At All Costs | Detroit Become Human, Part II (Ep. 132) - Pixel Project Radio: A Video Game Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:27):
Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio. This is part two
of our critical analysis on Detroit Become Human. If you're
finding this episode or this show for the first time,
maybe check out episode one before continuing today. We are
going to pick up right where we left off last time.
There's a lot to cover, so we're going to jump
right into it. Of course, I am joined once again

(00:48):
by esteemed guest Nomad from the Retro Wildlands. Nomad, how's
it going.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
It's going very well, Rick. It is a pleasure to
be back in front of the microphone with you and
continue this journey into Detroit.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Just a couple of things before we dive back into
the story. There is one thing that I think we
forgot to bring up, Nomad, and it's the smallest thing.
In the chapter where Kara is cleaning Todd's house. This
is a small detail that I wanted to bring up
now because it's going to be pertinent later on. Very
germane to an ending discussion. When Cara is cleaning up

(01:23):
she sees a magazine. Players don't get to see the
magazine when she is looking at it. You do get
to see it as she picks it up. There's some
kind of a young android girl on the cover, but
as she is looking at it, as Kara is looking
at it, we don't get to see the front. We
just see Kara looking at it from sort of behind
the magazine's point of view, and we see her led

(01:46):
sort of flash yellow, which in this universe signifies some
sort of heightened emotional state, distress something like that. That's
all that's said about that at the time, but I
wanted to float it here because it will come back
in the next episode.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah, good call. Stuff like this too. Happens a lot
in games where they'll give you just a little glimpse
of something's not quite right, and it won't be referenced
until much later. So yeah, this is definitely important.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, absolutely. And one other thing I have written down here,
there is going to be more talk on the differences
between androids and humans. I think in this episode. I
wanted to say that upfront. I feel like I was
maybe not the best at facilitating that discussion last time,
but we'll see more of that here because we're getting

(02:32):
into more of the meat of I think what David
Cage is hoping to convey here. Whether or not he
does is up to the viewers, but we're getting into
that more here, So without further ado, let's jump back in.
We stopped last time at the end of chapter five,
so we're starting at chapter six, titled Broken. This sees

(03:05):
Marcus and Carl returning home from Magala, and Carl says
something that is truer than anything I've ever heard with
regard to art. He says, nobody gives a damn about art.
All they care about is how much money they're going
to make out of it. Too.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
True, Yeah, very true. It was too disappointing to hear
that too. I don't partake in art nearly as much
as I would like personally, but I remember shaking my
head when he said that. Very disappointing but true.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
Unfortunately, you see it everywhere, and it was interesting being
in the classical musician field during a time, you know,
twenty tens, fifteen's twenty twenty, when streaming is so popular,
where students are sharing living composers work with each other
so folks don't have to buy it so they could
save money. There's a lot of there's a lot of

(03:54):
like double standards and eyes wide shut sort of attitudes
whenever it comes to ethics and things of that nature,
especially when it comes to art and paying artists and
things like that. It's almost not worth decrying because that's
just the landscape now. That's what we have to live with.
You know. We will never return to a pre Spotify,

(04:16):
pre YouTube time, so it's not worth pining for what
used to be for halcyon Days. But I don't know,
that's a different podcast entirely. I don't want to bring
a negative rant in right away.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, it definitely gives you something to think about, though,
that is for sure.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Speaking of making money off of it, somebody wants to
make money off of Karl's art. There's an intruder among us,
and that intruder is Leo. David Cage portrayed Leo, if
you'll remember, as somebody that is addicted to drugs, So
why wouldn't he come to ransack the place. I'm still
a little sore about that, but it's fine. It is Leo.

(04:54):
In fact, Marcus calls the cops remotely, which is one
of the things that androids can do, and there's a
confrontation with Leo accusing Karl of like Marcus more than him.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
Leo, what's going on?

Speaker 1 (05:09):
You refused out me?

Speaker 2 (05:10):
So I'm helping myself.

Speaker 4 (05:11):
It's crazy when some people pay for this shit. Don't
touch them.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Look, they're all going to be mine sooner or later anyway.

Speaker 4 (05:19):
Just think of it as a dumb payment on my inheritance.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
Marcus, get him away from there, get him out of here.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
And this is Marcus's breaking point. This is where Marcus
is about to break Deviant. And what's interesting is if
you remember with Kara's breaking into dev and C, when
we see that sort of wireframe model that represents Kara's
will bashing up against Carra's rationality, you know, obedience versus
the true self. There were lines of texts and phrases

(05:47):
around that sort of signified her thoughts. And with Kara
it was centered around protecting Alice, disobeying Todd to protect Alice.
With Marcus, it is much more. It has a much
more aggressive and sort of individualistic revolutionary tint. But we
get to see a bit of the android's personality shine

(06:08):
through when it comes to that. It's a nice little touch,
but they prompt Marcus to think for himself. Leo continues
to bully him. Go ahead, hit me, what' you're waiting for?

Speaker 5 (06:17):
I think you're a man.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Acts like one.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
Dob it doesn't matter too much of a pussy stop it, Leo.

Speaker 6 (06:25):
Dobin's gonna fight back, you fucking bitch.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
And then Marcus breaks free, He breaks into deviancy.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Yeah, this was an interesting scene because it starts off
with Leo harassing Marcus, but Carl is very adamant towards
Marcus and tells him specifically, do not defend yourself. And
that's really what prompts those deviant thoughts. Why shouldn't I
defend myself? And the things that you see flash on screen,
and once you break free, then that's when you, as

(06:55):
the player, are then given that choice to either defend
yourself or in door. What did you end up doing
your first time through with this one?

Speaker 1 (07:04):
My first time through, I defended myself against Carl's wishes.
I ended up pushing Leo. And what happens is you
push him, Carl gets a little bit upset. Leo is
on the floor unconscious, and Carl tells you to get
out of here. He tells you the cops are coming,
They're about to get here. Go get out of here,
Get out of here now.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, it was pretty powerful stuff and I want to
share kind of a quick story too, to kind of
talk about why it is that I made the choice
that I made. I did exactly the same thing. I
chose to defend myself and Marcus halls off and shoves
Leo and he falls and smacks his head. But in
that moment, I was actually taken back to an earlier

(07:44):
point in my life, back in I think I was
in middle school actually, and uh, I probably can't imagine this,
but I was the nerdy kid back in school. I
was the one with very few friends, and I had
what I felt like was my assigned bully. I had
a bully that would tore met me constantly and come
and knock my books out of my hands, stuff like that.

(08:04):
And it was actually an instance and actually completely unrelated.
I told this story to my kids and my wife
at dinner just the other night. Actually, this particular bully
of mine met me well, ran into me at the library.
I was dropping books off, and he came out of
the door and was starting to torment me with his
two hired goons, And I remember feeling a lot of

(08:26):
the same stuff, like I've just been putting up with
this for years, and I'm getting frustrated, and I'm feeling
anger boil in me, and I ended up after he
knocked the books out of my hand. I ended up.
And I still don't know why I punched this kid's
square in the nose and broke his nose and off
you right?

Speaker 3 (08:44):
Nice?

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Yeah? And I felt that way when I was watching
Marcus endure and go through this scene, and my thought
was the only way to truly make this stop is
to make a show of aggression. And that really is
what drove my decision in this moment, so fun fact
about myself and what kind of drew me there, Like
I could not think of a reason why to continue

(09:06):
to endure here. But on the other end, I did
want to share something I also really liked about this scene.
If you do decide to endure as Marcus, what ends
up happening to Carl is he becomes so distressed he
collapses and falls out of his wheelchair. I think Jesse Williams,
who is the motion capture and voice actor for Marcus,

(09:29):
does so such an incredible job in the scene. He
runs over to Carl, bends down, starts crying, and even
refers to Carl as Dad as Carl's slipping into unconsciousness
and I thought that acting was done exceptionally well.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Carl, he was.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Roger own sham Carl, don't.

Speaker 7 (09:55):
Leave, Okay, please don't call, don't leave.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
Remember Marcus, don't let it worry tell you you are no.

Speaker 7 (10:08):
No, Dad, no please, this is.

Speaker 5 (10:15):
All your fault.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
This never would have happened if it weren't for you.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
I kind of forgot he was an android for a second,
and maybe the game did too for a moment. But
I wanted to share that too. I thought that was
incredibly well done.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
It's very touching. Yeah, Unfortunately that thread, if Carl does die,
it doesn't really get resurrected at all or brought back
or elaborated upon. It sort of stops there, and Marcus's
arc continues with the sort of civil rights bent civil
rights slavery angle. But it is a very it is

(10:48):
a very touching scene. We should note. Regardless of what
happens here, whether Marcus obeys or disobeys, the police show
up and end up shooting Marcus. If Karl dies, Leo
will say, Marcus, attack my dad, they shoot you. If
Leo flees after you push him, they see you on
the ground with Carl, and they mistake you for the

(11:09):
robber and they shoot you. So either way it's lights
out for you. And that takes us into chapter seven Interrogation.
We're back with Connor and Hank. If you remember from
last episode, they just caught a deviant and they're going
to interrogate it. The deviant won't talk, he's stressed, and
deviants are prone to self destruction, we learn from Connor.

(11:29):
So this is a total scene out of a buddy
cop movie. Connor, the new rookie, offers to try to
get some info out of him. Gavin scoffs the rookie's
going to do it, and Hank says, well, what do
we got to lose? So you get to interrogate the deviant. Now,
this section highlights two things that I find perplexing and

(11:51):
deleterious to this game. So we mentioned in the last
episode about the whiplash, the total whiplash of conversation and
how depending on how you're role playing or what dialogue
options you choose, the role playing experience can feel very
disjointed lopsided because you'll go from one demeanor to another,

(12:14):
just back and forth, almost herky jerky, and the same
thing can happen here due in part to the second
part of this. This is a sort of mini game
where you have to get the deviant stress in an
acceptable range. I don't know the numbers off hand. It's
something like, I don't know, sixty five to seventy five percent.

(12:35):
Let's say, any lower you're not going to get a confession.
Any higher it'll self destruct out of stress. So you
have to get it right into that slot. But as
you do that, as you go up and down, you
say things to stress it out, to get the stress up,
you say things to calm it down. The dialogue is
just incredibly disjointed. I think the last time I said

(12:55):
something to the effect of a soggy puzzle soggi puzzle pieces,
it feels like that thing don't fit quite right. You know.
Connor is being very understanding and sincere one moment, and
then the next saying that he's gonna shut him down
and probe his memory. It's it's very strange.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
Yeah, this was the first time I really found myself
questioning what sort of tonal approach they were really trying
to go for, not just with this chapter, but with
this game sometimes too. And yeah, the dialogue tone changes
are very abrupt, like it's quite simply Connor's trying to
be nice in some instances, come on, talk to me.

(13:30):
I'll make sure the humans don't shut you down. And
then it gets to a point where he, like you said,
threatens to probe his memory, and he's very fierce, and
it's all in favor of trying to just balance a
meter that's on screen. So while I largely like this
chapter for what it's trying to do. I love the
atmosphere that's cold and machine like, and the music in

(13:53):
this moment does a superb job to match that tone.
But at the end of the day, you're just pressing
buttons to balance a meter, and I felt very disjointed
myself in this as well. Like I like this chapter,
but I wish they would have done it differently, I guess,
but I'm not entirely sure how they would either. So

(14:13):
I suppose it serves a purpose.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
I mean, how they would would have made it just
a more straightforward conversation. I think this is one of
the inherent downsides to this approach that Cage and his
team want to take this incoherency of character, motivation and
attitude and dialogue. It's just part of the struggle with this,
and they tip the boat a little too far in

(14:37):
service of making what is essentially a minigame. And yeah,
I don't know. I do think it suffers for it.
But regardless, it might self destruct, it might not give
you anything, but if you get it right into the
sweet spot, it gives you the low down on why
it did what it did. Here's what he says. He
tortured me.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
Every day.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
I did whatever he told me, but there was always
something wrong.

Speaker 8 (15:10):
Then one day he took a bat and started hitting me.

Speaker 5 (15:18):
For the first time.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
I felt.

Speaker 8 (15:23):
Scared, scared he might destroy me, Scared I might die.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
The android felt threatened, it felt abused, it felt threatened,
and self preservation kicked in again. We're back to this
empathetic human emotion. This what David Cage and his team
seemed to be equating with Qualia. Right. Remember we talked
about phenomenal consciousness, what it means to be a human.
Here it suggested that maybe that is empathetic individualistic drive,

(15:57):
self preservation, recognizing the self, no obedience, things like that. Moreover,
this is also where R nine begins to get mentioned
very heavily. The truth is inside, I think, is what
this Devian says, what do you make of R nine? No, mad,
what's your I don't want to say, what's your take

(16:18):
on this? Like? How do you interpret it? Overall? We're
gonna talk more about that moving forward. Do you have
any thoughts or opinions on them using R nine and
how they use it in this game?

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah. At first, when you see any mention of RA nine,
I think it's when you're in the house where this
devian is and he scrawls it all over the inside
of the shower stall. I think it is. And at
first it didn't really make much sense, and I kind
of had some different theories. But as soon as this
particular deviant mentions RA nine and the significance to it,

(16:52):
my mind immediately went to Christianity, Christ the Savior, Son
of God type of mentality here, and it almost seemed
too easy, if that makes sense, Like I and what
I mean by that is, I love the idea that
as these androids begin to become sentient and they're forming

(17:14):
their own thoughts and they're feeling human emotions, or at
least the simulation thereof, it kind of makes sense to
try to go towards, say, a religious sort of an
angle or humans do it all the time. We either
use or embrace religion to try to whether it's to
justify existence or actions, or what's going to happen when

(17:36):
we eventually die. And it's all very enthralling, and I
kind of like the idea that this android is kind
of peeking into this way of thinking. But I don't know.
It seemed too easy, if that's even the right word.
I wouldn't say forced, but it's not the angle I
was hoping they would go, at least that's what formed
immediately in my head. Maybe there was a different direction

(17:59):
the writers were trying to go, but I don't know.
It felt a little heavy handed. I don't dislike it,
but it was just kind of one of those Okay,
I guess I see where this is going. Does that
make sense?

Speaker 1 (18:10):
It does, and I think I think your interpretation is apt.
It's a stand in for religion, right. That's one of
the things that makes humanity unique, that makes us different
from other intelligent beings is faith. What it means to
have faith and what it means to have religion, And
I think that would be an incredibly interesting angle to

(18:33):
go down. Once again, we're window shopping with all of
these really fascinating ethical and philosophical ideas. What does it
mean to have religion, to have faith, and what would
that look like with an artificial but sentient life form?
What does how does faith play a role in something
that is inherently based off of nothing but logic? Well,

(18:57):
we don't really know, because they don't expel it is
a stand in for religion, and it's it's you know,
the images of the Savior coming in of belief, will
will keep us whole and satiate our soul. All of
that is all through here, but they don't really do
much with it. That's I suppose spoiler alert. But ra

(19:19):
A nine is brought up throughout the entire game and
it's never really it's never really explained. And I don't
I don't mean to say that they had to. I
don't mean to say that they need to have explained
it to make it interesting. What I'm saying is the
combination of not explaining it and not exploring it, that
combination together, it's like, at that point, why is it here?

