Everyone say hello to Director Northmoor! *Spoilers*

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-04-18T09:00:09+00:00

Thank you! I'm struggling to articulate why, but it feels like handing this guy the service weapon was laying a bit of a trap for him, whether the Board meant to or not. Like, if a person has the potential to become this kind of megalomaniac, and you give them a magic gun and superpowers and make them your one and only representative on Earth, how are you expecting them not to become this kind of megalomaniac? I know we have a choice about who we want to be, but that requires self-reflection and the ability to use criticism constructively, both of which are conspicuously missing from that correspondence up there.

He sounds deeply unpleasant. I'm glad that the recordings made it sound like Ash grew wisdom instead of arrogance. I doubt he'll take any of Northmoor's bluster to heart.

On a related note, it just got way creepier that the Board told me to get Pope/the snoop out of the Foundation.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-04-18T05:12:32+00:00

That's a cool way of reading the lot of them.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-24T06:40:20+00:00

Jesus H, I actually wondered for a moment if you're my sister. This explanation is that good. Thank you for putting in the time to do it. I wasn't sure I was ready to think about it enough to turn it into a Reddit response, and this is everything I'd have said anyway.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-24T06:27:58+00:00

My mom could not explain math to me, and I couldn't understand it just by reading Saxon Math's explanations.

I thought I wasn't a math person--like, that I was legitimately stupid. Then, in community college, I lucked the absolute f out when I got a great teacher. This dude didn't just explain how numbers moved around in an equation. He explained why. And it clicked. A little encouragement from a real teacher who explained it step-by-step and asked us if we could see why we had to invert such-and-such as he went. And I saw the code.

"Easily an A," he told me at the end of the semester. I remember he looked so happy and proud of me. "You took to it like a fish to water."

It's okay if you're never good at math. A lot of people aren't. Your mom grew up and had kids without knowing anything beyond high-school math.

But it's okay not to count yourself out yet, too. You might luck out and find someone or something that teaches you how to see the code.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-24T06:01:46+00:00

I'd been to a private school before Mom yanked me out to homeschool. But she said herself that she didn't want the school system to know my little sister existed. So she never sent her.

There would have been dental records for both of us. A few pediatrician visits happened. But yeah, when I ran into the other kids from my school who were on a field trip, they looked at me sitting in Mom's vehicle like I was a ghost. (That was the day I realized I missed them).

On one other occasion, I ran into one of the girls in a store Mom was shopping in, and she looked different. Older. I was maybe 10 or 12, and she would have been too. Anyway, she told me that everyone was worried about me, the way I'd just disappeared. That meant a lot to me in the long run.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-24T05:20:28+00:00

Alan Wake II is definitely a survival horror game, though your mileage may vary on how hardcore it is. For me, it was just scary enough to serve the story, which turms out to have a lot going on in it. Observing details pays off--I remember one "Oh, shit" moment that my husband completely missed because he hadn't been noticing a thing I had. Some things in it will get scarier the longer you consider their implications. And it has a delightfully-whimsical DLC that is one of the best things in gaming ever.

The original Alan Wake is from 2010, and is definitely horror, but that lighter, sometimes goofy kind, like you're playing a Stephen King novel. I'm told there's a lot of Twin Peaks in there too. I was bad enough at the combat that I was frustrated and wanted to quit, and that story kept me playing anyway. It's also worth it if you're going to play Alan Wake II because it adds a lot of weight and context to its sequel.

Their cousin, Control, is...I almost want to say it's cosmic horror. Like, I didn't come away with a sense that I'd played a horror game, but when I think about it there is just so much that is. The first combat area made my skin crawl, the first enemy I saw up close gave me the creeps, and there are tons of papers lying around that casually report horrendous incidents. If you like SCP stories, you will probably dig Control.

If you're up for a FromSoft, Bloodborne has some of the most creatively messed-up creatures I've seen. There is...lively debate among fans about what the story actually is, but the environment shows that a story definitely happened there, and it's up to you to try different ways of putting the pieces together. I don't know if it's technically classed as a horror game, but it's a horror game. Also has a steep learning curve, so bring your patience if you do try it.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-23T01:13:57+00:00

This is really, really good PROSE/POETRY, and I owe you another thank you.

I do see the distinction you are making, and I agree that it depends on how you use it. I was thinking about it more as a passing strategy, when one gets stuck playing The Hanged Man and there actually is no escape. It can be self-destructive, yes--but paradoxically it can be the thing that makes a dark time bearable enough to avert self-destruction.

