Imagine a marketing campaign for System Shock 3 a'la oldschool War of the Worlds. All radio signals and every TV channel suddenly starts snowing and SHODAN appears, saying something to the effect of "I'm coming for you, bitches." That would be glorious.
Anyway, this LP rocks and I can finally see what SS2 is all about. I have actually been on a little withdrawal thanks to the infamous "You are not a registered user" on a certain forum.
Does anyone remember this little gem of a game called "Strife"? I really want to do a video LP of it, since I know the game inside out and screens don't really lend themselves to what I want to do with it. The only problem is that my computer is from the previous decade, so you can't exactly expect 640x480 HQ from me. I've made some tests a few months back when I got Camtasia Studio 2 up and running and I can get something fairly reliable at around 400x300, which is the best compromise between speed, quality, and overall visibility of what I would be actually doing. If anyone would be interested in seeing this game LP'ed by me, then I will finally give it a shot and embarass myself in front of the whole internet (yay!).
Sounds interesting, I've heard of Strife before, but never played it. If you want to give it a shot, go for it. As for size, I suppose you could just give it a shot and see how it turns out. I'm playing SS2 in 1024x768, but I'm doing these screenshots in 400x300 to ease the loading for readers, yet they're still clear enough to work nicely.
Heading back from the crew quarters we come up to the Athletics sector of the deck. We passed this place a couple times in our searching, but now I think it’s time for us to take a look.
In typical video game fashion there’s several rooms that are connected to the outside world solely through a single point. This locker room’s the only way to get to the basketball court and swimming pool on the other side.
I am an expert at capturing these kinds of screenshots.
OH CRAP IT HEARD ME!
…That actually went down easier than I thought. I guess these big lumpy things aren’t immune to being set on fire.
With that out of the way, maybe we can do something about these lights. There were a couple logs earlier about how the pool next door keeps shorting out the electrical systems for the basketball court, but it’s really a stupid way to extend the fetch-questiness of getting through this area.
We found a power cell somewhere else and use that to reset the breaker. Seems like a really bad way to set up your electrical systems on a spaceship.
With the lights on, we can actually see the court now. If only I had a basketball..
Wait a minute! I can do something about that!
Shift + ;
Summon_obj basketball
Ta da! I’m guessing there’s an explanation involving quantum entanglement, nanite reconstruction, or some other bullshit to explain why I just pulled a basketball out of my ass.
Ok, let’s give our cybernetically-enhanced limbs a shot.
…Well, that was disappointing. Maybe if we tried from up higher?
Grav-lifts are fun!
WHOOOSH!
God dammit!
ARRRGH!
Ok, screw basketball. Here’s where I’m dunking it.
But while we’re here, I picked this life preserver off the wall:
“Due to arcane legal restrictions, all space-going ships are required to have a supply of life preservers. Some, especially on asteroid mining trawlers, have been redesigned to make them self-propelling in space, or to give them a limited air supply, but most ships simply pack the things into a storage locker and forget about them.â€
That sounds like something we need. I’m hanging onto this.
Moving on, we take a look upstairs. There’s another ninja bot here, but they’ve ceased to be a threat with this here EMP Rifle.
Sweet! Golf!
And here’s that transmitter everyone’s been making such a fuss about. We’d do something with it, but unfortunately we don’t have the whole code yet. Time to head back and keep looking.
But before we go, this other dead body here’s holding a broken Fusion Cannon. The highest level Heavy weapon, it’s big, neat looking, and fires a cool glowy green ball, but unfortunately sucks. Still, our pile back in Storeroom 2’s growing, and this will make a nice addition.
And now it’s time to head to the mall. There’s a security station in between, and a couple bots that think they can stop us.
There’s also a log from Rebecca here:
“I just killed some kind of... some kind of spider... I don't know... but it bit me... and now I'm sick... I'm down to my last med hypo. Come quick, Tommy... come quick...â€
Yeah, spiders suck.
A military bot on patrol. I imagine it’d probably do better if it was facing the other way.
Ah, the shopping mall. Hope you brought your gift certificates! Xerxes reminds us that there are only 163 shopping days until Christmas. Crap, we’d better get buying! I recommend cyber modules. They’re the gift that keeps on giving!
In here’s the third OS upgrade station. We’re starting to get into the higher levels of psi power, so Power Psi is a good choice. Now we won’t accidentally kill ourselves if we hold the button too long.
Anyway, back to shopping! Would you really want express brain surgery?
In digging around the mall I also found a log from Korenchkin:
“Forget about land grants, forget about media, forget about patents. What we've found on Tau Ceti will change everything. I've instructed the Von Braun to change course and return to Earth. Captain Diego is in complete accord with this decision. I know that you are skeptical by nature, Miri, but I know once you embrace our discovery you and the entire board will come over to our way of thinking.â€
I assume he’s using “embrace†in the same context as a Facehugger.
Around the corner are some regular upgrade stations. I bought another point of Psi. More power and more damage can’t hurt.
WHAT A BARGAIN!
All children should make sure their Big Daddies accompany them at all times.
There’s a Quantum Thingy in the mall. I’m figuring the shopping rush on the Von Braun must get pretty bad around Christmas Eve, especially with such a killer deal on jumpsuits.
Ok, forget Shodan and saving the ship, I’ve found what I want.
This vending machine sells keys to unlock the different rooms (and simulations) you can visit. We got a log earlier from some guy who left all his nanites and stuff in Nikki’s room, but it was “worth it.â€
Sounds good to me.
…
…
Oh come on, don’t tell me “main power’s out†or something! At least we snagged that guy’s nanites and cyber modules, so it wasn’t a total loss.
Now I’m all depressed. This ship sucks.
To take my mind off the disappointment, we head to the casino. Yep, when all else fails, gambling’s the answer!
These things are rigged.
Wow, I’ve got a couple hundred nanites saved up, wonder how much alcohol that would buy?
“And I want a spaceship. With blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the spaceship and the blackjack.â€
The little picture doesn’t say anything about metal balls you clip to your wrist.
We’ve got movie sign!
They’ve really let this place go ever since it got bought out.
Why is it in all futuristic settings, everyone is always interested in entertainment from before the late 20th century/early 21st? There’s never talk about some awesome book from the year 2067, or anyone watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy, it’s always Shakespeare and silent movies.
Even in the future, movie food is an overpriced ripoff.
All that, and there’s nothing good showing. Figures.
I’m assuming this place just replicates the food directly in your stomach.
Ah yes, the absolute perfect store for any occasion.
…Hm. Compared to drugs, brain surgery, and Taco Bell, some random Thomas Kinkaide paintings don’t really seem like they’d sell.
Then again…
(Code fragment Get!)
This was scrawled onto the wall outside the ship’s EB Games. I’m guessing it was from somebody camping out for the Wii who was asked to move.
…Yeah, until you walk up to me and explode.
Well, we’ve explored the whole map now, but we’re still one code fragment short of a transmitter. We got an audio log from some paranoid guy who stashed a bunch of stuff in his quarters. Now that I think of it, there was one door that was locked. Maybe there’s another picture terminal in there.
I said he was paranoid. I didn’t say he was clever.
In his closet is this… squishy… thing. It looks like a gun, so into the hyperdimensional pockets you go! We’ll have to research this when we get back to Deck 2.
If you think they’re out to get you, you should beat them to the punch.
And yes! The last bit of the stupid Triforce hunt is over! …Or code fragment hunt, whichever.
(Code fragment Get!)
We’ve got what we need now, so time to head back!
…To deck 2 to offload crap and research! Our pile’s still here, so Jim must be doing a marvelous job guarding.
A while ago I bought Molecular Transmutation. Now I’ll demonstrate it’s use.
This Tier 4 power lets you break down ammo and hypos into nanites. Sounds great, right? We aren’t using 75% of the guns in the game, so why not burn their ammo and get psi hypos? The problem with that strategy is that it costs psi points to use. So, most of the items you can break down don’t give you enough nanites to make up for the cost it would take to buy psi hypos to regain the points.
However, there are a couple things that do give you a good profit. Mainly, frag grenades. These give you 20 nanites a pop, and you can do 7 or eight of them per psi hypo. With all the grenades we’ve been stocking up, we went from roughly 300 nanites to over 2000.
Everything else that wasn’t worth using Transmute on I shoved in the recycler. We’re not going to use it so I won’t feel bad about only getting one nanite per bullet.
I researched that funky looking thing, and it turns out it’s a Viral Proliferator. That’s an Exotic Weapon that shoots clouds of deadly, deadly gas. Amusing, and rather effective against organic targets, but at this point not worth the cyber modules it would take to equip.
We’ll do just fine with our Psi-Amp.
Back to athletics. We’ve got the code, so now it’s time to overload Xerxes and let Shodan take over.
Oh, and warn Earth or something. Of course the ship can go faster than light, so even if we sent the signal off should the ship get fully taken over and decide to go attack Earth it’d get there a good 10 years before the warning.
We’ve got the code fragments, but what is the code exactly?
10, [1, 4, 6]. I’m assuming the brackets mean the end of the code, so there’s two combinations to try.
…Nope.
Success! Xerxes does the whole Daisy…dai…s…y… thing, but Shodan still can’t gain control of the ship. Apparently the Many’s spread too far into the system.
Well, at least we got the elevator to the Command Deck working.
Heading out of athletics we’re jumped by a cyborg assassin and a couple hybrids. After taking the cyborg out, I accidentally tried shooting at the hybrid with the EMP Rifle.
It’s not very effective…
But fireballs are.
Man, I want Tier 5. We still don’t have enough modules. I suppose we probably would if I would stop buying other things incrementally, but whatever.
While I was looking at the upgrade station, this monkey snuck up behind us and started flinging flaming poo!
I torched it’s corpse out of spite.
With nothing left to do here, time to head up.
How ominous.
And apparently, the entire ship is nothing but bare piping and conduits with a single sheet of drywall covering everything. I’m surprised there aren’t more holes in the place.
This elevator’s special. It only goes between decks 5 and 6. Why the only access to the command deck is in the middle of the crew quarters is anyone’s guess, but it’s probably for the same reason there’s no emergency ladders leading anywhere but one dude’s closet.
Push the button! What will we find on deck 6? FIND OUT NEXT TIME!
IIRC that worm gas-gun thingie was pretty much a letdown. Lotta resources to max out exotic weapons and then you just as often fried yourself as the intended target. It's for low-yield ventures like that the quickload was intented.
And we're coming to the home stretch here, there's slightly more than a week's worth of posts left, so I'll probably finish it off with weekend updates.
The only thing I really remember about the exotic guns - apart from ammo being scarce and a bit of a hassle to gather - is that they were the only weapons in the game which could kill swarms. I think the worm launcher could drop a rumbler in its tracks with one shot, but by the time you get it you should have at least one or two other weapons which can do the same thing to a wider variety of targets.
Swarms aren't worth any expenditure of ammo it would take to destroy them. Just run away for the all of 5 seconds that they live. I always thought the exotic weapons were fun to use, even though they were limited.
When we last left our mighty warrior, we had just discovered the pathway to Deck 6: Command.
So here’s Deck 6: Command. When we arrive, Shodan sends us an email. Basically, the Many has gotten out of control, so she needs to blow the ship up to get rid of them once and for all. On the bridge is an access card to get us into that one locked room back on deck 4, which will presumably help.
Figures. After all the hard work we’ve been through, now we get to blow the whole thing up. Makes me so mad I just wanna…wanna…shoot a ninja cyborg!
…That’ll do.
The door by the (dead) ninjabot is locked, so we’ll head this way. If I’ve learned anything from Half-Life, it’s that trams are good.
Just past the door is an upgrade station, and a log:
“I hope you're still alive, Ms. Delacroix. We really could use some guidance up here. They've got those lady cyborgs of theirs loading up the shuttles with those eggs... I don't know what their plan is... but it looks like they're running scared... I hear rumors of someone else, besides you, fighting back... Should I even hope to get out of this... I'm just gonna hang back... until I figure out what the hell to do...”
Considering how fast stuff drifts in the System Shock universe, and how fast the Many grows, if they load up a bunch of shuttles they could take over the galaxy!
And here’s the tram station.
…The line here’s a killer.
There’s a glitch involving the trams if you happen to have the Teleport psi power. You can set your anchor to the floor in the tram before you activate it, start the tram, then teleport. You’ll appear where the tram was…and fall onto the electrified floring.
It’s not as glamorous as it sounds.
Wheee!
There’s this security stop half-way down the tram track, with this locked door in the middle guarded by turrets. Must be important.
There’s a log here from Delacroix, though:
“Polito indicated that the AI, who now I believe to be SHODAN, was actually going to... <<MESSAGE INTERRUPTED>>”
While I’m not in the least surprised Shodan’s up to something, it seems Delacroix figured something out.
And here we are at the other side! Between the mismatched elevators, no emergency ladders, and an incredibly long tram ride just to get to the bridge, you’d think the designers of this ship made it hard to get around on purpose or something.
We’re greeted at our new destination by your friendly neighborhood exploding robot. We explode him before he can explode us.
