itch.io

oh, i don't mean he is poorly characterized. it works for an horror narrative like this. there's just this disconnect from how he responds to things and how i feel from reading. that's normal, disagreeing with the protagonist is something i do a lot. what i really wanted to say is, i now understand just how fearsome virgil really could be and why grey feels so helpless against him.

so, i always thought grey was a bit of a wuss. until last night, i had this nightmare with lanky virgil eating me alive. the only thing i could do was every now and then get a visual novel style choice selection to decide what body part he'd be taking next. it was so terrifying i was second guessing going back to sleep. that's very unusual to me, because i mostly only get mildly annoyed when i'm startled awake due to nightmares.

is this the one? i forget how i got it, but i believe it has to do with the hinterlands expansion. mostly it has to do with the cemetery, it has a number of different ways that can play out in the last day, but it could also be the scene you return to the colonel state after doing the burial task.

the whole thing was designed on purpose so that you can't do everything. but i do wonder if certain features like character added stats and acessories of the wardrobe could become permanent additions. the purple color does.

that's a perk for the math background only. if you have any other you will need to track it yourself

maybe not, the labyrinth was created to hold many more children of poseidon as prisoners, but athena got foiled on that. also the realm stays there even when asterion moves away in some of the ruthless endings. the question is if the hotel can be kept running if the realm doesn't have a master, or if there can be a master if there are no prisoners.

however, considering hermes request, it's quite possible you might destroy the realm inadvertly. but it could be just one of many endings there will be.

What if uncle Iroh was actually Onsen wearing a charm all along?

wait, i never responded to this? well then, i stated in the forums before and my favorite character has to be pedro. he is smart, he is naughty, he is an ass, but he is caring. a fuck up trying to do good in life in the limited capacity he can, like most people, but with superpowers. 

what i want and expect of him, is one - to go back to the hinterlands and solve the problem with the secret shed and goats. two - see more interactions with him and the rest of the cast, i really liked his hangout with luke in the music shop. it was really sweet the kinship they formed with the brothers name.

it's hard to pick a specific moment, so many things happen in "hinterlands 3". the mysteries, the flirtings, the ant hills, just the moments of understanding that people are imperfect and that's okay.

my least favorite characters are the kobold triplets. i don't feel like they have much of a role in the story other than causing a ruckus and being "cute". the cute mascot archetype is a bad match to my preferences, as it is, they might aswell not be there.

i think we need a moment in that everyone in the cast realizes they are all gay. some of them seem to be tip toeing in eggshells about it still, and i want a pride parade to be run in the hotel, or something

in the ruthless route mc drinks a potion of immortality, but it turns out that is poisonous to mortals. even the gods seem to be expiring, and asterion is technically not really alive. i doubt immortality can be achievable without a catch to it, and also is not a really good way to end things. no story that includes immortality ever goes well for the immortals.

what are you talking about? we know how he ended up in the hotel, that's like 99% of his content currently.

i have a question. what ages are each of the characters?

basically it can enforce certain society norms. like gendered spaces, 18+ spaces, staff only. this kind of segregration can be polemical, however, such as racial divides. the hotel could be able to apply it, the real question is wether it should.

i would say it's a place to help those who are lost rather than healing. it gives different implications on what the hotel does. 

it's like saying a cemetery is a place of resting. people don't usually go there to relax.

think about all the text that would need a rewrite to take your physical traits in account. that's why there won't be any, nor will the protagonist be able to become something like a werewolf. 

on an recent post, minoanon stated that the hotel has contracts put in place that prevent some types of organisms from reproducing and thus might cure certain illness. however, taking in consideration the labyrinth is built to torture, the valley may be capable to instill diseases upon him.

if the hotel can already identify such a thing, it's then just a matter of writing a contract. like, make some kind of room that is only accessible if you have certain characteristics. we know the hotel is capable of such tricks, like making sure you can get back to the lobby if you think of it. or get you somewhere specific if you take a specific combination of directions. the layout of it doesn't need  to make physical sense of it's locations.

