in that order.”

: “Do you know if there’s any taxis around.. or like, uh, ride sharing services?”

: “I’m afraid there are no taxis, ma’am. As for ‘ride sharing, uh, services’, I’m-”

: “Never mind.”

: We can look at the poster for the start of the game’s only real sidequest. I don’t know what Ragnar’s deal is with the name “Betty”.

: Yes, I bought a copy of Draugen from a grey-market key reseller. We’ll take a look at Draugen in a bonus dunk.

: “She’s a swell gal, we came off the assembly line at the same time and I knew as soon as I laid eyes on her. She was the ONE.”

: DUSTBORN, from the director who saw Nier Automata and got jealous that he isn’t Yoko Taro. Yoko Taro honestly kinda sucks. He’s no Suda, that’s for sure.

: We can’t leave because that would be INTERRUPTING. God I hate this fucking game and that stupid mechanic.

: “Right. Is Betty around?”

: “Oh no, she works at Betty’s Diner. No Betty’s ever worked at a Standard Energy service station!”

: “Silly me. And this diner, is it close? You guy see each other on Sundays or something?”

: “I haven’t seen my Betty since we shipped from the factory. I honestly don’t know where she works. All’s I know is she works at a diner. Not just any diner, mind. A Betty’s Diner.”

: “Betty’s Diner. Got it. Sad story, being separated from the one you love.”

: “It is. I wrote her a letter a few decades ago. But so far, I haven’t been able to send it.”

: Eventually, we get to ask the robot about his letter and he’ll give it to us. This is part one of a sidequest that spans the rest of the game.

: You can ask the robot about it, but it’s pretty obvious what we need to do: we need to light a fire to signal the biker gang.

: There’s a can of spraypaint here we can take.

: If we hadn’t given Noam the lighter we found a few updates ago, we could use it here.

: We can have Theo lockpick this door. There’s nothing much back here (I think there’s an alternate solution if you’ve got Ziggy on her I’m Going To Become Magneto coda) but I’ll do it anyway to show something off.

: If we ask Theo to pick the lock..

: He’ll do it because he’s on his “buddy” ending rather than “dad” or “boss”. I hate that Ragnar calls them codas purely to make a stupid pun.

: In case you’re too young: the “Coda” logo in the top-left is a parody of the former Kodak camera company, who used to have an ad slogan about “Kodak moments”.

: The back area has nothing in it except for a WMV.

: Like the robot said, there’s a broken truck in here. I’m pretty sure you can have Ziggy fix this, but right now she’s on her hippie route and won’t do shit.

: This is the dumbest dumb bitch argument I’ve ever heard. If the truck worked, that’s maybe an argument - but it doesn’t.

: Ziggy is an idiot. It doesn’t matter because there’s another solution.

: There’s another WMV over this couch.

: We just need one more thing. In the mural, the bikers are setting a tire fire. Where are we going to find a tire?

: We can have Sai do this, but there’s an achievement if you make Theo do it by himself. This takes several minutes.

: A person with common sense would burn the tire where it is, but this is a Ragnar Tornquist game.

: Don’t worry, you’ll all get to suffer along with me. 2.5% of people who own this game on Steam have done this cheevo, and now you can see why.

: I take a minute to do the stupid waveform minigame so we can get a new power I’ll never use.

: There’s just one more step, because of course there fucking is. We have to go inside and distract the robot so that Ziggy can steal a bottle of booze.

: It’s funny that she’s perfectly willing to steal that, but isn’t willing to steal the truck.

: I wanted to wait for this shot to say this, because we can see the gas pumps in the background. These people are at a gas station. Gas stations have gasoline.

: They went through all this trouble to steal a bottle of booze.. WHEN THEY HAVE ACCESS TO GASOLINE! Holy FUCK this is bad writing!

: I’ve seen fanfiction writers, people who aren’t even being paid for their work, put more thought into their work than this. Holy FUCK Ragnar’s a dumbfuck.

: “Lighting the tire, to draw the Riders’ attention?”

: “You’ll lose your eyebrows doing it like that, give me the bottle. Pass me that rag, Theo?”

: This dumb bitch is more likely to waste perfectly good booze than she is to start a fire with that thing. She’s doing everything wrong, and I mean everything.

: Rule one of making a molotov: you can’t just toss a rag in a bottle and call it a day. The rag has to be soaked in gasoline so it ignites. It also has to touch the fluid inside. That thing’s not even going to light.

: Rule two: alcohol doesn’t burn hot enough. You need gas. You can mix in a little kerosene or motor oil (or if you’re a man of culture, some crumbled styrofoam to make napalm), but you can’t do it with alcohol. Doesn’t work.

: And finally, Rule zero: before you fill the bottle with the gas, you want to scour the sides first. Why? Because chances are it won’t shatter on impact unless you do.

: Like that. Dumb bitch. Of course, this is also the dumbest way to light a tire fire. You just pour gas on the thing and toss a match.

: “Uh… is this part of the PLAN?”

: “If it is, I approve.”

: “No, this is BAD.”

: “I hear something..”

: “Buzzing? Bees? Are there bees in the desert? I thought all the bees were dead-”

: “Bikes.”

: “Not just bikes. RIDERS.”

: We could fight them, but I’ve already wasted enough time making Theo drag a tire. Let’s just sneak past.