There’s a log here from a really creepy guy named Prefontaine, who we’ll hear more stuff from later:
“The data gathering process is going well. Before I am taken by the Many, I will hopefully transmit a fair bit of information to whoever will listen. The large, floating creatures are not only capable of attacking with powerful psi-projections, but are psi-projections themselves. Destroying them only temporarily disables them. Their real source of power comes from a small control organism, which is usually located somewhat nearby. Although this control organism is quite powerful through its projections, it's eminently vulnerable once rooted out.”
His plan’s apparently to let himself get captured, then record their weaknesses onto audio logs that he’ll…leave on the ground?
As we approach the doorway leading to the bridge, we get an actual email from Delacroix! She’s apparently been trying to reach us for some time. Huh, and here I figured we’d just run across her dead body somewhere. She says she’s hiding in Cargo Bay A, and wants us to meet her there.
Now, before you go and run off back down the elevator to deck 1, let me give you some advice from the future. As you can see on the map of this deck, there are cargo bays for the shuttles up here, which is where she’s referring to. You wouldn’t really know it, though, unless you’ve been there before. What’s really stupid is that she says she’s in Cargo Bay A, but when we get to the shuttle cargo bays, they’re numbered 1 and 2. Chief Engineer of the Von Braun and she doesn’t even know what the rooms are called.
…What’s also stupid is that I forgot this game’s linear and the shuttlebay won’t open until we do the bridge stuff first.
So, it’s back on the tram to that bulkhead door! Here I am, breaking every public safety regulation in the book.
But I’ve got that life preserver, so everything’s fine!
On the other side of the bulkhead is a conveniently-placed indestructible, slowly-rising door, which won’t let me through until it (slowly) opens.
And look what’s on the other side! It’s our good friends, Tommy and Rebecca! The two of them actually made it this far. How they got here and where they’re running from I have no clue, since we’ll see in a second that the direction they’re running from is a dead end.
Oh, if only they’d look over here, then they’d see our misshapen goggly head. …And probably resume running.
Look out! It’s a MONSTER! Curse this immovable, cutscene-guarding map piece!
You know, with good guns those things aren’t that hard to take out, so why they’re running like sissies is beyond me.
…And they’re gone. Again, it’s worth pointing out that this is the only door like this in the whole game, and it’s not even guarding anything important. It’s here just so we can’t interfere in the little cutscene.
The door raises just enough off the ground to crawl under right as the rumber finally disappears from view (and disappears completely). Now we can look around this magic room. There’s a dead guy with an assault rifle in the little pool there. How someone with the best weapon in the game and ammo is dead is again beyond me.
We’ve come across a ton of people with Crystal Shards. I’m surprised so many people on the ship took Exotic Weapons training. Though I suppose there’d have to be, since there’s other exotic weapons all over the place too.
There’s a surgical bed here in this other corner. As you may have guessed, this is the very place Tommy, Rebecca, and a hulking monster came from. There’s no vents or doors or anything, just a convenient corner that hides enough space from view of the doorway to spawn NPCs.
You know, maybe that explains the MC Escher-esque design of this ship. Everyone bought Teleport for their psi-amps!
Following the same path the Three Amigos took, we see yet more locked doorways. This elevator in the middle here takes us up to the bridge, but we need a key. At this point, I’m just thankful we aren’t needing three gems, half a moon pendant, and needing to push a marble statue around first.
Going around the elevator, there’s a couple little elevators that take us up to the Officer’s Area. Why aren’t these grav-shafts? Tiny, insecure elevators seem even worse than the anti-gravity tube thingies.
Also not that both elevators are down. Tommy, Rebecca, and Guest were apparently nice enough to push the button again after they got up.
And meeting at the top is another ninjabot! I’m thinking some pirates in mechs would be good right about now.
On this little sub-floor is the officer’s area, along with some more tiny elevators that go up more. But we’ll take those later.
There’s this tiny break room here, or something. There’s another break room once we get to the actual Officer’s Area. From everything we’ve seen, there’s breakrooms, lunchrooms, and casinos every 12 feet on this ship. Oh, and resurrection chambers, in the event you choke on a crouton or something.
And here’s the actual Officer’s breakroom. A little nicer than the one on the suspended catwalk. This one’s got a pool table (sorry, no working pool balls).
There’s a log here from Tommy, so I guess they went this way:
“Getting the escape pod working again wasn't as easy as we thought. Bec had to go back down to engineering! Thank God somebody managed to get the elevators turned on again. I found the bridge key and performed an override on the access protocols and now I think we're ready to go.”
So he’s got the bridge key. Maybe I’ll actually get him to give it to me before he’s horribly disembowled. I know that sounds pessimistic, but I’m just saying.
This is also the one and only time I’ve set the alarm off in the game so far. There’s some pipes in the far corner that the camera’s wedged between, making it difficult to shoot before it goes off. But there’s also a security shutdown panel in here, so it’s kinda worthless.
But before we search for them, we’ll take a look around. In the Men’s restroom, the wall behind the hand dryer exploded or something.
…Wow. That’s just…
Whoever was here last had a real bad case of diarrhea.
…Moving right along, up this way’s the actual Officer’s Quarters. What, the officers are too good for dinky elevators? They need their fancy-panty ladders? Why couldn’t the rest of the freaking ship have these?
Up “stairs” are a bunch of tiny, open bunkrooms which are apparently for the officers. Man, this ship’s got the whole residence thing backwards. The shmucks below get a freaking hotel, there’s gardens on lower levels, and even the janitor gets his own, private place (granted, that one’s in the radiation filled coolant tubes for the main engine, but still).
Oh, and these places are littered with corpses, worm eggs, and other random bits of junk.
There’s a chemical storeroom up here, but let’s be honest. It’s late game now, there’s not much stuff left to research, and I’m not carting crap back to deck 2 anymore. I know that makes everything I’ve been doing before completely pointless, but what can I say, it’s compulsive.
One corpse had the code to this tiny room-thing, which has the key to the shuttle bay. Guess we’ll be heading there later.
Anyway, back down from the Officer’s Quarters, we can continue the way our three friends ran. This whole, giant ship, and apparently all the escape pods are up with the officers. Hmm…
Hey, a Quantum Thingy! Haven’t seen one of those in a while.
These things are getting farther and farther apart, to the point where there isn’t even one in each area anymore. May as well not bother and just remember to save often, but I love the glowy jello mold.
Ok, I lied. Those red doors are in one other area: keeping you back while you watch the freaking escape pod launch!
God dammit! Why can’t I just bail on this whole thing too? There’s been no sight of that rumbler, so either corpses vanishing is an actual, established part of this universe (and not just a game engine efficiency thing) or the two of them adopted it and took it with them.
Wait a sec! I smell a new Fox sitcom coming!
Man, Tommy and Rebecca (and Monster) were pigs. They even left their Bridge Access Cards lying all over the place!
Max personnel on an escape pod: 24. Number in there when it launched: 2 (3 if you count Fluffums the Rumbler).
They’re dicks.
At least this guy died doing what he loved. Bench pressing benches.
I love this. In the emergency escape pod area, at the far end of the hall, in an ominously-lit room, is a single Weapon upgrade station.
Do I want to know the logic behind this?
Now, since taking a nearby door back to that main room we were in originally would be convenient, the walkway is destroyed. Why there’s open gaps like this on a spaceship, you ask? Why, to create impassible sections by destroying the walkway, of course!
Ah, but look! Down the death tube is a canister of nanites! We’re in the last quarter of the game, though, so unless that things got like a million it’s not worth the 1 psi point it would take to TK it up.
Well, we’ve got the key we need, but there’s still more exploring to do!
The last of those retarded, tiny elevators takes us up to the exclusive CEO floor, Korenchkin’s pad. The only things up here are his quarters and a conference room, which contained a log from Diego:
“I am a soldier and a simple man. I cannot explain what has happened to me or this mission. I take complete responsibility. I've brought danger to my ship, to my crew, to my honor. I cannot resist the changes that are happening to me. The call of the Many is seductive. They got Korenchkin, but that bastard is weak. I am not weak. I can resist this cancer... and if I cannot, I will remove it forcibly. God save the UNN.”
Yeah, fight the power!
Korenchkin’s place has a little office, and a log from him:
“The machine-mother has enlisted avatars against us. They struggle, but they will fail against our unity. Does not the machine mother know her own creation is greater than she? She is cold and empty and we are warm and full... she seeks only to destroy... we seek to embrace... to include... all flesh will join ours or be wiped clean...”
Blah blah. What’s kinda creepy is that the picture associated with this log has changed. It’s no longer the low-rez, hand-drawn pic like everything else. It’s this squishy, purplish alien looking thing. I guess Korenchkin mutated all the way.
Korenchkin’s place is pretty sweet, even if the bed’s got terrible head room problems. The suit of Heavy Armor’s way too much for out puny psychic body to wear, so we’re sticking with the power armor.
Korenchkin’s the only person on the ship with a full, private bathroom.
This really just brings to light the absurd living arrangements on this ship. Deck 1 had private bunks but communal bathrooms. Deck 1 had one single private room that must have been for the most hated person on the ship. Decks 3 didn’t really have anything, but I’m sure people slept in their offices or something. Deck 4 had those military bunks, but they at least got personal shades to close them off. Deck 5’s got that whole Las Vegas thing going. And finally deck 6, where (supposedly) all the really important people are, get a bunch of tiny, open bunks with the only bathroom nearby accessible by ladder. I don’t know how these people survived.
Anyway, it’s bridge time!
The bridge gets a big elevator.
At the top is a poor military bot, minding its own business. I’ll make business out of its mind. I have no idea what I’m trying to say there.
Here’s the Von Braun’s bridge. It’s split into like 20 different sections. Actually, as far as sci-fi spaceship bridge designs go, I suppose it’s pretty good, considering that a spaceship won’t behave anything like a naval ship, and you’d have tons of sensor and communication things in place of a huge steering wheel. But the whole spreading everything out is kinda dumb.
This thing here’s awesome. It’s some sort of holographic display, and the transparency on it is really neat looking. I love how it totally cancels out the window behind it, somehow.
That face on the display screen… is that Shodan?
Grav lifts up to the top part of the bridge. Seems stupid to split important ship functions up like that, but I guess this makes the captain feel more important.
HOLY SHIT IT’S SHOOTING ROCKETS AT ME!
Why don’t we get a rocket launcher?
With the rocket turret dispatched, we can explore more. This poor, unfortunate sap is melded with the flooring, which is why I’m assuming his medkit didn’t help.
Anyway, in here’s the card we need. This room on Ops must be important, if the key to it is where the captain sits, and is sealed behind glass.
…But I don’t see any signs saying we can’t break it.
With this little thing in hand, it’s time to head all the way back to Deck 4!
On the way back down, we stop at that upgrade station at the beginning of the deck. We’ve been stocking up cyber modules, so it’s time to get Tier 5! These are the stupidly powerful…er…powers, and are 99% of the time not worth the psi points. But they’re cool, so we’re buying a couple.
Soma Transference, which basically makes us immortal (even more so than before), Psi Barrier, which creates forcefields, and Super Psi Armor, which if we ever remember we have it will reduce damage by 60%.
Back to the elevator, we need to take this short one to deck 5…
And take this one to Deck 4.
What exciting adventures will we have on the deck we already cleared? I’m guessing not much.
The only thing I really remember about the exotic guns - apart from ammo being scarce and a bit of a hassle to gather - is that they were the only weapons in the game which could kill swarms. I think the worm launcher could drop a rumbler in its tracks with one shot, but by the time you get it you should have at least one or two other weapons which can do the same thing to a wider variety of targets.
Just beat the game on hard again with the Techie/Exotic guy. Worm launcher took at least two shots to bring down a rumbler, (I think it was more like 3). It was, however, very effective on Psi reavers.
I actually found the statis generator useful on rumblers.
In the Body of the Many I would worm launcher the Psi reavers, then stasis the rumblers and whack em to death with the crystal shard. (Had maxed strength and exotic, leathal weapon and smasher) The virus proliferator was usefull on the many itself.
I'm not sure how people found this game too hard. I purposefully avoid the best weapon in the game (Assault Rifle) and waste my cyber modules on useless stuff like research 6 and modify 5, heavy 5 yet still beat it easily. The only difficult part was in the way beginning with pistol 1. Even that would have been easy if I had just gotten maintanence 1 instead of trying to max out Hack.
I’ll tell you what happens in Demon’s Souls when you die. You come back as a ghost with your health capped at half. And when you keep on dying, the alignment of the world turns black and the enemies get harder. That’s right, when you fail in this game, it gets harder. Why? Because fuck you is why.
It's not so much that the game itself is difficult, just that you have few resources in the beginning, and on harder difficulties the whole game stays that way.
The only time I've played this game was co-op multiplayer with a friend and I was a hacker. Despite starting this game a few times, we would never (though he played single through the whole game) get as far as getting the elevator to work. The furthest I remember is a water filled area and monkeys in medical I think. It's been a long time since.
