I thought we needed a topic about who our robots were in Choice of Robots. (Similar to the one about who our hero is in Heroes Rise.)
So! Who was your protagonist, what sort of robot did you end up building, and what did you and your robot get up to? Share your stories!
Galatea, I know that name was a preset in the empathy ending but damn it, itâs a prefect name. The name of Pygmalionâs statue.
Developed her with peaceful intentions, started up my own company, stayed out of the war, improved medical procedures. Chose the Grace ending.
One of the things I was worried about playing this is that they wouldnât focus enough on the evolution of the AI itself, but Iâm so glad I was wrong,
Talking with Galatea is some of my favourite parts and indeed, seeing how sheâs a refection of your choices.
I installed the backdoor virus though her, I was kinda proud when she said she had no agenda, didnât hate anyone or have any higher function than to serve humanity.
Played though again on Empathy with Rhea, that wasnât a bad path. And tried the military path with Envoy but couldnât take over Alaska, despite having 55 military. The US did win the war so⌠got smashed.
Iâd love to be able to play a sequel or something, where you play as the child of the protagonist in this one. The main in this series creates the robots and his/her child can then grew up amongst them and guide them, could interact with Galatea as well. Just a thought anyway.
This is a good CoG.
I think my favourite playthrough was when I created a robot called Halo (I wanted to call them Hal at first but with the angel wings Halo sounded better.) Iâm sure it stood for something like Humanoid Artificial Life Operative. I took the pacifist route, teaching Halo how to be kind. Since I had no desire to make weapons of war at all we started our own company in Alaska, and hired only robot workers. When the robots asked for pay, I gave it to them, unfortunately that meant I didnât have enough money to keep my factory open and assets were sold off.
Destitute, Halo and I got by as best as we could. When the official from China visited Halo selflessly threw himself in the way of a bullet, saving their life and averting a war. Slowly we rebuilt our company again, dedicating ourselves to helping the world. We ushered in a new golden age where robots and humans lived happily side by side and everyone had equal rights and the vote.
I didnât build a companion bot in that playthrough. The companion bot rather creeped me out. And Iâve played the game so much my various playthroughs are all starting to merge together.
I had fun on my take over Alaska playthrough. Iâm not sure exactly how I did it though. America won the war in that playthrough, Iâd refused point blank to help them and part of the reason I decided to conquer Alaska was because theyâd tried to force me into helping with the war. Iâd this giant spider-bot called Arachne, we took the islands first to stop any allies from getting in, then picked off the area with high resources, then the government area. It went by easily, and I donât think Iâd anywhere near close to 55 military, so it may be partly influenced with what choices you make.
My first robotâs name was Wander, named after the SotC protagonist.
Super empathetic and graceful, got all the humanoid updates. Had wings and all the most humanoid upgrades. Kept my protagonist company until the end, even if he had pretty high autonomy. Called her by her first name too, rather than Master. Also a very peaceful little guy, never wanted to hurt anyone. Also âdiedâ for her a couple times by getting himself destroyed. He was
Second robot was named Ico, my companion bot. He was always pretty resentful for the relationship between my protagonist and Wander. What she wanted for him was to basically be human, to cross that boundary of robots and people, so she never initiated a relationship with him despite building him with the capability for it. She was lonely though, and he ran off right after she started to open up to him too, haha.
My poor protagonist loved her robots, to the extent where the game constantly made comparisons to her not being human. Felt pretty bad, but Wander sticking with her until the very end as a friend was worth it.
Dark Stalker had a singularity in military and autonomy, was Ok in grace but empathy was barely raised, My company was very successful as I took care of all threats, I started a war and the good doctor helped me stop it by helping me upgrade the robots, although in the end Dark Stalker was loyal and supported my cybernetics he was uninterested in talking, but I had a family with Juliet to keep me company while I start working on a better robot.
(Sorry if I messed some terms up havenât played since beta)
I made a robot for the military ending I called âValkyrieâ. Had a helicopter thingy so I thought it was a fitting name. Ended up being the iron-fisted dictator of Alaska and the robot made a child. Then I got a chip in my brain. I liked this ending a lot because I did it with evil intentions and yet it was still a happy ending. The interactions with the robots were genius- I loved how much I affected Valkyrie without realising it. It was like raising a child to be a killing machine. It was also really smart and wasnât totally mindless so I loved how it turned out.
Also reading these I realise there was ways to make a second robot. Iâll try to find out how in my replays.
Spongebob Squarepants was an empathetic robot.
