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TechnobabylonRant [SPOILERS](9 posts)(9 posts)
(9 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted September 27, 2015
Whenever a game deals with science and ethics, the result tends to be terrible. Unfortunately Technobabylon wasn't an exception. I don't regret playing it, the game is shinyawesome, the worldbuilding is fantastic, production values are stellar. The central plot/conflict, however, is terrible. Let's list the reasons why.


1. Galatea wanted Latha alive. Why send Charlie to kill her? Nothing whatsoever in that situation is under her control, and Latha escapes in the last possible moment. I love the scene, but to make its implications not stupid, whoever ended up ordering the bomb planted should have wanted her death (and then adjusted the plan when she survived).

2. How did Latha end up on welfare, anyway, if she's so precious? We see how extremely dangerous life in the underworld is.

3. How did she end up with a Sri Lankan culturally assigned name, after Viksha, if her origin is a mystery? She's not Sri Lankan, she's Newtonian.

4. Why can't Charlie make more embryos? He's a scientist. He doesn't consider it immoral to fuck with Viksha's genome, as evidenced by the tree. He doesn't consider reproductive technologies icky. He doesn't think an embryo is a human being, because they were going to check for birth defects and dispose of the defective embryos, if any. And the practice isn't banned in Newton, because why would it be? Experimentation on embryos requires a permit. Fucking around with people's genetic material does not, for fuck's sake eating yourself or a dead person's clone is perfectly legal, no authorization needed. I can see why he would assign them a nonzero value, but the increased value of the embryos to him also makes the extortionists correspondingly more evil (and untrustworthy!)

5. Why isn't implementing Galatea's plan an option? Unethical to Central, so our heroes won't possibly go along with it? Murdering her and replacing her with an imbecile who would act in her exact manner apparently isn't (it's not what Nina does, but we don't know that when making the choice). Not okay with Latha? Latha's reaction to Jinsil can vary from "you betrayed me, you asshole" to "eh it's okay". She hates meatspace. She likes creating. Why not ascend as an immortal, perfect queen of the Trance? We don't wan't specifically Galatea succeeding, because Galatea is an asshole and she won't be able to keep her grubby mitts off the controls no matter how imperfect she personally is. But we know for a fact she didn't stick herself in the new overmind because that's what she needed Latha for; we should be able to take over her plan and leave her out in the cold. Having an upperclasshole design the perfect AI but chicken out of the ascendancy because of her upperclassholey love for supremacy through scarce meatspace luxury would've been the perfect ending.
Posted September 27, 2015
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Starmaker: 1. Galatea wanted Latha alive. Why send Charlie to kill her? Nothing whatsoever in that situation is under her control, and Latha escapes in the last possible moment. I love the scene, but to make its implications not stupid, whoever ended up ordering the bomb planted should have wanted her death (and then adjusted the plan when she survived).
Galatea wanted Latha alive, that's right. But Kreisel (the Mindjacker) did not so that part was him going against Galatea's orders.
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Starmaker: 2. How did Latha end up on welfare, anyway, if she's so precious? We see how extremely dangerous life in the underworld is.
Galatea and Latha are a kind of twisted Prince & Pauper setup with Galatea leading the princely life and Latha playing the role of the pauper. Galatea is a speaking name, perhaps referring to the perfect ivory statue of Galatea in the Greek myths.
Latha is an Indian name and means the creeper (as in a creeping plant, not as in a creepy pedophile or anything like that).
She is entwined in the Trance like creeping ivy so maybe another speaking name. Both names sound similar with Galatea sounding more glamorous and Latha sounding more humble.

