Jan
2nd
2023
IXION review · 9:56am Jan 2nd, 2023
- The hero of the game is the billionaire who destroys the Earth so a fraction of a fraction of a percent can find a different planet he hasn't fucked up yet.
- If you take a shot for the words "self-similar space" "genetic conatus" and "tachyon", you'll die of liver failure four hours in.
- Storytelling is done like reading a Twitter thread on 1980s dialup. By the time you can click the next part of the vignettes, you've already forgotten what they're about.
- Most of the concepts are cheesy parallel universes schlock - No, it's not the tachyons, you really have seen it all before.
- "Genetic conatus" (drink!) is the baffling decision that Lamarckian evolution is treated as so profound as to make a religion out of it.
Ixion's not as good as the games it's imitating. Gorgeous art and incredible cutscenes, though.
That being said, I do have to ask; The current fantasy of starting from scratch of a new planet is appealing, but the real enabler of these fantasies is the technology to terraform and the power to do it. If you had both those things, why not just fix Earth. Ixion's especially bad for this.
That game does exist though, and it's called Half Earth Socialism, and I'm pretty sure it's free on Steam. Better writing and much more respect for your time.
Earth already has people on it and those people have legal protections and sometimes disagree with our billionaire overlords. So obviously starting from scratch on another planet without those pesky obstacles is better.
5706552
I think my biggest thing, between this and Survive Mars and the like, is that all these people gushing over the beauty of a new man-made wilderness all seem like people who'd fucking hate hiking and camping.
I don't know IXION or the other games and this is slightly tangential but I am reminded of the Folding Ideas video about how the best way to make a new village in Minecraft is to abduct and relocate people from other villages.
5706557
Oh my god I hadn't seen this one, thank you so much
Enjoy! It's an interesting video.
"Spend, don't mend" on a planetary scale.
So if you break a leg, do all your kids walk with a limp?
"Conatus" seems to be derived from "conative", as in a "striving" or "purposeful" action. Erm... someone please explain to the writer that genes don't strive or have a purpose? They're molecules. Otherwise, as Applejack put it: "Then where's its brain?"
5706552
Duh, just terraform Earth until all those pesky obstacles vanish. Problem solved.
5706566
Okay so what's really weird is that (parts of) Lamarkian evolution has actually recently been proven to be at least slightly correct, which is weird as hell. Just taking a summary off Wikipedia;
It's disputed but I've found some details highly convincing.
How the game ends up using it though is initially very vague, but ends up being people who are doing extreme genetic modification to themselves. That is to say, conatus via genetics. Except that's only revealed at the end, and "believe in genetic conatus" as a phrase gets treated like "and have a good day" without any other context. I think they were trying to be coy and interesting but they couldn't pull it off.
EDIT: Oh, right, Conatus is this
5706571
Whoops! Sorry. Me jumping to conclusions again.
I was vaguely aware of a biochemical version involving the immune system modifying genes in response to the particular pathogens it encountered, but I might be misremembering a case of regulated gene expression rather than actual gene mutation, to say nothing of whether the genes in question were in the gametes.
"Limited inheritance", though? Can't say it rings a bell.
Wouldn't that count as eugenics, or (if not that) then gene therapy? Seems strange to me to give it an obscure name into the bargain, but I suppose that ties into its in-universe elevation as a religious tenet.
"Hologenome" is super-cool, though: I only recently learned of the concept of an organism's "holobiont" (the organism and its intimate symbionts considered as a whole), so that's a useful accompanying term.
5706572
Eugenocide is the term I use here. The ending I didn't pick finds a bunch of 'evolved beings' who basically renounced any industrial capacity and chose to modify themselves to be perfectly in-tune with their new nature, right down to switching to photosynthesis. They'll only let you join if you become part of their new race, which means the end of all human life. I got a lot of problems with it, it's just a bad faith presentation. You frame solving the problems of ecological collapse as becoming unrecognizable post-human elves, and you basically cede the ground that the problems of the world are inherent to biologically innate human nature. The default ending has them get blown up by AI space pirates for being useless. Real grim.
I mean, those aren't mutually exclusive. Just include a throwaway line somewhere to make it clear that the same technology is also being used to fix Earth and our space pioneers are doing it primarily for the same reason we invented space travel in the first place (to prove that we could, and show up those nutcases down the road).
