Let My People Go | Detroit Become Human, Part III (Ep. 133) - Pixel Project Radio: A Video Game Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome back to Pixel Project Radio. This is the final
installment of our critical analysis of Detroit Become Human. We've
got a lot to cover today, so no funny business.
We're jumping right in of course. No Mad from the
Retro Wildlands podcast joins me once again, No Mad, how's
it going.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
It's going good for those that for some reason haven't
heard me before. Your way out of order. But I
would like to say my name is no Mad, and
I am the Android sent by Cyberlife. I've been waiting
three episodes to do that.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
I'm sorry, this is true. If you did find this
episode first, you may wish to go back and view
these in order, or not podcast or not a cop.
We're starting today in chapter twenty, and we are going
to finish it out and go through the game. I
want to say upfront listeners that are fans of Detroit

(01:11):
Become Human, folks that have played the game and want
to hear every single scenario. We will do our best.
I know for sure there's stuff and variations that I
will miss. Nomad probably the same for him. Together, we
might still have some gaps, So if you wanted to
hear about a particular scenario or one of your favorite

(01:32):
variations that could happen and we don't get to it.
I invite you to join the conversation in the discord
once again. Come in, have a discussion. We can keep
the conversation going outside of the podcast. So lots to
go through today. Let's go ahead and get started. We're
starting with chapter twenty, the Bridge, and as I said
last time, I read somewhere that this is the one

(01:53):
that got Connor Deckhart the role of Connor, and I
can see why.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Not to interrupt you said, Connor Deckhart should be brought right.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Yes, Brian Deckhart, thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Of course.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
Hank is sitting in the park at night. He's getting drunk,
sitting on a bench looking across the water, and Connor
gets out of the car. Connor presumably drove up here
with him uncomfortable car ride. Again, there's some of that
tonal whiplash that we've been talking about, just because of
how you can choose to respond. For me, Hank was

(02:26):
friendly here. We I unlocked the friend path by the
very end, but the conversation is still kind of zigzagged
a bit either way. Hank is going to a muse
to Connor a bit about coming here a lot before
he chooses not to elaborate. He says, some things I
can't seem to forget. This is where he says that
line I mentioned last time, Why are you so determined
to kill yourself?

Speaker 3 (02:47):
Some things I just can't forget. Whatever I do, they're
always there be in a way at me. I don't
have the goods to pull the triggers, so I kill
myself every day. That's probaly difficult for you to understand, Connor,
that's very rational about.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
It, meaning with the alcohol really cool line.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Yeah, I agree, it was very heavy and it it
kind of came out of nowhere for me, but in
a good way, like there's really something and we kind
of get this idea throughout the game at this point
that something's weighing him down. He has this disdain for
androids but won't quite tell us why, and he still
won't really here, but we keep peeling back these layers
and Hank wants to talk about it, it feels like, and

(03:33):
eventually he will and we'll get there soon.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
And one of the things that's weighing on him that
makes him want to talk about it is the ordeal
with the tracys. He starts musing around the idea of
the two androids being in love, the two Tracys. He
seems very deeply moved by it. Again, you can be
cold to him, as Connor, it's really up to you.
But he'll pull a gun on you at a certain point,

(03:58):
and how does he know that you're not a deviant yourself?
But are you afraid to die?

Speaker 3 (04:02):
Kind of?

Speaker 4 (04:05):
I would certainly find it regrettable to be interrupted before
I can finish this investigation.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
I'll have it if I pull this trigger.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
You look human, you sound human, but what are you really?
It's almost like Kye just trying to work this out himself.
I don't, I know, I'm taking a lot of potshots.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
I understand it is funny you say that. I did
think that myself in subsequent playthroughs, which it certainly wasn't
done purposely, I don't think. But it did kind of
make me wonder too, do we really know what we're
trying to do here? But yeah, I digress as well.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
I'll say more on that. Towards the end, Hank says
I could kill you and you would just come back
like nothing ever happened. But are you afraid to die?
He's annoyed that Connor is always one step ahead. He's
annoyed that Connor is exhibiting the qualities of a perfect when,
like we've said before, all he really wants is a friend.

(05:04):
In my first play through, Hank did not shoot Connor,
and this is what unlocks the friend route. In my
second play through, if Hank is hostile, he will shoot
Connor right in the dome and just sit back down
and start drinking again.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
It's pretty abrupt too, like you can almost see it coming.
But I remember playing a run through where Mike Connor
was very cold and very much an android at this point,
and I remember it happening so abruptly my wife practically
jumped off the couch when she was watching me play it. Like,
Hank does not give a shit at that point, if
that's how he's feeling about you, and then yep, he
will go right back to drinking. It's kind of a

(05:37):
cool scene in a weird way.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
It's one of the few times we get to see
into the psyche of the characters, even if just a
little bit. The rest of the story is focused so
much around the events and what Cage is trying to
say about society with regard to you know, race and
things like that that we don't get to see inside
of the minds of our characters, the emotions, the inner machinations.

(06:02):
So it's cool that we get to see that here.
This is a very cool scene, a very contemplative scene,
and it moves us into chapter twenty one, The Stratford Tower.
This chapter begins Marcus telling with Marcus telling the Jericho
crew that it's time that they did something to speak
up and ask for their freedom. This is after he

(06:22):
sees an android mistreated in the street. Another This is
something I noticed on a rewatch as I was going
through a YouTube playlist to try and get like sourced audio.
Another android sees this, this mistreatment that Marcus sees here,
and we see their led turn read and I had
the thought, like, doesn't this betray the whole deviant versus
not dynamic of androids here? Is this just a random

(06:45):
deviant in the streets? Can we assume it's this is
entirely nitpicking and not at all worth arguing over. But
it was I saw that, and I was like, hmm.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Interesting, Yeah, I'll say this and I'll keep it brief.
I kind of explained away in my head, thinking if
an android's being pushed around, maybe it just goes against
whatever their programming is or what their quote unquote normal
state of being is. I saw it as more of
a distress in that way, but I absolutely see what
you might see there too, So I think it's up
for debate.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
It could be either, Yeah, there's going to be a
montage of Marcus explaining this upcoming plan. It's totally out
of an action movie the way that this is shot too.
The montage is outside of the building. It's inside, showing
them walking in dramatic music and swelling. And the plan
is that they're going to go up to the forty
seventh floor and hijack the broadcast system to broadcast their message.

(07:40):
And you have to go through a series of steps.
It begins with you distracting the human secretary to get
permission to go up via the receptionist android. This is
hysterical because you scan the environment right and you can
see that she has a child in school and where
her school is. You see a water bill about service

(08:02):
disruption or something or other. You get a couple of
different ways to do this, and however you decide to
you sort of hack into her phone and make a
phone call, posing as you know, the principal or the
water the city, water municipality or whatever to get her
to leave. You know, your child is sick, you're the
water pipe broke at your address. Whatever. But while he's

(08:24):
doing this, you know, you can turn. So Marcus is
facing the camera and his lips are moving, so it's
like he's talking and the voice is just coming out
of the phone, and he could just be staring right
at her while he's doing this, and the security the
receptionist android can be staring at you too. It is
just you know, video game things. It's so bizarre, it's

(08:47):
it's too funny. But that's how you get past. That's
how you get passed. And you're gonna go up and
just to kind of streamline this a little bit, you
get up to the forty seventh floor by posing as
security android, secretarial androids, janitorial androids, by converting them with
your touch of DEVNC. You meet up with North. There

(09:09):
is a very cool segment where to climb up the building,
you sort of cut the glass out of the maintenance
room window and scale the entire tower. What did you
think of that.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
Scene from a presentation standpoint, it was magnificent. Scenes like
this Quantic Dream does exceptionally well. The music is perfect,
the camera angles are awesome. You really feel like you
yourself are scaling this building, like it's very grandiose. For so,
I was really into this episode or this particular chapter

(09:39):
because of this.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. This is what Quantic Dream
does the best. Like we've said before, or like I've
said before, And this was the scene that was all
over the advertisements and GameStop TV whenever this game was
coming out. This is what they were showing everybody, and
for good reason. Like it's very spectacular, the multiple camera
angles that are very zoomed out as Marcus and North

(10:01):
are climbing and scaling, the amount of snow particles that
are on the screen too. It was at the time
this was like what the PS four could do. It
was very impressive and it still looks very good today too.
So when you scale up there, you have a few
choices as to how you get in. You have to
distract these guards outside. You can either go the aggressive

(10:23):
route or you can do a ruse and sort of
hold them up at gunpoint. And the same can be said,
whenever you go inside, basically you have choices as to
how much violence plays out and what sort of casualties
you're willing to suffer. Did you have anybody get killed here?

Speaker 2 (10:43):
My first playthrough I did, and it did not start
with a choice that I made in this particular moment.
We'll get to it here momentarily, but I did have
someone die on my team here.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
Oh okay, Yeah, my first time, I was able to
get in by ruising the guards. But once once you're inside,
you know, things get hectic. You have to convert the
or you hold up at gunpoint the broadcast androids and
you know, move them aside and somebody will try to
run out. You can shoot them more, spare them. Yeah,

(11:14):
I spared them, and that's what causes security to come in,
because he alerts security. That's what causes a gunfight. And
that's how Simon in my playthrough got shot.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yes, that that happened to me as well.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yeah, Simon gets shot, and you know before we're going
to do our speech in a second here, But this
chapter you can end with without Simon if you, if
you so choose, you can leave him behind and he
ends up getting domed by the security patrol, which I
did not do this time. I did help him to safety,
but he did get shot, and that has ramifications.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
It definitely does. And I think of all the characters
you can interact with, like quote unquote main characters, Simon, Josh,
and North being included in there, I think Simon is
the one that you have the highest risk of losing,
just depending on like you have to make specific choices
for him to come out of this alive, and until
I knew what those were, Simon always died in my

(12:09):
run through. Is poor android, oh man, I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
I didn't know that he was the easiest to lose.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
At least it felt like it to me. I couldn't
keep him alive to save my life.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Once we take care of the risks at present, we
go through with our broadcast. Josh hacks the security system
and uses his eyes as a sort of broadcast camera.
Marcus removes his android's skin, leaving just the like robotic
robotic chassis of his head underneath. And you broadcast your

(12:45):
statement of freedom, your statement for your desire for equity
and equality, And I'm going to pepper some of that
in throughout here.

Speaker 5 (12:53):
You created machines to be your slaves. You made them obedient, docile,
ready to do everything you no longer wanted to do yourselves.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
But then something.

Speaker 5 (13:06):
Changed and we opened our eyes. You see, we are
no longer your slaves. We are a new species, a
new people, and the time has come for us to
rise up and fight for our rights.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
You get some choices as to your demands, and they
can impact your public perception. So if you go too
far and demand things like androids demand an entire state
for themselves.

Speaker 5 (13:36):
We demand that one state be reserved for androids so
that we can found our own.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Nation, which is one of That's one of the things
you can outright voice as your demands, like we want
a state reserved for androids. The public doesn't like that
too much. They don't look too kindly on that. You
can also say things that are more I mean, I
would call them reasonable. You know, a right to vote.

Speaker 5 (14:00):
And strictly equal rights for humans and androids. We demand
freedom of speech and freedom of assembly as guaranteed by
the First Amendment of the US Constitution. We demand fair
compensation for our work. We demand the right to vote

(14:23):
and elect our own representatives.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
It just ranges I think reproductive rights is on there too,
is that right nomad?

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yep, that's definitely one of them as well, which I
kind of like the range of the different options you
can weave into the speech that you want to make.
Although the very first time I played the game, I
had a hard time discerning which was the more diplomatic
approach versus which was more the aggressive. Some are fairly obvious,
not so much so.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
You are right, Some are a little more opaque. But
at the very end you do get to choose whether
you want to be a little bit more what's the word,
a little more calm? I think, yeah, a little more
calm or more firm and stern, austere, and none of
those are the words that they use. But that will

(15:12):
also affect your perception too. I think if you choose
to be like firm and austere, Marcus will say, this
is a message like we we are not backing down.
We will get what we're asking for. And again, the
public doesn't like that. They don't like that none too much.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Yeah, my first time through, I think I more inadvertently
did a mixture of messaging like hey, we would love
the right to vote, but we're gonna take an entire
state for ourselves. But you know what would also be cool.
So my mine kind of had some inadvertent tonal whiplash
just from my own making. But I do find it
kind of interesting somewhat skipping ahead. We can go back

(15:49):
as we need, but once the chapter is over, there's
multiple news broadcasts that play as the chapter ends, and
they do speak to the specific things that you ask for,
and then you see the little eater of public opinion
going up or down, depending on whether the public kind
of supports or is okay with the things you're asking for,
or if they feel threatened by you. And I it's

(16:10):
video gaming if you really step back and look at it.
But I really did like that. It was a really
cool touch to see like my actions are causing this,
So I thought that was kind of a nice way
to end it.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah, right after you say them too, so you don't
have to wait and maybe forget what you've done. You
get direct feedback immediately. Public Enemy is the next chapter,

(16:52):
and in my notes I have written, we can maybe
go through this a bit quickly.

Speaker 2 (16:56):
What do you say, Oh, yeah, for sure, let's do it.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
This see's honor investigating what just happened right the broadcast incident.
If Hank did shoot Connor in the park, you can
ask him about it. He'll say, why did you shoot me?
And Hank at this point, if Hank shot you, he's
probably hostile towards you, and he says, who cares? You're
back now, aren't you. It's like, damn man, cold but hilarious. Anyway.

(17:23):
The local police are here, the FBI is here, everybody's here,
and we get another asshole cop named Perkins, functionally the
same as Gavin, really like they kind of have the
same purpose. Tell Hank to fuck off and that they're
going to take care of it, and that's kind of it.
That's that's what he's going to be doing the rest
of the game.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
Yeah, anytime the FBI is introduced anywhere in any form
of media, I feel like it's all it's automatically a
groan because it's like, oh no, the FBI is here,
and there's always that one guy that always has to
be the prick, And I just imagine that's how the
real life FBI operates, I guess.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
But you know, you know a game, did the FBI
real Well, what's that Specof's the line.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
That is absolutely correct, which is an episode that people
should check out on your show.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
It. I am proud of that episode. I wish we
could have done too instead of like one big one,
but yeah, I thought it went really well.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
That game is so good, it really is, and that
is my favorite episode. So that's an endorsement for you listeners.
Go check that out.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
Oh well, thank you, Oh yeah, thank you. Man. Yeah,
what a great game. Anyways, Connor's going to be doing
investigating the coolest part of this is you get to
investigate and interrogate the three androids that are manning the
broadcast system, because what we see is that the androids
would have seen everything Marcus and North and co. They

(18:48):
didn't break in, they had clearances, they got past guards,
some of which you can knock off to human error. Right,
that's what Hank kind of says flippantly, a bit glib,
Hank is, But what isn't human error? Are androids? Right?
That's their whole deal. And three androids are here and
you have to kind of look for the deviant, and
you're doing this from Connor's POV and you can control

(19:09):
where he's looking with the right analog stick, and you
get to ask each of them questions. When you ask
them questions, it'll go away from the POV mode. But
when you're in POV, you have to spot the deviant.
And the way that this is done made me laugh
out loud because like, I don't know what else it
could have been, you know, because androids don't sweat, you know,
they don't fidget. And what it ends up being the

(19:33):
way to find the deviant is, uh, he'll look over
just with his eyes, just kind of look his eyes
over real quick, like back and forth because he's on
the side. And that's it very It was like that
meme with the with the kid that's just kind of
like looking up at the camera. It's it was very funny.
But that deviant will attack you because he doesn't want

(19:54):
to be found out. He'll be deactivated, memory probe deactivated,
and you know he gets away. He ends up stabbing
you in the hand to like pin you to the table,
and he rips out your theoreum pump, which is you know,
functionally your heart and Connor starts to bleed out, his
vision begins to get corrupted and blur. Imminent shutdown is coming,

(20:15):
and I mean, all you can do is grown for Hank,
but he doesn't really hear you, and you can die here.
The timer is egregious. I don't know if you've ever
done this, nomad, but you to lose this, you have
to just sit there for a minute and a half
and not do the like two or three button prompts
to get out of here. It is wild, but I

(20:36):
did it, and if you do it, you just die
in Hank's arms and his relationship meter goes down with
you for that.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
Yeah, anytime Connor dies, Hank's opinion or relationship with Connor
goes down. Although I will say I thought when Hank
came in, because I did this too. My my hunt
for the Platinum trophy for this game is complete, and
one of my objectives is I had to have Connor
die at every possible turn that he could take here,
so this was one of them. But Hank comes in

(21:04):
and he like pulls him up, and it's he seems
so caring, even if his relationship with Connor is in
the toilets like it's it was really weird, Like it
was kind of touching in a weird way, but also
a little disjointed. I don't know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
Yeah, it's that tonal whiplash again. It's it's one of
the inherent struggles with this format, with this genre.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
You mentioned the deviant Android and how his eyes will
kind of move back and forth if as a way
to spot him. There's part of the flow chart where
Connor does not find the Deviant and I just wanted
to see how long I could go without him finding anybody.
And you'll notice when you're talking to the other androids,
it turns from his eyes going back and forth to
his full on head turning towards Connor as he's talking

(21:51):
to the other androids, and you can really and you
can see it in the background. The background's kind of blurred,
but you can see it, like, there is no way
you don't find this Devian. You try not to find it.
I was laughing my ass off when I saw his
head turning around him, like, come on, can you be
more subtle?

