The Village (Hell mining outpost)

Steps

0. The sad woman in the bar

After office hours, the character commutes to the bar, and is teleported to the rooftop. The player gets to admire the landscape for a few seconds, then a phone conversation will happen next to the character, leaving no other choice but to listen.

The conversation will be about a woman taking news from an inhabitant from Hell. You get to understand that there have been rumors those last days where a new mining spot was found not too far from the main outpost, and military personal weren’t too sure about how to handle the situation. The local minors decided to organize a strike to make sure they are paid better if they were to work on this spot as well, but the rumors also told that the Government was thinking about not letting any choice to the minors: either they yield or they die.

Once the woman ends the conversation, she will apologize and leave right away. The player is then free to also go back home.

1. Morning meeting

The next day, there will be small talks with the colleagues, about something that “happened”, but nobody knows what it is. Emil will seem more excited than usual, but will say he doesn’t know what’s up.

In the meeting, Mr Jameson will start the briefing by saying that Pythia Solutions got a huge deal with the Government for several projects, which will need to be filled by the character. Then, he will mention that it will be about Hell and something the Government discovered. There will be no mention of the strike and the minors being in danger. He will however mention that Emil somehow helped getting the contract for those missions, which will trigger several questions and reactions from the other colleagues. Mr. Jameson will cut those short, since there’s a lot of work to do.

2. Related missions

The first choice the player will do through their character is to decide wether they want to help the outpost or not. At this stage, the player might not have unlocked the sabotaging, so they have a small window to finish The Predecessor before starting handling the files. Otherwise, the player will have no other choice than completing the files. Note that you can still complete “The Predecessor” in parallel, but it will be too late for this living thread, and thus, the The Empathic path will not be reachable for the entirety of the game. However, if the player checks the notes before it’s too late, they will find one of them saying “I still have time to do something. Zahirah might be able to help on that”.

Reading this note will force the next bar scene to be a conversation between the character and Zahirah where she’ll get right to the “Name drop” phase of her living thread. If played correctly, her thread can be completed in 2 more days.

Organigram

Below is the possible choices the player will be able to make and their consequences.

Following the Empty path will make the living thread extremely short, as it takes 3 missions to complete it. Following the Empathic Path will require the player to be extremely cautious on the sabotages. Excepted for the “Report casualties” file, the player is free to change their mind and follow the Empty Path, but this choice cannot be undone.

Managing to sabotage the amount of troop sent to Hell will have an impact on what follows, since the game will keep in memory how much troops are sent vs how many you’re sending on the field on each missions and how many casualties are reported. The trackers will flag something if the numbers are ending up not matching anymore.

After the 1st fail, the colleagues (Excepted Emil) will moan on how those resources will be wasted and this whole project is just money being thrown away. Emil will be more and more upset, and will try to press Mr Jameson on sending more resources, but Mr Jameson will respond by saying that he doesn’t have the pay grade to make those calls.

“Report casualties” simply requires the player to indicate how many soldiers / mercenaries died in the field, so following the reports’s content cannot be considered as taking the Empty Path. However, this file can still be sabotaged by inflating the numbers.

The “Meet rebellion chiefs” will be an extremely humiliating phase for the Government, since the rebellion will now be too big to simply be eliminated by a sniper. Doing so will most certainly provoke an uproar in Hope’s civilization, leading to a putsch, since the population will start to take the Rebellion’s side from the moment we finish the “Report casualties” file.

Note: The missions will start to have more and more time between each of them after the “Report Casualties” file, and the news will indicate that the situation is now a position “war” with no real winner. Also, the time required to actually send troops on the field need to be taken in account, which delays lots of things.

By the time the living thread ends, we should be around the middle of the 3rd third of the game.

Rewards

If following the Empty path

Pythia Solutions’ internal health will greatly improve, the player get a big lump of money for their efforts as a reward, but their face’s opacity will fade a lot if still visible. Emil will keep having a big smile until the game’s end.

If following the Empathic path

Pythia Solutions’ health will take a hit, and will financially have a hard time to recover. Tobias will tell the player that they know that they’re behind the fiasco, but to keep going. Also, everybody will tell Emil that he was being extremely weird about all this, which live him with only a rictus until the end of the game.