[Video] My Let's Play of, and review of, "Midnight" Enjoy :)

thedoctorbluebox

Hope everyone enjoys, this is my let's play of the mission with a review at the end, and I also put on the Iconian Vest and show it off plus the Deflector and go over the rewards, enjoy

https://youtu.be/sRV9lljqiJc

guljarol

I'm looking forward to hearing your review

But wow, seems like it's one of the longest of your videos ​​

thedoctorbluebox

guljarol wrote: »

I'm looking forward to hearing your review

But wow, seems like it's one of the longest of your videos ​​

I got a quick link in the video so you can click straight through to the different parts, including the review

guljarol

Nah, I'll watch the whole thing. I like your episode plays I'd hate to miss all the comments during the episode itself.​​

mustrumridcully0

The riddles at the start with the Iconian computer are stuff we actually know in the real world about. I didn't know that until someone posted a link to an article about it. (Wikipedia has also stuff about the Exotic Sphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_sphere)

That we didn't go to Dewa and hand them over the Orb immediately seems a similar plot hole as Picard not taking the Nexus back to an earlier point where he could just arrest Soran before he did any greater harm (Saving the Enterprise D in the process). But I'd like to point out - we don't know how long we could reopen that temporal portal, and I am not sure what kind of contamination 3 ships from the 25h century could cause if they were stuck there.


About the alternate timeline we are in - we will never go back to the original one, I think. It would be kinda counter-productive - the "original" timeline with no incursions can only exist if we don't ever use the Krenim ship for an incursion, because any use alters the timeline. It seems to me the timeline is basically self-destructive if it allows the Krenim weapon to exist and be used.
But it didn't seem as if we saw Bepi or any other behavioural time travel means as suitable for the task at hand. (Aside from he usual plot hole / handwave explanation - it's unclear what range or precision the warp-around-the-sun time travel method has. Maybe 200,000 years very shortly before the fall of Iconia is not so easy to target.)

I don't think, however, that it took anything else to turn the Iconians on their war path. I think having seen your entire civilization burned down to the ground with only 12 survivors left is traumatic enough that it will alter your outlook. Sela probably didn't turn the Iconians against us - Sela turned the Iconians against the Romulans specifically, making T'Ket want some extra revenge against Sela and her species. (Thank Q she didn't know she's half human.)​​

mrspidey2

mustrumridcully0 wrote: »

About the alternate timeline we are in - we will never go back to the original one, I think. ​​

Agreed. I think Cryptic wrote it that way specifically so they could at later points retcon stuff from the Path to 2409 and even hard canon.
Think of it as similar to Superboy Prime's punch against the walls of reality during Infinite Crisis. They used that to great lengths to explain all kinds of changes, including why Jason Todd was suddenly alive again. ("Turns out he never died because Prime Punch!!").
Butterfly will simply be STO's Prime Punch from here on out.

lizwei

mrspidey2 wrote: »

mustrumridcully0 wrote: »

About the alternate timeline we are in - we will never go back to the original one, I think. ​​

Agreed. I think Cryptic wrote it that way specifically so they could at later points retcon stuff from the Path to 2409 and even hard canon.
Think of it as similar to Superboy Prime's punch against the walls of reality during Infinite Crisis. They used that to great lengths to explain all kinds of changes, including why Jason Todd was suddenly alive again. ("Turns out he never died because Prime Punch!!").
Butterfly will simply be STO's Prime Punch from here on out.

Of course when you think about it, this means that neither the Sphere Builders (Tuterians screwed over by incursion) nor the present day Iconians (saved by people from the timeline created by same incursion) should've existed in the pre-Butterfly timeline.

Another reason why Butterfly is the worst piece of fiction since mankind first carved lies about their accomplishments into stone.

gulberat

mrspidey2 wrote: »

mustrumridcully0 wrote: »

About the alternate timeline we are in - we will never go back to the original one, I think. ​​

Agreed. I think Cryptic wrote it that way specifically so they could at later points retcon stuff from the Path to 2409 and even hard canon.
Think of it as similar to Superboy Prime's punch against the walls of reality during Infinite Crisis. They used that to great lengths to explain all kinds of changes, including why Jason Todd was suddenly alive again. ("Turns out he never died because Prime Punch!!").
Butterfly will simply be STO's Prime Punch from here on out.