: This is why I had Theo lockpick the door and opened the door in the front. We can just walk up to the bikes and take them.

: There’s an ongoing joke that we keep running into the same group of bikers.

: I didn’t get it on video, but the biker boss has a voiceline here that was clearly done with no direction whatsoever. Just a very mild “Hey. Those are.. our bikes.”

: Luckily, Pax finds.. an entire saddlebag full of molotovs. I hope the bikers were better at this than she is.

: This is a pointless QTE. The bikers barely move relative to you, so all you have to do is point and click.

: “But parked in a ditch and through a fence. Which is less good?”

: “Where’s Noam?”

: “Hopefully still on the bus.”

: Dead, hopefully.

: “You okay?”

: “Yeah? Why wouldn’t I be? What’s going on? Are we stopping?”

: “You slept through ALL of that?”

: No shit! They overdosed on tranquilizers!

: “All of what? Where are we?”

: “Uh, you’d better come outside…”

: “You lost the bus, torched a service station, stole some bikes, made a daring escape.. and now we’re stuck here, in the middle of NOWHERE.”

: “That about sums it up, yeah.”

: “On the positive side, we found the bus.”

: “The bus.”

: “And also Noam.”

: This is the kind of dialog people make fun of Marvel films for having. I’m personally waiting for the day the MCU gets canceled.

: There’s a woke mind virus right by this pile of tires. We don’t strictly need to get it, but it saves us some dialog.

: Capturing it lets us take this piece of rebar.

: We have to talk to Noam to advance. I choose not to ask about the pills because I do not care. If you do, they mention the pills are for anxiety and they got them from Luna.

: “I can feel them. The emotions are LOUD and CLOSE. But.. there’s a.. a barrier between us.”

: No shit, it’s a steel fence. Since when could anyone in this game sense other people through walls?

: The party gets pissy because I didn’t talk to all of them. Can you blame me with how often this game softlocks?

: We get the “choice” of not bringing either Sai or Noam. In reality, you don’t have a choice.

: If you try to not bring Sai, she has a mental breakdown “coda moment” and demands to be brought along.

: “Noam, mind keeping watch?”

: “None shall pass. I’ll make bird noises if they do.”

: “Guys, I might need your help in there.”

: “Sure.”

: “Just don’t expect this to be some kind of bonding experience.”

: The game has some background dialog I’m going to ignore because it gets repeated by someone else. Just keep that in mind.

: “What were you expecting, Narnia?”

: “Reference acknowledged.”

: “But why the military-grade fence, if it’s just a trailer park?”

: “Maybe they’re really afraid of coyotes.”

: “Did you say COYOTES?”

: Coyotes do not typically attack people. We have them near where I live, and the posted warnings mention they’ll attack dogs but generally won’t attack people.

: “Or maybe it’s not there to keep anything OUT, but to keep someone IN.”

: There’s a WMV here that flips the laundry basket over.

: The radio gets us an upgrade part for the bat and a gift item.

: “WHOA.”

: “EASY, dude.”

: “SHIT!”

: “Why did you DO that to my TOMATOES?! Who are you WORKING for?!”

: As you can probably guess, this guy has the WOKE MIND VIRUS.

: “You planning to STARVE me out?! Force me back into the CITY, to feed your MACHINES!”

: “Are you Justice? That’s a Justice GUN, and–”

: “WHAT?! No! No, man, I’m no COP. I’m – shut up! Shut up, SHUT UP! Don’t try to MESS with my HEAD!”

: “FEED.. your-”

: “MACHINES?”

: This is Ragnar trying to make a ham-fisted comment on a real right-wing conspiracy theory, this time involving the concept of 15-minute cities.

: That was a conspiracy that didn’t last very long. I haven’t heard a single thing about it since probably when that article was published.

: “What did - how? Why did I think… I don’t know anyone who’s been ‘starved out’ before. I have FRIENDS in the city. And.. tomatoes? I can buy more.”

: “I’m REALLY sorry, guys. Thank GOD no one got hurt. You, uh, grabbed that gun really FAST. Is there any way.. you MUST be Anomals, right?”

: We can ask Harvey Dent here about the gun, but he just found it.

: “You found it in a trailer? That’s weird.”

: “Yeah, I mean, it’s not like anyone ever lived here. But a few of them had.. stuff inside. but just one gun. I keep it to scare people off. I don’t think I’ll be doing that anymore. You guys want it?”

: “Hells yeah!”

: “NO. Not a chance. Bury it somewhere.”

: “How long have you lived here?”

: “About three months? I don’t usually stay this long. I move around. A lot.”

: He probably has to, otherwise they’d stick him in Arkham.

: “You know how it is, work’s hard to come by, so I go where the jobs are. But the nice thing about this place is, it’s FREE.”

: “How does that work?”

: “Well, I don’t think anyone ever lived here. Bunch of empty shells, fake doors, painted-over windows. It’s all just a front.”

: “A front for what?”

: For a dumbass ripoff, probably.

: “I don’t know, man! I’d love to find out. I mean, why did they put a military grade fence around a bunch of empty trailers? Makes no sense.”

: “Have you seen one?”

: “I’ve seen forty-seven! I keep a journal. Their movement pattern suggests they’re headed this way. Which is why I want to stay a while. See if they land.”

