It is vaguely worth noting that, while N Corp's philosophy is still hypocritical and backwards in many ways, it's not entirely.
The Nagel and Hammer Inquisitors specifically have a hatred of mechanical prosthetics/augments. The City has many ways for one to get stronger or more powerful without the use of mechanical augments--examples include the biological augments of the G Corp soldiers, the wishpower tattoos of the Tingtang Gang, the EGO the Sinners have and use, and, presumably, whatever else the N Corp goons have under their armor. Their philosophy remains idiotic, but it isn't quite as inconsistent as one would assume.
Given what we see of mechanical prosthetics elsewhere in Project Moon's work, I see Nagel und Hammer as a violent and reactionary response to a "problem" that does exist, although commenting on that might have to wait until we get to later in the Canto.
ok so heres something i found interesting: N and H is just. fine with gregor. they dont give a shit about his arm.
it feels kinda... odd? especially considering how gregor samsa is jewish and these guys are probably based on nazis?
ok so heres something i found interesting: N and H is just. fine with gregor. they dont give a shit about his arm.
it feels kinda... odd? especially considering how gregor samsa is jewish and these guys are probably based on nazis?
And now we enter in the part of the Canto where Project Moon tell us "the goofy shit in Canto II were great, right? Well now it's over, back to PM certified horror!"
Eager to move on from All Of That, Gregor picks up his train of thought and asks Vergilius if he meant the Backstreets of District 11, to which Vergilius bluntly states that he knows what he said and he said what he meant. Their next destination is not just District 11, it's within the Nest itself. This both proves that the talk of 'J Corp's Nest' in the previous Canto was more of a colloquial term, and the events of that Canto did in fact take place exclusively in its Backstreets, and provides an on-ramp to the subject of the immigration process that highlights even for a new player the harsh divide between a Nest and Everything That Is Not A Nest in The City. We may all live in the country called Capitalism, but the City is effectively the entire world of Project Moon (it even has a population of over 6 billion going by the ticker at the end of the intro movie) and each Wing's Nest is akin to its own city-state with its own laws and borders. We're about to get an up-close look at one, and then the other not long after.
So about these two paragraph, there's an interesting tidbit of lore: people originating from the Backstreets tend to refer to a District by its number, representing how tenuous the control and influence of a Wing is in these places (which are instead actually ruled by Syndicates), while people who come from a Nest tends to refer to a District by their corresponding Wing's letter.
It's a nice tidbit of lore and characterization that's not directly stated but nonetheless present for those who pick up on it, and a nice way to illustrate how people see the place they come from.
There ya go, don't worry about the cordoned-off area behind him and the bodies on the floor it's fine.
Amusingly, Ishmael and Dante are just flabbergasted that Vergilius actually got off the bus and came with them instead of waiting. Even more amusingly it's specifically Dante that Vergilius chooses to respond to, instead of Ishmael who expressed the same sentiment much more audibly because Fraudgilius can hear them dammit he thinks he's slick but he's so bad at hiding it
Vergilius: "Because this is a Nest, Dante. If one of you were to get into unexpected trouble here..." Vergilius: "Well, Dante, the responsibility will be a bit too heavy for you to bear alone." Narration: When Vergilius put it like that... it sounded as if he were saying 'you're not reliable enough to be sent without supervision'.
yeah and is he fucking wrong, Dante?
Further along the line, Dante notices Ishmael starting to ask more questions more rapidly the closer it gets to their turn - the OCD Girlies and My Dad it seems having a lot in common when it comes to tackling customs, but perhaps I repeat myself. Vergilius slowly explains that the K Corp officials only ask very simple questions to people in this line (and it is clearly some kind of VIP or otherwise expedited line as we'll soon see) and that all they must do is say that they're here on behalf of Limbus Company and present their company ID badges.
Vergilius: "I'll take care of the rest, so you just have to prove that you aren't here to cause trouble." Faust: "If even memorising that is too much of a burden for you, I suggest that you keep your mouth shut. You can present your employee card instead." Dante: <Keep quiet and don't cause trouble. Easiest tasks in the world.>
Dante lets slip with a sarcastic remark and is immediately Shook worried that Faust will rat them out to Vergilius, but to their relief the guide is busy staring into space. He instead opens the floor to questions from raised hands, every bit the kindergarten teacher he swore he would not be back in Canto I.
The hysterical thing about this scene is that it's drawn out so much that you know that something will go wrong at some point, that there's no way that PM made a scene that long to then have everyone go through the checkpoint without problems, and it then become a guessing game of who will fuck things up.
