The chain gears aren't engaging with the spinning shafts, and I have no idea why. One of the connections seems to have no visible way to control it, while the other might have something but it's behind a puzzle with a ton of controls and no obvious objective.
Hint
There are three things to make the giant machine fully function. First is the control to turn on the fan blades. The second is the control to engage the driveshaft. The third is a thing that you point at the joints and use to connect them. The first two are on the maintenance walkway. The third is not, but is nearby.
I got the good ending! And I did indeed see that the Mofang sphere got plopped somewhere in an Arizona that is on fire.
I don't really want to bother seeing the Bad Ending, but I kinda feel like from what I saw, Earth may not be 100% toast. It's a far future away from when CW was born, and probably even us, but I mean, Arizona is ALWAYS on fire, and I feel like a bunch of burned out strip malls & apartment complexes =/= THE ENTIRE EARTH IS TOAST :O, esp. since the sun looked OK?
... like I guess what I'm saying, is we might have Mad Max: Fury Road Earth in there, but that doesn't mean everything's wiped out. Hell, I think I saw trees out there.
The point is, though, that despite having some lovely national parks, Arizona as a whole is something of a shithole from what I've seen, so, I would much rather live out on Nice Green Colony World Thingy. Like I'm not even FROM Arizona, why would I want to go back there? I wish there was a way to kinda explore the fully realized, interconnected world, but I guess not. And damn CW, like, why the fuck were you willing to basically *let everyone die* so you could go back to Earth? The hell is wrong with you?
Regarding the Mofang -- jesus, was their "colony" THAT small? And that... bereft of basically any resources? Or does it only look like that because it got blown up? ... I feel like maybe both, because like... we can see outside Kaptar and Maray that there's more cliffside temple ruins and more jungle, respectively, but outside of the Hunrath bubble, the Mofang world still looked like something of a desolate wasteland. No wonder they kinda wanted to murder everyone, stuck somewhere like that.
Ending spoilery thoughts
From what I understand about C.W.'s plan, he thought everyone was already dead, and he was sure his battery was the key to getting back home (to be fair, it was), so that's what he was going to do. He didn't know what time he would go back to (and we don't really know how far in the future it was) or the state of the Earth at that time. My guess is humans either wiped themselves out, the Mofang let one of their WMDs loose, or they invaded somehow. In the "bad" ending, Farley still made it and they have a sad conversation as C.W. tries to figure out what happened and realizes what he has done.
Regarding the state of Mofang, it's likely the result of whatever bomb thing they were playing with. Basically that sphere was swapped with the Hunrath sphere, hence the size. I'd imagine it originally looked like what you see outside of the dome, but their own weapon got turned on them.
I guess that's a problem I have with the game. There's a lot of backstory going on but you only really get small bits of it. I would have liked more expositionary bits of info scattered around.
Ending Spoilers:
I think the Mofang witnessed firsthand outside their bubble the destructive power humans could have. They probably watched in realtime as we blew ourselves up with nukes, and so presumed that the Hunrath humans would be capable of the same, and therefore went to stop them before it could happen with their own bombs. Then they either blew themselves up, or we blew them up with their bombs. There's literally a crater in the middle of the Mofang cell surrounded by broken spires, and their tree is half dead.
Edit: cripes that was a quote button not a spoiler button.
While that's entirely possible, it seems pretty hypocritical from a species that developed those WMDs that can supposedly destroy miles of terrain. It's hard to tell exactly what the deal is with the Mofang from the little information we're given. At first they seemed nice enough but then they seemed like psychopaths. But maybe they had some agenda from the start.
I'm pretty sure that destruction in the Mofang cell came from them attempting to blow up Kaptar. The seed pedestal with the scale, I'm pretty sure, is where the bomb was teleported in, but they expected it and were able to teleport it back out. Supposedly that was the point of those chairs with the note scattered around. Those were the identified bomb spots that they had figured out, so they were standing guard, waiting to send them back.
I bet those loading screens where the entire world disintegrates into a cloud of swirling particles looks really cool in VR...
Maybe I'm being an oversensitive asshole, but the first time that happened it blew my mind, so I would have spoiler tagged it. Not calling you out or anything, your call entirely, for all I know that's in the trailer (that I didn't watch because I went in blind).
Really....? Hm. It honestly did not occur to me that someone could think that was a spoiler, and I'm frankly still struggling to sympathize. It's like if I said, "Oh the lighting effects in that one room would look incredible in VR" and someone was like "Dude! Don't spoil the lighting effects for me!" I guess I just don't consider effects to be spoiler territory.
But I also believe there is absolutely zero point in telling someone that how they feel is wrong, so I'll let you have it.
