Let me just say that I really don't have enough time to read through 178 pages of posts so what I say may have been said a bunch already.
Ah I suggest you do it when you have some spare time, there are some very cool discussions there.
1. Lacey. I liked Lacey in Act 1 and she far surpassed that in Act 2. She became so much better after Dianne dropped the truth bomb on her and she was able to see herself as she really is. She is going to continue to make mistakes and hurt the MC. I have no doubt about that, but I do think she wants to be better.
Mav is right, we are now best friends.
2. The MC. He is very frustrating. But I was very happy when he has his epiphany at the end of Act 2. I know he will continue to get lost in his thoughts and make things worse. My biggest frustration with the MC came with how he handled finding the K in Mia's purse. He was looking around and seeing everyone as part of Mia's plan and couldn't trust anyone. I'm sorry, but how could he not go to Christine? Even if she is part of "the crew", with her history there is no way she knew about the Ketamine. And regardless of how far she was in with Mia if she knew Mia had that much K around Lacey and her possible intentions she would have helped the MC.
Welcome to our WC (Witness Character).
It is not even a matter of going to Christine or not, it is a matter of acting and being a protector or, even better, a functioning adult.
He never does anything, he looks at his life going through without ever acting about anything, we READ that he is this dangerous and scary man and yet the only act of violence he does is against his phone (or a 50 pound woman in a specific path).
His threatening of Veronica is laughable.
He acts once with 2 phone calls, that is it, and is treated as a small child by everyone, especially Anna.
He is always told that he doesn't understand or has no experience or that he is a fragile boy.
Look at his reaction when Lacey and Kelly have a spat, he stands there dumbfounded instead of intervening and he is told to shush "because the grown ups are talking".
3. Mia. I see now why there is so much hatred for her. I don't know how they can keep being friends with her. If it were me, when she came to me for the final lesson I would have said no just like the MC did to begin with. I would have told Mia that if she loves me and Lacey and believes that she has to share Lacey's secret because she loves us. And that she thinks because of that love she needs me to know the love Lacey had for those guys in college, then I will do the same. I would have said I love you Mia, and Lacey, and Anna, and everyone else in our friends group. And I think it is important because I love you that they all understand your love you had for your brother. And if you think it is so important that you share Lacey's secret with me without her permission I'm sure you also think that it would be very important for me to share your secret with them without your permission. right? However, all that being said, I think the MC wanted to see them. Heck he is the one that pulled them up when she handed him the phone.
You should have seen the hate way before, if you read the college recollections, how it was a game for her and how she pushed Lacey more and more even after she realized she was a drugged up shell of a human, there is no way that character can be considered anything but pure selfishly evil.
Add that we discover she did it also for her own benefit and when Lacey tried to get clean she wanted to have a "last hurrah" where Lacey almost dies.
And I didn't even go through the whole list, since she was also happy and cheering that Lacey got sexually assaulted in the shower.
She is a character that make no sense to have around or to treat as a good person, sadly Christine lost her "good standing" with me because now she is superfriends with her and it makes no sense.
4. Isaac. I still don't really like him, but the last scene with him in Act 2 made that a little harder to do. I loved the talk he had with the MC when he said you think I'm the villain in your story, well you are the villain in mine. You are my boogeyman. That may have been the best conversation of the whole game. I do hope him being a threat to the MC's relationship with Lacey is over. I don't think the talk they had will stop the MC from seeing him as a threat, but I really hope he is done trying to get with Lacey. I dread the MC buying and moving into his house though. If for no other reason then if he lives in Isaac's house how is he not going to be haunted by the guy around every corner. Unless the MC is past the threat of Isaac, moving into that house is the wrong choice.
You know? That conversation made NO sense, literally no sense.
Isaac looks for a girl to party with, fucks her for 3 weeks while she is drugged up to her gills (smashing her head on the ground with his foot nonetheless) while she cries the whole time and we are now supposed to believe she was the love of his life.
And this guy has the audacity to even compare 3 fucking weeks with 13 + 5 years, a ptsd, and saving her from suicide, I don't know how that scene even made sense to anyone, including MC.
I would have personally told him to use his own dick to fuck himself.
To me that scene has no grip and is actually demeaning to MC suffering, as he was never anyone's monster and it is laughable to think so.
5. The Monster. Like I said, I'm not going to go back through the posts to read thoughts on this, but who is The Monster? He appears to be a friend and I think he probably is. I was going through all the different characters we have met trying to figure this out, then there was one line that was said that made me think... Is this game going into a fantasy/sci-fi route. When the MC made the comment in passing about his future self building a time travel device and coming back to help himself and made me stop and think. Is The Monster future MC? Is this something the author would do? what do y'all think. I haven't played anything else this author has done, could this be the case?
I hope we don't have any fantasy or sci fi stuff, the story was gripping and hard without the additions of these "conspiracies", "secret characters" or catoonishly "evil doods".
Let's see what we uncover in act 3, but I would be glad to get rid of all of those to have a more grounded antagonist or simply facing the already numerous unresolved issues (such as Lacey's past which was definitely happier and funnier than she let us know).
6. The familiar voice, Barty, and Will. First I want to say, at the end of Act 2 when the familiar voice was meeting with the unknown man and he ask if they were buying his personality change my heart dropped, because my first thought was Isaac. Then he said Will's name and I thought well duh.
Is the familiar voice Barty? That just doesn't feel right to me. I think Barty is a business partner with TFV like Will is.
So who is TFV. Obviously, since it refers to them as a familiar voice it's someone that has been in the game. I'm not sure if it ever refers to TFV has being male, but it does lead you in that direction if it doesn't. I will probably refer to TFV as he, but I'm not sure. What are the thoughts of this? Based on TFV not knowing how the MC and crew were able to get past the video so easily he is not someone who was involved in the deep fake reveal and he does have listening devices and such all over or he would have known this. I just am not sure and would like to hear the theories.
Barty could be an accomplice or FV himself for all we know, him being involved is a character assasination.
Check his dialogues in act 1 if you don't think so.
He could have been tricked but damn how boring it is to have "good guy but he got forced/tricked" every act, we already had Veronica and Jeanette last time.
7. The deep fake. It's funny because when I watched this scene I thought the author made a mistake because I noticed that Lacey had pubic hair in a couple of the pics and was clean shaved in others. However before the end of that scene I thought "could this be fake". I went back through the scene again trying to see if there were any other differences but I did not see any that stood out. There was not a pic where her hair changed to blond that we got. I did notice that as much as Mia has talked about how Lacey is on and off of K that this was going to fit into this, but I still wasn't sure. When Christine came in and figured this out I was relieved. I'm sure that future videos are going to be just as hard for the MC, but I hope everyone around him reminds him not to trust anything he receives.
Never fell for the deepfake, I knew it was fake because it did not match with ANYTHING we got in the material, it was not even subtle, I am happy that many got tricked tho, because their hate for Lacey blinded them to the truth.
The only truth is the material, the material will make you free.
Just as a personal curiosity, how many correct answers did you get in the king weekend?
I'm sorry, I've only played once and I don't remember Bastion. I remember her kissing Damien and Morty, but can you remind me where Bastion was?
Apologies this is my fault, we sort of created several nicknames to the characters in the game and I often revert to them even if I remind myself not to do it with "new posters".
Bastion is Damian, and if you ever read the Pimp it means Mia.
EDIT:
Augusta is quite alright, there are two scenes that are, in my opinion, quite awesome.