That said, I look forward to every update in this LP. You are fantastic Dartboy.
This thread inspired me to try SS2 again, but after twenty minutes I remembered why I didn't get far.
1) The turrets, they own me. I suck.
2) This game gives me the worst motion sickness since Dark Forces. It completely owns me on a physical level I can't control. It's been half a day since I played for twenty minutes and I'm still all wobbly-kneed. It's like the third-worst hangover in my life except I didn't even drink.
Is there any way I could get over the motion sickness? I'd really like to play.
I never finished this game, because I always ended up overwriting my save somehow -_- I think I got like 90% through it before accidentally saving over my quicksave with a newbie save, and was too frustrated to do it all again.
This thread inspired me to try SS2 again, but after twenty minutes I remembered why I didn't get far.
1) The turrets, they own me. I suck.
2) This game gives me the worst motion sickness since Dark Forces. It completely owns me on a physical level I can't control. It's been half a day since I played for twenty minutes and I'm still all wobbly-kneed. It's like the third-worst hangover in my life except I didn't even drink.
Is there any way I could get over the motion sickness? I'd really like to play.
1. Yeah, turrets are tough if you don't have Armor Piercing or energy weapons. One thing I've noticed is that they have kinda crappy accuracy, so if you lean around a corner to attack them, they'll shoot back but hit the wall 80% of the time. Doesn't work too well against rocket turrets, though.
2. Did you try higher resolutions? I have a fairly large monitor, and trying to play games like this on a huge screenm yet in something like 640x480 gives me headaches as well. Zooming out does ease the dizzying effect somewhat.
I never finished this game, because I always ended up overwriting my save somehow -_- I think I got like 90% through it before accidentally saving over my quicksave with a newbie save, and was too frustrated to do it all again.
You went through 90% of the game without doing a regular save? Yeah, there's only one quick/autosave that is shared amongst all playthroughs, so like all games you do want to save to other slots.
I have fond memories of hacking the rocket turret on the bridge and having it kill
the Korenchkin psi reaver for me, while being completely immune to the reaver's attacks.
Equally fun is hopping on top of a turret and hacking it from there, or running up to one, opening up the hack menu, then doing circles around it to stay ahead of the barrel while trying to hack
I don't know that the game ever really felt difficult short of the Impossible difficulty, so much as I just felt frail. I didn't bother bumping up endurance until late in the game when I had most of the skills I wanted, so anything with a quick ranged attack that saw me first took nice big chunks out of me before I could draw a bead on it.
Also, I never noticed this before, but on Engineering two logs see the same guy die in different ways.
Sanger claims she saw Malone, an OSA guy, get killed by a cyborg, while another log - Martin, I think - says he took a shotgun blast to the gut by hybrids.
Also, I never noticed this before, but on Engineering two logs see the same guy die in different ways.
Sanger claims she saw Malone, an OSA guy, get killed by a cyborg, while another log - Martin, I think - says he took a shotgun blast to the gut by hybrids.
[/QUOTE]
I wasn't paying too much attention to who they were referring to in those, but maybe there's two of them? Super Malone Bros!
So here we are on deck 4. I skipped the boring part of walking here, nothing happened.
Pushing this big button control panel-y… thing gives Shodan control of the ship and lets her transfer herself to the Rickenbacker. Now that she’s “safe” we can head down to Engineering to reset the core or whatever and let her blow it up. I’m wary about going to the bottom of the ship when all the escape stuff’s on the top.
So, it’s time to head down. Once you’ve cleared out the levels, there’s still the occasional respawning enemy, but they’re nowhere close to threatening at that point.
Back down in Engineering. This’ll be the last time we head down here, and this vending machine’s pretty cheap, so it’s shopping time!
You know, walking through here again, I can’t help to think that some removable lead plates over those exposed, glowing green pipes would cut down on a lot of the problems.
Well, here’s the ol’ girl. After all the trouble we went through, I can’t believe we’re just gonna blow it up.
Remember this door here? If there’s a locked door in the game, you know you’ll be going through it at some point.
Shodan just gives us the access code. If she has enough control of the ship to know these things, why can’t she just simply unlock all the doors?
After pushing the single big button, Shodan informs us that she can destroy the ship at will. Sounds fun. Whatever we have to do to transfer her mind off this tin can, I’m gonna make sure it requires me being in a safe place first.
With that taken care of, we can head up here, to the shuttlebays on deck 6. When we get up here, we get an email about how the Many are preparing to evacuate the ship by loading eggs onto the shuttles. We need to do something to stop that. I’m betting “something” involves explosives.
AAH!
Blam Blam!
I’ve pretty much given up on charging most psi powers. It’s not that much more effective, and I can fire off two in the time it takes to charge one. And besides, rumblers are falling fairly quickly to fireballs, so there’s no need.
And here’s the shuttle bays. Or, rather the access corridor leading to the cargo bays. I’m not sure how useful the cargo bays are, since there’s only that tiny hall leading to them, so it’s not like you could really load/unload bulk goods or anything.
Here’s the door to Shuttlebay A…err… 1. Delacroix said she’s in here. And of course, this door’s busted, so we’ll have to find a way around.
Shuttlebay 2’s open, so we can head in here. There’s midwives and eggs in these places, so we’ve got some exterminating to do!
Inside is a log from Korenchkin:
“The glorious transformation is over and I am one of the Many. I imprint my thoughts on this device as a record of history. We began this journey as pilgrims of commerce and we now continue it as pilgrims of grace. I believed in money and TriOptimum, and now I believe in the joy of the Mass. Diego cannot be trusted so I must claim this ship for the Many. It shall be our vessel of salvation, spreading our message and our flesh.”
He makes it sound all dramatic. But I bet he’s some disgusting pile of flesh. That’s not for me. I prefer my pointy, monkey-like face, myself.
Opening the actual door to the shuttle, and we come to find the things are shielded. We’re going to have to figure out some way to take those things down if we want to prevent the Many from using these shuttles.
There’s a log in here from someone who had the same idea:
“I don't know what those goddamn worms want with the shuttles, but I'd love to throw a monkey wrench their way. If I can reach the control chamber above the shuttle bay, I can turn off the shields the worms and their helpers have set up around the shuttles. Once they're down, I can blow holes in those TriOptimum brand tin cans with my sidearm. Now if I can just get in there without getting caught. Oh, God, just get me out of this...”
So, it’s time to take the elevators up to the Shuttle Control floor.
As we come up here, we find a midwife destroying some very important piece of equipment. 5 nanites says it’s something we could have used.
Yep, it was the shield control gizmo to the shuttle in bay 1. And, like all sci-fi equipment, rather than shutting down or something that would be helpful when it’s destroyed, it keeps the forcefield permanently on. It’s the space equivalent of the elevator breaking down between floors. I’d hate to be stuck in that shuttle, and have to go to the bathroom.
However, the shield gizmo for bay 2 is working, so we shut that one down.
Taking a ladder down, we can get into a good firing position to destroy the shuttle.
Psi powers don’t do squat, so let’s use the weapon that’s good against robots and stuff.
…Huh? Why isn’t this doing anything either? Guess since the shuttle’s off, EMPs won’t affect it.
Well, we’ve still got that pistol.
Once it loses all its health, the shuttle’s textures stretch out and some panels come loose. Apparently that counts as destroyed in space. I know I wouldn’t want my textures stretched.
But we’ve still got to do something about that other shield…
Shodan sends us an email saying that she put a replicator pattern in the Value Rep here for a Sympathetic Resonator, which we can use to overload the shield and destroy the other shuttle.
But since the replicator’s menu is full, we’ll need to hack the machine to be able to buy it. This is the one other spot in the game where you need a specific skill or item to progress (the first being when you need to research Toxin A). If you don’t buy any Hack skill, you need to use an ICE pick to automatically hack it. I’m not sure what happens if you don’t have any and can’t hack.
But we do have hack, so we get our fancy light bulb.
Time to head down to the other shuttle! If you try shooting at a shuttle while the shield’s up, it just hit’s the shield (duh).
However, for some reason you can pass through the shield. You can run around and bump your head on the shuttle itself, but any shots at the shuttle inside here don’t do anything either. Guess we’ll blow it up the way we’re supposed to.
The shield generator. I see it has what looks like a light bulb socket, and we’ve got a light bulb.
when you stick it in, the shield generator (and the shield itself) turn red. And we all know flashing red lights on machines are bad.
Time to retreat to a safe distance. 12 feet.
BOOM! Bits actually came off this one. I’m impressed.
As a side effect of the explosion, it blew open the doorway into cargo bay 1. Time to go meet Delacroix!
Just as we walk through the doorway, Shodan calls us up and commands us not to go in. If we do, we’ll be “punished.” Whatever.
After everything that’s happened, it’ll be nice to talk to someone who actually wants to help.
…God dammit.
She was nice enough to leave us 10 cyber modules and her last words:
“They've got me now... And SHODAN has abandoned me. I'm not surprised... I've discovered her plans for the faster than light drives... her will is only matched by her imagination... if she gains access to the <<MESSAGE INTERRUPTED>>”
Messages always cut out right when they’re about to say the important part.
Well, nothing else to do here, time to loot the place!
There’s a box here perched rather precariously…
I have the sudden urge to go all Half Life 2 on it. And by that, I mean push it around.
Wheee! Rudimentary physics!
In these shuttlebays are these gross, half-formed eggs. They don’t hatch or anything if you approach, and destroying them just makes their gooey innards lead out.
As we walk back out, Shodan dispenses our… “punishment” + -10 cyber modules! Woo! …wait a minute… I didn’t think these things worked that way.
With out mission accomplished, it’s time to finally leave this rust bucket for what I hope is a much more logically designed spaceship (note from the future: it’s not).
But as we leave shuttle control, we’re attacked by like 12 billion hybrids!
Time to put our Tier 5 powers to use. Psi Wall creates an impassable barrier that’ll block movement and all attacks until it loses it’s health or the time runs out. Creative use of these things can do some cool stuff. However, by sealing the hybrids off, we’re cut off as well, with no way to actually hurt them.
Well actually, we do have a way. Soma Transference works through the wall, sometimes. It’s not consistent, so I’m sure this actually is a glitch instead of a hidden feature. I manage to do some draining, but the real thing killing off the hybrids is other hybrids! They’re all trying to attack me, completely oblivious to their brethren in between.
Eventually, there’s only two left, and the wall dies. We can now finish them off and continue.
We’re heading back to the tram. The connecting umbilical that will take us to the Rickenbacker is at that middle tram stop.
At least there’s no lines.
With the security door now open, we’re home free! There’s nothing that’ll stop us now!
Crap.
This thing’s invincible. And as we approach, we get an email from Korenchkin, who wants us to come meet him up on the bridge. If he can plant something like this, I’m thinking he’s not inviting us for cookies.
Taking the tram again, we’re greeted by a ninjabot. Was that his great plan? Ambush me with a robot?
At least Korenchkin was nice enough to lower the elevator again after he went up.
Gah! What’s that thing! It’s a big, floaty brain, and it’s shooting purple at us! Strangely, if you look at it’s targeting box, rather than naming it the box just says “corpse.” These are Psi Reavers, and they’re not really alive to begin with.
They just vanish when you destroy them, but they reform after a few seconds. So shooting them is simply a temporary measure, you need to find the thing creating them. Korenchkin’s not here, so I’m guessing he’s up where the keycard was.
Up top, we come across… a brain. Ewww. This is Korenchkin’s brain. He’s apparently been fully turned into a Psi Reaver. This fancy organ is the thing controlling the other floaty brains that actually attack you.
But the real thing doesn’t put up a fight. Korenchkin’s about to find out why you don’t leave your brain lying around.
Splorch! That’s pretty gross too. Amusingly, inside the brain is an audio log:
“Suarez and his whore want to escape. I do not understand. They get offered a miracle and they bite the hand. The Many has shared its wisdom... they shall not leave this ship.”
Yeah, may want to work on that…
But, I guess that’s one way to keep your memories.
With the brain gone, so is the psi wall. Now we can finally get out of this place!
The umbilical connecting the two ships has a huge Super Grave Shaft ™ as the way up. Neat. Wonder what we’ll find on our new ship?
Whoa, that's creepy and subtle. I never noticed that before.
Actually, you can open this door the first time you come to it if you already know the access code, and Shodan will come on and say the same thing, despite the fact that you supposedly haven't met her yet. Then things continue on as normal until you meet Polito, and Shodan gives you your "first" orders.
Welcome to the UNN Rickenbacker. The military ship glued onto the Von Braun for no reason other than to give us some extra levels to run through after we’re done with the first ship.
Looking out the windows to one side, we can see this nice view of space. Pretty.
There’s a log here that sheds some light as to what happened on Tau Ceti V:
“We arrived planet side via the shuttle on June 15th at 0800 hours. Korenchkin was the first one out the door, never even bothering to do a level B Hazard Suit exam. Not wanting to let that little TriOp suit get a head start, Diego went right after him. I thought it was crazy, sending the senior officers of the Rickenbacker down to the surface of an uncharted body, but both those idiots were going to get all the glory for the UNN and TriOp they could. Damn, time for inspection... more later.â€
Reminds me of that scene from Galaxy Quest.