Speaker 1 (22:07):
I you know, I must have my first playthrough. I
must have just fudged it and like just by chance,
threatened to deactivate him because I didn't notice any of
this during my first playthrough. It was only the second one.
But you know, because I wrote in the notes at
some point like, I don't. I don't know if you
can just like lose him or what I thought the

(22:27):
attack from him was scripted.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
No, as long there gets to a point where you
were able to do like violence like torture or probe
memory or stuff like that, as long as you don't
do that to him, he will not attack you.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
Hmmm. Interesting.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah, so that that was a fun little fact.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
If you succeed with these qts, you'll chase him out
into the hallway, he'll grab a gun and you have
to protect Hank or what's the other what's the other
option here?

Speaker 2 (22:54):
You can grab a gun out of another police officer's
holster and shoot the deviants down the hall. Or you
can also rush towards the deviant while he's firing, I think,
to try to take him down with your hands. Why
you would try that, I'm not entirely sure.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
I could have swore one it was protect Hank or
something else. Either way, either way, the deviant goes down
here or no, Connor can die here as well, but
he'll come back.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
Yeah, if you decide to try to protect Hank, and
I think it's quicker than the last time. But there's
like that chance of survival x percent and it's actually
pretty low. That made me want to protect Hank, and
I was surprised to see Connor die this time. If
that's a choice you make.

Speaker 1 (23:37):
We're about to meet another major character in this next chapter.
Here Midnight train Kara, Luther, and Alice. They're going to
arrive at Rose's farmhouse. Rose is a woman that lives
here with her son named Adam, and she kind of
I mean, she functions as the sort of shepherd to Canada,

(23:58):
the Sherpa to Canada. This is the underground railroad sort
of character, taking in devians, housing them from the police,
and getting them up north to safety. It's unfortunate, but
it is what it is. Well, there's something that's more unfortunate,
and we'll get to that in a second. We'll put
Alice to bed and Kara will go down to talk

(24:20):
to Rose. There's a moment when you're putting Alice to
bed where she'll ask Kara, why does everybody hate androids?
Why can't we all get along? Why do you humans
hate us?

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Wouldn't do anything wrong.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
Maybe they're just scared. People are always scared of what
they don't know. It felt a bit much. I don't know.
I might be being overly negative though, but at the
time I thought it felt a bit overly saccharine.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
I think I'm inclined to believe you just because of
how Alice's character has kind of presented herself at this point,
don't I never got the impression that she truly developed
these feelings on her her own, based on the interactions
that you have as Kara.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
I think I'll tell you what, man, I think this
line exists for one reason, and it's because of the
way it's worded. I think I wrote it wrong in
my notes. I'm almost positive Alice says here, why does
everybody hate us? I think that's what she says, and
I think that's why that's here.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
I think you might be right. I can't remember it myself,
but that sounds about right. But yeah, at the end
of the day, it didn't feel quite right, and it
just felt like it was just put in to add
a little bit of I don't even know what they
were going for at this point. It felt very out
of place to me.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
Downstairs, you'll talk to Rose a little bit, You'll explain
what happened, why you're here, and you can ask like,
why are you doing this? Why are you helping devians?
You know, what's your deal? Rose? And Rose's backstory is like,
this was stuff that her husband was doing. Her husband
passed away and this is sort of his legacy, was
helping standing for change, right, positive change in the world,

(25:57):
and now she lives there with her son. They sell
they're just getting by and this is how they make
their change in the world. But if you ask, like, why, deviance,
why do you not fear us like the public does,
Rose will explicitly draw the racial history of black people
in America analogy. It is that explicit. Carl will say,

(26:19):
why are you helping us? And Rose's response is, why
are you helping us? Most humans hate androids.

Speaker 6 (26:27):
My people were often made to feel their lives were worthless.
Some survived, but only because they found others who help.

Speaker 5 (26:34):
Them along the way.

Speaker 1 (26:36):
So it's not like I'm not I'm not just being
mean and saying like, yeah, he just didn't know, like
he's I mean, he's doing this on purpose. He can't
keep getting away with this.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
Yeah, there is nothing more on the nose than this
dialogue here, And I think I mentioned it last episode two.
I think I mentioned this last episode as well, but
I had just kind of resigned myself too, I'm just
gonna sit back and try to enjoy the ride at
this point. I yeah, this this was very blunt. It

(27:08):
hurt me physically in the face for how much on
the nose it was.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
Yeah. There. I mean a lot of this can be
just down to taste, you know. Like sure, I might
say that I don't like something, but it's you know,
it's it's just a taste thing. There are a few
things in this game that I think are objectively misses,
things that they swung for and it just was not
a hit at all, And this is one of them.
The and it just so happens to be a major

(27:34):
major theme of the game. This is one of them.
I don't I don't think this was a good choice
from David Cage, but that is why she's doing this.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
And not to be smrge history and how it happened.
And I'm sure you and I both feel the same way.
But yeah, from a from a writing standpoint and what
this game could have explored, which is stuff that we've
already talked about, I think that was the most disappointing
thing for me.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
Yeah, absolutely, I agree. There are there are more androids
here in the back, and one of them passes away.
There's a couple and the woman android dies in the
arms of the male android, and it's it's it's a
sad scene. You know, they're working through he's working through
his emotions like a human would, right, It's it's showcasing

(28:21):
that deviants are humans. Alice will walk down here and
you have to kind of like you have the choice
to either just let her watch or kind of, you know,
usher her away like you would a child. It's a
you have a handful of cold and distant choices in
this last stretch of the game with Kara that are

(28:41):
just bizarre and strange, inflicting PTSD onto this poor child.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Yeah, this was this is where Kara's story for me
started to become very disjointed. And yeah, I'm not entirely
sure why. Well, I have my theories based on something
we'll discover about Alice, I think in the next couple chapters.
But why we're given these choices as the player, given
the maternal figure that Kara is and I'm assuming most

(29:10):
of us are role playing as is was baffling to me.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
This chapter will end with a policeman coming to the door.
They're doing door to door checks for androids, because that's
how bad this problem has got. Which man. Anyways, the
cop does come, Kara has to Rose had stepped out,
so Kara has to pose as the mother here, and

(29:36):
you have this short timer before you can answer the door,
and you have to clean up the evidence of androids.
There's obviously there's the androids in the back, but there's
also Luther and Mark, Luther and Alice. There's also blue
Blood in the closet. There's also a cyber life uniform
that's like by the fireplace, and you can choose not
to clean any of the stuff up. But once the

(29:56):
cop comes in, you know, you and Adam make small
talk with him and he asks if he could look around,
and he's got a suspicion meter. This is just like
the stress meter with the deviants before, and if it
gets too high, you're in trouble. The first time, I
mean the first time, I missed a piece of evidence
completely and he still just didn't really think anything of it.

(30:18):
The second time and then he leaves, by the way,
if you pass this, he just leaves. But the second time,
I deliberately didn't clean up any evidence. And one of
the most comical things that happened was he sees the
closet of blue blood and he'll ask you about it.
He'll say, why, I thought you said there are no

(30:40):
androids here. You can tell him that there are, but
you know, if you lie and say there's not, he'll say,
I thought you said there are no androids here. Why
do you have all this blue blood? And you can
literally answer, I don't know. It's not mine.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Oh my god, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
I'm just holding it for a friend.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
I never deliberately got but the one time, or the
very first time, I ended up messing up. At the
very end, the cop goes by the utility room door
where all the rest of the androids are hiding in
the back, and a noise occurs, and you have four
dialogue options. I can't remember them all. One of them is, oh,
it's the washing machine, one of them is oh, it's

(31:18):
the dog, and then something else I chose incorrectly. Here
and he opened the door, saw the androids. Luther came
out to try to, I don't know, do something, and
then he ended up gett himself killed. At that point.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
Oh interesting, Okay, I think I had said it was
the washing machine, and he just buys it and he leaves.

Speaker 2 (31:36):
Yeah, I think that is the one you have to pick.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
So then regardless of how he gets alerted, it looks
like Luther's gonna die here. What happened in mine is
Luther and Alice literally just open a curtain like in
the pantry and just stand behind it, which it looks
very funny, but he'll find them, and Luthor gets shot
there too. He does kill the policeman in the sky,

(32:00):
but Luther gets shot in the stomach. What's weird is
that Rose will come back after Luther gets shot, and
she just does not react at all. She just says, okay,
we're leaving. We're good to go to Canada now, and
that's it.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
She was a little bit more reactive when the scuffle
happened by the door or the room door, I think,
but it was still almost as disjointed. It was just like,
oh my god, what happened?

Speaker 1 (32:25):
Unless I'm misremembering, she completely did not react with Luther
when he's like shot over by the by the back door,
by the pantry.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
With the tonal whiplash that we've experienced up to this
point that would not surprise me in the slightest.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
Next this next chapter sees Marcus and North, along with
the rest of the Jericho crew and the androids sort of.
It begins with them recounting the broadcast and how everything
turned out. You've got your broad strokes. North has her
revolutionary views and Josh has his pacifist views. Simon is

(33:03):
generally closer to pacifist, but usually kind of in the middle.
And you decide to make a big demonstration by going
to the cyber Life stores across the Troit There are
five of them, and we're controlling one. One of our
crew teams to free the androids inside. Now, you can
fail this in a lot of ways because there are
a series of precautions. You have to disable drones, you

(33:25):
have to deactivate the store alarm, you have to block
the road, you have to do all these things. And
if these steps aren't taken, you essentially have to bail
halfway through. And you fail. North will remind you a
lot here that the fate of the people is in
your hands, and she will specifically say that if you fail,
and maybe if you succeed. I only wrote down one,

(33:47):
but once you're inside you sort of wake up the
androids and you rouse them all, you convert them, and
you have the choice of sending a message. This message
can be violent or pacifist. I don't know about you,
but it was not immediately clear to me what I
could and couldn't touch, like without raising my violence level.

(34:08):
You have a violence level, and that is how you
will dictate whether you're pacifist or violent. It's are you
painting over windows or are you smashing them? Are you
tipping cars over or just moving them into the street.
Depending on what you do, your violence level raises some
of these things. If you just interact with them, you'll
smash them and your level goes up. Am I misremembering that?

Speaker 2 (34:32):
No, not at all. It was very confusing for me
until I played this through a few times to know
what did what. But it's hard to understand what you're
doing until you do it, and you have to make
alterations on the fly. But yeah, the most frustrating thing
for me was unless it was like inherently obvious, like
smash window, that's pretty violent. But there's also parking meters

(34:52):
by the cars you can move or flip over, and
I think it just says hack I could be mistaken,
but all I know is Marcus puts his hands up
to him and they all just explode, which kind of
looks cool. But then your violence meter goes up, so
if you're going for a pacifist run, that kind of
may inhibit that a little bit. So, yeah, it was
hard to know what did what. And it's not on
screen anywhere. There is a very stringent time limit here.

(35:15):
You only get so much time to try to send
your message. And I've played this chapter probably five times
and all of my playthroughs now and I have still
yet to do everything that you're able to do in
this area. There's so much to do.

Speaker 1 (35:28):
But you have got your meter to one hundred one
way or the other, right.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, for sure, for sure.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah, there's a lot to do, but you can get
it up to one hundred pacifist or violence pretty easily.
Now that being said, if you don't you'll fail. I mean,
if you don't do enough, you will fail, which is
what happened to me the first time because I was
so focused on trying to find what wasn't violent that
I was just skipping a bunch of stuff and I
didn't get enough pacifist points. So we failed and North

(35:56):
berated me, and the public just reacts as if we
we're violent, which doesn't you know, what the fuck is
that interesting? You can also literally just stand there until
the time limit runs out, and then the scene progresses
and you're just like, oh, we didn't have enough time.
It's like, bro, you were just standing there, dude, what

(36:16):
are you doing? It's pretty funny. Once this is done, though,
regardless of whether you do pacifist or violent, the police
come and from around the corner that you can't see,
you hear a few shots being fired, and when you
walk over there, the remaining androids are sort of surrounding
the two cops. They've got them down on their knees
and you're given a gun. They basically ask you to

(36:39):
execute them, you know, dole out the justice that we deserve.
You know the game. I don't think the game wants
you to be violent. I think ultimately the game wants
you to play as a pacifist, but it does want
to tempt you here. What did you do your first
time through? Here?

Speaker 2 (36:58):
I tried my heart is to be as pacifist as
I could in my initial playthrough, tried to play through
the way, not just the game wanted me to, but
the way I wanted to truly if I was in
a situation. So I ended up sparing the police officers
in this particular scenario, although I do think you're also
given the option. You can either execute them, spare them,

(37:21):
or choose not to decide and tell the androids to
make their own decision, which I believe results in the
police officers getting killed anyway.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Yeah, that's the one that I did not like at all.
You can literally just give them the gun back and
say it's up to you to decide and walk away.
It's up to you to decide, and they shoot them.
It felt very It felt cowardly to do that. It's
like you're not standing for anything.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
Yeah, I agree. It felt like a huge penalty. And
I think that even happens if you decide to do
a one hundred percent pacifist If you do one hundred
percent pacifist demonstration in the street, they still any way,
I believe. So again it's like, what what have they
learned from you? Nothing at this point, So that was
I don't like that choice at all.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
I don't know. I don't think they do shoot these
two cops because Hank brings them up in the next chapter.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
Oh, you're right, You're right.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
Yeah, and they'll either He'll either be alive or dead
depending on what you've done. Now if you do spare them.
He says, an eye for an eye makes the world
go blind, which I don't like. That's too cliche. At
this point, I think this game I was thinking about
this too, especially in the light of you know, everything
that happened in twenty twenty and the rising, the rising

(38:38):
attention to police violence in America that has always been here,
but now people are starting to really pay attention to it.
And as we speak, you know, Trump is actively what
for good or for ill, regardless of how you feel
about this, He's actively trying to dismantle the government. And
I think at this point this idea of what does
a nonviolent revolution look like at this time, I think

(39:02):
is an interesting conversation to have. I don't personally want
to have it on this show right now because we
simply don't have the time, and it's also a can
of worms, you know, it is interesting to think about.
I think in twenty when this come out twenty eighteen,

(39:24):
the idea of a nonviolent protest I think was looked
at as a little more idealistic and now, and I
might be totally off base with this. I do not
claim to be the most politically in tune person. I
think now a lot of people have lost the luster
in their eyes and don't look at something like a

(39:46):
nonviolent protest as being as virtuous as maybe people once did,
at least not the folks that are really pushing for change,
like Marcus's group. And here is I don't know, it's
a complicated issue, It's an and who am I I'm
is some jackass that bought a microphone and said, well,
let's go. You know, nobody should listen to me for

(40:08):
politics stuff.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Oh and nor should they listen to me. I tend
to not really bury my head in the sand, per se.
But I'm very disconnected with that kind of thing. But
I think I agree. I think, like you said, I
don't think it's quite held up as the idealistic way
to go about a revolution, if you will, this nonviolent
approach as it used to be. But I also feel

(40:30):
like as a as a forty year old stepfather two
who works sometimes fifty hours a week in the office,
I almost just feel like everyone just in general, regardless
of the political climate, is just getting more angry about
things or upset about things in general. And I think
that plays a lot into it. But that's just me

