The Alters: Last Variable

It took me two attempts to appreciate the main story, because I lost almost all my Alters during my first playthrough to the rebell faction. But at least the first part had a somewhat pleasant story, interesting character "branches", personalities, which all tied back to the story itself. The story itself had a satisfying, rewarding set of endings available, that ultimately made me feel like it was worth it (in my second playthrough). This DLC has none of that. Last Variable doubles down on the base building. Base building becomes the grind. In itself this isn't necessarily bad. But grind for what? The new Alters feel like a doubling down of the first part's challenges, to an artificial extent. It feels old, tiring, boring to listen to the new Alters. Not because they are poorly written in themselves, but because we've been through this at length in the main story. It's cliche at this point. So there's no reward from the character interactions. There's no reward from external characters anymore, no Lena, nobody else to care about. Caring about people is one of the key drivers that keeps humans engaged. But fine, you'd think, it's just a DLC. At least the ending will reward you, but nope. The ending validates a certain undertone that is hinted throughout the story (if you want to call it a story). I appreciate movies with this specific genre/theme, and there are certain components that you need to make such a theme satisfying, not depressing. This story doesn't adopt these components. Unless there's a hidden ending nobody has discovered afaik, the main ending is depressing, not satisfying, not rewarding. It's a net zero impact you have for all the grind. There's no philosophical insight gained, which could be some worst case excuse for this ending. That is because all philosophy and physics mentioned ingame is superficial and/or inaccurate. So nobody gains anything from this DLC. Neither player nor characters gain knowledge, insight, or have any impact on anything. It's a unclimactic grind that ends in a huge void. The ending also makes implausible assumptions, pitches possibilities that then can't be pursued (like destroying the QC or not lying to a significant Alter). It forces the player into two choices when I as a player would immediately have picked a third choice that the game doesn't offer. And there would be tons of other plausible options to bring this to a satisfying ending, with or without the themes they tried to incorporate. Overall, the developers have failed to learn from what has made their first part interesting. The game feels like a grind, without any thrill to it. I had to push myself to get to the ending just because I was curious about the ending itself, but then the ending isn't rewarding either. There are no characters to care about much, partially because character dialogues are reintroduced/repeated as part of the regular gameplay. The base building is actually fun at first, but then the challenges stop and the new tasks are more like alterations and repetitions of previous tasks. It's a boring grind without reward.