“What are you doing!? Is there air? You don’t know!â€
“*sniff sniff* …Seems ok.â€
The other side, however, is covered in some sort of disgusting goo. Where’s the Toxin A when you need it?
Shodan calls us up saying that there’s some new, black Annelid eggs that have been laid on the ship, and we’ll need to shoot them all. These will supposedly hatch into “unstoppable†creatures if we don’t get rid of them. But based on everything we’ve fought so far, I’m betting they’d be just as destructible as everything else. But whatever.
When crawling up a nearby ladder (I guess all the ladder technology on earth went to the UNN), we have to fight a whole line of turrets guarding the access shaft. The flaw with this plan is that the turrets can only fire straight ahead, while we can shoot them at an angle.
Anyway, here we are on the Rickenbacker itself, in some sort of tiny loading room that’s not useful for anything. There’s a big crate blocking our path, so we’ll need to move it.
Heading over to the ladder to the overhead control room, we come across the first Black Egg. They pop as easily as the normal ones, so I’m not convinced these things are any more dangerous than anything else.
Pushing the single button in the control room activates a magnetic crane or somesuch sci-fi gizmo. All it does is lift the crate to a higher ledge, so again I question the utility.
There’s another log up here about the Tau Ceti mission:
“The eggs were lying in a semi-circle in the middle of what looked like a crash crater. There were hundreds of those things. Hundreds. As we got closer, you could hear them... not the eggs, the things inside them... it was like music... I was scared out of my mind, but that music... all I wanted to do was see those things up close... find out their secrets...â€
As soon as the path’s clear, a rumbler comes out! It only has melee attacks, and we’re out of it’s reach with our ranged fireballs. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
Right behind it come a military bot! This thing does shoot at us, but we can pull off some awesome Neo-like Matrix moves, leaning left and right to dodge the shots. It goes down too
Up where that crate was being levitated to, is another Black Egg. What you see here is pretty much the extent of what’s up here, so I’m thinking the Many’s just planting random eggs around just to screw with us.
’
With the way clear, we can begin exploring the Rickenbacker in earnest.
The UNN is apparently a proponent of alternative fuel sources.
When we get here we receive an email from William Bedford Diego, captain of the Rickenbacker and dude who sounded like he wasn’t too keen on the Many in all his logs. He tells us he’s in the Rickenbacker’s sick bay, and that we should try to reach him. “Soldier, stay alive.â€
It’s at this time that I remembered that we’re supposed to be one of the Rickenbacker’s soldiers to begin with, and he’s our commanding officer. So, now we’ve got an order from someone we actually should listen to.
Some sort of explosion happened, and blew out this part of the deck. Luckily there’s a forcefield to keep all that nasty Space out. Here we get an email about how a Meson Coil or something or other blew up, and that the same thing will happen in Pod 2 on the way to the bridge if we don’t do something about it.
There’s a log in here that partially explains what happened:
“In order to reverse the gravitronic generators, I need to get into nacelle B. In order to get into the nacelle, I need my damn access card. But I left the it on the opposite side of the hull breach. Wait a minute... if I can extend the auxilary support struts, I could... if they've survived the blast, that is.â€
So some guy left his keycard on the other side of the explosion, which we’ll need if we want to make the other side of the ship not explode too.
Since there’s a big hole in the ship, we’ll need to take the air vents to get around. Again, note the nice feature SS2 included: once you’re in the vent, release crouch and you can run at your full speed. I wish more games did this, especially ones with extensive networks of air vents.
Inside the vent for some reason is another Tau Ceti log:
“After a couple of hours it was... it was like being on a bender... long periods that you couldn't remember... one minute we were in that crater... the next minute we were loading up the shuttle with the eggs... I remember hearing that idiot Korenchkin calling the Von Braun and ordering them to clear off the ENTIRE hydroponics deck. Diego seemed to think this was strange and said, 'Are you crazy, Anatoly?' And Korenchkin smiled and said back to him, 'Oh, Captain... WE are not Anatoly...'â€
Coming out of the vent we see the ladderway to Pod 2. Half the ladder’s been ripped off, so we have to do some acrobatics to get up.
There’s another log here about Tau Ceti:
“For some reason, they couldn't get a hold of my mind they way they could the rest. So when I found the remains of the data wafer near the crater back on Tau Ceti, I didn't say a word. I just slipped it into my belt and thought, 'Dr. Polito will know what to do with this...'â€
Ahh! Spiders! Invisible spiders!
Up here’s the Rickenbacker’s chemical storeroom. There’s nothing to really research here, so we’ll leave it.
Hmm. Wonder what’s around here?
AH! OW! OW! The Rickenbacker’s got these ceiling-mounted laser turrets that hurt far more than the regular kind. There’s two of them guarding an egg, but we triumph in the end.
Just as we turn to head out, we run face-first into another rumber! How are these things fitting in these tiny hallways?
The Rickenbacker has the same helpful arrows as the Von Braun, so we know this is the way to Nacelle B!
Nearby’s a Quantum Thingy. These are becoming scarcer and scarcer.
Pretty.
And here’s the way to Nacelle B. On we g-
Crap. I forgot to actually go back and get the keycard! Oh well.
We need to be back on that first side of the exploded room. I know I’ll just jump over this little railing here and take a shortcut!
Jump I said! …Jump dammit! You’ve got to be kidding me, I can’t get over that tiny railing!?
Well, I suppose we’ll have to take the long way around. Before we do, there’s a second support beam we need to extend first.
Taking the air vent again, we’re back to the beginning here. There was this button the whole time, and I forgot to press it.
Damn, it only extends the far one. But fortunately, with that side beam we did earlier we can jump across.
There was a security crate on the first side of that stupid railing, so we can easily get back to this side. With these beams out, we can jump across safely.
The dead guy in here (not the same one as the logs) has the Nacelle B Keycard. With this, it’s time to head back!
Ta da! The door opens!
In the far back of the engine nacelle is the Gravity Control switch for Pod 2.
Beep! Gravity reversed! Why is the gravity control for a different part of the ship inside one of the engines?
Now that we pushed that button, the other side of the ship won’t explode somehow. So, it’s time to continue on!
There’s a line of laser and rocket turrets in our path, which we can take out fairly easily with the EMP Rifle. There’s another log around here that goes into more detail about the whole exploding thing:
“Simpson, Malone, Chandara, and Perez are dead. At least those are the ones we know for sure... Those bastards sabotaged the meson acceleration coil. They blew out the entire driver core, six subdecks... From what I can tell, somebody tapped the frequency resonator to refract human sized movements. The overload of all those people moving around must have blown the resonator. We've set up a magnetic shield and the ship's still functional... barely. I've quarantined the entrance to Pod 2... the secondary coil is right there and I don't know how thorough the son of a bitch who did this was.â€
Don’t ask me how something can be specifically set to explode from someone walking around, just smile, nod, and continue.
Valuable advice.
Up this ladder is another military bot. I have absolutely no idea how it got here or what it’s doing in here. The ladder we came up is just barely big enough for a person, and the only way out is another door just wide enough for a person as well. Plus, the only thing up here is a ledge leading to the door, so there is absolutely nothing for it to guard. The only thing I can think of is someone brought the disassembled pieces of the bot in here, and put it together with the sole purpose of guarding this ladder.
Poor thing must have gone mad from the isolation.
So, we put it out of its misery.
There’s some bots and turrets guarding this area, and a bunch of protocol droid boxes in that hole in the ground in the middle there. This place is awfully heavily guarded. Wonder why?
What a wonderful slogan.
This must be what all the bots were for. This is one of the torpedo rooms of the ship, and an incredibly lame jumping puzzle. A log explains the situation:
“The worms are everywhere... and Captain Diego is the one who let them in. Nobody knows who to trust anymore... nobody's even sure who's human anymore. I've blown out the access ladders in the torpedo room to restrict access to Pod 2. Let's hope that holds them back. As long as we're alive and drawing a paycheck from the Navy, those bastards are not getting the Rickenbacker.â€
So woo, we need to figure out a way up. That consists entirely of pushing the buttons that raise up the torpedoes, letting us use them as stepping stones to reach the damaged ladder. Like I said not much of a puzzle.
When we get up, we look up to see the windows above shatter, raining glass (harmlessly) down on us. Oh noez! The space! But it’s ok, there’s enough fleshy goodness sealing all the windows off that we won’t die. How thoughtful of the Many.
This is the way to Pod 2, and it passes by the torpedo launch tube. There’s some unlaunched torpedoes that are leaking an unhealthy amount of radiation, so we need to do something about that.
So what do you do if you have some torpedoes you need to get rid of, and a launch tube? Why, launch the torpedoes, of course! I’m kinda surprised there’s no safety key or anything, just a big button labeled “LAUNCH TORPEDO.†Seems like the sort of thing that needs bridge authorization first.
There’s a rumbler guarding the path to the elevator that will take us to Pod 2. Again, how do these things fit in these tiny spaces?
Woo! The last egg! We’ve been shooting them as we come across them, and with this one gone, Shodan’s happy that they won’t hatch.
With that our of the way, we can take the elevator! What exactly is “Pod 2†anyway? Is that just what they’re calling the next deck? Because all the signs label the decks A, B, and C. And it’s not like we’re traveling to a side part of the ship.
I’m confused. But no time for that now! We’ve got a ship to detach!
Welcome to Pod 2/Deck B/whatever. Everything’s upside down. I imagine the elevator ride up here was pretty interesting.
This thing here’s the Meson Coil, that thing that explodes if we walk around. What I don’t get is how walking on the ceiling fixes the problem.
Yeah, screw you, Meson Accelerator 2!
Walking through some air vents and shooting lasers, we come to… a church? In the bowels of a spaceship? Well, ok.
There’s a log in here, surprisingly, from Polito:
“The genie of Citadel station is out of the bottle, and I am the cause. I can't bear to be Pandora. And I'm not brave enough to wait around and see the death and misery I have caused... This is my last transmission, my friend. Be careful... I think SHODAN has plans for you.â€
Guess she died up here, and that’s when Shodan took over posing as her.
Yeah. After we loot the church, we continue on to find the ships sewers or something. I suppose I can understand why the crew of the ship might want a religious facility somewhere, but couldn’t they find someplace more dignified and easier to get to than way down here?
The ship is worms! Or wires, or something.
And here we are at the (upside down) med bay. Diego’s supposed to be here, so let’s find him.
More invisible spiders! They aren’t really any more annoying than the regular spiders, just hard to see.
And here we… oops. Guess Diego wasn’t strapped in. Sorry about the whole reversing gravity thing.
…Moving right along, he has a log on his headless, skinless corpse:
“Those worms were a cancer in my body, so I had the autodoc cut it out. Do you think they're going to let you blow up the Von Braun? The Many will never allow it. But I've got something to help you. It’s in my quarters. You’ll find the access card on my… body. Take the fight to them, soldier. And remember, you're the only one you can trust.â€
Guess in the end he did do his best to resist the Many. Though I imagine that gaping hole in his chest hurt like the dickens. Still, I guess this eases off our conscience a bit, as he probably died before we flipped the gravity, so we don’t have to feel guilty about killing him with that fall.
In any case, we’ve got what we need, so it’s on to the bridge!
There’s another elevator here that’ll take us up. Let’s hope this elevator ride involved fewer bumps to the head.
Ow… and we’re right side up again. There’s more Many goo around here, so I’m thinking we’re getting close to something important.
Up here’s the last OS Upgrade Station! We’re nearing the end of the game, and we’re pretty good on our skills, so there’s really not much else to get. I picked up Sharpshooter, which will give us a little bonus to our guns. Kinda worthless at this point, but there’s not much else to choose from.
There’s a monitor here showing us what the status of the ship is. Apparently, there’s a giant worm or snake thing that’s wrapped itself around the ship. We can’t separate with that thing on there, so it looks like we’ve got some exterminating to do.
Up here’s Diego’s room, and the little “gift†he left for us. There’s a couple squishy Annelid items to research, so we’ll hang onto them for now.
Since we’re running out of stuff to buy, and we already maxed out Psi, I’m buying more Endurance. More health is never bad.
Here’s the Rickenbacker’s bridge. We’ve got to do something about the Many before we can ditch this whole mess. Shodan calls us up and says that there’s an escape pod on the bridge that’s conveniently pointing right at the Many itself. If we launch it, we’ll shoot straight into their fleshy body and then we can do our thing (killing) on the inside. Sounds like fun.
To the escape pod!
These things are supposed to seat 24 people? We’ll see the inside of Tommy and Rebecca’s escape pod later, and it looks exactly the same. There’s only the 6 cryo stasis tubes, so I guess if people are evacuating you have to do it in shifts.
The pod door’s open, and it’s leading straight into a fleshy wall. That totally sounds like something we should launch our rocket-powered pod into!
*BEEP!*
*WHOOSH!*
WHAM! What will happen next? Did we die? Find out next time!