The chain gears aren't engaging with the spinning shafts, and I have no idea why. One of the connections seems to have no visible way to control it, while the other might have something but it's behind a puzzle with a ton of controls and no obvious objective.
Hint
There are three things to make the giant machine fully function. First is the control to turn on the fan blades. The second is the control to engage the driveshaft. The third is a thing that you point at the joints and use to connect them. The first two are on the maintenance walkway. The third is not, but is nearby.
I got the good ending! And I did indeed see that the Mofang sphere got plopped somewhere in an Arizona that is on fire.
I don't really want to bother seeing the Bad Ending, but I kinda feel like from what I saw, Earth may not be 100% toast. It's a far future away from when CW was born, and probably even us, but I mean, Arizona is ALWAYS on fire, and I feel like a bunch of burned out strip malls & apartment complexes =/= THE ENTIRE EARTH IS TOAST :O, esp. since the sun looked OK?
... like I guess what I'm saying, is we might have Mad Max: Fury Road Earth in there, but that doesn't mean everything's wiped out. Hell, I think I saw trees out there.
The point is, though, that despite having some lovely national parks, Arizona as a whole is something of a shithole from what I've seen, so, I would much rather live out on Nice Green Colony World Thingy. Like I'm not even FROM Arizona, why would I want to go back there? I wish there was a way to kinda explore the fully realized, interconnected world, but I guess not. And damn CW, like, why the fuck were you willing to basically *let everyone die* so you could go back to Earth? The hell is wrong with you?
Regarding the Mofang -- jesus, was their "colony" THAT small? And that... bereft of basically any resources? Or does it only look like that because it got blown up? ... I feel like maybe both, because like... we can see outside Kaptar and Maray that there's more cliffside temple ruins and more jungle, respectively, but outside of the Hunrath bubble, the Mofang world still looked like something of a desolate wasteland. No wonder they kinda wanted to murder everyone, stuck somewhere like that.
Ending spoilery thoughts
From what I understand about C.W.'s plan, he thought everyone was already dead, and he was sure his battery was the key to getting back home (to be fair, it was), so that's what he was going to do. He didn't know what time he would go back to (and we don't really know how far in the future it was) or the state of the Earth at that time. My guess is humans either wiped themselves out, the Mofang let one of their WMDs loose, or they invaded somehow. In the "bad" ending, Farley still made it and they have a sad conversation as C.W. tries to figure out what happened and realizes what he has done.
Regarding the state of Mofang, it's likely the result of whatever bomb thing they were playing with. Basically that sphere was swapped with the Hunrath sphere, hence the size. I'd imagine it originally looked like what you see outside of the dome, but their own weapon got turned on them.
I guess that's a problem I have with the game. There's a lot of backstory going on but you only really get small bits of it. I would have liked more expositionary bits of info scattered around.
Ending Spoilers:
I think the Mofang witnessed firsthand outside their bubble the destructive power humans could have. They probably watched in realtime as we blew ourselves up with nukes, and so presumed that the Hunrath humans would be capable of the same, and therefore went to stop them before it could happen with their own bombs. Then they either blew themselves up, or we blew them up with their bombs. There's literally a crater in the middle of the Mofang cell surrounded by broken spires, and their tree is half dead.
Edit: cripes that was a quote button not a spoiler button.
While that's entirely possible, it seems pretty hypocritical from a species that developed those WMDs that can supposedly destroy miles of terrain. It's hard to tell exactly what the deal is with the Mofang from the little information we're given. At first they seemed nice enough but then they seemed like psychopaths. But maybe they had some agenda from the start.
I'm pretty sure that destruction in the Mofang cell came from them attempting to blow up Kaptar. The seed pedestal with the scale, I'm pretty sure, is where the bomb was teleported in, but they expected it and were able to teleport it back out. Supposedly that was the point of those chairs with the note scattered around. Those were the identified bomb spots that they had figured out, so they were standing guard, waiting to send them back.
In Farley's bedroom, if you read her journal, she pretty clearly implies that the Mofang were out to get them because they just straight up considered themselves a superior species. She says something to the effect of, "What gives any species the right to decide that it deserves to live and everything else deserves to die?" (not exact, I'd have to load the game and screenshot it to get the exact wording). "How can anyone really declare themselves superior when we all bring different things to the table?" And then some rationalization as she comes to this conclusion that they have to do something terrible for the Arai, Villein, and humans to survive.
Also, there's at least two Mofang who are on the humans' side -- you can see them in the pods. They're named in Farley's notes about the plan to blow up the Mofang.
You really do have to read everything and infer from context what's happening though.