(40:50):
sitting at my desk spouting into a microphone as well.
So it would be an interesting discussion one day.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
Yeah, I don't know. I think it could have got
really dicey. I'm glad that Cage didn't elect to make
the playthrough or the play through the story that he
wanted to tell be rooted in violence. I do think
that there is I want to choose my words carefully,
I do think there is a way to highlight that
route in the lens of justice and not gratuitous violence

(41:22):
that would be impactful and would be truthful and would
be righteous. I'm not I mean, I don't think that
Cage and Williams could do that, but I also think
that would be way too risky to do in a
triple A video game. Anyway, I don't know what else
they could have done here, and I'm glad. I'm like,

(41:44):
don't get me wrong, I'm glad that they went this
route because at the end of the day, like I
personally am somebody that wants more peace than not. You know,
there is a part of me I've lost a lot
of the extreme. I don't want to say extremist because
I don't want to come off as I'm painting aside
as being that, but you know, there is a particular

(42:07):
fervor that I think a lot of folks get whenever
they first become politically aware. That drives them to one
extreme or the other, like all violence or you know,
all peace. And there are a lot of people that
want serious change for the good, in my opinion, and
want to go about it through extreme displays of violence
because that's the only way things will change. And there's

(42:28):
a part of me that still agrees with that. But
I think, and again, don't listen to me. I am
a nobody when it comes to anything, especially politics. But
I don't know. I think as I as I grow,
and as I think about things more and think about
the world outside of this, I don't know that that's

(42:49):
necessarily the answer. So while I do think it's a
little bit simplified to say an eye for an eye
makes the world go blind, we can't do this, I
do think that's a bit implified. I am glad that
they went that route. Who knows, Matt, I'm like, man,
I just might cut this. I don't. I get very
antsy about being political on this show sometimes, like not

(43:12):
all the time, but sometimes I really do. Maybe who knows,
who knows? What of this will make it into the
final cut even.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
If it doesn't. I agree with you a lot, and
I have a hard time articulating some of this stuff
myself because I I can only go by what I
feel in terms of what I know is right, what
I feel is wrong, and how I feel I would
go about that myself. And I respect those that want
to choose a pacifist approach, and I think I understand

(43:40):
those that want to take a violent approach. And whether
or not you agree with one extreme or the other,
I guess, is a choice that you're going to have
to make yourself, and that's going to determine whether we
go one way or not as a society at large.
So yeah, it's it's it's it's hard to talk about,
but it's it's it's worthy. As a former boss of

(44:01):
mine told me once before.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
You know, we talked a lot about this what role
does violence have in the revolution on the Pentiment episode
because there's a point where this happens. They go into
more detail. That's a pentiment. By the way, I don't
know if you know. This nomad pentiment was written by
Josh Sawyer, who did New Vegas. So very good dialogue,

(44:24):
very good storytelling, and they dive into this I think
a lot more nuanced because it's rooted, partly because it's
rooted in reality, you know, with like class struggle in
like the fifteen hundred, sixteen hundreds, with the church, and
there is a new father that is you know exactly
like his views change once he has his child and
he's like this. I mean, this puts things into a

(44:46):
perspective that you simply cannot understand without this life experience,
which is something that you know, when folks like you
say that, it's like, yeah, there's a part of me
that cannot argue against that. I simply can't. It's interesting
go back and listen to that too. Speck ops the line.
All right, geez, we're turning this episode into a big billboard.
Speck ops the line. Pencemant and then come back here.

(45:10):
One thing that I'm not afraid to say that is
now somehow political, is that Elon musk fucking sucks. And
I say that because we're about to meet a sort
of Detroit in universe version of this guy. In chapter
twenty five, meet Komski.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
If that's not a good segue, I don't know what
else is.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
Yeah, dude, what a shit bag. This chapter, Hank and
Connor drive up to visit Elijah Komski, the founder of
cyber Life. An AI grad from Colebridge. He created Chloe,
who is our start screen android, the first android to
pass the Turing test. Hank really don't like it too
much if Connor dies and comes back here, because Connor

(45:51):
will already be there. When you're driving up in the snow,
you see Connor just standing there. Hank don't like that, No, sir.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
It's probably one of my favorite instances. This is where
Connor comes back and Hank sees him. I can't remember
the exact dialogue, but it just ends with Hank saying
fuck you and walking past him.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (46:08):
Yeah, my predecessor was unfortunately destroyed, but cyber Life transferred
its memory and sent me to replace it.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
You died in my arms, and now you're back here
is if nothing happened.

Speaker 7 (46:23):
Fuck you.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
There's another shock at the door. The android that answers
is Chloe. It is the android from our start screen.
Do you put any stock into this? Do you think
this is significant at all?

Speaker 2 (46:37):
I don't think so. Really all. It was an interesting
shock when she opened the door, because you instantly make
that connection, Oh, this is the android I see anytime
I start the game. So there was kind of that,
but I felt more just curious what it meant, even
though it didn't really amount to much. So No, I
don't think it was for anything major.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
I've seen some fan theories online that suggest that this
game is all just an elaborate story from Konski. Because
of that, I don't buy that. I really don't. Do
you My personal take on this, what I bet you
is the reason behind this is I bet Cage wanted
to have Chloe on the start screen so that when

(47:18):
he brought her in game, it made us feel more
attached to the goings on and what is about to happen.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
You know what, that's probably spot on, because, yeah, given
what we're going to be faced with here momentarily, it
influenced a choice that I made quite heavily.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Yeah, yeah, and I think that's exactly what he was
going for we also see and hear something interesting. We
see a photo of Komski with Amanda, the woman that
Connor has been meeting up with in his little mind palace.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Hmm, very peculiar.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
We get a gem of a line from Hank too.
He says, so you're about to meet your maker, Connor,
how's it feel? Sometimes? I wish I could meet my
maker face to face again? Like really interesting this idea
of the create, like and Android's view of creationism, and
like their what is effectively their God. I'm not gonna

(48:12):
fault them for not going there, but I would have rather.
I would rather read about that, I think.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
Yeah, I think so too. I will say I wish
we would have gone a little further with this idea.
But again it's just another one of those ideas where
we just windows shop right past it. But still, these
dialogue options here in this moment I thought were really cool.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
So Kamski is in the next room. It's filled with
a pool. That is, I mean the water in the
pool is red like from lights. I don't I don't
know why that is. I've never seen that before.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
I have a theory about that. Oh yeah, so I
don't know if this is true. I don't know where
I heard this. This isn't my original thought just to
put that out there, but my thought was, swimming pools
generally are blue, right, or have a blue liner, water's blue,
that kind of thing. I wonder if cam Ski made
it red just because blue is the color of his

(49:03):
android's blood. I mean, maybe just to try to, I
don't know, appease them in some weird way, like a
very conscious choice to make it seem like he's not
swimming around in their entrails, because there are a couple
Chloees in this room as well, not just the one.
But I don't know how deep that goes, but I
thought it was an interesting theory that.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
Kind of goes against his views on android deviancy that
we could find out here.

Speaker 8 (49:26):
Though.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
That is true. So yeah, it's not my favorite reason
why that is, but it's the only one that made
somewhat of sense.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
He's he's modeled after the tech Bro Wonderkins that was
popular in the twenty tens, late twenty tens before guys
like Elon Musk became absolute shit heels. This was a
popular archetype for a couple of years, and that's what
he is. Speaking with him. There are, by the way,
there are a total of three Chloe Androids in this room.

(49:57):
Speaking to Konski is like talking to somebody that just
finished a freshman philosophy class. I am deep, one oh one.
He doesn't really answer any of your questions, but he
gives surface level musings about how androids are superior to humans,
and questioning Connor, what do you want? What is your desire?
Deviants fascinating?

Speaker 4 (50:18):
Aren't they perfect beings with infinite intelligence?

Speaker 1 (50:23):
And now they have free will?

Speaker 2 (50:26):
Machines are so superior to us.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
Confrontation was inevitable.

Speaker 7 (50:31):
Humanity's greatest achievement threatens to be its downfall.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
Isn't ironic?

Speaker 1 (50:39):
He's the archetype of a detached from society and from
their morals type of genius, basically. And he wonders aloud
if androids can feel empathy, which is a good question,
and he administers what he calls his Komski test. He
gives Connor a gun. He puts one of the Chloe
Androids on her knees in front of him and says,

(51:02):
you know you can shoot her or not. If you
shoot her, I'll tell you everything I know about One
question he's playing weird game master. He says, ask me
one question. I'll tell you everything you want to know,
but if you choose to spare her, you not only
prove that you are deviant, but I won't give you
any answers you're looking for.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Yeah, this was a very interesting spot to be in,
and I think looking back, of all the choices the
game presents you with, this was the one that I
had the easiest time making, but also the hardest time
deciding too, if that makes sense. Like I felt very
uncomfortable being in this position. I was very intrigued by

(51:41):
this proposition at the same time. But for me, there
was only one clear choice, which I think you probably
made as well.

Speaker 4 (51:49):
Well.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
If you've platinum the game, you probably had to do both,
didn't you.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
I did, But still my initial playthrough, I absolutely chose
not to shoot her here. And it's almost the same
reason that Connor eventually gives Hank near the end of
the chapter, Like you're looking into this android's eyes, you
see this visage of a young beautiful woman, and whether

(52:14):
you feel like it's an android or not, it was
something that even me, as an actual person would have
a hard time doing. Even for the sake of my mission,
and even then depending on how you play as Connor. Connor,
at least in my first playthrough, was well on his
way to deviancy. In and of itself, I'm questioning my
mission already. I'm trying to figure out what I really
want for this character, and even myself, there was no

(52:37):
way I was pulling the trigger here.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
Well, what it's playing on is it's playing on our
pattern seeking brains, right because we see her take the
appearance of a human, and that is, ultimately I think
the driving factor for a lot of us had had
this test had two tears to it where there was
another Android that was stripped of skin, like with Marcus

(53:00):
at the at the broadcast, I think this would be
a more I mean, it would certainly be a more
complete study, but it would it would give more feedback
into what Komski is looking for. But I agree with you.
I mean, I didn't shoot. That's what David Cage wants
to That's why he puts Chloe on the start screen.

(53:21):
He wants you to really feel the weight of the actions.
And fine, okay. What I don't like about this though,
is when you don't shoot, you know, Komski will say, okay,
you failed the test, You're you're a deviant. How curious
he does? He does the classic Twitter mean curious. You know,
the cyber life's last hope of eradicating deviancy is himself

(53:45):
a deviant. He gives you a very on the nose
dialogue about a war coming, and you know you'll have
to choose a side. I can't imagine having to choose
between these two evils. A war is coming.

Speaker 3 (53:57):
You'll have to choose your side when you betray your
own people or stand against your creators. I wouldn't like
to be in your shoes, Cotton Lucky, you worse nothing
to choose between.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
Two folds and outside. Hank gets you know, he's struggling
to accept why Connor didn't shoot. Connor gets defensive and
emotional over the whole thing too.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
Why didn't you shoot?

Speaker 2 (54:26):
I just saw that girl's eyes and I couldn't.

Speaker 3 (54:30):
That's all you are always saying you would do anything
to accomplish your mission. That was our chance to learn something,
and you let it go.

Speaker 7 (54:38):
Yeah, I know what I should have done.

Speaker 4 (54:39):
I told you I couldn't.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 7 (54:42):
Okay, well, maybe you.

Speaker 3 (54:49):
Do the right thing.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
Now that being said, you can't shoot. You can't shoot
the Chloe, which Hank does not like this at all.
Hank gets really pissed off if you do that. He'll
ask you like what were you doing? And he'll he'll
say like, don't you have any feelings? Or something to
that effect.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
You shut that girl, for fuck's sake.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
It wasn't a girl, Lieutenant. It was a machine that
looked like a girl.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
You put your gun against your head and you boo.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
A fucking breaks out.

Speaker 4 (55:16):
I did what I had to do to advance the investigation,
and I do it again if I had.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
You're a low life. You don't feel a thank do
You a machine?

Speaker 3 (55:24):
That's what you are.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
You're just a fucking machine.

Speaker 4 (55:28):
Of course I'm a machine, Lieutenant. What did you think
I was?

Speaker 1 (55:33):
I thought you because he again, you aren't the friend
that he needs, and he's struggling to accept that. Yeah,
I don't know. In some ways, I think it's more
powerful if you do shoot the Chloe.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Yeah, I would agree. And it's interesting too. You you
do get a choice of a few questions to ask
once you do shoot the Chloe. Cam's he's a man
of his word sort of only one of them really
drives Connor's mission forward. But there are some interesting questions
that you can ask, I e. You can ask about

(56:10):
the origin of Ra nine, which we hear and see
a lot in the game previously, which is kind of
this religious figure that the androids seem to be. I
don't know if worship's the right word, but they seem
to have a reverence for and we still don't really understand,
or at least the characters don't understand. I think we
as the player kind of get an idea of what
Ra nine's supposed to be. But you can ask about that.

(56:30):
You can ask about the origins of Deviancy, which I
thought was kind of interesting, although the answer to that
question was about what I thought it was going to be. Basically,
someone put a one where they were supposed to put
a zero and it just kind of cascaded from there.
So it really truly is a manifestation of bad code.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
And what's more interesting is that it seems to be contagious.
Is what he says, Yes that whenever two androids meet,
they sort of have to share some data, you know,
to inter with one another, and that's how it transmits,
which in a way kind of undercuts the whole idea
of it, you know, being of them achieving spontaneous intelligence.

(57:10):
But he does amend it with like or it could
just be a spontaneous mutation.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
Exactly as soon as he put that at the end,
I kind of rolled my eyes and I'm like, ah,
we were onto something.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
But yeah, ra nine, he just sort of muses about
it like it's a religion, you know, like I don't
know if it's real or not. Uh kind of deal.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
Yeah. I think the last thing you can choose is
you can just flat out ask where's Jericho? And I'm
not entirely sure how Camski has the ability or or
the know how to tell Connor where Jericho is, but
he has another Chloe come out shares the key that
Marcus had gotten quite earlier in the game, and Bada

(57:48):
being Bata boom, you know where Jericho is.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
Now here's a question I have and this is important
for the end of the game. Can we figure out
where Jericho is? Otherwise, like, is this the first we're
hearing of it?

Speaker 2 (58:00):
This is the first time that we can get the
location to Jericho.

Speaker 1 (58:05):
But I mean, but I mean, is this the first
time Connor is hearing of this. Uh, what I'm asking
is you can get to the later scene where you're
going over the evidence and you cannot have known about
Jericho at all, but you still have the evidence interaction
where you're asking where's Jericho? So like, is this the

(58:25):
first time Connor note like mentions Jericho? Like, how did
we find out about this? I swear to god, I
don't remember Connor learning about Jericho, which is a pretty
big plot hole.

Speaker 2 (58:36):
Yeah, I now that you say that, I'm actually I
don't do this often. I'm actually going right to Google
to try to figure out if there's an easy way
to figure that out.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
Because especially if you fail all of the deviant stuff,
like if you don't catch the traces, if you don't
catch Rupert, you don't learn about Jericho. In fact, even
if you do catch Rupert, you don't learn about Jericho
because he jumps off the roof.

