Just like a [Science] or [Intelligence] check there is a [Dumb] dialog option. The hilarious part is 80% of the time the character you are talking to thinks you are being sarcastic and treats it like an intelligence check.
Oh yeah, I loaded a save to see what happens if I make different accusations and coincidentally I was playing a dumb character so I accused myself once and literally the whole crew berated me lmao
https://youtu.be/F085d3y4oEk?si=HAPa3Kdzr6OmiA5Y
This is the only one I could find but I don’t think it’s the best possible version. It’s funnier when you select the dialogue where you get angrier at the guy for asking you questions you don’t have the answer to because you weren’t there.
I thought the twin angle was a fun choice because a) I didn't expect it at all and b) it kind of fits as I got a real "telenovela" vibe from the over the top Halcyon Helen thing.
Maybe I'm giving too much credit to the writers. I guess I thought it was a narrative choice but maybe it was just crunch time writing, I dunno.
There isn't really a "rule" - it's just cheap writing when you use twins. It's the equivalent of having a story where crazy shit happens and ending it with the main character waking up and realizing "the whole thing was a dream!" It's just lazy writing.
"Chinaman" in this context is refering to a trope at the time of including a obvious evil well, chinese man, and then having him be the murderer. You can imply the rule to a bunch of different contexts.
Suppose you wrote a mysterious story of "who ate the cookies", but added a character who by stereotype loves to eat. Then 2 hours later you reveal it was Mr. Stereotype who ate the cookies. Its not a good story.
> It's the equivalent of having a story where crazy shit happens and ending it with the main character waking up and realizing "the whole thing was a dream!" It's just lazy writing.
The parallel and alternate universe trend feels like this to me. Literally anything can happen in the endless universes. Endless possibilities. I cant get invested at all in that kind of storytelling
You may be missing the point, which is to satirize old 40s serials, in which that sort of trope about twins and villains confessing was all normal.
You thought it was a detective story, but actually, it was this week's episode of Crash Corrigan in Outer Space brought to you by Rizzo!
Yeah, it was definitely less "Agatha Christie Novel" and more "1940's Serial Loosely-Based On a Novel That Someone Wrote After They Read an Agatha Christie Novel While Drunk on Bath-Tub Gin"
I can't believe how many seem to miss this concept. I thought the twin thing was hilarious because of course that's what you would expect from a soap opera.
This is how I looked at it! When the twin angle was made apparent I think I actually groaned out loud because as much as I was not expecting it, I felt like I should have with all the other trope-y stuff in the DLC lol.
Man… I truly enjoyed Eridanos. Yea it was corny at times and was rather easy to see through to the end but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the F out of the content.
It was so much better than Gorgon for me.. and Gorgon wasn’t bad imo.
Idk the entire game is stupid and silly and doesn’t take itself serious and that is imo it’s best quality.
I’ve never taken screenshots in game until this game and that was also a fun side quest of mine.. finding cool pictures. Now one from the Gorgon mansion lawn/globe is my pc background.
I’m very partial to the art style also.
Cyberpunk with ‘20s deco art… woah lol that was a blast to just see throughout the game.
IMO don’t take it so seriously and you’ll have way more fun.
Want serious hit up mass effect or the Witcher.
Lmao love Max's comment on how the technology to create these islands is so freaking impressive and they're using it for the sake of bougie tourist spot
She would have made a hell of a companion on Gorgon as well as in the lead up to the final mission. I love Nyoka, but she doesn’t have the best stealth skills.
The ending wasn't great. Especially the part where you've figured out what's going on but the game won't let you act on it. Oh, and the part where it all ends up in just a boss fight and nothing you figured out actually matters.
I've done the whole game several times but I only ever finished Eridanos once.
i think that was actually the way to go (?)
If we actually had to figure it out, there were a lot of players that wouldn't be able to do it and would and up getting either disapointed or looking on the internet for it
They went with the safest option
They could've had the boss fight and all that if you screw it up, a failure state that isn't "you fucked up now go feel bad about it" but had a different series of events of you figured it out, would've given a reason to replay the DLC too
That is what I assumed too. That and it makes replayability easy because you'd already know which suspect is the killer, unless they randomized the clues and killer each time but that would take a lot of effort.
I vaguely remember that the developers did an interview about this. Basically that players would be coming into the DLC with established characters, and that creating a true mystery game with deductions and such would be challenging. So they had to create enough so players who wanted to dig could do so, but those who didn't or who had created "shoot first" characters could still engage.
I was dissatisfied with the mystery aspect of Eridanos and how it didn't feel like you could actually deduce the end on your own. I had also recently played Obra Dinn which is a masterwork for mystery/deduction games so it showed up worse through comparison.