: And of course this guy is Dale Gribble, because that hasn’t been overdone to death. I watched the second season of the King of the Hill reboot recently and it sucked.

: If we look at his garden, you can see two giant metal rails on the sides.

: Before we do that, there’s a WMV I missed over here. Capturing it opens the toilets, which have a bat upgrade part inside.

: One more WMV over here we need to get to progress.

: It’s pretty obvious what we need to do here.

: I don’t know why this is a “coda moment”. Like, I can’t imagine what the alternative would be, except maybe that we have Harvey Dent push the trailer instead.

: This makes absolutely no sense. The bikers came in somehow, pushed the trailer, went downstairs and pushed it back all without leaving a trace?

: Who’s ready for a Fallout New Vegas ripoff?

: “I’ll keep Theo company. I’ll only slow you down.”

: “It’s you and me for this one, Zee.”

: Oh boy, it’s us and the lady who can’t stop having mental breakdowns. Kinda fucked that “lady who can’t stop having mental breakdowns” describes two different characters. I feel like if your story can do that, your story sucks.

: “We’ll find a way to signal you when we’re ready to go back up. If you don’t hear anything, recall the elevator in ONE hour. We’ll be on it.”

: “I swear, if we’re descending into a zombie apocalypse…”

: “Watch out for biker gangs. And bring our robot back in one piece?”

: “First?”

: METAL GEAR?!

: “First time in an elevator.”

: “Of course it is. I wasn’t thinking. Don’t worry, they’re safe.”

: “How would you know? How OLD is this thing? How DEEP does it go? Exactly. We’re basically in a COFFIN descending into a TOMB, and I’m-”

: “We’re slowing down. It’ll be fine, Zee. Trust me.”

: “I have a BAD feeling about this…”

: Welcome to that one spot in Old World Blues where you get the stealth suit in a 1950s high school.

: “Looks like my old high school.”

: “Why’s there an underground SCHOOL in the middle of the Nevada desert? Wait, you went to HIGH SCHOOL?”

: If I had to guess, it’s because they’ve got a Kamui maspro thing going on and were attempting ocular silverization.

: “For a year. In Sacramento. I even went to prom.”

: Here’s what gets me about this. Up until Trump took office, you generally did not see current or former US presidents on posters like this because it was a norm to not use your image to endorse things if you were president.

: Take Habitat for Humanity as an example. If you look at their website, you won’t see a single picture of Jimmy Carter in their marketing material. They have photos of him, but that’s mostly confined to a couple of pages about their history.

: Now, I don’t know JFK. He died decades before I was born. I did not serve with JFK. JFK was not a friend of mine. However, I’m pretty sure you would not see JFK do this kind of thing because there was an unspoken agreement to not do it.

: This also makes no sense because the game establishes that JFK created Justice after his wife died in 1963, and that Justice went nazi sometime in the early 80s. JFK was 46 when he died, and even if he had served another term, he’d only be in his early fifties. That portrait looks like he’s 70.

: For some reason, the walls here are covered in Robert Frost quotes. This is the same kind of pretentious bullshit YIIK pulled, except that was Haruki Murakami.

: Hold on a fucking second. You’re telling me Ragnar modeled a regular CRT TV and didn’t use that in Ziggy’s room? What a waste of time and money.

: There’s a WMV in here, and that’s the only reason to even bother coming in.

: That.. looks like those AI portraits Trump posts on Twitter all the time. Ragnar, are you trying to compare JFK to Trump?

: I don’t think Ragnar understands how drop ceilings work. Those tiles are fragile. They wouldn’t fall to the ground completely intact like that.

: Way to rip off Metal Gear, asshole.

: We need to come into this room (which has a THIRD MODEL of CRT, great job paying for shit you don’t need) so that Ziggy can have a mental breakdown.

: “Enclosed spaces, DEEP underground…”

: “The claustrophobia.”

: “That’s just one of them. Add fear of heights, fear of the dark… fear of abandonment. I got a whole field of phobias in full bloom.”

: “I’m sorry.”

: “Not your fault. Annie made that VERY clear. Just a tragic set of circumstances. So why apologize? Nothing to apologize FOR.”

: There’s another 10 lines of this garbage and I’m not transcribing any of it.

: We need to hit a WMV here to blow the door open. Keep this in mind for a few minutes from now where I get really fucking confused.

: Oh, and we get another power I’ll never use.

: I didn’t capture it on video, but this segment is a blatant reference to PT. Fuck you, Ragnar!

: We walk through the abandoned library and find a bunch of seemingly dead robots.

: There’s a WMV and some bat parts here. I use it to buy a pointless bat upgrade that gives you perfect parries. Of course this game has parryslop in it.

: The lights flicker out because this is PT.

: Oh no! The robots are moving! Whoever could have guessed this would happen?

: “U-R-P. Universal Robotic Port. Controls the door. We need a physical key.. or finger.”

: “A finger?”

: “A robot finger. Authorized robots will have embedded access.”

: They could have done something actually interesting with this, but no, it’s just PT.

: “The badge says ‘librarian’. Careful, if you damage it, we’ll NEVER get out of here.”

: “Got a better idea?”

: “I got a screwdriver. There’s a trick to detaching the arm. I’ve scavenged a few parts in my time. Most of the robots in Liberty are frankensteins.”

