Player choice and The End.

[Bek]

My favorite choice of the game was to optionally delete Dr Munshi's scan from the files in cath's lab, that guy prescribed aspirin for Simon's brain damage what a quack!

Haha, damn that's cold. I love it.

[grrrz]

edit: Almost forgot: The WAU err.. "human interaction devices" — they're comparable to the latern-things from Penumbra, right? Except the don't save the game, though they do clear up the blur/chromatic aberration. Was there some significance beyond this? Has anyone tried using them maximally/minimally? I began with the former but decided halfway through the was a bad idea; should've stuck to my guns, WAU be damned.

it's basically just a way to restore your health (and by doing so your movement and vision)

I liked the few choices you have (I probably missed some, since some killing seemed required at the beginning to go on). They do not affect the story because it supposed to be between you and your conscience, not a mechanism to unlock some aspect of the experience (like maybe dishonored, where not killing anybody render the game easier, and gives you the good ending. then you do it not because it's the right thing to do, but to get the good ending).
The most horryfing choice is of course the choice to kill the previous version of you. This is a very griping moment, and neither choice is a good one. you don't do it and 'you' wake up in a awful place with not a single glimpse of hope. you do it and effectively kill any single glimpse of hope.
and the ending reflects on this choice.
The human at the end was a nice twist. here it was really easier because she asked you to. there was no big moral dillemma (the fact she was maybe the last human, we couldn't really be sure, besides she would have died anyway, very probably).

[Tommyboypsp]

How about the one outside of Theta, Sarah I think was her name? The one who thinks she's in the ARK.
I had a hard time deciding whether or not to pull her plug because on one hand she was 'sentient'/'sane', and could therefore have decided to commit suicide whenever she wanted to or when she realised she wasn't in the ARK. On the other hand, since she didn't realise she was on the bottom of the ocean, maybe she wouldn't be able to see her hopeless fate? Maybe I should have pulled her plug so she wouldn't spend the rest of eternity waiting for the other ARK-inhabitants to arrive?

[1minus1is0]

The human at the end was a nice twist. here it was really easier because she asked you to. there was no big moral dillemma (the fact she was maybe the last human, we couldn't really be sure, besides she would have died anyway, very probably).

Actually, it is a huge moral dilemma because it puts you in WAU's shoes. My actions toward her are the reason I advocate WAU as the best and only hope for humanity. At that time you don't know the ending. I kept her alive as a historic relic and because once I launched the ARK (I knew how brainscans worked, unlike Simon) I wanted to be able to come back to talk to her so Simon and Catherine could have somebody to talk to and she could have somebody to talk to. She must be really lonely after being stuck on that machine after so many months. I was sure her desire to die would be allieviated once I came back and told her that I launched the ARK and everything she had went through had meaning and that her life had had meaning.

Then I saw the ending and I was like WTF simon.

[Kein]

I was really curious who the apparition was, especially since the little messages appearing on monitors like "WE MUST DESTROY IT" kept showing up in Omicron.

If I'm not mistaken it was the A.I. Psych guy. There is either audio or text log that says they had to bring back his body to Omicron and lock it up, trying to understand what happened to him. And there is pretty recognizable room at Omicron with glass capsule where you first see the Ghost. I assume this is where they held that body. In the same log it is mentioned that WAU tried to "get to the body in the isolated room".


As we know, every monster in the game is someone "changed" from the crew by WAU.

[wtcelesta]

I was really curious who the apparition was, especially since the little messages appearing on monitors like "WE MUST DESTROY IT" kept showing up in Omicron.

If I'm not mistaken it was the A.I. Psych guy. There is either audio or text log that says they had to bring back his body to Omicron and lock it up, trying to understand what happened to him. And there is pretty recognizable room at Omicron with glass capsule where you first see the Ghost. I assume this is where they held that body. In the same log it is mentioned that WAU tried to "get to the body in the isolated room".

The apparition is most definitely Johan Ross. I am currently searching for an explanation of the full story to understand who did what and, specifically, what happened to Ross to enable him to project himself in this way. From the absence of his body in the sealed glass room at Omicron I am getting a feeling that he was entirely transformed from a physical form into a projection.
Talking of him, has anyone succeeded at opening his room? You had to enter a code and I don't think I found it, or I did but didn't know it was the code for that room.

[humanoid]

Talking of him, has anyone succeeded at opening his room? You had to enter a code and I don't think I found it, or I did but didn't know it was the code for that room.

I don't remember what exactly triggered it (either access the screen multiple times or try the computer in the infirmary if you're using the one in the dispatch room?) but the code is automatically entered by Ross when you access the unlock screen at one point.

Also slightly offtopic but I think there might be an oversight in the story and the game setting?
I'm talking about the player choice to kill the WAU, clearly Simon-3's arm gets ripped off but shouldn't he also instantly die as a result since his protection suit that was supposed to withstand the high pressure just got torn apart?

[wtcelesta]

clearly Simon-3's arm gets ripped off but shouldn't he also instantly die as a result since his protection suit that was supposed to withstand the high pressure just got torn apart?

This is a great question. He is in the water right when it happens, and he gets to run across the ocean floor to the launch facility afterwards.
I wonder if someone with a good grasp of physics can explain. Maybe the suit doesn't have to be hermetic to provide the protection from the pressure? The body inside is dead so it doesn't need oxygen or thermoregulation, so the key question is the impact of pressure.

[humanoid]

The body inside is dead so it doesn't need oxygen or thermoregulation, so the key question is the impact of pressure.

Thats what I was thinking as well, however clearly the suit is supposed to protect Simon-3 (even if its just a dead body containing a cortex chip), otherwise we wouldn't need to get it in the first place.

Not to mention that Simon-2 literally dies due to high pressure when you jump down the Abyss, it even shows a little cutscene for that (at Omicron).

[D351]

Question: Why do we assume WAU, and not Ross, summoned Simon? As Simon's only practical purposes are to kill WAU and launch the ARK, it seems more probable that the events were all set in motion by a character that wanted those things to happen, though why he wouldn't just send a copy of himself I don't know, perhaps he knows himself to be too cowardly or selfish to allow the death he intended to inflict on Simon after WAU is killed.

In terms of ethics, I thought it best to save everyone I could other than the last human. It is her right to choose death, regardless of its effect on the species as a larger construct. Life against the will is the cruelest form of death. Simon is however a moron for thinking his being copied had any chance of taking him out of the body being copied from. This annoyed me to no end.