{"id":628,"date":"2009-10-30T20:26:10","date_gmt":"2009-10-31T01:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/628"},"modified":"2016-10-20T18:07:06","modified_gmt":"2016-10-21T01:07:06","slug":"628","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/archives\/628","title":{"rendered":"Inside Woman: Nanci"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Utopia Arcology is essentially a city in a tower, and like many urban games, <em>Inside Woman<\/em> has you tour the city and all it has to offer by starting in the slums and working your way up.  There&#8217;s a point where you have to earn some money to progress, so you wangle a job slinging pizza.  This lasts for one shift: once you&#8217;ve had the experience of solving pizza-serving puzzles, there&#8217;s no reason to revisit it.  It&#8217;s time to move on up to the museum and the university and suchlike.  Paying your dues to increase your status &#8212; it&#8217;s like a highly abbreviated American dream, except that you&#8217;re doing it to destroy the system from within.<\/p>\n<p>Just in case you forget this, your sidekick makes occasional heavy-handed comments reminding you how evil everything around you is.  I haven&#8217;t mentioned the sidekick yet: it&#8217;s the disembodied voice of a teenage boy, code-named NANCI, or Nanci for short.  We&#8217;re told in the beginning that Nanci is an agent assigned to monitor you via a nanomechanical transceiver you&#8217;ve ingested.  He can see through your eyes, hear through your ears, think perverted thoughts during your gratuitous shower scene <span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_628_1('footnote_plugin_reference_628_1_1');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_628_1('footnote_plugin_reference_628_1_1');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_628_1_1\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">1<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_628_1_1\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">I say &#8220;gratuitous shower scene&#8221; because that phrase has become an idiom, but I suppose it&#8217;s not really gratuitous here.  It occurs when you go through decontamination on entering the arcology, so it&#8217;s not out of place.  The clothing you bring with you is removed and a standard-issue Utopia jumpsuit issued standardly in its place, which seems like it&#8217;s done at least as much for its psychological impact as for public health issues, and the moment of nudity also seems like an important part of the experience as well &#8212; the almighty security guards want you to leave your first encounter with them feeling vulnerable and humiliated.  You could even invoke myth here: like Inanna entering the underworld, she gives her garments to the threshold guardian before descending into the perils below.  Still, none of this makes it less pervy.<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_628_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_628_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });<\/script> &#8212; he&#8217;s a lot like the player, in fact.<\/p>\n<p>As a wisecracking commentator with no physical presence <span class=\"footnote_referrer\"><a role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" onclick=\"footnote_moveToReference_628_1('footnote_plugin_reference_628_1_2');\" onkeypress=\"footnote_moveToReference_628_1('footnote_plugin_reference_628_1_2');\" ><sup id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_628_1_2\" class=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text\">2<\/sup><\/a><span id=\"footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_628_1_2\" class=\"footnote_tooltip\">I leave it up to the reader to decide what this phrase modifies.<\/span><\/span><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_628_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_628_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top right', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], });<\/script>, Nanci unavoidably reminds me of Arthur, the AI sidekick in <em>The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time<\/em>.  I hated Arthur.  Let me tell you about my experience with Arthur, and how it was optimized to maximize hate.  In <em>JP2<\/em>, you don&#8217;t start off with sidekick Arthur: you have to solve a sequence of puzzles to obtain him, and once you have him, he&#8217;s essential to solving other puzzles.  I failed to notice a hotspot in the game&#8217;s hub that was supposed to lead to encountering him for the first time.  Consequently, I played as much of the game as it&#8217;s possible to play without him &#8212; maybe 1\/3 of the game can be explored this way &#8212; then got stuck.  (So already my first encounter with him is associated him with a bad experience.)  When I finally got him, I was horrified at how he transformed the game.  I had been enjoying the quiet, lonely atmosphere.  I didn&#8217;t want it sprinkled with stupid jokes and insultingly unnecessary hints.<\/p>\n<p>Nanci is better than that, though.  He seldom speaks spontaneously &#8212; just on important plot developments, which, at the rate I&#8217;m going, occupy a small minority of my playtime.  Usually he&#8217;s silent until you explicitly request information about something, which you do by simply focusing your attention on it with the &#8220;focus on&#8221; command.  It&#8217;s like a third alternative to &#8220;examine&#8221; and &#8220;search&#8221;!  