(19:44):
It's it's not And it's not even like a mcguffin
or a red herring necessarily because everything else that's going
to happen in the plot, drives it forward perfectly fine.
It's it feels superfluous in a way, which is unfortunate
because I mean, I would have been very cool to
explore what an AI based religion and faith would have

(20:05):
been and would have looked like, and what function it
would have served to them. I don't know, it would
have been very cool, I think. And you know, there
aren't any answers hard answers in the wiki either. I
think a lot of folks say that R A nine
is sort of an idealized version of Marcus, the first
to awaken. I think that's probably the strongest interpretation outside

(20:27):
of just a faith fabricated from you know, their desires
and needs.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, you sum this up perfectly, and I think, even
just to try to further clarify my point, I'll keep
it brief. I think I went with the word easy
just because as I thought about it, more like you
had said, wonderful ideas that I wish they would have
explored a little further. And it is very easy to
kind of pin the R nine moniker on Marcus. As
he continues to go throughout his journey, he is arguably

(20:59):
the first to awaken, or at least it's kind of
how he's perceived, so it all makes sense from that standpoint.
But this again, this game continues to go towards some
amazing topics and discussions that could potentially be had as
they explore these things, but they left this one go
a little bit too. So I say easy because it's
a great insert that we don't do much of anything

(21:19):
with and that's unfortunate.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah, it's something fundamentally understood to all of us, and
I think that inherently makes it a little bit disappointing
that we don't see much done with it. Regardless, though
this chapter will end with Gavin coming in. They're going
to take the Deviant away. This is another instance where
it can self destruct because Gavin is of course a
huge asshole, and you can intervene. If you intervene, you

(21:44):
can ensure that the Deviant gets out safely. You have
to do it a couple times. Gavin will pull his
gun on you and tell you to quit your shit,
and then Hank will pull his gun on Gavin and
tell Gavin to quit his shit. Protocol is being broken
all around here. If you don't intervene, the the devient
will self distruct.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, it's a pretty it's a pretty interesting scene regardless
of how it plays out. But it's funny you say that.
That was my takeaway too, Dope, we're just pointing guns
at each other now, to hell with the rules.

Speaker 4 (22:15):
This is America.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Onto the next chapter. It's titled Fugitives. This is gonna
We have a couple of quicker ones coming up, and
this is one of them. Fugitives sees Kara and Alice
trying to find shelter for the night, and this can
go down in a couple of different ways. Three ways
this can go down? How did this play out for
you the first time around?

Speaker 2 (23:00):
So, the very first time I played this, I found
a abandoned house, a squat as the game likes to
call it, and I found a way to navigate through
a wire a mesh fence, get into the squat, and
ultimately that's where I spent the night. Leaving out some
details for now of course.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
Yeah, squatting in the abandoned house is what will get
you the most story content. You meet a character named Ralph.
If you don't do that, you can sleep in an
abandoned car in a parking lot in like a junkyard
rather junk yard parking lot kind of both, or you
can get some money and stay in a hotel nearby.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
I ended up doing all of these particular paths on
subsequent playthroughs, and like you said, the abandoned house is
by far the best from a story standpoint. The hotel
is interesting. The different things you need to do to
be able to procure money, to procure a disguise so
you don't look like an android to be able to
stay at the motel. Kind of liked what you had

(24:00):
to do to get there, but the payoff isn't all
that great once you get there, I felt like from
a story standpoint. And then staying in the abandoned car
in the scrapyard, Alice is extremely adamant that that is
something she does not, in any way, shape or form,
want to do, no matter how secluded they are from
the police or anyone pursuing them. And it's actually to
a point where if you decide to do that, it's
your quickest, easiest way out of this chapter. But Alice's

(24:24):
i'll call it approval rating of Kara goes down so
far that I did this once and she actually became
distance from car, I'm just like, oh, I think I've
just ruined the game by sleeping in the back of
this car.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
Well you would think that based on the red ink
on the paper, right. I think that was the analogy
I used the last time when the little tell tale
tells you that your relationship is hurting. But really it
doesn't work that way. Like I'm role playing this second
time around, I'm still finishing up my second play through
for this episode as we record in real time. If

(24:59):
I'm roll playing as Kara being kind of negligent and uncaring,
but that's not the story David Cage and his team
want to tell. So even though you can do that,
the grand skeleton of the story still takes you through
all those story beats of Kara being a maternal figure.
So there's there's this dissonance it. I don't know, it

(25:19):
doesn't work. I don't want to bring this up and
harp on it and be a broken record every time
it comes up. But since you did, I figured what
I might as well. Yeah, it's I don't know. I
don't know why we're roleplaying that, why he's allowing us
to roleplay that, given there's clearly a story he wants
to tell and it's okay, Like tell your story, man,

(25:42):
It's okay to be focused and linear, to have a story.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
I agree.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
I also stayed in the parking lot this second time around,
but staying in the house squatting in the house, you
have to get wirecutters from the convenience store, so you're
gonna have to rob it either way. That lets you
cut the gate and get in to the squatting house.
Ralph is in there. Ralph is an android that speaks
in the third person. He's very beaten and disheveled, obsessed

(26:08):
with ra nine and we don't really know why. We
think he might be a thread at first, but he
you know, he reveals himself to be cool. He doesn't
like humans. He's afraid of humans because his owner beat
and disfigured him, burned him, cut him up. He's got
scars and burn marks everywhere. That's where we're staying. We're
staying with Ralph for now and for this night. He

(26:28):
doesn't really cause any trouble, you know. We ask if
we can stay and he says yes, and that's where
we're holding up for the night.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
I really liked Ralph as a character because he did
a very good job of making me, as the player,
feel very uneasy. I didn't really know what the right
thing was to do, and even though the game's trying
to make me feel maternal towards Alice, I legitimately felt
that way. I almost second thought going into the squad altogether,
but I really liked his character, and I think this

(26:57):
particular moment in the story pretty nice. Even though you
kind of have an interesting moment with Alice after you
make her bet up of I think maybe something soft
and a piece of cardboard. I can't remember, but she
does ask Kara, are you going to be with me forever?
Promise you're gonna be with me forever. I can't remember
the exact verbiage, but it's interesting. The game even gives

(27:19):
you the choice to say yes, I promise will be
together forever, or we won't be together forever, or I
can't promise that because of exactly what you just got
done saying Rick. The game is written in such a
way where the answer is always I promise, regardless of
what you choose, or at least that's how I felt.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
Yeah, there's no reason we should be scarring this little
child and saying well, the future is uncertain. Actually there's
no proof of Santa Claus.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Yes, anytime the game gives me a choice to do
something like that, I can't do it, even if I
want to.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
You always let the kid believe in Santa. What's exactly
Chapter nine is from the Dead. This sees us as
Marcus coming back from being shot. So after he was shot,
he was kind of put into a junk heap of androids.
And what's interesting here there are two things that stand
out to me in this chapter. One there is a
huge metaphor for rebirth throughout here, and two, there is

(28:15):
a distinct horror flavor to this chapter that kind of
shows up in some chapters down the line too. There's
like it's almost like they had some horror fans on
the team and they wanted to give little nods, which
you know, I mean, it's not scary scary, but it's
definitely unsettling playing through this. What you're gonna do is

(28:39):
your legs are sort of torn off and you have
to crawl around to get new legs. But your ocular sensor,
your memory palace mind palace thing isn't working, and your
auditory function isn't working, so you have to go around
this scrapyard to find all of these spare parts among

(28:59):
all these other destroyed decrepit androids.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Yeah, the imagery here is very on the nose, but
I think kind of in a good way. This is
absolutely setting up Marcus's rebirth, and I've rather enjoyed the
aesthetics in this chapter, the quasi horror. As you said,
I also like that because certain things are physically damaged
on Marcus that actually impacts certain things with the gameplay.

(29:24):
The ability to hold down I think it's your R
two button on the controller to do kind of the
Android detective mode thing. It doesn't function until you find
the right part to repair it. And then another part
I think you mentioned was his audio chip. He can't
hear or hear well, so the sound in this particular
moment is very distorted. It's very kind of like you're

(29:46):
in a tunnel basically. And once you do find that
particular part and the audio is restored, it's crisp and
clean again. You can hear the rain and the thunder
and all that. And I'd like that as you slowly
piece yourself together, you're quite literally adding gameplay elements back
to your experience and it's really well done too.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
It's not so bad. Yeah, Marcus will continue to walk
through this valley of death, through the electronic debris, dirt,
and androids, piecing himself together. This is a literal rebirth metaphor.
We are not only clawing our way out of hell,
we are our personal hell, our hell of servitude. We
are clawing our way out to be reborn, to be

(30:27):
baptized in the rain. It is raining, of course, It's
almost a literal baptism and rebirth scene. As you replace
your parts, you also replace an eye and the result
is heterochromia, two different eye colors, which is a distinctly
human trait, which is, you know, it's further characterization that

(30:51):
are these people? Are these androids people? I don't know.
The metaphor, the Messiah metaphor gets way stronger later, so
I don't I don't know that I necessarily feel too
negatively about this one. It's kind of a drag to
go through on subsequent playthroughs, but it's not so bad.
I don't think it's so heavy handed to be obnoxious. Oh,

(31:15):
speaking speaking of upcoming chapters, this is the first time
we hear about a place called Jericho, and it is
a place where they can be safe. One of the
dying androids that is in pieces in here tells Marcus
this in a sort of frenzied last breath. So Jericho
is now on our radar.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
Yeah, we'll be hearing a lot about Jericho and the
subsequent chapters. So it's it's interesting how he's given that information,
but it encompasses just how really this is a good
chapter kind of as you were starting to allude to
as well, a couple things I wanted to mention before
we move on, and I'll keep him quick. I don't
know if you saw. It's depending on where you stand

(31:55):
in the junkyard. You're able to do the press at
L one to look at the thing prompt and there's
actually a very angelic statue that you can look up towards.
Why it's in this junk yard makes no sense to me,
but it's back lit by the moon and it looks
looks wonderful, But it just further further presses the theme

(32:16):
that the level's trying to go towards. I don't know
if you caught.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
That, Oh I did not. An angelic statue.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yes, like I can picture in my head where you
can see it, but I can't describe it to you.

Speaker 1 (32:25):
To save my life, I didn't. I did not see that.
I mean it further, It furthers the rebirth and baptism metaphor. Right,
Marcus is in his own personal hell, and he is
sort of representative of all androids in their own personal
hell of servitude, right, trying to break out and assert
their independence, their free will, their quality. And this is

(32:51):
that for Marcus, quite literally clawing our way out and
being reborn in the rain, complete, by the way, with
music underscoring that I can only describe as epic, which
is how they gave the directive to the composer for
Marcus's music. Epic definitely definitely captured that here.

Speaker 2 (33:12):
Yeah, one hundred percent. It was very well done. One
of the things I wanted to mention too before we
move on. I don't know if you came across him
or not. There are two androids in the Junkyard that
are still functioning, albeit very poorly, and you, as the player,
are given the choice on whether or not you want
to kill or spare them. There's one of them as

(33:34):
a female, and she's kind of half buried in the
Dirton debris, and she has the thermal regulator or the
heart piece that you need, and you can go to
take it, and she'll actually grab Marcus's hand and kind
of plead with him, No, I want to live. I
don't want to die. And then you're given the choice
to kill her and take the part you need, or
spare her and try to find it elsewhere. And it

(33:56):
is elsewhere, so you don't have to kill her, which
I thought was an an interesting choice to make. But
there's also another android crawling around on the ground somewhere,
and I missed him the first time I played the
game through. He's in such just repair that he asks
to be killed. He asked to be put out of
his misery, and you have the choice whether or not
you do it. You get nothing from it, but it

(34:16):
gives you that choice. So now the game is starting
to kind of set up the idea that you can
either be someone merciful or someone maybe vengeful, or just
do whatever it is that you need to do to
get out of where you are so you can continue
on whatever journey you decide for yourself. So I don't
know if you came across them, but I thought it
was interesting to pose the player with those choices.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
At this point, I did, Yeah, it gives you the
humanization aspect, or to frame it in a revolutionary light
that will see upcoming. Do we protect the people at
all costs, even if it means the struggle is greater,
or do we accept necessary sacrifices for quicker justice.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
There you go, well said I do.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
Okay. Sometimes we're on to chapter ten. We're waiting for Hank.
This is our first introduction to Connor's mind palace. So
every so often Connor will make a report to cyber
Life where he sort of stands there and meditates. This
is never like clarified, but I interpreted as this is
where Connor's going into his mind palace. It's a garden

(35:18):
of Eden essentially, where he is able to internally recluse
himself to speak with this character named Amanda.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Hello, Amanda.

Speaker 9 (35:29):
Connor, it's good to see you. Congratulations Connor. Finding that
deviant was far from easy, and the way you interrogated
it was very clever. You've been remarkably efficient, Connor.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
Thank you.

Speaker 10 (35:50):
Amanda.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
She's a woman, a somewhat older woman, and from what
we can tell, she is pro cyber Life, and she
really wants Connor to catch an deal with these deviants.
I don't know, let's talk about this here. I don't
know that we need to bring this up every time
it comes up, because it's largely the same shtick every time.

(36:11):
Amanda wants to see Connor succeed in his mission. She
does not want Connor to have empathy for deviance, she
does not want Connor to have struggles working with Hank.
She just wants him to do his mission and help
save cyber life. And we find out more later, but
that's sort of what happens every time. So what did
you make of this? Of this mind palace visually speaking?