Latha spends 97% of her time in Trance and doesn't really need to leave her apartment since she lives off welfare and the food machine makes going outside to shop for groceries superfluous. In that regard, her life is safer than that of a normal working person who needs to go outside. Latha is highly talented and skilled but has too little drive to change her situation and why would she anyway? The government pays for her food and rent and all her creative energy is spent towards Trance activism and projects, all done in Trance. Since Latha grows
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Starmaker: 3. How did she end up with a Sri Lankan culturally assigned name, after Viksha, if her origin is a mystery? She's not Sri Lankan, she's Newtonian.
As a refugee orphan, she was named and raised by the state and since her origin was assumed to be Sri Lankan, a name of Indian origin made sense to whoever named her. Maybe they used a randomizer to select a name from a data base of Sri Lankan sounding names.
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Starmaker: 4. Why can't Charlie make more embryos? He's a scientist. He doesn't consider it immoral to fuck with Viksha's genome, as evidenced by the tree. He doesn't consider reproductive technologies icky. He doesn't think an embryo is a human being, because they were going to check for birth defects and dispose of the defective embryos, if any. And the practice isn't banned in Newton, because why would it be? Experimentation on embryos requires a permit. Fucking around with people's genetic material does not, for fuck's sake eating yourself or a dead person's clone is perfectly legal, no authorization needed. I can see why he would assign them a nonzero value, but the increased value of the embryos to him also makes the extortionists correspondingly more evil (and untrustworthy!)
During the American civil war, he was taken prisoner, hired out to some evil warlord and forced to weaponize children and turn them into biobombers so I think he's had it with the genetical engineering. Such an experience will likely change any man.
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Starmaker: 5. Why isn't implementing Galatea's plan an option? Unethical to Central, so our heroes won't possibly go along with it? Murdering her and replacing her with an imbecile who would act in her exact manner apparently isn't (it's not what Nina does, but we don't know that when making the choice). Not okay with Latha? Latha's reaction to Jinsil can vary from "you betrayed me, you asshole" to "eh it's okay". She hates meatspace. She likes creating. Why not ascend as an immortal, perfect queen of the Trance? We don't wan't specifically Galatea succeeding, because Galatea is an asshole and she won't be able to keep her grubby mitts off the controls no matter how imperfect she personally is. But we know for a fact she didn't stick herself in the new overmind because that's what she needed Latha for; we should be able to take over her plan and leave her out in the cold. Having an upperclasshole design the perfect AI but chicken out of the ascendancy because of her upperclassholey love for supremacy through scarce meatspace luxury would've been the perfect ending.
Keep in mind that Galatea was not only responsible for the Mindjacker's victims (except for when he tried to have Latha killed). Galatea is also responsible for the death of one of Charlie's children so it's entirely out of question that he would side with Galatea.

There are two endings, it appears you sided with Central which places Galatea into the clutches of CEL. The other ending is if you side with Nina in which case she decides to set CEL free into the world wide web so that the AI can go on a soul finding hippie trip , so to speak. In that ending, Galatea ends up escaping and is contacted by CEL. They're kind of sisters anyway. In both endings, Nina doesn't get punishment as shes apparently too clever to find herself at the sharp end of the stick. She's kind of evil just like CEL is kind of evil so it's sort of a "choose the lesser evil" deal with those two, in any way they both didn't cross Charlie quite as badly as Galatea who for Charlie is the only one here who absolutely can't be forgiven in any way shape or form.
Posted September 28, 2015
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awalterj: Galatea wanted Latha alive, that's right. But Kreisel (the Mindjacker) did not so that part was him going against Galatea's orders.
But why, aside from "lol Baxter is crazy"? I mean, if he's consistently crazy and wants to wipe Charlie's genes off teh face of the earth, he should also want to kill Galatea and Central. "lol crazy" is a cheap motivation. (And for that matter, how did Kreisel know? What reason does Galatea have for keeping a hireling fully informed?)
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awalterj: Galatea and Latha are a kind of twisted Prince & Pauper setup with Galatea leading the princely life and Latha playing the role of the pauper.
I'm okay with the characters as they are from an artistic standpoint, but there should be an explanation why she ended up in the bottom other than the brightest minds in the world being fucking dumb. Latha didn't fall through the cracks; everyone in the original conspiracy knows about her. So, since she's so important, why not provide her with a more secure lifestyle? Basement dwellers are not a new concept.
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awalterj: As a refugee orphan, she was named and raised by the state and since her origin was assumed to be Sri Lankan, a name of Indian origin made sense to whoever named her. Maybe they used a randomizer to select a name from a data base of Sri Lankan sounding names.
She's not a refugee orphan, she's a native Newtonian. So why did whoever filed a fake background for her make her specifically Sri Lankan, after Viksha, if the whole premise of the fake background is to mislead people?
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awalterj: During the American civil war, he was taken prisoner, hired out to some evil warlord and forced to weaponize children and turn them into biobombers so I think he's had it with the genetical engineering. Such an experience will likely change any man.
So, "lol crazy". Again, I understand why he wouldn't want to make kids to specs. But he definitely hadn't had it with genetic engineering, and he doesn't consider the result of engineering "unnatural" because he made the tree, and he knows the extortionists are evil and acting in very bad faith. Making new embryos is ridiculously easy and he knows that. The whole scheme should've never happened, because Galatea shouldn't have expected it to work. I mean, my friend was murdered last year, and this year I was robbed and lost what I thought were the only copies of last photos of him alive. Now, hypothetically speaking, if the robber contacted me and asked an outrageous sum for the return of my stuff, I might have paid. But if he said, "Hey, I formatted one of your hard drives, but three still remain", I wouldn't have trusted him to put up, and of course I would pay diddly squat if I had backup copies.
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awalterj: Keep in mind that Galatea was not only responsible for the Mindjacker's victims (except for when he tried to have Latha killed). Galatea is also responsible for the death of one of Charlie's children so it's entirely out of question that he would side with Galatea.
Charlie hates Nina, too, and yet giving her Central's reins is possible. In contrast, independently implementing Galatea's plan doesn't mean putting her in control. I mean, Hitler breathed air, too. And if Charlie won't go along with it because lol crazy, zap him as Lao and carry him out of the room. Latha loves making, loves the Trance, and hates meatspace. The only reason for her to refuse ultimate cosmic power would be the lack of appropriate knowledge and experience, and Galatea had kindly provided the solution.
Post edited September 28, 2015 by Starmaker
Posted December 09, 2016
I agree with the OP. It's very, very rare for writing in games to work well, when they go for lofty ethical musings, or politics, and this one crashed and burned more than most in that respect. I would imagine because it shot higher than most games do, which is commendable I suppose, but the end result is still the same.

