Part 18: Hamlin's Weird Fetishes

Hamlin's Weird Fetishes

Welcome back! Last time on Black Geyser we apparently screwed up the conditions to get a one night stand with Isla (what a terrible loss) who also told us that we needed to go into the Black Geyser right now and go save the world, but first we had to go to King Velianrick's castle and personally oversee peace talks and this was more important than saving the world from imminent destruction.

Oh, also, the curse isn't really a curse, it's just the spirits of the damned who are mind controlling people to be greedy. Also, we need to get divine assistance but no one will tell us how, because the Pendulum is a useless moron.

We're going to ignore all that shit for a bit and go deal with something else.



Remember how Hamlin made a big deal of how he got robbed by those three guys but he didn't want to look weak in front of the Thieves' Guild and also lost the painting of our stepmother? We're going to conclude that today.



This is all voice acted and it's acted by an intern trying to sound like a robot. I really question why the developers used voice actors at all - almost everything you read about this game is that it was made on a small budget, and instead of coming up with a coherent plot or less overcomplicated game mechanics for no reason they went with this. I think it's cargo culting. Tyranny's voice acting is stellar, but the voice actors also have something to work with. Likewise, Age of Decadence doesn't have any voice acting, but the writing is strong enough (for an RPG) and it has real ideas behind it.

: I'd love to witness how the Guild punishes this kind of thing.

: As would I, Inta Rume. Who doesn't like a good old-fashioned flaying! Let's go pay a visit to the Guild, shall we? Their headquarters are located in the general store on Market Street.

Off to the capital.





Lendel is the only named character in the Thieves' Guild, so of course we talk to him.

: ...

: What the cobblestones tell, the house already knows. But a cat doesn't cry when a mouse gets stepped on.

: The trap is empty and the mouse still wants his cheese.

: Three birds are in the wind. If they end up in a stew, a door will open.

: A stew... Perhaps there's another key for this lock?

Is this really the slang used by dangerous, violent criminals?



: Okay, what do we do next?

: I need to deal with the three thieves - execute them - myself to make good with the Guild...



Oh no! A trolley problem! Ring ring! RING RING!

It's weird, because Hamlin literally described them as the crab bucket who sabotaged his efforts to get a real job.

Also options 2 and 4 are hilariously and stupidly psychopathic.

: Then we had better pay your old friends a visit.

: Yes, let's. We can find them in the old cemetery off Greybark Square.



Oh, huh, you seem to have magical glowing swords indicating you're an appropriate encounter?



Naturally, we will never question how Jacob knows who we are.







In other words, he had a vision from the developers. He just kind of mentioned it awkwardly. It would make more sense if he knew their old hideouts from his friendship with them, but seeing as Jacob was super surprised I don't even know.

: It never occurred to me before how convenient it would be to kill someone in a graveyard.

: I know it was you who ambushed me and stole the painting.

Jacob: Ambush, ha. Wasn't any harder than pushing a child off a stump.

It occurs to me that for all the drama about "will Hamlin kill his old friends" this quest desperately wants to set up, we've learned nothing about them aside from his few screens of expository dialogue. We certainly haven't gotten anything like "I learned this trick from Vorynne".



Of course, this is hilarious as between then and now Hamlin has, with us:
-gone into a mine infested by necromancers and flesh eating ghouls and killed them
-stormed the plague ridden city of Deron-Guld and fought and killed the demonically empowered Aldnar
-killed a "Shadowfury Demon"
-fought an ancient lich
-fought the "greediest man ever" in his fortress and killed him

: Yes, a joke, haha. Did you know that painting was the property of the Guild? And they're really a very humorless lot over there. They didn't find it funny at all.



Of course, this could have been entirely avoided if Hamlin hadn't run off to sell the painting on his own like a moron.

Jacob: So what if it belonged to the Guild? They can go buy it off Duchess Kjarvalr if they want it so bad.

Vorynne: We've been giving them the ghost for years.

... do you mean giving them the slip? Giving up the ghost is dying. Is this supposed to characterize Vorynne as a dumbass, or is it just bad writing? You decide!



Ok, I am going to absolutely fucking despise myself for this comparison, but you know what? Even Tides of Numenera did this shit better. For those of you who have wisely spared yourself Numenera, there's this companion Tybir who is looking for his ex boyfriend for really stupid reasons. You find the man who murdered him over a child's toy and you can try to talk down or stop Tybir, but you actually have to TRY to stop him with a skill check and if you fail he murders the guy.



The quest is overall dumb and masturbatory pandering to a kickstarter backer's OC Do Not Steal evil spider demon/crime mastermind, but that part at least made sense.

Here Hamlin admits he's been mugged by these guys and they suck, but is now questioning what to do as they straight up tell him he's a little punk and they're the only thing standing between him and his lifelong ambition of being a masterless man by joining an organized crime syndicate.

: If you are unsure, maybe we should take some time to reconsider.



Wow! Even these guys are calling out what an indecisive useless dumbass Hamlin is. Sure, he's good in a fight by virtue of being an RPG character, but as a character he's kind of terrible and inept. He would absolutely have been beaten to death by that merchant if we hadn't intervened, he got mugged by these three morons and... that's about it, really.



The moral "dilemma" here has the obvious solution - we don't like these people, they're standing in our way, and at this point in the game our protagonist has slaughtered hundreds of people for coin.



Are you just going to take that? These guys may have "raised" you, but they turned on you in minutes. Yea, I'm not having a vote on this.