Speaker 2 (36:32):
To start with, it is beautiful. It's one of those
places where I could absolutely find peace myself if I
were to ever come across something like that in real life.
And I like the idea that this is how the
game is kind of representing Connor making that internal report,
if you will, and talking to his superiors, which it
was actually kind of funny in the very beginning, maybe

(36:53):
the first couple minutes of dialogue between Connor and Amanda.
I didn't actually put that together for some reason. I
thought he was like literally somewhere else maybe Cyber Life
had this location within their headquarters as something like that.
But I came to terms with it pretty quick, and
I really really enjoyed it. And I also like the
dialogue between Connor and Amanda because it's an interesting kind

(37:15):
of tug and pull. Maybe not in this first scene really,
but in subsequent scenes. She really wants you to accomplish
your mission and she has no tolerance for any deviation
away from that objective.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
Yeah, she's and she's very clearly your superior. I suppose
it should be said.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
Yes exactly. And what I found myself doing a lot
of times is I would say what I know she
wanted to hear, whether I felt that way or not,
and I couldn't tell if that was me just trying
to appease my superior because maybe me, as Connor, I'm

(37:52):
starting to already think as the player deviant thoughts, if
you will, or maybe I'm just saying what it is
that she wants wants to hear because I am very
steadfast in my mission. It's interesting I find some instances
where you as the player can make conflicting choices based
on what you think the character should do, what you

(38:13):
want to do, and then kind of what the story
kind of wants you to do as well. I've got
some examples upcoming, but this really started me down that path.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
See, I told her what she wanted to hear, because
that is how I function in my day to day
life with all of my superiors. That's what she got
to do.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
That's exactly that's exactly right. If I had like one
of those little telltale meters next to my boss, it
would be a blue arrow all the time.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
I'd be the best little gamer possible. So we break
out of the mind palace. Connor is going to meet
Hank at the police station, the swankiest and most expensive
police station I have ever seen. Again, what is going
on in Detroit that they have so much money? It
is wild? But you wait for him to get in,
you know. Everybody jokes like, you know, what time does

(38:58):
Lieutenant Anderson get in? Depends on where he was the
night before. We'll be lucky if we see him before noon,
you know, because he's an alcoholic. The that's the gag.
But you do you wait for him. You get to
if you choose to. You can check out his desk
and learn a little bit about him. He's a by
the book Coppo type. He's a copper detective. He's a

(39:19):
detective that was a wonder kind and he lost his
fire and now he just drinks his night away, disheveled.
He's terrible with technology. He's totally at odds with his
boss because he goes by the beat of his own drum. Also,
and this is not part of the archetype, he really
likes heavy metal and jazz. Cool.

Speaker 2 (39:38):
Yeah, it's almost a little too on the nose that
particular archetype, but I have to admit I kind of
like that, and I think that allowed Connors, well you
as the player, to play Connor as someone that could
really be buddy buddy with Hanks, So I think it
serves more of a narrative purpose than anything else. But
I don't know. I also feel like I could actually

(39:59):
go and hang out with Hand, So there is totally
totally Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
I like that archetype too. Gets a little too close
to home with music stuff, and we don't have the
time to get into that. But I have a lot
of affection for the very gifted or very hard working
talent through hard work sort of archetype that loses that
fire due to personal issues or being becoming disenchanted with

(40:26):
what they once loved. I like that archetype a lot.

Speaker 8 (40:28):
I do.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
Yeah, same here.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
But speaking of Hank, he does come in and he
speaks with his supervisor. The gist of it is this,
Hank gets assigned to investigate the growing android problem. You know,
there are homicides that are happening way more often things
of that nature, and a blowout ensues.

Speaker 10 (40:46):
I've got ten new cases involving androids on my desk
every day. We've always had isolated incidents, old ladies losing
their android made and that kind of crap, But now
we're getting reports of a song and even homicide like
that guy last night.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
This isn't just cyberlifed problem anymore.

Speaker 10 (41:06):
It's now a criminal investigation, and we've got to deal
with it before the shit hits the fan. I want
you to investigate these cases and see if.

Speaker 11 (41:13):
There's any link. Why me, Why do I gotta be
the one to deal with this shit. I am the
least qualified cop in the country to handle this case.
I know jack shit about androids, Jeffrey, I can barely
change the settings on my own phone.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
Everybody's overloaded. I think you're perfectly qualified.

Speaker 11 (41:30):
For this type of investigation.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Bullshit.

Speaker 11 (41:32):
The truth is nobody wants to investigate these fucking androids,
and you let me hold the bag.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
Cyber Life send over this android to help with the investigation.
It's a state of the art prototype. It'll act as
your partner.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
No fucking way.

Speaker 11 (41:45):
I don't need a partner, and certainly not this plastic PreK.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
Hank is feeling targeted because he doesn't like androids. I'm
not sure where I'm gonna insert the audio. Maybe it
was just before this, maybe it's right after, who knows,
but you'll hear some of that because it's well acted.
I thought they did that very well. I love hearing
Clancy Brown get very angry. He's got a great voice
for that.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Yeah, that's the one thing I remember about this scene
is just how good Clancy Brown's acting. Shops are here.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
Yeah, Yeah, he's great. But he is being assigned to
the android cases, whether he likes it or not, and
he's none too thrilled. You go back and sit down
with him at the desk, and you can make small
talk if you want to, about what transpired, or about
what you learned at his desk, about his love for basketball, music,
his dog's name being Sumo, or you can just not

(42:35):
you could go right down to business. What I appreciate
about this though, is everything that you learn. You know,
basketball his job. He's got anti android propaganda stickers all
over his desk. If you just go down the list
and ask him about each and every one, some of
them will increase your relationship and some will decrease. So

(42:56):
not that I mean ultimately these relationships meters don't matter
all that much, so I mean that should be said,
But I mean, if you're just being the gamer that
goes down the dialogue tree, you're not necessarily going to
be rewarded at every turn. I like that same.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
I absolutely appreciated that too, because as soon as you
unlock a new type of dialogue or a way to
say something, the game signifies that by putting a little
unlocked padlock next to the dialogue option. So my gamer
brain is, oh, I worked to earn this dialogue option,

(43:33):
I should probably use it. And I liked how because
Hank is the type of character he is. He's very
unstable and volatile. Sometimes you don't really know what you're
gonna get. You think you're gonna ask this question with
the best of intentions, but somehow it either offends him
or annoys him. And at that point I learned you

(43:54):
don't just go down the dialogue tree anymore. Try to
think through what you're gonna say, even though the dialogue
options themselves can be quite vague and they don't always
correspond to how you think in classic but I think
this is a BioWare esque thing, or maybe it's a
quantic dream thing. Either way, very vague.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
I'm glad you brought that up. It's almost like we're
sharing the same notes. Yes, this is very BioWare. The
example that I wrote down here is you know, they'll
give you button presses that correspond with understandable, harsh direct,
et cetera. I pushed understanding, and Connor basically said, you've
got to move past your personal issues, lieutenant, and I

(44:35):
was like, that, ain't it, man, That's not what you say.
That's not it. Yeah, very BioWare in that way. It
got a laugh out of me. No matter what happens,
I'm pretty sure Hank ends the scene mad at you.
He gets a little aggressive physically with you, and you
either end with Hank getting a lead or Hank getting
no lead. I don't know how to get no lead.

(44:57):
I get a lead every time. I'm just a great detective.
How do you not get a lead from this?

Speaker 2 (45:02):
The way that that works is Alice and Caara need
to be dead by this point in the game, because
when you get a lead, it's about Alice and Kara.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
If they oh yes, yeah, right.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
If you somehow get them killed, which I think the
only way to do that is if you don't escape
the house in the beginning with Todd, then I think
the scene just transpires to Hank gets mad and then
he says I'm going to lunch and then the scene ends.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
That's right, Yeah, at this point that's the only way
Kara and Alice can die, and then you lose like
a third of your game. Yes, speaking of Kara and Alice,
we're going back to them in chapter eleven on the
run again. This will largely depend on where you stayed
the night before, but no matter where you stayed, Kara
is going to change her appearance. She's still walking around

(45:49):
in her cyber life uniform. So what she's going to
do is she's going to cut her hair, she's going
to change her hair color, and she finds clothing, whether
it's in a closet or in the trunk of the car.
She puts on this like oversized kind of like military
jacket sort of deal. She cuts her hair real short,
and you get to choose blonde, black, or white. I

(46:12):
always go white in hair situations that I can change.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
I think it looks cool nice. I did white my
first playthrough, but subsequent playthroughs I don't know. I did
black because I have black hair. I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
This also gets into androids and how Cage sees them,
but I want to hold off on that because I
know I have a comment later on about that, so
I'll hold onto that for now. If you're staying with Ralph,
there is a tense scene that happens here, and this
is all before Connor and Hank show up, because, as

(46:49):
you just said, they do, that's the lead they get.
But if you stayed in the shack in the abandoned
house with Ralph, when you wake up the next morning,
Ralph has Alice at knife point and he's dual wielding
in his other hand a dead gopher of some sort,
and he says he's going to feed us, quote like
a family.

Speaker 12 (47:07):
Ralph found this to feed the little girl it's good
for her a present to make up for past misunderstandings.
Raphail cook, we will do just a cumans.

Speaker 9 (47:19):
Do it.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
Cumans like Burt meat, succulent, succulent.

Speaker 4 (47:23):
You'll see succulent.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
Suculent, succulent. He's very fond of that word. Alice is
understandably terrified. As shit, I think is the medical term.
I tried having Mankara explain, like Ralph, people don't eat that,
that's not what people eat, and Ralph explodes, metaphorically explodes.
He says, you know, yes, they do. Ralph knows this.

(47:48):
Ralph went through a lot of trouble to get this.
It's very tense, and you have an option here. You
mentioned the padlocks signifying routes or options that you have
when you're chained in the shack. You actually put your
gun down to put on the new jacket, and you
can forget to pick it back up. If you pick
it back up, though, you have the option to check

(48:08):
your gun here. You don't have to pull it, but
you can check it. What I did is I convinced Ralph, hey,
a father would never threaten his daughter with a knife,
which you know, I'm not a parent, but I think
I've got that part down.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
Pat, there you go. You're your setup for success.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
I can I can think of fewer than five reasons
I would threaten a child with a knife, and most
of them probably wouldn't happen. Let's get out of here
before I get in trouble, before the scene plays out,
Connor comes a knocking, or I guess before we do that.
Any thoughts on Ralph This is kind of the last
we see of him.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
Yeah, again, we kind of touched on it a little
bit before. But I really really like this character. I
like how unstable he is because I felt very uncomfortable
as the player, and I it sounds weird to say,
but I really like being put in these situations where
I really have to try and think about what I
want Kara or whomever to say, what I think they

(49:09):
should say based on the character as they're presented to us.
And I think for the most part, the game does
really good about if you select options that are pretty
applicable to a character, their personality or their mental state
at that point that it kind of makes sense. There's
not a lot of total whiplash there, at least not
in my opinion. So this this particular scene was really

(49:30):
fun to kind of navigate through. I actually went the
route more so of oh yeah, Gopher sounds wonderful and
kind of played into his fantasy for a little while
until I think I reached the same point where I
could decide to check and or pull the gun at
that point, but he was a little bit more in
agreeance with us and not nearly as on edge because

(49:51):
we're about to shove Gopher in our faces. But it's
still really fun and I like Ralph as a character
for that.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
Yeah, his trauma manifesting here, it's it's not just that
he's some crazy, wacky android. He's traumatized. Connor comes in next.
You know what happens is Connor pulls up. We hear
him come in. Kara and Alice hide and Connor will
come in and gets to investigate, and you can scan
Ralph and you see that he's got like third degree

(50:21):
burns on his android's skin. He's missing an eye. I
think I forgot to mention tons of knife marks. It's
very clear abuse from a previous owner, so his trauma
is well founded on This goes to another sort of
mini game though, where it's hot and cold. You know
your Ralph's stress level will rise as Connor gets closer

(50:44):
to Kara Analys's hiding spot. You don't even actually have
to talk to Ralph. If you know where they are,
you can just be line it over there and and
this like real quick. But you can interrogate him too.
Once you find them they're hiding like under the stairs.
Ralph will kind of jump Connor from behind, giving them
a time to run, a time to escape. And that's

(51:04):
when Clancy Brown and I think another cop body comes
in and the pursuit begins. They chase Karra and Alice
to a highway. Connor does an automated highway. I suppose
it should be said these cars are autonomous and they
are traveling at speeds far greater than our highway, think
the Autobahn times one point twenty five or something very

(51:27):
very fast. And this begins a chase sequence across the
highway with Karra and Connor. Connor tries to go, and
Hank will try and stop you. Hank says, you know,
don't do that. It's suicide. And depending on how you're playing,
you can choose to ignore him or choose to go.
If you're being a deviant, you choose to obey Hank
even though it goes against your mission. Otherwise you can

(51:49):
go across the highway. But either way here you're going
to have to do some qtase at the very least
with Kra and Alice, and they can die here. They
can get hit by cars and die.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
Ye this scene, and I think largely this entire chapter
is one of my favorites, maybe in the entire game,
for a couple different reasons. Since we're on the highway
section here, I mentioned this last episode, although I can't
remember where specifically, but I absolutely adore the music that
plays during this chase sequence because this is from what

(52:22):
I recall, the first example that I can think of
where Connor's music is very distinct, Carr's music is very distinct.
They had two different composers that worked on the music together,
but now these two are in this exciting desperate scene
together and you can hear both of their themes kind
of overlapping into each other. Connor's more cold and metallic

(52:45):
sort of tones along with the violins and the strings
of karas as they're running across this highway. I don't
know what it is about that score, but it absolutely
elevates this chase scene. For me, it's one of those
ones where when it's on screen as as I was
replaying the game through, like if my wife were in
the room, she would absolutely stop and watch this particular
scene for how well it was done. So I really

(53:08):
like this chapter for that.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
It's very exciting. This is the stuff Quantic Dream does well,
like they do the action sequences, the movie scenes very well.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Oh yeah, big time. They absolutely nailed it here and
you have to commend them for it too. The other
thing that I really like about this chapter, and it
didn't really click with me until I played the game
through a second or a third time. But and you
might have mentioned it, but when you're here with Connor,
you're also controlling Connor, so your control is being flipped

(53:40):
back and forth between Cara and Connor. And then when
you're on the highway, the QTEs kind of do the
same thing. You hit the buttons, but you're also hitting
the buttons for Carra and Alice. Then you hit the
buttons for Connor, so he can also cross the highway
if you choose to have him go across the fence
and defy Hank. What I found interesting here though, is
you're controlling these characters. But these characters both they have

(54:04):
conflicting objectives. Car and Alice are trying to escape and you,
as Connor, you're tasked to try to catch them. And
I thought it was interesting because the more I thought
about it my second playthrough, I thought to myself, can
I just let them escape as Connor? And you absolutely
can if you want. If you want him to fail,
you can decide not to find them even if you

(54:25):
know where they are, and that can change the story
in that particular way. But I did find myself in
my first playthrough just going through the quote unquote motions
and just doing what I was told. But I thought
that was interesting. It's not really apparent that you can
do this, but you can play these characters kind of
off each other if you want them to mold into

(54:45):
a single objective for the narrative that you want to
try to paint for yourself. You don't get a ton
of freedom that way, but I like that it's there
sort of.

