Hello everyone! I sadly don’t have time for a good old return to Martinaise for more adventures with our favorite drunken amnesiac at the moment. However, I am INCREDIBLY curious about The Final Cut’s new Political Vision Quests. Would it be possible for anyone to present a few quick summaries of the basics on each of them?
Any help would be greatly appreciated, and keep the karaoke rolling baby.
Posted Apr 3, 2021, 1:25 AM UTC
I can give you a good summary of the Communist one:
You are first tasked with using your sense of smell to literally sniff out comrades (true Communists keep their beliefs held close to their chest) so that you can finally build more than 0.00000001% of Communism and 'get organized.'
You eventually find two comrades (>!Manana and Cindy the Skull!<) who tell you of a secret underground meeting being held by a few revolutionaries, and you set out to join them.
Upon discovering >!the meeting in the Capeside apartments, you realize it is actually a two-person book club, consisting of young idealists who then interview you when you ask to join up. During the interview, you can tell them of the books you've read so far in-game and spin them into leftist theory (including the alphabet book!). When you succeed, they give you some required reading- esoteric Communist theory that purports that thoughts influence others by creating literal physical phenomena that emanate outward. Therefore, to achieve Communism, one must simply believe in it. If it remains unestablished? If it fails? People weren't believing hard enough. Upon reaching the highest levels of Communist thought, one could then, supposedly, even manipulate the physical world with their very mind. The two young Communards are trying to build a matchstick castle to see if they can keep it held together with the power of their belief.!<
!After the reading, you three (four if Kim is with you) come to a breakthrough, finally understanding what certain Mesque thinkers had posited some 40 years ago after the Revolution failed- that Communism is a secular sort of religion, one that replaces faith in God with faith in humanity's future. This is a way to achieve everlasting hope, as well as having the knock-on effect of making it easy to justify the means to the end. Like shooting a lot of people. In conclusion, the young Communards still commit themselves to the ideology, simply as a way to express their refusal of the idea that humanity has peaked, or failed, and that things will forever remain broken until the pale swallows us all, because it didn't have to be this way if we had just played our cards better. There didn't have to be this much pain in the world. This much human manufactured pain. Together, you have the option to decide to try the matchstick castle once more as a group, despite your collective doubts. !<
!It fails.!<
!After this, you can make suggestions on how to change their reading club for the better- use posters? Ditch the passphrase? Ditch the secrecy and meet in a coffee house? Ditch the group interview?!<
And that's that. I've yet to test whether the changes you suggest can be seen to take place the next night. I doubt it, though to me it doesn't matter. It really hit me in the feels.
!I think a pretty important part of the matchstick castle is that it fails eventually, but for one shining moment, it succeeds. You get to achieve something impossible and even Kim doesn't know how you achieved it. And then, after that one brilliant moment, a tiny shift in temperature.. And it comes crashing down. But as one of the communists remarks: This was exactly what we tried to achieve, nothing more and nothing less.!<
!I think it required a hand/eye coordination check, so I don't know if it plays out differently if you fail that. But I think it is sad if it does, because it made everything even more beautiful.!<
Holy cow. That sounds freaking incredible. Thank you so much!
Bro is my quest bugged? Which apartment number is it supposed to be in? It's after 22:00 in the "correct location" I've spoken to both relevant parties and tried every door I can in the apartment?
!It's the door by Cindy! The one with the metal bars.!<
A true hero of the working class ✊
Also not getting my +4xp for left wing dialogue choices, surely that's a bug?
It doesn't show you got the xp in dialogue, it goes straight to the xp count.
Must be, unless your thought isn't fully internalized...
I didn't get the option to>! build the castle!<, didn't fail any checks and didn't skip any dialogue option. It just went straight from >!religion!< to >!posters!<.
Now I'm really sad :^(
Same here! What did I miss? Luckily I kept a save before hand
So I guess at best Communism is like a faith but as high Rhetoric shows that opinions calcify without opposing opinions it won't survive it's inevitable schism even if had survived the full onslaught of the Alliance and forced everyone to take up the creeds of communism.
Alright I’ve completed the Ultraliberal quest and the Fascist quest. I’ll try to give a full summary.
Ultraliberal - Savoie-Faire (aka “Savvy”/“Smooth Savvy”). Lays out your current economic state- you’re hustling hard but still broke as a joke. Barely skating by on the Reals you manage to skim and often resort to collecting trash for cash. Savvy says this is going to change and your entire portfolio must be “reconceptualized” so you can break into the big leagues. Conceptualization likes this idea and immediately suggests Art as an asset (being an Actual Art Cop I had a bunch of “high concept” dialogues that were amusing). Savvy insists the art you collect must be tangible (ie physical) so you can hawk it for big bucks. He suggests Cindy the Skull “reeks of art” so you head over to Cindy.
Savvy has you practice a sales pitch (I went with finger guns) to convince Cindy to sell you “something”. Cindy blows you off, you can squabble about “Art” a lot (again Art Cop) but eventually she agrees to sell you some of her “Art” (a hand painting easel she sneezed on spreading the paint everywhere). Some more “high concept” dialogue about its meaning and she demands 40,000 Real. Savvy says this is a buyers market and you haggle (I got it for 10). So with your new “diversified asset” in hand Savvy demands you find someone super rich to sell it to (has to be super rich b/c they’re can’t hang money on the wall they need “obscure art” to abstractly display wealth). Off to Light-bending-Mega-Rich guy in the container.