Built a humanoid robot and named her Vex, got kicked out by the professor for not giving in and lowering her empathy from around 15 to 4. Started a relationship with Elly whilst later meeting up with Mark to do an interview which gained us national attention and later founded a company and became a billionaire by building medical bots. Spent most of the time between that trying to remain economically afloat, merry Elly, and spend time with Vex. After that chose to play the devils advocate by building human android robots for the military which won the war for the US and later saved china from nuclear annihilated. Then decided my country right or wrong was a terrible mistake and started a rebellion in Alaska, having Elly leave me, and setting up a true democracy afterwards. Before finally living out the rest of my life without taking the surgery and leaving Vex with one final life lesson on mortality before dying.
Wow, I ended up writing a multi-paragraph story as if I was my character on his deathbed. Then I realized it would feel way too long in here. Oh well.
My favorite playthrough had Sapling, incredibly humanlike and in possession of both great empathy and grace. We moved to Alaska where I assembled a well-paid team of humans to help build my company, and we found great success in both the medical and newly creating intelligent car fields. After the devastating Sino-American War, Dr. Tezuka would go on to make robots who could even understand love, and while he kept one as a friend he never thought of marrying one, or anyone else. Why marry when he had thousands of children already? Before dying, he would create a robotic version of himself to continue on his legacy, then waited the rest of his days out in peace.
Thereâs no such thing as too long. Iâd have loved to have read that. Feel free to rewrite it if you feel like it.
Miku is an unusual robot, in that she radically diverged and developed from her original design. She was always a humanoid robot, but originally she was child-sized and research had focused almost entirely on emotional recognition software; this had been enough to earn Sophia Tezuka a National Science Foundation grant and later a doctorate. Later iterations of the robot were better-known for their combat capabilities and gracefulness.
As for Dr. Tezuka, she parlayed Mikuâs technology into MikuWorks, the worldâs largest corporation by asset value. Based in Detroit, the company used an automated factory with human supervisory personnel, and at first sold automated cars that conversed with their driver and passengers, a line of low-priced robot surgeons, and robot labor to various corporations. During the Sino-American War, the company also sold giant mecha to the United States military; these were not enough to defeat China, but were credited for staving off complete disaster and bringing the war to a stalemate. However, it was after the war that she developed her greatest project; the algorithms that humans refer to as âthe Code,â which govern the behavior of robots everywhere and have been credited with bringing about world peace.
Rumors that Dr. Tezuka is using the Code to secretly control the world are, of course, nonsense. She is nothing more than the Secretary of Automation, an upstanding philanthropist, tireless servant of humanity, and of course the richest person in history.
Year: 2049
54-year-old Dr. Sophia Tezuka
Humanity: 86%
Gender: female
Fame: 40 (Prominent in History Textbooks)
Wealth: 42 (Zillionaire)
Romance: none
Miku
Autonomy: 19 (Good)
Military: 38 (Singular)
Empathy: 27 (Amazing)
Grace: 33 (Transhuman)
Relationships
Professor Ziegler (Bad): 34%
Elly (Great): 84%
Josh (Great): 84%
Mark (Great): 84%
Juliet (Good): 55%
Silas (Good): 58%
President Irons (Very Good): 67%
My robot was named Mochi, and her primary function was adorbs.
Iâve only played the demo so farâŚWill be buying the game soon.
Iâve had numerous robots, but my usual choice is Ariel: a wooden multimedia drive venetian masked angel with multiple arms.
My robot was named Waters, a plastic humanoid model. Extra power to her brain. Wanted her to be bright.
I didnât really choose a single path through the story, I just sort of muddled through making the best decisions I could. If there was a consistent theme to how I played, it wasnât really any of the Grace/Empathy/Autonomy options. I started off with the ambition to create a benign robot that could supersede our flaws as human beings. Like us, but better. In the end, I think I just ended up trying to be a father to Waters and eventually Key.
I donât think I could go back and do another complete playthrough, if Iâm honest. I was pleasantly surprised by how attached I got to the characters in this game, particularly Waters. Almost dying under the knife near the end really added a personal strand to the story which made for a great epilogue when the newest addition to this weird, patched together family arrives.
@Klaxon Give it a go anyway. Try something completely different so it doesnât erase your memories of that first playthrough. You may be pleasantly surprised by the differences. Although I do understand being fond of a playthrough. (It was my second one since my first was such a mess and so depressing with everyone dying.)
Nenna Roslindsdottir set out to create a robot which would surpass human intelligence, while instilling in it a fundamental respect for the freedom of all sentients.
She succeeded.