Speaker 1 (54:54):
I totally agree. Yeah, that's well said and well observed.
You don't have to just play Connor either as either
one percent got him or one hundred percent didn't. You
can be in the middle, which is what I did here.
I'm kind of making my Connor this play through fully
non deviant but somewhat incompetent, So I had him chase

(55:14):
them across the highway, but I had him purposefully die.
I failed every QTE until Connor was killed on the highway.
That really shakes Hank up. By the way, Hank does
not like it when Connor dies and then comes back
in a different body. It fucks him up.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
Yeah, it fucks him up, and it pisses him off
to the nth degree as well.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
Yes, because he wants a he desperately needs a friend.
Hank does, and like it or not, he's seeing Connor
in that way. Hank is our sundare little protagonist and
he needs a friend. He wants a friend, and seeing
his friend essentially be a machine and reminded that there's
no humanity there. Hank doesn't like it. If you play

(55:54):
full non deviant, full android, Hank will be hostile towards you.
And we may see that fold out today in a
very exciting scene that I emotionally exciting scene I should
say that I think is very cool. Yes, but we
don't see that quite yet. We're moving on to the
next chapter, Chapter twelve, that's Jericho. This is a quickie.

(56:16):
This is my least favorite chapter in the game.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
I think yep I would one hundred percent agree with you.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
This is just fine. The clues. You're playing as Marcus
trying to find Jericho. You get these clues that you
look at on your hand. They're sort of like android
telepathically put onto your hand, and you're just going around
the city trying to find them. Between the camera angles
and the what do you call it force perspective, this
isn't much of a hunt. David Cage basically has you

(56:44):
on a hallway throughout this whole area. Despite it looking
open through cameras and through borders along the environment, whether
artificial like you know, traffic jams or whatever, or invisible walls,
you're on a hallway. He just suggests choice without giving
it to you. This is weak narratively one PC, but

(57:04):
here it works because it keeps the story focused and
it keeps the pacing focused. If this were just an
open world, this chapter would be insufferable, But to Cage's credit,
he doesn't do that. It doesn't work narratively. Whenever he
puts you on a hallway like this, but here, absolutely
that was the right choice one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
Yeah, And I'm glad you brought that up too, because
that's exactly what I think of when I think back
to this chapter. I'm so glad we weren't just flailing
around the city trying to find these symbols on a wall.
So to Cage's credit, one hundred percent, I agree with
you there too. The other thing that's part of this
chapter as well, we're introduced to a mechanic here where you,

(57:43):
as Marcus can actually pre construct or pre plan away
through an obstacle. Example, you jump on top of a
roof of one of these buildings, a little lower rooftop,
and you have to navigate over a gap, but it's
too for you to jump over. The game then kind
of puts you in the hold the R two button

(58:05):
down Android detective mode sort of thing, and you're able
to look around the environment and see spots where Marcus
could potentially navigate around this obstacle, and there's only one
right way to do it, so you're kind of trial
and error trying to figure out how to go across
this obstacle. And I like it for what it is
it's kind of cool to kind of put your shoes

(58:26):
in the Android mindset to try to calculate the process
for success and then you execute on it, and it's
kind of cool for that, but it's also kind of
a I felt like it was a time waster or
padded runtime maybe because then you construct your path, you
press the square button to execute, and then you watch

(58:48):
Marcus do the thing you just constructed in almost the
same camera angles. It was fine, but I don't know
what were your thoughts on that.

Speaker 9 (58:56):
Well.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
My first thought was hearing you say roof and your
sylvania is showing.

Speaker 2 (59:01):
Aha, sorry, I'll cover that up.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
That's okay. Anytime I say the word house I have
to think about how to pronounce it, because God forbid,
if you let a hass slip through, you never know
what can happen. Now, I think this is fine. I'm
going to hold off my thoughts on the pre constructed
routes business until the next chapter because it ties into
the pin I put in earlier. One of the unfortunate
things is it takes out all the exciting platforming, so

(59:27):
you just watch it happen instead of actually doing it, which,
like I get it, it probably would have taken a
significant amount of mo cap and editing. I get it,
but you know, I'm just saying it would have been
more exciting to do it. But we find Jericho though
it is a huge abandoned fright ship.

Speaker 2 (59:47):
So that reveal once he goes through the hallway and
you see this giant freighter with the word Jericho slapped
on the side. I don't know, I don't know what
I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting that. Although once
you actually get into Jericho, into the ship, it makes
a little bit more sense and we get a little

(01:00:08):
bit more symbolism too, as Marcus finds a way to
get himself into Jericho, which is a route I, as
a human would never take. So why I felt the
need to plunge into the ship the way that he
does is beyond me.

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
Yeah, it's a little bit of like a baptism and
rebirth motif continuations. It's very quick, like they don't linger
on it, but you know, he plunges into the water
in slow mo with angelic music playing. It's just a
direct continuation to you know, show that he's being reborn
again and highlighting him as a sort of savior. We

(01:00:45):
get more of the horror DNA in here too. When
we're going through the ship's darkened halls. There's even a
jump scare of one of our future compatriots running across
the hallway just ahead of us, with like an auditory
sound effect. A jump scare in this game, I was
not expecting that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
I wasn't either, so it got me pretty good. But
it was one of those where it got me and
I smiled because it got me. But it was really
cool to navigate the hallways. I think you even come
up to some doors where you can try to open them.
I don't think any of them open, so you are
still streamlined from a point A to point B as
far as I know. But I did like knowing that

(01:01:27):
you know there's something here now. So again, whoever was
on the team that had the love for horror, thank
you for putting it in this game, because it definitely
made me happy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
It's a little creepy, for sure. The chapter ends with
you meeting a bunch of androids, a bunch of rogue
androids that welcome you to Jericho, and then we fade
to black. We're moving into chapter thirteen, The Nest. The

(01:02:08):
end of this chapter is where I'm gonna unpul that pin.
By the way, this is back with Connor and Hank.
You're at a local food stand, you know, getting some lunch.
There are little buddy building moments here.

Speaker 5 (01:02:19):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
If you didn't cross the highway, you can ask Hank,
why didn't you let me cross the highway? And Hank
will say, because you could have been killed. And also
I don't like filing paperwork for damaged equipment, you know,
so little things like that you get a little more
insight into Hank. You can do like a an R
two scan and see that the vendor is doing like

(01:02:40):
illegal activities on the side or something, or maybe you
overhear it. I don't quite remember, but you tell him like, hey,
your buddy's doing illegal activities, and Hank will say, people
do what they have to to get by, you know.
He's that grizzled cop that has lost his fire, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
Which. I actually found this both interesting and confusing at
the same time. And what I mean by that is
I like that you can scan all these things and
gain some insights. Like you go up to the food
truck and I can't remember the name of the character,
but he's interacting with a character that's trying to sell
him a gambling lead. I think on a sports game maybe,
and then yeah, and then yeah, the food truck vendor,

(01:03:19):
I think his actual license to serve or his food
licenses like long since expired and stuff like that too.
But like based on the chapter where you're at the
police station and you're going down through the dialogue tree
and you find out that not everything's going to get
a positive reaction, I thought to myself, if I tell

(01:03:39):
Hank that, hey, your friends are involved in legal activities,
my thought was, I'm just gonna piss him off. So
I never really went down that route. But those particular
dialogue options actually endear Hank to Connor a little more
because he says what he says, I just do what
they do to get by. They don't bother anybody. They
don't bother me. And that confused me, Like why would

(01:04:00):
that make him happy? But I'm complaining for complaining's sake.
I think I still like the interactions though.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
This is where Connor explains deviancy to Hank. DEVI and
C is a fault in android's programming that makes them
emulate human emotions. It is fundamentally an error in computation.
They think they're feeling emotions, but it's all simulated. This
goes I mean again, they don't actually explore this, but
this goes back to that idea of phenomenal consciousness. What

(01:04:28):
is it and how do we pinpoint it and say
this is what it is? These, as far as Connor
and cyber Life are concerned, are just simulations, a perfect
simulacra of what a human would say, or feel or do.
But they're not human. That's deviancy. In a stellar display

(01:04:49):
of grab it off the shelf writing, Cage elects to
make Hank the grizzled techno illiterate gruff cop say, we
believe that a mutation occurs in the software of some
mandroid which can lead to them emulating a human emotion
in English please, and then follow up later with emotions
ruin everything. Androids aren't so different from us as we thought, Like,

(01:05:14):
that's really just grabbing it off the shelf. It's on sale,
throw it in the cart.

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
Yeah, exactly. This is This was very abrupt for me, Like, Okay,
I can buy the whole techno illiterate type of way
of going about writing. Sure, but I don't remember what
Connor was saying exactly in this moment to prompt this response,
but it was not technobabble in any way, shape or form.
I think you just said it to say it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
Which and this was this, This came out in twenty eighteen,
and like you know, it would have been a little
more accepted than it was written before that, so like,
you know, the whole in English, please and I'm tech illiterate,
Like that wasn't as snuffed out as it is now.
When when people say that now, it's it usually triggers
eye rolls and like, all right, man, come on now,

(01:05:58):
twenty twenty five, get with the program, grandpa.

Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
Yeah, no kidding. What also kind of threw me a
little bit too, was Hank all of a sudden seems
to start empathizing towards androids when he's been so adamantly
opposed to them. I don't know, that just seemed kind
of abrupt for me. And I know you can treat
Hank with respect and try to be buddy buddy with
him up to this point, but I don't know, it's

(01:06:23):
just yeah, this writing in this moment. Albeit I don't
think it was terrible, it just felt I don't know,
off is the best way I can describe it.

Speaker 9 (01:06:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:32):
Interesting, I don't know. I don't remember feeling like this
was abrupt, But also, you know, it's interesting whenever you're
going back and revisiting a piece of media that you've
lived with for a while, Like, you know, this is
my second time playing it for this show, but I've
played it no less than four times in the past,
So I think at this point my view is sort

(01:06:55):
of distorted in that I know their relationship and I
like their relationship, so maybe I didn't see that. And
I'm not saying this to be like I've played this
more than you. I'm not like, I don't mean it
that way, but it's like, do you know what I mean?
Whenever I revisit something you know very deeply, or at
least know better than a surface level, it's hard to

(01:07:15):
form to put yourself in a perspective to form those
initial reactions once more.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
So, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
I don't remember thinking this was abrupt. I wouldn't put
it past it. Maybe it is. If I were to
pull it up right now and watch it, that wouldn't
make for good audio content. But if I did, you know,
maybe it would be I don't know. I like seeing
Hank humanized, though, so maybe I'm giving it a pass
solely for that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:39):
No, I think I agree with you as you talk
it out that way. I also find myself being a
little bit more critical of this game than I think
it was originally anticipating, and I think that mostly comes
out of I really do like this game at its core,
and I want it to do well, and I wish
it would have done better in certain areas. But I'm

(01:08:00):
getting way ahead of myself.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
This chapter continues, the two of them go to do
another Android investigation. So there is another apartment that's been emptied,
a homicide was called in and it's another investigation. Just
like with Carlos Orties, it's clear that it's an android.
Ra nine has written obsessively. There are no fingerprints. This apartment, though,
is completely infested with pigeons just everywhere, and the Deviant

(01:08:25):
was taking care of them. As we piece it together,
eventually you find out you figure out that the Devant
is still here. He falls through the ceiling where he
was hiding, and another chase sequence begins again. This is
visually exciting, really visually exciting. Interestingly, during this chase, you
have options to take the slow but safe route or

(01:08:47):
the fast but risky route, and functionally you get there
all the same as long as you don't fail the qtase,
you're gonna get there no matter what route you take.

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
Yeah, that's disappointing, But at the same time, I give
this a pass only because I am so enamored with
how well this scene is put together. I think if
I were to rank all of the chapters in the game,
this one, if not my favorite, is very close to
my favorite, just because I love how well this is
put together. I love how you get a chance to

(01:09:20):
hold the R two button down for maybe two or
three seconds to decide where you want to go, and
you have to make that choice. The QTEs feel nice
and natural here. The music is incredible. It's it's giving
you that adrenaline rush and that classic Connor style that
you're used to hearing now and visually it's wonderful, like

(01:09:41):
it always fills me with adrenaline. I absolutely love this scene.
I wish there was more like it, and it actually
felt like almost felt like I was playing an actual
video game, having to actually do stuff instead of just
making dialogue choices.

Speaker 1 (01:09:56):
Yeah, you've got to think on your feet. It's very exciting.
It gets the blood pumpin. At a certain point, you're
going to reach a rooftop where Hank confronts the Deviant
as he's running, and Hank gets pushed sort of off
of the edge and he's holding onto the edge of
this building. He's about to fall, and Connor has a
pivotal choice to make. You can save Hank, who it

(01:10:16):
shows has an eighty five percent chance of survival. At anytime.
I say that statistic eighty five percent. I think of
that Scott Steiner infamous wrestling tirade, eighty five percent cent
chance at beat me at sacrifice.

Speaker 6 (01:10:32):
See, normally, if you go one on one with another wrestler,
you got fifty to fifty chance of winning. But I'm
a genetic freak and I'm not normal. So you got
twenty five percent at best at beat me. And then
you add turn angle to the mix, You're chance of
winning drastic go down.

Speaker 1 (01:10:50):
You know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
Oh nice, I love it, dude.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
I'm a genetic freak and I'm not normal.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
The knumbers don't lie. If somewhere were to put Scott
Steiner on the Bingo card for this podcast, I would
not have gotten that space.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
Oh you never know what's gonna happen, So you can
do that, or you can choose to pursue the deviant. Now,
of course, if you are playing the way that I
think Cage hopes you do, you're going to make Connor
sympathetic to humans, and you're gonna save Hank. And if
this happens, Hank kind of thanks you, like in his

(01:11:28):
own way, he thanks you, but your software instability goes up.
You do not catch the deviant. Now, you can also
choose to leave Hank and catch the deviant, and if
that happens, you'll get them. The deviant will be like
whose name is Rupert? By the way, He'll be like,
why are you doing this? Why are you helping the humans?
He outright calls Connor a slave?

Speaker 10 (01:11:48):
Why are you doing this?

Speaker 2 (01:11:49):
All right, one of us? Shut up? You're helping humans,
You're just their slave.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
I said, shut up. Hank will catch up to youmpletely
out of breath, he puts the android in cuffs and
then and then bitch slaps Connor in the face. He's
obviously he's not happy that you left him to die.
He says, you bastard. You saw it was gonna fahone.
You'd rather let me die than fail your fucking mission.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
I had to make a choice.

Speaker 11 (01:12:17):
It seemed to me statistic zero one in your fucking program.

Speaker 1 (01:12:24):
So how you see humans, your bastard, Jesus.

Speaker 2 (01:12:28):
I understand you're upset.

Speaker 1 (01:12:29):
Perhaps I didn't assess the fuck with you in your
fucking assessment. Uh, he's I mean, he's rightfully pissed because again,
all he wants, all he needs is a friend. But
you know he doesn't perceive Connor as seeing him as
anything more than a statistic.