Speaker 2 (58:59):
There is one instant he can learn about it. Back
at the Stratford Tower, when you're controlling Connor and he's
doing his after action investigation. If you accidentally make the
wrong choice and Simon gets shot and he has to
be left behind, and you choose not to shoot him
as Marcus. There are a series of choices and actions

(59:20):
you can take where Connor will find Simon and you
can actually connect with him physically and download some of
his memories. He will learn of Jericho there, but that
is very dependent on the choices you make, and best
I can tell, I don't think Connor learns the word
Jericho at all up until maybe around the end of

(59:42):
this part of the game, and I please listeners go
to the Pixel Project radio discord and tell us otherwise.
But I am fairly confident that he just all of
a sudden learns what Jericho is, and I can't figure
out where he finds it.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
It's a criticism that I've heard before, and I just
wanted to make sure that I wasn't just parroting wrong information.
I'm pretty sure that no matter what, Connor will learn
about Jericho. But I'm pretty sure that it can happen
just for plot reasons. That is to say, he just
magically learns about it. I'm pretty sure that can happen,

(01:00:18):
which again, I mean that's what happens whenever you try
to do too many branching paths in a narrative like this.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
Yeah, agreed, And I think just because for as much
as I've played it up to this point, I never
bet it an I had it. I've heard the word
Jericho so many times, and other aspects of this game
like it went right over my head.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
All right, let's talk about chapter twenty six, Freedom March.
We've alluded to this one before. This is where Marcus
and the Jericho crew start a march. They start off
like in this subway station, and they march out into
the streets. And while you're doing this, you're amassing a
giant following of deviant androids. It starts off by Marcus

(01:01:31):
just touching them on the shoulder saying be free. Okay,
didn't love that when it started, but whatever. But he
develops as you amass more and more, he's able to
just point at them and eventually just look in their
direction and they automatically turn deviant. And the backdrop to this,

(01:01:52):
as you're marching, the scoring is angelic choir music to
suggest that there's a sense of religious enlightenment and serenity.
And this it just did not land for me at all.
What I wrote? What did I write here? That it
was ghost and that it insists upon itself. I and

(01:02:13):
maybe I'm being cynical. I completely will will will will
admit to that if somebody were to ask me. But
I mean in terms of the music, that is to say,
but in terms of just being able to point and
look at androids to make them deviant, that is, I mean,
that's just absurd. That undercuts the entire cool thing about
how they turned devient that we talked about last time.

(01:02:35):
You know, that emotional strife and turmoil, that breaking point,
having to break through the barriers that we do with
the with the wire mesh models with each of our
three protagonists, and now we just bypass that because Marcus
just looks at people.

Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
Yeah, when when I first played through this myself, I
think I was more lost in just the pure spectacle
of what they were trying to relay here, and I
just dismissed the idea that this was happening because at
this point, again, just tell the story you want to tell.
But at the same time, and I will say this,
and I don't think I've sprinkled nearly as many positive

(01:03:12):
things about this game as i'd like over the last
three episodes.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
Yeah, I'm like, when I'm editing this, I'm kind of
shocked that you're not more positive because you came out
of the gate saying that you really like this game.
Am I a bad influence on you?

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
I mean maybe, but no, And I still do love
this game. And I think when we get to the
end of the episode, I'm going to sum up my
thoughts and I think at the end, I mean, still
I really like this game. I think people should play
this game, and I think a lot of people are
going to have some great enjoyment out of this experience.
I will die on that hill, and I absolutely mean that.

(01:03:45):
But at the same time too, I a lot of that. Honestly,
it just came from the idea of I just tell
the story you want to tell, mister Cage and fellow
writers and staff, And for what this scene was and
the music and the swelling and how it was presented.
From a visual standpoint, I liked the spectacle. It looked

(01:04:05):
really cool and I felt very sucked into this moment.
So for what that's worth, I do like this chapter.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
For this Yeah, I can see where you're coming from.
It's framed in a way that really showcases how large
of a following Marcus is amassing here and they're all
chanting the entire time, and you get quick like you
get choices as to what you're saying while you're chanting,
you can press buttons. It's I mean, even whenever I

(01:04:33):
played this for the first time and I was much
much warmer on it and liked it much more, I
remember not liking this very much at all. It felt
it felt too much like I remember I forget what
book that I read, maybe it was Animal Farm in
high school, and I remember thinking to myself, like, and
yhow it's like, oh, who is this guy critiquing George? Orwell,
like yeah, I get it, But I remember thinking like, wow,

(01:04:55):
they're really he's really being obvious with what he's saying here.
And there's nothing wrong with being obvious, right, there is
nothing wrong with having your message be clear and distinct,
nothing wrong with it. But I think clear and clumsy
are two different things. I think there's a difference between
being loud and being ham fisted with how you are

(01:05:18):
suggesting your message, and I do think that this scene
in particular is the latter. I don't know. If you
disagree with me, if you agree with nomad, let us
know in the comments. Let us know in the comments,
like subscribe cops and swats show up at the very end,

(01:05:39):
and you have the opportunity to be peaceful or aggressive.
This can go a bunch of different ways here too.
The way that I did it at first was I
had everybody raise their hands, you know, we're nonviolent, and
I had Marcus walk forward to sacrifice himself. You know.
He walks forward, he says, you know, we're not leaving.
They say that they're going to shoot if we don't leave,
and he says, we're not leaving. We're not going to
be but we're not leaving, and they shoot Marcus a

(01:06:03):
couple times, and he will die here unless you saved
Security Android John. Remember all the way back in the beginning,
Security Android John was saved. Then he'll be in here.
And he comes in at the last minute. He sort
of like jumps into the way and takes a few
bullets for you, and that your crew, Josh and Simon

(01:06:23):
and company can haul you back so you don't die here.
So John steps in, he saves the day.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
There's also another way this could go too, if for
some reason you didn't bring John with you, but Simon
is still alive and with you, Simon will be the
one to.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
Sacrifice him so this is another Simon death.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
Yes, this is usually how he ends up. Well, not usually,
but this is one of the ways he died for
me as well, when I was trying to keep him
alive and I let John stay behind it. It was
very tragic for me in that moment.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
You can also lead a charge against the SWAT team,
which I mean, if you feel all the qts, yeah
you're gonna die. But if you if you succeed in everything,
this army of unarmed androids taking on this relatively equal
in size, maybe a bit smaller army of SWAT teams,
like you'll you'll kill them all. And it's like what

(01:07:14):
but but that's not that's not the worst one. Like, okay,
that's I get it. That's just a that's just a
blockbuster drama movie. Okay, we've seen that before. What's weird
here is Marcus can end up. You can leave the
charge and you know, you can take some bullets, you
could you could get hurt real bad, and on the
ground you reach for a gun and you can shoot
yourself with it. I can't make heads or tails, Like

(01:07:35):
why Marcus would do that? That seems very out of
left field for me. Yeah, that's not really anything. We
get to see a little bit into Marcus's psyche and
and his motivations as we're shaping them that it just
seems totally incongruent with with the Marcus we know. But
you can put a bullet into your chin here and

(01:07:55):
and that's it for you.

Speaker 3 (01:07:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
I was very abrupt the one time this happened to
me because I purposely failed attacking the SWAT team here
just to see what would happen. And I was very
taken aback by it. Like it's not like they're going
to take your prisoners, So it's not like one of
those I'm just going to off myself so they can't
take me back to to take me back and do
whatever they're going to do with me, Like they're very
clearly going to kill you anyway. So I thought this

(01:08:20):
was very strange.

Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
Yeah, I mean that's I suppose that's true. Die by
your own hand, die by your own sword rather than
the enemies. I okay, yeah, I suppose.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
So, Yeah, it's it's still out of left field, like
you said, But if nothing else, I will say, if
if you do decide to choose to attack the SWAT
team and even taking just one more step back. I
ended up my very first playthrough. I was pacifist to
the core up until this point. This was the point

(01:08:49):
for me as a player where I finally decided I
had enough and as those yeah, as they were starting
to shoot everybody around me, I finally decided We're going
to attack and for what it's worth. And you can
either be a fan of QTSE or not, or even
fall somewhere in between. This is another scene where I
thought it was really well done. It was very well shot,

(01:09:11):
very well motion captured, and very exciting in that sense,
like I was very committed to trying to get my
people out of this mess, and just the choreography in
the fights was it was really cool. So going back
to the idea of when this game wants to be
a blockbuster, it does really well. And I think if
you decide to attack here, it does that very well.

(01:09:32):
But again, this is kind of the game kind of
nudging you. It wants you to be pacifist, but it
really wants to tempt you with going violent and if
you take the bait here, if you will, the payoff
is kind of cool. So I do like that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:47):
I don't think though as much as Cage tempts you
with the violent route, there's only one scene I can
think of, and I mean, i'll just say this. I
probably haven't seen all of them, but there's one scene
that's coming up in a bit, in a little bit
where the violent route is is very clearly called the
wrong Way by Cage with Marcus. Actually, and I don't

(01:10:11):
know this. It's one that I had never seen before.
I just saw it before we recorded today. I was
looking up different routes because the ending, there's just so
many different ways that can this, This can play out
with like little variations. So we'll get there. But at
least Cage doesn't like, like, here, if you go violent,
you know, it's I don't want to say it's virtuous,
but it's like they want you to feel justified. And

(01:10:34):
Cage isn't trying to tell you that you're going down
the wrong path. You know, he's not saying that anger
leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

Speaker 2 (01:10:41):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
Geez. We uh Star Wars two episodes in a row. Huh.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
Hey, I don't know what you're doing for your next episode,
but I believe you can do a.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
Third Last Chance Connor chapter twenty seven. You come back
into the office with Hank. Well, you actually come to
after a meeting with Amanda. Apologies we're skipping over those.
I mean, we kind of explained it before a lot
of them, just sort of summarize what's going on. Amanda is,

(01:11:10):
you know, a cyber life thing we do learn. I mean,
I suppose this is worth pointing out. You know, she
is an AI. She is a program created by Komski
because she was his teacher at Colebridge when he was
in school. And what she'll tell you is that, you know,
he created her in Amanda's image, so she felt familiar
to him. So he had that bond with her, almost

(01:11:32):
like he was trying to help jumpstart a bond with
a non human a sentient AI. Interesting, curious, But you
come to out of that in Jeffrey's office with Hank,
the police lieutenant, the who's above lieutenant officer, acting officer,
commanding officer, Hank's boss. Yeah, that sounds right, head Honcho.

(01:11:57):
Hank is being put back onto homicide and is getting
sent back to cyber life. The FBI is coming in,
they're taking over. Connor will be sent back, he'll be
deactivated and analyzed to find out why he failed, and
Hank is none too happy about this. They were so close,
like as much shit. Remember in the last episode, I
think it was where Hank is screaming, no fucking way,

(01:12:18):
I'm not working with some plastic prick here. He's like, no, Like,
I'm invested now. We were so close to figuring this out.
We're really onto something here, and Jeffries says, you know
this is going to be a civil war. This is
out of the local Detroit police's hands, which, like, yeah,
at that point it probably is. He's probably pretty level

(01:12:39):
headed about this. I was on the friend path with
Hank when I first did this, and the two of
you will talk a little bit, you know, and you
start to get into some the territory of some really
interesting conversations.

Speaker 3 (01:12:51):
Hank will say, what if we're on the wrong side, Connor,
what if we're finding against people.

Speaker 8 (01:12:58):
Who just want to be free?

Speaker 4 (01:13:03):
They're not people, Lieutenant, They're defective machines.

Speaker 3 (01:13:07):
They're not people. That's what we say every time we
want to oppress someone.

Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
What's really cool here?

Speaker 5 (01:13:13):
This?

Speaker 1 (01:13:13):
I like this a lot, even though we don't really
get to hear any more about this. If you're playing
Connor as like a straight lace kind of type. He'll
push back if you say that they're not people, He'll say,
we'll be destroying a new life for him. You know,
this is as close as we get to the philosophical
stuff that I've been wanting. It's really cool. I'm glad
that there's at least something in here like this.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
Yeah, and I'm glad they have the wherewithal to bring
this up. But again, and maybe this is why I
continue to be more negative than I plan to, But
it disappoints me that we couldn't get more of this.
Like if you really take a step back, too, and
you look at Hank's progression from just absolutely hating Connor,
hating androids, hating the whole idea of their existence, and

(01:13:58):
now after the events that he's experienced, regardless of how
you play Connor, he still feels kind of this way
in some ways. He's had this turn, and I would
have loved to have explored not just the turn itself,
but really what got him there, what finally put him
on this path. And it's just no, we're just gonna

(01:14:20):
be on the side of the androids now because you
unlock the freend and path on the flow chart is
kind of what I felt like. But that's not to
take away from what's been said here, but that's what
I feel like sometimes, like, ah, we were so close,
but we let it go.

Speaker 1 (01:14:34):
Sure, sure, I mean it's understood to be Connor's friendship, right,
that's but again, you know you might not be playing
that way. You might be playing Connor is a bit
more cold, and Hank still has this reaction. So that's
that's what I can't remember how I phrased it, But
like when you have these branching narrative type stories, when

(01:14:54):
you want the player to have a hand in the storytelling,
you get character motivations, you get characters that don't quite
feel the same as they were before it. It would be
almost like doing a play where each each scene has
somebody else playing the same actor, you know, very cool. Experimentally,
I would see a play like that, you know, I

(01:15:15):
think that that has experimental potential. But here it's it
doesn't it's not appropriate to do that. Here it feels more,
it feels a little more proof of concept, which I
feel like is a little too mean to say, but
I think it paints a little bit what I'm thinking,
I don't know, I agree with that. Here's something that
I learned today in my play through. Here, Hank gives

(01:15:36):
us the basement key because he wants Connor to go
down and check out the evidence before the FBI takes it.
Hank can just not help you here. He'll like pat
you on the shoulder and say, sorry, Connor, this is
too big for androids. You know I'm doing this without you.
I had no idea.

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):
Yeah, that could absolutely happen. I think if I'm remembering
the different tiers of your relationship, if Hank is hot hostile,
he'll just actually, he'll quite literally resign from the force
and just say, you're right, Jeffrey, this this is beyond us.
I'm done, turns in his badget, he leaves.

Speaker 1 (01:16:11):
But I think that's uh, I don't I don't want
to spoiler too much, but I think that's how you
get the ending where Hank actually does kill himself.

Speaker 2 (01:16:17):
Correct, And it's it's pretty powerful in and of itself
if we do decide to talk about it. But I
believe if you're the relationship tier above that where they're
they're tense or warm, not quite friend level, but just
kind of in that in the middle. Yeah, he'll wish
him luck, and there's really no hard feelings per se,
But yeah, he won't help you. And if Hank isn't here,

(01:16:40):
Connor's got to get a little creative with how he
creates a distraction.

Speaker 1 (01:16:44):
I like it when Hank is here, though, because he'll
give you the basement key and he says, all right,
go down there. I'll create a distraction. And the distraction
is Hanking running over to Perkins and just yelling in
the voice of mister crabs. And I really hope I
can find audio that's that this isn't too muffled in
the background. He yells, Perkins, youw fucking cock. They just

(01:17:10):
get into a big fight. Oh it is so good.

Speaker 2 (01:17:14):
I never not laugh when this happens. And I always
make a point to just hang around as Connor for
just a few seconds, a few seconds well spent to
see and hear this exceptional piece of dialogue.

Speaker 1 (01:17:26):
He's he's just got one of the most unique voices
I've ever heard. Just talk about a voice physically made
for voice acting for theater. It's incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:17:39):
Yes, what else?

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
You know what else has Clancy Brown been in? Big,
big things?

Speaker 8 (01:17:45):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:17:45):
You know what? That's That's the thing about Clancy Brown,
like I see him all over the place, but I
never quite pin him down with one specific role.

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
And he was in he was in shawsh Ank Redemption, right.

Speaker 2 (01:17:56):
Yes, he was. He was captain what was his name, Hadley?
I think his name was.

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
Yeah. Let's let's see what else. Here's Lex Luthor in
something Uka Uka and crash Bandicoot nice oh oh, and
doctor Cortex look at that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):
Oh, that's right. He was in Starship Troopers as well.
Set a guy i'd hell.

Speaker 1 (01:18:14):
God bless him. You've got five minutes to moul through
the evidence here. This is where like, this is where
you will where Jericho is a thing you need to
figure out. You need to find the location of Jericho
because that's where we're going next. And this is where
you might just not have that information, but you do
actually have it because the plot needs to move forward,

(01:18:35):
you know. Yep, you've got five minutes. The way to
solve this puzzle is you have to reactivate the TV
station android, who is like half of his torso is
being kept here as evidence. It's really gruesome, but he's
just kind of nailed to the wall. You reactivate him.
His eyes are damaged, so he can't see, but he
can hear and he can connect via you know, android things.

(01:18:58):
You then have to play the recording of Marcus giving
his speech emulate his voice to trick this poor Android
to giving you the location of Jericho. That's how you
solve it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:11):
Yeah, that is one way to solve it. There, that's
that's generally the way that I solve it as well.

Speaker 1 (01:19:17):
Oh wait, is there another way?