: “You mean ‘Frankenstein’s monsters’.”

: “No.”

: Such riveting dialog. I’m so glad I’m taking screenshots of this shit.

: This is a direct reference to a well-known Flash screamer from 2004.

: The idea is that it’s a maze and touching the sides resets you. When you get to the middle of the really narrow part, the screamer happens.

: Come on, Ragnar. References to that shit were dated in 2006.

: Are we going to get a dumbass sex joke? You bet!

: “It’s finger time.”

: “Just.. stick it in.”

: I’m amazed Ragnar had the restraint to not have “TRY FINGER BUT HOLE” written over the socket in orange paint.

: Fuck you, Ragnar!

: This fight is so easy I don’t even need to use superpowers. I didn’t bother recording it but if you’d like to experience it yourself, just sit in front of your screen and mash left-click at nothing in particular for around 3 minutes.

: I didn’t have my backup video going, but there’s a WMV here and the Metroid shows up to eat it when you try and catch it.

: Ziggy has a second mental breakdown. Am I going to bother with this one? No.

: “What do we do?”

: “RIDERS. Fighting ONE guy. We help the ONE.. right?”

: “Hello boys.”

: “And girls.”

: “And girls. Didn’t your parents teach you not to gang up on people?”

: I got this one on video. I don’t know why - it’s as boring to watch as it is to play.

: The gimmick with this one is that there are fires you can push people into. The problem in doing that is you’re likely to set yourself on fire. I nearly died here.

: Once we kill the first wave, more come in.. through the same route we used to get here. Did Ragnar think this through at all? Who am I kidding, of course he didn’t.

: One of the bikers manages to set himself on fire during a cutscene. I don’t think this is intentional.

: At this point, the enemies mostly take themselves out by setting themselves on fire.

: I wish my enemies would do that.

: The fact that this guy is black and has a really, really pronounced dick feels.. I dunno, kinda racist.

: “You can put down your WEAPON and your SHOUTS. I’m not here to fight you.”

: “You’re like us.”

: “Like you.. how?”

: “Anomal. You’re Anomal.”

: “Anomal? Oh, SHOUTMAN. Yeah, I am.”

: “Shoutman? Dude, that’s SO much better than Anomal. I’m Ziggy, by the way, this is my- this is PAX. And you are?”

: “Eli. Thanks for helping.. although I’m still not sure WHY you helped.”

: Hold on a second. Look at that portrait in the corner. That hair looks like horns. Ragnar, you asshole! You ripped off Wyll from BG3!

: Ragnar really strikes me as the kind of guy who sees someone make something better than anything he could and absolutely seethes about it.

: “Look, I’m here to.. FIND something., and I’m not leaving until I do.”

: Is it the contract he made with a demon?

: “We’re also looking for something. Or.. someone. A missing ROBOT. We could pool our resources?”

: “Safety in numbers? I’m guessing you’ve also run into the zombie robots, or ZOMBOTS, if you will-”

: Cut that shit out, Ragnar. That shit’s cringy.

: Eli’s superpower is that he can make a sword. He is the Hol Horse of Dustborn.

: “We can use that beam to cross.”

: “Fine, but I’m NOT going first.”

: I mean, this should be fine. That’s a steel beam wide enough that you could pretty easily fit both feet on it. Jet fuel can’t even melt those.

: There’s some creaking and groaning as Pax crosses.

: And of course, as we get to the other side, a chunk of concrete drops from the floor.

: “See? Perfectly safe.”

: “I wouldn’t call it ‘safe’. It looked pretty fucking UNSAFE to me.”

: “Hey, I’m also afraid of heights. But you’re okay. Just keep your eyes on the beam.”

: There’s something very stupid going on here. Can you tell what it is? I bet you can.

: That floor shouldn’t have collapsed like that. It might make sense if the structure was outside, but it’s not. That kind of thing usually only happens if water gets in.

: …I was not expecting that answer, but okay.

: She can teleport! Why wouldn’t she just teleport across?

: So yes, we’re in another incredibly dumb, contrived situation that doesn’t make sense in-universe and kind of undermines the entire point of this being a superhero plot.

: I want to end this here because I’ve been working on it all weekend and it’s starting to make the post editor lag, but we’re going to go just a bit further.

: “Zee!”

: “Pax?”

: “Oh, thank GOD. Are you hurt?”

: “You said it was SAFE!”

: “I-I’m sorry, Zee. Are you-”

: “I don’t think I’m hurt, I landed between walls, on top of.. I think packing materials? But either I’ve gone blind, or…”

: “It’s pitch black dow here. I can’t see a THING! And – and I HATE the dark. I HATE THIS!”

: Three mental breakdowns in one update. Amazing.

: “We’re gonna get you out of there, Zee. Promise.”

: “Hang in there, Ziggy! You’ll be fine! I’ll look for another way around. I’ll find you guys.”

: This is another bad game design spot. We get the ability to SHAUN by pressing Q. This shows us where Ziggy is.

: Upstairs is an immediate dead end.

: Up until this point, the game has taught us that we need to find a WOKE MIND VIRUS to progress… except there aren’t any. I spent several minutes trying to find a WMV somewhere, but that’s not the solution.

