Why Am I Chasing Astrid?


Pickwun

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On 2017. 09. 29. at 8:01 AM, Carbon said:

 "Relatable" is subjective and you acknowledge this, so your inability to connect with the characters seems to be insurmountable (read: your individual problem). So again, what can be done? Should the writers consult with each and every player before proceeding? The only thing that can be said is that they just don't work for you. It's a shame, but...ok then, opinion stated.

That's not how it goes! And I'm pretty sure that you know that. You're emotionaly invested in the game too much and now you can't think 'clear'. It's like in a relationship. Love is blind!

@Boston123 was right! That's how there's bestseller books and blockbuster movies out there. Writers shouldn't had to consult their audience before release a book/movie to make it a huge success, and you know that! You know that, but now you act like you don't. And that is love. That's when you're blinded. You're defending your love right now. So, I would say your opinion is not even relevant. Because you can't think clearly for sure. I wouldn't argue with somebody who professed about something. That's the worst kind of person. When you're in doubt, please go to steamcharts.com and check out how many people playing the game. You'll see that not too much.

You act like @Boston123 was the only one who think that the story is cheap. But it isn't true either. The forum is abundant with dissatisfied people. We all know who wrote the story, and we all know that he's not even a writer.

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  • 11 months later...
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Will is chasing after Astrid because he refuses to lose her again.  He has already gone through his world ending once: the loss of a child.

If this is indeed what happened, then Astrid and Will were emotionally torn apart.  The cutscene at the start also hints at alcoholism: “it’s under control!” (Or is it?).  I think Astrid’s comment “ Don’t let this new world break you” was something she told him long ago in the depths of his dispair following their mutual loss.  Makes sense that would be first thing in his mind following the crash.

Now Will has a shred of hope that he can hang on to one family member.  He’s suffered & lost enough already- he will not let Great Bear stand in his way.

As a player I sympathize with Will and want to see him succeed by pure force of willpower.

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  • 1 month later...
On 15.9.2017 at 10:40 PM, Pickwun said:

Seriously, why do I care where she went?  Apparently we broke up at some point in the past, because her ambitions were more important than me.  Now she's come back and cajoled me into flying my plane into a storm in the middle of the night - and of course we crashed.  I'm injured, she's a doctor, and she just took off leaving me to freeze/bleed to death on the mountain.  Why am I lugging around this case that she couldn't be bothered to pick up?  Am I hunting her down so I can beat her to death with the case when I find her?  Am I just so ungodly stupid that I deserve to just die in the wilderness anyway?

I guess because love makes you do crazy things

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The line of dialogue that poses the most serious questions is this one from when they are in the plane, just before the aurora starts:
Will says, "What I did, I did it for us!"
They were talking about the loss of their son. What did Will do? Did he somehow cause the thing that happened to their son? And does Astrid blame him for it? Whatever, she didn't want to discuss that.

On the face of it, in each of my play-throughs of Wintermute, I've been left with the overall feeling that Astrid isn't treating Will very well: she does seemingly leave him for dead at the crash site; she doesn't tell him what she's doing there; she gets angry with him when he (perfectly reasonably, to me) tries to ask her about it; she's generally reluctant to engage with him about anything. She's very aloof, and doesn't come across as terribly likable from what we see of her in Episodes 1&2. But we don't know what happened to them or between them - there's still a nagging feeling in me that Will did something terrible in the past which she can't forgive him for, or can't completely reconcile herself with.

More to the point, did Astrid somehow know about what was going to happen (with the geomagnetic event)? She'd been working for/with some shady-sounding character (Will: "Sounds... legit?") whom she wouldn't talk about with Will and who needed her help; it wasn't necessarily medical help. She certainly did leave Will at the crashsite, and that's something Will (and we) would be justified in feeling aggrieved about, but she's clearly decided that her "mission" was more important. She perhaps knew that staying with Will would delay her, bringing him with her would delay her and force her to deal with his questions and his re-opening of old wounds that she didn't want or wasn't able to deal with at that time - she couldn't afford to allow herself that delay because her reason for reaching The Person was more important. Perhaps she even assessed that Will was not seriously injured and trusted that he could make his way out of there and survive? Anyway, leaving him was, to her, worth the risk of his possibly succumbing to the cold and his injuries, but she must have had her reasons for doing it. Maybe she even felt later that she'd made a mistake, but was unable to go back because of what happened to her in Milton?