I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve seen anything yet where Nanci yields essential new information, but he does at least provide the guidance of an additional point of view, like examining things with Poet in <em>Suspended<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>He doesn&#8217;t seem to take much advantage of being on the outside, though &#8212; you&#8217;d think he could look up information not available to you, contact the relatives of your fellow citizens, things like that.  Maybe he&#8217;ll get to do that at some point, but so far, he might as well be inside the arcology with me.  Which makes me a little suspicious.  Maybe we&#8217;re headed for a third-act twist here.  Maybe the nanomachines I swallowed aren&#8217;t a transceiver at all, but an AI.  Alternately, maybe he&#8217;s just a delusion.  The whole mission briefing was told in flashback &#8212; it could easily be a false memory.  Maybe, just maybe, Alice Ling is nothing more than a dangerous madwoman who hears voices in her head, voices that tell her that Utopia is evil and must be destroyed.  But that doesn&#8217;t explain where she gets her martial arts skills from.<\/p>\n<div class=\"speaker-mute footnotes_reference_container\"> <div class=\"footnote_container_prepare\"><p><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_label pointer\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_628_1();\">&#x202F;<\/span><span role=\"button\" tabindex=\"0\" class=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button\" style=\"display: none;\" onclick=\"footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_628_1();\">[<a id=\"footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_628_1\">+<\/a>]<\/span><\/p><\/div> <div id=\"footnote_references_container_628_1\" style=\"\"><table class=\"footnotes_table footnote-reference-container\"><caption class=\"accessibility\">References<\/caption> <tbody> \r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_628_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_628_1_1');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_628_1_1\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>1<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">I say &#8220;gratuitous shower scene&#8221; because that phrase has become an idiom, but I suppose it&#8217;s not really gratuitous here.  It occurs when you go through decontamination on entering the arcology, so it&#8217;s not out of place.  The clothing you bring with you is removed and a standard-issue Utopia jumpsuit issued standardly in its place, which seems like it&#8217;s done at least as much for its psychological impact as for public health issues, and the moment of nudity also seems like an important part of the experience as well &#8212; the almighty security guards want you to leave your first encounter with them feeling vulnerable and humiliated.  You could even invoke myth here: like Inanna entering the underworld, she gives her garments to the threshold guardian before descending into the perils below.  Still, none of this makes it less pervy.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n<tr class=\"footnotes_plugin_reference_row\"> <th scope=\"row\" class=\"footnote_plugin_index_combi pointer\"  onclick=\"footnote_moveToAnchor_628_1('footnote_plugin_tooltip_628_1_2');\"><a id=\"footnote_plugin_reference_628_1_2\" class=\"footnote_backlink\"><span class=\"footnote_index_arrow\">&#8593;<\/span>2<\/a><\/th> <td class=\"footnote_plugin_text\">I leave it up to the reader to decide what this phrase modifies.<\/td><\/tr>\r\n\r\n <\/tbody> <\/table> <\/div><\/div><script type=\"text\/javascript\"> function footnote_expand_reference_container_628_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_628_1').show(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_628_1').text('\u2212'); } function footnote_collapse_reference_container_628_1() { jQuery('#footnote_references_container_628_1').hide(); jQuery('#footnote_reference_container_collapse_button_628_1').text('+'); } function footnote_expand_collapse_reference_container_628_1() { if (jQuery('#footnote_references_container_628_1').is(':hidden')) { footnote_expand_reference_container_628_1(); } else { footnote_collapse_reference_container_628_1(); } } function footnote_moveToReference_628_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_628_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } } function footnote_moveToAnchor_628_1(p_str_TargetID) { footnote_expand_reference_container_628_1(); var l_obj_Target = jQuery('#' + p_str_TargetID); if (l_obj_Target.length) { jQuery( 'html, body' ).delay( 0 ); jQuery('html, body').animate({ scrollTop: l_obj_Target.offset().top - window.innerHeight * 0.2 }, 380); } }<\/script>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Utopia Arcology is essentially a city in a tower, and like many urban games, Inside Woman has you tour the city and all it has to offer by starting in the slums and working your way up. There&#8217;s a point where you have to earn some money to progress, so you wangle a job [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[311,84,310,313],"class_list":["post-628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-if","tag-andy-phillips","tag-if","tag-inside-woman","tag-the-journeyman-project-2-buried-in-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4236,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions\/4236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}