From what I understand... initially the Mofang acted friendly, but all three other species started to suspect malice at some point, and started to implement measures to protect themselves without alerting the Mofang to what was really happening. At some point, likely whenever the Mofang started sending their little insta-kill dodecahedrons out, everybody realized that the Mofang wanted to kill them all. Two Mofang weren't into this idea and defected, which is 1. why two of them are in the pods and 2. how the humans knew about the Mofang's plan and could figure out some way to stop it.
So, no, this isn't ~lol yet another lesson about how humans suck~, it's more about how being warlike tribal bastards with inflated senses of superiority sucks, and working together with people who aren't like you is better for everybody. Well, among other things.
A fridge moment about the "good" ending:
I hope those trees send out more seeds to get more Villein, humans, and maybe some less bastardly Mofang, because if not, that's a hell of a small genetic pool this nice new colony has to work with.
I still think that Earth probably isn't 100% toast. Which is to say, that's still a "bad" ending and still not a place you want to end up, but I think Earth isn't "dead." There's some green trees off in the distance near the ruined buildings. Probably Arizona just became a nu-Right / Libertarian dystopia :P Well and climate change drowned all of us on the coasts -- wait I already said, "Mad Max future."
I sincerely doubt it was nukes like a previous poster said. To me, the damage looks more environmental and slow abandonment / collapse -- the smoke is likely just from the equivalent of forest fires. If it's a Bad Earth caused by climate change -- especially plausible if some adapted plant life is still hanging on -- it's probably just that things catch fire when it's too hot and dry. Just ask California.
In general, I think this game does make the "lol single biome planet" / tiny area is indicative of whole planet! mistake. That one section of Maray could BE Earth -- I've BEEN in forests like that in Hawaii. You'd have a very different idea of what Earth is like if you were in Siberia, or in the Amazon, or at the bottom of the ocean. That, in turn, really makes me wonder what the Mofang planet is "really" supposed to be like, and also what else there is on Kaptar.
A bit about Kaptar:
Kaptar seriously has some of the best environmental/context-based storytelling I've ever seen in any game. The Arai threw me off a little bit, but without even reading a single bit of text, I was able to infer that there had been one civilization that worshipped these giant fish and had built a sort of... Buddhist retreat out here to meditate on them. Then a second civilization comes along, likely long after the first one had faded into dust, and builds this giant industrial processing facility in the temple ruins to catch and process the fish instead. Really cool stuff. Without context it seemed weird, but with the context EVERYTHING in that world made sense... unlike Maray which was a giant weird puzzle. I mean there's a REASON it was nothing but a giant puzzle, but it was really jarring to have something that was so clearly just a puzzle after something else that was so clearly a place to figure out.
The chain gears aren't engaging with the spinning shafts, and I have no idea why. One of the connections seems to have no visible way to control it, while the other might have something but it's behind a puzzle with a ton of controls and no obvious objective.
Hint
There are three things to make the giant machine fully function. First is the control to turn on the fan blades. The second is the control to engage the driveshaft. The third is a thing that you point at the joints and use to connect them. The first two are on the maintenance walkway. The third is not, but is nearby.
No, I did that already. Everything around the chains is spinning, but the chain gears themselves aren't. I've also turned on what appears to be a semi-pointless elevator, and the fourth joint seems to lead to that walkway connected to the machine with way too many controls.
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
The chain gears aren't engaging with the spinning shafts, and I have no idea why. One of the connections seems to have no visible way to control it, while the other might have something but it's behind a puzzle with a ton of controls and no obvious objective.
Hint
There are three things to make the giant machine fully function. First is the control to turn on the fan blades. The second is the control to engage the driveshaft. The third is a thing that you point at the joints and use to connect them. The first two are on the maintenance walkway. The third is not, but is nearby.
No, I did that already. Everything around the chains is spinning, but the chain gears themselves aren't. I've also turned on what appears to be a semi-pointless elevator, and the fourth joint seems to lead to that walkway connected to the machine with way too many controls.
If you're talking about the chains that go off into the distance, I don't think they move. They're just a rail for the tram.
The chain gears aren't engaging with the spinning shafts, and I have no idea why. One of the connections seems to have no visible way to control it, while the other might have something but it's behind a puzzle with a ton of controls and no obvious objective.
Hint
There are three things to make the giant machine fully function. First is the control to turn on the fan blades. The second is the control to engage the driveshaft. The third is a thing that you point at the joints and use to connect them. The first two are on the maintenance walkway. The third is not, but is nearby.
