We are back this week with our thoughts on the penultimate episode of Tales from the Borderlands! Catch a ride!

Full transcript below the cut!

Transcript

This episode contains spoilers for Tales from the Borderlands.

JAYLEE: Hello and welcome back to the Push to Smart Water Cooler. This week we are tackling the penultimate episode of Tales from the Borderlands, at least for this season. Last episode we left off without party in dire straits, as Vallory basically beat us up, took Athena, and is the Boss of Bosses now. This episode starts off pretty much immediately after that, where Vallory wants to get Gortys’ last piece, which is up in Hyperion.

STACEY: And here the game kind of takes a change as far as genre tropes. It really starts pulling lovingly from the heist genre.

JAYLEE: Which it does so beautifully.

STACEY: Mhmm. It’s mostly obviously in the narrative cues and the things we see, but the way we get to participate in it, especially the montage, where they’re talking about the heist, was just really funny.

JAYLEE: The big idea that Rhys has is that he needs to dress up like Vasquez, and for that he has to go find his dead body and then scan it and then get a disguise so his can be “Rhysquez.” Fiona and Sasha need to get Scooter’s help to build a spaceship.

STACEY: I love this whole sequence. I was kind of hinting at it earlier, but one of my favorite things was… In every heist movie they go through the plan and there’s like a montage of them actually doing the plan. And it is so ridiculous, and you know that it’s not going to work out this way because these are the Borderlands characters.

JAYLEE: Exactly.

STACEY: But as things… Like, when he’s hacking the mainframe in the montage, literally all you have to do is press O or something… (laughs)

JAYLEE: Yeah, you just kind of mash the buttons. I loved that!

STACEY: And it’s hilarious because that’s exactly how “hacking” is portrayed in Hollywood. It’s just hitting the keys a bunch and going “I’m in!” And that’s exactly what we did.

JAYLEE: Yeah. Mhmm.

STACEY: And it was really really funny, and really clever kind of acknowledgement of that.

JAYLEE: Another clever acknowledgement is during the present time, with the masked stranger, Rhys decides that he’s going to make a break for it, but he makes sure to tell Fiona that the best way not to get shot is to zigzag. Which is hilarious, not just because of how ridiculous he is when he zigzags, but because in all of these first person shooters that is rule number one: zigzag and people have trouble firing at you.

STACEY: Yeah.

JAYLEE: So I loved that little nod to the roots of the first person shooter.

STACEY: I didn’t even think of that. I just kept thinking Archer and “Concentric circles, Babou!”

JAYLEE: (laughs)

STACEY: But that is so funny, because that is exactly what you do. Or jump up and down. It’s just really silly movements that wouldn’t make any sense in real life, but the game’s program and structure that’s going to help you win. That is really clever. And he figured that out all on his own as an NPC.

JAYLEE: Yeah.

STACEY: Didn’t work.

JAYLEE: He put his own special spin on it.

STACEY: Yeah. Which e both did different options there. You decided to run with Rhys… (laughs)

JAYLEE: Yeah, which I loved, because Fiona is just doing a steady little jog and Rhys is flailing behind her, and it’s hilarious.

STACEY: I chose not to run, which I thought was also really funny, because both she and their masked assailant just stare at him and talk about how ridiculous he looks as he’s running around in the foreground screaming. That was a very good way to start the episode. (laughs)

JAYLEE: Yeah. (laughs)

STACEY: One of the things that kind of stuck out to me about this episode is that it’s another… With all our episodic game Water Coolers we’re at the penultimate episode, and we’re still no closer to figuring out who this masked guy is and what he wants. We kind of suspect who he is…

JAYLEE: I read this interesting theory that’s “What if it’s Athena?”

STACEY: (gasps)

JAYLEE: And that would make it so much better than Felix.

STACEY: Oh! I like that one better.

JAYLEE: But I’m not sure how far into the future this is, so…

STACEY: Mhmm. One thing I will say to get my negative out of the way: this didn’t really do much to advance the main plot in a way that was necessarily compelling as a whole, I suppose.