5706630
This is such an obvious solution that not a single thing I am complaining about has implemented - I wouldn't complain otherwise.
5706631
Because if we are fixing earth then justifying a shiny--although high-tech--boot stomping down on the faces of the colonists becomes harder. You know, it's not about the survival of the species anymore.
Well, in fairness, it sort of depends on the exact nature of the terraforming technology. In many sci-fi settings, terraforming a planet either requires it to be totally uninhabited or would prove lethal to any current inhabitants a la Star Trek II, so terraforming the Earth while everyone was on it wouldn't be possible. Although that does bring to mind an amusing, if hilariously impractical, idea - terraform Mars, then have everyone (and possibly every other living inhabitant) on Earth move over there, fix Earth while everyone's gone, then come back and continue like nothing happened.
Also, it should be remembered that the whole "start anew on some other planet" thing is just a sci-fi twist on a far older concept - there's been plenty of fantasizing over the centuries about doing the same in the wilderness or an isolated island - and a significant part of it is the idea of "getting away from it all". Now, whether this fantasy is reasonable or good or... well, anything really, is not for me to say, but it does, I think, go some way to explaining why starting on a new planet might seem more attractive.
5706553
Um... probably? But I don't see how that necessarily discounts their point. I mean, in terms of specifically the beauty of such a place (from their perspective, at least, not sure I'd agree)... well, there are those that find beauty in deserts, tundras and storms, but that doesn't mean they'd want to be put in them. It's okay to admire things from a distance.
And as for the fantasy as a whole... well, most war gamers would never want to be in or start an actual war. Most who imagine being peak-human martial artists wouldn't want to get into a lot of fights. Most who fantasize about being wizards wouldn't willingly spend decades without break studying to become one. A fantasy doesn't have to be realistically aspirational in order to be appealing. Heck, I'd imagine many people on this very site have one particular fantasy world they like to imagine living on, but if offered the chance to, would immediately decline.
I mean, while the idea of colonizing an uninhabited world is an interesting thought experiment and logistical challenge, I will say it's not a fantasy that I feel any particular inclination towards. However, I really don't think it's that hard to see where those who do are coming from.
Also, completely unrelated, but... well, I know that names from Greek mythology have always been a thing, but... Ixion? Really? That's the guy you wanna name something after. Like, as weird as the frequent use of Icarus is, at least his downfall came from being overwhelmed by actually flying and trying to go too high. Ixion was just a moron and a dick.
5706700
The Folding Ideas video upthread is a great summary of why I'm aware of those older ideas and am critical of them, saying that and still as much as 4/5s of my steam purchases in the last three months were in that ouvre. One thing I'd actually disagree with the video for is that he gets super uncomfortable about Factorio's terms "deal with the natives" as uncomfortable when that's the explicit point, Factorio is a villain-protagonist narrative. I adore Factorio and I respect that from it so much.
I totally get where you're coming from with the second half of this comment too, and I understand all that. What I more meant was that dissonance has a harmful political reality in this time and place, right? I think it was Scarlet who said it best years ago - when people watch cop shows, they come away knowing they watched a fictional story and all of it was made up. But they don't think about the assumptions they had to hold in their head to believe the story while it was being told - to see police as fundamentally good, dedicated to catching the right people, etc. And those get held in the brain as truthful even while accepting the rest of the work is fiction. Right? Which is why the CIA sponsors movies like Zero Dark Thirty, because it made an absurd amount of people who watched it change their mind into thinking torture is good. I've been awake like thirty goddamn hours at this point so I'm being lazy, but from memory of the book Security Theatre it was like 30% of audiences, shockingly big number.
That's what I'm actually thinking about when I say these people wouldn't want to camp or hike. They're valuing healthy ecosystems at a purely aesthetic level, but that's not what they carry out or take with them. What they're really taking away is that this new ecosystem is, somehow, better than Earth's, and when that's combined with a disinterest in their lived Earth ecoystem, that's a narrative assumption that they're not going to question or counter in other ways. You end up with the passive idea that Earth is a disposable first draft attempt.
And I'm speaking from personal experience here. The difference between before and after I picked up photography is shocking on that one.