Speaker 2 (01:12:45):
Yeah. I feel very bad for Hank whenever I do
make the choice to be able to see this scene.
But I have to say this is another example of
some stellar acting on Clancy Brown's part, and Brian de
Chart does a wonderful job Connor. And what I love
about this is when Connor gets smacked across the mouth,
the way he flies back, but then in a very

(01:13:07):
Android esque way, snaps back to attention to take Hank's
verbal abuse. Like, I like how this scene has acted out.
It's very well done. But I do feel terrible for
Hank because, like you said, we're giving him more reasons
to just saddle up with the demons he's been trying
to fight this entire game.

Speaker 1 (01:13:26):
Oh, speaking of the snapping back, I want to unpull
those pins. So the flow chart if, by the way,
whenever you apprehend the deviant as you're going to leave,
the deviant says ra nine, save me, and he jumps
off the building, which the flow chart labels as a suicide.

(01:13:46):
This narrative is inconsistent with how it views androids. It
doesn't know whether it wants to portray them as being
human or not human, equal to humans, lesser than human,
or better than humans, which is what I think is
the interesting conversation. It depends on what Cage wants to

(01:14:08):
convey emotionally and what he wants how he wants to
manipulate the plot. Sometimes androids are superior to humans. Marcus
can preconstruct these pathways. Kara can flawlessly cut her own
hair and change color immediately. Kara has nine thousand children's
stories committed to memory. That's an upcoming scene. But sometimes

(01:14:30):
they're characterized as being similar or less than humans. There's
an upcoming scene where Connor gets sucker punched by a
human and he gets the wind knocked out. Of him there.
If you fail the qtase, you can just get wrecked
by cars or wrecked by Todd, a Schlovy human. And
there are some plot whole things that I don't want
to get into without because of spoilers. But David Cage

(01:14:53):
and Williams are never sure what their stance on this is.
How interesting would this game be if the thesis was
humans or androids are superior to humans? How can we
ethically live with them and alongside of them? How interesting
that would be? But they don't do that. They instead

(01:15:14):
just use whatever is convenient at the time. That's something
that I noticed this second playthrough around. It didn't bug
me as much the first time, but this time around,
after listening to a bunch of interviews with Nick Brostrom,
especially Simulation Hypothesis and an AI researcher, It's just it's
been in my mind a lot. And you know, am

(01:15:35):
I saying that I could do this story better? No,
But I'm not the one that made it. I'm not
the one that put it out for the world to view.
And while I'm not saying that like this is getting
into the role of the critics episode that we have
coming up. While I'm not saying that, like, we should
all be nitpicking across every single thing that we come
across with with a with a magnifying glass. This really

(01:15:57):
stuck out to me as being theally and ideologically inconsistent.
I don't know, did you notice this or do you
think that I'm just sort of rambling here.

Speaker 2 (01:16:07):
No, I think you're practically spot on. It's something I
didn't really notice until subsequent playthroughs, And when I think
back to the very first time I played this game,
I think I started to subconsciously just identify androids as
other humans, and I just left it at that because
there's so many different mannerisms and things that they do

(01:16:29):
that are so human esque, and I understand that they,
like you spelled out how Carr and Marcus have very
clearly demonstrated their technological superiority and things like that over humans.
But I'm glad you brought up a Connor getting punched
in the stomach like that. He reacts to that in
such a human way that I think it was that

(01:16:52):
moment forward where my brain just shut off and just
I rarely looked at an android as an android or
anything else unless I visibly saw their led on screen
and even then I kind of let that fly. But yeah,
it wasn't until later playthroughs that I started to see
what it is you're calling out. I actually missed the
fact that the flow chart labeled this as a suicide,

(01:17:14):
and I'd like to think if I saw that, I'd
have probably gone down the same thought train that you
went down as well, because there was a point I
do remember thinking to myself, what am I supposed to
think here? So I just decided I'm going to think
what I feel like I want to think. And I'm
just playing a game with a bunch of humans at
this point.

Speaker 1 (01:17:34):
Which is I think what they want you to how
they want you to perceive it. Yes, but you know
that's something that I wanted to call out here. There
are going to be more instances of that coming up,
and totally unrelated to DEV and C too. Just you know,
there shouldn't be any reason they should be physically weaker
because of DEV and C. That's that doesn't track. I

(01:17:56):
don't know's that's something we'll see more of. But moving forward,
we've got chapter fourteen, now fourteen already, we're moving through it.
Time to decide this is picking up where we left
off with Marcus, we meet the crew of Jericho. Specifically,
we meet three of their leaders that become important, Josh,
Simon and North Jericho. That freight ship is a refuge

(01:18:22):
where androids go when they don't want to be slaves anymore.
That is a quote. This is where the underground railroad
and slaves. Those illusions come way, way way into play.
It's not great. I don't think it's great. I think
it's bad.

Speaker 2 (01:18:40):
Yeah, I didn't really find myself gravitating towards the story
that they were trying to tell with the different interactions
that Marcus has with Josh Simon, North, and even some
of the other androids that you can interact with once
you regain control. Like I don't even know if the
phrase heavy handed is right here. It just it felt.

(01:19:01):
I get it. I understand the relation that Cage is
trying to make. I get it, but I think it's
been beaten to death at this point. I would have
loved to have heard other stories as to why some
of the androids are in Jericho. It doesn't always have
to be this slave route. Like example, I would have

(01:19:23):
loved if there was an android somewhere in Jericho that
had a very similar relationship with the human as Marcus
and Carl did. I became deviant because I had someone
support me so well that they encouraged me to make
my own choices or help me realize that I was
more than just someone that's gonna wash dishes and do

(01:19:45):
the laundry kind of thing, and my deviancy came from
that or something along those lines. I don't know if
it would really make sense in the story that the
writers were really trying to tell here, but anytime I
talk to an android, I'm like, please tell me a
different story, and it was just a similar variation on
the same and I wasn't too keen on that.

Speaker 3 (01:20:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
Yeah, that really slots into the master slave dynamic that
I think they're unfortunately going for. You know, having too
many androids like Marcus's situation would kind of ruin that metaphor,
and I don't know it would Sully the archetype and
the skeleton that they were trying to use with these characters.

(01:20:30):
It's unfortunate, but you know that's the choice they made.
This is speaking of Marcus. This is also where you
get to begin to shape his ideology. Is he a
pacifist or is he an aggressor. Each of those three, Simon, Josh,
and North kind of have different ideas on that as well.
Like Josh total pacifists, we don't want violence, nor total opposite.

(01:20:53):
North wants to burn it all down. If there's casualties, Hey,
shit happens. Simon's kind of in the middle. More often
than not, Simon just says, what should we do. It's like, okay, buddy,
we're glad that you're here, Jericho. Though they've been here
for at least four and a half weeks, nobody here's
again back to our androids superior less than what are they.

(01:21:14):
Nobody knows who discovered this place anymore. It's been lost
to time, which that sure is a convenient gap in
their memory whatever. Many of the androids here are wounded.
There's about nineteen twenty of them, and like you said, Nomad,
it's all implied to be by their former human masters.
We learn they are trying to salvage blue butt, blue

(01:21:37):
Blood and biocomponents from those that die, but they don't
have enough resources to keep everybody else alive. The death
rate is out running the additions to the colony, and
if they don't get more stuff, they're gonna die. We
see some androids here that are afraid to die, and
they explicitly like kind of say that sentiment that's never explored.

(01:21:59):
I wrote out a whole paragraph here. I think we've
kind of already talked about that at length. It's just,
you know, we're not exploring all of the really interesting questions.
Why is an android afraid to die? What is their
concept of mortality? What do they believe happens after death?
We don't I mean, we don't know because we never
talk about it. We're just supposed to implant ourselves onto
them because they're.

Speaker 2 (01:22:19):
Human, right, Yeah, we'll go with that.

Speaker 1 (01:22:25):
Lucy is the last main character we meet here before
Marcus and company decide to go and storm cyber life
for biocomponents. Lucy is a sort of soothsayer oracle character.
She heals Marcus's wounds, cauterizes the wounds to stop the bleeding.
Absolutely no pain, you know. Connor gets sucker punched and

(01:22:46):
he's winded, but Marcus is getting actively cauterized and he's
not even blinking. She connects Marcus via their like android
hand meld thing. She connects to him and gives him
some lines feeds him some lines that, if I'm being pessimistic,
exists to highlight the quote player is the storyteller angle,

(01:23:08):
Darkness and light exist within you, Marcus, and remember your
choices shape our destiny. Let's see if I can put
some in here.

Speaker 5 (01:23:15):
You had it all and you lost it all. You've
seen hell, and now hell lives in you. Your heart
is troubled, a part of shadow and a part of
light which will prevail. Your choices will shape our destiny.

Speaker 1 (01:23:42):
Stuff like that. I don't know. Am I being pessimistic
by saying that that's a little bit too much?

Speaker 2 (01:23:48):
No, I don't think so. It was very obvious to
me the way that Lucy was talking to Marcus that I,
as the player, knew that I had to make a
very choice going forward in the game to either be
pacifistic or be violent. And it kind of took me

(01:24:08):
out of the immersion a little bit, if I'm being honest, Like,
I really couldn't figure out what Lucy was supposed to
really represent, Like her her visual presentation is very stunning
in my opinion, Like she's a woman, and her eyes
are completely blacked out, the backside of her head is

(01:24:30):
completely missing, so all you see is wires, and she
presents herself in sort of an ethereal kind of way,
like a like you said, an oracle, I think is
the word that I was thinking of when I first
saw her, and she's she's very captivating in that way.
But at the end of the day, I think all
she serves is she just tells the player, you're going

(01:24:51):
to have to make a choice as you continue to
play this video game, and that brought me out of
the immersion just a little bit. But she served her
purpose well enough. So that's kind of where I'm at
with Lucy.

Speaker 1 (01:25:04):
We get enough of that from everybody else and from
Chloe on the start screen. It's just I don't know
why they included Lucy. I really don't.

Speaker 2 (01:25:12):
Yeah, I agree, but.

Speaker 1 (01:25:13):
They decide to storm cyber Life because they need to
take matters into their own hands if they want to survive,
and that's where this chapter ends. We're moving on back
with Alison Kara for a chapter titled slot Go. Slotko
is going to be a character that we're about to
meet from a tip that Kara received from an android
on the street. We arrive at Szlatko's mansion. He's a
bigger dude with a beard and long slipped back hair,

(01:25:37):
chest hair popping out of the shirt. It's great. And
he's got an android named Luthor, a very large and
imposing android. Playing back into that, you know, feels a
little weird to say, but playing back into that master
slave dynamic slot Goo is a white dude. Luther is
a black dude. It's just it's hard not to notice, it,
is all I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (01:25:58):
Yes, agreed.

Speaker 1 (01:26:00):
They take in refuge refugee deviance to help them, and
you know, he tells car that we can get you
to Canada. They don't have anti android laws there, will
get you to Canada. Alice protests. She says, like, you know,
I don't. I have a bad feeling about this. This
is bad, and Carus says, this is our best hope.
So we're going to get Car's tracking chip removed and

(01:26:22):
get on our way to Canada. So we go to
Slatco's basement and this is where David Cage does David
Cage things. Zlotco hooks you up to this machine and
he says it's going to be unpleasant. It binds you
by the wrists and by the ankles as well as
like by the back of the neck. It's the David
Cage Special. It's it's like a fetish. Like every game

(01:26:45):
of his has the female lead bound and sometimes gagged
by a menacing male figure, oftentimes in in ways that
could turn sexually violent. This isn't that, but this happens
in every game of his, every single one. It's so

(01:27:06):
he's putting his fetish out there for everyone to see it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
Interesting. Interesting. I've yet to play any of the other games,
so this is new to me. I didn't realize this
was a thing, But I guess there's that to look
forward to. Very interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:27:19):
Yeah, there's I think there's two in Heavy Rain. There's
definitely there's at least one where you're like bound to
a table, and I think there is like an implied
sexual assault attempt at another point in Heavy Rain. It's
been a while since I've played that one, hmm. I
think like twenty thirteen was the last time I played it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:37):
Oof made my back hurt just thinking that far back.

Speaker 1 (01:27:41):
But while you're bound up here is lot Go lays
it all on the table. He says, You know, Devians
aren't actually all that hard to track, like their their
tracking chips just stop working. I don't know how car
I didn't know this, by the way, whatever, and he
says that's why they're hard to track down and spoke earlier.
I don't know if I'll keep that in. Zloco is

(01:28:03):
going to wipe your memory and he's gonna do what
he does with all the deviants that come in. He's
either gonna sell you back to like wiped, totally refreshed,
and sell you for profit, or he'll just keep you
and do experiments on you. Because I guess he's a
comic book villain, one of the two. You fool, you buffoon.
I can't believe you believed him, Alice, who is you know?

(01:28:23):
Obviously upset trying to fight back, gets taken away by
Slatco and before Luther leaves, he walks up to you
and this is all POV from Kara's view. That's another
thing with this trend with David Cage. When he does this,
it's always POV of the of the woman, and Luther
walks up and whispers, meet me in the living room,

(01:28:44):
z Loacho. As much as I'm kind of shitting on
David Cage here, Slacko does have a really cool line here.
He says, quote, that's what you get for having a dream.
They always end up the same tears and disillusionment. Believe me,
you're better off being erased and feeling nothing more pain,
no more hopes dashed. I almost envy you the way

(01:29:05):
he says this, Like I was like, oh, man, are
we gonna learn more about Szlacko's background. No, but like
he says something so profound and so interesting, like we're
gonna learn why this wackadoo is the way he is.
He's a broken human. But no, you know what a
great line, delivered very well, and just we don't get

(01:29:29):
anything after it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:30):
Yeah, this is a prime example of one of these
moments in this game where I observe it and I
just feel tinges of disappointment because in that moment, for
the very first time I played this game, that's exactly
what I was hoping for. I wanted to understand why
he was doing what he's doing. I want to understand
why he feels the need to experiment on androids or

(01:29:50):
anything like that. And granted it could even be just
basic reasons to kind of coincide with the comic book
villain trope at this point, but you can't say so
thing like that and just leave it on the table
like it was so disappointing.

Speaker 1 (01:30:05):
Yeah, total missed opportunity. But from here, there are a
few ways this can go. First of all, Car's got

(01:30:26):
to get out of here. She's got to stop the
reset process. The way you do this is by like
knocking over some vodka and causing a short circuit. I
think you can actually let this complete if you just
sit there and then like your new objective is to
find Master meanings lot go yes, and you don't recognize Alice.
I didn't. Actually I've never done that.