No, I did that already. Everything around the chains is spinning, but the chain gears themselves aren't. I've also turned on what appears to be a semi-pointless elevator, and the fourth joint seems to lead to that walkway connected to the machine with way too many controls.
If you're talking about the chains that go off into the distance, I don't think they move. They're just a rail for the tram.
If there's a tram, I haven't found it. There's a car I can stand in, but it appears to be fixed to the chain, and there are no controls within it.
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
The chain gears aren't engaging with the spinning shafts, and I have no idea why. One of the connections seems to have no visible way to control it, while the other might have something but it's behind a puzzle with a ton of controls and no obvious objective.
Hint
There are three things to make the giant machine fully function. First is the control to turn on the fan blades. The second is the control to engage the driveshaft. The third is a thing that you point at the joints and use to connect them. The first two are on the maintenance walkway. The third is not, but is nearby.
No, I did that already. Everything around the chains is spinning, but the chain gears themselves aren't. I've also turned on what appears to be a semi-pointless elevator, and the fourth joint seems to lead to that walkway connected to the machine with way too many controls.
If you're talking about the chains that go off into the distance, I don't think they move. They're just a rail for the tram.
If there's a tram, I haven't found it. There's a car I can stand in, but it appears to be fixed to the chain, and there are no controls within it.
The car should have a lever inside to the side. I remember riding 2 trams there, but I don't remember why.
Looked it up, it's something that I probably never would have noticed on my own.
There's a blocker restricting the motion of the spinning bridge, that you can lower.
Ah, that must be where I first used it, passed that teleport. I've noticed people missing that arm. I got lucky and noticed it immediately when I first went there and happened to turn around.
Looked it up, it's something that I probably never would have noticed on my own.
There's a blocker restricting the motion of the spinning bridge, that you can lower.
Ah, that must be where I first used it, passed that teleport. I've noticed people missing that arm. I got lucky and noticed it immediately when I first went there and happened to turn around.
haha I actually accidentially lowered it on my first play, but that's probably because I'm a very long-time Myst fanatic whose general gameplay is CLICK EVERYTHING ALL THE THINGS CLICK IT and I have a good eye for Wot Should Be Clicked
In any case, I've turned hint gleams on now. I don't see any particular cost for doing so, since interactive elements are few, far between, and generally easily visible.
I'm getting weird bugs when traveling towards the tree roots, I think related to transitions during map segments.
When I was headed for the second one, for some reason the game kept flipping me around in a location where it wasn't immediately obvious that I had been flipped around. I would follow the tunnel, the screen would stutter a bit at one point, and then I'd come out exactly where I had entered. If I turned back before that point, I'd obviously come out of the entrance. If I turned around after that point, I'd start going the correct direction but then be flipped around again. It took me a while to figure out exactly what was going on, and turning immediately when I hit the stutter eventually ended up working.
I've also managed to crash the game by taking a wrong turn, hitting a transition with a bit of load time, then immediately turning around and heading back the way I came.
They really need to touch up the transitions quite a lot.
Any chance a GeForce 560 ti can handle this game? I knows it below the system requirements, but I thought I'd check.
I definitely need a new card eventually (Deus Ex... I need you) but I don't have the cash yet.
I think I saw one person on the steam discussions who was running it on a card that low, but I'd strongly recommend checking for driver updates first, and you'll probably still have to turn down effects, draw distance, etc. There is also a resolution scale slider you can use that can help.
I'm hesitant to guarantee it will run, but I did see one person with a card around yours claiming to be running it, albeit roughly.
In any case, I've turned hint gleams on now. I don't see any particular cost for doing so, since interactive elements are few, far between, and generally easily visible.
I'm getting weird bugs when traveling towards the tree roots, I think related to transitions during map segments.
When I was headed for the second one, for some reason the game kept flipping me around in a location where it wasn't immediately obvious that I had been flipped around. I would follow the tunnel, the screen would stutter a bit at one point, and then I'd come out exactly where I had entered. If I turned back before that point, I'd obviously come out of the entrance. If I turned around after that point, I'd start going the correct direction but then be flipped around again. It took me a while to figure out exactly what was going on, and turning immediately when I hit the stutter eventually ended up working.
I've also managed to crash the game by taking a wrong turn, hitting a transition with a bit of load time, then immediately turning around and heading back the way I came.
They really need to touch up the transitions quite a lot.
Yeah, I've gotten that tree thing a couple of times myself. Not sure what happens there.
In any case, I've turned hint gleams on now. I don't see any particular cost for doing so, since interactive elements are few, far between, and generally easily visible.
I'm getting weird bugs when traveling towards the tree roots, I think related to transitions during map segments.