: The solution is to come up to this rubble pile and mash Q until Ziggy hears you. I don’t know why you’d think to do that.

: No, what you’re supposed to do is come to the rubble pile and hit Q.

: “You gotta use your VOX, Zee. You gotta PHASE through the WALL.”

: “Are you INSANE? I have no idea how thick it is or what it’s made of! What if I get STUCK?”

: “We’ll figure it out, just try to calm down and BREATHE.”

: “Are you SURE? Is that the ONLY solution? I’d PREFER not to DIE today, Pax. Pushing my whole body through could KILL me.”

: I don’t think I’d care if she died. I doubt any of you would either.

: “I’ll help you. Put your hand through and grab onto mine. I’ll pull you out.”

: We can’t pull Ziggy through the wall here because it’s too thick.

: “Are you okay? No missing bits?”

: “No, PAX. No missing bits. Not THIS time.”

: “It was just a PINKY, no great loss.”

: Huh. A lady with teleportation powers missing a pinky.. as we’ll see when I get around to doing the Bonus Dunk on Draugen, Ragnar fucking loves Bioshock Infinite for some reason.

: There’s a WMV near the swings. I didn’t notice, but we have enough WMVs to get another dragonshout. This also drops a bat upgrade part.

: We have another therapy session with Ziggy on the swings. It is uninteresting.

: Yep, nothing going on here.

: Oh, except for getting interrupted by zombies. This is another uninteresting fight where I clicked M1 for three minutes.

: We have a couple of bat upgrades that let us throw the bat to hit multiple targets. My goal is to get the thing that does damage over time on throws.

: We’ll “keep going” next update. I want to play something actually worth playing this weekend. Next time, we’ll probably watch Ziggy have another mental breakdown and watch as Ragnar’s plot slowly disintegrates into nonsense.

[Timrod]

Summary

: For this Bonus Dunk, I made a very bad decision.

: I bought a copy of Draugen on sale off a grey-market key reseller. You really think I was going to give Ragnar money?

: Almost every review for this game, even the ones who will give any “artsy” game a 90, mention that the writing sucks. Ragnar failed his team yet again.

: This one pisses me off almost more than Dustborn does. You’ll very quickly see why.

: Hmm.. I feel like there was another game set in the early 20th century about a guy and a younger woman that had a mode named after a year. What was it again?

: Hmm.. there’s something about that name, too. And the fact that it starts with two people sitting like this in a rowboat.

: Nah, I got nothing.

: Lissie’s focus as a character is that she’s annoying and talks like an old guy.

: Be thankful I’m omitting most of the dialog. Lissie is fucking insufferable and you can tell that her VA hates it.

: “Dolls are best when they are loved” - Ragnar Tornquist, probably.

: Edward is looking for his sister, Elizabeth (who goes by “Betty”). Betty has fucked off to the tiny Norwegian village of Graavik (pronounced like “grove-ick”).

: This is exactly how you don’t do period-appropriate language, not that this is period-appropriate: both of these people are supposed to be American but they’re talking in British accents and sound like a parody of a Charles Dickens novel.

: Take something like Lackadaisy (before they tried to pivot it into indie animation), where they use a small amount of period-appropriate 1920s slang where it’s amusing. That comic introduced me to the term “struggle buggy”, which really shouldn’t mean what it does.

: Roughly five minutes of bad dialog later and we’ve arrived on land. It’s weird.. I feel like there should be a lighthouse here.

: Oh, I just remembered! That card!

: Right, I’m supposed to use one penis, two keys, and two swords.. no, wait.

: Oh right, it was called KEN LEVINE SUCKS. How could I forget? Yes, this entire intro to the game is a shameless ripoff of Bioshock Infinite.

: Bioshock Infinite was not a good game. If you don’t believe me, SelenimarSA did an excellent LP of the PS3 version.

: Edward pulls out a letter while Lissie fucks off somewhere, presumably to get him ammo or a health pack.

: These two screens alone speak fucking volumes about why Ragnar needs to retire. Remember how Dustborn has a massive voiceacting problem? Let’s talk about the VAs in this game.

: Nicholas Boulton has a pretty long resume consisting mostly of minor roles, usually as British characters. He was in Nioh 1, Still Wakes the Deep, and played Raubahn in FF14 until Shadowbringers.

: He’s been in a lot of Harry Potter shit recently, which means he’s an asshole. There’s no excuse for that shit in 2026 - and yes, he’s been in some HP shit as recently as this year.

: Skye Bennett has a smaller resume: her biggest role was playing both Pyra and Mythra in the English dub of Xenoblade 2 and its DLC.

: The point is that both of these are VAs with at least some experience, probably union, and neither one is in a role where they need to sing. They’re also two of only three credited VAs in the entire game.

: Edward can walk maybe twenty steps before he starts gasping for air. While you can make it all the way to the farmhouse without stopping, he moves at an absolutely plodding pace.

: I watched Bob (the owner of this site) play through a game called Letters of Bernard Thorne a few months ago - it’s a horror game where the protagonist is a disabled Vietnam vet. That guy was more physically capable than Edward is.

: Christoffer Grav honestly didn’t do a terrible job on this game. He was also the art director for Dustborn and still works at Red Thread as far as I know. He probably should find another job.

: Morgan Sandbaek has only ever been credited on this game and Dustborn. They also should probably find a new job.

