u/unclemattyice

Here’s your precious princess.

.

I’m going to hell 🤷‍♂️

It is now in my top 5 all time.

Some of yall have been following my recent posts, as I’ve gone through my journey with this masterpiece. I’m closing in on 100-percenting it.

I’m not the kind of person who goes through my full digital library, hunts around and re-installs games I never completed. I am kind of a serial non-completionist, it’s a problem.

I only gave the game another chance, because I found it literally covered in dust, and I genuinely felt bad for this inanimate object I held in my hand…

I was also poignantly reminded that I paid full retail for this back in the day, and I knew it would work (and look as good as possible) on my series X.

So I’m throwing in my lot, with the rest of the gaming community, on the physical media issue.

A physical copy stopped me from bouncing off a game that I absolutely treasure now, a game in my top five.

I’m going to start buying physical more often. GameStop isn’t far from my house, it’s still alive and kicking, and they could use the boost too.

And I will -never- buy a future console, that denies me that choice, and the chance at re-discovering my own games.

That’s a looooooong way down.

I’ve never attempted a nightmare run, but I smashed a No Needles run on hard. I think I’m ready.

I have 70% of achievements already.

I already have Split affinity, no needles, I and thou, I and It, and all the achievements that automatically come with those.

I will not be constrained to any specific playstyle or nueromods this time, I can go to town.

The achievements I have left are mainly completionist, like eating every food item, mimicking 20 unique objects, finding every human (dead or alive), reading every email, listen to every transcribe, and finding all six dead drops.

I have a couple easy, “trick” achievements (blasting myself 20m as an object, killing a lifted enemy, scanning my own phantom shift, complete the opening tests using the intended Typhon powers)

Since this run will be extremely thorough and exploration-heavy (literally no stone unturned on Talos), I’m not enabling oxygen.

There is too much for me to hunt down outside the station on this run, so I’m absolutely not doing a timer.

I’m also not taking Weapon degradation, as this was balanced specifically for the mooncrash simulation, and is just an unnecessary chore and drain in spare parts, in the base game.

Wish me luck, brethren!!

100%, here we come.

I kinda kicked the shit outta that, too.

Prey for me, brethren.

I’m down the rabbit hole

This tells me that this is the singular, most under-appreciated roguelike, of all time.

This experience was incredible. It demanded excellence.

It demanded strategic planning, and then made sure my best plans couldn’t go off, without some kind of random environmental hazard messing things up.

It required me to run the simulation just enough, to truly learn the map, anticipate obstacles, learn to work as a team of five…. and then once I had the plan lined up, I had to execute, almost flawlessly.

I don’t think the 0.26% is an indication of how hard this is. I just got the DLC, 3 days ago.

I think it’s evidence that this roguelike just… did not land, for the vast majority of people.

That is a crying shame.

This is a masterpiece, and I honestly had even more fun with it, than the base game.

I feel like a fan of “The Thing”, in the 80’s.

How can everyone else, not appreciate this?

How did this flop??

So, I installed the game two days ago.

I’ve been learning the base, learning my options, following the story objectives, and getting some fantastic escapes.

On my last run, I finished Vijay’s story, and unlocked Claire. I also got the fabrication plan for the time delay.

Fantastic bit of storytelling for this last character unlock, by the way.

Anyway, for this run, I wanted to accomplish several things.

Mimic escape for Andrius, and Escape pod exit for Claire, were the baseline objectives. I also wanted a weaver scan for Riley, so she could do her exit eventually.

Simple enough, right?

What followed was ALMOST a perfect run, all survivors getting their preferred exits.

I knew I had to have a hacker, to open the mimic portal, and Claire is on the team now, so I started it out like this:

Joan repairs mimic, takes tram to crew annex, locates the escape pod, eats a time delay, dumps inventory to mule, takes shuttle, escapes.

That went off without a hitch, but I did notice on my way that moonworks was without power, so I grabbed the control modules from the tram station in crew annex, and sure enough, the escape pod was in moonworks. So those control modules were key.

I jumped in with Claire for the very first time, and bought her an escape pod tracking module, and a nueromod, for hacking 1.

Her run was pretty flawless.

Almost no damage, kept corruption bottomed out, dodged the moonshark on the way down the command tower stairs to power control, rebooted moonworks.

Corruption is still low level 1, and Joan cleared the labs, so she breezes into isolation, hacks a level 1 password, and then I made a mistake.

I wanted hacking 2, just in case it took me too long to get to moonworks, and I hit corruption 2.

So I went upstairs to Riley’s office, and looted her neuromods, and took level 2 hacking.

This ended up being a mistake, but, critically, I found an anti-rad, and tons of food and drinks, in the executive level. Immediately banked those for Vijay.

I got to the moonworks escape pod and ejected easily, still late in level one corruption (after using two time delays earlier), so the hack level was one, and I had spent Riley’s mods for no reason.

At this point, the game yanked me out, I got a cutscene from B, and the game made it clear I would have new obstacles and environmental hazards, from here out.

I jumped in with Andrius. I’ve already invested in him, he can handle himself, and his exit was wide open.