JAYLEE: It didn’t really feel like it was setting up the final episode.

STACEY: Yeah. It was this thing where I really enjoyed it but at the end, I was like, wait, we only have one more episode. What are we even wrapping up at this point?

JAYLEE: Yeah.

STACEY: And we kind of have… Getting a little bit ahead, but we finally see the “Will you or won’t you let Jack take control?” kind of come to a head, but it’s not in a way feels that dramatically satisfying as part of a whole arch with the other episodes because we didn’t really have that good foundation laid before. As we kind of talked about, it never felt like there was a point where it’s like, I really should have trusted Jack.

JAYLEE: Yeah.

STACEY: So I feel like as an episode in an overarching story it did not work well, but as an individual two hours of play it was really, really funny and really fun.

JAYLEE: One thing I will say about Handsome Jack, in this episode they didn’t really make me feel like he was ever a valid option, but they did try to humanize him a little bit.

STACEY: Yeah!

JAYLEE: Which I think that did a lot to kind of ease a bit of that.

STACEY: Mhmm, that’s exactly what I was thinking, especially… Getting ahead when you’re at his desk and you see the photo of his daughter. These little things that are clearly meant to manipulate you into feeling like, okay, maybe I can trust this guy, even though we don’t really have that established from earlier episodes. And I was Googling before this, trying to figure out the story on his Angel, and apparently there’s this whole big backstory on it in the game, in the Borderlands games. So I’m sure that added a little bit extra for people that have played the games that maybe that wouldn’t have humanized him as much. Or I wonder if that would have colored their feelings on him. But yeah, I came away from this really wanting to play Borderlands. (laughs)

JAYLEE: (laughs) Which is good! Unlike the Game of Thrones game, which literally keeps me from watching the new season of Game of Thrones.

STACEY: Well, to be fair, the new season of Game of Thrones should keep you from watching the new season of Game of Thrones. It wasn’t very good.

JAYLEE: One thing that commenters in our previous episode pointed out is that Athena is actually a playable character in the pre-sequel, and the previous episode really sets up how she gets to that game. So this episode gave you a lot of closure with Athena. You go to Scooter’s garage and get to talk to her girlfriend. And you’d actually interacted with her girlfriend previously. So what did you do in this situation?

STACEY: I was just truthful with her. I told her, you know, she was training us, somebody hired her to do that. She put up an this amazing fight, she didn’t really have time to say anything, she was just doing this because it was a job.

JAYLEE: So I said that it was a delivery job.

STACEY: Oh.

JAYLEE: Fiona pulls out the packet of bullets that Athena gave her from Felix, and so she was like, “See, it was a delivery job.”

STACEY: Oh! Should we talk about then Rhys and Handsome Jack and Vaughn going to get Vasquez’s body?

JAYLEE: Wait, Vaughn was with you?

STACEY: Yeah!

JAYLEE: Vaughn wasn’t with me.

STACEY: (gasps)

JAYLEE: What?!

STACEY: Wait, what?! Did you not have the scene on the back of the truck, then?

JAYLEE: No! Because Vaughn is with Cassius. He wasn’t in this episode at all other than a conversation over a comm.

STACEY: Oh no, he was in this episode. Cassius gave him to Vallory, so he’s Vallory’s hostage, and we had a conversation in the back of the truck and he asked if I thought he should make a break for it and I told him no, and then you had the option to—since you’re hands are tied, instead of a brofist, a bro-knee.

JAYLEE: (laughs)

STACEY: And then I got the alert “You and Vaughn at the broest of bros.” And then he still stayed with the truck while I and Handsome Jack went an got Vasquez and his face.

JAYLEE: Yeah, that didn’t happen at all.

STACEY: I wonder what choices we made?

JAYLEE: I’m guessing it might be because I tried to stop Athena from killing Cassius, but Cassius and Vaughn run off.

STACEY: Oh, interesting!

JAYLEE: When shit hits the fan.

STACEY: Yeah.

JAYLEE: One of the first moments that made me laugh my ass off was when they were talking about face pizza.

