What is the "real" story progression? [SPOILERS!]

[RavenWorks]

So, I've now said goodbye to Pixie in front of the boat, and watched the credits over a shot of the boat sailing away from Dorisberg.... but, this involved Sebastian talking about having destroyed a computer, which I didn't do, so I'm pretty sure I found a bunch of non-standard solutions and accidentally skipped some sequences in the process :P

So at this point, I'm curious -- could anyone who's seen the "real" story summarize what the player is meant to do from start to finish? I'm tempted to start a new save file to try and play it 'normally', but I'm not even sure what that would involve. (I've had some bugs on my playthrough with characters doing their scripts in the wrong place, even BEFORE I found the modifier and teleporter, so it's possible that the real solutions would have been more obvious without this problem....)

I guess I'm just asking for a really brief "story walkthrough".... most of the walkthroughs for this game that I've seen, seem to be focused on programming tricks instead of story progression!

[RavenWorks]

Okay, let's try this way: here's what I did, tell me how much I missed :P

I might be getting some of the order wrong (especially since I had to restore to work around bugs a few times)

• I arrived in town and sold soda for something like 13 in-game days
  
• I found the teleporter
  
• I met Pixie in the bar, and went to the dance in the mine with her
  
• I had the encounter with Araki and a Typer in the Plaza, and followed her to the basement of the shoestore (I had already done the cigarette thing at some point)
  
• I bought a modifier from Gunnar and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ with it and the teleporter around town until about day 30
  
• I joined the Lodge and completed the tests
  
• I did the mission to the factory but didn't find anything very interesting
  
• I did the mission to talk to Monad in the casino but didn't find anything very interesting
  
• I was offered the mission to spy on the mayor but before I could complete it, Ivan was taken to the ministry
  
• I used Mainframe to find him on the internet, and teleported there, but of course couldn't cure his corruption
  
• I used one of the pink flower computers they installed in the Devotchka to teleport him out of the internet, then cured his corruption, and he stayed cured
  
• I went to Pixie's house, and was told the ministry is coming for me, so we went to the boat, and I got the 'sailing away from Dorisberg' credits.

This leaves me with a bunch of unaddressed storylines, like

• what is up with the sodas?
  
• what is up with the message in Ratvader's Dream?
  
• what exactly is the ministry doing that's "bad"? (other than kidnapping Ivan to the internet, but why did they even do that?)

Is there anything I should have been doing differently to encounter more of this game's plot? I'm interested in it, but I can't really figure out how to trigger it...

[dunbaratu]

You really should have put that post in a spoiler tag. I mean that's a LOT of plot you're revealing there.


(Just a warning about spoiler tags - their content still apperas on google searches, annoyingly, and there the paragraph or so of context the google search shows on the list of hits still shows the spoiler text unmasked. Therefore I put spoiler text further down the post, not in the first few lines where it will appear in the google context paragraph.)


Monad *IS* the Ministry. She's the boss of it, as it turns out. That answers both the question "why are they evil" and "why are they kidnapping Ivan". *She* is doing it, using their resources at her disposal. There's a few places you can chase some links from door to door that eventually piece together some of Monad's notes that indicate Ivan is her ex-boyfriend and she's a jealous spurned lover who wants to make him "hers" as a pet at any price, including imprisonment in the internet.

"RatVader" appears to be the name of one of the musical artists in the credits of the game. I think it's just a cameo reference.

Yes, the dialogue of the NPCs doesn't take into account the multiple ways to save Ivan, and presumes incorrectly that you destroyed a Ministry computer to save him, when as you discovered there are in fact other ways that don't ruin such a lovely resource, that let you keep using the powerful computer instead of destroying it. The NPC dialogue scripts don't seem to be written to realize this. Based on comments here, I'm not sure Erik realized this is possible either. He claims in the next release there will be some dialogue changes that take into account some of the alternate paths players have found and mentioned in this forum.

Sadly, it seems the ending of "you had to run for your life and get on the boat" is the only ending the game realizes, other than endings that occur even earlier that indicate failing even before that point.

I plan to try a walkthrough again after 1.0.8 is out, just to see if I can hit any areas I missed.

[RavenWorks]

About the spoiler tag: why would someone click this topic if they haven't already beaten the game?

And, if the ministry is evil because it's Monad, and Monad is evil because she kidnapped Ivan, why was everyone mad at the ministry BEFORE she kidnapped Ivan?

[dunbaratu]

Originally posted by RavenWorks:

About the spoiler tag: why would someone click this topic if they haven't already beaten the game?

Fair enough, but "What is the real story progression" also sounds like the sort of question someone might be asking at the start of the game if they're stuck and can't make anything seem to progress the story along. (As in "I've been selling soda by the can for days now and the story doesn't seem to be going anywhere. What's the real story progression becuse this doesn't seem to be it...?") It's not until they click on your post that they can see that you've finished the game and are looking to fill in the gaps, rather than being stuck at the beginning like they are, and asking that question.

And, if the ministry is evil because it's Monad, and Monad is evil because she kidnapped Ivan, why was everyone mad at the ministry BEFORE she kidnapped Ivan?

They claim the Ministry seems to be keeping the power to themselves by monopolizing the ability to manipulate the universe (as in, only government-approved programming of this matrix-like world may happen). But there doesn't seem to be much evidence of this in their behaviour. I can 'hack' right in front of one of their agents and they don't even bat an eye. It would be a bit more believable if the agents reacted in hostile ways to noticing that you're using one of the hack devices in their presence.

[RavenWorks]

Hm, okay, fair enough -- I've renamed the thread to make its purpose more clear :)