When I was headed for the second one, for some reason the game kept flipping me around in a location where it wasn't immediately obvious that I had been flipped around. I would follow the tunnel, the screen would stutter a bit at one point, and then I'd come out exactly where I had entered. If I turned back before that point, I'd obviously come out of the entrance. If I turned around after that point, I'd start going the correct direction but then be flipped around again. It took me a while to figure out exactly what was going on, and turning immediately when I hit the stutter eventually ended up working.
I've also managed to crash the game by taking a wrong turn, hitting a transition with a bit of load time, then immediately turning around and heading back the way I came.
They really need to touch up the transitions quite a lot.
Yeah, I've gotten that tree thing a couple of times myself. Not sure what happens there.
Pretty sure it's because at that point the game is loading a new area (but without a transition sequence). It tries to keep you oriented the way you were going, but goofs up sometimes and has you reverse focus. I have the same problem in the Hunrath mine zone.
I'm excited for the time when this game is "old" and the loading times cease to be noticeable. (They're not bad for me now, but they're there. I've had that reorientation bug in the root chambers happen as well.) I imagine it will feel every bit as cool as it felt to play Riven without having to switch CDs.
I got the tree in Kaptar connected, but there's still the occasional machine and/or locked door there that I haven't cracked. And while these colossal machines are neat, I don't really have a concrete sense of their purpose to the natives... That said:
The note about a cross-species, seed-based, battle plan—not to mention the missing seed and half-a-Mofang near it—has me extremely pumped to learn more.
I'm bailing on using the in-game photograph system and switching to Steam's screenshot tool. I may even try to revisit all the vistas I photographed using the in-game system. I mean, I knew it was broken; that's clear the first time you try to photograph a note for future reference, but that's clearly a bug and will—I assume—eventually be fixed. My issue is that the lighting in photos taken with the in-game camera is less impressive. Everything's a little underexposed. It was barely noticeable until I took a shot of...
The Polyarch and its swarm
...in Kaptar, at which point the difference became really noticeable.
Other observations made while working my way through Kaptar:
• Upon entering the Polyarch's chamber, if you ascend the ramp around it rather than descend (that is, if you get as close to it as possible), the Polyarch starts glowing more strongly and making noise at you. I felt bad that I couldn't understand it or explain myself to it.
• In Farley's room in Hunrath, three of the Kickstarter-backer items that have been inserted into the room are 1. A Myst linking book (un-openable), 2.Unwritten, the Myst source book for the FATE RPG (un-openable), and 3. the Ark of the Covenant (un-openable, thank God).
Any chance a GeForce 560 ti can handle this game? I knows it below the system requirements, but I thought I'd check.
I definitely need a new card eventually (Deus Ex... I need you) but I don't have the cash yet.
My 750 ti handles it decently enough, though I'm also rocking 12 gigs of RAM (albeit an i5 processor... sigh). You'll be running on the lowest settings, however, and I can warn you right now that water effects of any kind are going to make your machine unhappy. There's also wee bug creatures in the game (they're in the trailers so not a huge spoiler?) and while as individuals they're not a problem, there's a few points where they swarm and that could be an issue.
... With that said, heyyyy, the 750 ti isn't THAT expensive as these things go, and it can run on a totally garbage power supply (which is the entire reason I had to get one, my PC has a totally garbage power supply)
If you like, I can what the machines are for. It's not immediately obvious.
The Myst book in Farleys' room is a double secret! You can turn it around and open it. Since you need to be in the know to understand the reference, I'll explain... it's not a real Myst book.
*e* Unspoilering the Myst book discussion because it's cool. I won't tell you all where this easter egg is, but I will at least say, this device IS in the game somewhere.
Which is a book that has a miniature computer inside that lets you play Myst on the Linking Panel. I know the guy who made it; he's a really interesting fellow from Australia.
If you flip it over, you can open the back cover and see the miniature computer inside. Unfortunately, there is no minigame where you can open the front cover and play the entirety of Myst inside Obduction, as hilariously amusing as that would be :P
Bit of trivia: This replica book is the same book they scanned for use in realMyst: Masterpiece Edition. So it's actually been in their files for a while. Yes, RUIM+ was a backer, at an EXTREMELY high level, I believe...
*edit* Re-watching his video, I forgot that it actually runs every Myst game, plus the Manhole and a few other neat things.
If you flip it over, you can open the back cover and see the miniature computer inside. Unfortunately, there is no minigame where you can open the front cover and play the entirety of Myst inside Obduction, as hilariously amusing as that would be
I actually did flip it over and tried to open the back (not because I remembered the "real" Myst book—though I did read about that at the time—but because it seemed odd that I could flip it over and hey, maybe that meant I can open it from the back), but found myself unable to. To be fair, in Kaptar I noticed I was having trouble manipulating objects. Sometimes I would have to push a lever in one of the elevators in the opposite of the direction I wanted the lever to move.
