Potentially big spoilers here, so be warned?:
Sidestep is a very powerful telepath who can make people do something and think it was their own idea. Ortega, for the longest time, thought your secret was that you were related to HG because you look so incredibly similar to each other, as if you were siblings. And as soon as you shake their hand you find that you have to agree with them and don’t get an option to refuse.
These three things may be related…
Sidestep can’t know about the regenerater. So be a jewel thief and have your puppet be sleeping with Mortum. When they start talking about their gun, tell them to just buy it and you should get the option to accompany them
If your subtle manipulation is high enough, you can notice what HG is doing and stop it without HG noticing.
I don’t think my force or subtle manipulation scores budged a bit in this game. They are either exactly what they were at the end of b1 or there was an unnoticeable change. Probably because my stupid MC is more of an anti-hero than a villain. I’m sure if she were running around murdering everyone and stabbing the Rangers in the back, she’d have better skills.
Ugh, that kinda blows. She’s got less than 80% on both,with 79% for subtle and 67% for force. She’s gonna get her ass handed to her, at some point, telepathy suit or not (especially now that Mortum has deserted her and she’s on her own with the suit… at least she’s tech savvy, I guess).
Now I just have to convince my MC that shaking hands isn’t a power move, because that outcome sounds more like what would happen with her. And it would make the ending more palatable, despite all the crap with Ortega and the fact that he’s probably about to turn on her, just like Mortum did.
I just love how all of my Sidestep’s fears come to fruition, because people really are that shitty.
I don’t think mine moved either now that you mention it. Maybe wherever they are at at the end of Rebirth is where they’ll stay for the rest of the series.
Spoiler below
Its incredibly satisfying If you meet HG as Sidestep and don’t shake their hand. Sidestep takes out HG, Jake amd Nocturne and then they go through HG’s guards like a knife through butter. It really shows just how capable and lethal Sidestep is even without the armour.
Dr M is a lot more friendly towards you if you tell the truth and get stuck in the puppet for the last chapter since otherwise, the puppet wakes up without you being in them and Mortum freaks out and thinks you were lying to them
Damn, I’m trying to get strength of mind to 80% but I’m at 75%, sounds like I’m not gonna be able to do that in retribution then
You have to stuck as puppet , as orginal host we have less luck
Say what, now?
Does this mean my Sidestep really did wake up without her being in her (she popped over to the puppet body when the car crashed)?
Yep same with the puppet if you end up stuck in Step’s body
The second body wakes up in every single one ending
I don’t think mine did either, but you can definitely get a far less depressing ending. Spoilers, obviously, but just to show you how ‘nice’ of an ending you can achieve:
My Sidestep romanced Ortega but called it off to let him be with Puppet, forcing him into a friendzone situation - he’s so not over Sidestep, you can see it in the Puppet romance scenes with him. The only active manipulation she does outside of that is use the Puppet to romance Mortum as a tactic. She is working against the system but never killing anybody, managed to keep herself hidden from Argent and rebuild bridges with Steel. She then romanced Herald, showed him she’s a Re-Gene. Met with Hollow Ground, accepted but on her own terms, landed in the hospital.
Everyone found out she is a Re-Gene, but no one suspects she is a villain. Ortega called her out on not trusting him, but Herald protected her by calling out why one wouldn’t expose a life endangering secret to someone who hates Re-Genes. Herald and Ortega then worked together to free Sidestep and she’s currently resting and recovering in Herald’s apartment as his lover.
Okay, so that really did happen. It confused me at the end. Wonder if the puppet’s… mind??.. ends up in whatever body the MC isn’t using at the time.
Is that what all the precog stuff was about? My MC kept “knowing” what was about to happen. It was a bit perplexing.
Dang, ya’ll got much more cataclysmic endings than I did. My ending pretty much kept the status quo as is. No one knows jack about my Sidestep (although looking at the secret stats, a few of them certainly suspect things). Not a peep from the Farm. No big confrontations with the Rangers. The only big change came with the Puppet.
Getting hospitalized due to the car crash. Then kidnapped… err rescued by Mortum. And then waking up with -15 puppet_individuality, so that ought to be interesting.
I’m a bit surprised that showing up as yourself for Hollow Ground seems like the most popular option by far. My Sidestep’s filthy rich but living in the sewers because he’s so paranoidly cautious, so no way he’s ever going do that without his suit (Unless HG was burning orphans and he needed to show up & save them or something, because his complete inability to stop hero-ing seems to be what’s finally going to out him).
It looks like Game 3 is going to begin from some wildly different start points.
Not if you go all MAXIMUM HERO in your replies to Steel’s questions while you’re doing this.
A lot of the choices to use your telepath powers while in your villain persona will trigger the general known_telepath flag (which means Argent will auto-know as well even if you were using your powers against someone else).
Sometimes you can get away with some of the more subtle stuff (particularly if you have a high Subtle Manipulations/Subterfuge stat), but most of it gives yourself away.
I still do not know who is in the second body
In the dream there were 3 mirrors , one for Mc , one for the Puppet , and one strange and black with something lurking there… I prefere Ace than that possible entity
Yeah, I figured it out. Its cause I went for the dampeners during the fught with Blaze.
Got every achievement. I liked it a lot, obviously! Saw a handful of possible bugs:
If Mortum researchs Shroud for you, the puppet can’t ask them to assemble the regenerator. The MC can, if you have a second in-person meeting, but otherwise the puppet won’t ever bring it up. (Which can lead to lines like “With Dr. Mortum out of the picture, you have to step up” later on, even though you’re still on perfectly good terms.)
“My shields are fraying fast” won’t trigger with high subterfuge and force exactly 80 – only >80 or <80. (It also has a “force %+5” that never does anything, because if force>80 that always rounds down to 0.)
The Zephyr epilogue where Blaze is dead and Chen comes to talk plays without change even if Chen is in surgery from being shot in the stomach by the puppet.
The option “Breath. Stay in control. It’s not Chen’s fault.” should probably be “Breathe.”
Telling Herald “I don’t want Ortega to get killed because of you.” only sets herald_weaken if your relationship is “oh no, he’s hot” or “oh no, I like him”, which is probably unintended.
I knew just from the massive increase in the overall word count to average playthrough ratio that there must be a ton of variation in this game, but wow, it really is wild reading how completely different a lot of stuff happened for people!
My ending definitely didn’t shake things up as much as it seems most people’s did - I went to see Mortum as my MC but didn’t tell them the truth about the puppet. I revealed my MC was a re-gene to Lady Argent. And I went to see Hollow Ground as my puppet, leading to Ortega revealing they knew the puppet had criminal connections and frequented Joe’s. But I refused to have the puppet confess who they were working for and, after waking up in my MC body, went ahead and planted evidence to suggest that the puppet had been spying on MC for someone else instead of working for them. And the cliffhanger was just the puppet’s body in the hospital starting to stir or whatever.
How does one see those “Hidden Stats,” btw?
Probably have to code dive in order to see those hidden stats.
If you don’t want to read through the whole source code, here’s a guide on how you can peek at your current stats using a browser’s Web Console.