In This House We Respect The Laws Of Thermodynamics

Real talk: my last post on Hades was in my drafts folder for three weeks between finishing and publishing. I just needed to upload the screenshots for it, but any time I started to do that I thought, "I could be playing Hades right now!" and would do that instead.

So, yeah, Hades has been a surprisingly addictive and fun game. I've come a long way from my initial annoyance with it. In particular, now that I've played it for so long I don't feel as negative about my hand-eye coordination or reflexes. A lot of my frustration was really due to lack of familiarity with the enemies' move patterns and the map layouts. Now that I've played for a while and have absorbed all that, I find I'm having a blast and doing vastly better, cruising easily through former roadblocks and even welcoming in-game handicaps to increase the challenge.

There are lots of different ways that roguelikes handle randomness. Early on I thought that Hades was generating each new room; in particular, in Tartarus, some rooms have closed gates or boulders blocking doorways, so I assumed that those things would change from each run. Eventually I realized that there are a finite number of possible rooms. Certain things within those rooms can change: the enemy types you fight, and some extras like Wells of Charon or Treasure Troves. But things like the position of traps and walls and pits are always the same, and getting to know those will make the progression much easier. Likewise, you come to recognize enemies' attack animations, patterns of movement, and so on, and get to a point where you can reliably anticipate their next move and block or counter it effectively. All this takes time, and a lot of dying, but that's the whole point of the game! More so than any other roguelike I've played, Hades has a fantastic in-game explanation for why you're fighting and dying over and over and over again.

Here are some random strategy tips that I've found helpful. First, on runs themselves:

• Keep moving! You're invulnerable during dashes, and enemies take some time to adjust to your new position. Particularly for melee, but also for ranged weapons, dashing frequently is probably the single most important aid to survivability.
• Plan your build. It can be worth changing your Mirror talents and Keepsake based on your weapon: for example, I always take the Lambent Plume with the Fists, while I might take the Coin Purse with another weapon. The Shadow Presence ability for backstabs is usually a good ability to take, but with something like the Bow you won't be behind enemies often, and so Fiery Presence is better to make your strong first draw count the most.

• But, be flexible with your build. I usually try to think of a few potential gods who would work for a given weapon, and will pursue any matches that appear over the course of a run. An early Daedalus Hammer might prompt me to shift my entire strategy.
• Figure out your combat strategy. For some builds, it will just be holding down Attack while facing each enemy. Others might be more complex, switching between Attack and Special and Cast. For most of my runs, it typically looks something like opening with a Cast to lodge my Blood, then a high-damage strike, then a rapid but lower-damage assault. Ideally there will be two different Boons across those to trigger Favored Status.

• Gods like Aphrodite are great on slow and powerful attacks, Dionysus is great on slightly more rapid attacks, Zeus is fantastic on very fast but weak attacks. 
• Hermes has a lot of good boons and some great ones. My general preference is Dashes > Sturdy > Auto God Gauge. Of course, some builds might have other priorities.
• Once you start getting Nectar, prioritize giving a single bottle to each person you find, rather than going "deep" into a single person. There will be plenty of time for that later, and many more rewards by spreading it around early on.

• In general, when choosing between gates that show lasting rewards, I prefer Nectar > Key > Gems. One Key reward is worth two Gem rewards, and one Nectar is worth five Keys.
• For gates that show in-game rewards, it varies a bit more depending on the run; but my priority is typically Trial (two gods) > Hammer > Miniboss God > Single God > Heart > Pom > Obol. You will almost always get two Hammers by the end of the game even if you skip one or two hammer gates, so sometimes I'll pass one up if there's a good god in another gate. And if I'm low on health and the god(s) aren't appealing, I'll opt for the Centaur Heart.
• I almost always take Chaos Gates early in a zone, but avoid them if the debuff will last through the boss fight. The exception is if the Gate appears in the room before the last zone ship (like chamber 12 in Tartarus or chamber 22 in Asphodel). In this case, the boss fight will occur one room later than normal, and you'll basically have an extra chamber in the run than you would otherwise. You'll also often get more options for the pre-boss room, which might include a Hermes boon or other goodie.

• I'll usually take an Infernal Gate over any other exit; I use Skelly in here to draw away enemy attention and ensure a clean clear.
• My keepsakes are typically [Redacted] or Coin Purse for Tartarus; [Redacted] or a God one for Asphodel; [Redacted] or the Evergreen Acorn for [Redacted]; and the Evergreen Acorn or Broken Spearpoint for [Redacted].

And some thoughts on the between-run resource management stuff:

• When in doubt, hold on to your items instead of converting them. You'll eventually need and use everything.
• Keys are useful early for both unlocking weapons and Mirror abilities. I typically spent on the Mirror whenever I was close to running out of available abilities to spend Darkness; but there's a case to be made for prioritizing the Weapons so you can start to make use of Titan Blood early.
• While learning the game, Stubborn Defiance is great: you can basically treat it as a free heal in Asphodel chambers that you clear. Once you start reliably making it to the final boss, then it's better to switch to Death Defiance, which gives you more resurrections per fight.
• In general, the Green (default) abilities in the Mirror are the best all around; the Yellow ones can be good, but tend to be more situational for specific builds. The exception is the bottom three, where I think the Yellow ones are better.
• Make use of Skelly in the training room! It's really handy to try out attacks and get a feel for how each weapon works. Also, pay attention to the damage numbers shown to figure out your damage profile.

• When purchasing House Contractor upgrades, the leftmost tab (Work Orders) is by far the most important; most other tabs are just vanity items, although a few are involved in NPC relationships or prophecies. Starting with the cheapest Work Orders and making your way up is probably the best strategy.
• In my game, Diamonds felt very limited, followed by Blood, followed by Nectar, followed by Ambrosia. Eventually (well, if you play as long as I have!) you'll have plenty of each. All that to say, you might want to save Diamonds for relevant Work Orders instead of spending them on cosmetics, at least until you have a stockpile.
• Early in the game, you won't use the Wretched Broker much: it's usually better to hold on to items than convert them. But keep an eye open for good Sales: it's worth exchanging Keys for Blood, Gems for Diamonds, or Gems for Nectar.
• By the midgame, you'll have bought all the essentials stuff that costs Gems, and not have any real use for Keys, so it's good to use the Broker to exchange those items for Nectar and advance the NPC stories.
• And by the endgame (er, post-endgame), you'll be swimming in all this stuff anyways.

• Each NPC will have a single conversation with you during each visit to the House of Hades. You can also give each NPC a single Nectar or Ambrosia if their affection is unlocked. You might be eligible for multiple conversations, in which case you will get a random one, and then will see another conversation on your following visit.