Meh, you should be exploring every inch of the game anyway, and most of them are in plain sight along the way. I've never had a problem finding them all.
Meh, you should be exploring every inch of the game anyway, and most of them are in plain sight along the way. I've never had a problem finding them all.
why should I be exploring every inch of the game anyway?
There’s another log around here that goes into more detail about the whole exploding thing:
“Simpson, Malone, Chandara, and Perez are dead. At least those are the ones we know for sure... Those bastards sabotaged the meson acceleration coil. They blew out the entire driver core, six subdecks... From what I can tell, somebody tapped the frequency resonator to refract human sized movements. The overload of all those people moving around must have blown the resonator. We've set up a magnetic shield and the ship's still functional... barely. I've quarantined the entrance to Pod 2... the secondary coil is right there and I don't know how thorough the son of a bitch who did this was.â€
Hahahahahaha oh wow. He really gets around, doesn't he?
There’s another log around here that goes into more detail about the whole exploding thing:
“Simpson, Malone, Chandara, and Perez are dead. At least those are the ones we know for sure... Those bastards sabotaged the meson acceleration coil. They blew out the entire driver core, six subdecks... From what I can tell, somebody tapped the frequency resonator to refract human sized movements. The overload of all those people moving around must have blown the resonator. We've set up a magnetic shield and the ship's still functional... barely. I've quarantined the entrance to Pod 2... the secondary coil is right there and I don't know how thorough the son of a bitch who did this was.â€
Hahahahahaha oh wow. He really gets around, doesn't he?
Meh, you should be exploring every inch of the game anyway, and most of them are in plain sight along the way. I've never had a problem finding them all.
why should I be exploring every inch of the game anyway?
because I am some kind of tool?
No no, it's just such a well-designed, comprehensible, interesting and varied environment!
I'm sweating in anticipation for the next update. SHODAN is an evil-AI-bitch that has access to the Evil Overlords list, which just makes me feel all tingly inside.
Strifer on
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augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
Meh, you should be exploring every inch of the game anyway, and most of them are in plain sight along the way. I've never had a problem finding them all.
why should I be exploring every inch of the game anyway?
because I am some kind of tool?
That's one reason.
heyo
august on
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited September 2007
Well, I just reached Athletics in my playthrough.
And I saw the newest arrival in the critter family.
What's it take to kill this thing? A chainsaw?
cj iwakura on
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augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
edited September 2007
Fire.
Anti-personnel rounds.
august on
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
edited September 2007
Worked like a charm.
Well, until 'Pistol jammed!' lead to 'nom nom nom'.
After the subsequent retry, the lights are on. Now I guess I get to go artwork-code hunting.
Yes, like most of the enemies in the game, you can take them down much easier with the proper tools. That's one of the nice things about going Psi. It's hard in the beginning, but your powers are better suited to the later enemies.
The late game for psi in my experience was literally just watching a movie in between annoying puzzles. I don't think I was visible to enemies from about the mall onward.
Posts
Anyway, this LP rocks and I can finally see what SS2 is all about. I have actually been on a little withdrawal thanks to the infamous "You are not a registered user" on a certain forum.
Does anyone remember this little gem of a game called "Strife"? I really want to do a video LP of it, since I know the game inside out and screens don't really lend themselves to what I want to do with it. The only problem is that my computer is from the previous decade, so you can't exactly expect 640x480 HQ from me. I've made some tests a few months back when I got Camtasia Studio 2 up and running and I can get something fairly reliable at around 400x300, which is the best compromise between speed, quality, and overall visibility of what I would be actually doing. If anyone would be interested in seeing this game LP'ed by me, then I will finally give it a shot and embarass myself in front of the whole internet (yay!).
Heading back from the crew quarters we come up to the Athletics sector of the deck. We passed this place a couple times in our searching, but now I think it’s time for us to take a look.
In typical video game fashion there’s several rooms that are connected to the outside world solely through a single point. This locker room’s the only way to get to the basketball court and swimming pool on the other side.
I am an expert at capturing these kinds of screenshots.
OH CRAP IT HEARD ME!
…That actually went down easier than I thought. I guess these big lumpy things aren’t immune to being set on fire.
With that out of the way, maybe we can do something about these lights. There were a couple logs earlier about how the pool next door keeps shorting out the electrical systems for the basketball court, but it’s really a stupid way to extend the fetch-questiness of getting through this area.
We found a power cell somewhere else and use that to reset the breaker. Seems like a really bad way to set up your electrical systems on a spaceship.
With the lights on, we can actually see the court now. If only I had a basketball..
Wait a minute! I can do something about that!
Shift + ;
Summon_obj basketball
Ta da! I’m guessing there’s an explanation involving quantum entanglement, nanite reconstruction, or some other bullshit to explain why I just pulled a basketball out of my ass.
Ok, let’s give our cybernetically-enhanced limbs a shot.
…Well, that was disappointing. Maybe if we tried from up higher?
Grav-lifts are fun!
WHOOOSH!
God dammit!
ARRRGH!
Ok, screw basketball. Here’s where I’m dunking it.
But while we’re here, I picked this life preserver off the wall:
“Due to arcane legal restrictions, all space-going ships are required to have a supply of life preservers. Some, especially on asteroid mining trawlers, have been redesigned to make them self-propelling in space, or to give them a limited air supply, but most ships simply pack the things into a storage locker and forget about them.â€
That sounds like something we need. I’m hanging onto this.
Moving on, we take a look upstairs. There’s another ninja bot here, but they’ve ceased to be a threat with this here EMP Rifle.
Sweet! Golf!
And here’s that transmitter everyone’s been making such a fuss about. We’d do something with it, but unfortunately we don’t have the whole code yet. Time to head back and keep looking.
But before we go, this other dead body here’s holding a broken Fusion Cannon. The highest level Heavy weapon, it’s big, neat looking, and fires a cool glowy green ball, but unfortunately sucks. Still, our pile back in Storeroom 2’s growing, and this will make a nice addition.
And now it’s time to head to the mall. There’s a security station in between, and a couple bots that think they can stop us.
There’s also a log from Rebecca here:
“I just killed some kind of... some kind of spider... I don't know... but it bit me... and now I'm sick... I'm down to my last med hypo. Come quick, Tommy... come quick...â€
Yeah, spiders suck.
A military bot on patrol. I imagine it’d probably do better if it was facing the other way.
Ah, the shopping mall. Hope you brought your gift certificates! Xerxes reminds us that there are only 163 shopping days until Christmas. Crap, we’d better get buying! I recommend cyber modules. They’re the gift that keeps on giving!
In here’s the third OS upgrade station. We’re starting to get into the higher levels of psi power, so Power Psi is a good choice. Now we won’t accidentally kill ourselves if we hold the button too long.
Anyway, back to shopping! Would you really want express brain surgery?
In digging around the mall I also found a log from Korenchkin:
“Forget about land grants, forget about media, forget about patents. What we've found on Tau Ceti will change everything. I've instructed the Von Braun to change course and return to Earth. Captain Diego is in complete accord with this decision. I know that you are skeptical by nature, Miri, but I know once you embrace our discovery you and the entire board will come over to our way of thinking.â€
I assume he’s using “embrace†in the same context as a Facehugger.
Around the corner are some regular upgrade stations. I bought another point of Psi. More power and more damage can’t hurt.
WHAT A BARGAIN!
All children should make sure their Big Daddies accompany them at all times.
There’s a Quantum Thingy in the mall. I’m figuring the shopping rush on the Von Braun must get pretty bad around Christmas Eve, especially with such a killer deal on jumpsuits.
Ok, forget Shodan and saving the ship, I’ve found what I want.
This vending machine sells keys to unlock the different rooms (and simulations) you can visit. We got a log earlier from some guy who left all his nanites and stuff in Nikki’s room, but it was “worth it.â€
Sounds good to me.
…
…
Oh come on, don’t tell me “main power’s out†or something! At least we snagged that guy’s nanites and cyber modules, so it wasn’t a total loss.
Now I’m all depressed. This ship sucks.
To take my mind off the disappointment, we head to the casino. Yep, when all else fails, gambling’s the answer!
These things are rigged.
Wow, I’ve got a couple hundred nanites saved up, wonder how much alcohol that would buy?
“And I want a spaceship. With blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the spaceship and the blackjack.â€
The little picture doesn’t say anything about metal balls you clip to your wrist.
We’ve got movie sign!
They’ve really let this place go ever since it got bought out.
Why is it in all futuristic settings, everyone is always interested in entertainment from before the late 20th century/early 21st? There’s never talk about some awesome book from the year 2067, or anyone watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy, it’s always Shakespeare and silent movies.
Even in the future, movie food is an overpriced ripoff.
All that, and there’s nothing good showing. Figures.
I’m assuming this place just replicates the food directly in your stomach.
Ah yes, the absolute perfect store for any occasion.
…Hm. Compared to drugs, brain surgery, and Taco Bell, some random Thomas Kinkaide paintings don’t really seem like they’d sell.
Then again…
(Code fragment Get!)
This was scrawled onto the wall outside the ship’s EB Games. I’m guessing it was from somebody camping out for the Wii who was asked to move.
…Yeah, until you walk up to me and explode.
Well, we’ve explored the whole map now, but we’re still one code fragment short of a transmitter. We got an audio log from some paranoid guy who stashed a bunch of stuff in his quarters. Now that I think of it, there was one door that was locked. Maybe there’s another picture terminal in there.
I said he was paranoid. I didn’t say he was clever.
In his closet is this… squishy… thing. It looks like a gun, so into the hyperdimensional pockets you go! We’ll have to research this when we get back to Deck 2.
If you think they’re out to get you, you should beat them to the punch.
And yes! The last bit of the stupid Triforce hunt is over! …Or code fragment hunt, whichever.
(Code fragment Get!)
We’ve got what we need now, so time to head back!
…To deck 2 to offload crap and research! Our pile’s still here, so Jim must be doing a marvelous job guarding.
A while ago I bought Molecular Transmutation. Now I’ll demonstrate it’s use.
This Tier 4 power lets you break down ammo and hypos into nanites. Sounds great, right? We aren’t using 75% of the guns in the game, so why not burn their ammo and get psi hypos? The problem with that strategy is that it costs psi points to use. So, most of the items you can break down don’t give you enough nanites to make up for the cost it would take to buy psi hypos to regain the points.
However, there are a couple things that do give you a good profit. Mainly, frag grenades. These give you 20 nanites a pop, and you can do 7 or eight of them per psi hypo. With all the grenades we’ve been stocking up, we went from roughly 300 nanites to over 2000.
Everything else that wasn’t worth using Transmute on I shoved in the recycler. We’re not going to use it so I won’t feel bad about only getting one nanite per bullet.
I researched that funky looking thing, and it turns out it’s a Viral Proliferator. That’s an Exotic Weapon that shoots clouds of deadly, deadly gas. Amusing, and rather effective against organic targets, but at this point not worth the cyber modules it would take to equip.
We’ll do just fine with our Psi-Amp.
Back to athletics. We’ve got the code, so now it’s time to overload Xerxes and let Shodan take over.
Oh, and warn Earth or something. Of course the ship can go faster than light, so even if we sent the signal off should the ship get fully taken over and decide to go attack Earth it’d get there a good 10 years before the warning.
We’ve got the code fragments, but what is the code exactly?
10, [1, 4, 6]. I’m assuming the brackets mean the end of the code, so there’s two combinations to try.
…Nope.
Success! Xerxes does the whole Daisy…dai…s…y… thing, but Shodan still can’t gain control of the ship. Apparently the Many’s spread too far into the system.
Well, at least we got the elevator to the Command Deck working.
Heading out of athletics we’re jumped by a cyborg assassin and a couple hybrids. After taking the cyborg out, I accidentally tried shooting at the hybrid with the EMP Rifle.
It’s not very effective…
But fireballs are.
Man, I want Tier 5. We still don’t have enough modules. I suppose we probably would if I would stop buying other things incrementally, but whatever.
While I was looking at the upgrade station, this monkey snuck up behind us and started flinging flaming poo!
I torched it’s corpse out of spite.
With nothing left to do here, time to head up.
How ominous.
And apparently, the entire ship is nothing but bare piping and conduits with a single sheet of drywall covering everything. I’m surprised there aren’t more holes in the place.
This elevator’s special. It only goes between decks 5 and 6. Why the only access to the command deck is in the middle of the crew quarters is anyone’s guess, but it’s probably for the same reason there’s no emergency ladders leading anywhere but one dude’s closet.
Push the button! What will we find on deck 6? FIND OUT NEXT TIME!
Next Episode- Waiting for the tram.
you sir, are a gentleman and a scholar.
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
Seconded. Outstanding LP, especially the running commentary on the ship's design.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
And we're coming to the home stretch here, there's slightly more than a week's worth of posts left, so I'll probably finish it off with weekend updates.
Oh, how rude of me then, sorry and get well soon
Can't wait to laugh at your crusade
When we last left our mighty warrior, we had just discovered the pathway to Deck 6: Command.
