[SPOILER] Personal views on few key issues

[xanatos]

Purely personal opinion if it's wrong welcome to correct me.

Personal views on a few key issues, hope this helps!

- About Rachel.
Rachel should have had a child with James and lost him as a baby because he was too young to be brought back.
Rachel probably couldn't bear the pain and chose to jump off a cliff to kill herself, and in order not to be resurrected, she took a poison to make her ichorite unusable.
James said in the beginning of the game that "This was the second time he saw someone's ichorite melted," could Rachel be the first? Maybe yes.
James has been resenting himself ever since, as well as the drug dealer who bought Rachel the poison.

- Speculation about the connection between ichorite and James' reasoning technique.
James' reasoning technique seems to be able to reverse time, which is amazing and has a magic-like feel in it, but it's clear that this game doesn't want to discuss magic, so how does James flashback time?
Most likely with the help of ichorite, by reading the information from all the electronic devices in the vicinity, as well as the ichorite of all the people who were there at the time (this is the most important), and then importing them into his own ichorite, (but there are still a lot of things that are not very easy to explain in this case)
That's why it's best not to backtrack on events that involve yourself (James' train event), because it means reading and analyzing yourself at the same time, and probably putting yourself in some kind of dead end loop

- About Greene and who the real culprit is.
Greene is the culprit of the whole thing, essentially he's murder + suicide; (Kovalev was supposedly an accomplice to the same hallucinations, , but he's only helping.)
Why? In short, he went insane, and after many more iterations of rebirth, his sense of self gradually collapsed, but perhaps not because he was consciously manipulated by something, but more directly because he schizophrenically developed some sort of crazy destruction-seeking second personality.
All of this was his crazy, planned self-direction, which is why the two big events have the same date, a perfect design that would have been almost impossible to predict far in advance unless the person in question had predicted it himself
Meanwhile, James has been in the same mental problem as him for a long time.

- Speculation on the ichorite's technical flaws.
Aside from the corruption of the ego-soul decline due to multiple iterations of rebirth, it's likely that the logic of the nerve conduction device itself is flawed,
and the plot has already outright stated that memories may be missing during conduction, and that what's missing may be precisely the good memories, and that imperfections are more likely to be remembered instead.
It's as if James' deepest memory is about the conversation he had with Rachel while watching a detective movie, and afterward he actually felt some remorse for what he said at the time, and that's exactly why he remembers it the most fondly
Once a human is reborn, it's likely that the memories of remorse and hatred will be reinforced, splitting into some sort of second personality filled with malice.
It's worth noting that this malignant second personality is fully integrated with the memories of the main body, so Greene's and James' second personalities have very distinctive features
Greene's room is filled with representative achievements of humanity's old technological era, proving that he is in fact a technologically omnipotent progressivist, which is also amply demonstrated by his naming of the nightclub blimp Icarus,
so his negative personality, which creates the same ending as Icarus', will An ending where he ends up burning and destroying everything because of his failed pursuit of technology, which could be his negative ultimate answer to the current social predicament, burning everything down
On the contrary, James' favorite thing is detective noir movies, and what is the characteristic of a detective noir movie?
A hardened detective who never gives up at all costs, and a "killer" who must exist, a specific culprit.
That's why he's suddenly in a frenzy to find out who sold Rachel the poison from a drug dealer he's probably never even met, and even thinks there's a huge conspiracy behind it, as well as chasing after a specific murderer in the Greene investigation.

- About Seth.
Seth would have known about James' problems.
In that last part of the train scene, Seth briefly tells James that an "anti-terrorist squad is coming and that they can straiten it up with the chief."
It was clear that Seth was trying to get James to stand down and leave the scene but James wasn't hearing any of it. Seth seemed to know that something was wrong with James
It's also likely that Seth told the Chief something about James.

- About the Chief.
The Chief most likely knew everything, knew about James' mental problems, knew about Greene's mental problems, confirmed from the beginning that Greene was really suicidal,
and even had some knowledge of Greene's whole crazy plan that's why he sent his own secret agent to buy the drawings, but unfortunately he was still too late.
The Chief also probably knew about James' madness during the train incident, but he chose to cover it up so as not to irritate James any more.
He didn't shoot James down at the end to kill him, it wouldn't have killed James at all, and the Chief made it very clear that "I'll come back for you (i.e., resurrect you) afterward, and it's all for your own good."
He's very aware of James' problems so he doesn't want him to add to them, it's for the good of everyone, the Chief is probably a real gray character, he's unclean but he's not completely let himself go and still trying to solve the problems

- Speculation that can be further analyzed.
What does the Ouroboros mean specifically?
Has the ichorite, the filament of the Goddess of Fate, developed some sort of artificial intelligence on the level of collective consciousness? And is it overtaking humanity?Is it possible that Greene and James' madness is a product of this collective consciousness?

Finally, if there is no murderer, no greater conspiracy, just endless nothingness.
Then who is the real enemy? Let me tell you my comrade,
Capitalism, whitewashed with so-called freedom, elections, media, celebrities, politicians, and pushed to its limits by technology, is the only Sin here.

[Bee]

First, good catch regarding the Chief. I watched the comment threads and most participants were wondering why the Chief would "murder" James--seeming to forget that a normal shooting "death" would be more like a severe tasing. "Killing" James is merely incapacitating him to collect his ichorite. He'll be fine, and the Chief knows this; he's just tired of arguing with James.

Originally posted by xanatos:

Let me tell you my comrade, Capitalism, whitewashed with so-called freedom, elections, media, celebrities, politicians, and pushed to its limits by technology, is the only Sin here.