• Moving between the rooms of the House of Hades can reposition NPCs in the main hall. This doesn't let you have additional conversations, but can make NPCs eligible for gifts if they weren't before.
• Buying the Fated List of Minor Prophecies is a great move, and a great source of mid-term goals. Even when you're dying a lot, you can still be advancing the Prophecies. Note that actions you take prior to buying the List do still count towards the List.

• Personally, I always went on runs with whichever weapon had Dark Thirst, giving 20% more Darkness. But that definitely isn't necessary; if you like a particular weapon or set of weapons, it's totally valid to stick with it.
• Once you start dealing with Heat: I see taking on higher Heat as primarily a way to earn more Blood, which in turn lets you upgrade your weapons higher, which... lets you take on higher Heat. If you're struggling with a particular weapon, you can spend Blood to upgrade it; or, if you're struggling on Heat, then you can do a 0-Heat run with it to collect a bunch of Darkness and fill out your bottom Mirror talents.

MEGA SPOILERS

In my previous post, I mentioned how I was surprised that Supergiant would abandon their pattern of creating original worlds to instead set a game in one of the oldest existing worlds. I've come to deeply love that decision. While the setting is more familiar than it would have been otherwise, the story that they have to tell feels radically different from other video games. I've complained before about how so many games are telling the same story that "A Great Evil Will Destroy The World And Only You Can Stop It". At first I assumed that Hades would end up being something like that: you're escaping from Hell, after all! Maybe we would prevent the legions of the dead from overrunning the living, or whatever.

Instead, the game ends up being about something totally different: reuniting a dysfunctional family. I love how the story gradually unfolds and you are eased into the objective. The mechanics of what you're doing never change: you're still fighting your way out towards the surface, over and over again. But the meaning of what you're doing evolves and matures. At first it's an act of defiance and spite, rebelling against your oppressive father to seek freedom. Then it becomes a voyage of discovery, seeking to find your "lost" mother Persephone. It turns into an act of pilgrimage and growth, as you desperately seek to forge the bonds that were lacking in childhood (quite a change from the "breaking bonds" imagery of your earlier runs!). Then it becomes a cunning ploy, with you seeing yourself as a member of the underground family and protecting your (problematic but valuable and ultimately loving) parents from the vengeance of your relatives on Mount Olympus. And finally it becomes a job and a ritual, a responsibility you embrace, a fun activity that involves you killing your dad over and over again (though occasionally he does kill you, too).

That particular dynamic is so fascinating. Early on, Zagreus feels such bitterness and anger towards Hades, while his father feels cold and disdainful towards him. And then... you work it out. It's a long, gradual process (that, again, involves killing each other over and over again), but over time you come to understand where each other is coming from. Zagreus comes to realize how much of his dad's actions are motivated by a desire to protect the ones he loves, crippled in expression by a too-strong sense of pride and need to maintain an image that he feels befits his station. For his part, Hades comes to terms with his son as his own man and not a reflection of Hades' failings with Persephone, and recognizes that while Zagreus does not share all of Hades' values, Zagreus is motivated by good intentions and has many skills (that do not involve clerical work in the Administrative Chamber).

Cathartic is the best word to describe it. Zagreus and Hades work out their feelings and build a relationship by fighting each other, letting out their emotions and coming to respect one another. Sigmund Freud would have a field day with this game! I thought a lot about Freud's idea of an Oedipal complex, which doesn't directly apply to this game, but I think Greek mythology is an incredibly rich source for exploring complex psychological phenomena.

The structure of the game is super-interesting too. When you start the game you think you have a clear objective, to escape the Underworld. It takes a lot of practice and growth, but you eventually do it, hooray! And then you have a new objective, centering around Persephone, and keep playing the core game loop, now with more skill and a broader view of your goal. You reach a point that seems like a clear end of the game: the credits roll, you listen to a typically wonderful Supergiant vocal track, Persephone is back in the underworld and things seem great. But, I kept playing, and I think have spent more hours since seeing the "end credits" than I did before. You totally could stop playing then and would have a satisfying story; but the world and the characters are just so deep and rich that I didn't want to leave them behind. I've now logged just north of 100 hours in the game, and there is still new dialogue and subplots that I'm enjoying resolving.

My most recent thing has been viewing the Epilogue, the final denouement between Olympus and the House of Hades, and I think I am ready to call it a game. But I am still curious: would I ever see Persephone up in Greece again? What is underneath those other two statue cloths? What will Aphrodite and Demeter say when I forge bonds with them? And so on.

And that's just the story! There is a huge community around Hades, mostly oriented around speedrunning, and tons of people have a blast running through the regions and experimenting with crazy builds and stuff. I can definitely see the appeal: story aside, this is a roguelike, which is designed for endless replayability and excitement.

As for me, I think I'm done, but I'm delighted I saw the whole journey through!

And now, some lists.

• Favorite God: Artemis

• Favorite Chthonic God: Nyx

• Favorite PC Romance: Megara the Fury

• Favorite NPC Romance: Achilles

• Favorite Employee of the Week: The Wretched Broker
• Favorite NPC Chamber: Eurydice

• Favorite Weapon: Anything but the sword! Fists were the most fun, but I'm probably best with the bow.
• Favorite Sword Aspect: Arthur
• Favorite Spear Aspect: Guan Yu. (Achilles is fun too, but in my experience one of the most boon-dependent weapons.)
• Favorite Shield Aspect: Zeus
• Favorite Bow Aspect: Chiron
• Favorite Fist Aspect: Zagreus
• Favorite Rail Aspect: Eris, although Lucifer is amazing with Athena on the Special
• Favorite Overall Aspect: Chiron Bow
• Favorite Music: Sunrise over the Aegean

• Favorite Zone: Hard to choose! Maybe Elysium

• Least Favorite Zone: Probably Asphodel

• Favorite Boss: Lernie

• Least Favorite Boss: Non-Extreme-Measures Theseus
• Favorite Miniboss: Asterius

• Least Favorite Miniboss: Witches Circle
• Least Favorite Enemy: Exalted Shields
• Least Favorite Mechanic: Poison
• Favorite Boon: Divine Protection
• Favorite Call: I've come to appreciate all of them. Lately I've really been digging Poseidon's.
• Favorite Cast: Artemis, although I love using Ares with Blitz Disc.
• Favorite Status Curse: Chill. Actually, let's do them all in order: Chill, Weak, Exposed, Jolted, Hangover, Ruptured, Doom, Marked. Obviously varies a bit based on the weapon and other boons.
• Favorite Cthonic Companion: I've only really used Companion Rib from Skelly.