The story is deliberately vague so far. That does make it difficult to relate with the characters, and I do think that it's a bit frustrating to spend 2 whole episodes out of 5 with this level of player/audience disengagement with what's actually going on. But there is a redux coming -and soon- and a new episode that should explain at least some of why Astrid is behaving so strangely.

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Maybe it's just me, but if I were in control of an aircraft that went down in a cataclysmic event, I would make a point to seek out what happened to my passenger.  Whether they were total strangers, or my own ex-wife, I would need to know.  Especially if they had approached me in the middle of the night begging for a flight to a remote town, bearing a case with unknown contents, refusing to answer questions, and declaring that it was important enough to warrant risking a flight in that kind of storm.

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7 minutes ago, ajb1978 said:

I would make a point to seek out what happened to my passenger. 

Even if the passenger is your ex-wife, you've had a child together but bad things happened, and she abandon you just after the crash, to your death near a cave? After using you without telling anything? Come on!

I have to agree with OP, so far I can't care less about what happened to Astrid, I was already hating her even only with the cinematics, the way she treats other humans being is just... awful. Astrid is simply part of these toxic people you don't want to mess with, because they don't treat you like they ask you to treat them.

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Or maybe she couldn't see the ravine that Will and the rest of the plane landed in? It was dark, in the middle of a blizzard, and the ravine was fairly far down. I think it's reasonable to think that she didn't see him down there and she decided to get herself to safety, not to mention any injuries she might have had.

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She speaks to him before leaving him: "Mackenzie! Mackenzie! Don't let this new world break you".

Which also by the way implies that she knew in advance that they've been victims of an event, the "First Flare", that she knew would be happening somehow. Else how could she know it's a "new world" and not just a crash with strange lights?

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Pulled from one of the Steam trailers with the Astrid voice over. I wonder if we will see a new region with this community hall location? Looks like this could be a place she headed to look for Will?

oib3LsT.png

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Perseverance Mills?

"Jeremiah says it can be reached by taking the road north out of Pleasant Valley, but would take days to get there on foot."

There is space for a new region before it, if Jeremiah's observation above stands as truth. Christmas is going to be good. :toque:

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 15.9.2017 at 10:40 PM, Pickwun said:

Seriously, why do I care where she went?  Apparently we broke up at some point in the past, because her ambitions were more important than me.  Now she's come back and cajoled me into flying my plane into a storm in the middle of the night - and of course we crashed.  I'm injured, she's a doctor, and she just took off leaving me to freeze/bleed to death on the mountain.  Why am I lugging around this case that she couldn't be bothered to pick up?  Am I hunting her down so I can beat her to death with the case when I find her?  Am I just so ungodly stupid that I deserve to just die in the wilderness anyway?

OMG You're right. Now that you mentioned it, she was a little witchy when they were in the plane :) Now i just wanna loot her frozen corpse to get the code for the suitcase :) 

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Well, should Will lose hopes of finding her he'd just hole up in a cave with a couple of deer to eat and start trying codes. There are four digits, it's mechanical so no "three attempts then it's formatted" threat, how long would it take to try ten thousand codes with nothing else to do? Less than three days, with no hurry and relaxing once in a while.

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I don't know about you guys, but If I was in Astrid's shoes I think I would've left too. There's no shelter above the ravine, hostile wildlife, and strange men in orange suits crawling all over the place.

I dont think she's truly leaving him for dead purposely, she ripped her clothing a few times on the way out so she must've been running from something/someone.

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She is a doctor, and does not ask to many questions. In the movies these kind of doctors, fix criminals in a vet clinic at night or have phials with zombie viruses in their suitcase :) And she really was witching around when Mackenzie asked a question :) 

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I will be posting some spoilers to the Story mode from some summation that I have heard at some point, coming from believable sources. I don't know if it were official Hinterland sources at the time or some media newspaper description to the backstory of a planned Story mode for TLD, but this was years before the story mode came out... yet the backstory seems to holds true to a lot of what we have seen in the game so far.
 

