was working on my termite ranking list but I realized I don't like how any of the termites were written in p2 so here's me complaining about p2 Notkin instead. he's so nothing. his day 1 quest throws a pamphlet's worth of completely open-ended ideological questions on you, that he doesn't pick a side on, with NO effective consequences and then the devs trying 2 account for him being Probably Dead for much of the game led to his having nothing interesting to say after the house of death. I don't think his d10 re-infection dialogue even accounts for what the player did during that quest? and it makes the day 1 murder-trial read like trying to make the soul-and-a-halves relevant via "gritty" edginess, b/c the rest of them still don't do anything material except "make up with the dogheads", when their war with the dogheads only comes through in that one missable act 1 event where they've trapped a kid on the staircase. also they manipulate artemy into killing a guy for fun and notkin's like "eh whatever". Where Are Your Ideological Stances Now... in fact between the d1 poisoning quest and the Kickstarter invisible cat quest the soul-and-a-halves feel like nothing but red herrings where you think you might see something genuinely surprising but you don't. except they're also an unbelievably convenient item trading center. Bereft of conviction but good of mechanics, as with everything else in the game sigh sigh
