Rooster Teeth's gen: Lock

Watching this week’s episode, just noticed that at the end of the OP (1:29) there’s blink you’ll miss it shot (as in you literally have to pause the video to see it) of Evil Union colors Chase

And the episode literally begins with Miranda questioning Chase about why Nemesis moves and talks like him.

Holy shit this episode.

Edited by TheAirman on Feb 23rd 2019 at 10:58:03 AM

.........holy shit. Just.....wow!

Well, the next character status chart is gonna have a metric fuckton more color variety.

Also Val/entinaxKazu OTP, that scene was just goddamn beautiful.

Edited by TheAirman on Feb 23rd 2019 at 11:29:16 AM

"More" color variety? How is swathes of red more variety?

And I guess they couldn't keep paying David Tennant's salary forever, not with every other big name they've got. But damn what a way to go. Though I wonder how they're supposed to get the gen:Lock system up and running again without him. Maybe Caliban has all the schematics and stuff?

Edited by danime91 on Feb 23rd 2019 at 10:42:29 AM

Caliban is Waller if you ask me. A copy of his mind. The "Omega level protocols" thing probably means unlocking his full personality. Rooster Teeth pulled a similar thing off with RWBY.

But yeah. Talk about a Wham Episode. I expected them to take it slow this week.

I'm surprised Kazu hasn't complained about everyone treating him like a Token Minority. "Shogun" heh.

Red and Yellow. Remember that mech pilots can actually seal their suits against the nanotech. Also, the Colonel appeared to be giving some order after the nanomachines began spreading - and they began entering the Anvil from the lower levels - so the command room could have potentially been sealed off in the nick of time. Then there's the fact that Holon's obviously haven't gotten all the upgrades we see in the pilot. And if the gen:Lock team really are the only survivors, then there is no longer a supporting cast, and those are kinda necessary for stories in general to work.

Finally, I'm not saying the Anvil isn't lost, it totally is. But that doesn't it was a total party kill. The Union now has access to the sixth Holon, and potentially two candidates to mindrape and force-upload - Real Sinclair and Leon (his age made didn't make him incompatible, just too much of a risk to take the chance).

Not to mention that you can see in the background of his lab one of the monitors says "Transfer Awaiting Authorization" and then later "Transfer Complete". Dude absolutely backed something up.

Edited by TheAirman on Feb 23rd 2019 at 1:09:42 PM

The thing about big name actors is their schedules and their salaries are precisely what makes them questionable to survive stuff like this.

So wow, 6 episodes to completely upend the status quo, introduce a major existential crisis, and possibly kill off half the supporting cast. With still no clue who or what the Union are. Even so, it’s clear the Polity is losing the war badly.

True. Though how good their odds of survival are considering there are still plenty of Union drones and Evil Chase still around on top of the giant cloud of nanos. Even the slightest hull breach means they're as good as dead in that environment. A whole bunch of question marks on the status board, I guess. Though any regular infantry on that battle field are pretty much dead, but then there aren't any named infantry characters.

And I suppose my earlier theory was right. You could take a back-up copy and download it into the body. Which also means it actually is cut-paste, rather than copy-paste. Else they would have just self-destructed Chase's gen:Lock when it looked like it was gonna be captured and have Chase just wake up. And there wouldn't have been a need to create a backup copy every time he uploaded.

Evil Chase is kind of tragic. He just wants back into his body. But the way the gen:Lock system works, he's probably been stuck in Nemesis the entire time, a nightmarish situation on its own, but that means he's waaaaay exceeded up-time, so he can't download back into his body. Though the Union probably just lied to him and said they could figure out a way around the up-time limit if they can get their hands on the tech. That coupled with all the horrific things you can do to a digitized mind, I'm not surprised he is the way he is now.

And stepping away from the spoiler wall for a bit. Looks like they saw some of the criticisms or they just finally got around to implementing it, but I like that the battle damage was much more obvious on the Holons now.

Edited by danime91 on Feb 23rd 2019 at 11:41:03 AM

Kazu bearing the brunt of it, of course. I really liked that touch actually because of course he's the one that would just tank hits while tearing into the Union forces.

Well how else would the Dragon of Dojima fight?

His entire fighting style is HEAT actions...

It all makes sense now.

Same battle system.

Edited by Beatman1 on Feb 23rd 2019 at 3:10:35 PM

But Koichi Yamadera voices Shun Akiyama not Kazuma Kiryu...