I'm not so sure they can handwave it that easily. The way I took the episode, most of it took place in an alternate-but-similar universe--but the last few minutes of Butterfly were in continuity with the Path to 2409 and everything else.

fovrel

Nice video. I enjoyed it. Let me give some comments on the whole arc.

I don't like the Iconians, the present ones, as species. They are to fantasy like. You can take them out and put them right into any fantasy game, Neverwinter, Guildwars etc. You won't think, oh, this is out of place. They are however in this game.

Time line/Time travel. Through Sela we know they cannot travel through time. First. It is rather silly that such a feature just comes to our knowledge more or less by accident. If we know that little about them, why are we in conflict? If thre is a threat, then you want to have as much information as you want, I suppose.

So indeed, the plot, they cannot time travel, we can will be worked out in the story. Sorry this feels as a kind of cheating to me. I have played many games and I admit, for instance in Civillization, when things went not as I wanted, I used the cheat codes to rework things and that is exactly what we are doing here in the story. We don't like the story, so we go back in the (hi)story and change it. I call it artistical cheating.

So yeah, we are in a different time line, in our original time line the Iconians are winning. Do we want to go back?

The end outcome, not a defeat, not a victory, but a settlement, is very nice in my view. Because as I do have problems with the Iconians, the way they look, I have also a problem with a far more advanced species, an intellectual superior species, that is out on a revengeful killing spree, a warmonger bunch of conquerers and destroyers. That image looks like it is rectified.

mrspidey2

fovrel wrote: »

I don't like the Iconians, the present ones, as species. They are to fantasy like. You can take them out and put them right into any fantasy game, Neverwinter, Guildwars etc. You won't think, oh, this is out of place. They are however in this game.

This is absolutely intended, though. It's inspired by Arthur C. Carkes famous quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The Iconians are Type II Civilization on the Kardashev scale while the powers of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants are Type I. That's a difference comparable to one betwwen a human and an ant.
So, obviously, their tech looks like magic to us.

fovrel

Ok, so their technology is magic and they are far more advanced than we. However, one of us who really looks like he comes from the prehistory chops of an arm with a blade and in another fight we have with an Iconian, she constantly flees and comes back weaker and weaker and finally dies.

That is another issue with this Arc. We suppose to have to deal with an enemy that is much stronger than we are, that is unbeatable, yet I never had the impression I was up to something I could not handle. The story can roll on, because we as players are railroaded, not because we are outplayed, outgunned. Game play and story did not connect in my view, so I had this feeling, yeah, whatever, let's see what the next cutscene brings.

gradii

mrspidey2 wrote: »

fovrel wrote: »

I don't like the Iconians, the present ones, as species. They are to fantasy like. You can take them out and put them right into any fantasy game, Neverwinter, Guildwars etc. You won't think, oh, this is out of place. They are however in this game.

This is absolutely intended, though. It's inspired by Arthur C. Carkes famous quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The Iconians are Type II Civilization on the Kardashev scale while the powers of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants are Type I. That's a difference comparable to one betwwen a human and an ant.
So, obviously, their tech looks like magic to us.

mrspidey2 wrote: »

fovrel wrote: »

I don't like the Iconians, the present ones, as species. They are to fantasy like. You can take them out and put them right into any fantasy game, Neverwinter, Guildwars etc. You won't think, oh, this is out of place. They are however in this game.

This is absolutely intended, though. It's inspired by Arthur C. Carkes famous quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The Iconians are Type II Civilization on the Kardashev scale while the powers of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants are Type I. That's a difference comparable to one betwwen a human and an ant.
So, obviously, their tech looks like magic to us.

The Iconians are closer to a 3, the Federation is already a low end type 2.