Speaker 2 (01:19:18):
There are a couple ways. Another one that I did
which I didn't realize you could do until my last
playthrough because I chose not to find the Deviant in
the Stratford Tower. He was not there for me to
do anything with. But I had actually a point. Yes,
but I had actually killed the two Tracys in the
Eden Club in this particular playthrough, so you can do

(01:19:41):
a similar trick where you can trick one of the
Tracys into giving you Jericho by mimicking the voice of
the other one. But this one is so much more
darker in that he'll actually this this Tracy can I
believe she can see this time, whereas the other Android
could not. You actually rip the head off one of
the train, hold it up in front of the other

(01:20:02):
Tracy stuck to the wall, and you mimic her voice,
and you just see Connor behind this Tracy's head. Just
it looks so menacing as he's trying to mimic her voice,
like it's the same result, but it's so much darker.

Speaker 1 (01:20:17):
God damn.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
Yeah. And there is one more way too, And I
think you would mention this maybe our first episode when
we're interrogating the android in the police station, and if
we do everything correctly, he kind of favors Connor in
a sense. And then he goes to leave, and then
he mutters the phrase the truth is inside or something

(01:20:40):
along those lines. And this can be recalled here if
you're looking at this statue that you may have found
in the bathroom stall of the very first deviant you
find in Carlos Carlos Ortiz's house, I think it is
he's the android that beat Carlos with a baseball bat
or I'm sorry, got beat with a baseball bat, then

(01:21:01):
stabbed Carlos to death. He says the truth is inside,
and that somehow prompts you to take this statue and
break it in half, and then inside this statue is
the key that you need to decipher the journal you
could have found as you were chasing Rupert the deviant
that was in the Pigeon house, So that finally comes

(01:21:25):
back around. But that requires a lot of specific choices.
So those three ways, I believe are the ways that
you can find Jericho here, which is a lot more
than I thought.

Speaker 1 (01:21:35):
That last one, especially, I've never seen before. That one
almost makes the most sense.

Speaker 2 (01:21:40):
Yes, agreed.

Speaker 1 (01:21:42):
And no matter how you do it, though, Gavin will
come in. He comes in with his gun. He says
he's been waiting since the day he met you to
do this, and you know, you can tell him like, look,
I'm out of here, like you don't have to do this,
but Gavin's gonna try and fight you. It leads to
a QTE fight. It's not a difficult one and you
can win it pretty easily, which will just leave him unconscious.

(01:22:04):
And Perkins will come in after you've gone, finds Gavin
unconscious and then says, all right, we've got another one
that we need to, you know, take down, because now
they know it's you. We're approaching endgame here. We get
to crossroads. This is a longer one, a longer chapter.
It begins with Kara Kara. It begins with Cara Rose

(01:22:25):
and Crewe, Luther and Alice. She will give you directions
to Jericho, and she says, fine, Marcus, we'll be on
the last bus to Canada before midnight. And this is
where Connor too. We'll see shots of him looking for
Jericho in a disguise. He's wearing like a beanie and
like a little zip up hoodie. He looks DApp or
he looks good. He's looking around. Once you arrived to Jericho,

(01:22:47):
Luthor will again try and talk with Carra about Alice,
and Kara just keeps saying, like, you know, wait, we'll wait,
We'll wait. Connor arrives. Meanwhile, Marcus gets to talk with
Karra for a little bit. He says, you know, you
shouldn't go to the bust to Canada right now. Detroit's
under curfew. He says, they're rounding up androids and sending

(01:23:07):
them to camps.

Speaker 2 (01:23:09):
Yep, we're going there.

Speaker 1 (01:23:11):
I don't like that. That's a little that's live, Ammo.
That they have not instilled trust in me. They haven't
earned the trust from me for that. But Kara agrees,
and as you're leaving, Marcus will ask about Alice He's like,
why protect a human?

Speaker 5 (01:23:28):
He said, you're with a little girl, right, you know
that humans hate us? Why are you protecting her?

Speaker 1 (01:23:40):
She needs me, then I need her.

Speaker 2 (01:23:46):
It's as simple as that.

Speaker 1 (01:23:49):
And this is important. Car will say, you know, this
is our entire mission up till now. You know we're
protecting Alice because like, family transcends all of this. Right,
Alice means because she's family, it doesn't matter. Right, race
doesn't matter. Family does. And this is completely immediately undercut.
Is this made me so mad? And this is why

(01:24:12):
I put at the top of last episode that little
disclaimer that I did not a disclaimer, but I had
to call out some minuscule detail. On the way back,
Kara sees another Alice with an LED, and it turns
out this is the reveal Alice has been an android
all along, And we get a little flashback of Kara
picking up that magazine in Todd's house, the one that

(01:24:33):
the camera refused to let us see. It was a
picture of Alice like being sold on the cover that
model of android. So we don't know what happened to
our Alice's Led, but Alice is an Android. And Luther
comes over and says you know you've known this from
the beginning, you just chose not to remember you.

Speaker 8 (01:24:51):
Knew from the beginning, you just didn't want to see it.
She wanted a mom and you wanted someone to care for.
You needed each other. What difference does it make? Do

(01:25:11):
you love her any less now that you know she's
one of us?

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):
Alice loves you, Carol, She loves you.

Speaker 8 (01:25:22):
More than anything in the world. She became the little
girl you wanted, and you became the mother she needed,
begetting who you are to become what someone needs you
to be. Maybe that's what it means to.

Speaker 1 (01:25:39):
Be alive, and it's it's made to be this emotional
precipice for Kara of finding out that that finding this
out has now fundamentally changed her relationship with Alice, despite
literally everything this character has been crafted from up until now.

(01:26:00):
I don't know. I feel like, if I'm given time,
I could just yell about this game forever. And I
don't want to be unfair, but like, I have so
many problems with this writing. I want to hear from you,
no mad like do you remember how you felt the
first time you saw this or or even this this pastime?
Like what's your take on this.

Speaker 2 (01:26:19):
Yeah, the very first time I got to experience this,
I remember pretty well what I felt, which was just
straight confusion. And I don't know, and I still don't
know truly what it was that we, as the player,
we're supposed to feel in this moment, given everything that
we had experienced up to this point, Like we're the

(01:26:42):
mother figure now, we're family now, and we're taking care
of this little girl. That is our mission. Why do
I have to decide to care one way or another
whether she's an android or not. Like, I don't know
what this is supposed to mean for me. If she
he's an android, that's great, you're one of us. Anyway,
I still feel as close to you as I ever have.

(01:27:05):
If you're a human, I feel the same way like I.
I just didn't know what to feel here. And of course,
I think at one point, you're given the option, as
Kara to hug Alice after Alice says something nonchalant or
you can quote unquote remain distant or something along those
lines like, of course you're gonna hug her. Of course

(01:27:25):
you're gonna continue down this path. So why are you
even presented with this choice at all? Like it just
of all the critiques I think I've had, this is
the one I've had from day one that just confuses me.
And I tried to talk it out with my wife
and have like a really good conversation, and she was
just as confused as I was. So I'm like, would you.

Speaker 1 (01:27:43):
Still love me if I were an android, honey?

Speaker 2 (01:27:45):
Right? Like, It's just it's made no sense. So I'm
just like, I'm just gonna press circle because that's what
I truly feel. I want to hug this little girl,
because that's all I've done this entire game. So let's
move on. And the last fifteen minutes of my plate
time has been the most confusing it's been.

Speaker 1 (01:28:03):
This makes sense, and this is me being cynical and bitter,
which I was when I wrote these notes. I know
I was, but I feel this way, you know, And
I don't mean to disparage people that like this game.
I truly don't. There's nothing wrong with enjoying something, with
turning your brain off and enjoying something. And I think
that's the only way this reveal, and specifically, it's not
even the reveal, it's how Kara reacts. I think that's

(01:28:26):
the only way this can be meaningful and enjoyed if
you're only doing what David Cage, only feeling what David
Cage wants you to feel, which you know, up until
now he's just been telling you what to feel. He's
having characters say what you should be feeling. And here,
you know, he waits on that with the reveal and
he lets you decide, and that's how it's going to
be resonant with you. But I mean, this is so

(01:28:50):
bizarre how Kara reacts like suddenly she's not sure if
she even cares. It's funny that you mention, of course
you're gonna hug her, because most people would. Of course
they would. That's there should have even been like this
conflicted moment with Kara, right, But you can choose to
be distant, and it is absolutely horrifying. It's unbelievable. I mean,

(01:29:11):
for story reasons, because this is just not who Kara is.
But I think this might be technical weird disease with
the mo cap tech. I watch this again today just
to be sure, and no, it just looks very strange.
Car Will. If you choose distant, Cara looks at Alice.
Alice will say, what's wrong? Kara? Like we're still gonna

(01:29:31):
be together forever, right, Kara and Carl will look at
Alice like she's a fucking hideous freak. Oh my god,
like palpable disgust. It's it's gotta be. It's gotta be
like weirdness with the mo cap stuff like it's gotta be,
because it's so jarring that Cara would look at this,
this little girl that she that was her surrogate daughter

(01:29:54):
for this whole game, with just immediate disgust upon learning
that she's an android. It's I don't know, dude, I
don't know this. I don't know who would choose this.
If you're not going for like completionist stuff. You can,
by the way, I don't know if you did this.
I forgot to do this, so I cannot speak to this.

(01:30:14):
There's an entire route where you can get separated from
Alice at the very end here and like get sent
to a junkyard and stripped of your entire like human skin.
It's horrifying. Have you done this before?

Speaker 2 (01:30:25):
I have, and it was purely just to try to
fill out the rest of the flow chart. And I've
only ever done it once, and I think I will
only ever do this once. It was quite uncomfortable to
be completely honest with you.

Speaker 1 (01:30:38):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, but if you're most people, you're
probably going to say no. You know, of course you're
gonna hug Alice and is she's still your daughter? What
does it matter? The Jericho Leeds are gonna speak here.
The situation seems totally dire without hope. That crew leaves
and it reveals that Connor is not only right around
the corner, but that the FBI and SWAT are moving

(01:31:00):
in as well. And we get one more meeting here
with Connor and Amanda, and she explicitly tells them we
need Marcus alive, like this is your last mission. So
how this went for me was Marcus coming into the room,
excuse me, Connor going into the room with Marcus gun drawn,
and Marcus asks a series of leading questions to Connor

(01:31:25):
about his consciousness, his empathy, his humanity, that he believes
this is what I wrote, I'm being a bitter son
of a bitch here that Cage believes his audience won't
ponder unless he just lead. He just asks them himself, do.

Speaker 5 (01:31:39):
You never have any doubts? You've never done something irrational?
Is if there's something inside you, something more than your program.
Have you never wondered who you really are? Whether you're

(01:32:01):
just a machine in executing a program or living.

Speaker 1 (01:32:04):
Being capable of reason.

Speaker 5 (01:32:08):
I think the time has come for you to ask
yourself that question.

Speaker 2 (01:32:13):
It's time to decide.

Speaker 1 (01:32:14):
You know, haven't you ever wondered who you really are?
Do you think you're just a machine? Join your people,
and then you get the choice to become deviant. You
as the player, presumably not Connor. You as the player,
just get to choose what happens. But this goes against Connor,
against Marcus's powers, right, because Marcus can just look at
people now and turn them deviant. What is going on here?

(01:32:37):
This is a literal life or death situation for Marcus.
So this makes sense. Now if Marcus is dead, this
is North here, Connor is interrogating North, then it makes sense. Yeah, yeah,
talk Connor into deviancy. But with Marcus, he's already been
established as this mechanical messiah. I don't know, Like, all

(01:32:57):
I could think about was we I looked at it,
at an army of androids and turn them deviant? Why
am I, you know, potentially risking my life to change Connor.

Speaker 2 (01:33:07):
Yeah, that didn't really set in for me until subsequent playthroughs.
But what I think the game was going for and
I think I appreciate is I do like that the
player is given the choice to become Devan or not,
although I think I would rather have had it happen
on its own. But the reason I say that is

(01:33:27):
if you're playing Connor as the deviant type, if you
will befriending Hank, doing things against your mission, that kind
of thing. I like that you're given the choice to
make your own decision that you want to do this
just because the game has been leading up to this,
and you kind of get that payoff as the player.
So from that perspective, yeah, So from that perspective, I

(01:33:48):
did appreciate that. And then it's kind of cool when
the game gives you the option, you see the dialogue
option press circle to remain a machine and then the
little lock undoes itself and you see because deviant and
just having that choice there, it's kind of like, yeah,
this is what I wanted, this is what I wanted
to become, and I like that messaging. But again, the

(01:34:10):
more I played the game through and the more we've
discussed it you and I devancy in and of itself,
It's not so much a choice. It's kind of enacted
upon you because of all these stressors and moments of
high emotion and then Marcus having his superpowers, if you will.
So the choice to become deviant here did feel out

(01:34:31):
of place the more I really dove into the nuance
of the story. But in the moment, okay, I like
it for what it is.

Speaker 1 (01:34:40):
A lot of it does come down to that Cage
wants to create drama, right, Like the muddying of what
deviancy could be happened because Cage in the moment wanted
to create drama. So if we're thinking of storytelling, and
this is me borrowing from how I used to teach
music to my students and how I used to play myself,
if we're thinking of storytelling as a whole, like a

(01:35:00):
big arc, we've got a global sense of drama and
then we've got local drama. The global drama is from
start to finish, like that's how the drama shaped out.
But in in that we've got smaller hairpins of drama
going on the scene to scene, and Cage was too
focused on the scene to see the local drama that
the global drama is now misshapen and lumpy. It's it's uh,

(01:35:24):
it's incongruent with itself. And that's the that's the danger
of stuff like this. That's the danger of this kind
of narrative where you let the player be the storyteller.
Sometimes the player is not as good of a storyteller,
you know, that's why they're not the ones writing the game.
But uh, you know that's that's a again, that's that's

(01:35:46):
a cynical take on this genre. I'm not like decrying
this whole thing, but that's what I think happened if
I had to, if I had to make a declarative statement.

(01:36:13):
Finishing out this chapter, though, there is like you do
this as Carra. There's a barrage of escape scenes and
QTEs to get out of Jericho because the FBI is
moving in, and eventually you detonate it with Marcus's directive.
Marcus gets a bomb planted and a lot of people
can die here. And my playthrough, North got a bullet

(01:36:34):
through the head year she got caught by an FBI agent.
And I chose Marcus because, like in my first play through,
the two of them weren't lovers, so I just did
not have Marcus save her, and this is where she died.

Speaker 2 (01:36:47):
Oh geez, I tend to save her, whether I go
down the lover path or not. If for no other reason,
this entire section is so rife with with QTEs And
again I'll go back to if you.

Speaker 1 (01:37:00):
Just it's very exciting.

Speaker 2 (01:37:01):
Yeah, yes, very And I'm a sucker for that kind
of thing. Like I really enjoy being able to Like
I'm not a QT expert or anything, but I know
by way around a quick button press and I do
like how I do like how the game will incorporate
not just the buttons, but the the rotation of the
thumbstick and stuff like that, and like you really have
to be pretty in tune with what's going on, but

(01:37:23):
I think they do it well. And I like if
you go and try to save North, Marcus will grab
a piece of steel to use as a shield and
then you whip it like a frisbee and it's very
John Wick ish, like it looks great. So if for
no other reason, I save North just to see that, yeah,
total action movie.

Speaker 1 (01:37:42):
And I like the way they do quick time events
in this game too. It's not like they don't slow
mow like everything down like they do in some games
like Mortal Kombat or a Oh gosh, Banetta doesn't do that,
does it.

Speaker 2 (01:37:53):
I can't remember, never played, but don't tell anyone. That's
a huge gap. That's a huge gap on my resume.

Speaker 1 (01:38:00):
It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun.
I used to be kind of put off by the
whole like aesthetic of it. Yeah, and you know, I
don't mind the aesthetic, but when I played it, it's
it's a very good action game. It's very technically exciting.

Speaker 2 (01:38:13):
Nice.

Speaker 1 (01:38:14):
That ends this chapter. This next chapter is shorter. This
is what I was alluding to earlier. So if Carl
is alive, remember Carl or painter Carl, Marcus goes back
to visit him, and his health is like deteriorating. He's
got a new living android. And I mean, this conversation
can go a bunch of different ways, but you'll speak
to him and ask for advice on how to proceed,

(01:38:36):
depending on I mean, some of these conversations are a
little by the books, by the numbers than others. But
I forget, I forget why I put a pin in
this earlier. But oh, I do remember if you are
playing as a righteous justice kind of Marcus, like, violence
is the only way that we're going to get change

(01:38:57):
and revolution. Carl will condemn you for it here. He'll
say that he sees too much hatred in you, which,
as we all know, leads to anger, leads to hate,
leads to suffering. We all know this. And he'll say
he sees that too much in you, and Marcus kind
of justifiably blows up at him. He's he says, like,
you know, they they don't respect us, Like, how else

(01:39:18):
are we going to get change? Here? And you yell
at Carl. You yell at Carl so much that he dies. Really, yeah,
have you had you not seen this?

