VN Talk: Steam Prison - Part 4: Adage

If I'd played with a walkthrough from the start I would have done Adage's route first; not because of what I saw of him in the common route (he's the only love interest who isn't in it!), but because I liked his character design. That said, I didn't know what kind of character he would be, and even after finishing his route I find him difficult to sum up in a few words, which is good! It means we don't get many love interests like him in an otome.

For a game about Cyrus being sent to a penal colony, Adage is surprisingly the only love interest who is actually a criminal. He's a blunt and contradictory man, simultaneously selfish and selfless, and for a doctor, he has a terrible bedside manner. Adage initially comes off as someone who doesn't waste words, but he's actually quite talkative when he wants to be. And though you might call him dour from his frequently clipped and emotionless manner of speaking, he has a sense of humor and often smiles.

Adage's spoken language is also ridiculously coarse, considering his profession. He swears more than the rest of the cast and he's possibly the first love interest in an otome that I've seen drop an f-bomb to describe what he wants to do with the protagonist. Given that it's Cyrus though, I'm not sure she understands what he means by that.

All that makes him an interesting and very human character to watch. He also has a great dynamic with Cyrus, who is much more outspoken on his route than the others. Whenever he finds a shortcoming in her, he doesn't mince words, but Cyrus doesn't sit there and take it either, and she pushes him over his own shortcomings as much as he does her. And one thing I like is that even though he frequently brings up that she doesn't have a feminine way of speaking, he also acknowledges that he likes that about her and doesn't want her to change.

His route is largely his story rather than Cyrus's, though we do get a surprise reveal near the end that I'll talk about later. Adage is perhaps unusual in that he committed a crime intentionally to be sent to the Depths, since he's looking for his estranged father. This makes him a little more sympathetic since he wasn't committing crimes for profit, and the victim was a patient who wanted to die anyway, but he acknowledges that his patient died in a cruel manner because he wanted to make sure the murder was heinous enough that he would not be granted leniency.

Like Eltcreed, his route is initially a lot of Cyrus settling into her new life with him. Adage hires her out of guilt for not saving the lives of the mother and son who'd taken her in, and this gives the impression that his hang up is about not being a better doctor, rather than living in the shadow of his father (who it turns out is also a doctor). But there isn't as strong a feeling of routine as in Eltcreed's route so I found I didn't mind the lack of a plot early on. Each day felt different and there was enough mystery around Adage himself (since he doesn't volunteer why he's in the Depths right away) that there's a reason to keep playing and see what happens next.

As in previous routes, something has to happen to spark Cyrus's feelings, and in this case it's Adage not wanting to deal with people around town second guessing his relationship with her. (He calls it "making fun of" but in practice it sounds like what he really doesn't want is gossip.) So he "fixes" this by introducing Cyrus as his wife while making it clear to her that it's just for appearances and they aren't really married.

But Cyrus doesn't really understand what exactly a married couple does, so in order to correctly pretend her role she needs Adage to explain it to her. This kicks off a number of hilarious conversations that illustrate just how sheltered Cyrus's life has been, and how much of a rapscallion Adage was despite the fact they both grew up in the Heights. Though I've seen Cyrus get some flak from other players for not realizing how babies are made, considering that sex ed is still optional in some places in our world, I didn't find it that hard a stretch, and there's something entertaining about Adage dryly discussing how that's accomplished through intercourse.

Given the focus on marriage in his route (even if it's a fake one) it's surprising Cyrus doesn't ask if he's had a real one. Adage was twenty-four when he was sent to the Depths, and we know Fin at twenty-two was getting a rare postponement due to having a low income; an option Adage would not have had as a doctor. He ought to have been married by the time he was sent to the Depths whether he wanted to be or not. It was probably glossed over just to make him a somewhat older love interest with more life experience, but it's also another instance of the worldbuilding not quite hanging together.

Though the seeds of Adage's route finale are laid down fairly regularly, it's hard to see how they all come together, until they do. Glissade Roselite is the doctor for the HOUNDS and he takes an interest in Cyrus, showing up multiple times on Adage's route. Though it's been about twelve years since his father disappeared from the Heights, Adage is also positive that Glissade is his father, but Glissade never acts as though he recognizes him.

What happens is a surprising exploration of what happens when there is a mandatory population plan with arranged marriages. Cyrus got on the lucky end with parents who ended up loving each other and were happy to have her. Adage's father did his civic duty and emotionally tapped out, being uninterested in both his wife and his son.

Instead, he fell in love with a child of his own creation that he cobbled together like Frankenstein out of the bodies of discarded infants that did not fit with society's desired traits. Because she was created out of his own free will, he cherished her for years until she died and he embarked on a mad scheme to repair her. (And getting repair parts is much easier from the bodies of criminals than upstanding citizens.)

The twin spokes of the finale revolve around the revelation that Glissade arranged for Cyrus to be framed as a criminal--not the specifics of getting her parents killed, but getting her sent to the Depths so he could drain her rare blood type to bring back Priscilla--and Adage coming to terms with the fact the father he wanted to reunite with cares nothing for him.

Normally I like it when a love interest's personal story and the protagonist's intertwine, but Glissade's reveal as the mastermind behind Cyrus being sent to the Depths honestly felt like it came out of nowhere. It's telegraphed early enough that the fact he wants her for reconstructing Priscilla is not a surprise, but him having the pull (because laws were definitely trampled) to get her sent to the Depths was a surprise and not properly set up. And the reveal isn't something Cyrus gets to discover for herself so much as something he just drops into conversation while villain monologuing.

The resolution to Glissade's mad scheme is similarly underwhelming. Adage sets fire to the currently inert Priscilla and Glissade dies trying to save her, which was all right, even though we know the HOUNDS aren't going to let that go unpunished. But because there needs to be a happy ending Adage can't actually be executed. The game avoids that by having Ines suggest to Sachsen that they make Adage Glissade's replacement, since getting a doctor for the HOUNDS is rough when people don't normally volunteer to go down to the Depths.

This was not a bad idea, but Ines suggests it moments before Adage's scheduled public execution in front of a large crowd. With a boss as volatile as Saschen it makes no sense to suggest that he could do things better in front of people he loves to impress his authority over.

I know why it's done publicly, it's so Cyrus can be present to see it, but it doesn't make much narrative sense.

Still, I felt that Adage ended up having one of the better routes, because it at least addressed a lot of questions about Cyrus's framing and even whether the HOUNDS' medication is really necessary. For that reason it feels the most complete out of the routes unlocked at the start and I'd recommend it first.

Unfortunately since Glissade was the only one who knew the truth about what really happened to Cyrus, his death prevents her from getting the proof she needs to return to the Heights, so she remains in the Depths as Adage's assistant. Not that he's nothing if not devoted to her. Adage's life has been a cesspool of neglect, so once he develops an attachment to Cyrus, nothing's going to break it.

This is also the first route to really touch on the Heights population plan, but like other parts of the worldbuilding, if you look at it too hard it tends to fall apart. For instance, knowing that children are planned, and that the Heights is constantly losing people due to natural death and exiling their criminals and HOUNDS, families of two to three children should be fairly standard. But Cyrus is an only child and so is Adage. While it's possible their parents could have had reproductive issues preventing additional children, it would not have been a voluntary choice and I would have liked to see that commented on.