The Alters: Last Variable

Man, I wish I liked this DLC more, especially considering the base game was one of my favorites from last year. I liked the premise of exploring the secrets of an oasis in an otherwise dead world. It’s a novel idea, but that quickly falls apart because the DLC ends up feeling like a mishmash of ideas that just don’t work well together. The gameplay is fun for the first few hours since it’s essentially just the base game in a new area. However, the introduction of the piping mechanics, along with the lack of proper tutorials for the more complex parts, makes it feel unnecessarily confusing. The Alters themselves are also watered-down versions of those from the base game. They’re nowhere near as interesting and their only purpose is to push the story forward. Story-wise, I was intrigued at first, but it eventually devolves into characters constantly throwing vague explanations back and forth about what could be causing the phenomenon. Then the ending basically gives you a big middle finger because NONE OF IT EVEN MATTERS. The story could’ve gone in several interesting directions, but instead it settles for the most cliché and underwhelming one. Missed the mark on what could’ve been a great follow-up to the main story.

内容很足，但本质上还是剧情驱动的游戏而不是玩法驱动， 几个分身剧情稍显薄弱，矛盾刚开始就浮现，几轮对话后立刻尖锐，然后完成任务后立刻蜕变，太赶了，在我没意识到的时候就已经完成全部分身任务了。 玩法上前中期资源管理做的不错，但后面自动化出来之后，由于绿洲区不会摧毁基建，分身就可以蹲在家里摸鱼了。探索还是老样子。 我的配置不能说顶级，但好歹玩玩3A也是很流畅的，但在DLC中总是出现掉帧和卡顿，不至于AMD支持的游戏连A卡和AU都优化不好吧。 最后说说科扬的剧情吧，其实玩到中期就已经猜到套路了，看起来好像玩家科扬是真的想去探寻绿洲的奥秘，但就游戏表现来看，玩家一直在被推着走，家里有人消失了，一群人只有面板动了一下，然后该吃吃该喝喝。甚至任务都是过了几天才会跳出来。当然也侧面证明了科扬（一代目）本质上是相当傲慢的人，以至于传到玩家都逃不过他的设定。 几个分身出去一趟就彻底失去了人类的进取心和好奇心，可以说已经不是人类了，以致于根本无法理解他们的想法和共情。 DLC的名字其实也是印证了官方推崇的价值观和选择，但我仍然选择了另一个结局。 我相信人定胜天，无数人类科学家在看不到未来的情况下前赴后继将人类文明推到此处，不是来放下的。 最后，我也有猜想就是初代科扬在经历了日出之后实际上已经变得不正常了，才会导致设定的扬机器人会做出清除数据进行迭代的行为，完全不符合科研逻辑，从研究变成了掷骰子，可以说编剧已经完全沉浸在量子力学的艺术当中了。

After laying 18 miles of pipes and still not having megafluid, I just stopped caring. I really liked the idea and the start of the DLC, but the megafluid part was just annoying. I don't care about finishing it anymore. Let them all die in the Oasis. Ain't nobody got time for that.