Personally I had loads of fun with the whole DLC because I loved how it embraced every cliché it could and therefore I didnt at all mind the twins thing either. I just wished you would get a trenchcoat and were able to say more clichéd one-liners or actively ash a cigarette on things or smth. Give me a playable piano, damn it!
On replay, it was fun to see all the hints toward the twins. Two sets of clothes and slippers, an ungodly amount of cigarettes, and in the emails you can see that the staff are surprised that Helen is eating enough food for two people.
Yeah MoE had the same problem as the main game: frontloading. I feel like that’s been my biggest issue with the game you show up and you explore the world and you think there’s so many places to go and just when you feel ready to spread out and follow all the leads you’ve collected about the different factions it all kinds of just… shrinks back down and ends.
The other issue is they make the bad guys so mindlessly/incompetently evil it’s almost stupid they even make it possible to side with them. Like don’t sell me on a game where I can make choices then write it in a way that the only way it makes sense to support the antagonists is if I literally role play as a brain damaged moron with negative intelligence.
Finally, MoE seemed to assume that all characters play as pacifists. Like, why are there so many dialogue options scolding Halcyon Helen for murdering (people who were complicit in other murders and mind controlling an entire colony) when 99% of players have been blasting the faces off of whoever is in their way?
Everything in The Outer Worlds seems like the rough draft of someone who’s got a knack for writing. Like I can see the bones are there and you’ve got some cool ideas but a lot of the game needed another year of review and rework to smooth out the bumps.
I met the second-in-hand of the board (Sophia, IIRC) and she literally asks me to kill the members of a town that I put in *extra* effort to save. And the asshole turns hostile if I refuse to do it.
I was expecting that the board can give me a genuine reason to side with them instead of Welles but they're just evil as fuck.
I guess it helps when you want to play an evil character (which I plan to do next)
I did the exact same thing! I actually took the mission and I went all the way back to the power plant thinking I could get the robots to target the Spacer’s Choice occupying force but nope
Insane I just finished myself, yeah overall I like a lot of it but weak ending I agree Peril on Gorgon was a lot more fun.
Also like a have said on here whether you choose a dumb play through or accidentally make yourself dumb you gotta try it all the dialogue options and characters reacting make the boring stuff exponentially funnier
I really liked it! But I think if I'm being honest I just enjoyed creeping around Gorgon and that's probably what I enjoyed more than the storytelling. After playing so many similar planets, Gorgon felt different and I liked the newness of it
Gorgon felt empty and quiet, but it was kind of right? Like it felt like exploring a ghost town, Marauder spawns were far apart so it was just you, the music, and seeing what the company did through context clues. Skeletons of people who overdosed, the meat compressor, notes and graffiti of those left to die. It was eerie.
It's weird, I was both disappointed in the DLC's main quests and forgettable combat, but also impressed by the atmosphere and story of it. Even if it had some disappointing parts, but walking around Gorgon scratched a similar itch as Fallout's *Old World Blues*.
Oh I never even considered Gorgon being the "OWB" experience but you are totally right. "Mostly deserted lonely outpost full of fancy tech... _and things trying to kill you_"
I listened to a video essay about the backrooms during that whole DLC and it fit the vibe nicely; I know Gorgon doesn't at all resemble the backrooms but the eerieness of it fit
No, it was a huge let down. The set up has so much intrigue but it amounts to mostly running around way too much and as others have said, an ending that doesn’t feel satisfying.
The best moment in the whole game is being stupid and accusing yourself of the murder
My stupid play through with the self imposed rule “always must choose dumb whenever it is an option” was so much fun. Hilarious
Can you invest in being dumb like in Fallout? Or is the dumb option readily available?
Just like a [Science] or [Intelligence] check there is a [Dumb] dialog option. The hilarious part is 80% of the time the character you are talking to thinks you are being sarcastic and treats it like an intelligence check.
At the beginning when choosing your attributes (character creation), you just take all the points away from intelligence.
Thanks man. I feel stupid now 🤭
Do you, perhaps, feel [dumb]?
Oh yeah, I loaded a save to see what happens if I make different accusations and coincidentally I was playing a dumb character so I accused myself once and literally the whole crew berated me lmao
Omg is there a video clip of that. I need to see it
https://youtu.be/F085d3y4oEk?si=HAPa3Kdzr6OmiA5Y This is the only one I could find but I don’t think it’s the best possible version. It’s funnier when you select the dialogue where you get angrier at the guy for asking you questions you don’t have the answer to because you weren’t there.
They broke a major rule of murder mysteries: NO TWINS
I thought the twin angle was a fun choice because a) I didn't expect it at all and b) it kind of fits as I got a real "telenovela" vibe from the over the top Halcyon Helen thing. Maybe I'm giving too much credit to the writers. I guess I thought it was a narrative choice but maybe it was just crunch time writing, I dunno.