STACEY: Yeah!

JAYLEE: Rhys is like, “Ugh, pepperoni.” And it’s just… (laughs)

STACEY: (laughs)

JAYLEE: And the delivery is so perfect. And this entire scene is just like… I loved it. When he’s peeling off the face and Handsome Jack is like, “Yeah! Just like a serial killer!” And It’s…. It was just such a beautiful…

STACEY: The part that made me laugh was when Rhys goes running and just Jack’s like, “I can fly!”

JAYLEE: Oh Yeah!

STACEY: It was like, it didn’t fit the scene at all, but it made me laugh.

JAYLEE: Yeah.

STACEY: Yeah, there’s a lot of really clever writing.

JAYLEE: So once you collect all the pieces and once you get Scooter and Athena’s girlfriend to make you a spaceship, then you have the big credits moment with the song which is also hilarious because there’s that walking-staring-weird sequence, and then they’re up and space and Rhys vomits on the guy and it’s just…. I always look forward to those sequences. And this one they put it off a lot longer than they usually do. So it was building up and I was really happy. (laughs)

STACEY: (laughs)

JAYLEE: And then you get that scene with Scooter where he dies, and I was very sad.

STACEY: Yeah.

JAYLEE: But I wasn’t going to kiss him, because…

STACEY: I did by accident. (laughs)

JAYLEE: Oh no! (laughs)

STACEY: Because I chose… It’s like, Step 3! I was like, okay, on to the next step. I’ll just have her commit and just go with it. And it’s like, no, Step 3 was make out! Nooooo! (laughs)

JAYLEE: Did you forget? (laughs) I hugged and it was very poignant.

STACEY: (laughs) For the record they did not make out, it was a little kiss. But he got his Dr. Strangelove, riding the rocket down sequence, yelling “Catch a ride!”

JAYLEE: Yeah.

STACEY: So it’s like, if you’re gonna go…

JAYLEE: Did you shoot out the satellite?

STACEY: I didn’t.

JAYLEE: You didn’t?!

STACEY: I didn’t. Cause I didn’t wanna—

JAYLEE: You heartless… person!

STACEY: We could have got caught. We were going into enemy territory.

JAYLEE: So you can program what it says, and one of them is “Catch a Ride,” obviously, which is what I chose, because of course.

STACEY: Yeah.

JAYLEE: But another one “See you Space Cowboy.”

STACEY: Oh!

JAYLEE: Which I swore you would have done.

STACEY: No! I didn’t do it! Aw! I wish I did!

JAYLEE: You didn’t honor Scooter’s memory. I’m so offended.

STACEY: No, I had to make sure we got through with the mission.

JAYLEE: And then you finally land and Rhys suits up as Vasquez, and meets the guys outside.

STACEY: Which, this is part of the genius of this game. We complain in Game of Thrones and some of the later The Walking Dead episodes that your choices don’t matter. Here they’re not going to change the course of the story, but they matter so much in terms of creating the perfect joke.

JAYLEE: Yeah.

STACEY: And so when you first have the chance to approach these guards, they’re going to be suspicious of you no matter what. But depending on what you say to them, you can get a really, really funny sequence.

JAYLEE: And then we have the big reveal that Yvette double-crossed us.

STACEY: Whaaaaaat? That’s another thing: is she going to end up being the Big Bad? Since this is the second to last episode?

JAYLEE: I don’t think so because she was alluding to management.

STACEY: Mhmm.

JAYLEE: She’s like “I’m going to take you to management.”

STACEY: Mhmm.

JAYLEE: So I feel like that might be. But I don’t know, maybe Vallory is, maybe Handsome Jack is. That’s one of the things that kind of threw me is that I’m still not entirely sure what the big hurdle that we have to jump over is.

STACEY: Which again, going with our idea that these are just NPCs, they’re not going to have a big hurdle. But it felt…

JAYLEE: The hurdle is themselves.