So here’s Deck 6: Command. When we arrive, Shodan sends us an email. Basically, the Many has gotten out of control, so she needs to blow the ship up to get rid of them once and for all. On the bridge is an access card to get us into that one locked room back on deck 4, which will presumably help.
Figures. After all the hard work we’ve been through, now we get to blow the whole thing up. Makes me so mad I just wanna…wanna…shoot a ninja cyborg!
…That’ll do.
The door by the (dead) ninjabot is locked, so we’ll head this way. If I’ve learned anything from Half-Life, it’s that trams are good.
Just past the door is an upgrade station, and a log:
“I hope you're still alive, Ms. Delacroix. We really could use some guidance up here. They've got those lady cyborgs of theirs loading up the shuttles with those eggs... I don't know what their plan is... but it looks like they're running scared... I hear rumors of someone else, besides you, fighting back... Should I even hope to get out of this... I'm just gonna hang back... until I figure out what the hell to do...”
Considering how fast stuff drifts in the System Shock universe, and how fast the Many grows, if they load up a bunch of shuttles they could take over the galaxy!
And here’s the tram station.
…The line here’s a killer.
There’s a glitch involving the trams if you happen to have the Teleport psi power. You can set your anchor to the floor in the tram before you activate it, start the tram, then teleport. You’ll appear where the tram was…and fall onto the electrified floring.
It’s not as glamorous as it sounds.
Wheee!
There’s this security stop half-way down the tram track, with this locked door in the middle guarded by turrets. Must be important.
There’s a log here from Delacroix, though:
“Polito indicated that the AI, who now I believe to be SHODAN, was actually going to... <<MESSAGE INTERRUPTED>>”
While I’m not in the least surprised Shodan’s up to something, it seems Delacroix figured something out.
And here we are at the other side! Between the mismatched elevators, no emergency ladders, and an incredibly long tram ride just to get to the bridge, you’d think the designers of this ship made it hard to get around on purpose or something.
We’re greeted at our new destination by your friendly neighborhood exploding robot. We explode him before he can explode us.
There’s a log here from a really creepy guy named Prefontaine, who we’ll hear more stuff from later:
“The data gathering process is going well. Before I am taken by the Many, I will hopefully transmit a fair bit of information to whoever will listen. The large, floating creatures are not only capable of attacking with powerful psi-projections, but are psi-projections themselves. Destroying them only temporarily disables them. Their real source of power comes from a small control organism, which is usually located somewhat nearby. Although this control organism is quite powerful through its projections, it's eminently vulnerable once rooted out.”
His plan’s apparently to let himself get captured, then record their weaknesses onto audio logs that he’ll…leave on the ground?
As we approach the doorway leading to the bridge, we get an actual email from Delacroix! She’s apparently been trying to reach us for some time. Huh, and here I figured we’d just run across her dead body somewhere. She says she’s hiding in Cargo Bay A, and wants us to meet her there.
Now, before you go and run off back down the elevator to deck 1, let me give you some advice from the future. As you can see on the map of this deck, there are cargo bays for the shuttles up here, which is where she’s referring to. You wouldn’t really know it, though, unless you’ve been there before. What’s really stupid is that she says she’s in Cargo Bay A, but when we get to the shuttle cargo bays, they’re numbered 1 and 2. Chief Engineer of the Von Braun and she doesn’t even know what the rooms are called.
…What’s also stupid is that I forgot this game’s linear and the shuttlebay won’t open until we do the bridge stuff first.
So, it’s back on the tram to that bulkhead door! Here I am, breaking every public safety regulation in the book.
But I’ve got that life preserver, so everything’s fine!
On the other side of the bulkhead is a conveniently-placed indestructible, slowly-rising door, which won’t let me through until it (slowly) opens.
And look what’s on the other side! It’s our good friends, Tommy and Rebecca! The two of them actually made it this far. How they got here and where they’re running from I have no clue, since we’ll see in a second that the direction they’re running from is a dead end.
Oh, if only they’d look over here, then they’d see our misshapen goggly head. …And probably resume running.
Look out! It’s a MONSTER! Curse this immovable, cutscene-guarding map piece!
You know, with good guns those things aren’t that hard to take out, so why they’re running like sissies is beyond me.
…And they’re gone. Again, it’s worth pointing out that this is the only door like this in the whole game, and it’s not even guarding anything important. It’s here just so we can’t interfere in the little cutscene.
The door raises just enough off the ground to crawl under right as the rumber finally disappears from view (and disappears completely). Now we can look around this magic room. There’s a dead guy with an assault rifle in the little pool there. How someone with the best weapon in the game and ammo is dead is again beyond me.
We’ve come across a ton of people with Crystal Shards. I’m surprised so many people on the ship took Exotic Weapons training. Though I suppose there’d have to be, since there’s other exotic weapons all over the place too.
There’s a surgical bed here in this other corner. As you may have guessed, this is the very place Tommy, Rebecca, and a hulking monster came from. There’s no vents or doors or anything, just a convenient corner that hides enough space from view of the doorway to spawn NPCs.
You know, maybe that explains the MC Escher-esque design of this ship. Everyone bought Teleport for their psi-amps!
Following the same path the Three Amigos took, we see yet more locked doorways. This elevator in the middle here takes us up to the bridge, but we need a key. At this point, I’m just thankful we aren’t needing three gems, half a moon pendant, and needing to push a marble statue around first.
Going around the elevator, there’s a couple little elevators that take us up to the Officer’s Area. Why aren’t these grav-shafts? Tiny, insecure elevators seem even worse than the anti-gravity tube thingies.
Also not that both elevators are down. Tommy, Rebecca, and Guest were apparently nice enough to push the button again after they got up.
And meeting at the top is another ninjabot! I’m thinking some pirates in mechs would be good right about now.
On this little sub-floor is the officer’s area, along with some more tiny elevators that go up more. But we’ll take those later.
There’s this tiny break room here, or something. There’s another break room once we get to the actual Officer’s Area. From everything we’ve seen, there’s breakrooms, lunchrooms, and casinos every 12 feet on this ship. Oh, and resurrection chambers, in the event you choke on a crouton or something.
And here’s the actual Officer’s breakroom. A little nicer than the one on the suspended catwalk. This one’s got a pool table (sorry, no working pool balls).
There’s a log here from Tommy, so I guess they went this way:
“Getting the escape pod working again wasn't as easy as we thought. Bec had to go back down to engineering! Thank God somebody managed to get the elevators turned on again. I found the bridge key and performed an override on the access protocols and now I think we're ready to go.”
So he’s got the bridge key. Maybe I’ll actually get him to give it to me before he’s horribly disembowled. I know that sounds pessimistic, but I’m just saying.
This is also the one and only time I’ve set the alarm off in the game so far. There’s some pipes in the far corner that the camera’s wedged between, making it difficult to shoot before it goes off. But there’s also a security shutdown panel in here, so it’s kinda worthless.
But before we search for them, we’ll take a look around. In the Men’s restroom, the wall behind the hand dryer exploded or something.
…Wow. That’s just…
Whoever was here last had a real bad case of diarrhea.
…Moving right along, up this way’s the actual Officer’s Quarters. What, the officers are too good for dinky elevators? They need their fancy-panty ladders? Why couldn’t the rest of the freaking ship have these?
Up “stairs” are a bunch of tiny, open bunkrooms which are apparently for the officers. Man, this ship’s got the whole residence thing backwards. The shmucks below get a freaking hotel, there’s gardens on lower levels, and even the janitor gets his own, private place (granted, that one’s in the radiation filled coolant tubes for the main engine, but still).
Oh, and these places are littered with corpses, worm eggs, and other random bits of junk.
There’s a chemical storeroom up here, but let’s be honest. It’s late game now, there’s not much stuff left to research, and I’m not carting crap back to deck 2 anymore. I know that makes everything I’ve been doing before completely pointless, but what can I say, it’s compulsive.
One corpse had the code to this tiny room-thing, which has the key to the shuttle bay. Guess we’ll be heading there later.
Anyway, back down from the Officer’s Quarters, we can continue the way our three friends ran. This whole, giant ship, and apparently all the escape pods are up with the officers. Hmm…
Hey, a Quantum Thingy! Haven’t seen one of those in a while.
These things are getting farther and farther apart, to the point where there isn’t even one in each area anymore. May as well not bother and just remember to save often, but I love the glowy jello mold.
Ok, I lied. Those red doors are in one other area: keeping you back while you watch the freaking escape pod launch!
God dammit! Why can’t I just bail on this whole thing too? There’s been no sight of that rumbler, so either corpses vanishing is an actual, established part of this universe (and not just a game engine efficiency thing) or the two of them adopted it and took it with them.
Wait a sec! I smell a new Fox sitcom coming!
Man, Tommy and Rebecca (and Monster) were pigs. They even left their Bridge Access Cards lying all over the place!
Max personnel on an escape pod: 24. Number in there when it launched: 2 (3 if you count Fluffums the Rumbler).
They’re dicks.
At least this guy died doing what he loved. Bench pressing benches.
I love this. In the emergency escape pod area, at the far end of the hall, in an ominously-lit room, is a single Weapon upgrade station.
Do I want to know the logic behind this?
Now, since taking a nearby door back to that main room we were in originally would be convenient, the walkway is destroyed. Why there’s open gaps like this on a spaceship, you ask? Why, to create impassible sections by destroying the walkway, of course!
Ah, but look! Down the death tube is a canister of nanites! We’re in the last quarter of the game, though, so unless that things got like a million it’s not worth the 1 psi point it would take to TK it up.
Well, we’ve got the key we need, but there’s still more exploring to do!
The last of those retarded, tiny elevators takes us up to the exclusive CEO floor, Korenchkin’s pad. The only things up here are his quarters and a conference room, which contained a log from Diego:
“I am a soldier and a simple man. I cannot explain what has happened to me or this mission. I take complete responsibility. I've brought danger to my ship, to my crew, to my honor. I cannot resist the changes that are happening to me. The call of the Many is seductive. They got Korenchkin, but that bastard is weak. I am not weak. I can resist this cancer... and if I cannot, I will remove it forcibly. God save the UNN.”
Yeah, fight the power!
Korenchkin’s place has a little office, and a log from him:
“The machine-mother has enlisted avatars against us. They struggle, but they will fail against our unity. Does not the machine mother know her own creation is greater than she? She is cold and empty and we are warm and full... she seeks only to destroy... we seek to embrace... to include... all flesh will join ours or be wiped clean...”
Blah blah. What’s kinda creepy is that the picture associated with this log has changed. It’s no longer the low-rez, hand-drawn pic like everything else. It’s this squishy, purplish alien looking thing. I guess Korenchkin mutated all the way.
Korenchkin’s place is pretty sweet, even if the bed’s got terrible head room problems. The suit of Heavy Armor’s way too much for out puny psychic body to wear, so we’re sticking with the power armor.
Korenchkin’s the only person on the ship with a full, private bathroom.
This really just brings to light the absurd living arrangements on this ship. Deck 1 had private bunks but communal bathrooms. Deck 1 had one single private room that must have been for the most hated person on the ship. Decks 3 didn’t really have anything, but I’m sure people slept in their offices or something. Deck 4 had those military bunks, but they at least got personal shades to close them off. Deck 5’s got that whole Las Vegas thing going. And finally deck 6, where (supposedly) all the really important people are, get a bunch of tiny, open bunks with the only bathroom nearby accessible by ladder. I don’t know how these people survived.
Anyway, it’s bridge time!
The bridge gets a big elevator.
At the top is a poor military bot, minding its own business. I’ll make business out of its mind. I have no idea what I’m trying to say there.
Here’s the Von Braun’s bridge. It’s split into like 20 different sections. Actually, as far as sci-fi spaceship bridge designs go, I suppose it’s pretty good, considering that a spaceship won’t behave anything like a naval ship, and you’d have tons of sensor and communication things in place of a huge steering wheel. But the whole spreading everything out is kinda dumb.
This thing here’s awesome. It’s some sort of holographic display, and the transparency on it is really neat looking. I love how it totally cancels out the window behind it, somehow.
That face on the display screen… is that Shodan?
Grav lifts up to the top part of the bridge. Seems stupid to split important ship functions up like that, but I guess this makes the captain feel more important.
HOLY SHIT IT’S SHOOTING ROCKETS AT ME!
Why don’t we get a rocket launcher?
With the rocket turret dispatched, we can explore more. This poor, unfortunate sap is melded with the flooring, which is why I’m assuming his medkit didn’t help.
Anyway, in here’s the card we need. This room on Ops must be important, if the key to it is where the captain sits, and is sealed behind glass.
…But I don’t see any signs saying we can’t break it.
With this little thing in hand, it’s time to head all the way back to Deck 4!
On the way back down, we stop at that upgrade station at the beginning of the deck. We’ve been stocking up cyber modules, so it’s time to get Tier 5! These are the stupidly powerful…er…powers, and are 99% of the time not worth the psi points. But they’re cool, so we’re buying a couple.
Soma Transference, which basically makes us immortal (even more so than before), Psi Barrier, which creates forcefields, and Super Psi Armor, which if we ever remember we have it will reduce damage by 60%.