As for more background on the machines in Kaptar, @Lucid_Seraph, I think I'll wait until I've finished the game to start trying to fill in blanks with outside information. Thanks though!
So last night I was playing and I got to a new area and was really stoked about it, and then as I was walking along a footpath obviously laid out to be walked along, I suddenly couldn't move anymore. For a second I thought the game had locked up, but I could still look around, take pictures, open menus, etc. I just couldn't MOVE in any direction, as though WASD had been suddenly disabled. It was stuck like that for what felt like a full minute, so I assumed something had bugged out and just killed it with task manager.
I tried reporting it as a bug, but people told me "Oh, that happened to me a few times. It was just loading. You just have to wait for a while."
THESE LOADING TIMES. JESUS CHRIST.
I love the game but
JEE
ZUSS
CHRIST
WordLust on
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
You'll see a spinning circle in the top right of the screen when it's loading.
You'll see a spinning circle in the top right of the screen when it's loading.
Yeah, there was a pink spinning circle in the upper right quarter. I thought it might be loading, but it just kept spinning, and spinning, and spinning. I went and put some food in the microwave and poured myself a drink, then came back, and it was still spinning. It was spinning for so long that I thought there must be some kind of problem.
These are seriously the longest load times I have ever experienced in any game. That's part of the frustration, but the other frustration is that I don't understand WHY they are so long when a game like The Witness, which is very similar, has nowhere CLOSE to this issue.
You'll see a spinning circle in the top right of the screen when it's loading.
Yeah, there was a pink spinning circle in the upper right quarter. I thought it might be loading, but it just kept spinning, and spinning, and spinning. I went and put some food in the microwave and poured myself a drink, then came back, and it was still spinning. It was spinning for so long that I thought there must be some kind of problem.
These are seriously the longest load times I have ever experienced in any game. That's part of the frustration, but the other frustration is that I don't understand WHY they are so long when a game like The Witness, which is very similar, has nowhere CLOSE to this issue.
The graphics and physics going on in Obduction are way, way more complicated than the ones in The Witness. Like, by a LOT.
It almost makes me long for the days of Riven. INSERT RIVEN DISK 5.
Got the bad ending. Okay, I walked around on Mofang. I peered through the field and saw that the Arizona outside the dome was not the Arizona C.W. wanted to go back to. Similarly, having been paying attention on Maray, I know that all of the non-"remainers" are in stasis and that C.W.'s operating from an incorrect assumption about the Mofang having wiped everyone else out. But, in the absence of any coherent alternative, what else was I gonna do? Honestly, I didn't even think I was at the end of the game at that point.
The Arai swarming over the battery once the die was cast made it clear to me what I "should" have done. So I loaded up a back up save and unplugged the battery, then proceeded as normal. Why did that work? What was Farley's plan? The only thing I found that might qualify as a plan was the sheet left for the "remainers" on each world, and while I didn't really understand the content of that sheet, I don't think it alluded to anything like what happened in the good ending.
So, what the hell? Was I just meant to take the fact that C.W. was obviously wrong as motivation to sabotage him with no idea as to the consequences of doing so? Please tell me that's not it, and that I missed something.
EDIT: Also, the Mofang sphere is a shit-hole. No wonder they wanted to attack the other, more prosperous spheres.
EDIT Again: Puzzles were quite satisfying, though, including the maze in which you have to bounce back and forth between Maray and Hunrath. But then, I am typically very patient and recently upgraded from an HDD to an SSD, so the load times may not have hit me as hard as they hit others. 15–20 seconds-ish each way? I was fine with it.
Sneaks on
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
edited September 2016
Looks like they relaunched the first patch:
Global
Fix for stuck loading screens with unsupported languages! Game will now properly default to English when local OS language does not have a localization file available
Fix for resolution scale slider
Adjustment to gamma setting slider (Work in progress)
Small fix for the Credits
Tweaks for new game menu
Fixes for screenshots during loading
Art
Many small art tweaks around all of Hunrath
Nodes
Many fixes to nodes in Hunrath
Known issues in this release:
OS's with unsupported languages may see a missing menu hitting escape during gameplay
Photos and their ordering that were broken in previous builds may still appear broken
Windows user accounts with that contain foreign characters may not see their photos in the photo viewer. The photos will be available in the game's save directory.
Anybody found any performance tricks? Settings that are especially egregious? My FPS is holding steady when I lower the settings a bit but I'm feeling a lot of intermittent choppiness anyway.