I still enjoyed the game overall, but a lot of the story seemed to be written as it came along, making it lose sight of the big picture. In other words, elements may have felt logical scene to scene, but when looked at in their entirety, break down. I guess I don't feel like going into detail, but I just remember a lot of "What? Why would she want to do that?" or "But earlier, you said *insert conflicting statement here*", and the ending seemed like the exact opposite result the game was setting up with the choices it gave me.
Posted October 25, 2017
Bringing this back up because I've just finished the game and there is something that is really unclear to me: in the tower, I decided to give control of the tower back to Central rather than to Nina in the control room (where Kreisel is).
However, in the ending we see that Nina gets Galatea out of prison to use her in her own project for a new AI, and that Central is even an accomplice in this.
Now my question is: why in the world would Central bring on a full force attack against Galatea, even in "first person", and then show interest and even participate in Nina's plans?
Am I missing something from the picture here?
Posted November 27, 2017
As long as we're discussing plot holes, I never understood why the Councillor Dean sent a bomb terrorist to kill Nina at the restaurant. He said he was being pressured by the Van der Waal guy because of information on election rigging, but the blackmailer was long dead by that point so why still act on his behalf? And why did Van der Waal want Nina dead?
Posted August 01, 2018
I'm a little annoyed that Central's authoritarian tendencies (cancelling constitutional rights whenever convenient, killing the train biobomber if Regis got him to surrender "just to be safe") don't play any role in the story. They're a good argument to go against Central but they might as well not be there but to lend a dystopic patina on the shallow freedom of Newton.

I guess that makes Jinsil sympathetic except that she acts as much the deceitful tyrant as Vargas did.
Posted March 14, 2019
finished the game now.
i really see the argument behind the starting reasoning, and i will get through the whole post, but for now i'll just state my two cents.

i absolutely love Wadjet Eye games and i am positive they are between the few actual responsible of the late 2000s realunch of adventure/point-and-click games. their retro style manages not to feel old but caringly linked to beloved aesthetics without missing innovation, their pixelart is great, they put care in all aspects of production, both from a structural and technical standpoint, and a narrative one. they even keep attention to details like the usual (sometimes) great but still almost omnipresent voice acting. i don't feel to pinpoint technical shortcomings or defects, there are some, but i think others already spoke about them, and after all i feel that they are marginal to me.

so, i played many of their games and have always seen and said how it is very easy to see their love for the genre and their respect. they pour quality and sheer artisan goodness in their work. all granted.

but this time, really, this is a "Beneath a Steel Sky" rip-off with a flavour for bad/unlikeable characters and lack of ideas with a hint of PC/SJW aftertaste. i get that originality is hard to come around, but the key elements and all the great themes and what is not superficial (even some mechanics and even clever aenigmas that you could actually single out one by one) were already said, done and overall explored 25 years ago by the guys from Revolution Software probably better, surely in a more innovative way.

BaSS had its falws, mind you, one of those was its short span and somewhat linear structure, but had his keen world, lore, aesthetics and approach to tech/ethics and themes like infospace, mind, artificial life and computer brain, it stands today as a great gem and at Wadjet Eye KNEW THIS ALL TO WELL.

i think that in this case, with this game it's safe to say Wadjet Eye guys were really showing what means that emulation is the highest form of admiration but also that admiration is the farthest from comprehension:
- you cannot go any deeper in showing your admiration for something than when emulating it;
- alas, copying is VERY FAR from deep comprehension and understanding what makes something great

in short, "Technobabylon" IMHO *is* a good *little* game, but its narrative it's just a tad modernized, yet more ineffective retelling of the key elements so good in "Beneath a Steel Sky". worth to play? sure. innovative, independent, original, always effective? absolutely not.
Posted August 29, 2020
Warto. :) To ma być pełnoprawny izometryczny RPG z walką utrzymaną w konwencji soulslike'owej. Gra jest od dawna przeze mnie obserwowana guide. Premiera prawdopodobnie jeszcze w tym roku.
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This is my favourite topic
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TechnobabylonRant [SPOILERS](9 posts)(9 posts)
(9 posts)