• Favorite Keepsake: Pom Blossom
• Favorite Dark Mirror Ability: Greater Reflex
• Favorite Practical Upgrade: Infernal Trove
• Favorite Aesthetic Upgrade: Aphrodite wall poster (so cheesy!) or toys for Cerberus
• Favorite Fish: Voidskate
• Favorite Well of Charon Item: Yarn of Ariadne

• Favorite Charon Shop Item: Mystery Boon

END SPOILERS

I want to say "Supergiant has done it again!", but really, they've done more. Hades is another fun, engaging game that I've had a blast playing and looking at and listening to. But it has also nailed something better than their previous games. All of Supergiant's previous offerings were designed to be replayable, and to some degree built around it, but as much as I loved those games I never felt sufficiently compelled to have a second or third go-around. With Hades, though, I've tackled the core roguelike game over seventy times, and have over forty victories. It feels like they've really cracked the code on how to tell a story that doesn't have to end, and keep you coming back: to have more fun, to hang out with people you love, to strive a little harder and dig a little deeper.

Go Directly To Hell, Do Not Collect 200 Obols

I'm shifting back into low gear on the Minecraft front. I may do another post at some point with the things I've made and done in the last few months, culminating in a startlingly effective gunpowder farm. I've achieved the major goals I was working on, and have returned back to where I started, mostly treating it as a social game and popping in on certain occasions to hang out and chat with other office-mates.

For a while I was thinking of picking up Cyberpunk 2077, which went on sale for a while and apparently has gotten some positive patches. But then I remembered that I had other games that I wanted to play and hadn't even started yet. I do take a certain pride in keeping my backlog under control, and so I finally fired up a title that's been waiting for me for many months: Hades!

Hades is the latest entry from Supergiant Games, the San Francisco-based developer behind my beloved Transistor and other great games including Bastion and Pyre. I remain incredibly impressed at their work ethic and style: not only do they create a new universe for each game, but they also completely reinvent their genres. Bastion was an action-RPG, Transistor a turn-based strategy game, Pyre a 3-on-3 pickup basketball game, and Hades is [drum roll, please] a roguelike.

I kind of regret putting that outside of my spoiler tags; it's such basic information, but somehow I had completely avoided learning what kind of game it was before starting it, and it was kind of delightful when, about twenty minutes in, I went "Ohhhhh, that's what's going on!"

I don't tend to think of roguelikes as one of my favorite genres, but looking back over the games I've played in the past decade, many of my favorites fit into that category. The Binding of Isaac, of course, and FTL, and Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies, and Sil. There's a part of my brain that loves systems, which often lies dormant, but at a certain point these games will trigger that center of my brain, and I will enjoy getting deeply into strategies and builds and probabilities and all sorts of stuff.

"Roguelike" is of course a very loose term; to pick one example, FTL and Sunless Skies are both roguelikes set in space but could not be more different in mood, gameplay, lore, or style. Hades is differentiated by a few cool things:

Some retained progression. Virtually all modern roguelikes have some form of this, where you don't restart completely from scratch on each attempt. Hades is one of the best approaches that I've seen, though. During each run you collect various currencies, some of which (obols) must be spent during your current run and will be lost when you die; others (gems, keys, nectar) you can keep indefinitely, and spend back at your base between runs. This negates my instinctive hoarding tendencies (due to the use-it-or-lose-it design), while also letting you gradually build towards goals over the long haul.

Supergiant style. Gorgeous artwork and stunning music, including deeply moving vocals, which we've come to expect from the studio.

Tons of relationships. There are a couple dozen characters to meet, argue with, charm and bribe.

Lots of things to customize. You go into the start of each run with certain innate Mirror upgrades (like more Dashes or Backstab damage), a keepsake, and a chosen weapon. While on the run, you can grab temporary weapon upgrades and many many different abilities ("boons").

Synergies out the wazoo. While Hades has a ton of items in it, I think The Binding of Isaac still has more, but the mix-and-match potential of Hades is far greater. Some of these are pretty obvious, like stacking abilities that boost your Crit chance and your Crit damage; over time I've come to appreciate others, like combining low flat-damage effects with a weapon that hits many times, and multiplicative increases to weapons that do strong attacks. Not to mention buffs, debuffs, DOTs, AOE, chains... lots of things to mix and match.

A compelling plot. Another Supergiant staple, the story is intriguing and deftly interwoven with the gameplay.

MINI SPOILERS

I was a little surprised when I first learned of the game Hades: All of Supergiant's other games have been based on completely new worlds that they invented, so why would they instead turn to one of the oldest worlds for inspiration?

It didn't take very long for them to win me over: the deities in Hades are tremendously fun interpretations of their classical inspirations, recognizable but very fresh and vibrant. Everyone is likeable, which is a really tall order for a game with this many adversarial characters. Dionysus is a bro, but the sort of bro you'd want to hang out with. Zeus is confident and supportive, but jealous and prideful. Hermes talks really fast and leaves you with the impression he's playing multiple games at the same time. And on and on.

The gameplay was not as compelling to start with, mostly because I wasn't very good at it. I'm getting old, my reflexes and hand-eye coordination aren't as good as they used to be, and it's mildly frustrating that Supergiant has been moving from turn-based into more twitch-reflex gameplay as my capacity for the latter is diminishing. I crashed and burned on... I think my first seven or so attempts at escape, never even leaving Tartarus.

It turns out, though, that my issues were almost entirely due to my weapon of choice. I'd done all of those seven runs with your starter weapon, the Stygian Blade; my thinking had been that I would focus on one weapon and master it before moving on to the next thing. But as soon as I tried another weapon, my success rate drastically shot up, and it's remained high since.

I seem to be good at everything but the Stygian Blade, and have at least reached the penultimate boss battle on all of them (while still not clearing Tartarus with Stygian). At first I thought that it was because I'm better at ranged than at melee; but I also have had very successful runs with the Fists, which are even shorter-range than the Blade, so I don't think that's the issue.

At this phase of the game, I'm mostly focused on unlocking things. I switch to whichever weapon has Dark Thirst on it, and on a run will try to take any Boons or weapon upgrades that remain on my Fated List of Minor Prophecies. At some point I will probably switch to focusing on a particularly powerful loadout and figure out the best boons for it and buckle down to try to actually beat the game. I've come close, though! Twice now I've gotten to the [REDACTED] of the [REDACTED] fight.

So what will that weapon be? I don't really know! I've revealed the alternate Aspects, and have been pouring Titan Blood into the Aspect of Chiron; but my best runs so far have actually been with the vanilla (non-upgraded) Fists, Spear and Rail; the Rail in particular was really funny because the first time I took it I died halfway through Tartarus, and the second time I got to the final fight with it.