Anybody found any performance tricks? Settings that are especially egregious? My FPS is holding steady when I lower the settings a bit but I'm feeling a lot of intermittent choppiness anyway.
Drop the Water effects to their lowest setting for sure, that helps a lot.
I eventually had to resort to a video guide and STILL ended up stuck after a bunch of random teleporting back and forth after coming out of the mine exit/entrance across the river from the start near the rotating bridge, but it was rotated the wrong way then got stuck somehow. So the game defeated me in the end.
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I'm pretty sure that destruction in the Mofang cell came from them attempting to blow up Kaptar. The seed pedestal with the scale, I'm pretty sure, is where the bomb was teleported in, but they expected it and were able to teleport it back out. Supposedly that was the point of those chairs with the note scattered around. Those were the identified bomb spots that they had figured out, so they were standing guard, waiting to send them back.
Really....? Hm. It honestly did not occur to me that someone could think that was a spoiler, and I'm frankly still struggling to sympathize. It's like if I said, "Oh the lighting effects in that one room would look incredible in VR" and someone was like "Dude! Don't spoil the lighting effects for me!" I guess I just don't consider effects to be spoiler territory.
But I also believe there is absolutely zero point in telling someone that how they feel is wrong, so I'll let you have it.
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
Also, there's at least two Mofang who are on the humans' side -- you can see them in the pods. They're named in Farley's notes about the plan to blow up the Mofang.
You really do have to read everything and infer from context what's happening though.
From what I understand... initially the Mofang acted friendly, but all three other species started to suspect malice at some point, and started to implement measures to protect themselves without alerting the Mofang to what was really happening. At some point, likely whenever the Mofang started sending their little insta-kill dodecahedrons out, everybody realized that the Mofang wanted to kill them all. Two Mofang weren't into this idea and defected, which is 1. why two of them are in the pods and 2. how the humans knew about the Mofang's plan and could figure out some way to stop it.
So, no, this isn't ~lol yet another lesson about how humans suck~, it's more about how being warlike tribal bastards with inflated senses of superiority sucks, and working together with people who aren't like you is better for everybody. Well, among other things.
A fridge moment about the "good" ending:
I still think that Earth probably isn't 100% toast. Which is to say, that's still a "bad" ending and still not a place you want to end up, but I think Earth isn't "dead." There's some green trees off in the distance near the ruined buildings. Probably Arizona just became a nu-Right / Libertarian dystopia :P Well and climate change drowned all of us on the coasts -- wait I already said, "Mad Max future."
I sincerely doubt it was nukes like a previous poster said. To me, the damage looks more environmental and slow abandonment / collapse -- the smoke is likely just from the equivalent of forest fires. If it's a Bad Earth caused by climate change -- especially plausible if some adapted plant life is still hanging on -- it's probably just that things catch fire when it's too hot and dry. Just ask California.
In general, I think this game does make the "lol single biome planet" / tiny area is indicative of whole planet! mistake. That one section of Maray could BE Earth -- I've BEEN in forests like that in Hawaii. You'd have a very different idea of what Earth is like if you were in Siberia, or in the Amazon, or at the bottom of the ocean. That, in turn, really makes me wonder what the Mofang planet is "really" supposed to be like, and also what else there is on Kaptar.
A bit about Kaptar:
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Ah, that must be where I first used it, passed that teleport. I've noticed people missing that arm. I got lucky and noticed it immediately when I first went there and happened to turn around.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
I definitely need a new card eventually (Deus Ex... I need you) but I don't have the cash yet.
I'm getting weird bugs when traveling towards the tree roots, I think related to transitions during map segments.
I've also managed to crash the game by taking a wrong turn, hitting a transition with a bit of load time, then immediately turning around and heading back the way I came.
They really need to touch up the transitions quite a lot.
I think I saw one person on the steam discussions who was running it on a card that low, but I'd strongly recommend checking for driver updates first, and you'll probably still have to turn down effects, draw distance, etc. There is also a resolution scale slider you can use that can help.
I'm hesitant to guarantee it will run, but I did see one person with a card around yours claiming to be running it, albeit roughly.
accidental double post >.<
Yeah, I've gotten that tree thing a couple of times myself. Not sure what happens there.
Pretty sure it's because at that point the game is loading a new area (but without a transition sequence). It tries to keep you oriented the way you were going, but goofs up sometimes and has you reverse focus. I have the same problem in the Hunrath mine zone.