Vergilius: "I was asking for your thoughts. Why do you not understand this?" Don Quixote: "I-I was speaking only to be interrupted!" Vergilius: "What you should've said to me at the get-go was an apology, Don Quixote. Anything you'd add should be an elaboration on how you plan to improve your conduct." Don Quixote: "What unjust... Agh! Thou'rt demanding a specific answer out of me...!" Vergilius: "Don't you know? A company already has the 'correct' answers for its employees. The questions are only asked to see if you can get it right." Vergilius: "You're sorely mistaken if you believe the company is sincerely curious about your input." Don Quixote: "Kagh... If- if the company insists so, then I-!"
I remember a comment in a Youtube LP saying that even Don enjoyers admitted that this scene was a long time coming and even necessary to Don's character.
And it's another great point of PM's writing: instead of having a character being a moron for he sake of being a moron and make it "fun" and "quirky" and make the audience laugh, here the story explore the realistic consequences of having such a character in a team, and shows how she's a fucking lunatic that yes, make the players laugh, but in-universe is a fucking nightmare to deal with, until someone has to step up and slap some senses into her before her behavior becomes truly uncontrollable.
Another interesting detail: if you zoom on Sinclair's left shoulder, you'll notice that he originally was Sinner No.10, but had the "0" crossed out and replaced by a "1", making him the eleventh Sinner.
This is one of the things I love most about Limbus—you can easily see a lesser story choosing to take the easy way out by having its characters never connect the dots on basic things or speculate out loud like this, another game might have chosen to never have the Sinners employ basic pattern recognition to understand what's actually going on with their destinations or toss around theories about what's happening with Dante, but Limbus does do those things and feels more put together and more smartly written as a result.
Yeah, that's a great strength of Limbus Company (and PM games in general)'s writing that the characters are written as actual adults (if really dysfunctional ones) that can use basic pattern recognition and thinking.
ok so heres something i found interesting: N and H is just. fine with gregor. they dont give a shit about his arm.
it feels kinda... odd? especially considering how gregor samsa is jewish and these guys are probably based on nazis?
They mention that they are against mechanical prosthetics because it prevent people from feeling pain (which is an integral part of the "human experience" for them), Gregor's arm being biological, it can still feel pain, so it get a pass for them.
By the way, I've made a long post in the PM Games thread on other points that contains spoilers, you can find it here, but beware of spoilers up to where we are in the story right now.
Are we entirely sure that K Corp didn't just kinda hedge its bets on whether flesh or steel would reign supreme in the market, and then just... allow the virulent anti-cyborg racists to have their fun when it turned out the HP Bullets had the higher share price?
It makes all too much sense. What makes more money, one-time purchases that you might not be able to capture the repair market for, or something people have to continuously consume if they want to stay in the game, which only you can produce thanks to your Singularity patent?
It's subscription augmentation. They've finally done it lads.
I expected not to like Ryoshu but I'm warming up to her. She really went 'yeah all this gore is cliche. no artistry'. Her of all people. I love it.
I also love Ishmael and Heathcliff tagteaming on turning the Hammer guys into corncobs. Beautiful. They're both extremely in tune with how ideologies like this actually function; a veneer for a deeply pathetic excuse to hurt others, hold power over them, and take their stuff without ever having to see them as people instead of a scapegoat for one's own hangups that deserves absolutely none of the consideration it demands. Given N corps's whole thing about 'humanity', it's a metastasized outgrowth of that tumor, in that what gets picked as the focus of ire for these things is both completely arbitrary as a quality and keenly selected from the already constrained and vulnerable.
Dante's also really interesting in this one, since it's where a lot of what's been building up comes to roost for them as well as Sinclair. Continuing the inevitable tabletop comparisons in a different direction, I'm reminded of when Questers are afraid to take any option and play very conservatively as a result. There was that brief exchange with Gregor back at the start, but here it's getting apparent to the other Sinners that maybe uh, things are genuinely affecting them.
Between this and Don Quixote, this really is the Canto of 'your dicking around has consequences', huh?
Sinclair really is having the worst day, the horror and trauma of the past echoing into the present in an even more severe shape to finish ruining his world and taunting his helplessness all the while. But Sinclair might not be helpless if all the power he has surprisingly packed in his body, and his willingness to ask for aid, are anything to go by... what he is, is understandably unprepared and unrefined emotionally, unreliable towards himself while having his growth hampered by so much stress.