One really fun aspect of the RNG of the game is that you can't predict what boons and weapon upgrades you'll get, so it's good to be flexible. I'm leaning towards starting my run with the Coin Purse; then, after leaving Tartarus, deciding what boons would pair best with the ones I've gotten so far, switch to that God's keepsake for Asphodel, maybe another God for Elysium, and finally something like Skelly's or Maegara's boon for Styx. But you could also make a really compelling case for just carrying the Lambent Plume from start to finish!

I'll write more about the story later, but for now I'll note that it's (1) great and (2) pretty different from Supergiant's earlier games. Most characters in this game are "real" character from Greek mythology; their personalities seem really fresh and surprising, while their actual roles are faithful to their classical origins. So, for example, you meet the shade of Achilles early on, and much later meet the shade of Patroclus, which is really awesome since you as the player know about their relationship, and are a few steps ahead of you as the character. Unlike Pyre, I think most players will experience the story of Hades in much the same way: from what I've seen so far, there aren't really branching decision points or dialogue choices or anything like that. But unlike Transistor there's a huge degree of freedom in how you advance the story and what areas you learn about first. In my case, I've been focusing my Nectar on developing my relationships with Artemis, Nyx, and Megaera, so I've been learning a lot more about their concerns and goals; another player would likely eventually see the exact same dialogue, but if they're front-loading their interactions with Dusa and Hypnos and Cerberus, they'd be learning different things and getting a different perspective on the story.

END SPOILERS

I'm digging this game a lot: despite how hard it is, the stellar craftsmanship keeps me hooked and coming back to bang my head against the wall again and again. And I do seem to be getting better; it's encouraging to see my progress getting stronger, from a combination of in-game leveling (better weapons, keepsakes, and stats) and personal skill development (getting better at dashing through opponents, backstabbing, and executing timed attacks) and overall knowledge (becoming familiar with maps, trap placement, phases of boss fights). I'll probably drop in one more post once I finally escape and get closure to this intriguing story!

Wiki Wiki

 Be forewarned, this post is even more rambly than usual.

I'm mostly creating this post to help nudge Google's SEO to pick up the new Fallen London Wiki, which has recently relocated to a new home. Well, "relocated" might be too tame a term. "Escaped an abusive relationship and started a fresh life" might be more accurate.

I have a long, albeit tenuous, connection with the wiki. When I first started playing Fallen London about a decade ago, there were two separate community-driven wikis. I believe that the wikidot was first; its domain name even reflects the original title of the game, Echo Bazaar. This wiki focused on gameplay and strategy; in particular, I found its item conversion tables invaluable. In contrast, the wikia was more of a straight dump of the game contents, focused on storylets: you could look up anything in the game to see what was required to make it appear, what the options were, what requirements each option had, and what each choice did.

There was some mild-mannered back-and-forth between the wiki community and Failbetter Games. Since Fallen London is almost entirely composed of text, the company was understandably not enthusiastic about their entire game essentially getting mirrored into a clickable alternative, allowing people to essentially "play" through the game without any Candle limitations. A few principles got established early on that thankfully continue to this day. First, no details can be provided on the wiki about stuff that requires Fate, i.e. spending real-world money. Secondly, there is a character limit on how much text from each storylet body can be present in an article. In practice, this has meant that you can read a summary or gist of what an action does, but will need to play it to experience the actual content.

I was a very active Fallen London player in those days, and that extended to Wiki contributions: I created the entry for the Rumourmaster's Network (now renamed Rumourmonger's Network), filled in descriptors for the higher levels of Scholar of the Correspondence, and filled in lots of details about random ranges, seasonal events and other things. I'm no longer at the vanguard of content discovery, so these days I just use the wiki as a reference. It has some absolutely excellent tools and calculators, including a best-in-slot calculator that was essential prior to the expansion of Outfits and remains extremely useful today. (Fortunately, the retirement of Paramount Presence of the Ancient Regime and the invention of new stat caps has removed the need for me use the wiki to look up each and every new action before I click on it to ensure that it will not remove 1 CP of one of my main stats.)

At some point along the line, Wikia rebranded to Fandom, which I believe was a universal move. Let's take a little tangent and talk about that!

Almost all wikis are based on MediaWiki, the open-source engine that drives Wikipedia. In the early days of Wikipedia, people embraced its ethos as the "everything encyclopedia": you could write an entry about literally anything, and there was an explosion of content and communities building out vast webs of documentation about their passions. Prior to this, information on a given commercial project was usually limited to one of two forms: either an official web site, maintained by the creator of that project and typically limited to a very high-level summary of it; or a community forum, which contained a vast amount of content of varying quality that was difficult to search but likely had the information you sought. Wikipedia seemed like a great solution to the problem of making knowledge discoverable: if you wanted to figure out what issue of Bone first revealed the identity of the farmer, or how many members were in the Minibosses music group, or who the most prolific graffiti artists in San Francisco were, you could head to Wikipedia and find out. And, on the off chance it wasn't there yet, you could do some research and create your own entry, which other users would later polish and correct and refine.

That golden era came to an end in the Great Crackdown. I mostly experienced this with the Webcomic Purge, when dozens and then hundreds of Wikipedia pages were taken down for lack of "notability". A daily newspaper comic that nobody talks about deserved an entry; a daily web comic that got millions of views and spawned a passionate following did not. The purge continued, ruthlessly removing all entries that did not meet the editors' arbitrary standards of notability. (As you might suspect, these reflect the biases you would associate from white nerds. To this day there is a long and informative article about the Vala on Wikipedia; any similar entry on a less-revered property would certainly face deletion.)

Fortunately, there was an alternative! (Sarcasm alert.) While the Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit, it just so happened to have a for-profit alternative, Wikia. Founded and run by the same people as Wikipedia, and running the same software, but instead of creating a single repository for all human knowledge it segmented each topic into a separate site, and served ads on those sites to make money. To this day I remain convinced that Wikipedia intentionally drove away these vibrant, active communities so they could make money off of them on Wikia instead.

MediaWiki itself will always remain open source, and over the years quite a few other competitors have entered this space. I ran into a lot of headaches related to this during my Shadowrun days. A trend has grown for game companies to establish an "official" site for a wiki, perhaps seeding it with some art and content but leaving it up to players to maintain and fill it in. When Shadowrun Returns first launched, their official wiki was on a domain called wikispaces.com. A ton of great content went up in there: Harebrained Schemes wrote a few articles giving details on the editor, and I and a lot of other creators wrote various tutorials and guides and other stuff. But, wikispaces went away, as you will see if you try to visit that domain now.

Prior to the launch of Shadowrun Hong Kong, HBS migrated over to a new wiki on Gamepedia, copying some (but definitely not all) of the old content and guides. That has been the main source of community knowledge in recent years, though honestly you'll likely get better results by searching Google and finding a relevant Reddit thread; we seem to be back to the old days where the best content could only be found in forums.