STACEY: Yeah. (laughs)  But it felt like… In the last episode you were talking about that kind of meta-narrative and the idea of Athena training Fiona to be more than an NPC and to take control of her own story and then it felt like she just failed spectacularly and now we’re just back to the status quo of these people just no idea what they’re doing. And this is going into… I don’t think this advanced the main story. I have no idea what the main story is at this point.

JAYLEE: (laughs)

STACEY: But I’m struggling to decide whether or not that’s a bad thing, because I’m enjoying it so much just bumbling around with these people.

JAYLEE: Yeah, exactly. I feel like it’s one of those things where I’m not going to know if it’s a bad thing until that final episode.

STACEY: Yeah.

JAYLEE: And then from here the heist continues and you all have your little missions. Sasha, Fiona and Gortys have to steal the tour guide’s ID badge and then “Rhysquez” has to disable the security in this weird brick game.

STACEY: I did not understand what was happening in that scene. It was like halfway through and the bricks are all building up and it’s like, oh shit I’m supposed to be doing something!

JAYLEE: Yeah.

STACEY: And then Handsome Jack—I don’t know if he does this for everybody or just for people like me that don’t understand what’s happening—

JAYLEE: Oh, he did it for me too.

STACEY: And you understood what was happening. (laughs)

JAYLEE: But I didn’t really know what was happening either, so… (laughs)

STACEY: (laughs) But Handsome Jack kind of takes over. Which again, might be building to you’re going to have to trust Handsome Jack, like kind of creating that maybe he is on our side, where he hasn’t really necessarily helped us before. But yeah, that sequence as a playable sequence didn’t quite work. But we should say this is also where a sight gag is established too. Once Rhysquez is walking the halls, you see in the background, people—

JAYLEE: Accountants. (laughs)

STACEY: —Do the thing where they do the finger guns and pretend like they’re shot.

JAYLEE: Yeah.

STACEY: And Rhysquez does it once to somebody, and then you see it in other scenes—like with Fiona and Sasha in the plaza—in the background getting more and more elaborate, like people sneaking behind plants to shoot people with their finger guns.

JAYLEE: Which was so amazing. I felt like on its own it would have been hilarious as this totally random corporate life thing. And then it builds to—

STACEY: The greatest payoff. (laughs)

JAYLEE: (laughs) Which is so random, but it was the perfect kind of comedic pacing. At that point there hadn’t been a big laugh in a while, so it was time. And so they just did this completely over-the-top sequence, where it almost felt like my button presses didn’t really matter that much.

STACEY: No, it very much like was like John Woo, slow-mo pulling both finger guns out from his coat and it was so silly. And of course all the sound effects are people just making gun noises.

JAYLEE: Yeah.

STACEY: And then I like that also in that sequence you have the people who were not involved just walking around the cafeteria. Like right when he slams into the table to flip it to dodge, the guy with his coffee cup just kind of gets up and stands out of the way like this happens every day. (laughs) And you had the guy with his cell phone…

JAYLEE: And the guy who’s just randomly cleaning around all the dead bodies. (laughs)

STACEY: (laughs)

JAYLEE: And then you have Sasha, Gortys, and Fiona getting the ID badge, which of course goes horribly wrong because Gortys is amazing. (laughs)

STACEY: Yeah! (laughs)

JUSTIN: And she’s like, “Would you like another cup of whatever humans drink?” And then smashes everything everywhere. Oh, I just loved it.

STACEY: Telltale and Gearbox: please merchandise this. Get on a talking Gortys doll or robot or something. I will buy it. Please. She is so cute! (laughs) Again, I keep coming back to it’s not advancing the story, but it is so funny and it’s like, there’s so much love put into all these little details that make it so funny. Before we were recording, when I first finished it a few days ago, I was like, “Okay, did you do this choice? Okay, I’m going to send a clip of it just so you can see what I got because it was really funny.”

JAYLEE: Yeah.

STACEY: And you’d send me a clip of what you did in that situation and it was really funny. And this is a game—I don’t want to say it’s made for it—but it does especially well with the advent of YouTube and Let’s Players because you can share and see all the different possible scenarios. Because they’re all really funny!