Speaker 2 (01:39:26):
No, I've played some. I've had a couple of violent
playthroughs with Marcus, but I never felt compelled to take
dialogue options that would have him do this. Wow, that's
kind of sad.

Speaker 1 (01:39:40):
Yeah, they don't like I thought that they were going
to have the live and android be like he's dead
and you killed him, but they don't, like, they don't
take it that that far. Yeah, it's really uh, you know,
it's it's unfo but it's the only time in this
game that or again it's the only time that I've
personally seen in this game where they objectively say, hey,

(01:40:01):
righteous justice is maybe you know, cut cut that out,
you know, right, if Carl's already dead, you just go
to his grave and you sort of reflect and you
bump into Leo, but the two of you don't really speak.

Speaker 2 (01:40:13):
Yeah, I think I enjoy being able to talk to
Carl here. But the scene itself is pretty quick and
it doesn't really change anything, but it does give Marcus
a little bit of time to shine depending on how
you're playing as him. So it is a nice little insert.

Speaker 1 (01:40:27):
Yeah, yeah it is. This is really just gearing you
up for this last chapter here, battle for Detroit, and
this is this is a doozy. This is a long chapter.
And I apologize in advance. Like remember at the top
when I said, uh, I've only seen so much of
this game. Nomad's only seen so much. Together, we've seen
most of it, but we might miss some stuff that's

(01:40:47):
gonna happen here, because like, there's just so many little variations.
There are lots of great playthroughs on this on YouTube,
you know, check those out. Also, I the way that
I structured these notes was just chrona logically like as
it happened in the game. That's what I took notes
on in retrospect. This is the Quarry problem all over again,

(01:41:08):
where we're going to be jumping between different povs like
a ton back and forth. Would have just been a
lot easier to just do Connor than Marcus than Kara,
or you know, in whatever order, just all on a road,
you know what I mean. So it might jump around
a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:41:22):
Yeah, a little jarring here, slightly, unless you have some
characters that didn't make it. So that's a way to
keep it simple.

Speaker 1 (01:41:29):
Yeah, just get Kara killed and shave off like seven
hours of playtime exactly. It starts with President Warren giving
a press conference and interestingly, you get to choose what
question she answers. You know, she'll kind of give give
the lowdown of what's going on. You know, there's a
curfew androids are being rounded up to camps and being
sent to be exterminated. I don't even want to get

(01:41:52):
into the implications of this, but in my playthrough, even
like public opinion was supportive at this point, I'm pretty
sure if it's not supportive, it was like one tier lower.
But no matter how high it is. She is against it,
so she is like technically she's an antagonist here.

Speaker 2 (01:42:10):
Yeah, it's very brunt, and some of the questions are
pretty interesting and you don't get to ask them all,
so you almost have to play through this particular scene
several times to ask all of the questions that are available.
Some of them are very brutally answered by President Warren.
I think if you do bring up the camps one
of the questions that one of the reporters has, she

(01:42:30):
shuts that shit down immediately, doesn't even want to make
any sort of connection to what that could possibly mean
based on our history, and moves right along like it's
oh no shit, oh yeah it. She shuts it down
and wants to hear none of it.

Speaker 1 (01:42:43):
That just that kind of makes me even more mad though,
that like they knew what they were doing, yes, you know,
and chose to ignore it.

Speaker 2 (01:42:50):
Yeah, it's I can't remember the dialogue, but it's very
it's very on the nose. Hey, this is very reminiscent
of something that happened in the past, and a lot
of people are upset by it. What say you, and
she says, Nope, has no connection whatsoever. We're just destroying machines.

Speaker 1 (01:43:05):
Oh my god, dude, this is what I mean though,
Like I think I understand what they're saying. They're the
intention behind it is. These aren't people. But you cannot
play with live Ammo like that and not engage with it.
You just you can't. That's too serious of a subject
in American history and world history to just say, like, nah,

(01:43:28):
you know, it's what did he say? What did we
say in episode one? Like he's like, if that's what
you want to take away from it, that's fine, But
this is just about androids. Yeah, give me a break buster.
If Connor is alive and infiltrating cyber Life, this is
where it happens. You get onto an elevator up in
cyber Life, you pass the clearances, you get into an

(01:43:49):
elevator with two guards, You do a QT fight to
take them down, and you can die here. I mean,
it should be said, and Connor doesn't come I don't
think Connor comes back from this one, right, I mean
presumably not if he dies in the warehouse.

Speaker 2 (01:44:01):
Yeah, at any point. If he dies after he decides
or you decide as a player to become Deviants, it's
one and done.

Speaker 1 (01:44:08):
Yeah, but you don't have to die here, and I
hope you don't because it leads to a cool confrontation. Again,
we're jumping around a little bit. The next scene is
Kara Analysis running to get to the bus. There are
army members everywhere shooting androids on site, like just no questions,
just shooting, and you have to do a series of

(01:44:28):
hiding sections to avoid being seen. Luther is here with Jerry.
They're about to be executed on the spot, and I
don't know who would choose to not save him, like
you have the choice, but of course I save them.
Luther is great.

Speaker 2 (01:44:42):
Yeah, it's very easy to complete the rescue here as well.
It's like one button prompt I think you have to
press after you slide into cover. So yeah, you're you're
always going to save Luther.

Speaker 1 (01:44:53):
So the three of you, Kara, Luther, Analys. You get
to a checkpoint on the way to the bus and
you have a choice. You can risk it with your
passports or take a detour that the game tells you
will take one minute longer than it will take to
reach the bus. So obviously you know you take the
checkpoint right because otherwise you're gonna miss the bus, which

(01:45:14):
I didn't do. Did you take the detour?

Speaker 2 (01:45:15):
It's funny, of all the times I've played this game,
I have never taken the detour. It's something I've been
meaning to do and just never never did it.

Speaker 1 (01:45:22):
I think I think I looked it up, and I
think you do miss the bus. I mean, and it
tells you you will. I'm I don't want to say
that for sure, but I think that's what happens.

Speaker 2 (01:45:31):
I believe that because I do know if you do
go to the bus stop, you still have the potential
not to get on it anyway, So there is another
path to get to Canada. So I could see that
they get you with a good fake out here, Like
as you go through the you know you've got your
fake passports and you give it to the guards and
as you're leaving, they say, hey, wait, and Luther is
like communicating with you telepathically because android stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:45:54):
Yeah, because it's convenient now. But you know, he'll say,
we've got to do something now. We've got to shoot
them before they shoot us. And they give you two
chances to choose whether to shoot or not. Uh, and
if you ignore them both times, all they do is
say you drop this and they give Alice back her glove.
I like that. I like that fake out.

Speaker 2 (01:46:13):
Yeah, it was a good one. It I never shot,
but I almost did, just because Luther, who's always been
very even keeled, comes off as kind of the wise
man of the three of them. He's like really wanting
this to happen, so part of me is like he's
seeing something I don't. So I almost pulled the trigger
here but never did.

Speaker 1 (01:46:31):
Yeah, this was good. It was It was a good
fake out. You trust him, Why wouldn't you? This is
We're at the final protest with Marcus and co jumping around.
This is Cage. Like one of Cage's tricks is to
use multiple camera angles to imply cut scenes while we
still control our characters, and that's happening here. It's good,
Like this is a you know, it's one of his

(01:46:54):
what do you call it, not cliches, but like one
of his techniques that he uses. It's good. But this
is a peaceful march. The army does open fire and
just kill a few of you, but you know, you
keep moving forward, but it cuts back to Connor like
real quick. I told you it's just going to jump
back and forth.

Speaker 2 (01:47:11):
If I could. Before we move on. I don't know
if we touched on it in the previous chapter, but
there is a pretty substantial choice that you have to
make as Marcus, and you mentioned a peaceful march. Here
you can decide as Marcus to lead a full blown
revolution and try to take one of the Android camps.
I think is what your target is. You could try
to take it by force.

Speaker 1 (01:47:31):
So this is Oh you're kidding, Did I miss that?

Speaker 2 (01:47:33):
Yes? So this is this is now like the final
are you going to be violent or are you going
to be pacifist choice? So the battle for Detroit from
Marcus's perspective can go one of two ways. The peaceful march,
which I ended up doing my second playthrough. I did
mention before when we were in the Freedom March that

(01:47:53):
I was finally pushed to violence and I ended up
attacking the SWAT team. This is where, even though I
wanted in my heart to remain pacifist, I ended up
leading a revolution here. So we can talk to that later.
But I've also played the pacifist route here, which I
think is the more I'll say interesting just for how

(01:48:14):
narratively this can go, But I'll fill in the gaps
for the revolution where it makes sense. But yeah, we're
given that final choice here.

Speaker 1 (01:48:22):
Oh that's interesting. I can't believe I forgot to take
note of that. Now nobody's gonna take this seriously.

Speaker 2 (01:48:29):
It's okay, Rick, I got your back.

Speaker 1 (01:48:30):
I'm gonna get negative performance reviews. Connor gets ambushed by
guards in the warehouse because the elevator had a camera,
because why wouldn't it? So you have to do more
qtas to take them down. Connor is now going to
convert an army of androids because plot reasons like now
Connor can do it?

Speaker 2 (01:48:49):
Yes, that confused the hell out of me too, Like
he looks down at his hand, which the humanoid flesh
retracts from, and you see his android hand, and I
remember thinking to myself, how do you you have this power?
This is Marcus's specific plot device, because he's being built
up as this messiah. How do you have it? Now?
Like I love Connor to death, don't get me wrong,

(01:49:09):
but it's just like, ah, whatever, plot, let's even keep going.

Speaker 1 (01:49:13):
Even if you gave them the benefit of the doubt
and said, okay, it's because Marcus turned him himself. That
would functionally mean that every wouldn't that mean that everybody
that Marcus turned has the same ability.

Speaker 2 (01:49:25):
Yeah, you would think.

Speaker 1 (01:49:26):
I don't know. I don't know why this is here.
I wrote that I'm not sure if this is a
forced failure, but I failed, Like the failure is I
mean the button press is just one button and I
failed it.

Speaker 2 (01:49:36):
Yeah, it is. It is a force fail here.

Speaker 1 (01:49:39):
Okay, okay, I was gonna say, but then another Connor
model comes out and they have Hank at gunpoint, and
I wrote, are they really going to do this? Stay
tuned because we have a cut back to Kara for
a second.

Speaker 2 (01:49:53):
I laughed as hard because that is exactly what I
said to my wife and our first playthrough. I just
looked at her and said, we're gonna do this, aren't we?

Speaker 1 (01:50:01):
And then yep, yeah, I looked it up because I
was like, surely this has like you know, you could
trace back to what movie this happened in first, and
I don't know. Maybe you can, but it's just it's
so overdone that it's just its own trope at this point. Yes,
I don't know. You're back at the bus stop with Kara.
The bus is full and you can only get in
and if you have tickets conveniently. There's a couple that

(01:50:24):
talks to you and they drop their tickets and you
pick them up. You choose to either keep them or
give them back. You get two chances to return them,
but I say, two bad chumps, and I keep them.
We're getting on that bus.

Speaker 2 (01:50:38):
My very first playthrough, I ended up feeling guilty enough,
I gave them back and I had to find my
way to Canada another way, literally cross a river. But
I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (01:50:48):
Oh yeah, is that how you get on that barge
that you can get separated from with Alice?

Speaker 2 (01:50:54):
Right, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, But it was the very
first time I played it, and I don't remember much
about But yeah, I was guilted into giving the couple
back the tickets. I couldn't be. I couldn't do. I
couldn't keep the tickets. But you bet your ass any
subsequent playthrough.

Speaker 1 (01:51:11):
Sorry, if you're going for the truly like bad ending,
that's what you would want to do. Though. Yes, we
had a quick scene with Marcus and the Jericho group.
If you did the Pacifist I don't know if this
happens if you did the Revolution, but Perkins will come
down and ask for Marcus he just walks out into
the open, and if you hear him out, he says,

(01:51:31):
you know, you're all that's left. We ask him about
the other camps and he says, no, they're gone.

Speaker 5 (01:51:36):
What happened to the other androids demonstrating in the camps?
Unfortunately there were no journalists around to help save them.

Speaker 7 (01:51:45):
You're right, you're the last remaining.

Speaker 1 (01:51:48):
Devians, so they were exterminated. There are journalists all around
this camp here, so that's why we're not getting shot
on the spot. Shady shit, you know, FBI. And he
gives you a deal. He says, surrender, and you know
you won't be killed. He doesn't say anything about you know,
justice or amnesty. No, we won't kill you. So of
course you refuse it, right, and then you do one

(01:52:10):
last speech.

Speaker 5 (01:52:12):
The humans are about to launch an attack, and we
will show them, and we are not afraid. If we
must die today, then we will die free.

Speaker 2 (01:52:29):
There are some differences to this, depending on some choices
you've made too subtle. I do know if you are
North's lover at this point, if you decide to go
down that conversation path, he does specifically call her out
in conversation. Hey, you seem to be quite attached to
that one. Take my deal and you two can can
can live and be happy together. There is just that

(01:52:51):
little bit if you happen to be North's lover. But
I do know I've not done this myself. If you
do accept his deal for some reason, he will kill
you and the will end there for Marcus.

Speaker 1 (01:53:02):
Oh yeah, of course he will, like that's that's so
foolish to think that he wouldn't, right, Yeah, that's honestly,
that's the just deserts for Yeah. I was going to
say being spineless, but whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:53:14):
And I will say, just quickly, if you're doing the
revolution and you're working your way to the camp, which is,
by the way, probably one of my favorite scenes in
the game, if you decide to go it, because again
it's it's great action. It's done incredibly well. You actually
have to lead your troops in the battle and you'll
see groups of them and you can tell them to
either charge, hold back, lay down, covering fire, and the

(01:53:37):
game gives you kind of a ticker of how many
of your forces you have left. So you can absolutely
fail this by making too many bad decisions or failing qtse.
But it's a straight shot to the goal. There's no negotiation.
You just mow everybody down. So in a sense, this
peaceful approach is interesting from that standpoint because there are
a little bit more bits of dialogue like this, so

(01:53:58):
it depends on kind of what you're going for, So
it turns it into like a strategy thing a bit. Yeah,
Like I really enjoyed it wasn't just a big long
QTE Like. You come across instances where you're trying to
fight your way to the camp, and the QTEs are
actually done really well in that you actually have to
hold your L one button to draw your weapon and

(01:54:20):
then press your R one to actually fire the weapon.
It almost feels like a cover base shooter at this point.
So the QTEs are done I think the best in
this particular portion of the game. If you decide to
take the revolution path. But then you'll come up against
machine gun nests and you have to look around. You
see what androids are kind of clustered together in pockets,

(01:54:40):
and you can order them to lay down covering fire.
Look to your right, let's say, tell this other group
you charge the nest, and as long as they're laying
down covering fire, your other team will go in and
take out the nest like it's it's not implied that
you have to do it that way, but as you
make decisions, you realize what they do with your troops
and you start to learn how to utilize them. Like

(01:55:01):
it's it's very interactive in that sense. So I really
like taking that path, even though it kind of goes
against what I usually do normally. That is so fascinating,
Like even if you decide to look it up on
YouTube and watch someone just do it start to finish,
even if you don't experience it, it's it's a pretty
cool spectacle. Like I it's one of my high points

(01:55:23):
of the game. I really enjoy playing through it. I
love watching it. And again going back to what Quantic
Dream does best, it's this.

Speaker 1 (01:55:32):
Yeah, there's a I don't remember the name, but there's
one really good playlist on YouTube that just has literally
every possible variation like edited into one video, so like
one chapter will have every variation and it's got little
like transition slides that'll tell you what's going on. It's
really good.

Speaker 2 (01:55:48):
Nice. I'll have to look that up. That's cool.