And related to this I think, even while unable to reach or produce answers for themself, that Dante aspiring to do something driven by empathy isn't without meaning. What are they able to do, what will they do if opportunity presents itself? Difficult to say even from our perspective, given Dante's abilities beyond the trick of revival and their self-reinforcing negative esteem; but Dante questioning these things, and grasping at the slightest steps might be rewarded with the Sinners reaching out in turn, at wondering what they can do for the manager's burdens or seeking sincere support for their own goals and not merely obligated by the job.
Going to take a while still for that to materialize, I suspect. But it's also interesting and rewarding to see the characters candidly discuss hypotheticals and possibilities prompted by the mysteries that are being shown in the story, in a way that echoes thoughts the audience is likely already considering (following up from Dante speculating on the personal relevance of each Golden Bough mission to the SInners).
Fascinating that at the closing of the update, Sinclair is so blunt in suggesting (or rather accusing) that the Sinners are each here to act as a tool to bring Limbus Company to a Golden Bough connected circumstancially to them. Was he thinking about this earlier, or did he pull that out just as he understood what his instincts were saying about the intended path?
There's some more bits of Ryoshu foreshadowing here as well. She specifically refers to the other Sinners as calves/children.
I think it's interesting that for all Meursault volunteers information for once. I get the sense he really loathes N-Corp. Enough he might have actively left rather then being banished or some such.
Oh, and N-Corp is being *weird* actually. The Inquisition is noted as being a subfaction of N-Corp that has risen to prominence for...reasons. Probably bad ones. Meanwhile N-Corp took in The Feather of a Fallen Wing and is giving her a taskforce to collect The Golden Boughs. I genuinely do not know why they are willing to overlook her past. Wings almost always hold their taboos as sacred and profound.
So genuinely what in the Inferno happened that N-Corp is going topsy turvy?!
Why, none other than everyone's favourite mother figure, Hermann! This of course brings up some questions, namely "How much is the current situation from Hermann's machinations" and "How did she get hired by N-Corp when she was formerly employed to the defunct G-Corp, knowing how people who worked for fallen Wings are treated usually".
One of many reasons of why I love Limbus so much is because of moments of foreshadowing like these. Why, of all the sinners, Heathcliff was the one who wanted to get an answer to the question of what a Meursault would do? He didnt seemed like very cpmpassionate persoon in the bus. But if you know what main reasons for his anger outbursts was this moment is making too much sense.
Huh, interested that no-one's commented that we're repeatedly told that nobody can understand what Dante says (except Vergil who's trolling on purpose)... except Sinclair literally has full conversations with them, here. Sinclair understands Dante, probably has since they first met, and it makes sense because Sinclair's from Prosthesis Town, The Town Where People Replace Their Heads. He's not just responding to body language, either, these are very clearly actual conversations.
There's definitely a sense of 'well we've got the magic healing bullets, we don't need a low-profit prosthesis division' that makes the fact N-Corp is allowed to do this on K-Corp's turf make a little more sense, that's exactly the kind of short-term thinking that idiots like the people running everything in the City seem to be would have. Still seems like, uh, making yourself a victim of another Corp for no real benefit, but maybe N-Corp is on the rise and K-Corp is on the fall, so they don't have a choice?
Presumably the WH40K knock-offs also have healing bullets, given that Guido comes back completely fine.
Also love that they're so completely uninterested in their own ideology that they actively sin against it by installing cybernetics onto unenhanced people in direct contravention of their stated principles. Unironically peak understanding of the fascist fanatic. They just want to hurt people, the ideology is simply a convenient excuse.
Huh, interested that no-one's commented that we're repeatedly told that nobody can understand what Dante says (except Vergil who's trolling on purpose)... except Sinclair literally has full conversations with them, here.
Ah, I thought it was that no-one could and the Sinners were just spending enough time around them that they could interpret their body language; must have mis-remembered that bit.
ok so heres something i found interesting: N and H is just. fine with gregor. they dont give a shit about his arm.
it feels kinda... odd? especially considering how gregor samsa is jewish and these guys are probably based on nazis?
The arm is biological, so it doesn't go against their creed. As for the alleged nazi inspiration, I'd say that's a bit of a stretch to say theyre exclusively based on them. They're definitely performing pogrom-type activities, but the actual methodology isn't distinctly what the nazis did. And nazi attitudes are fairly at odds with the more religious theming of Nagel Und Hammer. I'd be more inclined to compare them to other groups. Even if the title of One Who Grips has been linked to the nazis, there are a lot of other things mixed in. Like, say, the crusades.
