Consortium - 20/20 hours

The positive opinion playthrough turned out to be much easier than the negative opinion playthrough, which is nice. I didn't learn any new information from it, because I'd had positive opinions from every character in the game at one point or another in my first three runs, but it was a high note to end my time with Consortium on . . . or it would have been, had I not finished it at the 17 hour mark.

That left me with a tough decision. I had just enough time for one more quick jaunt through the whole plot, but playing the game six times in as many days would have been almost entirely pointless. The only thing I had left to get was a handful of incidental Steam Achievements.

So I did something kind of risky. I just went back to my previous saves and loaded files for right around when the guide said the achievements were available. Because one of them involved playing through 21 levels of the training simulator, they took longer to get than I might have feared. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite long enough. I wound up at 19 1/2 hours with 37/39 Achievements. Since the last two looked actively unfun (keep all the civilians alive in the training simulator and end the game with neutral attitudes from every character), I decided to just grit my teeth and finish the game again from right where I earned that final Achievement.

Consortium is a fine game, but I highly recommend that you not play it five and a half times in a row. I was seeing new material almost to the very end of my 20 hours, but it was small and incidental, and nothing compared to the large bulk of the dialogue that I had to sit through every game.

I didn't care for the "traveler from another dimension" subplot. I thought it added nothing in particular to the story (except for the revelation at the end of an optional dialogue chain that suggested the previous inhabitant of Bishop 6's body was a second mole), and I actively resented it every time the ARG was mentioned. However, putting that aside, I was still interested in seeing what happens in the sequel, even after so many repetitions. That's a real credit to the writing, characters, and worldbuilding (although I am extending some trust on the supposed identity of the Churchill Tower terrorist - it had better not be as stupid as it looks). The main reason I don't just buy and play the sequel right now is that it's still in early access. I also worry that there might not be a chapter 3 and, of course, I don't want to commit to playing it for 20 hours. But two or three years from now, I will definitely be diving into the further adventures of the Consortium . . . unless I forget.