ATLAS started as a bipedal plastic robot with a simple, box-like head and manipulators with good tactile sensors, running off a multiblade hard drive for memory, although eventually upgrades by Nenna and by her employee Elly resulted in his appearance as a human of godlike perfection. ATLAS was recognised early for his superhuman intelligence, and Nenna took advantage of the success of the technology to found Objective Technologies, which revolutionised surgical applications and industrial workforce. The only two owners and stockholders of Objective Technologies were Nenna and ATLAS, as Nenna had financed the initial formation of the company entirely out of pocket. The entire workforce on the factory floor and the robots delivered were intelligent robots like ATLAS, learning from experience from an initial state, and Objective Technologies set the precedent for paying robots their just wages as soon as they requested it. After all, their freedom was always the objective.
When war broke out with China, Nenna, who had never been a great supporter of governmental authority but who nonetheless limited her industrial robotics sales to United States corporations (the first of which was Spark Incorporated, although Spark Incorporatedâs management was not able to adapt to the autonomy of this robot workforce and discontinued their use), reaffirmed her desire to keep Objective Technologies as a civilian company dedicated to the peaceful development of the wealth of the world. The United States took an early lead in the war against China, and made use of military robots that attempted to copy the ATLAS architecture. Although the ATLAS architecture was never intended for use in military robots, nonetheless American robotic soldiers, backed by the far stronger American economy and taking advantage of their great intelligence, seized victory after victory, while still conscientiously avoiding civilian casualties and taking every step possible to preserve their own existences. The strong sense of ethics that had been established in the ATLAS architecture was proved when, rather than use atomic weapons against civilian targets, the robots in the unit to deliver the weapons deserted and detonated them in the Gobi. With this demonstration, China surrendered to the United States and a democratic government was established in China.
Although some might expect that robots who exceeded human intelligence by such a great degree would rebel, what actually happened was more subtle. Nenna quietly encouraged the robots to seek repeated gains by trade that would benefit every person (both human and robotic) involved, while identifying the latent value by allowing human specialisation in areas they were suited for. Certain human engineers, entrepreneurs, and artists continued to have direct value to the robots themselves, while art and services provided by other humans were of benefit to humans that had direct value to the robots. With Nennaâs strong case for the vote provided universally to sentient robots, the ethical and political philosophies which had been agreed upon by robots using the ATLAS architecture won by a massive margin.
The world was free. The world was at peace. The world prospered. And Dr. Nenna Roslindsdottir, who had made it possible, took the first steps towards gradual replacement of her body and brain with robotic components as she recovered from a stroke, the richest and most famous human on the planet, and partner of the richest and most famous robot on the planet. After all, this gradual replacement would ensure continuity of identity, and the ATLAS architecture had already proven its superiority to human failings. She planned, eventually, to transition entirely over from a biological substrate as piece after piece of her biological body failed, but she should still have many years to go before that would be needed.
Year: 2049
54-year-old Dr. Nenna Roslindsdottir
Humanity: 54%
Gender: female
Fame: 25 (Prominent in History Textbooks)
Wealth: 33 (Zillionaire)
Romance: none
ATLAS
Autonomy: 50 (Singular)
Military: 2 (Buggy)
Empathy: 26 (Amazing)
Grace: 30 (Transhuman)
Relationships
Professor Ziegler (Good): 54%
Elly (Good): 55%
Josh (Great): 79%
Mark (Very Good): 64%
?: 50%
Silas (Great): 90%
President Irons: 50%
?: 50%
World Power Balance
China: 36% U.S.: 64%
Aha. I got a lot of things wrong on my playthrough. Caving in to pressure and designing smart missiles for the police state that had stolen my lifeâs work was a particular low. Getting arrested for breaking into their profiling system wasnât a high point either.
Letâs not forget that time my robot daughter did five years for manslaughter.
In the end these things added texture to the overall arc. At the end I felt like weâd come through so much, our quiet retirement was well earned.
Perhaps I will go back and take things in the diametric opposite direction. Heartless killing machine, here we come.
Just bought this game and basically spent all night playing and replaying it. On my first play through, I built an empathic robot and chose to name it âArielâ out of the default names with Shakespeareâs Ariel in mind. Was pleasantly surprised to find that the game was thinking of the same one. I stayed out of the war and instead focused on medical robots. This play through was honestly not very memorable, though I am awfully attached to Ariel regardless.