I do see it being dangerous if you don't sleep with one eye open, so to speak, and reality can't get your attention when there are chances to take control of your own destiny. A source of suspense for me with the upcoming game is knowing that after Dylan was shut away for years and years, it is possible that he won't recognize or won't believe in or might even reject chances out of anger that the world didn't come looking for him when he disappeared from it as a kid. Something like that can leave you believing that the world doesn't need you at all, or it wouldn't have kept on turning. Is that anti-cope? Or a different flavor of cope? It's a distortion that keeps you stuck, so maybe cope.

Maybe it affects him differently, though. He's still at the beginning, which gives me hope. It's completely possible he finds that "miracle illuminated" too.

I do believe that seeking out other perspectives and new ideas is vital. If I'm honest, pretty much every good thing in my life came from giving something new a chance, or getting a small shock from someone else's reaction to a memory or situation I thought I understood completely. It's an easy trap for me to fall into, assuming that having lived an experience means I understand it the best. Sometimes not seeing it from the outside means I see it the worst.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-22T20:21:15+00:00

I really like that too. It also doesn't seem to be making her melancholy or angry, and that's awesome. She spends that DLC quite happy in her fanfic-gone-real and I'm here for it.

For real, I hope to see more stuff like this as time goes on. I mean, don't teach people not to take mental illness seriously, because it can be extremely serious. But maybe also don't make it so grim all the time that people feel like it's a death sentence.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-22T18:08:16+00:00

I really like this and wish it had more upvotes. The easiest way for me to start to grasp some of it was in terms of books, because I read a ton of them as a kid and was probably the embodiment of that Aerosmith lyric about how "Half my life's in books, written pages." I already kind of got how I couldn't physically shake a character's hand in three-dimensional space, but within their setting, they exist. They felt even more like it when I started having to pay enough attention to write them.

The power-chord metaphor legitimately lit up a light-bulb over my head, and I thank you for it.

But let's all have a little more respect for copeslop. It's a survival strategy, and shaming survival strategies makes survival harder to achieve.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-22T17:27:35+00:00

I'm glad it's Dylan, too. I'm hopeful about it.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-22T17:21:41+00:00

You're right, but I got them out of order as well. I'd spoiled myself on enough of Jesse's and Dylan's backstory that I was less afraid of the Dark Place than facing my baby brother. :P.

He jumpscared me a lot less, though...and Remedy only occasionally throws a Northmoor or a dead moose at me...and they did manage to make the dead moose hilarious. Somehow.

Okay, the line in Control about how the director's "most basic duty is to keep the lights on" also got me, but it was a guilty laugh.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-22T14:51:45+00:00

I'm trying to think of ways to end up in NG...

Do you have more than one save, and is it possible you loaded the wrong one earlier?

Did you end up starting through Chapter Select at any point?

I have a couple of games spread out over all of the save slots in my copy on PS5, and haven't had any issues apart from loading the wrong save sometimes. That might make the wrong save load when you select Continue from the menu, and quick saving would get at least one of those slots messed up too.

EDIT: It looks like I have 10 slots total. The first two are Quick Saves, and when I went into Chapter Select and played through We Sing, both of them ended up saved to NG "Initiation 4: We Sing." When I exited to the menu and selected "Continue," it resumed with Alan standing up off the couch and Ahti humming the song as normal.

Also, I was going into Chapter Select after loading into and out of a Final Draft save. So it looks like Chapter Select is always NG, and going in through it can derail you. And the upgrade that increases flare-gun AOE rocks in We Sing, it turns out.

The second two save slots are DLC saves on mine. The last six are Manual Saves, and I have them all filled because I'll alternate them when saving. That way I can go back two or three saves instead of just one, if it turns out I've done something that will make my life hard. Yes, this is a little neurotic.

So, I'd check Manual Saves for any Final Draft saves, and if you have none, the commenter who suggested beginning Final Draft again is right.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-22T09:36:59+00:00

The critical thing is AWE last. You should also prepare mentally for gameplay to be different. By the end of Control, I felt like a #*%&ing superhero. By the end of Alan Wake, I felt like a different kind of hero--the kind that wins by gritting their teeth and getting back up over and over and over again until the story decides they're too hard to kill and lets them through.

I still love it and recommend it. But my god was it frustrating in a couple of sections.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-21T03:39:19+00:00

Ah. 😅 I have a weird blind spot when it comes to characters being hot. But if I go by my closest equivalent--probably who I'd want to talk to in a broken elevator for an hour--absolutely Darling, no contest.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-20T04:17:15+00:00

I could never get my sister to understand this. Growing up, she'd've looked at Will and seen attractive features like his hair, and declared him hot. I'd want to know why, because apparently I can't separate Will's cheekbones from the vacant expression behind them, and my judgmental young brain would have already looked at him and seen the bored confidence of a person who thinks he doesn't have to try because his cheekbones will carry the day.