JAYLEE: I was thinking about it because I was getting very emotional when I was playing the episode, thinking about how this all has to end. We’re going to have to say goodbye to these characters. And it reminded me of The Walking Dead, and how there was always this gap that I put between myself and the characters, because other than Clem and Lee, they could die at an moment. And that’s what made the first season so moving.  But in this I don’t have that gap because nobody’s really died until Scooter. And it’s just kind of jokey and fun, so when the stakes get raised, I’m caught off guard and I’m a lot more emotional than I would be in The Walking Dead.

STACEY: Yeah, which that happened to me at the beginning of the episode and it occurred to me it did not happen to you. Vaughn gets stabbed. Vallory stabs him in side.

JAYLEE: Vallory stabs Sasha for me.

STACEY: Really? Interesting! That’s a totally different read. And you still have Fiona having to make that choice and try to talk with her, right?

JAYLEE: Yeah.

STACEY: Okay, that’s interesting. That would be… I feel like I would play that very differently if it was Fiona’s sister being stabbed.

JAYLEE: Yeah, because I did it, and then I pretty much gave in pretty quickly. And then Sasha was like, “You should have tried to get something out of it.” And I was like, she just stabbed you through the arm!

STACEY: Oh.

JAYEE: So I don’t know.

STACEY: Yeah, Vaughn got stabbed in the side, and still had Fiona try to argue for something—because it’s Vaughn—

JAYLEE: (laughs)

STACEY: But at the same time that was the first time I thought, oh yeah, this is a Telltale game. People die in these games. (laughs)

JAYLEE: (laughs) Quite often.

STACEY: So should we talk about the actual tour that Fiona has to give?

JAYLEE: Yes. Which I loved.

STACEY: Me too.

JAYLEE: Because another thing, it is on rails, that’s the thing: in a game like Game of Thrones, you want your choices to matter. You need your choices to matter to be invested. Because it’s shitty.

STACEY: (laughs)

JAYLEE: And for Tales from the Borderlands it’s like, it’s on rails, and there is a story, but it’s all about the characters and the moments. And so you do feel like you’re piloting this ship in a way, because you are choosing all the gags.

STACEY: In think in Game of Thrones I think when we say we want our choices to matter, we want them to have definitive influence on the story as far as where it could branch. We want Event A to affect Event B. Whereas here, A and B are static, and that’s okay, it’s more about the little squiggly line in between and making the best jokes.

JAYLEE: With Game of Thrones I want my choice or my consequence to resonate with me in some way. And that doesn’t happen when I’m like, I’m taking my sword with Ramsay—nope.

STACEY: (laughs)

JAYLEE: But when it’s something like “’Sup ladies?” and they talk about misogyny, then it’s like, I did that. That’s awesome.

STACEY: Yeah.

JAYLEE: Or if I shoot a diamond pony. (laughs)

STACEY: (laughs) Oh my god! Oh my god, it’s just… It kept going and it was so funny!

JAYLEE: Yeah. “What? What?”

STACEY: Oh my god! And there was so much going on in that moment. I was like…. She shoots it, which is already funny, and then Gortys is yelling and hitting it, “I’m ready for life in prison!”

JAYLEE: (laughs)

STACEY: And then it’s bleeding and Fiona’s freaking out, and then she gets… It was perfectly… Everything was perfectly timed. It was beautiful.

JAYLEE: Yeah.

STACEY: But before we had to do that, we’re taking these dudebro Jack fans through the tour and you have to make it up as you go along, which as someone who has never played Borderlands, I chose to make what looked to me like the most ridiculous choices.

J; Yeah, me too!

STACEY: I said like, “Oh, this is Jack’s father, and he rode his diamond pony steed into every battle.”

JAYLEE: And then when you go up to the chair and you’re like “It’s a metaphor.” And the guy sits down on it and then I was like, “I got you! Boom!”

STACEY: Did you let them enter the office?

JAYLEE: Oh hell yes. (laughs)

STACEY: Yeah. (laughs)

JAYLEE: And that’s the thing. I have no doubt in my mind that even if you say you can’t go in, they’d rush in like buffoons.