You know, writers, when you call out that Hamlin is basically a passive observer in his own quest it's kind of hilariously embarrassing. Remember, when we met Hamlin, he was perfectly willing to fight and kill us to retrieve that painting so he could join the Guild for power or something.



The game wants us to believe he has an emotional attachment to Larry, Moe, and Curly here but it just doesn't work because they treat him like shit and he has nothing good to say about him. For this to work they'd have to show some guilt over what they did to Hamlin, or claim they were blackmailed into it, or didn't recognize him, or something, but even this game's shoddy writing makes it quite clear these guys never cared about Hamlin except as a criminal accomplice.



It's a crab bucket all the way down.



Sorry Nurt, your one reasonable line is not going to change this.

: These three attacked you in the street and made you a fool. Not even the beggars will respect you if you don't do something about it. You only have one option. You know what it is.



Because the dilemma is so shallow it's impossible to read as "Hamlin is conflicted about slaying his abusive family to realize his ambition" and more that he's lazily abrogating his moral thought process to Espen. There's no pushback, Hamlin never actually grows as a character and instead we step in and make all his decisions for him like a legal guardian acting with power of attorney for a mentally incompetent adult.



It sure was polite of these three to stand around waiting for the relatively famous Espen and Bjalla to murder them all.





They go down like chumps.



They're legitimately carrying assassin's gear on them to trivialize the moral "dilemma" even further. Oh no, not more dead murderers in our RPG where we have to cut down bad guys by the hundred!



Hamlin has nothing to say about the murders of his friends of course. Back to the Thieves' Guild!



: The three birds ended up in the stew.

: Ah, she seems to have caught on.



I really don't like it when the game desperately tries to fellate the player.

: Ahem! Anyway, welcome to the Guild, Hamlin! Now that you've fulfilled your task, I can make you a full member.

: What? Doesn't one have to complete a thieving task to be admitted to the Thieves Guild?



I'm sorry, what? How? How did the Thieves Guild get the king to agree to that? Are they secretly royal enforcers?

The game also doesn't really have a commentary on how Hamlin is a moronic inept thief who is now a proficient assassin.

: Yes, it was brutal. Hard to believe you went through with it.



The voice "actor" gets even more monotone. "Tramp" is not voice acted, as presumably you get a different insult as a man.



Oh, uh, yea, we just screwed up Hamlin's romance. It's hilarious, because he's never really done anything like flirting with the player.

Well, let's go reload and see this amazing love story, shall we?



: They earned their fate.



They... they weren't close to you, Hamlin! They literally left you for years (remember, they're described as orphan children) then when you got mildly successful they violently assaulted you on the street and stole the painting you badgered Inta into giving you.

: You're not alone. The two of use are close, aren't we? I was hoping we could get closer.



"They were my only friends. But i killed them. I know! I will hop into bed with the woman who encouraged me to murder my friends so I could become a street thug! Boyoyoyoying!"

: Yes, I'm sure.





We get another fade to black as it's heavily implied we bone down in the Basement O' Larceny. Why do I get the feeling the writer for this game continually got dumped for proposing sex at a Waffle House?

: How do we carry on from here?



Having taken Hamlin's virginity he will now fight to the death.


It's amazing how little sense none of this makes. I actually buy the friends being hateful and resentful, go read The White Tiger on the Rooster Cage and how all of Indian society collaborates to keep the poor down. The three morons being jealous of Hamlin for having a real job and not smelling like shit is on par, although I'm kind of shocked none of them thought to get money out of him first.

The real problem is that Hamlin comes across as a psychopathic murderer who was just looking for semi-official approval to murder these people.


It's somewhat inconsistent with his prior characterization where he stole nearly exclusively from the rich but sympathized with the poor, as thin and cliched as it was. The game wants us to believe that Hamlin is a cunning street survivor who hates the rich and wants to join the Thieves Guild because he values his independence, but he attaches himself to the player like a remora. We are to believe he's grateful for the friends who raised him yet he never seems to show any affection or demonstrate it in any way, and his reaction is to go to the Thieves Guild and request their deaths, only showing any sort of concern when it turns out that he, and not some faceless assassin, is expected to dispose of them. This causes a bunch of inconsistent whiffling - where Hamlin had previously been portrayed as a strong willed character who was willing to fight the player - a benefactor who had helped him escape a deserved beating - to the death. Yet when we actually reach these friends it takes only the mildest of pushes to convince him that he - a man who nominally values his independence - should abandon whatever principles he has left and kill on command. Hamlin jumping into bed with the player character after lamenting that you talked him into murdering all his friends is just icing on top.

What's more damning to me is the sheer amount of squandered potential. I'll be the first to admit that nothing about this game is competently written, but there are a lot of parallels between Hamlin and the player character. Both characters are raised with a constant sense of inferiority - Hamlin as a street urchin, Espen as a servant denied their birthright. Both characters face the choice to kill their surviving families - Hamlin these three, and Espen Aldnar. A better writer would have these characters examine these similarities and maybe lean on each other to get through them, but the Black Geyser writers have continually proven to be completely unable to create anything that parallels the human experience in any way. If you look on their website or their game manual there are endless attempts at writing fake myths and deep diving into fantasy bullshit, but the human element is entirely soulless. Zornilsa is not greedy because of a character flaw, but because she needs greed to survive or some nonsense. There was a short argument in the thread over whether this game could have been better with more time, and this questline disproves it. This quest was not in the original game. It is not coherent with Hamlin's preexisting characterization or with any sort of actual human motive. What a joke.

Next time: Peace talks, for real.