I contributed to the Gamepedia for a while, but threw a hissy fit when they got bought out by someone called Curse Media, and then forced me to create a Twitch account to continue editing articles. I can't justify how mad I was, but I walked away and never touched that wiki again.

If you try to go to the Shadowrun Gamepedia today, you'll be taken to Fandom, which is the new rebranding of Wikia. It's becoming yet another monopoly, swallowing up all of the alternatives that were out there and bringing all properties under its banner. After reading Goliath, I am very radicalized against the trend towards consolidation, crushing the little guy and creating big, terrible companies that give everyone an awful experience.

The monopoly wasn't the tipping point for the Fallen London wiki, though. The community editors faced a host of issues that they thoughtfully documented. One of the most germane problems for readers of the Fandom wiki, though, is that it's absolutely unusable on mobile. In recent months I've had to deal with full-screen takeovers, autoplaying videos, pages that jump around to trick you into clicking on ads, and all sorts of slimy, awful stuff. Fortunately my adblocker on my PC does a good job at removing that stuff, but that's no consolation to folks who try and read the wiki from their phones and tablets.

And yes, of course this is a direct result of Fandom establishing a virtual monopoly over the wiki space. If they were merely one of many players, they wouldn't be able to get away with providing such awful service with such aggressive ads.

The move to a new non-Fandom wiki site may be a quixotic quest; currently "Fallen London wiki" still shows the old Fandom site as the first result, and the .wiki on page 2 of results. But hopefully that will change. One especially awesome thing is that Failbetter Games is supporting this change, even though they historically haven't had anything to do with the old wikis: they announced the wiki move to players, added a wiki link to their FAQ, and even offered to pay the hosting costs for the new site. I think that's really amazing of them.

Hopefully there will be more moves like this in the future. Apparently the Fallen London community move was inspired by the Runescape Wiki's escape several years ago; that move seems to be very successful, and their wiki is now very easy to find. I do wonder if, in the future, more companies will move towards hosting their own wikis in the same way they used to host their own forums. It does blur the line between community and company, for better or worse, but on balance I'd take that solution over further fattening the Fandom monopoly.

Soooo anyways, if you play Fallen London please update your bookmark for the wiki and save yourself from watching a thousand terrible ads!

Spur Line

The Underground Railroad is a good book, but can be a hard read. As it should be. It particularizes the horror of slavery, showing its toll on black bodies and minds, and the pernicious influence it wielded over all society. It's still very readable, with a compelling protagonist and tight action and a tinge of fantasy, but (perhaps ironically) it fights against escapism, holding historical reality firmly in the center.

Of course this made me feel uncomfortable, and I could usually only manage a chapter or so per day before having to set it aside for a bit. It made me think about how I learned about the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman in elementary school. Slavery was presented as a pure evil, but in my memory we spent a lot of time focusing on the bright things that happened, which gives more hope and optimism about human nature. On further reflection, it's harder to get excited about dozens of people successfully escaping slavery while four million remained in chains. Likewise, this book doesn't let you get too comfortable with the rare positive exceptions: it gives you a taste of possibility, then snatches it away, bringing you back to the brutal reality that most people of African descent experienced here.

MEGA SPOILERS

I didn't notice until I was nearly halfway through the book that it has won a Pulitzer Prize, which is really cool. It is a very well-written book, and what I like best about the style is the sort of verbal pacing that Colson Whitehead uses. He will often say what's going to happen in the upcoming scene, so there's a knot in your stomach as you watch people walking into the trap that awaits them. This technique reminds me a little of Vonnegut telling you the end at the beginning. But there are other times, most notably when the North Carolina Regulators raid the attic, where I gasped while reading because it happens so quickly: in less than a sentence you move from feeling safe to everything being lost.

The structure of the book is interesting too. Cora is the main storyline, and the book seems to move through a series of tableaus, each set in a different geographical region which exhibits a different flavor of white supremacy. Georgia has the brutal and unadorned plantation, with slaves forced to pick cotton under the threat of the whip. South Carolina seems like heaven in comparison, with blacks and whites living in the same society; but while whites here seem kinder they still disdain the race, preaching eugenics and other forms of control. North Carolina is a rigid terror, with whites abolishing slavery by abolishing black people, brutally murdering any dark face they see. Tennessee passes by in a blur, the color-blind forces of nature pummeling slave and free alike; but thanks to the Fugitive Slave Law only one of those categories can live freely. And finally Indiana shows how even in a putative free state white people will still feel threatened by black success: when the law does not directly enforce white supremacy, they will go outside the law and impose it with their own force.

I am curious about the actual history behind these tableaus. I hadn't previously heard of this North Carolina policy, and three minutes of research on Wikipedia didn't turn up anything; I wonder if it might have been a particular regional movement, or a dramatization of a particular strain of thought at the time. Given that this novel depicts a physical railroad secretly dug deep under the ground all the way from the North down to Georgia, it obviously isn't meant to be taken completely literally. The South Carolina experiences carry strong echoes of the Tuskegee experiments and eugenics, which did happen but were more 20th-century events. 

In between each set of tableaus is an intermission, switching the perspective from Cora to some other character. Sometimes the intermission provides background on someone we're about to meet, other times it gives insight into a character who has left the story. These grow especially poignant near the end, when we get to see Caesar's love of Cora after we learn of his death. And it's especially moving to learn how Mabel "escaped" the plantation, and connect that with Cora's feelings of rage towards her mother.

Finally, an Escaped Slave newspaper notice appears before each section. Some of these are obviously about Cora, but I didn't recognize some of the other references. After learning more about how the underground railroad operates, I now wonder if some of these are examples of the coded messages used by conductors on the railroad to describe upcoming journeys for their passengers.

Of course, the railroad itself is a really compelling idea, a sort of fantasy loosely woven into this very grounded reality. I was expecting it to be a major part of the book, but it isn't really, more of a device to move the story forward at key beats. It's interesting how the railroad seems so grand at the start, with wide tunnels and gleaming stations and powerful trains, and so pitiful at the end, abandoned and overgrown and narrow and dark with just a hand-cart; it can't take Cora anywhere, she has to move herself.

Ultimately, I think the book points to how deeply entrenched racism and white supremacy are in America, and how fragile any gains are. It is much more pessimistic than the popular MLK sentiment that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. We as Americans tend to believe that things automatically get better over time, but they don't, and slavery is actually one of the best examples of that. At the time of the founding of the US there was entrenched slavery and white supremacy. By the eve of the Civil War, it was even worse. Most of the Founders wrote about their personal hatred of slavery and expressed a hope that it would naturally fade away over time. By the time of the Confederacy, southern leaders had no qualms about declaring the inferiority of the black race, the divine justification for slavery, the inhumanity of their "property".