STACEY: Yeah.

JAYLEE: But I don’t know, it doesn’t bother me.

STACEY: Yeah! Because it’s funny!

JAYLEE: It’s funny, and if you do it, you’re kind of like a sly Fiona, and if you say no, you’re just Fiona surrounded by dudebros. I mean, it still contributes to her character.

STACEY: Mhmm. Like the guards reaction is just like, “Ugh, I’m not cleaning this up again.”

JAYLEE: Yeah.

STACEY: Just total… He’s seen this a thousand times, and that says so much about this world.

JAYLEE: The culture of Hyperion.

STACEY: Yeah, it creates an entire story about this little room. (laughs)

JAYLEE: (laughs) Oh, and then you have the confrontation between Rhysquez and Yvette in her office. What did you do?

STACEY: I intimidated her and talked her down.

JAYLEE: Yeah, me too.

STACEY: I feel like talking down makes more sense in this universe, even though Vasquez is clearly not above brutalizing and murdering his way up the corporate ladder.

JAYLEE: Obviously. (laughs)

STACEY: But I mean, there is a kind of game here.

JAYLEE: They get down to prison, and they find the trapdoor that leads up into his office. And that’s kind of when the game kind of rushes towards the end.

STACEY: Yeah.

JAYLEE: I know it’s such a silly distinction, but this episode feels like a two-parter as opposed to just an episode in that it ended so abruptly.

STACEY: Yeah.

JAYLEE: And there wasn’t much buildup. But it’s obviously going to continue immediately in the next episode. And that’s whether you decided whether to rule Hyperion with Jack in your head or not. Which did you choose?

STACEY: I chose to rule it.

JAYLEE: I knew you would. (laughs)

STACEY: (laughs) Why, is it my tree burning ways?

JAYLEE: Yes! No, just because I know that you knew that I wouldn’t.

STACEY: I did! (laughs)

JAYLEE: (laughs) And I’m like she’s just like going to do it to get the different footage and to see what it’s like. So what was that like?

STACEY: I’m assuming it was the same. It was a little bit weird. Rhys was like “Let’s do this!” He’s really into it. And then they plug the thing into his head and his eye turns gold. Which one of our commenters, Katherine Henderson, pointed out she actually had trusted Jack before and noted that his eye went yellow whenever Jack was in control, so her guess was that the future segments where Rhys’s eye is permanently yellow is something to do with Jack, which I’m thinking this is pointing to yes, this is definitely the case.

JAYLEE: Yeah.

STACEY: And then Jack gets on a loudspeaker and announces to everybody that he’s back and they got a new president he’d like to introduce. He’s come all the way from janitorial to president. And then it kind of cuts. So what was it like for you? Because I’m assuming you still got, for lack of a better word, possessed by Jack in some way.

JAYLEE: Mhmm. He forcibly puts the thing in his head and then it’s just very menacing screens of Jack’s face in the background. And it’s like, “I’m going to make you kill Fiona with your own hands!” Kind of thing.

STACEY: Ooh!

JAYLEE: Yeah. And then Fiona and Gortys get found and this is the one that I’m very curious about. Did it seem to you like Sasha betrayed them?

STACEY: I don’t know. I didn’t get that sense at first, because she also reacts—which maybe she does for you—when Jack is coming up over the loudspeaker, she says something like, “This can’t be happening.” Which seemed weird to me. Because it seemed like she knew something that I didn’t, which maybe that… Did you get that too? Is that why you feel like she betrayed you?

JAYLEE: There were just little pieces leading up. Like for example, when she was taken hostage by Vallory and stabbed, and after I gave in immediately she was like, “You could have gotten something out of that.” Like very cutthroat. And then when they’re on the spaceship she’s like “I never really felt like I belonged on Pandora.” And the way she kind of eased into the silly corporate… So it gives me pause.

STACEY: Yeah, but at the same time, remember, when we meet her, she’s posing as August’s girlfriend. It’s like, that’s how I took it at first, that she’s just really good at running this game.