I have to wonder how that rule came about at first. Like, would they know to spare the beneficial bacteria beforehand? Where there any casualties because of that? How far back could that rule have been implemented for the scientific knowledge necessary be available at the time?

The labyrinth at it's foundation is a place of torture. It heals Asterion, so that it can hurt him again. Outside of that, I'm afraid there is no such magical healing properties. The whole "place of healing" thing is more a wish Asterion has to help those who get lost. 

The wine that heals Asterion either has no effect on others or is a lethal poison to them. I forget which is the case. In the ruthless route there is one such lethal poison Argos helped confect, but it's been a long time since I've read that. Not sure if that was just an elaborate job to get another bottle of the wine to summon faster.

I assume you refer to Luke, his hasn't been reworked on yet. From chapter 14 onwards you get to do hangout scenes with the characters. These are optional but not elusive at all. If it's available, it will be there when you are doing the management of the day.

You are trans before you start transitioning. The question is more on wether it only accounts for the gender you are born in, or if it may recognize your gender's "soul". That's assuming souls aren't genderless and based on the notion that they can be seen by someone like Robert.

There's a devlog with a table showing it could go up to 30. I believe that's not really final though, could have more or could have less.

Honestly, Asterion seems to be another case of Prometheus. In his myth, after Prometheus stole fire from the gods, he was condemned to eternal torture, being tied up and having his liver eaten by an eagle every day, regenerating after each session.

but with asterion it's a bit different. he died before being brought to the labyrinth. you cold say he's some kind of zombie or ghost, rather than someone who ended up getting an absurdly long lifespan

she wouldn't, the goddess of beauty isn't going to look like anything except gorgeous. but athena...

the main thing is that asterion is in a long ass borrowed time already. it'd be against the laws of mortality for him to be free from the hotel and alive aswell. as long as he is in the hotel, he can't be free. at best, there could be put a contract in place that the current master's death would release asterion. granted, i'm assuming the rules here. with this scenario, life and freedom should be in conflict. it's one or the other.

it's worth considering the effigy might not be tied to one of the gods, that would explain why it's different. similarly, there's an altar to a nameless god in the valley, this is explored in the ruthless route. still, we know there's at least 7 ichor drops to gather and no more than 17 should exist in the realm.

The ruthless route really changes the perspective on Nikos. He is a good boy.

Supposedly there are only 7 beasts, and each god only donated but a single drop of ichor. It doesn't say that every god donated, so it could either be 13 from the olympus 12 + hades, or just 7 that voted in favor of the labyrinth. unless there could be more "gods" involved. 

What i do wonder though is that there is ichor elsewhere within the hotel. at least, i thought that's what it was anyway. there was this liquid dripping from an axe head that is related to asterion's  execution, and the crystal wall in the hermes altar. 

Anyway, it was a short update introducing this quest, so obviously they couldn't put all of the cards on the table right away. There is not much to do for now except be wary of what might be at stake on this request and we don't know.

yeah, the pattern he gets are dependant on a number of choices. There is no guide for it, but there are 2 passwords you can input on Jean's phone when he asks you to type your name. "Chaoskampf" will give you the gray pattern, and I don't remember where the password for the brown one can be found.

 Yeah, some games do that and i'm not really a fan. particularly due to how they are structured, "do all of the everything so that you can finally play the real route for real and this is the ultimate super mega route". That's to say, if there is a bestest true ending, then it should be possible to get in a single run. When you artificially lock the best ending behind the worser ones, it's like your first try doesn't even count, cause you need to beat the game once before you can play the "real" version. 

 Right now I can only see the do the hermes task or not endings, but that doesn't mean I think they are the only ones there will be. I just don't have quite enough information to be making educated guesses as to what other options there will be.

The ruthless route isn't really sadistic, there are like 4 chapters but it's played from our good boy Nikos' perspective. He is at his goodest self during this route. The chapters themselves are pretty much linear with very little variation, or quite similar bits at the very least, it just has 4 different outcomes. Aside from that, there's a good amount of lore reveals we don't get in the main route yet, including one way to free Asterion, which is one of the outcomes.