: Hans Andersen kind of split his time between Epic Games and Red Thread. He worked on Dreamfall Chapters, Draugen, and Dustborn but also worked on Fortnite and the original Hades. He deserves better.

: Eivind Andvig has only ever worked at Red Thread and again, deserves better than working under Ragnar.

: I sincerely hope all these people find more rewarding jobs working on good games with actual budgets. They deserve it.

: Simon Poole has kind of followed Ragnar around throughout his career. He worked on The Secret World and Anarchy Online in addition to all of the Red Thread games.

: Filip Lange-Nielsen is one of the only people on this list to have a career outside of Red Thread and I’m glad he found other jobs.

: And, of course, the absolute fuckwit himself. I’m going to start transcribing dialog now so you can get a taste for how bad it is.

: Okay, I need to point something out to make it SLIGHTLY less bad that a grown man is wandering around with a teenage girl.

: Well, not slightly less bad. It’s really the same amount of bad, just in a different way. The plot twist is that Edward is schizophrenic and Lissie is a hallucination.

: “Nor are you seventy. Put some spring into your step, old sport.”

: “Did you see the flag? It’s at half-mast. Someone died.”

: “So this is it, huh? Nice digs. But seriously, where is everyone?”

: The other plot twist is that everyone in the village is dead.

: “This is starting to creep me out.”

: “Perhaps everyone’s indoors. The rain’s picking up.”

: “You first, old bean.”

: This is like that one guy who did the “Beatles in Ocarina of Time” thing where every song starts with the Beatles announcing that they are the Beatles.

: “Maybe they went on holiday and left the door open. Give it a shake and a rattle.”

: I could come up with a way better hallucinatory companion than this. I mean, I kinda came up with four of them.

: Five if you count me.

: Right. Five. Mara’s re-design is almost done, by the way.

: “I can’t just barge into their home.”

: “It’s not a crime if you’re invited.”

: “Hello? Is anyone home?”

: “This house is as empty as a bird’s nest in December. Hey, you want to check out the upstairs?”

: “I don’t know, maybe they’re playing hide-and-seek? Well, I didn’t want to go upstairs anyway. it’s creepy.”

: “There must be a sitting room on this floor.”

: My grandma had chairs like those. That upholstery absorbs everything and gets horribly stained, and they were so expensive to re-upholster that we threw them out.

: I really need to get more art done of the nameless mimic.

: This is about as far as I’m going to go, but I wanted to make a point. The art direction in this game? Actually pretty good. The voiceacting? Not terrible, probably would be better with an actual voice director.

: The only problem is the godawful writing. Ragnar let all these people down in a way that they absolutely didn’t deserve. I fully believe that if you took this same team and put them under someone competent, they’d be capable of making something great.

: What kills me though is that Ragnar has at this point had two games that reviewed the same way: the game itself is okay, but the writing sucks. And what’s he decide to do? Try it one more time just to see if anything changes. Definition of fucking insanity.

: I’m going to get back to recording more Dustborn. Maybe someday, if I ever get asked to guest on a stream, I will stream Draugen to completion.

[Timrod]

Summary

: Let me start this update with some good news. Mara has finally been cleansed. He is a Hazbin OC no longer.

: Thanks to dicklanes on Discord for that, even if it took a few tries.

: Good to be back.

: After the mental breakdown and yet another boring robot fight, we run into Eli again.

: “You’re okay? I KNEW you’d be okay.”

: “I’m good. Pax.. my SISTER saved my ass. She uh, she could’ve been a BIT more careful, but.. she saved me.”

: “Way to go, Pax!”

: “Did you find what you’re looking for yet?”

: “Yes and no. I found.. SOMETHING. It’ll just take a second? Follow me!”

: There’s a long bit of optional dialog here that I’m going to transcribe because it’s going to piss me off.

: “I thought I left it in here, but I don’t see it..”

: “What are you looking for?”

: He should be able to see what he’s looking for from this position, but he doesn’t.

: “A GIFT.. from someone who took CARE of me. The ONLY person who cared for me.”

: “We’ll help you look. RIGHT, Pax? What are we looking for?”

: “A DOLL. My only friend made it for me. I used to hide it under my pillow, to keep me safe at night.”

: “So you LIVED here? You went to SCHOOL here?”

: “Sort of? This wasn’t a REGULAR school. Justice did experiments on us, kids my age.”

: “What.. kind of experiments?”

: And here’s Ragnar stealing The Silver Case. I’m sure what he’s actually stealing is one of several X-Men alternate timelines, but this is The Silver Case.

: The difference is that Suda51 can write.

: “They’d put us in the WHISPERING room, and when we came out, they’d tell us to TALK. To try and MESS with people. Most of the time, with most of the kids, it didn’t work. They tried for YEARS. And then one day..”

: Ragnar, the entire point of The Silver Case was that the Shelter Kids project didn’t work. I mean, it did, but not for its stated purpose of harvesting silver eyes.

: “My friend, she was also CHANGED. We kept it a secret, so the wardens wouldn’t send us away. We looked out for each other.”

: I kept cutting the dialog off looking for the stupid doll. There are six different hotspots for it in the room.

: We can pick up a copy of.. I wonder what port of Beyond Good and Evil that is. I don’t remember any of the characters looking like that.