JAYLEE: I really hope so. I really want her to be a bad guy.

STACEY: If she ends up being a bad guy, it’s like, oh, she was just flirting with me to get this Jack data that’s in his head. And it’s like, no! I like Sasha.

JAYLEE: Yeah, she’s one of my favorite characters.

STACEY: Yeah!

JAYLEE: She better not be… Yeah. So let’s do choices.

STACEY: Choices!

JAYLEE: So for me, because I had a heart and a soul, me and 48.1% of players honored Scooter with his catchphrase on his satellite.

STACEY: Uh, me and 14.9% were practical and pragmatic—

JAYLEE: And jerks.

STACEY: —And decided to continue with the plan.

JAYLEE: Boo! And then we and 43.7% of players let the tour group get vaporized.

STACEY: Oh, it’s gone up to 43.8%.

JAYLEE: (laughs)

STACEY: It’s like, if you saw that chance then you gotta take it.

JAYLEE: Exactly! They’re all wearing Handsome Jack masks. I mean, come on. (laughs)

STACEY: And I and 70.9% of players shot the innocent diamond pony. (laughs)

JAYLEE: (laughs) Ah, it was so great!

STACEY: Oh my god, we were ready for prison life.

JAYLEE: As for Rhys, I revealed that Handsome Jack was helping me.

STACEY: Oh! What percentage was that?

JAYLEE: 26.4.

STACEY: 26! Oh, when I played it was 62.4% that claimed I was searching my databases.

JAYLEE: Interesting.

STACEY: Yeah.

JAYLEE: Yeah, because they both get really offended. “How come you didn’t tell us?”

STACEY: Oh. Yeah, they didn’t get offended, but they still were suspicious that you were hiding something, but for the most part they dropped it. Again, shockingly, only 23.7% when I played had talked Yvette down.

JAYLEE: And then I and 57.8% of players chose to reject Hyperion.

STACEY: 46% chose to rule it.

JAYLEE: So yeah, I came in expecting the end of the episode would lead up to them getting caught by the masked man.

STACEY: Ohhh!

JAYLEE: We still have no idea when that happens or when it’s going to happen in the game.

STACEY: Mhmm.

JAYLEE: And so now I’m just like okay, I’m just going to let you guys tell your story. I’m not going to try and figure it out.

STACEY: (laughs)

JAYLEE: Just make it all worth it and make Sasha not a bad guy.

STACEY: Yeah. And make Gortys toys. (laughs) Oh my god, I love Gortys. She’s MVP.

JAYLEE: And you weren’t the only person who thought that, because last week our question was “Who is your favorite character?” and of course we got Gortys. Reverie Nightingale said they would choose Gortys if they were forced to choose just one because, I mean, obviously. She’s adorable. And Reverie fell in love the second she was introduced. Bleeters’ favorite character is Athena, and I believe, based off her comments, that she’s played the other games in the series.

STACEY: Three-Five Nine’s favorite characters was Vallory. “Loved her design and her swagger.” I have to agree. This kind of made me think of—while I was seeing Vallory menace Fiona—made me think back to all the way back when Grand Theft Auto V came out, there were a lot of think pieces. I think Leigh Alexander was one of the ones really pushing it, of why aren’t there any women in Grand Theft Auto? Is it just because they aren’t creative enough to write menacing women?

JAYLEE: Mhmm.

STACEY: And here we’ve got Vallory. (laughs) It’s like, this shows a whole area of untapped potential that games could explore.

JAYLEE: Yeah, you don’t really see a character like Vallory who’s physically imposing but not in a comedic way.

STACEY: Yeah. She’s just, she’s big!

JAYLEE: Yeah! She’s just big badass boss of Pandora. And so this week we want to know, as per usual, since the next episode is the last one, any finale predictions. Tell us what you know who you think the person in the mask is, if we’re going to meet up our timelines, how much time has passed. Let us know all of these things in the comments. And of course don’t forget to subscribe to keep up to date with all of our latest episodes and water cooler discussions.

AUGUST: You’re shitting me.

GORTYS: I wouldn’t know how!