(Note if you want to do this quest do not visit Light-Man before doing it. It can lock you out and bug up.). Getting into the container requires a super high rhetoric check but Savvy adds a +6 modifier so it’s easy. You enter the container and hock Cindy’s “Art” as best you can (I said the artists was “Anonymous” to maintain secrecy and that it Contained high concept patterns that were stolen circuit diagrams or something...bullshit but he bought it). Mega-Rich guy gives you 220,000 Real in “shares” of some Mercury mining company. You get a little ticker above you Real I game that shows your total “net worth” including the shares. You get the shares and “feel” your net worth increase and become more similar to Mega-Rich guy. Mega-Rich guy recommends you get a personal brand manager to continue your endeavors.
Savvy likes this idea and runs down a lists of candidates - he suggests you visit idiot Doom Spiral (the “High concept” drunk homeless guy who tells you about your Tequila Sunset antics) for an interview.
So you see him and he rambles a lot and you hire him pro-Bono. He suggests a branding campaign with the horse statue to “get your name out there” as that’s the highest concept of visible “brand wealth” folks in this poor area can grasp. You can suggest he cut back on the booze a bit as he needs to focus (Savvy likes this). He goes and does “something” to the statue (it’s covered in scaffold and remains so until the Union goes back to work). After some grumbling (towards end of game) you can go back to the statue and it’s been rebuilt with your name on it in a big glowing sign. Savvy is pleased. Idiot Doom Spiral is happy his client is happy and maybe he had one less beer a day. He’s still perma-shitfaced. Your net worth doesn’t change much and that ends the quest. Savvy says you’ll be a millionaire in a few weeks.
I enjoyed the quest, it’s short but made me laugh and fit very well with Art Copotype. Gave Savoire-Faire skill a bit more of a “voice” which was nice.
Split this up from above as the post is long
Fascist Quest - Endurance remarks that Revochal is a shit hole and getting worse. It’s lost it’s Sovereignty to foreigners after the “Kingsmen” failed and let the country be overrun by communards and hysterical woman. Your gut twists in pain as you agree with Endurances assessment, hurts to see Revochal this way. Endurance says there must be a way to “Turn back time. Go back and make it right. Go back and “get Her back””. To accomplish this he proposes meeting some “brothers” who might have done suggestions. The list is, Rene (old Royalist vet in uniform), Measurehead, Gary, and “Fat-Racist-Lory Driver” (the boring stereotype racist truck driver that Measurehead mocks). He says you need to talk to 3-4...well I would’ve loved to see what Gary had to say but he’d already left (don’t accept Phasmid quest before this or else he disappears) and as it turns out the quests proceeds just fine with two. Rene and Measurehead are no brainers.
For Rene - Some Additional dialogue options appear when he hits you with his war stories. You ask him “How can I go back? I need to turn back time.” He’s baffled at this question and starts asking if you’re crazy...and it’s Harry so naturally you have some more bizarre follow ups that you’re seriously asking this question..as if he could give you the secret of time travel. Rene starts to get pissed off and snap at you, Rene’s friend asks him to calm down (shoots you a pleading glance I interpreted as “please don’t go down this road it’s not good for him”). You have to pass a very high Pain Threshold check to press Rene further. I can’t remember his tone (it’s either a seething raging blowout or in grief and agony) that it’s impossible to turn back time. Revochal had one chance to save itself and prevent its degradation to its current degenerate state and it failed. He lashes at the communards, Ultraliberal marketing, etc. and finishes it up with a hit on the King who abdicated to Fressil (forget his name) who betrayed everyone by abandoning his country in its hour of need to become a VC overseas. He starts panting his friend gets worried and demands he settle down.
So with that very happy and uplifting conversation you head over to Measurehead. There’s a high level check you have to make (can’t remember stat) but you say you want to talk with him about “women” and “turning back time.” He agrees and you meet with him in the Union office (his Mom’s office as you discover in the dialogue). Kim pulls you aside and asks “Hey man why are you doing this? What’s this sudden obsession with turning back time?” Many things you can say - being nice to Kim, being a jackass, or being batshit crazy. Kim says he doesn’t want to talk with Measurehead, especially about women, he waits outside the office.