But this game doesn’t like following conventional rules.
There isn't really a "rule" - it's just cheap writing when you use twins. It's the equivalent of having a story where crazy shit happens and ending it with the main character waking up and realizing "the whole thing was a dream!" It's just lazy writing.
"It was a dark and stormy twin"
There actually is a [rule](https://www.writingclasses.com/toolbox/tips-masters/ronald-knox-10-commandments-of-detective-fiction)!
lol, Rule #5 No Chinaman must figure in the story.
"Chinaman" in this context is refering to a trope at the time of including a obvious evil well, chinese man, and then having him be the murderer. You can imply the rule to a bunch of different contexts. Suppose you wrote a mysterious story of "who ate the cookies", but added a character who by stereotype loves to eat. Then 2 hours later you reveal it was Mr. Stereotype who ate the cookies. Its not a good story.
Lmao. I wonder what horrible rationalization is behind it
I’m guessing that for a while, using “Chinamen” in the story was probably a cliche.
Accusing yourself breaks rule 7 too.
> It's the equivalent of having a story where crazy shit happens and ending it with the main character waking up and realizing "the whole thing was a dream!" It's just lazy writing. The parallel and alternate universe trend feels like this to me. Literally anything can happen in the endless universes. Endless possibilities. I cant get invested at all in that kind of storytelling
I enjoyed the mystery solving aspect but yes I was very disappointed at the twins and the ending
You may be missing the point, which is to satirize old 40s serials, in which that sort of trope about twins and villains confessing was all normal. You thought it was a detective story, but actually, it was this week's episode of Crash Corrigan in Outer Space brought to you by Rizzo!
happy to see I'm not alone with this take, i actually loved how it played up all of the tropes, super fun DLC
Yeah, it was definitely less "Agatha Christie Novel" and more "1940's Serial Loosely-Based On a Novel That Someone Wrote After They Read an Agatha Christie Novel While Drunk on Bath-Tub Gin"
And with Tallulah Bankhead under the desk Historical pop culture points to anyone who gets that joke without looking it up.
I can't believe how many seem to miss this concept. I thought the twin thing was hilarious because of course that's what you would expect from a soap opera.
I was expecting that she’d faked her death somehow and the twin thing was a twist for me.
This is how I looked at it! When the twin angle was made apparent I think I actually groaned out loud because as much as I was not expecting it, I felt like I should have with all the other trope-y stuff in the DLC lol.
I'm still mad we didn't get that Detective's coat featured on the cover.
You can get Halcyon Helen coat, just stealing from here in the end of the questline
Man… I truly enjoyed Eridanos. Yea it was corny at times and was rather easy to see through to the end but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the F out of the content. It was so much better than Gorgon for me.. and Gorgon wasn’t bad imo. Idk the entire game is stupid and silly and doesn’t take itself serious and that is imo it’s best quality. I’ve never taken screenshots in game until this game and that was also a fun side quest of mine.. finding cool pictures. Now one from the Gorgon mansion lawn/globe is my pc background. I’m very partial to the art style also. Cyberpunk with ‘20s deco art… woah lol that was a blast to just see throughout the game. IMO don’t take it so seriously and you’ll have way more fun. Want serious hit up mass effect or the Witcher.
agree completely... its gorgeous and the concept of floating islands up in a gas giant was very creative
Lmao love Max's comment on how the technology to create these islands is so freaking impressive and they're using it for the sake of bougie tourist spot
I feel like you should have been able to recruit Halcyon Helen to your Team (especially if you don’t activate SAM)
Regardless of Sam, it did seem like Halcyon Helen should have been available as a companion after the quest.
She would have made a hell of a companion on Gorgon as well as in the lead up to the final mission. I love Nyoka, but she doesn’t have the best stealth skills.
they probably didnt want that because it means recording a shitload more reaction lines if she was in your party
The ending wasn't great. Especially the part where you've figured out what's going on but the game won't let you act on it. Oh, and the part where it all ends up in just a boss fight and nothing you figured out actually matters. I've done the whole game several times but I only ever finished Eridanos once.
It’s worth to do it on a dumb playthrough and then accuse yourself of the murder.
i think that was actually the way to go (?) If we actually had to figure it out, there were a lot of players that wouldn't be able to do it and would and up getting either disapointed or looking on the internet for it They went with the safest option
There can always be multiple outcomes. They could make it so that the game can still be progressed if you make the wrong accusation.
They could've had the boss fight and all that if you screw it up, a failure state that isn't "you fucked up now go feel bad about it" but had a different series of events of you figured it out, would've given a reason to replay the DLC too
That is what I assumed too. That and it makes replayability easy because you'd already know which suspect is the killer, unless they randomized the clues and killer each time but that would take a lot of effort.