: Maybe this is that Carlson and Peters book Double H keeps talking about.

: The doll is underneath the bed. Eli should’ve been able to see it.

: Is that doll a multi-species sparklefur?

: “I loved hearing stories about it. The antlers, the mask made of bone, the fire in its belly.. I asked if this creature could keep ME safe too, so she made this to PROTECT me. It was a birthday gift. Not that we really HAD birthdays..”

: Oh, it’s one of those stupid skull monsters.

: “I want to keep going, see if I can find any more information about O. Ophelia. My friend. There’s a computer room all the way down. I’m thinking that’s a good place to look for information.”

: This is the most “Space Marines! As you know, most of our brothers are stationed.. in space!” dialog since Dawn of War Soulstorm.

: Where else would they be?

: As soon as we cross the door into the cafeteria, we get into another dumbass robot fight.

: This immediately segues into a fight against more bikers. This is the first fight I am going to skip because it’s glitchy bullshit.

: I use Hoax here, which is.. honestly kinda dumb. It makes enemies believe they’re on fire. We need to use it once in order to get the “all combos” achievement.

: Kill it.

: Its mouth is begging to have a shotgun placed in it.

: “Oh yeah, that’s the FIREMAN.” What the fuck is this dialog?

: This fight. FUCK this fight. The fireman has an AOE molotov spam attack that can stunlock Pax to death.

: The trick to this fight is to run around in circles until your Q comes off cooldown, use it to make the boss ragdoll, and then use Trigger to deal damage.

: “Any more RIDERS down here, Eli?”

: “I don’t THINK so? Unless… unless SHE brought more.”

: “She?”

: METAL GEAR!?

: “My, uh, my EX. Also the bosslady of our pack.”

: So yeah, the fire-breathing lady we’ve now fought twice? That’s his ex.

: There’s a Metroid here we need to kill to open the door. As it turns out, the reason the game is doing this is because it needs you to unlock Hoax to progress.

: This room has two more WMVs and a bat part in it. We’re way ahead on WMV collection.

: One more WMV in here.

: There’s also a trading card here for a president who looks remarkably like Comstock from Bioshock Infinite. I feel like that game lives rent-free in Ragnar’s head even though it sucked.

: The funny thing is I just read an article about it today (it was on my phone) about how that game kickstarted the Source Filmmaker porn industry and that’s kind of its legacy now.

: The robot has the WOKE MIND VIRUS because of course it does. Every story involving a robot has to have a special robot. I wish they’d stop.

: Once the WOKE MIND VIRUS is pulled out, the robot’s voice switches from male to female. I wonder if Ragnar realized this has transphobic implications.

: Of course he didn’t. Man’s a dumbass.

: “Someone is WHISPERING to me. INSIDE. Many someones.”

: “Who ARE you? You’re not our robot.”

: “My voice is different because my original programming has been restored. I’m THE CARETAKER. But I’m also still the robot you affectionately called ‘tin can’ and ‘rust bucket’.”

: I hate this.

: “I am. many things now. It was.. very odd.”

: “You were infected by an Echo.. which is IMPOSSIBLE.”

: “Oh. Is that what it was? An ECHO. It was.. invasive. It flooded my circuits with awful thoughts and images, trying to make me afraid and angry. Trying to make me HATE.”

: I don’t need a mind virus to do that, I can just hate things. Like this game. Or Ragnar Tornquist. Or AKG for making dogshit headphones.

: “Is this what humans have to contend with? If so.. I feel sorry for everyone. I would’ve been unable to extract myself, if it wasn’t for you. Thank you.”

: “I just don’t understand how an Echo could work on you. You’re not HUMAN.”

: The constant repetition feels insulting. You know why people aren’t paying attention to your plot, Ragnar? It’s because your plot is shit and you’re an unskilled writer.

: Bad writing makes you feel like you’re in a time distortion field where everything is several times longer than it actually is. That’s what happens every time I record this game.

: I’ll record half an hour and it feels like I’ve been going for half a day. Even YIIK never really did that to me because it was at least amusingly bad.

: The robot has magic chips that restored its memories through a wipe. This plot point is a fucking cliche. It was cliched in the 1980s.

: We need to hoax the robot to get it to move because it thinks there are still kids here.

: I wonder if Ragnar ever played through his own game, or even read his own script. I’d like to see that. Tie his ass to a chair and force him to play through the entire game.

: The robot knows Eli. It’d be surprising if it didn’t.

: We need the robot to open the elevator because Theo has mysteriously fucked off.

: They’ve been kidnapped, and you know what that means! It’s time to mash M1 for a few minutes.

: The fight opens with a tutorial on using Hoax. I am dying, on the inside.

: The bikers on the trailers throw molotovs, which are pathetically easy to dodge.

: The reason this fight sucks are the shield assholes. There’s no good option for dealing with them because of how long the dragonshouts take to recharge.

: I’m also going to transcribe this three-line exchange because fuck you, Ragnar.

: “They really love fire, don’t they? It’s a sign of a primitive culture.”

: “What was that?”

: "I said, ‘it’s a sign of a primitive culture!’ "

: “Oh sorry, I thought you said ‘dim-witted vulture’!”

: “WHY would I say ‘dim-witted vulture’?”