Back to the elevator, we need to take this short one to deck 5…
And take this one to Deck 4.
What exciting adventures will we have on the deck we already cleared? I’m guessing not much.
Next Episode- That’s using your head!
Edit: Spoiler'd for thread size.
Just beat the game on hard again with the Techie/Exotic guy. Worm launcher took at least two shots to bring down a rumbler, (I think it was more like 3). It was, however, very effective on Psi reavers.
I actually found the statis generator useful on rumblers.
I'm not sure how people found this game too hard. I purposefully avoid the best weapon in the game (Assault Rifle) and waste my cyber modules on useless stuff like research 6 and modify 5, heavy 5 yet still beat it easily. The only difficult part was in the way beginning with pistol 1. Even that would have been easy if I had just gotten maintanence 1 instead of trying to max out Hack.
Let me tell you about Demon's Souls....
That said, I look forward to every update in this LP. You are fantastic Dartboy.
1) The turrets, they own me. I suck.
2) This game gives me the worst motion sickness since Dark Forces. It completely owns me on a physical level I can't control. It's been half a day since I played for twenty minutes and I'm still all wobbly-kneed. It's like the third-worst hangover in my life except I didn't even drink.
Is there any way I could get over the motion sickness? I'd really like to play.
I never finished this game, because I always ended up overwriting my save somehow -_- I think I got like 90% through it before accidentally saving over my quicksave with a newbie save, and was too frustrated to do it all again.
1. Yeah, turrets are tough if you don't have Armor Piercing or energy weapons. One thing I've noticed is that they have kinda crappy accuracy, so if you lean around a corner to attack them, they'll shoot back but hit the wall 80% of the time. Doesn't work too well against rocket turrets, though.
2. Did you try higher resolutions? I have a fairly large monitor, and trying to play games like this on a huge screenm yet in something like 640x480 gives me headaches as well. Zooming out does ease the dizzying effect somewhat.
You went through 90% of the game without doing a regular save? Yeah, there's only one quick/autosave that is shared amongst all playthroughs, so like all games you do want to save to other slots.
I don't know that the game ever really felt difficult short of the Impossible difficulty, so much as I just felt frail. I didn't bother bumping up endurance until late in the game when I had most of the skills I wanted, so anything with a quick ranged attack that saw me first took nice big chunks out of me before I could draw a bead on it.
Also, I never noticed this before, but on Engineering two logs see the same guy die in different ways.
I wasn't paying too much attention to who they were referring to in those, but maybe there's two of them? Super Malone Bros!
So here we are on deck 4. I skipped the boring part of walking here, nothing happened.
Pushing this big button control panel-y… thing gives Shodan control of the ship and lets her transfer herself to the Rickenbacker. Now that she’s “safe” we can head down to Engineering to reset the core or whatever and let her blow it up. I’m wary about going to the bottom of the ship when all the escape stuff’s on the top.
So, it’s time to head down. Once you’ve cleared out the levels, there’s still the occasional respawning enemy, but they’re nowhere close to threatening at that point.
Back down in Engineering. This’ll be the last time we head down here, and this vending machine’s pretty cheap, so it’s shopping time!
You know, walking through here again, I can’t help to think that some removable lead plates over those exposed, glowing green pipes would cut down on a lot of the problems.
Well, here’s the ol’ girl. After all the trouble we went through, I can’t believe we’re just gonna blow it up.
Remember this door here? If there’s a locked door in the game, you know you’ll be going through it at some point.
Shodan just gives us the access code. If she has enough control of the ship to know these things, why can’t she just simply unlock all the doors?
After pushing the single big button, Shodan informs us that she can destroy the ship at will. Sounds fun. Whatever we have to do to transfer her mind off this tin can, I’m gonna make sure it requires me being in a safe place first.
With that taken care of, we can head up here, to the shuttlebays on deck 6. When we get up here, we get an email about how the Many are preparing to evacuate the ship by loading eggs onto the shuttles. We need to do something to stop that. I’m betting “something” involves explosives.
AAH!
Blam Blam!
I’ve pretty much given up on charging most psi powers. It’s not that much more effective, and I can fire off two in the time it takes to charge one. And besides, rumblers are falling fairly quickly to fireballs, so there’s no need.
And here’s the shuttle bays. Or, rather the access corridor leading to the cargo bays. I’m not sure how useful the cargo bays are, since there’s only that tiny hall leading to them, so it’s not like you could really load/unload bulk goods or anything.
Here’s the door to Shuttlebay A…err… 1. Delacroix said she’s in here. And of course, this door’s busted, so we’ll have to find a way around.
Shuttlebay 2’s open, so we can head in here. There’s midwives and eggs in these places, so we’ve got some exterminating to do!
Inside is a log from Korenchkin:
“The glorious transformation is over and I am one of the Many. I imprint my thoughts on this device as a record of history. We began this journey as pilgrims of commerce and we now continue it as pilgrims of grace. I believed in money and TriOptimum, and now I believe in the joy of the Mass. Diego cannot be trusted so I must claim this ship for the Many. It shall be our vessel of salvation, spreading our message and our flesh.”
He makes it sound all dramatic. But I bet he’s some disgusting pile of flesh. That’s not for me. I prefer my pointy, monkey-like face, myself.
Opening the actual door to the shuttle, and we come to find the things are shielded. We’re going to have to figure out some way to take those things down if we want to prevent the Many from using these shuttles.
There’s a log in here from someone who had the same idea:
“I don't know what those goddamn worms want with the shuttles, but I'd love to throw a monkey wrench their way. If I can reach the control chamber above the shuttle bay, I can turn off the shields the worms and their helpers have set up around the shuttles. Once they're down, I can blow holes in those TriOptimum brand tin cans with my sidearm. Now if I can just get in there without getting caught. Oh, God, just get me out of this...”
So, it’s time to take the elevators up to the Shuttle Control floor.
As we come up here, we find a midwife destroying some very important piece of equipment. 5 nanites says it’s something we could have used.
Yep, it was the shield control gizmo to the shuttle in bay 1. And, like all sci-fi equipment, rather than shutting down or something that would be helpful when it’s destroyed, it keeps the forcefield permanently on. It’s the space equivalent of the elevator breaking down between floors. I’d hate to be stuck in that shuttle, and have to go to the bathroom.
However, the shield gizmo for bay 2 is working, so we shut that one down.
Taking a ladder down, we can get into a good firing position to destroy the shuttle.
Psi powers don’t do squat, so let’s use the weapon that’s good against robots and stuff.
…Huh? Why isn’t this doing anything either? Guess since the shuttle’s off, EMPs won’t affect it.
Well, we’ve still got that pistol.
Once it loses all its health, the shuttle’s textures stretch out and some panels come loose. Apparently that counts as destroyed in space. I know I wouldn’t want my textures stretched.
But we’ve still got to do something about that other shield…
Shodan sends us an email saying that she put a replicator pattern in the Value Rep here for a Sympathetic Resonator, which we can use to overload the shield and destroy the other shuttle.
But since the replicator’s menu is full, we’ll need to hack the machine to be able to buy it. This is the one other spot in the game where you need a specific skill or item to progress (the first being when you need to research Toxin A). If you don’t buy any Hack skill, you need to use an ICE pick to automatically hack it. I’m not sure what happens if you don’t have any and can’t hack.
But we do have hack, so we get our fancy light bulb.
Time to head down to the other shuttle! If you try shooting at a shuttle while the shield’s up, it just hit’s the shield (duh).
However, for some reason you can pass through the shield. You can run around and bump your head on the shuttle itself, but any shots at the shuttle inside here don’t do anything either. Guess we’ll blow it up the way we’re supposed to.
The shield generator. I see it has what looks like a light bulb socket, and we’ve got a light bulb.
when you stick it in, the shield generator (and the shield itself) turn red. And we all know flashing red lights on machines are bad.
Time to retreat to a safe distance. 12 feet.
BOOM! Bits actually came off this one. I’m impressed.
As a side effect of the explosion, it blew open the doorway into cargo bay 1. Time to go meet Delacroix!
Just as we walk through the doorway, Shodan calls us up and commands us not to go in. If we do, we’ll be “punished.” Whatever.
After everything that’s happened, it’ll be nice to talk to someone who actually wants to help.
…God dammit.
She was nice enough to leave us 10 cyber modules and her last words:
“They've got me now... And SHODAN has abandoned me. I'm not surprised... I've discovered her plans for the faster than light drives... her will is only matched by her imagination... if she gains access to the <<MESSAGE INTERRUPTED>>”
Messages always cut out right when they’re about to say the important part.
Well, nothing else to do here, time to loot the place!
There’s a box here perched rather precariously…
I have the sudden urge to go all Half Life 2 on it. And by that, I mean push it around.
Wheee! Rudimentary physics!
In these shuttlebays are these gross, half-formed eggs. They don’t hatch or anything if you approach, and destroying them just makes their gooey innards lead out.
As we walk back out, Shodan dispenses our… “punishment” + -10 cyber modules! Woo! …wait a minute… I didn’t think these things worked that way.
With out mission accomplished, it’s time to finally leave this rust bucket for what I hope is a much more logically designed spaceship (note from the future: it’s not).
But as we leave shuttle control, we’re attacked by like 12 billion hybrids!
Time to put our Tier 5 powers to use. Psi Wall creates an impassable barrier that’ll block movement and all attacks until it loses it’s health or the time runs out. Creative use of these things can do some cool stuff. However, by sealing the hybrids off, we’re cut off as well, with no way to actually hurt them.
Well actually, we do have a way. Soma Transference works through the wall, sometimes. It’s not consistent, so I’m sure this actually is a glitch instead of a hidden feature. I manage to do some draining, but the real thing killing off the hybrids is other hybrids! They’re all trying to attack me, completely oblivious to their brethren in between.
Eventually, there’s only two left, and the wall dies. We can now finish them off and continue.
We’re heading back to the tram. The connecting umbilical that will take us to the Rickenbacker is at that middle tram stop.
At least there’s no lines.
With the security door now open, we’re home free! There’s nothing that’ll stop us now!
Crap.
This thing’s invincible. And as we approach, we get an email from Korenchkin, who wants us to come meet him up on the bridge. If he can plant something like this, I’m thinking he’s not inviting us for cookies.
Taking the tram again, we’re greeted by a ninjabot. Was that his great plan? Ambush me with a robot?
At least Korenchkin was nice enough to lower the elevator again after he went up.
Gah! What’s that thing! It’s a big, floaty brain, and it’s shooting purple at us! Strangely, if you look at it’s targeting box, rather than naming it the box just says “corpse.” These are Psi Reavers, and they’re not really alive to begin with.
They just vanish when you destroy them, but they reform after a few seconds. So shooting them is simply a temporary measure, you need to find the thing creating them. Korenchkin’s not here, so I’m guessing he’s up where the keycard was.
Up top, we come across… a brain. Ewww. This is Korenchkin’s brain. He’s apparently been fully turned into a Psi Reaver. This fancy organ is the thing controlling the other floaty brains that actually attack you.
But the real thing doesn’t put up a fight. Korenchkin’s about to find out why you don’t leave your brain lying around.
Splorch! That’s pretty gross too. Amusingly, inside the brain is an audio log:
“Suarez and his whore want to escape. I do not understand. They get offered a miracle and they bite the hand. The Many has shared its wisdom... they shall not leave this ship.”
Yeah, may want to work on that…
But, I guess that’s one way to keep your memories.
With the brain gone, so is the psi wall. Now we can finally get out of this place!
The umbilical connecting the two ships has a huge Super Grave Shaft ™ as the way up. Neat. Wonder what we’ll find on our new ship?
Next Episode- Scrambled eggs.
Edit: Spoiler'd for thread size.
Whoa, that's creepy and subtle. I never noticed that before.
Wheeeeee!
Welcome to the UNN Rickenbacker. The military ship glued onto the Von Braun for no reason other than to give us some extra levels to run through after we’re done with the first ship.
Looking out the windows to one side, we can see this nice view of space. Pretty.
There’s a log here that sheds some light as to what happened on Tau Ceti V:
“We arrived planet side via the shuttle on June 15th at 0800 hours. Korenchkin was the first one out the door, never even bothering to do a level B Hazard Suit exam. Not wanting to let that little TriOp suit get a head start, Diego went right after him. I thought it was crazy, sending the senior officers of the Rickenbacker down to the surface of an uncharted body, but both those idiots were going to get all the glory for the UNN and TriOp they could. Damn, time for inspection... more later.â€
Reminds me of that scene from Galaxy Quest.
“What are you doing!? Is there air? You don’t know!â€
“*sniff sniff* …Seems ok.â€
The other side, however, is covered in some sort of disgusting goo. Where’s the Toxin A when you need it?
Shodan calls us up saying that there’s some new, black Annelid eggs that have been laid on the ship, and we’ll need to shoot them all. These will supposedly hatch into “unstoppable†creatures if we don’t get rid of them. But based on everything we’ve fought so far, I’m betting they’d be just as destructible as everything else. But whatever.