And in just the last ten years, we've seen a massive backlash against the first black president which has led to courts striking down the Voting Rights Act. Even as you read this blog post a raft of bills throughout the nation are advancing that will make it harder for black citizens to vote, further entrenching white supremacy. What's happening in Georgia now feels an awful lot like what happened on Valentine's farm.

END SPOILERS

And in conclusion, that's why we should abolish the filibuster.

Let Us Prey

I didn't have any particular expectations when I started playing Prey, and have been blown away by how much I enjoyed it. This was another gift from my sister and brother-in-law, and in passing they mentioned its similarities to System Shock 2. That should have been a hint for how much I would love it; SS2 remains one of the most memorable games I've played. Having finished Prey, I almost feel like you could call this game System Shock 3. It returns to the heavier RPG-style elements of the original franchise, unlike the more official "spiritual successors" of BioShock that moved into more of a run-and-gun style of gameplay.

Even the skill trees in Prey closely resemble the SS2 originals, with you leveling up in Scientist, Engineer, and Security trees, roughly equivalent to OSA Agent, Navy Sailor and Marine in System Shock. The environment is fantastic, atmospheric, tense, threatening and moody. And the gameplay is a great blend of action, strategy, and resource management. There are only so many bullets, so many EMPs, and so on, so you are incentivized to be strategic in when to fight and when to hide and when to flee.

There are a lot of great innovations in this title. One really nice aspect is recycling, which fits very well with the setting and also gives a lot of nice flexibility to the gameplay. Throughout the game you pick up a lot of trash, as well as items that you personally may not have a lot of use for. You can recycle these items to reclaim simpler forms of matter: minerals, biological components, and so on. Then you can use matter fabricators to reconstruct items of more use to you. So, for example, if you're using the silenced pistol a lot and running low on ammo, you can recycle items you aren't using so you can make more 9mm bullets.

This system is also a great incentive to thoroughly explore areas and collect all the stuff you can: there's no true "junk", everything has value. I probably took a lot longer to get through the game than most people since I'm an instinctive completionist and wanted to fully clear everything; this in turn got me a lot of resources and made me pretty powerful by the end. But you could also stealth your way through a lot of the game and save on resource expenditure, finishing the game more quickly but maybe with some more risk.

Some minor random strategy notes from my own gameplay (on Normal difficulty):

Advancement is entirely done through Neuromods. Some of these are just lying around and can be claimed during exploration, some are placed as rewards for side-missions, and you can eventually fabricate some yourself from raw materials.

There isn't much use in stockpiling Neuromods. I'll sometimes keep a few in reserve - like, if I have 5 points and am debating between Hacking 2 or Leverage 2, I might wait until I need one or the other and get that first. But usually you're better off having active support from upgrades.

It's probably best to prioritize the neuromods that let you collect more materials and use them more efficiently. In no particular order these include Dismantle, the Repair tree, Materials Expert, and Necropsy (the latter gated behind Physician). You don't have to get those first, but the earlier you get them the better equipped you'll be for the remainder of the game.

Take advantage of the stackability of items. If you're carrying 1 each of 5 types of food, and 5 pieces of another type of food, then you should recycle the first 5 to free up a ton of inventory space, and just eat from the last stack.

In the mid-game and later, look at recycling not just junk and food but all equipment. In my case, I'd accumulated around 60 Psi hypos without ever using any of them; I recycled half, and got about twenty neuromods out of it.

You'll pick up a lot of spare weapons, and as long as you aren't on the hardest difficulty, you don't need any duplicates. Dismantling and recycling are both valid approaches, so do the former if you're running low on Spare Parts and otherwise recycle; I found Minerals increasingly rare and valuable the later you get into the game (though that may vary depending on your playstyle and loadout).

Turrets can never be permanently destroyed: when broken, you can always repair them again. Turrets keep their Fortified status even after destruction, so it can be very worthwhile to invest in Fortify if you're using Turrets. Turrets can be knocked over pretty easily by enemies, but there doesn't seem to be much you can do about that.

Having a mix of a couple of favored weapons seems to be the way to go. If you exclusively use a single one (that shotgun!!), you'll always be low on ammo and need to fabricate more. But if you use every gun, your upgrades will be spread thinly. I generally favored:

• The wrench when possible (a single not-too-strong enemy who I could ambush)
• The shotgun against most heavy targets
• The pistol for sniping at a distance
• The Q-Beam against powerful enemies who are weak against it

Gloo and the Boltcaster can be situationally very useful. At first I wondered "Why is the game giving me all these weapons that do no damage?", but in addition to some puzzle-solving aspects and navigation aids, they also can be key assets in combat.

Enemy weaknesses can make a huge difference. An EMP can completely knock out some weaker electric-based enemies. Stronger electric enemies aren't disabled by the EMP, but will take significantly more damage from subsequent attacks while under the EMP effect. So a great technique is to sneak in, toss an EMP, activate Combat Focus, and shoot a bunch of times with your shotgun.

There are a few timed quests, which are very clearly indicated. Fortunately, the time allowances for these are very generous. You'll usually want to focus on that quest until it's done, but don't need to rush on the way to completion.

Enemies can spawn on maps you've previously visited/cleared, but don't do so repeatedly. Basically, once you kill an enemy, it stays dead, but more enemies may arrive in the area after the plot advances. There are only two exceptions I'm aware of, which are both pretty clear in-game. I'm not sure if enemies are ever automatically removed from a map or not.

When you approach the very end of the game, exploration becomes more challenging and limited. There's a sort of sweet spot to explore, so once you have full access to the station, if you want to explore and do all your sidequests, that might be the best time to do it. By this point of the game I was deeply invested and loving it so I did my standard RPG thing and did everything but the main quest line. There aren't any hidden time limits, so you can take advantage of those breathers.

Choices matter! More about this in the spoilers below, but just be aware that (a) not choosing to do something is also a choice, and could be considered the 'right' choice; (b) there are often gameplay benefits associated with making choices; and (c) many of these impact the story and the eventual ending.

Now, some complaints:

For the most part the KBM controls worked great, but it's very obvious that this game was designed to be console-friendly. One impact of this is that there is a fixed limit of 20 hard saves per game. The game never communicates this until you attempt to make your 21st manual save. To make matters worse, it seems to be impossible to delete saves: the menu says to press "Del" to remove one, but the Delete button does nothing and Backspace closes the menu. I eventually had to plug in an X-Box controller just to delete some old manual saves so I could create new ones! (You don't need manual saves, but this game is RPG-ish enough that I'm compelled to make them before major story beats.)