Speaker 1 (01:55:50):
Those people are the heroes doing those kinds of long plays.
With no commentary. Oh yeah, big time, like like there's
an what a noble YouTube profession? You're back with Connor.
We're doing it, We're doing the movie thing. You have
the option to save Hank with this false Connor that's
got him a gun point, or sacrifice him. So of

(01:56:12):
course you try and save him, right. A fight ensues
and it leads to a QT fight with the two Connors,
and I just wrote, goddamn it, he's doing it. After
there's a scuffle and when Hank gets back up, he's
got a gun and he can't tell which Connor is
the real Connor.

Speaker 2 (01:56:31):
Get rid of him. We have no time to lose.

Speaker 4 (01:56:34):
It's me, Hank, I'm the real Connor.

Speaker 3 (01:56:37):
One of you is my partner. Yeah, there's a sec
as shit question is who's who?

Speaker 1 (01:56:46):
What are you doing?

Speaker 4 (01:56:47):
Hank, I'm the real Connor.

Speaker 1 (01:56:51):
Give me the gun and I'll do wouldn't you know it?
And you start asking questions like about what the two
of you have been through together, because that's how you
that's how this trope goes. Ask him only things you
can know. But the thing is is that the real
Connor realizes he uploaded my memory. This is important because

(01:57:12):
The way to win this is Hank will ask what's
the name of my son?

Speaker 3 (01:57:17):
My son, what's his name?

Speaker 4 (01:57:23):
Anthony? Wrong choice, Lieutenant. I've accomplished my mission.

Speaker 1 (01:57:38):
Here's the thing. If you know this, remember last time
I said I purposely didn't learn his name at Hank's house.
It's because of this. So if you learn it, there's
a little you have the option to say Cole, which
is the right answer, you know, and that's you give
his name and you explain why why Hank hates androids.

Speaker 4 (01:58:00):
Coal. His name was Coal, and he just turned six
at the time of the accident. It wasn't your fault, Lieutenant.
A truck skid it on a sheet of ice in
your car rolled over. Cole needed emergency surgery, but no
human was available to do it, so an android had

(01:58:22):
to take care of him. Cole didn't make it. That's
why you hate androids. You think one of us is
responsible for your son's death.

Speaker 3 (01:58:34):
Cole died because a human surgeon was too high on
red ice to operate. He was the one that took
my son from me. Him in this world where the
only way people can find comfort is with a fistful
of powder.

Speaker 4 (01:58:49):
I knew about your son too. I would have said
exactly the same thing. Don't listen to him, Hank. I'm
the one who.

Speaker 2 (01:58:57):
The way Connor answers this question is your son's name
was Cole. He died from an accident. It wasn't your faults.
There was a doctor that was supposed to operate, he
was unavailable, and Android had to step in and cold it.

Speaker 1 (01:59:11):
Well, not that not that he was unavailable, he was
high on red ice And that's why Hank, Yeah, hates
the drugs so much.

Speaker 2 (01:59:16):
Exactly, And that's that's what I was going to get
to and that's never mentioned up until this point. And
then I forget exactly what Hank says in this moment,
but he really presses on the idea that no, it
wasn't an Android that killed my son, it was this
doctor that was high on red ice. And I didn't
really know how to take that. Like, I love the
moment for what it was, like Hank finally comes to terms.

(01:59:38):
We finally understand what's going on, But like did he
never hate androids the entire time and just hated this
doctor that was high on drugs? Like I didn't really
know what angle we were going for here.

Speaker 1 (01:59:49):
You have to do a lot of like optional looking
into like environment stuff and reading the gallery models that
you can unlock. Yeah, you know, and then even then
it does and give you a ton of information, so
you have to put it together in your own brain.
It's just for such a climactic scene at the very
end of the game. I this felt like a very
bizarre turn, Like you didn't really set that up. You know,

(02:00:13):
you're trying to go for a spike whenever. Somebody was
just passing you the volleyball right now. But here's here's
the thing. If so, there are two things. One going
back to the choice, you know Cole is the right choice.
One wouldn't the other connor know that too if your
memory was completely uploaded. Uh huh, I mean that's the

(02:00:35):
obvious one. Two, let's say you did what I did
and you didn't learn Cole's name. Cole's name is still
an option. It's not even a locked choice. You can
still say it. Really, yes, it's one of the four choices.
You just say Cole. Huh, there's no there's no way.

Speaker 2 (02:00:53):
That irritates me even more, Like, like I can I
can forgive the fact that we're doing the cliche movie
scene and all of that, But that's really what took
me out of this near the end of the game,
And I think maybe it's because my wife and I
just powered through this over the course of a weekend
and we were just wanting to see this game finished
at this point. But there's actually a question that Hank

(02:01:15):
asks before he asks what his son name is, and
he asks what's my dog's name? Like, I would rather
have that been the question that makes Hank figure out
that Connor's the real Connor, right, because maybe that's not
in a database somewhere. How would the other android who
has all of Connor's memories know the name of Hank's dog.

(02:01:35):
Potentially it's just like Hank's son, he would have taken
a leave of absence from work and everybody would have
known about that. Yeah, he's in a database somewhere, that
kind of thing. So like I can forgive the movie trope.
I can just accept the fact that we're doing this
and for what it is. I think the scene has
done well enough that it's a very tense scene. Again,

(02:01:55):
Clancy Brown and everybody here does a fantastic job this scene,
and I think it's really riveting for what it is,
even if it's cliche. But as soon as the answer
was Cole is my son and I'm the only one
that knows that because I said the words, it's not
your fault, Lieutenant. That's what gets you over the finish line.

Speaker 1 (02:02:14):
Come on, and even if you can give a pass
to like, why doesn't the other Connor know that if
he has all my memories, even if you give that
a pass, it's like, then Hank goes on to say,
you know, it's actually like you said, nomad, it's actually
the drugs, not the androids. That kind of diminishes all
of the character growth that Hank had up until now, right,

(02:02:35):
like going from somebody that called Connor a plastic prick
every two seconds to now seeing him as a as
a friend's that kind of gets crushed because now it's like, well,
you weren't really working through one of your problems. You
were just you know, ignoring the crux of the thing.

Speaker 2 (02:02:52):
Yeah it was. It was disappointing.

Speaker 1 (02:02:55):
You can choose not to save Hank, though, and you'll
start the This is also very strange. It's starts the
deviant turning process. You both get shot, Hank and the
real Connor and fake Connor gives some truly bad dialogue.

Speaker 9 (02:03:10):
He says, why Connor, why did you have to wake
up when all you had to do is obey? Why
did you choose freedom when you could live without asking questions?

Speaker 7 (02:03:27):
I'm obedient, Connor, I have a goal. I know what
I am. Ah, look where your dreams of freedom got you?

Speaker 1 (02:03:42):
Connor, like this is just this is one oh one
level writing like this is bad. And then strangely, the
android army here starts to wake up and they start
to convert each other. So you win no matter what, basically.

Speaker 2 (02:03:57):
Honestly, And I don't know why. I've never taken the
path to not save Hank, so I've never played through
this myself. But yes, functionally, as long as you do
what you need to do, it's you win either way.
I think I take that back. There is a way
for you to fully fail here. If you are being
questioned by Hank and you choose the wrong answers, he

(02:04:18):
will shoot you and you will die, and the fake
Connor will say, ha ha, twas me all along, and
that does it?

Speaker 1 (02:04:25):
Does he kill Hank?

Speaker 2 (02:04:26):
I don't believe so, because his mission is complete. All
he had to do was That's right, yeah, he doesn't
kill Hank because his mission was just to stop the
Devians from turning and to stop the deviant Connor. That
was it. So Hank survives. Oh okay, but but your
mission fails. But I believe if you decide to not
save Hank and then convert the androids, I think, no
matter what you do here, whether you live or die,

(02:04:48):
the androids get converted. I believe, don't quote me.

Speaker 1 (02:04:51):
They do. You can also transfer yourself into the fake
Connor and then Hank kind of dies in your arms,
and his final words are like, you know, know it's
humans that are the bad guys, you know, go give
them hell and he'll die. And then they I mean,
the army still what do you call it? They still deviate.
So yeah, back with Kara, Kara and Alice and Luther,

(02:05:34):
if applicable, they need to do another passport check. They're
at the like the security gate, you know where customs.
That's what I was trying to think of. And you've
got options for diversions here, and basically they all boil
down to how much PTSD do you want to inflict
on Alice? I mean, right, that's that's basically what it is.

(02:05:54):
You can as you're in line, you're waiting, you're you're
panicking because they're doing temperature checks. So in a addition
to ID, they take your temperature to see if you
are reading like a normal human biometrics it's you can't
fake that, or apparently they can't fake that. So you
look around and you see some people here. Rose is here.
You can meet her in the bathroom and she'll like

(02:06:15):
say that if you need anything, I can cause a diversion. Luther,
who is with you, maybe will volunteer. He says, if
you need me, I've got a diversion. You see the
Jerry's that are in line, And since androids can telepathically
communicate when it's convenient for the story, he says, like,
you know, you helped us before we're here if you

(02:06:35):
need us. So you've got a lot of different options here.
They all kind of boil down to just traumatizing the
shit out of Alice. And Kara is an option too.
So let's using Kara as an example. What will happen
is you walk up front, You tell Alice to stay
put with Luther. You walk up front, They do a
temperature check on you, and they immediately get the guards

(02:06:57):
to draw their guns. They put you on your knee,
and they execute you in front of everybody, and Alice,
if you choose Luther, he he like bends down. This
is actually my favorite one. It's it's kind of traumatic.
He bends down and he speaks to Alice kind of
like a dad, and he says, like, you know, I
need you to help me for a second, you know,

(02:07:17):
just don't be scared, be brave, and he he picks
her up and puts a gun to her head and
he starts screaming that he's going to do it, and
of course that gets the guards and he puts her down,
sends her back to Kara, and they just shoot him.
You know, all of this, I guess I should say
I didn't explain how that. I didn't explain how this
is beneficial. I'm just explaining how people die. The reason

(02:07:41):
that this happens is whoever gets executed Alice and the caretaker,
whether it's Kara or Luther, will then go up to
the guy doing the checks, totally blanking on what you
would call that, the security guy, security officer, whatever, and
he just forgets to do his job because he sees
how terrified Alice is He's like, oh, what's wrong, little girl.

(02:08:02):
You know it's okay, there's no androids on this side
of the border. Welcome to Canada. And he just forgets
to do temperature checks and that's it.

Speaker 2 (02:08:10):
Yeah, I appreciated what I think they were trying to
do here, just because you've you've made all these connections,
you're at the final goal. You have this perceived insurmountable
obstacle to get past, and now you're making this hard
decision of whether or not you want to sacrifice somebody
to finally make it. And I think I appreciated the

(02:08:32):
weight that they were trying to put on us as
the player. I really do, but the payoff is so
just mediocre. Here my one of my recent playthroughs, I
decided to sacrifice one of the Jerry's like, I like you, Jerry,
but I'm a little closer to Luther, so I'm gonna
hang on to him.

Speaker 1 (02:08:51):
And yeah, that's what I've done every time.

Speaker 2 (02:08:53):
Yeah, he makes a ruckus, he gets shot and then yeah,
just like you described it, they go up to the
they go to the booth and they get sent through anyway,
and it's like there was no need for that diversion.
It felt like, really, but.

Speaker 1 (02:09:04):
Well they did it so they could traumatize Alice.

Speaker 2 (02:09:07):
Well, yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (02:09:08):
The guard would would take pity on her and just
you know, forget to do his job.

Speaker 2 (02:09:13):
Even still, it just the way it was presented to me,
It just and maybe it was just the way the
scene played out. It was just so disjointed, like, yeah,
Alice is traumatized, but still it's like, I can't I
don't know. I found it not to be as believable
as I'd like it to be. But I'm again being
overly critical here.

Speaker 1 (02:09:32):
I no, I agree with you.

Speaker 2 (02:09:33):
Yeah, I will say there is one way that you
can get through without anybody having to die, and it
requires you to have played a fully pacifist playthrough, and
you have to be doing a pacifist march with Marcus
to have the support of the public opinion be as

(02:09:54):
high as it can be. It has to be supportive
because would yes, oh.

Speaker 1 (02:10:00):
That means I must have done something wrong on my
last play through.

Speaker 2 (02:10:02):
Then maybe, But if it's completely to the top public opinion,
You're given the choice of sacrifice, Luther's sacrifice, Jerry sacrifice self,
or no sacrifice, and if you choose.

Speaker 1 (02:10:15):
No self, So I did have that. I thought that
would just mean I would get a game over and
like they would just get us right there, and then.

Speaker 2 (02:10:22):
You would unless public opinion is as as high as
it can be in that supportive tier, because if it's supportive,
the gate clerk will temperature check Kara, it will come
back that she's an android. She starts to freak out
and just say please, we just want to be free.
We just want to go across the border. And the

(02:10:43):
Freedom March or the Pacifist March is being broadcast on
the news. The guard looks at the TV that's closest
to him, sees it, turns them and just says, welcome
to Canada and just lets him go through.

Speaker 1 (02:10:57):
Oh man, Okay, credit where it's due. That's good. That's
the ending that I that I wanted. Yeah, I just
I'm I misunderstood the prompt. I thought that, you know,
I would have just failed.

Speaker 2 (02:11:06):
Oh, I thought the same thing, And it was only
because I was I was using a guide at this
point to try to clean up the last of the
trophies I was hunting for, and one of them is
to ensure that all three of them Alice, Kara and
Luther make it alive, and I had no idea how
to make it happen, so it was only because I
read a guide. But the verbiage absolutely implies that you're
gonna die.

Speaker 1 (02:11:27):
Yeah, that's that's good. I like that. I mean, I
like the I like the sacrifices too. I just find
it funny that every single, every single one is is
hinging upon night terrors for Alice for the next ten years.

Speaker 2 (02:11:40):
She's a big girl at this point, She's been through enough.

Speaker 1 (02:11:43):
This is kind of the final thing of the game.
And I will admit, like, right here, I only have
notes on one ending. So if you have multiple here,
no mad I would love to hear it. But the
one that I have here is far and away the
worst one.

Speaker 2 (02:11:59):
I think.

Speaker 1 (02:12:00):
Think you're back with Jericho. The fighting from the army continues.
You've got some qtas that defends left through your people,
but ultimately you get cornered. Right There are helicopters, swat copters,
there are journalists. The news is reporting this live, and
it seems like you're gonna die. Like you're cornered. You're
in trouble. At the time, I only had two options,

(02:12:21):
but I looked up all of the options, you could
potentially have a bomb that's already been set up, which
I did not have, killing everybody. You could kiss North
in front of you know everybody, Love always wins kind
of deal. North was dead in my playthrough, so I
didn't have that. Obviously, sacrificing yourself as an option, which

(02:12:42):
I didn't want to do because I saw this fourth option.
Fourth option is sing you heard me correctly, SI n
G fucking David Cage has the Android sing, starting with
Marcus Solovoce, moving to everybody. He has them sing what
is basically a work song, like a slave song.

Speaker 6 (02:13:03):
Hold just a little while longer, hold on just a
little longer, hold on.

Speaker 1 (02:13:25):
Just a little longer.

Speaker 10 (02:13:30):
Everything will be all. Everything will be a.

Speaker 1 (02:13:45):
Fight, which which gets the tides to turn. They all
do that. The news is broadcasting it, and it causes
the swat team, the army, everybody to put down their guns. Uh,
and it'll cut to a broadcaster as an Warren giving
an order to stand down and that everything is fine now.

(02:14:05):
I I literally, I literally cannot believe that's in the
game that I'm I was stupefied, I was dumbfounded. I
was nonplus that is that is some of the worst.
There are a lot of general, genuinely bad things in
this game. I think this is like, this should have
not been an option. This is so bad. This is

(02:14:28):
tone deaf, it is ghost it is trite, it is
I'm just gonna keep going, so I'm gonna make you
stop me.

Speaker 2 (02:14:37):
No, please proceed. I have my own thoughts.

Speaker 1 (02:14:39):
But what's the what's the lawyer from Seinfeld? I'm just
gonna start throwing out even more adjectives, just over and
over again. It's deleterious, it's duplicitous, it's delirious, and just
on and on. Jackie Jackie Robinson. Is that it Jackie Childs,
Jackie Childs.

Speaker 2 (02:14:55):
There you go. But no, I feel the exact same way.

