u/OneUseHero

I think the wish placed Nikki under the control of Bears Id. It's impulsive and primalistic to satisfy it's urges to love Bear, but at the core of him he does not know what love actually is, and only knows affection and desire.

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Curry has confirmed Nikki is not possessed, at least not by a demon or the typical things we would expect. But what if the wish took from Bear and used that as a control. I'm not saying strictly just that portion of his psyche, but an amalgamation of it and Nikkis, only replacing all of her desires/needs with him.

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I think the reason the Wish version struggled with loving in a traditional way is, as I said before, Bear doesn't know what it's like to love. Sandy likely gave him affection, but when it came to reciprocating we could see that he had extremely poor conditions for her to live. He didn't care enough to have a bowl for her food, left cans partially opened, and didn't bother closing medicines properly. Even his practice with the waitress felt like it was forced trying to emulate a romance more than an actual feeling.

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If it is part of him controlling her on a subconscious level it would also possibly explain why she said her cat just died, before shifting to remembering the wish version is in her body now, and not part of Bear.

I've been showing my wife SR2, she has watched her brother play the third and never saw the early parts of the series, so I started to replay 2 while she watched. It had been a while, and I forgot all the tiny details that made Stillwater such a great sandbox to play in.

The radio DJs all fit their stations extremely well, the music was very rooted in the time, and the radio losing signal and fading in/out sometimes makes it feel more authentic.

Each district is uniquely it's own, with NPCs rarely sighted outside of areas they would belong in, making the city feel like an actual place and not generic city concepts.

Doing activities is entirely optional, but each one gives extremely generous rewards.

The story is not entirely linear, being able to go after gangs at whatever point I want instead of working through one chain is always nice. I like clearing the map of the Ronin and Sons before hitting the brotherhood.

I can and have just fucked around exploring the city since release, it's just a cozy game to me at this point. I really wish they had embraced the key parts of the heart of the game and focused it as a gang empire simulator experience then trying to distance themselves from GTA. There was so much potential and I'm still sad that the series likely is never coming back.