5706707
Ah. In that case, I'll curtail any further discussion to say that... that's all a very valid viewpoint and I wasn't necessarily trying to argue against it. It's just... you asked a question and I tried to answer it. I apologize if it was meant to be rhetorical, but it... did seem like one that should be answered.
5706708
No, no, it's fine, I'm just having mania induced insomnia, you're not keeping me up and I was trying to answer in the spirit the question was asked. Sorry about that, you're sincerely fine, the swearing was only at myself. Thought yesterday's blog post would be context enough!
5706604
I get it mostly considered "no-brainer" in left-ish circles to assume (hope?) most of our destructive behavior can be changed if we change "just" social relations, without diving in risky, poorly-understood and abused in the past biogenetical jungles...
but is it really the case? From practice it seems making required sociological changes actually "hard". Partially due to resistence of ...higher class, partially because ..it requres undoing a lot of experiencies (so they not propagate just by bad habit, oversimplifying) and changing suprizingly big % of humans at once, because for some reason becoming anarcho-communist is not path of least resistance ..... so, while I hope 'socialism and interest in it on the rise" will lead to some interesting, positive and unpredictable (by opponents too!) effects - I think being a bit more thoughtful about axios also needed ...
May be soft-modding humans with dance/music, tea and good food will enable some much needed changes? :) I mean at the end of the road psychology still run on material brain, as you noted in early post ... so, in effect we probably will change very substance of ourselves, but in subtle, not sledgehammer to genome ways ?
5706795
Unironically this is the role of artists in the revolution. If you need an instrument for making new cultures, changing old ones, and community building, I can't think of any better
Wait, what?
I didn't get this from the narrative AT ALL. I regarded Vanir Dolos as a pretty straightforward villain. Dude even looks like fuckin'... Silco from Arcane.
It... does? When the Piranesi showed up in Ilia, I crammed the Tiqqun right down its throat in short order and Romulus and Remus lived happily ever after together.
I will say that my primary disappointment with Ixion (which has an immensely solid citybuilder under its hood; really, up there with Frostpunk mechanically) wasn't so much in the ending as in the journey.
Maybe its just me, but when the game started and they introduced me to the Marduk Council (solid choice there, stealing the name of one of the villainous cabals of transhumanists from Neon Genesis Evangelion, way to let me know what team I'm on) I was like "Oh, okay, I see what they're doing here. They're pulling a Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. After I fuck things up and start my trek across the stars, I'm going to encounter every one of these people again and they'll have formed their own deranged faction I'll have to deal with."
Only that didn't happen. Most of the people you meet in the intro, that they actually shelled out for voice acting on, never figure in again. You find bits and pieces of them but nothing solid. It seems narratively obvious to me that either you'd encounter them again, OR you'd encounter their legacies, but neither happened.
By the same token, the UN and the Black Market Society and the Ashtangites are not well-presented in your trip. The UN they do the best with; the narrative throughline of "the UN fucks Dolos up real good" was pretty clear. But the narrative of the Black Market Society is weakly put together. And they could have come up with a better name.
I dunno. My expectations might have been out of line. But I feel like this was a huge missed narrative opportunity; give me this colorful cast of weirdos and villains at the start, destroy the world, and then let me find them afterwards. Only it didn't do that.
5706931
The ending where you have his P.A give a speech reveals that, due to parallel universe shenanigans, the destruction of the moon was inevitable and so he worked to get the Tiqqun ready to be Earth's salvation in the only time window available. I'd have assumed the same otherwise.
5706935 Are you kidding me?
That's absurd. I mean... it still makes him pretty villainous, because he knew the moon was gonna pop and told nobody, and then he started a war with the UN, and then he built the Protagoras, but that's a ridiculous narrative twist to dump at the end. The entire rest of the game primes you to regard Dolos and his cadre as dangerous, lunatic fuckups! Why try and shoehorn in "no, see, he had inside information" at the tail end?
5706990
The UN declared war on him, for his company being the one to blow up the moon. I absolutely agree with all the rest though. I actually said out loud "Oh, fuck off" at my screen when the line played.
IXION is a game in desperate need of a story-free infinite free play mode. Cut the jump damage, add a random system generator, let me build a cool space ship in peace.
It's a very solid city builder game dragged down by its story, and the fact that gameplay forces your city building to just pour alloys down a hole with enough desperation to leech the fun out if the rest of it.