Speaker 2 (01:30:46):
It's funny my very first playthrough. I looking back, I
don't know how I failed to free her, because it
is pretty simple once you look around and see the
right things. But I had time run out on me
because I didn't really know what to do. So once
that happens, the machine sets you down, and your little
objective just says meet Luther in the living room or

(01:31:06):
obey Master or something along those lines, or a combination thereof,
and you go meet Luther in the living room. There's
a tray of there's a tray of food, and it's
supposed to be slot goes dinner. But if you actually
look at it, it's like a bag of chips, a
granola bar, a bagel, just some random stuff. And you
will take it up to Sloco on the second floor,

(01:31:27):
and it's a room I don't think you have access
to if Kara has her memories back if you escape
the machine successfully. Don't quote me, but I think that's true.
But you'll walk in and he'll ask you to put
the tray down on a table, and you see him
just ripping into an Android on the table, and there's
Android pieces and parts all over the room. It's clearly

(01:31:48):
like his experiment layer or what have you. So he
tells you, okay, put it down, thanks, go away and
know uncertain terms, and he calls out to Luther, which
you'll actually do whether or not you have your memory
or not here, and he'll say, hey, bring me the
little girl. I'm going to be finished doing what I'm
doing in about ten minutes. So now the game gives

(01:32:09):
you a timer to find Alice before that ten minutes expires,
and if you don't, the game for Kara will actually end.
But in the case my case where I didn't have
my memory, my memory was wiped. Kara goes into the
next room, and then a thought prompt comes up on
screen who is the little girl? And then your objective

(01:32:31):
is remember? So you have ten minutes to regain your
memories and find Alice and then make your way out
of here. And the way to regain your memory is
you have to go around the house and find certain
things to kind of jog your memory. Like example, your
coats are taken by Luther before you come in or

(01:32:52):
before they take it down to the basement. Find your coats,
interact with them. That'll trigger a flash of a memory.
Carl'll start to remember. And you find all these little
objects and things around the house. If you find enough,
you regain your memory, regain control of Kara in that sense.
And now your objective is to go find Alice and
then you can continue on. I don't think you've played

(01:33:12):
through this part, so really the only thing I'll leave
us with here is I was very disenchanted with this idea, like,
how is it that a machine can completely wipe your
memory free, but you can then go around and find
little objects around the environment and then restore your memory. Somehow,

(01:33:33):
It goes right back to the is this a machine
I'm playing? As is it a human what is going on?
But I will say from a gameplay standpoint, I did
appreciate the fact the game allowed me to regain control
because I missed up that quick time event so badly.
So there is that.

Speaker 1 (01:33:50):
I think you hit the nail on the head with
that last remark. I think it comes down to giving
the players a fail safe because, like you said, you
can lose here. You can get Car and Alice both killed,
but you really have to try. They give you many
opportunities to get out of here, and you have to
like intently fail them. As you're going through here, whether

(01:34:13):
you regain your memories or whether you stop the reset process,
you've got to get out. You find Alice. There are
some obstacles around here. There's a few different ways this
can go down. You can interact with some of his
Lacko's experiments. He's got like a polar Bear android that's
got half of its face missing. You can just unlock
its cage. Cool, all right, nothing bad will happen there.

Speaker 2 (01:34:36):
I love that prompt just because I opened it, because
it allowed me to open it. Sure, why not video game?
I'm sure it serves a purpose.

Speaker 1 (01:34:44):
Yeah, pretty much. I mean what is it going to do?
Mall meat to death quote from man who just recently
was mauled. You can also though there's an android in
a bathtub that it makes a big old racket. If
it sees you, it starts screaming. Then you know who
are you. You're not obeying the Master. You must obey
the Master. I'm alerting the Master and it'll start screaming

(01:35:05):
and alerts LOCKO to come to you, So you have
to kill it if you don't want that to happen.
But you can also find some of the other experiments
in the basement too, and you can unlock their cages.
Now they're like they're like disfigured zombies kind of. That's
how they're portrayed, really disfigured, grueling facial features, limbs hacked

(01:35:31):
off and reattached. You know his experiments, and you can
like undo their cave lock and then just run away.
They'll come back later if you do that. Otherwise you've
got a evades LOCKO. You can set the house on fire,
which is something I just learned this past play through.

Speaker 2 (01:35:50):
Really I don't think I knew that.

Speaker 1 (01:35:52):
Yeah, yeah, as you're running away, you can grab a
poker from the fire or some timber from the fire
and like just set the house ablaze. And that's just
another thing to contend with. As you're running away, there
will be some quick time events to evade Slocho shooting
at you with a shotgun, which is always fun. There's
some stealthy stuff you have to do to avoid Luther's gaze.

(01:36:14):
I had another little dirty moment here where I don't know,
I guess the button didn't register, so I just walked
out of a hiding spot and that kind of accelerated
the chase to the very end. Whatever. That's cool. You
got to run out the back door. You can see
that the back door is unlocked earlier, but if not,
you have to choose that or the front door. Front

(01:36:35):
door's locked, You go out of the back you escape,
and Lutheran's Locko will catch up to you. And this
is where Luther, who turned deviant because of plot reasons,
stops Loocho from shooting you. He stands in front Locho
says get out of the way. He says, no, I
won't let you hurt them, and he takes the shotgun
away from him. Now, if you unlocked the EXPERI immense

(01:37:00):
doors you know the uh what do you call it,
the the zombie androids. If you unlocked that door, they
will come out as like a mob and just sort
of beat Slocko to death as he's yelling, I am your.

Speaker 2 (01:37:14):
Master, canna wapen, canna lighten, I'm I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:37:20):
Your master, I'm you which again comic book film.

Speaker 2 (01:37:28):
Right, Yeah, given how we know slock gop to this point,
this is the perfect end for him and always puts
a smile on my face, because why not.

Speaker 1 (01:37:37):
The alternative if you didn't do that is Luther just
shoots him point blank with a shotgun, and he stays
remarkably intact and in place. If that, if that happens,
that is like, you know, I'm not a gun nut,
but if you get blasted point blank with a shotgun,
you're not going to be intact, and you certainly won't

(01:37:58):
be standing in the same spot. Those two things just
they're not gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (01:38:02):
Yes, that is science.

Speaker 1 (01:38:05):
So Luther will then offer to help you if you
can forgive him for doing his Lacko programmed him, and
obviously we do. Luther is a very kind man. He's
a gentle giant. He says, I didn't want to hurt you.
He programmed me to obey him.

Speaker 5 (01:38:21):
When I saw the Little One riskal life to save you,
it was like opening my eyes for the first time.

Speaker 1 (01:38:29):
Finally I could see.

Speaker 3 (01:38:33):
I know you have no reason to trust to me
after what I did, but I know someone you could
help you across the border. I could take you there.

Speaker 5 (01:38:47):
I could protect you, you and the little One.

Speaker 1 (01:38:52):
So we're seeing that pattern for dedancy being established, a
sudden urge in humanity born from witnessing true injustice. This
becomes important later because they abandon this. Unfortunately abandoned this
because up till now they've set this up such that,
you know, that's why DVNC happens. There's some sort of
injustice and you have a sudden urge of empathy, whether

(01:39:16):
towards others or for yourself whatever. They kind of do
away with that later, and it's a real bummer. But
up until now it's been it's been fine, it's been good.

Speaker 3 (01:39:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:39:26):
I noticed at this point too, this is where this
particular thread gets left behind, and it is very disappointing.
But either way, I really do like the addition to
Luther to the party. The game actually doesn't give you
a choice to allow him to come along. He's kind
of forced along. But either way, I really like his
inclusion with this now trio. So it's gonna be cool

(01:39:46):
seeing what happens to Luther as things go forward. So
he's a welcome addition.

Speaker 3 (01:39:51):
I like him.

Speaker 1 (01:39:52):
Oh yeah, I do too. I do too. It's creating
that sort of family dynamic between the three of you, mother,
father child. Yes, pretty explicitly, he's great. This next chapter,
Russian Roulette, is a shorty. We're in Connor's mind palace again.
But after that, like we said, that kind of plays
out the same way each time. Afterwards, you go to

(01:40:15):
Hank's house and he's passed out drunk on the floor
with a gun in one hand and a bottle of
black Lamb scotch in the other. You can see this
through the window. You're looking into the window through the house.
You have to break in to get there. When you
do that, you kind of slap him to wake him up.
You realize he's passed out drunk, and you know, you

(01:40:36):
get some really primo drunk clancy brown lines throughout all
of this. It is very good.

Speaker 2 (01:40:45):
I'm going to sober you up for your own I'm
fucking android.

Speaker 1 (01:40:51):
Get the fuck out of my house. I'm sorry, Lieutenant,
but I need you.

Speaker 2 (01:40:55):
Yeah, this is another This is another one of my
favorites too, just because of this dynamic. Again clan see
Brown can be drunk, he can be sober, he can
be in distress, whatever it may be. Top notch voice
acting all the time. This was such a fun chapter.

Speaker 1 (01:41:11):
Yeah, he's so great. This is like the closest that
gets to laugh out loud. Funny because this is a movie.
You sober Hank up the same way all movies do.
You throw him in the shower, to which he says,
I must be the only cop in the world to
have his android break into his own home. And I'm
thinking he must be the only cop on the forest
to be constantly badgered to look into every single case

(01:41:32):
that's coming up. Just lots of great Clancy Brown dialogue
in here. And while Hank is sobering up and puking,
you get to look around the house. Hank will eventually
he agrees to come. You can either just kind of
drop it or you can kind of tease him and
you can be like, you know, I guess we aren't
going to the sex club to investigate and Hank's like,

(01:41:54):
you know, actually, I think I'm okay to go. So
you pick out some new clothes for and then you
get to like look around as he's puken. You can
see his records, what he likes. You can look at
the revolver, and you know he was playing Russian Roulette,
like that's what he does. He gets drunk and plays

(01:42:14):
Russian Roulette. This is like beyond suicidal ideation, like he's
actively trying to die, which He's got a great line
later where he says he kills himself a little each
day because he's a little too scared to pull the trigger.
It's we'll get there. It's very good. You can ask
him about that or not. You know, you can see
his dog, Sumo will be there. I didn't learn his

(01:42:38):
name purposefully this past play through, thinking that he might
attack me when I broke in here. But no, no,
he didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:42:45):
Yeah, even if you don't know Sumo's name, he's still
riled up. So but there is a difference on the
flow chart, So for those completionists out there, you'll either
have to learn his name or not, and two separate playthroughs.

Speaker 1 (01:42:58):
There's another name you can learn here.

Speaker 3 (01:42:59):
Too.

Speaker 1 (01:43:00):
The name of Hank's late Sun. Hank's son died as
a child. His name was Cole. I purposefully did not
learn Cole's name this time around, for a reason that
will not become clear until the very end of the game.
But I think it's important, so we'll get there. But
you can learn that here. I don't I don't quite
remember how did this gets outlined in that very same

(01:43:24):
scene later on down the road, but I can't remember
how did Cole die? It was on the operating table
because an android did the job because the doctor was
like not available or something.

Speaker 2 (01:43:35):
Yeah, if I remember the whole story, there was a
traffic accident. Coal needed surgery. The doctor that was going
to do the surgery, or should have done the surgery,
was unavailable for I'll save the reason why until the end,
and an android had to do the surgery that was
the only thing available. And it doesn't explicitly say why.

(01:43:57):
But Cole didn't make it through the surgery.

Speaker 1 (01:43:59):
Yeah, it could have just been surgical complications that happen
with the best doctors in the world, right, I mean
that stuff just happens. Humans are a fragile machine, to
quote Carl, But yeah, that's important to know. We'll get
into the why later, Like I have it written in
the notes. It would just be a lot of scrolling

(01:44:20):
to get down there and find it. But that's important.
We'll come back to that soon. But for now we're
back with Marcus and Gang. Chapter seventeen spare parts. We're
breaking into cyber life. They're making a lot of noise
breaking into here, and I don't know how more guards
are not seeing them, but they ought not to do stealth.

(01:44:40):
You're just running around the drones doing some parkore. You
follow north, do some button presses. Cool. You eventually get
caught as you're walking around this warehouse by a security
android and the human worker who just happens to be
looking for him. So you can either attack the human
worker or kind of pull the security android in to

(01:45:02):
you know, become your compatriot. You can hold him and
you can be like, please join us now. If you
do that, if you kind of hide from the human,
put your hand over the security android's mouth. Once the
human's gone, you let him go. This is where it's
revealed where Marcus that Marcus has the ability to cause
deviancy with one touch. He has become that level of Messiah.

(01:45:25):
He can trigger deviancy with a touch of the hand.
All I have written here is this is ridiculous. I
don't I and I'm gonna be honest. I remember thinking
this whenever I played the game way back when in
twenty eighteen. There is a scene later where this gets
even more egregious, but you know we'll get there. This

(01:45:45):
this causing deviancy with such a perfunctory action. It this
is what I mean, Like they set up this pattern
where devincy is caused by extreme human feeling, this human
urge to see injustice and have something inside you just
snap and say I can't take it anymore. I need

(01:46:06):
to push back here. It's being waved away for plot
reasons because Marcus is God and he can just do
that and that. Man, this is maybe my least favorite
thing that this game does. I could forgive a lot
of stuff in here. Like I said, this is like
a guilty pleasure genre for me, but this is too far.
This really bums me out, Like as a writer's story, whatever,

(01:46:32):
this sucks.

Speaker 2 (01:46:33):
Yeah, my first playthrough when I saw this happen, I
think I just consciously dismissed it as I'm just gonna
go along for the ride at this point and try
to understand the story that the writers are trying to tell,
because I thought something very similar. I was very vested
in the idea of how deviance is caused, and I

(01:46:53):
even though a lot of the emotional trauma is coming
from a human abuse either way, take that aside. I
really wish they would have kept up with that angle.
Now it's completely just been thrown away, it seems like,
at least in most cases. And what I always felt
to be a little jarring as well is when Marcus
does awaken these androids, I feel like deviancy up to

(01:47:17):
this point, like when Kara and even Marcus himself experience
breaking into deviancy, there's kind of that moment of like
something has happened to me, they need a moment to process.
Their eyes go wide. Anytime Marcus touches somebody and they
become deviant, they just immediately accept the fact that they
are deviant. And I wouldn't say they're completely subservient, but

(01:47:41):
they don't really seem like that they're free in the
way the game wants them to be portrayed as anytime
I would free an android as Marcus, I felt like
I was just adding a chess piece to the board
or adding someone to my stronghold kind of thing, Like
it didn't feel as personal as the game. Yeah, I
think wanted to feel. It felt like a gameplay mechanic.

Speaker 1 (01:48:03):
You bringing this up just made me think of this.
I'm going to be a parody of myself for a moment.
Let's talk Frederick Nietzsche. Frederick Nietzsche famously called Christianity a
master and slave morality, where you know, you are a slave.
You are a slave to the doctrines of Christianity, you
are not being an individual. We're essentially seeing that here

(01:48:24):
with exactly what you just said. Nomad Marcus causes devancy,
and they are immediately falling in as one more cog
in the machine of this great grand cause. They are
trading subserviency to humans to subserviency to Marcus. Not a
single one of these new androids, with their newfound quality
of phenomenal consciousness, says, you know, let's consider this for

(01:48:47):
a moment, and to be fair, this is a movie,
this is a game. These relationships have to be condensed,
otherwise we would be here for you know, forty days
instead of you know, twenty hours, so fine, but all
all the same, all they're doing is trading one level
of one kind of subservience to an for another. There's

(01:49:10):
no interesting conversations about the ethics of that, about whether this,
you know, is the right move for them, And I
don't know it.