Jesus Christ. The entire supporting cast just got a Bolivian Army Ending. Weller is probably dead, though I strongly suspect he has backups. I'm a bit disappointed with the rather weird way they handled the cut+paste/copy+paste thing, but I suppose they felt like full on copy+paste would have taken away the stakes. Oh well, either way the 6th holon isn't going to be a 6th ranger, it's going to be the second Union holon.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Feb 23rd 2019 at 3:45:43 PM

I feel like the Union's facelessness is definitely a point of characterisation at this point - as in, they prefer not to do faces. Just look at how inhuman so much of their wargear is (spiders rather than bipedal walkers, faceless, eerily robotic infantry), and how the Nemesis has none of the careful regard for body dysmorphia you see in the Polity Holons. They may not be aliens, but they definitely seem to have a strong disinterest in remaining human.

Edited by Iaculus on Feb 23rd 2019 at 9:05:42 AM

"Okay, so for this scene on a roof overlooking a canyon, we need an opening line. Any ideas?"

"...how about 'now that's a katana'?"

Due to the fact that this episode opens with the idea of backups, by creative logic, I would have to think that Weller wasn't lying about meeting them. Of course, that would mean killing off essentially only the in-house voice actors, which seems like a weird business decision.

Yeah, I'm personally hoping their ideology is something along the lines of the Human Hive from SMAC; a sort of radical collectivism merged with aspects of the philosophies of Nietzsche and 商鞅 (Shāng Yāng) that proposes essentially that humans are* a eusocial species, and human society is essentially a superorganism, then extends that to a normative assertion about how human society should be governed.


Miranda at least is almost certainly going to be alive, and honestly I kind of doubt they'd kill off any of the supporting characters off screen.

* One somewhat controversial opinion in evolutionary biology makes such an assertion based on how a very minor modification to one of the criteria for eusociality would seem to include humans in the definition, those criteria being as follows:


1. Reproductive division of labor (with sterile castes) 2. Overlapping generations 3. Cooperative care of young


2 is umambiguously true, 3 was true for early hunter gatherers and arguably in terms of modern society given there's extensive direct contribution to the rearing of human children from the state in the form of public education in nearly every country on Earth. 1 is where things got controversial. The fact that human women are sterile for around a third of their lifespan is really peculiar from an evolutionary biology perspective, and some argued that meets the criterion, and further broadening it by dropping the reproductive part would unambiguously include humans.

Edited by CaptainCapsase on Feb 23rd 2019 at 4:24:17 AM

Jesus, normally this is how you would end a season (maybe even wait until the second?). Instead we've still got two more episodes to go.

Kudos RT, you went from taking years to have any semblance of stakes, to fubar'ing the status quo in six episodes.

Alternative, similarly horrifying option - they don't see the sorts of people they use as soldiers as being any more human than the war machines they fight alongside. Again, the Nemesis was clearly not designed for Chase's comfort and wellbeing.

I wouldn't be surprised if Union soldiers are mindwiped or something so they don't feel fear or disobey orders.

What's really horrifying is that you just know the moment the Union gets their hands on the complete gen:Lock tech and the ability to replicate it for themselves they only need one compatible candidate, which they already have, and just make unlimited copies of them and brainwash them using the built-in sliders to become an army of unwaveringly loyal mechas.

I think the reason Weller blew up the lab wasn't only to save the team, but to destroy his lab and the data in it. For all we know, the thing he blew up was some hybrid of a normal grenade with an EMP one.

Well, no wonder Weller had "Ship of Theseus" written on one of his screens...

Daw, Leon wasn't being a stick-in-the-mud (or distrustful over recent discoveries like Miranda) at all. He was hiding the real welcoming party.

Val's one shot triple kill kinda really didn't make any sense for her three targets stacking up. Were the guys in the back thinking "Man I really don't want to get shot...I'll just stand behind Bob..."

Looks like they slipped in some G-rated blood when Val gave that guy a third eyehole. It was orange-yellow because of the lighting, but we all know that fella's not actually going to see out of that spot.

I really thought Marin was hamburger for a moment there, and then Chase arrived, and then the nanotech appeared. All in all though, I do suppose it'd be a bit unlikely they'll kill her off though because it'd be a bit of a bother to just to kill her off and then re-introduce a new CO for them after as they would inevitably have to in a military organization.

Yaz was really a sweetheart in this episode. With Weller dead, I'm now expecting she'll be having to pull everyone together a lot more hereafter, especially since she'll probably be the one believing in him the most after everyone gets to hear about how he never told "Chase" that he's...well, quotation marks (spare me your various Ship of Theseus answers, you get me!).

Definitely so. The one Holon they've got is giving them enough trouble, absolutely no way Weller's gonna help them get to make more.

Edited by VutherA on Feb 23rd 2019 at 8:41:28 AM

So something that I have noticed, the nanocloud got into the Anvil through the opening in the gate that Miguel opened to get the team out. Plenty of angst fuel for the next episode.

...Ooooooooooh.

Yaz says "Thank you.", Miguel thinks next episode "For killing all of my co-workers?"

This got real heavy.

Clearly the Vanguard needs to take some advice from the Russians, given the map. They’re holding their own.