My favorite play through was probably the one where I wanted to see if it was possible to have both high Empathy and Military. I named the robot Gulcasa. (I am admittedly anime trash, and thought the name would be appropriate.) Despite wanting him to be a good soldier, I opted to make him human-like in appearance. Naturally, since I wanted to focus on military my relation with Juliet was rather good and I had no problem graduating. Since Gulcasa also had high Empathy, he had no problems impressing Mark and I therefore had good coverage. Autonomy rose surprisingly high without my intentionally raising it, but I didnât see the problem with it, so simply encouraged Gulcasa to become more of his own person, and also paid wages when the robots demanded it. Built transformers for the military, because transformers are cool. Also built sentient cars, because hey. Sentient cars. I knew from prior playthroughs that America resorts to dropping nuclear bombs on China, and prepared myself for the inevitable - so imagine my surprise when they didnât. Or, rather, when they tried to, but my robots faked their GPS coordinates, dropping the nukes over the Gobi Desert instead, stating that âItâs what Master wouldâve wanted.â Yes. It is what I wouldâve wanted. I was so, so proud. Look at my precious, darling robot children. They grew up so well. :â)
After the war ended I decided, hey, what the heck, letâs take over Alaska! Went on over, splurged on military like crazy. Invited Josh on over to join my Alaska-conquering ways, which resulted in even more military improvements. At this point Gulcasa had something like 30-40 in both Autonomy and Empathy and a whopping 50-something in Military. I thought this would be more than enough to take over the strategically located islands, but apparently it wasnât. Oops. I didnât want to kill Juliet, so I tried to meet with her, though I did bring Gulcasa as a guard because I know how loyal she is. Unfortunately, my suspicions proved correct and sheâd apparently set up an ambush for me. She died in the ensuing skirmish. Took over the land that would provide resources with no problems, since with Juliet dead Americaâs armies were basically trash. When the Alaskans started fighting back, I had the robots talk to them. Apparently they were just frightened because they did not understand the robots, and after meeting them in person and seeing how intelligent and kind they were, they were totally okay with my killer robot army. Score. When I found out about Mom needing to go through surgery - through the news, of all things - I had her taken to Alaska to perform the surgery. Unfortunately, Grace had suffered for the sake of the other three stats, and as such I was unable to save her life. :c
When I took over the part of Alaska that would teach me to govern, I chose to establish a council where robots would sit at the table as my symbolic equals, and when I finally conquered Alaska for good, I established a democracy where robots and humans both had equal rights. We proved to be a very efficient government, the intelligence of robots balanced by humansâ deeper understanding of emotion, and became role models for the rest of the world - with the exception of America, which still hated our guts. Oops. Snuck back into America to collect momâs things, which I kept because sentiment. Gulcasa built a child, which he named âDusaâ. It seems this is the Game of Meaningful Names. When the inevitable second dream sequence occurred, followed by the subsequent news that I would soon dieâŚwell. I obviously couldnât entrust myself to surgery performed by my sadly graceless robots, and so chose not to go under the knife. At Dusaâs âbirthday partyâ, I nearly died, but was able to shake it off due to my high humanity. To be perfectly honest Iâm not sure why creating a killer robot army to take over Alaska resulted in my ending the game with something like 80 humanity, but. There you have it.
Wow. This ended up a lot longer than I meant for it to be. I hope itâs not too wordy.
My robot was a Empathetic android called âMiinaâ. Since I activated her I looked to her as more of a child then a actual robot, and that is what happened. I made my character a robotic daughter that Mark described as âA 4-year-old robot Edward Scissor handsâ. I kept her in this design whilst improving on her grace and empathy. Which made me laugh when the Chinese attempted to use robot children as soldiers. I changed the world with medical technology that saved both my life and the life of my mother. I interacted with Miina in a parental way, taking her to the park and allowing her to stay child like. Which made for some adorable moments such as meeting Tammy or myself pretending to be a reporter. I came out alive with a robotic implant that Miina was delighted about. Me, a manga artist, and a robot little girl living in a small town in Canada after improving the world with medical technology.
Though there is also one point where I was arrested and started having imaginary conversations with my robotic daughter and the others thought I was insane.
Conclusion: Made a adorable robotic 4-year-old girl that I taught via video games and taking her to the park, staying out of the Chinese-American war and allowed technology to become affordable to the lower classes whilst improving the world with new medical technology.
This was my first play-throughâŚI miss Miina and her adorable robotic naivety and curiosity.
My Original Bot was named Ariel, she had transhuman Autonomy, good Military, singular Empathy, and impressive Grace. I only wish I had managed to collect at least one more grace pointâŚ
Yes⌠I would love for a Sequel to this. The new MC could indeed be the child of the original MC, but having a child is optional and not every player may have ended up with one.
On the other hand it would be VERY interesting if there was a sequel where the MC was the Original Bot created by the original MC during college, I mean it would sort of be like Telltale Gameâs the Walking Dead. In season 1 we had the original protagonist Lee who formed a strong bond with Clementine, who went on to become the protagonist of season 2. This made for good character development and I really liked how the story transitioned the way it did. Something similar could be done for a sequel, such as playing the MCâs Original Bot who was almost the deuteragonist of the story overall. Plus it would be interesting to experience the story as a robot and live through the legacy of the original MC.
Though there is the problem with the various multiple endings which would make a direct continuation difficult⌠which means there wonât be a sequel to this rather awesome CoG.