Personally though, I don't think MC has that much beef with the gods. Queer people tend to be at odds with religion, considering how the most popular ones currently are constantly used as an excuse to try and abolish us. But that doesn't mean religions are always this xenophobic. Greek myths themselves are quite queer, and that's just what survived various cultural erasures promoted over the centuries.

In the trials about half of the gods were agains the labyrinth, Athena being the main one to blame and potentially manipulate the votes. But more importantly, the talk with Robert about how hells and afterlife in general work, it's implied you go to the afterlife of your specific religion, so that's why if Asterion and MC are to meet in the afterlife, one of them might have to convert, and I don't see our bull boi doing that.

Technically Asterion was happy in Hades, and it should be possible for MC to go there if he "converted to the religion". I'm not sure how that works, but still. It may be true that greek myths tend to tragedies, but I do believe we will have a good ending. Just not an utopian one. This also comes down to personal preference, in that I find that bending the rules to force the narrative to become the perfectest ending is shallow and demeaning to the story I got invested in. Obstacles can be overcome or worked around. That's what makes a story worth telling, but if you just take the challenges away without proper resolution, they shouldn't have been introduced in the first place.

allow me to clarify my issue with the gold armband and hermes request. i had those glaring concerns i've presented that were not addressed in those scenes. it's okay if the master wanted to do it as a promise or whatever, but i wanted for them to at least acknowledge that the terms would bring harm to him even if it wasn't his fault. then he could be like, "yeah, but i'm gonna do it anyway because promises". for the hermes is the same thing, i wasn't given a reason as to why the master did not inquire hermes further in, it didnt have to go there with the questions i still had, but at least the conversation could have had to be interrupted short to give us the sense that there were things that needed to be left unsaid for the time being.

if themba isn't in the hotel then luke will fill in that videogame talk, and as much as i love themba, i have to say that luke had the most heartfelt conversation with pedro for me. technically musical instruments aren't natural resources, so you'd have to teach the hotel to make them first, it can be probably done, but it's the sort of thing that might require an R&D task.

there is a codex, it only registers the things you found, but it's available to see from the main menu. it's called files and it registers everything you got in every playthrough. i also did post somewhere on this forum a files list with everything that can be found, assuming mine is complete. there's also an achievments menu to keep track of certain things you've done and hint at others.

but you will have to choose between arts background to recruit both themba and khenbish, or the leaders background to be able to recruit both pedro and nikos

Did you not see the Themba version of Pedro's segments in this chapter? Or are you just questioning their poor taste?

You could try to make a copy of your save files to transfer them. you would have to find which folder your device stores roam data, ren'py uses that folder to store saves that then can be retrieved by the next update without you having to tell it to. That said, I did have to manually go through many of the previous lines this update when attempting some reruns.

Alternatively, you could go to the in game setting and activate "unseen text" in the skip options, but make sure you deactivate that once you catch up do a few more lines and save. If you forget that option is on, you could easily come across something you haven't seen and skip it by accident.

Honestly, I do think there will be a better ending than what I've proposed, but it's not going to be perfect, or at the very least, Asterion and MC are not going to get to live togheter forever. It's not really a suicide mission to gather ichor, it's just a matter of thinking of a way to transport it safely, Kota is a god, even if not as powerful, so maybe he could pick it up no problem. Also, much like the greek heroes turned demigods you've cited, taking down those monsters of legends isn't ever a feat of brute force alone, to stay in theme defeating them will involve cunning methods and solutions, it's not going to be something straightforward like making a bazooka, and the master's powers are very versatile in that regard. besides, the team does have plenty of mythical power, I don't imagine we will be able to defeat all 7 of them in whichever team configuration, so which ones you get to take down will probably be suitable to whoever is available. 