Zero issues. Andrius gets his story unlock exit too. Also, Joan happened to take her shuttle exit.

Next Vijay absolutely smashed his run, I have him one more time delay, and he had so much food, water, ammo, a rare shotgun etc, that he SMASHED his run. Almost as easy as Andrius, and when he ate that time delay and launched himself with the mag driver, I was still at low level 2 corruption… and 4/5 survivors were out, all taking their preferred exits.

I only had level 1 genesis on Riley. She had never escaped, and she had never scanned a weaver, to get genesis 2… but here I was, with a potentially perfect run on my hands.

I bought her four neuromods, and beelined to the labs, to find a weaver.

I found one in Typhon containment, but had to make the hard choice to unlock psychoshock, so I could kill the telepath demon in there, and get my scan.

I’d found one extra neuromod, so after sacrificing 3 to take psychoshock, I need 2 more for phantom genesis…

But the walls started closing around me.

I wasted too much time in containment.

I had already used the nueromod stash in my office.

Corruption is now almost at 4, I’m out of everything, health is low, and I don’t see a way forward.. particularly because I don’t exactly know how to progress the conciousness escape.

I’m going to die, just inches away from a perfect exit, all survivors taking their story exits.

Feels bad, man.

But this game is INCREDIBLE.

I took an escape pod, and it’s pretty clear I should have dropped all the loot I had found.

But still!!

First survivor ever, made it out!!

So yesterday, I finished a NG+ where I was specifically gunning for “I and Thou” and “Do No Harm”. I wanted them on my first run, but two key issues stopped me. One, was that I executed the cook. Definitely invalidated DNH, and probably I and Thou.

Then I got the infamous soft-lock bug, where I spoke to Alex and triggered the zero G in the arboretum, before I dragged Dahl down to the medbay to be saved by an operator. Once zero G hits, Dahl bugs out and becomes un-savable.

So, I upped the game to Hard and did a NG+. I was determined to not blow this.

These achievements don’t play around. You have to be Talos I’s guardian angel. The grading system for “I and Thou” is extremely thorough, everything you do regarding the survivors is strictly graded, and the whole system is hidden from the player.

It’s not enough to just save the people. You have to DO THE RIGHT THING, go out of your way to help people, and complete optional side quests.

Anyway.

Since I had hacking 4 right off the rip, I decided to get creative with how I would punish the “cook” for murdering Abby Foy.

I walked into the kitchen, instantly zapped his ass with the disruptor (remember, no kill run), and dragged him in the freezer, right where he left Abby, then dragged her out of there and made a “funeral pyre” for her, in her quarters. I posted about that a couple days ago.

After I went and talked to Danielle at the pool window, she gave me the quest to execute the cook… but I found out the hard way last time, that would register as a human kill, and invalidate both achievements. So I planned to just leave that quest unfinished, until later in the game, when he… “resolves” the quest himself, in a scripted event.

The problem was that me zapping him, broke the scripting for that later scene. He was still unconscious in the freezer as I was preparing to cross the point of no return, into the last act… the game was unable to move him to his final encounter.

It also just… really bothered me, that Danielle personally asked me to deal with him, I know personal side quests are critical for I and Thou, and I was about to leave him alive. I felt like he was getting off easy. I was also very concerned that not resolving this quest, and helping Danielle get justice, could invalidate “I and Thou”.

So. He had to die, but the game couldn’t move him to his normal “passive” death scene, and also, I couldn’t be the one to execute him.

I was concerned that I had seriously bricked my achievement run.

So I put on my thinking cap, and I invested in phantom genesis 2. I summoned phantoms from random corpses around the cafeteria until I got a voltaic one, and then tested a theory.

I walked my phantom into the freezer, and allowed its passive electrical AOE to zap him to death. The quest resolved, Abby and Danielle got justice.

Then I opened my stats, and sure enough… still no “humans killed” line.

I guessed that environmental damage would not register as a kill, even environmental damage from my own, personal lightning thrall. I guessed right.

Three hours later, the credits rolled, and both achievements popped.

The absolute best feeling.

I’m honestly very impressed.

I gave the AI several images of the area and the fight, from several different angles, just re-loading my save.

This isn’t perfect, but…. Damn.

I left her murderer stunned, but alive, in the freezer… where he left her body.

I did my best to gently drag her out of there, all the way back to her bed, and I did my best, to leave her in her happy place.

I’m not just going for “I and Thou”, on this new game plus run.

I am roleplaying this, hard.

I think I have found the best way to deal with the cook, while also getting I and Thou.

It is to save everyone, gain his trust with the award, stun him, and use hacking 4 to open the freezer.

Then you drag him in there, right next to Abby, and lock the door.

It doesn’t count as a human kill, and I am assuming later he will have escaped.

Don’t care.

He needs to “chill out” for a while, right next to her.

In all seriousness, I saved every single person. I count 13, including the ones in the main hall… and I’m locking them all in here.

Sleep tight, yall.

AND HIS NAME IS ALEX YUUUUUUU

Whenever he wakes up, he can tell everyone exactly what happened.