I'm not sure if this is an issue with my playthrough or the game as a whole, but the resource allocation seems wildly out of whack. Minerals are far, far more useful & less available than the others. I had a ton of Organic resources that never got used. Synthetics were pretty useless too. Exotics are limited early on, but they require an equal amount of Minerals, so those get stockpiled as well. It's possible that a less gun-heavy playthrough would have a different experience, though.

I was happy to see a lot of human NPCs showing up around the midpoint of the game; but they all tend to talk over each other, and pass on important information while a PA is blaring over them or you're getting an incoming call or in the middle of a firefight. In general the game has a bad tendency to overlay dialogues on top of each other, which is frustrating when the story is this good.

The zero-G segments were conceptually really cool, but also annoying and occasionally nauseating. I'm glad they were in the game, and also glad there weren't any more.

And I think that's it! The game was solid and never crashed for me. It was nicely difficult, with both resource management and combat tuned well. But the atmosphere and the story were definitely the high points for me.

MINI SPOILERS

This game is in a totally different continuity from System Shock and BioShock, and it's a fun one to explore. From what I can reconstruct, this is the story:

Things seem to start to diverge from our timeline in 1963, when the assassination of JFK fails. The US retains a strong focus on space exploration, as does the USSR. The two nations' rivalry eventually turns to cooperation as they realize that their joint investments in space put them far ahead of the rest of the world, and they embark on several joint missions: establishing permanent space stations, moon exploration, and so on. The Cold War deescalates, with the Gulf of Tonkin not pulling the US into Vietnam, and the USSR remains a viable entity well into the present of the 2030s.

The US and USSR realize that governments aren't best for administering space: there are difficult decisions that are politically unpopular but necessary to make. Control passes from the governments to the TransStar Corporation, which continues to operate the missions from the private sphere. In addition to the straight space work, TransStar pioneers many scientific breakthroughs, drastically extending longevity (JFK lives into the 2030s) and finding ways to manipulate power and gravity. One of their newest and most exciting inventions is the Neuromod: more or less equivalent to a skillsoft wetware in Shadowrun, a Neuromod allows transferring skills from one person to many others. So, a talented baseball player's neurons could be captured, and then others could install that to gain the same instinctual level of ball-playing capability.

That's all in the public history. The secret history is more sinister. Very early in the space era, we made contact with an alien life form that arrived in the solar system. Dubbed the Typhons, they do not seem capable of communication or reason, but have a wide array of deadly capabilities including transforming into other pieces of matter, mentally controlling humans, and manipulating elemental forces like fire and lightning. Almost all of TransStar's inventions are in fact repurposed from Typhon powers. Talos I, where the game takes place, is secretly a Typhon research facility: holding the organisms in quarantine and running experiments on them. This is incredibly dangerous work, and there have been outbreaks in the past where Typhons have slipped free and wreaked havoc. (Which is another great reason to do this work in space - when things go wrong, it's easier to clean up any messes when you don't have to worry about civilian casualties.)

You are Morgan Yu, the daughter or son of a powerful family in TransStar history and sibling to Alex, the CEO of Talos I. Early in the game, you learn that you have been repeatedly run through a simulation: you install new neuromods, take some tests, and experiment with typhon powers: levitation, explosions, etc. The neuromods are removed, causing you to lose your memories, and then you start over again. I'm still not 100% clear on the purpose of these experiments, but it seems to be trying to condition the human body and mind to adapt Typhon abilities, eventually creating superhumans who will be able to take on the Typhons and any other aliens in the galaxy.

Morgan has done this many times, and has created contingency plans: one early set before the first time she removed her neuromods, and then again during subsequent runs through the simulation. One early and frequent source of in-game confusion is the timing of these plans and their authorship: who is the "original" "you"? The plans are associated with various months: January advocates for shutting down the entire station if things go south, October for completing a moon-shot and uplifting humanity, December for simply abandoning the endless rat race and finding freedom. This touches on some cool and heady philosophical ideas; I found myself thinking of Dark City, as your position at the start of this game reflects the protagonist's position in that film.

At the very start of the game, the typhons break free from confinement. The researchers had been unsure whether Typhons were intelligent or merely instinctual, but it quickly becomes very clear that they are in fact extremely cunning and have been preparing their assault for a long time. You are suffering from in-game amnesia, placing your character's knowledge in line with your own, catching up on your personal history as you try to grasp what's happening around you and plot a path forward. Everyone on the station knows you, but you don't remember anyone except your brother.

As noted above, there are many choices to make in the game, many of which seem to be strictly gameplay but do in fact have implications for your character and, potentially, the story. There are two spheres of abilities to acquire, with one set of skills labeled Human (hacking, running, guns, repairing, stealth, etc.), and another set of skills dubbed Typhon (mind control, morphing, pyrokinesis, etc.). In my game I strictly stuck to the Human skills, which the game eventually noted and remarked on. If you install too many Typhon mods, the station's automated defense systems will start to identify you as a Typhon and try to kill you (unless you hack or destroy them); other Typhon organisms like the Nightmare may become better attuned to your location if you seem sufficiently Typhon.

The mechanics of Prey are very traditional for this type of game: go to a place, find a thing, that will unlock another place, etc. Thematically, it started to get a lot more compelling for me once I entered the Crew Quarters, where you start to find living survivors. Now the game isn't so much about shooting aliens: it's about rescuing humans from alien control, trying to find survivors and give them a fighting chance of survival.

MEGA SPOILERS

Because of the System Shock heritage, I'd been prepared for a twist. The first twist comes about 5-10 minutes into the game and didn't seem likely to be the only one. My mind kept running with possibilities: was January tricking me? Maybe Alex was really January. I even doubted the videos of myself that I saw: you can fake Danielle Sho's voice, so who's to say that that's really "my" voice?

It becomes a lot more clear that something is up when you try the December ending, which is available relatively early in the game. Alex says something like "Such a disappointment. Let's try again." I was now pretty sure that all the events of this game were a simulation, not real. But what was the nature of the simulation, and to what end?

The most likely possibility seemed to be that the Typhons were running things. Either they had already won and this was some sort of macabre torture, "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" style; or they are trying to manipulate Morgan to reveal some information or perform some action that will benefit them, perhaps allowing them to truly escape quarantine or establish contact with their point of origin. (One of the many things that I love about this game is that the first thing you experience is a "simulation" that is actually "real": Not just a VR thing or direct neural experience, but an elaborate system of moving backdrops and actors convincing you that you're somewhere other than where you truly are. Could typhons be mimicking the operators and humans, and manipulating you to carry out their goals on the real Talos?)

