Nope that’s the sympathetic text
Have you been acting distant with Ortega? Trying to avoid them, trying to cut ties, giving out mixed signals? What is the text description of your relationship status? If your status is “Ghost from the Past” (or something such) at this point, then you’re screwed in this scene.
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Wait what?
For real?
Nope. My MC and Ortega are lovers as of checkpoint 5. Connection with her is at 96%. And he thinks Mastermind has made some good points.
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Hmm strange , i was thinking about Herald but Mortum came
Huh.
Can it be a bug then? Because under those conditions my Sidestep was rescued by Ortega/
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Well Ortega technically does care. Even when I did a villain playthrough and actually killed people, Ortega was still pretty tore up about what happened despite leaving me in the hospital. They are also super pissed about Argent hurting you in the hospital. I don’t think they would be okay with you getting tortured by the special directive. Ortega probably thinks your protected there. But obviously they would be wrong about that lol
Yeah I’m thinking this might be a possible bug in the code. Cause that isn’t supposed to happen. Or its possible you might have hurt or injured people in the past like guards. Despite not killing them, maybe triggered that variable.
Now this one isn’t really fair to Ortega, considering the MC is the puppet and you are actively encouraging that relationship. You can simply just stay friend’s with them. Also at that time. Ortega is still somewhat unware of the MC still having feelings for them.
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Maybe. I reloaded back to checkpoint 5 three times, to the same end. Ortega always betrays her and wants her punished, and pretty much makes it clear he’s washed his hands of her.
Yep, I played through the whole epilogue. It ends with Ortega’s POV. He was punching a dummy or something. And thinking about “this is what heroes do” with respect to betraying Aave. And that was that.
I reloaded to check my stats, so I’ll run through it again and see the exact wording, but he turned his back on her completely.
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@EvilChani Might be a stupid question but the people on the discord are asking if you went through the whole epilogue they break you out at the very end. Wait no the epilogue should ends with the puppet waking up no matter what ending you got with Ortega if you end the game in Step’s body
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The amazing part of this series is how we only get explicit revelations near the end of this book for the MC’s motivations but 1) we still strongly feel and adopt the MC’s emotions and motivation and 2) there’s enough clues throughout that an attentive reader can figure out most of the backstory
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Okay, going by the code that @Nm6k already posted, then if your MC didn’t kill anyone and you’re passing both the MC & villain relationship checks with Ortega, then the only thing that could be jamming a spanner in the works is the “fakeself” flag.
Fakeself seems to be set in the dialogue with Ortega during this scene and it pretty much revolves around you convincing Ortega that the Sidestep he knew is already dead/gone/lost.
These options set fakeself to true.
#“Sidestep is dead,” I snap, reflexively.
#“Give up,” I snap. “This is the only Sidestep left.”
#“It’s different now,” I say coldly. “I’m different.”
#“And that didn’t save me,” I say, voice cracking.
The below option will reset fakeself back to false. (Not needed if you didn’t already choose the previous options)
#I will talk. Maybe I can make ${him} understand.
There are some other convoluted ways to reset fakeself to false, but those require having certain other flags already set, so the easiest way would be to avoid the 4 options I listed above.
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Yep, I played through the whole epilogue. It ends with Ortega’s POV. He was punching a dummy or something. And thinking about “this is what heroes do” with respect to betraying Aave. And that was that.
I reloaded to check my stats, so I’ll run through it again and see the exact wording, but he turned his back on her completely.
I suggest turning the page after you get the Ortega POV epilogue. Tell me what the next page says.
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Maybe there are other ways to set fakeself as true? I never chose the first three (that’s not my MC, at all) and remember choosing the other one, her trying to talk to him.
Where are those choices at, do you remember?
Oh shit! He rescues her! I saw “The End” and figured that was that. He didn’t take her back to his place, but he got her out. And the puppet woke (I was wondering why that scene didn’t show in this run, when Aave’s body woke up in the run where the MC ended up in the puppet’s body).
Okay, so I don’t hate him anymore! That was pretty awesome how he did it.
Once again, Chen’s epilogue scene makes my heart hurt. He really does want to help Sidestep, and doesn’t know what to do.
Also, this time through from checkpoint 5, my Sidestep managed to kick everyone’s ass after the HG meeting. She picked the Nocturne choice instead of trying to focus on Jake or HG. That was pretty cool.
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Really just an amazing game. I’m honestly shocked at how many paths there are and how many branching endings you can get; I can’t imagine the kind of work that had to go into that and that that will require in the next game. Hats off to the author; they should be so proud!
And aside from the game aspects, the story really is fantastic. All the characters are so dynamic and interesting (to the extent that I have a really hard time choosing who to spend time with!) and the world/lore and plot are fascinating. I can see a lot of foreshadowing, symbolism, and metaphors that I think are very clever and really enjoy. But if I spent any more time talking about that, I think this comment would end up being a novel itself!
I did notice what I think are a couple typos/bugs through my playthroughs so far:
If your MC is trans, and you romance Daniel and come out to him about being trans, there’s a part where I think MC is supposed to be referencing Anathema in their thoughts during the convo (from what I remember from the demo) as another canonly trans character, but they say Daniel instead. I don’t remember the exact wording, but it’s something along the lines of talking about Daniel transitioning openly; didn’t sound right when I read it, anyway.
and
If your puppet is romancing Dr. Mortum, and you brought the doctor back to the puppet’s apartment in the first game after going home from the hospital but DIDN’T sleep with them (at least, I chose the keep your clothes on option), then the second game will treat it as if Dr. Mortum has never been to the appartment (ie, giving you the options to choose whether you’ve brought anyone back to the puppet’s appartment again). At least I think that’s what it is, because I didn’t have this same inconsistency when I was going off of a save where I did choose to sleep with Mortum.
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No, just those – and they’re all in the same place, it’s every choice under ‘badreveal’, which only happens if you’ve killed. fakeself means Ortega thinks you aren’t the real Sidestep, you’re a Regene infiltrator that replaced them. You’d probably have noticed that.
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So I actually do remember that it is possible to lock yourself out of the good ending with Ortega even if you do a heroic playthrough. I think choosing combative dialogue. Can possibly trigger the bad ending. Which adds on to what the other user was saying about Ortega not thinking your the real MC but a Regene. What I did was try to be as remorseful as possible. Being apologetic etc
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Faith in humanity and Ortega restored!
Gucci part just cracked me completely
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Oh shit! He rescues her! I saw “The End” and figured that was that. He didn’t take her back to his place, but he got her out. And the puppet woke (I was wondering why that scene didn’t show in this run, when Aave’s body woke up in the run where the MC ended up in the puppet’s body).
Okay, so I don’t hate him anymore! That was pretty awesome how he did it.
There you go 
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Oh, also! Really loved the implementation of the checkpoint system in this game!!! I’m the type of person who is really anal about playthroughs and will drive myself nuts restarting COG/HG if I pick a “wrong” choice, so that was really nice.
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I laughed out loud at the Gucci thing. Only Ortega would do that… granted, my MC is probably used to the finer things now. She’s rich from stealing from criminals, lol.
You and me both. I hate having to restart games from the beginning due to one wrong choice (or an accidental click). It makes the game more enjoyable to have that system in there!
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