When crawling up a nearby ladder (I guess all the ladder technology on earth went to the UNN), we have to fight a whole line of turrets guarding the access shaft. The flaw with this plan is that the turrets can only fire straight ahead, while we can shoot them at an angle.
Anyway, here we are on the Rickenbacker itself, in some sort of tiny loading room that’s not useful for anything. There’s a big crate blocking our path, so we’ll need to move it.
Heading over to the ladder to the overhead control room, we come across the first Black Egg. They pop as easily as the normal ones, so I’m not convinced these things are any more dangerous than anything else.
Pushing the single button in the control room activates a magnetic crane or somesuch sci-fi gizmo. All it does is lift the crate to a higher ledge, so again I question the utility.
There’s another log up here about the Tau Ceti mission:
“The eggs were lying in a semi-circle in the middle of what looked like a crash crater. There were hundreds of those things. Hundreds. As we got closer, you could hear them... not the eggs, the things inside them... it was like music... I was scared out of my mind, but that music... all I wanted to do was see those things up close... find out their secrets...â€
As soon as the path’s clear, a rumbler comes out! It only has melee attacks, and we’re out of it’s reach with our ranged fireballs. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
Right behind it come a military bot! This thing does shoot at us, but we can pull off some awesome Neo-like Matrix moves, leaning left and right to dodge the shots. It goes down too
Up where that crate was being levitated to, is another Black Egg. What you see here is pretty much the extent of what’s up here, so I’m thinking the Many’s just planting random eggs around just to screw with us.
With the way clear, we can begin exploring the Rickenbacker in earnest.
The UNN is apparently a proponent of alternative fuel sources.
When we get here we receive an email from William Bedford Diego, captain of the Rickenbacker and dude who sounded like he wasn’t too keen on the Many in all his logs. He tells us he’s in the Rickenbacker’s sick bay, and that we should try to reach him. “Soldier, stay alive.â€
It’s at this time that I remembered that we’re supposed to be one of the Rickenbacker’s soldiers to begin with, and he’s our commanding officer. So, now we’ve got an order from someone we actually should listen to.
Some sort of explosion happened, and blew out this part of the deck. Luckily there’s a forcefield to keep all that nasty Space out. Here we get an email about how a Meson Coil or something or other blew up, and that the same thing will happen in Pod 2 on the way to the bridge if we don’t do something about it.
There’s a log in here that partially explains what happened:
“In order to reverse the gravitronic generators, I need to get into nacelle B. In order to get into the nacelle, I need my damn access card. But I left the it on the opposite side of the hull breach. Wait a minute... if I can extend the auxilary support struts, I could... if they've survived the blast, that is.â€
So some guy left his keycard on the other side of the explosion, which we’ll need if we want to make the other side of the ship not explode too.
Since there’s a big hole in the ship, we’ll need to take the air vents to get around. Again, note the nice feature SS2 included: once you’re in the vent, release crouch and you can run at your full speed. I wish more games did this, especially ones with extensive networks of air vents.
Inside the vent for some reason is another Tau Ceti log:
“After a couple of hours it was... it was like being on a bender... long periods that you couldn't remember... one minute we were in that crater... the next minute we were loading up the shuttle with the eggs... I remember hearing that idiot Korenchkin calling the Von Braun and ordering them to clear off the ENTIRE hydroponics deck. Diego seemed to think this was strange and said, 'Are you crazy, Anatoly?' And Korenchkin smiled and said back to him, 'Oh, Captain... WE are not Anatoly...'â€
Coming out of the vent we see the ladderway to Pod 2. Half the ladder’s been ripped off, so we have to do some acrobatics to get up.
There’s another log here about Tau Ceti:
“For some reason, they couldn't get a hold of my mind they way they could the rest. So when I found the remains of the data wafer near the crater back on Tau Ceti, I didn't say a word. I just slipped it into my belt and thought, 'Dr. Polito will know what to do with this...'â€
Ahh! Spiders! Invisible spiders!
Up here’s the Rickenbacker’s chemical storeroom. There’s nothing to really research here, so we’ll leave it.
Hmm. Wonder what’s around here?
AH! OW! OW! The Rickenbacker’s got these ceiling-mounted laser turrets that hurt far more than the regular kind. There’s two of them guarding an egg, but we triumph in the end.
Just as we turn to head out, we run face-first into another rumber! How are these things fitting in these tiny hallways?
The Rickenbacker has the same helpful arrows as the Von Braun, so we know this is the way to Nacelle B!
Nearby’s a Quantum Thingy. These are becoming scarcer and scarcer.
Pretty.
And here’s the way to Nacelle B. On we g-
Crap. I forgot to actually go back and get the keycard! Oh well.
We need to be back on that first side of the exploded room. I know I’ll just jump over this little railing here and take a shortcut!
Jump I said! …Jump dammit! You’ve got to be kidding me, I can’t get over that tiny railing!?
Well, I suppose we’ll have to take the long way around. Before we do, there’s a second support beam we need to extend first.
Taking the air vent again, we’re back to the beginning here. There was this button the whole time, and I forgot to press it.
Damn, it only extends the far one. But fortunately, with that side beam we did earlier we can jump across.
There was a security crate on the first side of that stupid railing, so we can easily get back to this side. With these beams out, we can jump across safely.
The dead guy in here (not the same one as the logs) has the Nacelle B Keycard. With this, it’s time to head back!
Ta da! The door opens!
In the far back of the engine nacelle is the Gravity Control switch for Pod 2.
Beep! Gravity reversed! Why is the gravity control for a different part of the ship inside one of the engines?
Now that we pushed that button, the other side of the ship won’t explode somehow. So, it’s time to continue on!
There’s a line of laser and rocket turrets in our path, which we can take out fairly easily with the EMP Rifle. There’s another log around here that goes into more detail about the whole exploding thing:
“Simpson, Malone, Chandara, and Perez are dead. At least those are the ones we know for sure... Those bastards sabotaged the meson acceleration coil. They blew out the entire driver core, six subdecks... From what I can tell, somebody tapped the frequency resonator to refract human sized movements. The overload of all those people moving around must have blown the resonator. We've set up a magnetic shield and the ship's still functional... barely. I've quarantined the entrance to Pod 2... the secondary coil is right there and I don't know how thorough the son of a bitch who did this was.â€
Don’t ask me how something can be specifically set to explode from someone walking around, just smile, nod, and continue.
Valuable advice.
Up this ladder is another military bot. I have absolutely no idea how it got here or what it’s doing in here. The ladder we came up is just barely big enough for a person, and the only way out is another door just wide enough for a person as well. Plus, the only thing up here is a ledge leading to the door, so there is absolutely nothing for it to guard. The only thing I can think of is someone brought the disassembled pieces of the bot in here, and put it together with the sole purpose of guarding this ladder.
Poor thing must have gone mad from the isolation.
So, we put it out of its misery.
There’s some bots and turrets guarding this area, and a bunch of protocol droid boxes in that hole in the ground in the middle there. This place is awfully heavily guarded. Wonder why?
What a wonderful slogan.
This must be what all the bots were for. This is one of the torpedo rooms of the ship, and an incredibly lame jumping puzzle. A log explains the situation:
“The worms are everywhere... and Captain Diego is the one who let them in. Nobody knows who to trust anymore... nobody's even sure who's human anymore. I've blown out the access ladders in the torpedo room to restrict access to Pod 2. Let's hope that holds them back. As long as we're alive and drawing a paycheck from the Navy, those bastards are not getting the Rickenbacker.â€
So woo, we need to figure out a way up. That consists entirely of pushing the buttons that raise up the torpedoes, letting us use them as stepping stones to reach the damaged ladder. Like I said not much of a puzzle.
When we get up, we look up to see the windows above shatter, raining glass (harmlessly) down on us. Oh noez! The space! But it’s ok, there’s enough fleshy goodness sealing all the windows off that we won’t die. How thoughtful of the Many.
This is the way to Pod 2, and it passes by the torpedo launch tube. There’s some unlaunched torpedoes that are leaking an unhealthy amount of radiation, so we need to do something about that.
So what do you do if you have some torpedoes you need to get rid of, and a launch tube? Why, launch the torpedoes, of course! I’m kinda surprised there’s no safety key or anything, just a big button labeled “LAUNCH TORPEDO.†Seems like the sort of thing that needs bridge authorization first.
There’s a rumbler guarding the path to the elevator that will take us to Pod 2. Again, how do these things fit in these tiny spaces?
Woo! The last egg! We’ve been shooting them as we come across them, and with this one gone, Shodan’s happy that they won’t hatch.
With that our of the way, we can take the elevator! What exactly is “Pod 2†anyway? Is that just what they’re calling the next deck? Because all the signs label the decks A, B, and C. And it’s not like we’re traveling to a side part of the ship.
I’m confused. But no time for that now! We’ve got a ship to detach!
Welcome to Pod 2/Deck B/whatever. Everything’s upside down. I imagine the elevator ride up here was pretty interesting.
This thing here’s the Meson Coil, that thing that explodes if we walk around. What I don’t get is how walking on the ceiling fixes the problem.
Yeah, screw you, Meson Accelerator 2!
Walking through some air vents and shooting lasers, we come to… a church? In the bowels of a spaceship? Well, ok.
There’s a log in here, surprisingly, from Polito:
“The genie of Citadel station is out of the bottle, and I am the cause. I can't bear to be Pandora. And I'm not brave enough to wait around and see the death and misery I have caused... This is my last transmission, my friend. Be careful... I think SHODAN has plans for you.â€
Guess she died up here, and that’s when Shodan took over posing as her.
Yeah. After we loot the church, we continue on to find the ships sewers or something. I suppose I can understand why the crew of the ship might want a religious facility somewhere, but couldn’t they find someplace more dignified and easier to get to than way down here?
The ship is worms! Or wires, or something.
And here we are at the (upside down) med bay. Diego’s supposed to be here, so let’s find him.
More invisible spiders! They aren’t really any more annoying than the regular spiders, just hard to see.
And here we… oops. Guess Diego wasn’t strapped in. Sorry about the whole reversing gravity thing.
…Moving right along, he has a log on his headless, skinless corpse:
“Those worms were a cancer in my body, so I had the autodoc cut it out. Do you think they're going to let you blow up the Von Braun? The Many will never allow it. But I've got something to help you. It’s in my quarters. You’ll find the access card on my… body. Take the fight to them, soldier. And remember, you're the only one you can trust.â€
Guess in the end he did do his best to resist the Many. Though I imagine that gaping hole in his chest hurt like the dickens. Still, I guess this eases off our conscience a bit, as he probably died before we flipped the gravity, so we don’t have to feel guilty about killing him with that fall.
In any case, we’ve got what we need, so it’s on to the bridge!
There’s another elevator here that’ll take us up. Let’s hope this elevator ride involved fewer bumps to the head.
Ow… and we’re right side up again. There’s more Many goo around here, so I’m thinking we’re getting close to something important.
Up here’s the last OS Upgrade Station! We’re nearing the end of the game, and we’re pretty good on our skills, so there’s really not much else to get. I picked up Sharpshooter, which will give us a little bonus to our guns. Kinda worthless at this point, but there’s not much else to choose from.
There’s a monitor here showing us what the status of the ship is. Apparently, there’s a giant worm or snake thing that’s wrapped itself around the ship. We can’t separate with that thing on there, so it looks like we’ve got some exterminating to do.
Up here’s Diego’s room, and the little “gift†he left for us. There’s a couple squishy Annelid items to research, so we’ll hang onto them for now.
Since we’re running out of stuff to buy, and we already maxed out Psi, I’m buying more Endurance. More health is never bad.
Here’s the Rickenbacker’s bridge. We’ve got to do something about the Many before we can ditch this whole mess. Shodan calls us up and says that there’s an escape pod on the bridge that’s conveniently pointing right at the Many itself. If we launch it, we’ll shoot straight into their fleshy body and then we can do our thing (killing) on the inside. Sounds like fun.
To the escape pod!
These things are supposed to seat 24 people? We’ll see the inside of Tommy and Rebecca’s escape pod later, and it looks exactly the same. There’s only the 6 cryo stasis tubes, so I guess if people are evacuating you have to do it in shifts.
The pod door’s open, and it’s leading straight into a fleshy wall. That totally sounds like something we should launch our rocket-powered pod into!
*BEEP!*
*WHOOSH!*
WHAM! What will happen next? Did we die? Find out next time!
Next Episode- Rupturing sphincters.
I CANNOT WAIT FOR YOUR NEXT ONE, MAEK POAST NAO!!
why should I be exploring every inch of the game anyway?
because I am some kind of tool?
Quantum Bioreconstruction Chambers ftw!
No no, it's just such a well-designed, comprehensible, interesting and varied environment!
That's one reason.
heyo
And I saw the newest arrival in the critter family.
What's it take to kill this thing? A chainsaw?
Anti-personnel rounds.
Well, until 'Pistol jammed!' lead to 'nom nom nom'.
After the subsequent retry, the lights are on. Now I guess I get to go artwork-code hunting.