Despite my suspicions about what was going on, I relentlessly pursued a "good" path, to the best of my ability. In no particular order:

I neither freed nor harvested the prisoner in Psychotronics. I couldn't articulate my reasoning in-game, but basically I felt that I as an individual was unqualified to make such a weighty decision. It sounds like he deserves justice, but that justice should be carried out by society as a whole, not a random lady with a wrench. This seems to eventually be an even kinder route than freeing him, as he's still safe in his chamber at the end of the game.

I rescued all of the humans I could find, which required reloading a couple of times in the Crew Quarters.

Apparently you can kill January! Or not summon her! That's wild, I assumed she was essential to the game. I kept her around until the very last scene, though.

I chose to detonate the previously-scheduled shuttle heading towards Earth. That's one of the harder decisions, but as I saw it, the risk was just too great. Additional information gathered later in the game seemed to reinforce that, as it becomes clear that the Typhon had already widely spread and were likely on board the shuttle.

I rescued the doctor from the shipping container and did his side-quests, though I was ambivalent about his enthusiasm for Alex.

I helped the security chief and other survivors in the Cargo Bay, bringing power back up and helping them fight off a wave of Typhons and secure the zone.

I saved my ex-girlfriend; the timer on this quest is ridiculous, like two hours long, how could you not save her?!

(Quick side note: Prey very much seems to be a successor to System Shock rather than Bioshock, and is filled with nice little nods to the older game, like the "Looking Glass" technology for 3D video recordings. But this one particular visual is totally an homage to Bioshock's ADAM syringe.)

I made contact with Danielle Sho and tracked down "Mitchell" to his escape pod, but incapacitated him with a stun gun rather than kill him.

I attempted to rescue the fake employees during the Dahl incursion, then saved the real employees by repairing the air supply. I incapacitated Dahl and cooperated in wiping his memory.

In the endgame, I saved Alex from suffocation. I followed both the heart-of-coral / nullwave mod fabrication quest line and the power plant detonation quests, setting up both before getting to the bridge. On the bridge, I heard out Alex and January until Alex shot her, then reloaded, then stunned Alex just before he shoots her.

Throughout the game, I was leaning towards "blow it all up" as the best ending. Since that's the first direction you get from January, I was on the lookout for a twist, but all the alternatives seemed easier and riskier, more selfish. Very late in the game, it got a lot more compelling to pursue the escape plan, and I mulled over the risks. Dahl had left Earth after the typhon invasion, so his craft would have been clean when it arrived: was I confident it was still clean now? None of the prospective passengers were carrying any typhons, right? I initially just wanted to leave that door open to see what happened, but as the time grew closer I became more confident in that approach. January herself expresses that, as I had no typhon mods, I did not pose a threat to Earth.

One frustration I had heading into the final minutes of the game is that, well, you just don't know. You're asked to make weighty decisions that affect your life, the lives of your friends, and potentially all life on Earth, and you just aren't sure what's going on. Does the shuttle carry no risk, or a small risk? Can I trust January? Is any of this even real?

Whatever. I'd worked hard for this, and was going to try and get a happy ending. I activated the self-destruct, smashed January (at her not-too-subtle suggestion), and made it to the exit shuttle with several minutes to spare. (Again, I'm a big fan of the generous time limits in this game.) I chatted with the major NPC passengers, checked the crew manifest for the back cargo area, and took off! There's a relatively short ending that seems to show debris, presumably from the exploding space station, as your shuttle returns to Earth. And then the credits roll.

And then THAT happens.

I was digging the ending already, but my esteem of it shot up dramatically during and after that final scene. It gets me on personal and a philosophical level. First of all, it does feel good to have my choices recognized and honored, getting a sense that this does matter.

The dialogue is also really fascinating: at one point someone (I think Alex?) says something like "Of course we can't judge its motivations," which is something that I think a lot about when designing and playing and writing about video games. You can tell what a player did, but even in a text-heavy RPG with vast dialogue menus, you can't definitively know why. In a sense, Alex and the operators are in the role of game developers, peering at a player's decision trees and murmuring "Does this mean that they're trying to be a good person? Or not?" It was such an honoring and validation of the ambiguity and complexity I'd been intermittently struggling with during the game, turning those very same things from challenges into features.

Likewise, it was a trip to go back through my old screenshots and piece some stuff together. There are a couple of points throughout the game where you have sort of blackout visions, seeing scenes and voices that aren't really there. At the time I had thought that these were flashbacks to when your neuromod was installed for the first time, or perhaps when it was removed. The conversation snatches you can hear are definitely sinister. Now that I know what I'm looking for, though, I can see that these weren't glimpses across time, but across realities: the shock of the neuromod is briefly piercing the veil, letting you see outside the simulation for a few seconds, witnessing the operators witnessing you.

One of several reasons why I opted to destroy the station was because of "Will Mitchell"'s final message: as I was heading towards the bridge, he called and rambled about a vision he had had of the Earth conquered, the human race destroyed. He seems to have had a premonition of the events on board Talos, and for some reason the Typhon seem to be frightened of him. I figured that his vision was more likely the consequence of me activating the nullwave transmitter than of me blowing it all up, so I blew it all up. Of course, we eventually learn that not only was Will Mitchell not Will Mitchell, he also wasn't Luka Golubkin, he wasn't real at all. So, what's that all about? There are several possibilities, all of which are fun. The simulation might have been based on the real Luka Golubkin: it's interesting to imagine that the original Morgan Yu heard the same warning, decided to activate the transmitter, and brought about destruction. Or he could have been voiced by one of the Operators, creating one of those nuanced and difficult choices permeating the game (kill the murderer? trust the liar?). It's also fun to think that he might be one of those characters in fiction like Deadpool or Kilgore Trout who are aware that they're fictional characters, and thus have higher insights than the people around them who do not.

One final thought: the D&D stuff was great fun. I love piecing together all the rhythms of the campaign and the group dynamic over emails, character sheets, audio logs and more. The final reward was pretty cool, too.

END SPOILERS

It was quite a shift to play Prey after so long in Minecraft: switching to more realistic visuals, modern controls, voice acting and more. Prey isn't at all a sandbox, but it does offer a pleasing degree of freedom: in character progression, in exploration, pursuing quests and making decisions. Once I started thinking about it as System Shock 3 it suddenly had a very high standard to live up to, and it managed to hit that high bar.

There's apparently a New Game + mode, which I'm mildly curious about. I've also received a personal recommendation for the Moonbase expansion: it's apparently a roguelike, which I'm having a very hard time imagining with this game but which is definitely an intriguing idea! The game proper ends kind of wonderfully: it perfectly sets up a sequel, but at the same time I'd be fully satisfied if this is the end of the story. It's hard to ask for more!