Speaker 9 (01:49:19):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:49:20):
I was not expecting Nietzsche to This isn't a j RPG.
I wasn't prepared to talk about Nietzsche, but it just
it just kind of came up. Yeah, that's wow, that
is Uh, there are a lot of problems with this,
uh touch touch to deviancy.

Speaker 2 (01:49:35):
Yeah, and it's interesting. I don't think that any other
android has this ability I heard now that I think
about it. So yeah, it's it's very much relegated to
Marcus for this exact purpose. But yeah, well.

Speaker 1 (01:49:47):
Actually until it's not Connor gets it at the very end, right, Yes,
you're right, yes, because plot reasons.

Speaker 2 (01:49:55):
Yeah, I think we're going to use the phrase plot
reasons a few more times here.

Speaker 1 (01:49:59):
But David Cage had like one too many screws left
over from the build and he just was like, Eh,
this can go here. It's fine.

Speaker 2 (01:50:07):
That brings back memories of working on cars, but that's for.

Speaker 1 (01:50:09):
Another day, but did I always have this spare part?

Speaker 2 (01:50:14):
But still it's again to kind of wrap up my
thoughts here. Again, when I was playing the game through
for the very first time, I just accepted that this
is what the game is now, and now I have
a cool new game mechanic, so let's see what we
can do with it. And we get to test that
out pretty quick when we open up a gigantic shipping
container a little ways away.

Speaker 3 (01:50:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:50:35):
Yeah, you can choose to turn them deviant or just
put the lid back on them, which seems so crazy
to me. No, thank you, goodbye, which is actually what
I did. I'm playing Marcus in this time to be
very aggressive but very incompetent at his job, so he's
I'm having him fail literally everything. It's very funny. This

(01:50:56):
will get cut short if you choose not to let
the security android come with you when he asks, he'll
say that you're no different than humans and sound the alarms.
You have to run out. This section's over. If you
let him come with you, he'll tell you about some
spare parts that they have in the truck. All we
need is the key, so Marcus elects to go get it,
and you've got to deal with two of the most

(01:51:17):
inept security guards I've ever seen. You can just walk
right in, jam a screwdriver into their like their electronic
schematics to cause a blackout. Casually just hide and they
don't see you. They don't look around. This is a
small office. They're just like, hey, what's going on here?
You can also I don't I haven't done this, but

(01:51:38):
you can also like knock over an oil drum or
something outside to distract them. You basically this Barney and
Fife team, you just distract them to get their key
and you steal the truck and get out of there.

Speaker 3 (01:51:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:51:52):
I kind of like this section for what it was
trying to do. Give the player the a chance to
take a bigger risk for a bigger reward kind of thing,
And I liked that you had to trick the guards.
But once you actually get into this little area and
you see how small and condensed it is, it's very Uh.
It's another thing that actually broke immersion for me just

(01:52:13):
a little bit, because there is no way they can't
see you or hear you. And if you decide to
bust up the electrical panel, this sheer act of driving
that screwdriver or whatever tool you have into the board
is excruciatingly loud. How they don't immediately turn around and
see you is baffling to me.

Speaker 1 (01:52:33):
But oh yeah, But either.

Speaker 2 (01:52:35):
Way, there's actually a point too, And maybe you've done
this because you're playing Marcus the way that you described earlier.
But you can get caught by the guards. I actually
tried to hold them up at gunpoint. You can find
a gun I think, off to the left hand side
of this particular office, and if you don't press the
prompts correctly, a fight will ensue, and if it goes
horrifically bad, you can actually kill the guards, which, depending

(01:53:00):
on how you play, you don't really want to do that,
or maybe you do. But there's a couple of different
ways this could end. But ultimately you do end up
stealing the key or you don't. But I always steal
the key here. I never I never don't.

Speaker 1 (01:53:15):
If you do that, or if the security guard calls
the security android calls the rest of the gang, you're
gonna get some blue blood and Jericho is gonna be
all the better. And then Marcus ends with this speech,
I came.

Speaker 8 (01:53:28):
To Jericho because here androids are free, Free to live
in the dark, hoping that no one finds us, free
to die in silence, waiting for a change. It's never
gonna come. But I don't want that freedom. And I'm

(01:53:49):
not gonna beg for the right to smile or love
or stand tall.

Speaker 1 (01:53:56):
I don't know about you, but.

Speaker 7 (01:53:57):
There's something inside me that no oo, that I am
more than what they say. I am alive, and they're
not gonna take that for me anymore. Our days of
slavery are over. What humans don't want to hear, we
will tell them what they don't want to give.

Speaker 3 (01:54:19):
We take.

Speaker 1 (01:54:21):
We are people, We are alive, we are free. We're
in the chapter eighteen the Eden Club. Hank and Connor
are about to get frisky. It's a sex club. Cue
the browncha Wau music. This is a sex club full

(01:54:42):
of androids. Again. Look, this brings up a lot of
interesting ethical discussions. I think I was listening. I cannot
remember for the life of me if this was Hidden
Brain or this American Life, but I remember them doing
a discussion on the ethics of sex spots and AI
and how that could be. Like, this is gonna this

(01:55:02):
is gonna sound crazy, and I promise it's not a
weird episode. It's it's very psychological and ethical. But how
autonomous android uh things? Android life forms could be used
to curtail some of the more vile sexual fetishes and
sort of be used as a method to for for

(01:55:24):
for therapy in that way and to and to kind
of keep the crime down. I don't want to go
too far into it because one, I'm not prepared to
talk about it. In two, it's it's kind of a
graphic subject and I don't want to just do that
without any kind of warnings. The point is, sex in
AI is rife for ethical quandaries and philosophical ideas. What

(01:55:49):
does it mean to love? Boom biggest question a human
being could ask? I think, what does it mean to love?
We don't really get to explore any of that, and
you know, to the game's credit, if they tried to
explore every little thing that we keep bringing up, this
would be a bloated mess of a game. I get it,
I do. I'm just saying there's a lot of mist potentially.

(01:56:10):
This is like the Star Wars prequels. No, not really,
not a lot of miss potential. Would some people love them?
I'm one of them. I love the prequels. Some people don't,
but it's just a lot of miss potential And I
don't know. The more I interact with this game, the
more I'm just seeing, Yeah, loads of things that they

(01:56:31):
could have done that would have been very cool. Sorry,
that was a bit of a weird tangent to go on.
I apologize, No.

Speaker 2 (01:56:38):
Apology is necessary. I one of the last times I
played this game again, I was playing and my wife
was watching me while I was playing, and I remember
trying to broach this subject, although I couldn't really put
it into words, because the very first time that we
come to this sex club, my first thought was, Oh,
this is gonna be fun. But then I immediate kind

(01:57:00):
of started to think about, well, what does this really
mean in the larger scheme of the world that they're
trying to build, Like it makes absolute sense for this
to exist, but how do people really feel about this?
How what can we explore when it comes to thinking
about the existence of this place and the idea that
people can gratify themselves in this way with AI. But

(01:57:23):
I really wanted to ask those questions and try to
understand how people feel about it, or understand what our
characters think about it, or even just the world at large.
Let me bring this up. I don't think we've brought
this up yet, and I'm not sure when it triggers.
But at some point on the main menu, Chloe, the
AI that's watching you through the monitor, will ask you

(01:57:46):
to take a survey, a ten question survey.

Speaker 3 (01:57:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:57:50):
I don't remember all the questions, but the one that
sticks out to me is the very first question, which
asks you would you consider being in a relationship with
an android that looks and sounds like you, or some
variation of that question. You can either answer yes, no,
or I don't know. And I remember looking at that

(01:58:13):
question for the very first time, and my answer was
ultimately I don't know because I never really thought about it,
and I would love for people to bring that question
up in game or let us know what they think.
But again, it's just here, and then poof, it's God.

Speaker 1 (01:58:29):
I answered, I don't know too, because this game explores
it here as purely sexual. Right. We want to break
down relationships into the carnal and into the emotional.

Speaker 3 (01:58:42):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:58:42):
Those are two specific sets of needs that all human
beings share, and I think those are two very different
sets of needs, so relationship that's a bit vague. Is
it emotional? Is it sexual? Is it both? We don't know.
I definitely have different feelings between the two. It's it

(01:59:02):
is a very interesting thing to explore because I mean,
visually they look identical to humans. I mean we obviously
were playing a game. We can't touch them to feel
what they feel like. I would assume they feel identical
to humans in terms of skin to skin contact, if
they are intelligent, if they are aware, if they look
it's there are a lot of things that suggest that

(01:59:24):
a physical relationship would be something that I think a
lot of people could reason with themselves to feel okay with.
It's the emotional part that then we're into a whole
new territory. Yes, that's when it gets into the things
like phenomenal consciousness. Is this thing alive? Can? I I

(01:59:46):
mean we just I mean, geez, we just saw in
the news just recently that one teenager that fell in
love quote unquote with that with that chatbot of Game
of Thrones and ended up killing himself. Oh that's right,
because he was so like Shelter and needed some kind
of contact, but didn't I guess didn't have it. I
don't know all of the all of the particulars just

(02:00:07):
off the dome, but we're seeing these ethical questions in
real time, and that makes this game really fascinating to
cover in twenty twenty five because these AI wasn't like
this when this game came out. Maybe they could have
predicted it, but I don't think we could have seen
just how quickly this would take off and the deleterious

(02:00:29):
effects that it was having on society and businesses. I
mean CEO Healthcare that is of United Healthcare. That is
a terrific example of the public pushing back on not
just AI, but AI had a huge part in that.
And then you know this kid developing romantic attachment to
what is essentially a string of code. There's a lot

(02:00:52):
of ethical questions happening in real time. I don't know,
it's interesting. I'm not trying to derail us too much,
and you know, talk about things that were not prepared
to talk about on air, but suffice to say, there's
a lot to ponder with regards to this game, and
in some ways that's you know, if art can get

(02:01:14):
you thinking, that's what counts, right.

Speaker 2 (02:01:17):
Yeah, that is the one thing I will say here
even though these themes and ideas really don't get a
chance to breathe or allow us to explore it, at
the very least, it has spurned conversation, and I think
the game deserves a little bit of credit for that.

Speaker 1 (02:01:32):
Totally. Absolutely, let's get on with this case. So you're

(02:01:57):
examining this homicide. Gavin says that it was just some
pervert that got more action. He could handle.

Speaker 2 (02:02:04):
What happened.

Speaker 1 (02:02:05):
And there's a fella that's in this room. He's dead.
There's also a dead they call them Tracy's.

Speaker 11 (02:02:13):
It's just the.

Speaker 1 (02:02:15):
Female sex android. The analysis shows that it wasn't a
heart attack like you were told. This was a strangulation.
He was murdered. The android has been badly damaged, but
Connor is able to revitalize it for just over a
minute and a half, which isn't actually true. The timer
kind of jumps around based on the dialogue choices you choose.

(02:02:36):
If you choose all the right ones, this is over
in like thirty seconds. What happened was the man was
beating her. This is her recollection, beating her over and
over again. And there was another android in the room
for a potential threesome, and he was beating the other
android and she felt like she would be next, and

(02:02:56):
so she strangled him. But now we know that there
was three, we have to find the deviant that got away.
This leads to a great you know you're looking. What
you're doing is you're probing other androids around to see
what they saw. You're probing their memory to see what
they saw throughout the day to track down this deviant.
You're under a time limit somewhat. You know, the game

(02:03:20):
just kind of does it because it needs to give
you something. They say, you know, they wipe the memories
of these sex androids every two hours, so by my calculations,
we have ten minutes. Okay, okay, David Cage, sure, but
you're probing the memories to see what these androids saw,
which leads to Connor needing Hanks Biometrics to purchase several

(02:03:42):
sex androids all in a row. And he's like, I'm
spending all this money. I'm not even having a good time.
And it's good. It's funny.

Speaker 2 (02:03:51):
It is very funny, and even more so in the beginning.
I like how they just make light of where you
are at this point in the middle of a club
and as you make your way to the crime scene
a little bit beforehand, you can actually walk up to
these androids are actually in like glass tubes basically, like
product on display basically, and that's how Hank is freeing

(02:04:13):
them with his handprint to purchase them, and the glass
goes up and they can come out. But before you
get into the actual crime scene, if you hold the
L one button, the game will allow you to look
at one of the androids in first person and you
can look up and down and check them out. But
then as soon as you let your button go, Hank
will turn around and just berate Connor and say.

Speaker 1 (02:04:33):
Connor, what the fuck are you doing coming, lieutenant.

Speaker 2 (02:04:37):
And it's so funny, Yeah, calling him a pervert and stuff.
It's wonderful. So yeah, they just keep that theme going
throughout this entire chase, So it's it's kind of a
breath of fresh air. Even though you do have this
kind of arbitrary time limit that's imposed on you.

Speaker 1 (02:04:55):
Well, I failed it my first time. I didn't find
him in time. Because there are a lot of androids around,
you can and probably will purchase some that just didn't
see anything, which is a waste of your time. So
I failed it my first time, and I ended up
reloading because I know the route that I was playing.
I didn't want to miss what was coming next. And
what does come next is tracking the deviant. You find them.

(02:05:19):
You find them eventually hiding out among other discarded models,
like in the back, like the in an employee's only
sort of warehouse area, and they're standing amongst all these
other used and discarded models, and when you look at
them with L one, the yellow led flashes. That's what
tips you off. But then Connor gets attacked by another deviant,
which leads to a two v two between these two

(02:05:41):
androids and Connor and Hank just a bunch of QTEs. Now,
if you're successful, I didn't fail these, so I'm not
sure what happens. Maybe you could speak to that. But
if you're successful, you tail them out to a fence,
and as they're running, you see them holding hands and
you have the option to shoot the newer one one
that started this fight, or let it go. If you

(02:06:03):
let it go, well, actually, no matter what happens, you
get this information if you shoot him or if you
let him go. But basically what happens is this, she
didn't mean to kill the guy, but after he killed
the android in the room, she knew that she'd be
next and she wanted to be with quote her love again.
So these two androids are in love. Depending on whether

(02:06:26):
or not you shot the one, they will either run
away or the remaining one will blow her brains out
with your gun, depending So I mean, we're kind of
bumping up to what we were just talking about Nomad,
this idea of what does it mean to love? Can
can and can sentient beings? When does a sentient being

(02:06:48):
attain the ability to love as we have defined it
and as we know it? We don't know because this
plays out basically here and it's done. Hank has more
quips about it because this really moves him on a
deep level. But outside of that, this thread is severed here,

(02:07:10):
which makes sense if you shot the android, because then
the grief stricken lover then blows her own brains out.
But you know, I know it's not that kind of
a game, but this especially I would have liked to see,
to have seen elaborated on.