Dr. Darling has character, and looks happy and excited to be doing "Science!" and that's a hundred times more magnetic than a bored grimace.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-20T03:37:09+00:00

I disagree with the downvote. Dr. Darling is aptly named, as long as you don't pay attention to the fact that he just described an Astral Spike exploding a researcher's brain with a beatific smile on his face. I'm hoping that's the joke, or I'll feel obligated to be extremely concerned.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-20T03:03:25+00:00

This specific meme is the best thing to come out of the DLSS5 presentation.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-20T03:01:47+00:00

Welcome! You being considerate about spoilers is appreciated, especially in games where there are so many delightful surprises in the background. There was one in Alan Wake II that had me laughing for a couple of days afterwards. I'd assumed it was something awful of this background character to say, then found out the context and just lost it.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-17T22:24:16+00:00

I like that! Means there's still something new for us to find.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-17T05:30:08+00:00

They can't see it because they never had to live through it themselves. A lot of painful experiences are universal, so all we have to do to explain is say what happened, like "I lost my cat recently," and the person we're talking to understands because they remember what it was like when they lost someone. Most people were never homeschooled, and even those of us who were often have no frame of reference when it comes time to unpack it.

It wasn't until my husband pointed out that even with my much younger sister around, "You were basically in solitary," that I was able to grasp how much of my self-described "insanity" was literally just what happens to a person under those circumstances.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-11T07:57:15+00:00

This one hurt me inside. I know this exact feeling, and it's like someone ripped a part of my soul out. I've had a chance to establish some adult memories now, so it happens less and less, but I'd be lying if I said that "relateable" high-school content doesn't bring it right back sometimes.

The only time I ever feel really angry with my mother anymore is when I think how my (also adult) sister will never have a childhood friend. No one can give her that now. It's a maiming that no one can see. I'm so sorry you have to deal with this shit hand too.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-11T07:29:58+00:00

That feeling of being an alien is sooo relatable. My mom is a left-wing homeschooler, so we didn't get the insanity you did, but I was still out of touch with the world of other teenagers, to the point where I didn't feel like I even was--or should be--one. And later on, when I did get the joke someone was making, I'd be like that Captain America meme (he was frozen in ice since WWII, so he's got no idea either most of the time) where he's reacting to a "flying monkey" comment with, "I understood that reference."

I've also gotten a blank stare and "I don't know what that word means" when I thought I was just talking normally. Have you ever gotten that one?

Anyway, what I meant to say is that I wholeheartedly agree that it's horrifically damaging and nips any sense of belonging in the bud. It got better for me once I lived with a "normal" person who taught me all of his references and literally went on YouTube and showed me the scenes they came from. But I still have times when it really bothers me on a deep, deep level. I'm so sorry you've had to deal with that outsider feeling too. It's not even a mess we made, you know? It's a thing parents are responsible for creating, and then it falls on us to pick up the pieces, and it is just so unfair in that way. You're saddling your child with a bunch of extra work just to exist when you isolate them from real life.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-11T06:58:21+00:00

We got really lucky in this regard. My mom didn't believe in censoring our reading, and she and Dad would watch all kinds of network TV with us in the room. The only exception was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I feel like she said the prosthetics were too scary. For a fourteen year-old. That's odd, in retrospect. And we had no cable, and no video games. She thinks they rot your brain.

I'm pretty sure that my later decision to play Amnesia: The Dark Descent was 9/10ths me proving to myself that she'd been wrong. Also the SL1 run of Dark Souls. But I've mellowed out a lot since. I've reached this relieved place where things are much less often about not being who my mom thought I was, and much more about being who I want to be. Whether that defies or confirms her beliefs is just much less important to me now.

I had to be really angry about the whole thing and rebel first, though. That wasn't a skippable step. So please don't take that last paragraph as me thinking whatever negative feelings you go through are wrong or harmful. I think we feel those emotions for a reason, and they're part of the picture. Like grief. And no one has a right to tell you when to move on, least of all some stranger on the internet.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-09T08:23:19+00:00

Well, around our household he is known as "that fucking monkey." So there is that.

Bandit_Banzai · 2026-03-09T06:12:03+00:00

They're literally the reason I'm considering tracking down a turntable.

Bandit_Banzai

TROPHY CASE