u/JackRipps

I have, previously, made severe and continuous lapses in my judgement and I do not expect to be forgiven.

For the fans of this game who I looked at with a slight amount of disdain when I was struggling with the earlier hours of the game, I need to say sorry.

Obviously, spoilers beyond this point.

Okay, I… loved that. Among Remedy games, I’m pretty sure this game will be to me like a rebellious kid that you have. It has its flaws. Its “jank”. There’s moments where it doesn’t behave as you’d expect. But god is it beautiful and god is it mine.

I complained earlier about the jankness of the game, and the staleness of the mechanics. Whilst I really can’t say anything to defend against the jank, the mechanics did increase after a bit. I got more powers and I got far better at using them. Once I did, I really did feel like a speedster. While I’ll maintain they could have done more, I’ll also acknowledge that what’s there is still pretty solid.

As for the story? 10/10, no notes.

Liam Burke? Absolute fucking unit. Get yourself a man like that.

Charlie Wincott? Unexpected redemption, personally I was more invested into the Charlie/Fiona/Beth/Liam subplot than the main story during the start.

Beth Wilders? MVP. Tragic hero. The queen we needed but never deserved. Lived approximately 35 years to ensure the survival of humanity, time, and everything good and pure. Personally, her death was a massive fucking shock. Like I had kinda read one comment earlier saying how they didn’t like what the hame did with Beth, so I was expecting maybe she gets lost in time or does something bad. I did not expect her to be FUCKING executed. It was really such a shock that I didn’t even immediately felt grief. It was just afterwards that I felt this… extreme lingering pain. How, even if we won, we could probably not save Beth. How, even if we won, Beth would never get to ride off into the sunset, never get to enjoy the victory she worked her entire life for, lived like a ghost for. The most tragic character of them all.

William Joyce? Genius. He had so much plot relevance for so long, with such little screen time. He built it all. The Meyer-Joyce field, the time machine, the countermeasure. He is the reason why any of it happened. All technology in the game originates from him. Also, I thought we couldn’t save him. I thought he just dies. I was actually so relieved when I saw the roof cave in because my head immediately went “but… we never SEE him die.” Started it all, ended it all.

Jack Joyce? Protagonist. Not much to say, we know basically everything about him and share the same opinions on him. He’s stubborn, determined, in pain and bearing so much responsibility. I wonder what happened to him at the end of the game, though considering he’s giving the interview to Candace, I won’t assume he fades away or something.

Paul Serene? Weird. That’s my final thought of him. And here, I’ll need the lore masters to probably correct me. From what I understand, in the “original” timeline, Paul Serene is just the best friend of Jack Joyce and a regular person. Becomes a young millionaire, builds a time machine on the basis of Willian Joyce’s findings. Creates the fracture due to being a business and not a scientist. Gets teleported forward to the end of time, where he basically goes a little crazy, fights Beth Wilder, then goes straight back in time to 1999.

One question, does this mean that after 1999, there exists two paul serenes in the world? One from the future and the actual one who is still friends with jack?
And when the original paul goes to the end of time, the future paul takes his place and reveals himself as the CEO of Monarch?

Also, does this basically mean that Paul could never fix what had happened, due to the whole “past is fixed” thing, but also, because he had to be the villain that would lead to the Jack and William fixing things in the future?

Given how the game ends, and how Jack tells Beth “I’ll come back for you”, does this mean the past can be changed?

I feel like with the weird glitching thing Jack was doing and with his promise to Beth, there was a setup for a sequel there which… never came to be.

Taking the piss at Magnus is one of the favourite things of the warhammer 40,000 community to do. While, I personally, also find it very amusing, the question does remain.

What should he have done?

For context, I have read a Thousand Sons and Master of Mankind so I have some (albeit quite limited in the grand scheme of things) actual information from lore on what to think about the matter.

But what do you do, as Magnus, with the context that basically every rule and standard you have followed in life has just been broken. One of the most foundational beliefs of your life, aka everyone’s shared trust of Horus, has just been shattered.