I write this with a heavy heart. I absolutely loved the alien planet exploration theme, the resource management/base building mechainics, and the storytelling for Jan in the base game. As such I was very excited about this DLC and bought it day 1. While I don't regret doing so, I find it difficult to recommend this expansion to anyone who didn't absolutely adore the base game. The graphics are excellent and a key selling point of both the base game and this DLC. Getting it to look as good as it does, while running well even on my mid-to-high tier PC (especially in this day and age) is an impressive achievement and the team should be proud of it. I will say the introduction of a majority vegetation environment in this DLC does actually start to harm the game's performance, but this is understandable and it doesn't make the game horrendously unplayable (for me). Gameplay: The base game had you manage a variety of threats to you and your base at the same time to maintain tension and momentum - balancing your time with resource gathering, exploration, base building, and keeping your Alters happy and healthy. All this was punctuated with the knowledge that you had to ensure you were progressing the main story and completing all of the mandatory tasks, or you would face a game over. In the Last Variable this tension is essentially gone. There is only one existential threat to you and it is treated more as an inconvenience. I didn't mind being able to take my time playing this game's resource -> building -> crafting loop as I found it pretty fun, but the lack of urgency means the loop felt closer to busywork than it did in the base game. I also found that I spent a lot of time waiting without anything to do because I was gated by a certain type of research or progress. There simply isn't a need to be paranoid about gathering enough resources unlike the base game. The new buildings are a cool idea but they really tested the game's somewhat clunky basebuilding mechanics. The complexity of what you're asked to build starts to resemble a factory sim game, for better or worse. I think I would've enjoyed it more if they were just adjusted a bit to be more user friendly. Story/Alters: The game's central idea, the Alters, are really underwhelming in this DLC. The base game had you manage numerous Alters at the same time, who all developed their unique personalities, cliques, and relationships with the player. Even scripted, their contributions both pushed the plot forward and made the original Jan examine himself and his past. This gave the Alters presence and an emotional weight that pays off throughout the story and the ending. The individual quests are spread out enough that you don't finish all of them quickly and then forget about them. I found only one Alter in this DLC to have an individual story even remotely close in character development and intrigue, but it is also so short that it was over by the first major milestone I reached. The Alters here are also disturbingly.... okay with being Alters? There are interesting ideas/implications here that could've been explored in the context of the base game's events, but they just... aren't. The emotional states of the Alters here are disappointingly easy to manage, but if they weren't I imagine they would've just been cumbersome instead. The sad truth is that only the player character, Scientist, actually matters. And yet, Scientist himself doesn't really get the character development that he needed for the ending of the story to actually feel meaningful. As such, the ending is just a nothingburger. I didn't feel anything and wasn't compelled to choose what seemed like the "canon" ending. I appreciate the game giving us an ending that breaks up the monotony of the story up until that point but I don't like that I felt like the story wasted my time building to a climax that it ultimately didn't earn. Conclusion The issue with the Last Variable is that it is essentially a watered down version of the base game. The base-building is the same but with new buildings, the tech tree is identical, the exploration is limited to similar looking/behaving areas, the player character is less interesting, the Alters are watered down, and the story doesn't really go anywhere super interesting. Perhaps the best thing I got from this DLC was realising what made the base game so good in the first place. If you, like me, loved the base game and wanted to play more of it, I recommend this DLC on a discount. However if you only liked the base game and wanted to get more of it in this DLC, I regret to inform that anything Last Variable does, the base game has done better.

[h1] All that pipework was for nothing... [/h1] The main game is among my favorite games, but this DLC is worse in almost every aspect, which is a huge disappointment for me. - Almost no variety in your interactions with alters. You can get pretty much all the content on the 1st run (but it's not that bad actually). - The main game forces you to make a lot of hard decisions with consequences throughout the game. In the DLC, the story is fully linear (just one choice at the very end). - There is much less story content, although the time to beat is pretty much the same. - The main game has a lot of interactions with and between your alters. Here, we only have one short quest line for each of them and a couple of linear side quests. They are still good and interesting, and some of them are pretty surprising. But you won't be able to settle arguments between the alters as you could in the main game. And consider the fact that there are only 4 alters. - Exploration doesn't involve finding unique items that unlock dialogues/activities as in the main game (with minor exceptions). - There isn't even the slightest extension of the original story. - The ending is just unsatisfying, which was actually intended by the devs. Although there are some things to speculate about - they don't add up and some of them feel like plot holes because of that. - As I've said, the pipe system is tedious, and that's coming from a factory games enjoyer. But it can be fixed with some QOL changes. - Dialogues are filled with pseudoscientific gibberish, which is quickly becoming annoying. - Optimization is poor. Also, I got couple of game crashes, a few minor bugs and one bug that forced me to load a save. Overall the DLC lacks the core elements that made the main game so great. I do get that it's a DLC, not a full game, but it just feels redundant next to the main game. It adds nothing new either narratively or in terms of gameplay. But if you enjoyed the main game and are fine with all the downsides - it should be worth playing.