Measurehead kicks back and opens with “Soooo, Women.” And from there you can talk about a whole range of topics. There’s a ton of stuff there but I didn’t exhaust it all to get on with the quest. Measurehead gives done more personal background, his mother/father/family life. It’s pretty tame. Mom (office) and Dad (welder) worked for Union. He respects them both for what they gave him (mother is “best mother” but Dad “made him tough”). You can read into it a bit more but I didn’t bother. He can rant about his “Strategic Seminal Reserves” (SSR) which is just him covering for his Erectile Dysfunction. You can dig into this in a lot of depth along with some of his race theory and get some interesting stuff to push him on this...(Logic: “If life is a competition and all “conquest” that ultimately matters is sexual and genetic why are you voluntarily conserving semen? Shouldn’t you be doing the opposite?” Or some such - he responds with vague nonsense Rhetoric on this). There were a lot more dialogue options with him on this in various tones I glossed over these. You bring up “I need to turn back time.” And have to pass some check. Measurehead’s response is actually...pretty grounded and blunt. He says it’s impossible but even if it was you should not want to. You need to accept reality as it is and move forward. Once you face forward you can have future conquests, if you wallow in the past you’ll live forever alone in despair. Again this is a summary I may have missed something. He sends you to talk to that pale-driver women who is so burned out on pale she represents the only way “turning back time” is possible. Being a delusional sick person. You meet back up with Kim. He agreed with Measureheads parting message...is surprised you got rational “healthy” advice from that guy.
So because Gary was gone the game judged two was enough I guess, Endurance says you've learned enough and now are ready to "See yourself as your truly are. It's going to be be absolutely *devastating* but there's no way to avoid it." You go to the shack and look at the mirror (huge endurance check). Now the dialogue you get when you pass it - its great. I actually wrote some of it down so I can pass it along here.
Endurance: "It's time you knew the truth brother. Love...time...Revachol...it's all shit. Just a mountain of shit, every bit of it. Face it brother. No one's got the *willpower* to set things right. They won't do what it takes. Look deep inside yourself. You KNOW it's true, because it hurts. It takes a true kingsman to summon the *will* to face reality in all its darkness. To stare straight into the abyss and do *what must be done*.
Endurance: "Remember: Kingsman are not born, they are made. And the only thing that can unmake us is that which drove us to rise above in the first place. We keep that thing locked in the deepest cellars of our mind. So deep we forget what it is. We keep it buried like a horrible secret. We feed it through the cracks in the floorboards out of a sickening sense of nostalgia. Just enough to keep it alive. And yet it still comes to us in moments of weakness, unbidden, a source of shame and panic....
Endurance: The day will come when you need to take a shotgun to that cellar, shoot whatever is down there in the head, and walk away, never looking back. Only then will you be free to love Revachol and she will be *faithful* to you. If you can make this last sacrifice you will finally know happiness.
There's a bit more and in the end Endurance dubs you "Icebreaker and you get a portrait change. Harry's portrait background is now the feudal Revachol flag (see Gary's portrait) and his face is now a slight scowl. tbh I thought it looked like a vast improvement from expression harry or sad harry. Few voices chime in. Harry's will be like this permanently, (due to extensive nerve damage from Pain Threshold). And that's the quest.
Was very short, and I couldn't go back and talk to Gary as he disappeared (his VA is pretty awful anyway so I didn't care). Rene's character was fleshed out a bit more which is nice. I thought he was underused in the original. You get more Measurehead which is nice. The ending Endurance dialogue was good stuff. Would be nice to know if there's an option in the final dream to "shoot" Dolores Day with a shotgun. But I didn't continue further on this save (played the Ultra quest above via reload).
Thank you so much for the summaries! This is exactly what I was looking for!
This is genius! Does anyone know if you can shoot Dora in the dream sequence?
no, you can not
Pitty. It would have been the perfect use for that spare bullet.
Spoiler below for the moralist quest.
Only done moralist. You realise you need to assign 'la responsabilité' for the situation in martinaise, and to create a commitee in order to start making progress. You end up contacting the coalition for assistance in order to do that. It's fairly straight-forward, a few fairly difficult checks to pass in order to progress but it should be doable with most characters, perhaps with a little save scumming if you want to.
Communist quest is focused on some extra lore. Moralist is mysterious and eerie. Liberal is post-ironic about current state of our capitalistic world. Surprisingly, i enjoyed the fascist one the most of all as it is pretty wholesome in terms of *self-discovery journey*. Unexpectedly intimate and deeply thoughtful. If you don't have time, would definitely reccomend to check out at least this one.
Will doing it piss off kim though?
Asking the real questions here.
Nope. Measurehead of all people gives Harry some sound advice. In between the rest of his rantings of course. Kim agrees with it. Quest fits nicely with the game tone.
In the Ultraliberal one you want to make a lot of money and let people know about it.
Is there anywhere I can find a playthrough showing some of these quests?
I’d appreciate that too!
I don't think it's been made yet.
Huge write up & walk-throughs of the new content.
Thanks!
I’ve only done the communist one. You join a reading group. It’s funny if you’ve ever known any leftists.
do you know how to get the passhprase ?
Talk to all the socialists (there are a lot in this game!) and you'll get it.
Bro is my quest bugged? Which apartment number is it supposed to be in? It's after 22:00 in the "correct location" I've spoken to both relevant parties and tried every door I can in the apartment?
Quite possibly. Have you tried chilling with Cindy?
Depends what you mean chilling? I've exhausted all her dialogue for the minute. So I have art cop that gives 10xp for conceptualization and I assume I'm supposed to get 4xp whenever I chose my commie dialogue choices but ain't. Think I should put it in the bug megathread?
She lives next to the reading group meetup. If it isn't popping for you at ten pm then something's gone wrong.