Speaker 2 (02:07:25):
Yeah, same here. I appreciated what they were trying to
do here, but at the same time, there was really
no build up to it. It's just all of a sudden,
these two androids are in love and can experience love,
and Hank has this emotional reaction to it, which when
I think back to it, it's actually really touching. It's

(02:07:45):
really starting to get to him as a human, and
he's kind of turning his opinion on them. It all
works really well for what it is, but we don't
get any lead up to it. It's just this is happening,
and whether they escape or we end up killing them here,
Like you said, it's it's kind of dropped here. It's
it's it's another little plaything that we're given to really

(02:08:07):
think about and maybe potentially interact with, but then it's
kind of taken away, and I really don't know how
I felt about it, and it's it's it's a little jarring.
I wish we could have learned a little bit more
or explored even just that a little bit, just because
some of the themes that we've seen in the game
so far, the familial nature between Alice and Kara and Luther,

(02:08:30):
now family, let's take the path of actual romance love
that kind of that kind of path. I would have
loved for them to have done something with this.

Speaker 1 (02:08:39):
It would have been nice too, and they could have
justified it, because this is where Hank starts to turn.
That's what you were getting at. This is where Hank's
perception of androids starts to flip. He's seeing them as
something more than just pieces of plastic now, and he's
got that internal dissonance to work through as well, because

(02:09:01):
of the tragedy that happened with his son. Not to mention,
you know the reality that in this world androids are
taking jobs for you know what would otherwise be American citizens,
we could presume. So there's a little bit of that,
but mainly the son thing. He's got that dissonance within
him that he needs to work through. And you know,

(02:09:23):
if we could have just magically given this studio like
a X amount of dollars, this is probably in the
top three things where I would have been like, hey,
do more with this. Don't first of all take a
little bit off the top for yourself. Don't let Marcus
like just touch people to cause deviancy. I believe in you.
You can you can work around that. Number two, you know,

(02:09:44):
more love, more love exploration, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:09:48):
I agree. Oh, and to fill in the gaps of
how the fight can turn out. I did allow yeah, yeah,
I did allow myself to lose the fight because it's
actually another piece of the float chart and I was
trying to get as much completion as I could. Nothing
different happens if you lose the fight. What ends up
happening is if you fail all the QTEs, the tracy
that's attacking Connor will do significant damage to him. It's

(02:10:11):
almost comical, and when they throw themselves off the back
of the loading dock. Traditionally, if you win the fight,
Connor gets back to his feet and they rush towards
the fence and there's more QTE fighting. If you lose
the fight, Connor just stays on his back and the
tracys start their ex exposition at that point. So no
real changes and no real weight to failure here.

Speaker 1 (02:10:34):
Huh, I would I was not expecting that interesting.

Speaker 8 (02:10:38):
Nor was I.

Speaker 2 (02:10:38):
But I guess if you want to complete the float chart,
allow yourself to get stabbed repeatedly with a screwdriver.

Speaker 1 (02:10:46):
And I think we'll finish off today with one more chapter.
It's a short one, nineteen the Pirates Den. This is
a Luther Karra and Alys have Stolen's lot Goos car,
which is a you know, I wrote that they're driving it,
but it's kind of driving us. It's an automatic car.
Everybody's just kind of sitting in it. You know, they've

(02:11:07):
figured out all the kinks and ethical dilemmas with that.
Gess talk about ethical dilemmas in real life. They're driving.
It's very snowy. You can turn on the radio for me.
Whenever I was writing these notes, public opinion had turned hostile.
Public opinion is its own relationship meter. By the end
of my first run, everybody supported androids. This run that

(02:11:28):
I'm going through, I want I want no part of that.
I want everybody to see us as a pariah. That's
what I'm going for this time. But you'll get information
on that. Now you get to make small talk with Luther.
The car breaks down, and as luck would have it,
you know, Kara is wondering what do we do. Luther
suggests walking. We can't do that because Alice will freeze.

(02:11:50):
But there's an abandoned theme park called Pirate Cove up ahead,
so we go there. We search for shelters. It's mostly
banged up game booths, but there is a little like
lodge kind of deal, right, like it looked like a
is that?

Speaker 3 (02:12:07):
What is that?

Speaker 1 (02:12:09):
Help me out here?

Speaker 2 (02:12:09):
Yeah, lodge I think is the best term for this.
Because you're going down this long stretch of the of
the amusement park and you're looking in these game stalls
and things like that, and you'll have Kara Shiner flashlight
in and she'll get like little thought bubbles. The roof
is unstable, unsafe for Alice, or won't hold the three
of us. And then yes, we come across it almost

(02:12:32):
looks like a house. But it definitely lodges the best
term here.

Speaker 1 (02:12:37):
The roof that's right inside. You know, you get Alice
all set up and get her some you know, warmth.
You can talk with Luther. If you see the R
nine writing in here, you can talk to him about it.
This kind of furthers that idea that it's a religion.
Luther doesn't believe in it, but he wants to or no,
I'm sorry, Kara doubts that it slash he exists A nine.

(02:13:00):
Luther is a believer, that's what it is. You can
also talk about Alice, and this is important. Luther will
ask Kara have you noticed anything about Alice? And you
can answer yes or no. You know, if you say yes,
you'll just say yes. She's so special, huh. But this
is the first inkling we get, like something like what

(02:13:22):
is Alice's deal? Luther sees it, and according to the wiki,
a lot of other people have seen it, some of them.
I think it's a bit of a stretch, imo, But
Luther definitely asks here. You can also talk to Alice
here as well. You know she will ask, you know,
if we're going to be a family like these posters,
why didn't my dad love me? Things like that? You

(02:13:43):
can fill in that maternal role, or you can be
cold and distant and heartless up to you. But before
like any kind of before any more conversation can happen,
these this group of androids break in, and because of
the lighting and the way that David Cage like frames

(02:14:04):
his shots, we think that they're like a legion of
evil robots androids. And you can either use a gun
that you find in Luther's bag or just shout at them.
The outcome is the same, no matter what I thought
that you could shoot them, so I chose to use
Luther's gun. You don't, you just shoot in the air.
It's like a warning shot. But what these guys are.

(02:14:25):
These are like if you've played Planescape Torment, this is
like many as one. This is a collective group of
androids to kind of share like one brain. They call
themselves the Jerry's, which is a great name, and they say,
you know, like, we're not gonna hurt you. We just
wanted to make sure you weren't humans, because sometimes humans
come in just to hurt us for fun. They see

(02:14:49):
Alice and they're like, oh, you know what a sweet
little girl. Come on, we haven't had a human in
so long. And they end up taking you to the
Merry Go Round. And this chapter ends very upliftingly with
Kara helping Alice up under the Merry Go Round. She's
smiling for the first time in ages. Kara says, ever,
which you know, given her home life, I don't doubt it.

(02:15:10):
And you know, the Jerry's are a friend. They're going
to be a friend to the end, which is you
know that they become a final chapter important thing. But
this chapter is one of the few chapters that ends
on a positive note. We get to see Alice just
forgetting for a moment and being a kid, and it's nice.

Speaker 2 (02:15:30):
Yeah, I really like the chapter for that for me,
even though Kara is being painted as this motherly type
of character and that's really what drove her to deviancy
and drives her through the narrative up to this point,
I as a player never really found a way to
connect with Alice, like her personality never really shined through

(02:15:52):
for me. There's one moment where she questions why her
father was the way that he was, and I think
there's even another moment sort of upcoming. I won't spoil
it too much, but she does question like, why are
humans and androids so different? Why do we kind of
hate each other? Kind of thing? But those are the
only moments that we ever get out of this little girl.

(02:16:13):
So I I had a hard time attaching myself to
her until this particular moment. I think it was so
well done. The music was great, and just that that
picture of watching Alice, even though she's alone on this
Merry go round, and actually watching her smile. Maybe it's
the dad in me. I don't know, but I smiled

(02:16:34):
pretty heartily here. And it was nice because this was
probably one of the one of the nicer, more warm
chapters that we get to experience. So this was a
nice change of pace.

Speaker 1 (02:16:44):
Well, I'm glad that you brought that up. That's an
that's an aspect of the human condition that I don't have, right,
I don't have children, so that that that those weren't
those neurons weren't firing for me. I kind of am
still seeing Alan the way that you did. She doesn't.
I mean, you said her personality, and the first thing

(02:17:05):
I thought was what personality? She kind of exists as
a as a prop for Kara's arc, and that's kind
of it. She just serves to further Kara's maternal strives, right,
her strive for motherhood. Again, that's if you're viewing it
like I am. I think it's important to highlight that

(02:17:26):
different people have different life experiences. So this could work
for somebody that has children, that has the fatherhood or
the motherhood perspective through which to view this. I think
that's very interesting. I also agree with you. The music
does a lot of the lifting here. It's very well scored.
Kara and Luther, you know, everybody's animated really well because

(02:17:48):
mocap and also the snow, I mean snow on a
Merry go Round. There's just it almost forces you into
a nostalgic mood.

Speaker 2 (02:17:59):
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it's And maybe it's cliche to say,
but this was a very magical moment. There was just
something very magical and very charming about the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (02:18:10):
And you know, as much as we want to be
critics about it and critique everything, ultimately if something does
make you feel something, then it's worthwhile. Right. That's almost
the end of the conversation, because it's it's difficult to
argue against that. It's the same tenet as like, well,
if it sounds good, what's the big deal. It's sort

(02:18:32):
of the same thing. I'm learning a new daw and
a new digital audio workstation. So a little peak behind
the curtain. Thanks for being patient with me, But it's
sort of like that. If it made you feel something,
that's got to be mentioned first and foremost, that weighs heavier,
that spends heavier than the rest of what we're talking about.

(02:18:57):
And I guess with that, I think for today, that's enough.
That leaves roughly eleven twelve chapters left next time, interestingly,
starting with the scene that won Brian Deckhart the role
of Connor.

Speaker 2 (02:19:13):
Is that true? I didn't realize that was, but once
we get to the scene and we describe it, I
think we'll understand why that's perfect.

Speaker 1 (02:19:22):
It makes sense given how it can go. And you know,
it's very it's just him and Clancy Brown. And I
cannot imagine that they cast Connor before casting Clancy Brown.
I swear they had to have written that character for him.
But I think that's all for today. We'll pick it
up next time and go to the end. How are

(02:19:43):
you feeling about it so far?

Speaker 2 (02:19:45):
I'm feeling really good about this so far. The points
that we're hitting are spot on, I think, and it's
really good to actually talk this out and really get
the feelings that I think myself anyway, have had for
a while that I just haven't had a chance to articulate.
So this has been a really, really good discussion so far.

Speaker 1 (02:20:04):
I'm glad man. I feel the same way. We're going
to get into a lot of the salient and Germaine
points that really tie this work together, some rugs that
tie the tie the room together, so to speak. And
you know, there's more positive to come. There's certainly more
negative depending on who you ask, but there is more

(02:20:26):
positive to come. Especially I mean this next scene is
a great one, you know. In particular, I think this
next one is really moving. I wasn't sure, like I
thought about ending in on the next one or maybe
the one after that. There's like several different places we
could stop over the next few chapters, you know. But
we've been going for like two hours and twenty minutes,
and neither of us slept super well last night from

(02:20:48):
what I understand, so.

Speaker 2 (02:20:50):
You know, but either way, I think the discussion today
was was really well done. And yeah, this is this
is fun. I really appreciate you bringing me on for this.
I always wanted to talk about this game and have
a really good conversation about it, so selfishly, this makes
me very happy.

Speaker 1 (02:21:09):
I'm glad to hear it. Man, the pleasure is mine.
Speaking of pleasure, only a week about a week and
a half has transpired since we last spoke in real time,
that is. Any news from the Retro Wildlands if folks
didn't hear the last time, go check that out so
you can hear about them, or click the link in
the description either as fine, any new updates from over there.

Speaker 2 (02:21:35):
So yes, I am hard at work on our next episode.
I am almost done putting together an episode on Super
Techmobile for the Super Nintendo as well as the original Nintendo.
I'm gonna get that out before Super Bowl Sunday, so
depending on when you're hearing this, this episode should be
out in the wild already. It was very fun for
me to put together for those of you that haven't

(02:21:57):
listened to my show before. I love sharing my personal
memories wherever I can with the game, and this particular
game is very special to me because I got to
play it and experience it a lot with my stepfather
and it really bonded us and it gave me a
love of football, even though I don't watch football very
much anymore. But I love sharing those stories with people.

(02:22:21):
So if nothing else, if you want to give it
a listen and just hear a forty year old gamer
just reminisce about some good times. I think this will
be an episode that everyone will enjoy. And I'm also
working on scheduling some more live streams where I jump
online and play a game while you all watch. I
just got done playing through Resident Evil three on the

(02:22:42):
original PlayStation, and I think this is subject to change.
The next game I'm going to play through is Dino Crisis,
which is Resident Evil with Dinosaurs.

Speaker 1 (02:22:54):
I had a not so fun experience with that one.
We almost did that, Phil and I have deleted saves.
We ended up doing Silent Hill one instead, which man,
I didn't love Silent Hill one, but I had a
good time. I struggled with Dino Crisis, and I'm glad
because I almost bought it on Dreamcast and it's expensive
on Dreamcast, so I bought it on PS one instead,

(02:23:15):
And yeah, struggled pretty hard.

Speaker 2 (02:23:19):
Yeah. The puzzles specifically in this game are what usually
bring me down. They're pretty well thought out for the
most part, but they can also be very tedious. So
I'm anxious to see how that's going to translate to
a livestream experience. I always want to make sure that
I'm entertaining those that are watching me, and I don't
want to get bogged down with a puzzle or two.

(02:23:39):
But we'll see how it goes. I'm very excited to
do that. So if nothing else, check out the Retro
wild Lands on your favorite social media platform. I'm practically
out all of them, and as soon as I get
that next show locked down, you will be the first
to know, well.

Speaker 1 (02:23:54):
There you have it. You can find all of that
by clicking the links in the description, as you're always doing.
You can find our stuff there too. No news from me,
Same old, same old. Find us on socials. Give the
show a ranking, ranking, a rating, and a review. If
you haven't much appreciated, if you could join the discord,
start a discussion. Makes me happy to see that place poppin.

(02:24:17):
But until then, I think we can cap it and
we'll finish it off next week. So thank you once again,
No Mad genuinely appreciate you coming here. It's always a pleasure,
and it's always a pleasure knowing that you listeners out
there are enjoying things. My name is Rick, I'm your host.
As always, we'll see you next time. Take care,

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At All Costs | Detroit Become Human, Part II (Ep. 132)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}At All Costs | Detroit Become Human, Part II (Ep. 132)