因为人会老死，人的研究领域有限，就不去探索外星了吗 但，这是废物的思维 我们需要更多的科学家杨！

Honestly, this isn't what I expected from this expansion. I rated the base game a solid 10/10, so I was hyped for the DLC. Here's what we ended up with: [list] [*]Bizarre retcons [*]Illogical gameplay moments [*]Confusing game flow [*]An ending that makes zero sense [*]Unanswered questions [*]Broken optimization [/list] Attention, SPOILERS ahead!!! (And sorry guys, this is less of a review and more of a disappointed fan's rant) Remember how the original game told us the Oasis was completely protected from radiation? Well, not anymore. How is this explained in-game? 'Well, things just changed.' That's it. Somehow Palpatine returned, right? Since you no longer have to run from the sun, you'd think you could just wait out the day inside your bunker, do your chores, and head back out to the surface later. Except the daytime here lasts 13 years! And it's followed by 2 weeks of night :) I won't claim a triple-star system can't work like that, but it still feels weird. Okay, so we built cryo-pods to sleep through the day. But if you don't go to sleep before daytime hits, it's an instant Game Over! Why? Just because. Like, come on, what's stopping me from hanging out inside the base for a couple more days without stepping outside? I want to finish my research, build a new module, or do something else! I'm inside a freaking bunker! To make matters worse, they added terraforming, meaning you can cover the entire map with an Oasis. You'd think that would save us from having to spend years in cryo-sleep. Nope. The game still just ends. It makes so little sense and completely breaks immersion to the point where I don't even know what to say. Why do magnetic storms affect us, and why does the crew get irradiated while literally inside the bunker? Also "just because". On the bright side, you can leave your Alters in the Oases for 13 years and watch them age. And after all that time, you only get to exchange two sentences with them: "How's it going, old man? Doing alright? Cool, see ya!" Seriously, man? You haven't seen the guy in decades! Not only are they basically living in a tent, but the tent itself hasn't changed at all over all those years: no signs of someone actually living there, and zero wear and tear over decades. The Alters themselves are much less interesting than in the base game, but that's just imho (btw, why are all the plant-related Jans such wimps?) The game throws a ton of questions and clues at you WITHOUT ANSWERING A SINGLE ONE![list] [*]Why did the rules of the Oasis change? It no longer gets destroyed by the sun only to regenerate later; now it's just immune to heat. [*]Why did radiation start affecting it? [*]Why do the Alters refuse to leave the Oasis? What is the Siren Effect, and what causes it? [*]What's up with the first Scientist's journal? What made him think the planet is alive and the Oasis is merely a result of his observation? [*]And most importantly, why didn't Ally Corp return to the planet? Did Rapidium suddenly become useless to everyone?[/list] I honestly feel kinda sorry for the original Jan S. He sacrificed his career as a scientist on Earth to unravel the mysteries of this planet, only to accomplish practically nothing in the end. Oh, and one technical detail: they broke the optimization in the DLC. Now it stutters even on a 5080 :) Great concept, but the execution really fell short. It's honestly disappointing. [h3]Final Score: 4 Scientist Alters out of 10. [/h3]

После прохождения этого дополнения ощущение, будто бы меня окатили ледяной водой. Очень жосткий финал. Такие эмоции последний раз мне дарила только SOMA. Прям уф, надо посидеть и осознать реальность. У дополнения есть два противоположных финала, но для меня он точно один. Я бы поступила также, даже не сомневаюсь. Лучше всего передаёт сюжет дополнения одно из стихотворений Александра Блока: [spoiler]Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека, Бессмысленный и тусклый свет. Живи еще хоть четверть века — Всё будет так. Исхода нет. Умрёшь — начнёшь опять сначала И повторится всё, как встарь: Ночь, ледяная рябь канала, Аптека, улица, фонарь.[/spoiler] Теперь о ключевых особенностях дополнения. Сперва положительные моменты: 1. Сюжет идеально вплетён в оригинальную историю. Логичное продолжение жизни Ученого, который решил остаться. Задействована база мятежников (Яна Механика). Остались руины базы-колеса. 2. Привет из прошлого от оригинальных Янов из основной игры хоть и короткий момент, но очень душевный. Если бы позволял бюджет, лучше бы заменили на CGI сцену или на что-то уровня той самой песни. 3. Карта очень понравилась! Она огромная. Гораздо больше, чем в оригинальной игре. Многоуровневая, запутанная. Такое я люблю. 4. Графика - моё почтение. Дымка, небо, скалы потрясающие. 5. Есть реиграбельность. Она связана с поведением альтеров после определенных назначений. Надо раза 4 перепройти, чтобы все реплики открыть. Может больше. Я буду переигрывать на максимальной сложности, мне нравится этот момент. Слабые моменты в дополнении: 1. Отсутствие CGI сцен не дает того же драматического эффекта погружения в историю и принятия одиночества, что имеется в оригинальной игре. Как будто всё происходящее не так серьезно, как в оригинальной игре. 2. В дополнении есть сценарно очень подходящие моменты для душевной CGI сцены спустя 13 лет после завершения цикла, но разработчики ими не воспользовались. Вероятно из-за ограниченного бюджета. 3. Нет жизненных уроков от альтеров как в оригинальной игре, хотя каждый из них по своему уникален и не похож на Ученого. Уроки прям просятся сюда. Тоже очень жаль. 4. Солнце перестало быть смертельной опасностью, его просто можно переждать. Ощущение стабильной безопасности убило оригинальную атмосферу борьбы за выживание, гонку со смертью. 5. Лимит на сохранения и на закрепленные сохранения. Просто...зачем? Мешает реиграбельности. По итогу есть ощущение, что это дополнение ставит жирную точку во вселенной Alters. Хотя я бы очень хотела ещё какое-нибудь DLC. По этой игре надо фильм снимать на уровне Голливуда. Сюжет прям написан под Райана Гослинга.