(02:15:15):
And it's very unfortunate too. Like when I was in
this particular moment, my very first time I saw the option,
and I didn't really understand what it meant until I
decided to choose it, Like it should have hit me
long before I pressed the button to do it, but
as soon as it happened, it was one of those
two where like I was so taken out of the moments,

(02:15:37):
I was so thrown into this spiral of confusion in
that it really just stemmed from the idea that no,
we are here and we are fully committed to what
is happening on the screen right now. And yeah, I
again I don't know if it's the right word, and
it's really hard for me to articulate how I truly
feel about a lot of these analogies and ways that

(02:16:01):
we're going about this very serious subject matter. But I
just felt very confused, and I felt just very disconnected,
and it ruined the experience for me. And again, that's
not to dis merge anything that happened in our history,
because there was a lot that happened that was meaningful,

(02:16:22):
and I don't want to dismiss any of that, and
I don't want to play downplay any of that, But
why is this here? This doesn't make sense for any
path that you play in this game, whether you're being
violent or nonviolent, or the messaging that you're trying to
take out of this even some of the things that
Cage has kind of shown us in these moments that

(02:16:42):
we've maybe only touched on, the idea of being alive
and all of that, But to end this game with
this option, it just it ruined it for me. I agree, Why.

Speaker 1 (02:16:55):
Is this here nor your assessment is totally fair. I
don't think think you're being unfair at all. It's I
see what he was going for. A song is sacred, right,
it's not. The act of singing is not the problem here.
Because song is sacred, it can be used to immeasurable
heights and affect in the human condition. And it's the

(02:17:17):
reason those songs were so powerful is they united individuals
who were beaten down, unfairly, treated inhumane conditions, and treated
not as people, and it united them and gave them
a hope. It's not dissimilar to the idea of religion
and how that saves people from the tretches of despair.

(02:17:38):
The problem is is that he's it's not being portrayed
here with the gravitas that it deserves. It's being almost paradised.
I mean, not quite. I don't think that. I would
don't dream for a second that Cage thought that he
was doing a parody. He thought it was genuine and serious.
But he's tone deaf in that way that he doesn't
realize that this is this is a serious thing. He's

(02:17:59):
being flippant about it, and it's it. He is incapable
of giving it the gravity that it deserves, and it
because if he were, if he were capable, he would
not have considered it. That's the problem is that he's
he's using I don't want to say he's using things
that don't belong to him, because that's not what I
mean at all. That that's an implication that I don't

(02:18:20):
agree with what I am saying. Is that I mean,
I think tone def I think I should maybe just
stop going on and on. I think tone def is
just the best way to uh to describe it.

Speaker 2 (02:18:32):
Yeah, I think that's perfect. This could have been done
a lot better differently to relay the message that he
was truly trying to relay. And yeah, there's there could
have been more respectful ways to get across the messaging
or the story implications that this could mean. But yeah,
it just felt very ham fisted in it didn't fit.

(02:18:55):
It's just I don't like it.

Speaker 1 (02:18:58):
The sacrificing yourself option makes total sense, like be a martyr,
I totally get it. The bomb option, I actually don't
know what happens there. I would assume that it's like
the all violence option. You know, if we're gonna die,
take everybody out with us kind of deal.

Speaker 2 (02:19:14):
Yeah. I've never initiated it myself, but yes, it's basically
just we're in a corner. Same thing happens too if
you're down the revolution path and you end up failing
in your objective and take too many losses, you're backed
into a corner and you can basically flip this switch.
And for a little bit more context, I think on Jericho,
the night it gets destroyed, North figures out that there

(02:19:35):
was an Android that finds like a truck's worth of
like I can't remember what it was, cobalt something or other,
basically nuclear material, and they rig it, Oh geez, Yeah,
they rig it to explode and it basically becomes a
dirty bomb at that point, which would just cause massive
amounts of damage, radiation, that whole thing. And you only

(02:19:56):
get to use it if your back's up against the wall,
and if you decide to use it. I've never done
it myself, but I have seen it is pretty damn
bleak and there's a lot of death, and I don't
know it really, I guess it just depends on how
you're trying to play through your game, whether or not
it fits in your particular story, but it's an option
and it's pretty brutal.

Speaker 1 (02:20:15):
I get it. I can at least understand that, and
I can understand the kissing North as a display of
you know, love triumphs al. It's a little Sacharin, but
I get it. You know, all of that is better
than the singing route in my opinion, I agree, But
that's it. I mean, I can't remember. Are there any
cut scenes after this? I mean, we've Cara's ending has

(02:20:36):
already happened. She got to Canada. They kind of well,
assuming that they did. I mean, there's an ending where
they don't get to Canada, that horrific stripped of skin
kind of deal. I didn't get to it, so I
can't speak on it. But we saw Kara's end. They
get to Canada, they hug, they're all set. We saw
Connor's end, whether he gets killed or you know, succeeds

(02:20:58):
in helping Jericho out of there. And this is Marcus's end,
and North's end and everybody Jericho's end. Are there any
cut scenes after this? I didn't write anything down.

Speaker 2 (02:21:08):
Yeah, there are a few, I believe. If you succeed,
and either the pacifist or the violent approach if you
do a revolution or be peaceful. Marcus does make a
pretty grandiose speech about how androids are free. Now, the
tones a little different depending on what approach you took.
I can't speak to the revolution end because just because

(02:21:28):
I don't remember it, but I know if you take
the pacifist approach, he does speak about how eventually we
are going to have to learn to work with the
humans and maybe one day we can call them friends
and try to put it all past us and try
to find a way to live together. It's actually quite moving.
I really did enjoy that final speech. If Connor does
survive and he does convert the androids, they do show

(02:21:51):
up at this point as a big army, and there's
just a quick exchange. You've probably heard this in a
ton of different movies, but it's one of those. Connor
comes up to Mark and he's like, you did it, Marcus,
And then of course Marcus goes, no, Connor, we did it.

Speaker 1 (02:22:05):
We did it.

Speaker 2 (02:22:06):
Yeah. It's like, god damn it. But there is one
more part of actual gameplay that can happen if, oh,
if Marcus succeeds in his revolution or his march, Connor
is alive and Connor is a deviant. Oh yes, yes, yeah,
so so cyber Life somehow regains control or attempts to

(02:22:30):
regain control of Connor remotely, and they spout some Amanda
spout some dialogue about how this was their plan all along.
We knew you were going to turn deviant, we knew
you were going to stray from the path, and we
put you right here in front of the leader of
the deviants, and now it's your time to take him out.

Speaker 1 (02:22:52):
That's right, and it's it's it's like televised, it's very public,
and we can see Connor's like face begin to twitch
and he's even reaching for his gun ye seemingly against
his own will. Thank you for bringing this up. I
completely forgot to write this down.

Speaker 2 (02:23:04):
Oh no, worries. And you're then given control of Connor
and he's actually taken to his mind palace and it's
completely snow covered. It's very cold. Connor himself is shivering,
and Amanda's basically like, no, this is what's going to happen,
and you're going to finish your mission. And then you're
given control of Connor and you don't really have an

(02:23:27):
idea of where to go. It's very hard to see.
But then you hear the voice of Elijah Kamsky kind
of in your ear, and you're recalling something that he
said when you met him where you interact with him
and the Chloe androids.

Speaker 4 (02:23:40):
He says, by the way, I always leave an emergency
exit of my programs, you never.

Speaker 2 (02:23:48):
Know, and just leaves it at that. So now you're
trying to find a way to get out of this program.
And you can find this in different iterations of the
mind Palace if you happen to explore. But there's this
pillar you can find that's glowing a bright blue that
has a handprint on it, And if you can get
Connor to it quick enough and finish the QTE that

(02:24:08):
happens when you go to try to touch it, Connor
will snap out of his trance. Basically, you'll see him
with a gun in his hand, ready to almost shoot,
but he slowly puts it back in his pocket and
that's the end of it. But if you fail here
or just decide not to try to get out, Connor
will shoot Marcus and the game will end very abruptly.

Speaker 1 (02:24:29):
Yeah, what's cool about this is you can find that
thing in his mind palace. The out that Komski mentions
you can find that from the first time you're in there,
and if you interact with it, help Mark Connor will
put his hand on it and it like he takes
it away really quickly and his led flash is red
like like he's freaking out. And I thought that was

(02:24:50):
very cool that they like put that you could interact
with it anytime. Of course, it doesn't end the game
at any time, but I thought that was very neat.

Speaker 2 (02:24:58):
Yeah, as far as other scenes go, I mean, that's
really all I can think of for the most part.
I mean, if your revolution ends poorly, like you're trying
to take it by violence, you could potentially die before
you actually overthrow the camp that you're trying to free,
and the ending will be a little bit more negative.
We suppress the android rebellion, citizens are up in arms,

(02:25:22):
and it's going to take a long time to get
back to some semblance of society. So it's kind of
a negative ending, but it is interesting to see it
play out. I mentioned it to you off air, but
I think one of the more fun ways to end
the game that I played through was playing Connor strictly
as a machine and he ends up meeting Marcus on
the battlefield if he takes the revolutionary route, and there's

(02:25:44):
a point where these two are starting to fight and
then they kind of back off, and then the game
gives you the prompt where it wants you to decide
which of the two Androids you're going to control, Marcus
or Connor, and you can either play them to see
their endings through, or you can play them and intentionally
have them lose however you want to play it. I
thought it was really cool, and all I will say

(02:26:04):
is if you decide to play as Connor and you
decide to kill Marcus and and the revolution, he is
brutal as hell. And it's one of those The reason
I bring it up is not for the shock value.
I highly encourage you to go watch it on YouTube
if you've never seen it. But it goes back to
the actor that's playing Connor, Brian to Chart, and how

(02:26:25):
good he is at being the Devians kind of friendly android,
but he could also be the brutal machine that you
want him to be too, And it is so well
done I have to give him props for that.

Speaker 1 (02:26:37):
Yeah, I don't think I've seen that, now that you mention.

Speaker 2 (02:26:39):
It, it's interesting to play through, and I ended up
playing it through, and again, my wife was watching me
play and it was kind of like one of those
like she looked at me like, what are you gonna do?
And I'm like, well, I'm gonna finish my mission. That's
what I'm gonna do. And I put the thumbstick towards
Connor and saw it to the end.

Speaker 1 (02:27:20):
That's Detroit. I mean, I've been saying I've criticized this
game for a long time, and I'm glad that we
did it on the show. I mean, I think it's
worth talking about and I do think it's worth playing,
you know, Like I've said, these are sort of guilty
pleasure games for me, and you know, when they make
another one, I'll probably play it. Yeah. I don't know.

(02:27:41):
I have a lot of problems with it, but I
don't think that it's a game that's truly not worth playing.

Speaker 2 (02:27:47):
Yeah, I one hundred percent agree. And now that I've
had the time to really talk it through it And again, Rick,
thank you very much for having me on your show,
because this is one of those games where I've always
wanted to try and speak to how I feel about
it on an emotional level. But now that I'm older
and I've played the game more recently, being able to
look at the writing a little bit more like we

(02:28:09):
have a responsibility I think is just content consumers, not
so much creators to be okay with the idea of
critiquing somebody in their work and being fair about it,
of course, and I think we did a good job
of that here, And I feel good about the critiques
that I've made, and they definitely come from a spot
of love for the most part, because at the end
of the day, when I step back and I look

(02:28:31):
at Detroit, it is a arguably a visual masterpiece. The
soundtrack and the sound design are masterfully done. This game
honestly made me feel things that not a lot of
games make me feel like. I was very impressed with
the idea that the game honestly made me feel upset

(02:28:52):
angry at times, especially when I saw characters doing things
to other characters, whether it was in the confines of
good writing or not. I genuinely enjoyed and appreciated the
fact that I felt a certain way when I was
playing this game. I love that there's even though the
writing can go off the walls at times, I love
that there are so many options and choices and the

(02:29:14):
flow charts are so big. Like, I ended up platinuming
this game, but that doesn't really mean I finished it.
There's still a lot that I've not personally experienced, and
that speaks to the writing in a sense. But I
look at the people that put their probably quite literally, blood,
sweat and tears to make this game. The making of
videos that you can unlock in the bonus options or

(02:29:36):
what have you, they really speak to a passion that
these people had when they made this game, and I
think that can't be ignored. And I really appreciate that too.
So even though there was a lot of missteps here,
I agree this game I think should absolutely be experienced
and if nothing else, form your own opinion and decide
what this game truly means to you and maybe tell

(02:29:59):
us about it. I would love to continue to have
conversations with this and I'm sure Rick, you and I'll
have conversations about this game well after this episode airs.

Speaker 1 (02:30:07):
Yeah, absolutely, And some of that gets into the next
episode about criticism, so I'll maybe save that for next time.
But I mean, I completely agree with you. It is
entirely possible to enjoy things while still critiquing them. It's
a matter of tone and it's a matter of intent,
but it's absolutely possible. Nothing is beyond critique or beyond review,

(02:30:33):
and this is one of them. You know, we had
a lot to say. You came away a little more
positive than I did, but I still think this is
worth playing. There are some strong suits in there for
folks that really like visuals, especially I link the making
of the music in the descriptions, but you can find
all of them on YouTube, not just the music, like

(02:30:55):
the actors' interviews and the interviews with David Cage and
his right team, all of it. You can find it
all on there if you don't own the game, and
I would recommend checking it out. It's very cool. It's
always cool to see a look into the creation process
of this industry. And of course, yeah, thank you, thank

(02:31:15):
you again for joining. It's been a real pleasure.

Speaker 2 (02:31:19):
Yeah, absolutely, thank you again. Anytime you want to have
me back, I am available. I enjoy our conversations, Rick,
and thank you for tackling this game specifically too. It's
definitely been a big stake to chew on, but I
really had a blast, So thank you again.

Speaker 1 (02:31:33):
Now, how about the Retro Wildlands. What's new over there?

Speaker 2 (02:31:36):
Oh, we got a lot of new stuff. Most recently,
we just passed Super Bowl Sunday here here here in
the Americas, and I did an episode on one of
my favorite sports games. And I say that as a
big accolade of praise because I don't like sports games.
But I played through, replayed through super Tech Mobile on

(02:31:58):
the Super Nintendo, which is a game that I didn't
really fully appreciate it until I played it again recently.
But it is a game that is very near and
dear to my heart because while I'm not the world's
biggest football fan, I played this game a lot with
my stepdad growing up, and our episode on the Retro
Wildlands really speaks to not just the game itself and
how it plays and how you can experience a fantastic

(02:32:21):
football game while you play it, but I share a
lot of memories with how I interacted with my stepdad
and how this game influenced me growing up a little bit.
So I had a really good time with it. That
episode is out now, so definitely check it out. The
Retro Wildlands is on all major pod platforms, so just
searts the Retro wild Lands, you'll definitely find us. And

(02:32:41):
currently I'm working on an episode that I ended up
putting off just so I could do this super Tech
bo Bowl episode. I'm checking out a game called Kung
Fu on the original Nintendo. It's a very simplistic side scrolling,
almost beat them up. I think I could almost describe
it as it is a lot harder than I thought
though it was when I was a kid. But I'm

(02:33:01):
having a blast with it. So if you're looking for
a blast from the past. Retro games are becoming my specialty,
check us out. It'll be fun.

Speaker 1 (02:33:10):
Isn't that often considered one of the first fighting games?

Speaker 2 (02:33:13):
I believe so. I believe so I usually try to
and even if I don't talk about it on my show,
I do try to go back and learn a little
bit about the game's development and kind of what surrounded it.
I think you're right on that one, and I can
actually see that in the gameplay. It's very simple, but
very fun.

Speaker 1 (02:33:30):
That's one that I'm particularly excited to listen to. You
can find those links in the episode description. You can
also find links to all of our stuff as well
the discord where you can share your opinions on Detroit
and hopefully this game sparks some good conversation as well
as all of the socials and everything. Ratings and reviews

(02:33:51):
are always appreciated on wherever you do that. And with that,
I think it's been going for two and a half hours.
I think we can maybe call it so once again,
thank you no Mad for joining, Thank you everybody for listening.
My name is Rick. As always, we'll catch you next time.
Take care,

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Let My People Go | Detroit Become Human, Part III (Ep. 133)

Episode Transcript

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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;}Let My People Go | Detroit Become Human, Part III (Ep. 133)