 


I don't remember all the points well but in general, this should be the backstory:
Will was born into a family in a very remote community of just few people - I think it was a lumberjack camp. At some point his mother died, I believe - not sure if it was during early childhood or childbirth, but he grew up with only his father. His father got a licence and ran a small plane company with supplies - but was a heavy drinker. At some point he had an accident - his plane crashed, which he survived, but it made him drink even more. He eventually got another plane and continued on with his business.
Will was also mostly self-taught (which I think is depicted in the game in his skills - with him, having a pretty high starting skill of mending clothes) - but with no real education. He followed in his father´s footsteps as a pilot and took over his father´s company. Later on he met Astrid, which was a doctor, working under some other Doctor who is even mentioned in the story mode, but dont remember his name. I think they were freelance doctors who were helping out in the area with medical attention to natives, and remote colonies like that where Will lived. This is why I believe Astrid is using a bow as signature weapon - due to a fact she spent a lot of her time in the villages of the natives, providing medical care.

They fell in love and eventually got married, even had a child of their own, a boy. But something tragic happened and their son died. This created a pitfall in between them - and Will turned to drink like his father. Astrid blamed him for what happened to their son, and Will blamed himself as well. So Astrid "divorced" him and left to continue her work under this doctor - but as we know from the beginning of the story, went freelance on her own later on. No idea if she divorced him officially, probably not. She was hurt and depended on him for support but he lost himself in the bottle, so she left, but never moved on. Neither of them did - which is why they are both seen with their wedding rings.

The story begins several years later when Astrid returns and asks Will for his help. There is a mystery with the box and its contents - but the notion is that Astrid has some basic understanding of the Aurora event, or at least that there is some crisis afoot. Yet the case is crucial to someone that Astrid wants to help - unsure if this has anything to do with the Aurora.

 


Taking all of that into consideration, I am not surprised Will is chasing after Astrid. They have a lot of history together, and though they were separated by a tragedy they clearly have strong feelings for one another. And Will has the character of a white knight and a protector - always tries to see the best in people and wants to help everyone, yet can also get really angry... And feels profound guilt towards Astrid that he is trying to make up for.

I am not going to go looking for the sources of this information or trying to fix it according to what I actually read - but I am quite certain I read this somewhere, moreless, some 5 years ago. I may have forgotten some parts of that text, but I think the backstory I wrote about fits along with what we know from Story mode so whenever I read it, it must have come from at least semi-official sources.

Edit: I actually tried really hard to come up with the source of this backstory. I can't find it anywhere. My guess was that it would be on the Kickstarter page but it seems not. I am a bit worried that I may have been wrong or a victim of some speculations - yet I fairly well remember reading about this backstory lore to the game those years ago, being intriqued by anything that had something to do with this game. Shame I cant find it anywhere.

 

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@Mroz4k

That all makes sense. Will did something bad, and he feels the need to explain himself to Astrid. If he's not still holding out hope of resurrecting their relationship (which he might be), then he at least wants to find her so that he can get his thoughts off his chest - make peace with himself over what happened by telling her and making her understand why he did what he did.

I think the person who Astrid needs to find on Great Bear is not in need of her medical help because of illness; I think it's a person (possibly a scientist) who had predicted the geo-magnetic event, and was working on something with Astrid as some sort of solution to what they knew was coming. Maybe that's why she was so sharp with Will - she knew time was running out and didn't want to give him too much information in case he got scared and backed out of helping her. Best if he just thought it was a medical emergency, because then he'd probably just agree to it.

I'm not expecting many more big plot reveals from the Redux, but there might be a few more little details.

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@Mroz4k

I read something like that, too. There was also information that Will is engaged in illegal transportation.

8 hours ago, Pillock said:

That all makes sense. Will did something bad, and he feels the need to explain himself to Astrid. If he's not still holding out hope of resurrecting their relationship (which he might be), then he at least wants to find her so that he can get his thoughts off his chest - make peace with himself over what happened by telling her and making her understand why he did what he did.

I think the person who Astrid needs to find on Great Bear is not in need of her medical help because of illness; I think it's a person (possibly a scientist) who had predicted the geo-magnetic event, and was working on something with Astrid as some sort of solution to what they knew was coming. Maybe that's why she was so sharp with Will - she knew time was running out and didn't want to give him too much information in case he got scared and backed out of helping her. Best if he just thought it was a medical emergency, because then he'd probably just agree to it.

I'm not expecting many more big plot reveals from the Redux, but there might be a few more little details.

If we take into account the assumption of a new location. It is likely that it will familiarize you with some part of the backstory of their relationship.
 

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