: “I don’t know, I wasn’t the one who said it!”

: When I did the Draugen update, I found something out about this game that I didn’t know. With Dreamfall Chapters and Draugen, Ragnar is the only credited writer. That actually isn’t true for Dustborn.

: Dustborn has three credited writers who are not Ragnar. None of them had prior writing experience on a professional project, at least not as far as I can see. Let’s talk about them a bit.

: First up is Giselle Francis. Dustborn is Giselle’s first writing credit in a game, but she was apparently working on Life is Strange: Double Exposure at the same time (Double Exposure also came out in 2024).

: Next is Teresa Cardillo. Dustborn is the only game she’s credited with working on. Already we’ve got two really bad signs, but what about the third?

: The third is Jess Erion, who is credited as a Senior Writer and also Editor. She had one prior game credit (not as a writer) and worked on one game after Dustborn.

: So already, you’ve got a problem. You have three new writers, one of whom is simultaneously working on a second game, and no one to supervise.

: This is not how you try to introduce new writers to the field. This is directorial negligence. A good director would have reviewed the script before release, seen this, and shitcanned it.

: It’s also doing his writers a disservice by making them look bad. It’s one thing if you’re a writer on a game that merely doesn’t sell well - that’s not your problem. It’s entirely another if you’re a writer on a game critically panned for having bad writing.

: Eventually, the boss we’ve already fought twice before shows up.

: The ragdoll to repeated hits combo works every time.

: The game establishes at one point through optional dialog that the gun doesn’t actually work.

: Eli and his ex make up.

: “These guys are actually NICE. That guy over there asked about my art.”

: “On the one hand, they DID hold us hostage. On the other, they gave us a snack.”

: “Trail mix and bottled water.”

: “A choice of sparkling and non-sparkling.”

: “I almost feel BAD for kicking their asses.”

: I love games that let me violate the Geneva convention like this.

: God this writing is so unbelievably bad. I didn’t actually perform - I just got this shot and restarted the game.

: “I hadn’t eaten in a week, I was dehydrated and close to death’s door.. when a vast and terrifying figure appeared before me! This was BITUMAN, the Tar Dude, the Asphalt God of the Hidden Highways!”

: His god is schizophrenia?

: That “god” would die to a single shotgun blast to the abdomen.

: “The blacktop melted beneath His feet. He towered over me, blocking out the stars. His breath stank of tarmac and engine oil. I thought I was dead!”

: “But his noxious breath nourished me, his molten gaze eased all my pains, and when he spoke, in a voice of thunder and fire, I fell into a dreamless sleep.”

: That’s a run-on sentence alright.

: “When I woke up, I was with the Horned Riders. They called me a PROPHET. They fed and clothed me, and gave me shelter.”

: “And who was the girl who took care of me when I was a lost child in an unfamiliar place? Which brings us back here, to this place, and to the end of my story. For now! Ladies and gentlemen.. thank you.”

: We need to talk to four different people, none of whom have anything even remotely interesting to say.

: The other reflection point for this chapter is here. There are over 50 lines of dialog to this and not a one of them tells us anything new.

: Great. Also, that’s not how you fucking spell cathartic. Sitting here for a bit helps because we have to wait for Noam and Ziggy to fuck off in order to talk to Eli.

: Dammit. We’ll go talk to the robot first for some more nothing dialog.

: “I don’t meant the same as before. I mean that I FEEL, and that.. feels normal.”

: “What do you remember from before THE REBOOT?”

: “I like to think of it as a re-BIRTH. And I remember.. everything. Well, everything from BEFORE they shut me down and AFTER I woke up in La Torre. There’s a.. GAP, in the middle.”

: Why does any of this matter? The robot is a non-character.

: We can also ask the robot things like “What did they do to the kids in there?” when we already know the answer.

: Noam actually has something plot-relevant to say.

: “Did you notice something OFF with Sai? I’m getting ODD vibes, is what I’m saying.”

: Odd vibes? From the lady (well, one of the two ladies) who has a mental breakdown every 5 minutes?

: “I’m sure it’s nothing… but let me know if you see or SENSE anything. I want to nip things in the bud before they blow up.”

: “Prime bud-nipping time. I’m sure it’s fine, anyone would be stressed out after a day like this.”

: We can skip ahead a bit to hear Noam’s backstory - not that it’s interesting.

: “I thought MY origin story was bad, caught up in the Broadcast while vacationing with my parents.”

: “Do you remember much of the Broadcast?”

: “Oh, God, no. Nothing. I was seven, living in a cocoon of luxury. I do remember being AFRAID, people SCREAMING.. but my father got us out of the Republic and back to Hong Kong in a day. It’s amazing what money can do.”

: We’re forced to make a choice on whether we romance Noam or not. It’s kind of funny if you do when you consider that Pax is pregnant with another man’s baby.

: Ziggy and Eli are a plot recap and I do not care.

: You have “potatoes and vegetables”.. but have a plate full of hot dogs right there. Okay.

: There’s campfire dialog here and I do not give a shit.

: Due to a bug, the characters don’t shut the fuck up even when you’re out of that scene entirely.

: This is gonna suck. This cover isn’t as bad as some of the others, but it’s still bad. We are now at the point where 75% of people have dropped the game.

: If I was smart, I’d have dropped it too. Oh well.