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
I got the tree in Kaptar connected, but there's still the occasional machine and/or locked door there that I haven't cracked. And while these colossal machines are neat, I don't really have a concrete sense of their purpose to the natives... That said:
I'm bailing on using the in-game photograph system and switching to Steam's screenshot tool. I may even try to revisit all the vistas I photographed using the in-game system. I mean, I knew it was broken; that's clear the first time you try to photograph a note for future reference, but that's clearly a bug and will—I assume—eventually be fixed. My issue is that the lighting in photos taken with the in-game camera is less impressive. Everything's a little underexposed. It was barely noticeable until I took a shot of...
...in Kaptar, at which point the difference became really noticeable.
Other observations made while working my way through Kaptar:
• In Farley's room in Hunrath, three of the Kickstarter-backer items that have been inserted into the room are 1. A Myst linking book (un-openable), 2. Unwritten, the Myst source book for the FATE RPG (un-openable), and 3. the Ark of the Covenant (un-openable, thank God).
My 750 ti handles it decently enough, though I'm also rocking 12 gigs of RAM (albeit an i5 processor... sigh). You'll be running on the lowest settings, however, and I can warn you right now that water effects of any kind are going to make your machine unhappy. There's also wee bug creatures in the game (they're in the trailers so not a huge spoiler?) and while as individuals they're not a problem, there's a few points where they swarm and that could be an issue.
... With that said, heyyyy, the 750 ti isn't THAT expensive as these things go, and it can run on a totally garbage power supply (which is the entire reason I had to get one, my PC has a totally garbage power supply)
@Sneaks
The Myst book in Farleys' room is a double secret! You can turn it around and open it. Since you need to be in the know to understand the reference, I'll explain... it's not a real Myst book.
*e* Unspoilering the Myst book discussion because it's cool. I won't tell you all where this easter egg is, but I will at least say, this device IS in the game somewhere.
It's actually this thing: http://www.riumplus.com/mystbook/
Which is a book that has a miniature computer inside that lets you play Myst on the Linking Panel. I know the guy who made it; he's a really interesting fellow from Australia.
If you flip it over, you can open the back cover and see the miniature computer inside. Unfortunately, there is no minigame where you can open the front cover and play the entirety of Myst inside Obduction, as hilariously amusing as that would be :P
Bit of trivia: This replica book is the same book they scanned for use in realMyst: Masterpiece Edition. So it's actually been in their files for a while. Yes, RUIM+ was a backer, at an EXTREMELY high level, I believe...
*edit* Re-watching his video, I forgot that it actually runs every Myst game, plus the Manhole and a few other neat things.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
As for more background on the machines in Kaptar, @Lucid_Seraph, I think I'll wait until I've finished the game to start trying to fill in blanks with outside information. Thanks though!
I tried reporting it as a bug, but people told me "Oh, that happened to me a few times. It was just loading. You just have to wait for a while."
THESE LOADING TIMES. JESUS CHRIST.
I love the game but
JEE
ZUSS
CHRIST
Yeah, there was a pink spinning circle in the upper right quarter. I thought it might be loading, but it just kept spinning, and spinning, and spinning. I went and put some food in the microwave and poured myself a drink, then came back, and it was still spinning. It was spinning for so long that I thought there must be some kind of problem.
These are seriously the longest load times I have ever experienced in any game. That's part of the frustration, but the other frustration is that I don't understand WHY they are so long when a game like The Witness, which is very similar, has nowhere CLOSE to this issue.
The graphics and physics going on in Obduction are way, way more complicated than the ones in The Witness. Like, by a LOT.
It almost makes me long for the days of Riven. INSERT RIVEN DISK 5.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
The Arai swarming over the battery once the die was cast made it clear to me what I "should" have done. So I loaded up a back up save and unplugged the battery, then proceeded as normal. Why did that work? What was Farley's plan? The only thing I found that might qualify as a plan was the sheet left for the "remainers" on each world, and while I didn't really understand the content of that sheet, I don't think it alluded to anything like what happened in the good ending.
So, what the hell? Was I just meant to take the fact that C.W. was obviously wrong as motivation to sabotage him with no idea as to the consequences of doing so? Please tell me that's not it, and that I missed something.
EDIT: Also, the Mofang sphere is a shit-hole. No wonder they wanted to attack the other, more prosperous spheres.
EDIT Again: Puzzles were quite satisfying, though, including the maze in which you have to bounce back and forth between Maray and Hunrath. But then, I am typically very patient and recently upgraded from an HDD to an SSD, so the load times may not have hit me as hard as they hit others. 15–20 seconds-ish each way? I was fine with it.
1.4GB
Drop the Water effects to their lowest setting for sure, that helps a lot.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
So it's a Cyan game, yep!