As for Gregor specifically, it's worth noting that Kafka died before the rise of Nazi Germany. I'd be more interested in seeing them explore aspects of the Jewish experience which Kafka actually wrote about. For instance, Amerika (or The Man Who Disappeared) it covers the alienation of being the outsider, the immigrant, constantly feeling separate. And I'd say it would make a lot of sense for Project Moon to specifically use that book's themes since they already seem to have referenced it with Gregor being at the same age that Karl, Amerika's protagonist was (15) when the event that turned them both into an outcast occurred.
Instead, a bonus observation! If you zoom in as much as possible and really squint, there's two things of note about the base Don (based on what?) combat sprite. Firstly her lance instead reads "soñar lo imposible soñar" - apparently "y soñar lo imposible soñar" is the last line of the actual song and if I plug that into Google translate it returns "and dream, the impossible to dream" instead of 'dream the impossible dream' like I thought, so I'm not sure how accurate or inaccurate that all is. Secondly, and you really have to squint at this and/or open it fullscreen - the left side of her coattails reads 'MIGUEL' instead of 'DON QUIXOTE' like it does in the conversation sprites.
Project moon patched it 2 weeks ago. Turns out both the words on the lance and the name on the battle sprite? Yeah, not supposed to be like that. Her base sprite has been like that for over a year before they realized this. Incredible.
Oh yeah. Fun fact for the non-Limbus-players of the thread.
Do you remember this?
Project moon patched it 2 weeks ago. Turns out both the words on the lance and the name on the battle sprite? Yeah, not supposed to be like that. Her base sprite has been like that for over a year before they realized this. Incredible.
Project moon patched it 2 weeks ago. Turns out both the words on the lance and the name on the battle sprite? Yeah, not supposed to be like that. Her base sprite has been like that for over a year before they realized this. Incredible.
If, for example, a Kleinhammer comes at Ishmael with Inquisition and she clashes with Loggerhead, that's a ceiling of 8 and a floor of 2 contesting a ceiling of 10 and a floor of 3. Now let's say Ishmael wins, so one coin is destroyed and they clash again. Now it's a ceiling of 8 and a floor of 5 contesting a ceiling of 10 and a floor of 3. Even if the Kleinhammer hits heads again, if Ishmael doesn't also hit heads she's now fucked. Reverse-coin skills just get more and more difficult to beat in a clash as they lose more coins
Oh my goodness, I had never realized this aspect of Reverse Coins before you pointed out, but you're right. Since having coins at all is a downside for them, you can never be sure if you'll win a clash until you win, unless your numbers are just that much higher. That's a really cool quirk of the system.
Upside: did you know that Sinclair's s3 fucking launches his target a good 12ft in the air on the second coin so he can launch them across the screen with the third? The boy is The Fucking Strong. He can just Do That, no augments no nothing, just pure German fury and hormones. What kind of hormones? Don't worry about it-
I really wanna go just look through all the default sinners' animations now, I don't think I've ever properly appreciated them besides Outis, who I still use at base ID.
Case in point, they switch gears from this to making a crack about mounting the clockhead on the wall after they find their real head, eliciting an aghast look from Ishmael. Because like, bruh what do you even say to that.
Literally what do you even say to that!! Only quoting this one, but all the moments of the Sinners being horrified by Dante's self-deprecation about something they would really like them to refute are good. Very telling too, I think this is the moment when a lot of them collectively realize abuse directed at someone they're starting to have some kind of bond with might have unintended consequences.
Heathcliff: "Hey, wait...!" Narration: In response, he swings his weapon with a tremendous force I never thought he could exert, crushing the head of the one who grabbed him. Narration: The Inquisitor collapses to the ground before even a gasp could escape their mouth. Narration: Sinclair would normally keep to the back of our group; this was the first time I saw him charge in unprompted like that.
Sinclair being lowkey Built Different and the fucking strong is definitely fun whenever it has its moment. Reflexively backswinging someone so hard they turn to paste.
Man. Kinda speaks for itself, really. In his time of greatest crisis the almost hormonal duality of Sinclair comes to the fore - unable to commit to the momentary courage his hatred of Kromer brings, unable to control the outpourings of grief for the life he used to have, swinging back and forth between the two like a pendulum in a way that merely renders him volatile and dangerous to be around
Being unable to control your emotions or even just keep on one track is just awful. Every Canto is struggling hours for its Sinner, but lord does Sinclair get it rough.
it's a joke that yugioh players don't read the cards but I feel like that applies to library of ruina players too, lmao. Somehow I missed that quirk on all of those.
it's a joke that yugioh players don't read the cards but I feel like that applies to library of ruina players too, lmao. Somehow I missed that quirk on all of those.
It's true, Project Moon fans cannot read! And here we all are, in a thread, reading someone recount the story, about several characters based on books and stories.