Asterion is the stuff of legends and has water affinity given he is a creation of Poseidon. The though part here is the valley is going to immediately target and attack him, but at the same time, he can recover from any injuries that should have been lethal. And he is going to have the most understanding of this realm than anyone else.

Luke is nearly indestructible and can fly, with military experience from the world wars. He's knowledgeable with stars, so it could be a great help with navigation.

Kota is a river god, and dragons often come with exceptional powers, he is confirmed to be much stronger than he looks.

Khenbish has wrestling and cooking expertise, his bad luck curse might be a problem, but he could do good for a supporting role.

Themba isn't explored to much, and i'm not too familiar with grootslangs, apparently his phisiology can have some kinky perks.

Wolf has sharp senses and is a predator, the hard part is figuring how to make him help since he is an animal.

Robert can see souls and has extra high body temperature, even if not outright breathing fire, that can still be very powerful. As a lawyer, he also has in depth understanding of contracts which is a core mechanic to how the realm functions.

Nikos has the knowledge of how to navigate and survive the valley both from his time there and from his predecessors' teachings. He might know some tricks to the realm even Asterion doesn't.

Pedro has his feathers with can be really good for monitoring and investigating from a distance, he is also adept at rites, even if they are not the flashy kind of magic.

Oscar also has water affinity, and brawn, perhaps naive but at least the valley might not actively try to kill him like it would Asterion.

The cobalts are also there, and being small would make them both sneaky and capable of reaching hard to get places. they might be infatile but should be able to do excellent teamwork when it really matters.

There's also going to be 3 others who should be able to join the hotel. so there still is more potential to join the table. I think one of them is going to be a medic too, and healers are invaluable to any party.

Well, greek myths are notoriously tragic. If you think about it, Hermes task is that of retrieving the source of what created the labyrinth, so there's a risk that without it, the hotel might cease to be due to how unstabble this realm becomes. Another idea is that freeing Asterion from his sentence means that he will immedietaly have to go back to the realm of Hades. Afterall, he is already dead. Hermes said that the initial plan was to give them about 20 years or something before proposing his request, so it stands to reason there would be some motive to want to stall from making Asterion free right away. 

As the master of the hotel, MC already has a lot of power, and he has a bunch of mythicals to help with this task. So, I don't think there would be any reason to reward him a demigod status and even then, that could conflict with his ability to be the master, since it must be a male human (this reminds me of that non-binary mod. if this rule gives vital implications down the line, then it would make that mod incompatible with the lore). Then there is the idea that ichor, the blood of gods, is nocive to normal mortals. Even if he does indeed become a demigod, he still couldn't be made immortal, so it'd be no more than just a title.

So, right now, I see 2 possible outcomes: You don't do the task, Asterion becomes eternally bound to the realm and eventually turns into stone, or you do the task and the hotel ceases to be with Asterion being returned to Hades.

Basically, what i've found is that the Pedro's scenes will involve Themba or Luke, and Nikos will involve Khenbish or Kota

Sorry for the late response, i wanted to try out a bunch of different iterations to see what else i could find and got carried away reworking saves given rng aspects. The new things of note that I've found out, is that Kota doesn't always appear bottomless in the final scene (giving Themba's patterns flashbacks) , it was a bit weird considering his first impressions of Luke but it could be some cultural aspect i'm unfamiliar with. The other thing was with Lucas and Peter, and the heartache in the reason for those nicknames.

 Also, i'm aware mc didn't exactly promise to follow through with the request, but i thought in both scenes these were important points that weren't brought up, even if MC would still follow through without giving the player any choice. The talk with Hermes could even have been interrupted by Asterion feeling unconfortable with the topic, thus making it shown that some topics of it had to be postponed by "outside" force.

edit: oh, i guess i should specify, when i say bottomless i mean no underwear on.

his buffness can be a bit out of character considering the time he spends isolated in the valley, or it could be interpreted as a hint that he wasn't living under malnourished conditions for that long. aesthetically i like buffness, but lore wise there's nothing on his known background to imply he'd have developed muscles