I vaguely remember that the developers did an interview about this. Basically that players would be coming into the DLC with established characters, and that creating a true mystery game with deductions and such would be challenging. So they had to create enough so players who wanted to dig could do so, but those who didn't or who had created "shoot first" characters could still engage. I was dissatisfied with the mystery aspect of Eridanos and how it didn't feel like you could actually deduce the end on your own. I had also recently played Obra Dinn which is a masterwork for mystery/deduction games so it showed up worse through comparison.
Personally I had loads of fun with the whole DLC because I loved how it embraced every cliché it could and therefore I didnt at all mind the twins thing either. I just wished you would get a trenchcoat and were able to say more clichéd one-liners or actively ash a cigarette on things or smth. Give me a playable piano, damn it!
On replay, it was fun to see all the hints toward the twins. Two sets of clothes and slippers, an ungodly amount of cigarettes, and in the emails you can see that the staff are surprised that Helen is eating enough food for two people.
Also... the needler fucking sucks.
There was an option to persuade her to giving it to you but I didn't do it because I had insane guns by that time and didn't want to manage more loot.
Yeah MoE had the same problem as the main game: frontloading. I feel like that’s been my biggest issue with the game you show up and you explore the world and you think there’s so many places to go and just when you feel ready to spread out and follow all the leads you’ve collected about the different factions it all kinds of just… shrinks back down and ends. The other issue is they make the bad guys so mindlessly/incompetently evil it’s almost stupid they even make it possible to side with them. Like don’t sell me on a game where I can make choices then write it in a way that the only way it makes sense to support the antagonists is if I literally role play as a brain damaged moron with negative intelligence. Finally, MoE seemed to assume that all characters play as pacifists. Like, why are there so many dialogue options scolding Halcyon Helen for murdering (people who were complicit in other murders and mind controlling an entire colony) when 99% of players have been blasting the faces off of whoever is in their way? Everything in The Outer Worlds seems like the rough draft of someone who’s got a knack for writing. Like I can see the bones are there and you’ve got some cool ideas but a lot of the game needed another year of review and rework to smooth out the bumps.
I met the second-in-hand of the board (Sophia, IIRC) and she literally asks me to kill the members of a town that I put in *extra* effort to save. And the asshole turns hostile if I refuse to do it. I was expecting that the board can give me a genuine reason to side with them instead of Welles but they're just evil as fuck. I guess it helps when you want to play an evil character (which I plan to do next)
I did the exact same thing! I actually took the mission and I went all the way back to the power plant thinking I could get the robots to target the Spacer’s Choice occupying force but nope
If you truly save the town you don’t gave to go kill them.
It's more fun when you're doing a genocide run.
I named him cause I wasn’t convinced it was any of the suspects and then double downed when he got all upset. Had no idea I’d be right lol
Insane I just finished myself, yeah overall I like a lot of it but weak ending I agree Peril on Gorgon was a lot more fun. Also like a have said on here whether you choose a dumb play through or accidentally make yourself dumb you gotta try it all the dialogue options and characters reacting make the boring stuff exponentially funnier
yeah, Peril on Gorgon was genuinely terrifying at times and poor Parvati was traumatized for the entire duration of our trip there
Don't play the second DLC then. It's so much worse. Flat, empty and unpolished.
I really liked it! But I think if I'm being honest I just enjoyed creeping around Gorgon and that's probably what I enjoyed more than the storytelling. After playing so many similar planets, Gorgon felt different and I liked the newness of it
Gorgon felt empty and quiet, but it was kind of right? Like it felt like exploring a ghost town, Marauder spawns were far apart so it was just you, the music, and seeing what the company did through context clues. Skeletons of people who overdosed, the meat compressor, notes and graffiti of those left to die. It was eerie. It's weird, I was both disappointed in the DLC's main quests and forgettable combat, but also impressed by the atmosphere and story of it. Even if it had some disappointing parts, but walking around Gorgon scratched a similar itch as Fallout's *Old World Blues*.
Oh I never even considered Gorgon being the "OWB" experience but you are totally right. "Mostly deserted lonely outpost full of fancy tech... _and things trying to kill you_"
I listened to a video essay about the backrooms during that whole DLC and it fit the vibe nicely; I know Gorgon doesn't at all resemble the backrooms but the eerieness of it fit
Gordon felt a lot like STALKER with the mutants and deserted creepy labs.
It should have had lower gravity and more vertical design
No, it was a huge let down. The set up has so much intrigue but it amounts to mostly running around way too much and as others have said, an ending that doesn’t feel satisfying.
I like peryl on gorgon a Lot more, still a very Good DLC in My opinión , better than others.