Some facts to establish:

1. If Horus isn’t trustworthy, no one is. I haven’t read the book in which it happens, but I believe Rogal Dorn almost kills the marine when he first receives the news that Horus is a traitor. Loken in the first couple books of the HH remarks and jokes about how totally impossible it is that space marines would ever fight against each other

2. Physical means of communication such as sending a messenger to Terra, or sending a messenger through a telepath are not viable. Magnus was Tzeentch’s prize, and I find it hard to believe that either of those attempts or anything similar would work and NOT be thwarted by a warp storm or other chaos interference. You have the attention of a chaos god on you.

3. Terra must be warned. I don’t think it’s rational or possible to say, “Well, I would just do nothing. The Emperor told me to wait, and I’m going to wait”. Yes, but the situation has impossibly changed. The warmaster has before a traitor and a heretic.

And man, was it fun. I have a lot of good things to say about the game and obviously I’ll have some comparisons to make with the first game, so I’ll get the things I didn’t like out of the way before.

First off, god this game needs some optimisation. I have an RTX 5060, an i12400f and 16gb of DDR4 Ram. Runs cyberpunk 2077 like butter but this game really gave my rig a go for it’s money. Only could run the game at high, with lighting dialled to the lowest setting and even then, there was definitely five to six times at the very end where the game stuttered/stuck. Wouldn’t say it was anything deal breaking but definitely noticeable.

Second, I feel like this game is less cinematic than the first one in some way? Even though the game looks phenomenal, the scale is quite grand, and especially the intro where they pan through the ravine and show the new version of the city is great, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the nature of the game. The first game had me roaring the words “BURN!” or “RAGE! RAGE AGAINST THE DYING OF THE LIGHT!” Corny, I know but games are meant to have fun with, and the first one was definitely a uniquely singular experience. Maybe it’s just that the first game is more Man v Nature, so you’re fighting against this huge, apathetically callous force that cannot be reasoned, bargained or defended against. You can only put your city against the roaring cold and hope you prepared enough to survive.

Speaking of the difference between the two games, now on to what I did like about the game. Graphics are obviously great, I like the strategic direction the game took. It went from being this post-apocalyptical city building survival series to an entry moreso focused about the political intrigue of a city that has stagnated and gotten complacent over the years. I’m sure people can suggest other directions the series may have gone in and maybe that would have been better? But I still really like what we got. I haven’t played the DLC/Utopia Builder yet so I can’t compare the two. I like how your decisions have a longer lasting impact on faction relations, how they rebel and fight against each other to further their own agenda.

You’d think being on the last city of earth would be a pretty good reason to not in-fight. Yet humans are dumb and would do exactly that. I like the new mechanics such as squalor or districts or goods. But I do want to get your thoughts on it as well. What did you think about the frostbreaking? How do you feel about the new resource system, the requirements of the factions and the overall arc of the story?

I feel like in regards with the story of frostpunk 2, not a lot really happens. You’re put in charge, coal’s running out. You go find oil and it stops being a problem ad infinitum. Improve generator, face a whiteout, go handle winterhome and that’s about it. I liked every second of it so maybe I’m just being greedy. I also have only done the stalwart/reason/order root and haven’t done the faithkeepers/frostlander/pilgrim/tradition route do maybe the outposts you set up through that might be a different experience all together?

So yeah, let me know your thoughts and let me know if I should play the dlc next or if I should replay the main story with the tradition/adaption route first!

I’ve been watching Hasan for about a year now, I’m not sure about the exact timeline but I recently found out about his whole situation with Ethan Klein.

My uploaded screenshot is of two videos.

First one I watched fully, and the second one I’m an hour into.

And the question occurs to me… what happened?

In the first episode, they have such a clear, back-and-forth respectable conversation.

Hasan presents his one-state solutions, Ethan presents his two-state solutions yet concedes that both are difficult to implement yet he can see Hasan’s solution being the easier one to implement, which is the solution he initially provided some reasoning as to why it could be difficult to implement.

They discuss some other matters, and again seem very cordial and respectable about.

They discuss the whole “River to the Sea” thing which… albeit a little dumb from Ethan’s side, Hasan handles pretty well.

Ethan gets a little emotional in the end and seems to have some grievances about Hasan’s community not liking him. Hasan addresses it, defends Ethan, talks about his positive qualities and views, empathises with him and explains how streaming especially in a political space is a thankless job.

In the end, they part really friendly.

And then, there’s the second video in which, regardless of who you think is right or wrong, you can absolutely agree that Ethan seems… really angry, childish and petty.

So what happened in the interim?

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