Ugh. I hope you're young, or European. This yarp about "Capitalism" is so tiresome. "Capitalism" is what we used to call "Free market enterprise," which is inextricably bound to post-Enlightenment Western ideas and ideals of freedom of expression, right to pursue happiness, individual Liberty, and free association.

What tankies call "Capitalism" when they want to bloviate about it, is actually the modern convergence of Corporate (Finance), Government, and Media power. It has absolutely nothing to do with "Capitalism," unless maybe you're talking what people sometimes call "crony Capitalism," which has never been a very useful description to begin with.

This convergence of Government, "Means of production" (aka companies/corporations) and Media is more properly called early-20th-century Fascism, which was quickly bundled into National Socialism, and now Global (Fabian) Socialism, which some people call "The Longhouse," or "Globohomo," or "The Managerial State," "The Cathedral" and such.

For the astute reader, collecting a bunch of complaints about modern (Fabian) Socialism together, calling it "Capitalism" and then complaining about "Capitalism," is at best, silly as heck. These political convergences are 180 degrees from free market enterprise, and that freedom of market participation is really what the Commies are aiming to stamp out. All modern griping about Capitalism is actually Fabian Socialists shouting their complaints about the very world and system they have built on the ruins of the Capitalism they parasitized, cannibalized, looted, and buried.

Nobody Wants to Die takes place in this environment run amok. It's Blade Runner, it's 1984, it's V for Vendetta, it's Brave New World, it's Partos: The Clonus Horror, it's Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, it's all of this pseudo-Cyberpunk, Jennifer Government source material mashed together. But what's important to note is that this isn't just big money run amok--it's only possible with Big Government compelling everyone to participate, under the guise of "rights." Everyone has the "right" to immortality, therefore registration in the body lottery is mandatory. Doesn't sound very free enterprise to me.

[xanatos]

wow, hello Bee, I'm glad you commented, it's very good and interesting, although I didn't expect that to be the focus of our discussion :P

I'm sorry you had to read 'This yarp about "Capitalism"', but rest assured I'm not a "young, or European", and even less a "Fabian Socialists", but... I'm from that East Asian country. Hahaha~

But really, regarding the description in the last paragraph of my comment, rather than me attacking something, it's more of a self-satire, a joke that probably only we can understand.

Believe me, if some timeline in the future of mankind is really going to have a story similar to the one in the game, then it's more likely that I'll personally experience that in terms of mathematical probability from various factors stacked on top of each other.
After all, you've already mentioned "big government".

There are even crazier and more likely versions of this type of story that could come true, so if you're interested, maybe try the game "Minds Beneath Us".

Have fun :D

[Bee]

Originally posted by xanatos:

There are even crazier and more likely versions of this type of story that could come true, so if you're interested, maybe try the game "Minds Beneath Us".

Have fun :D

Thanks for the recommendation! It's a very good game. Great graphics, good music, writing is decent enough, story is adequate typical cyberpunky dystopian fare.

For a Taiwanese studio, it's disappointingly filled with Western progressive yarp though. Climate change check, workers rights check, evil corpos behaving evilly check (though progressives don't really care about this anymore, in fact siding with them against "teh far right!" more often that not). And I don't get why I have to keep hearing about "Jeff's boyfriend, tee hee!" over and over again. These are lefty tribal signals that act as termite rot warning signs for globalist degradation. It shows just how bad and how widespread the woke cancer has spread.

[Bee]

Originally posted by xanatos:

There are even crazier and more likely versions of this type of story that could come true, so if you're interested, maybe try the game "Minds Beneath Us".

Finished it up. Thoughts.

First, thematically and story-wise, there isn't a lot left to talk about, because HOLY COW TALK. Absolutely every angle was explored in-game through in-game dialogue from absolutely every perspective, laboriously, extensively, comprehensively, and repetitively. Every moral angle, ethical angle, pragmatic angle, was ping-ponged back and forth across the dozen-plus characters to the point where there's no room left for your own brain--you can only agree with NPC 1 more than NPC 11.

The overall situation, those beats--nothing new. As I said before, typical cyberpunk dystopian fare. Large scale amoralism vs. small individualism in a future of high technology and large and escalating population. Books have trod these boards flat for the last 100 years at least.

The yacht rock ending theme was surprising. That is a very specific and easily-identifiable form of American music from the 1970s--there's no mistaking it for any other style. Not bad, but surprising. I laughed.

But I want to get back to the Western progressivism: There are literally only 5 romantic entanglements mentioned in this game total. The protagonist and his wife, a guy at the corp with a crush on a girl at the corp (who rejects him), a male co-worker who mentions several times his male "partner," the lesbian romance in the basement (Ops) and the lesbian romance in the OWL team. Nobody has children or speaks of having children (minus the denizens of the "s-hole," who are poverty-stricken and sometimes sell their children). There are zero, what we would call "normal," families.

That's only 5 instances where romantic pairing is brought up--and 3/5 are homosexual. 60%. And nobody has a normal family situation with kids. What is going on here? If this were a modern American game, this is the part where I look for a "sensitivity reader" or "story consultant" in the credits, because that's typically how such bizarrely aberrant outcomes that just so happen to conform to modern Western Liberal Progressivism rear their completely verisimilitude-busting heads.

Does this reflect modern metropolitan Taiwanese ideas about families, sexuality, and romantic pairing? Or is it only reflective of the Taiwanese "indie game" community? Because I've got to tell you, it reeks of basic-***** Western "baizuo" mentality. It's weird. It's not weird if all you see is American media, but if you live in the actual world not online and not in television, it's noticeably odd.