It's fun to try and break games.
It's fun to try and break games.
It's great in Deus Ex because they plan for it. In most games, sure maybe you can blow up that important person, but you'll just stop progression and have to reload.
In DX? Just keep going. The world will adjust for whatever nonsense you come up with. I adore it.
I'm having that issue in FO: New Vegas.
There's a mission where I have to go talk to the person in charge at one NCR outpost to progress the mission. I went there to talk to them, and right as I got there I watched a Ceasar's Legion raiding party kill everyone. I didn't think too much about it at the time, and went on with some other quests. I just figured the character I needed would respawn.
Nope. Quest permanently stuck open.
Part V: Natural Born Conspirators
(SPOILER)
When we left JC, he was returning to UNATCO with the unconscious Lebedev after learning that Paul had been working for the NSF (and maybe it was UNATCO who where the real terrorists?). It will all come together in this update. Paul is now persona non grata and on the run.
In the break room we find the mysterious government official chatting with Doc Reyes about getting his back, sack and crack done.
We also finally discover to nobody's surprise that the 'WS' that we have been seeing all over people's emails at UNATCO and MJ12 is in fact this man, Walton Simons. The game just sort of starts using his name suddenly and I don't think he's actually introduced.
While doing our rounds we run into the secretary we harassed in the bathroom near the start of the game. I think she's getting the wrong end of the stick.
UNATCO Goon 1's eyes visibly light up at the information that JC shares his George Michael-esque enthusiasm for cottaging. We will stay well clear of the gents from now on.
There was also another Aug canister on the plane to pick up. In the medical bay we can apply it. Now we have super strength, bulletproof(ish) skin, resistance to toxic chemicals (a useless augmentation if there ever was one) and super powered legs which enable JC to run like Usain Bolt and jump like Psychotic when I creep up on him in the shower.
JC goes into Alex's office to find he isn't best pleased about us liquidating Anna Navarre.
Nobody cares about your opinion, Alex.
Time to explain this mess to Manderley. We dump Lebedev's body on his desk as a peace offering.
The way he delivers this line is hilarious.
JC is told to forget about Paul and move on to the next mission, in Hong Kong. Tracer Tong is the target. To the helicopter! We take Lebedev with us as he's never seen the delights of Wan Chai Market.
Paul? In trouble? TO THE BATCAVE (in this case his apartment)
A crippled Paul is sitting calmly, bolt upright on a chair. He doesn't seem to be bleeding and has no trouble talking. Seriously hurt? I'm calling bulltrout here, chiefWe dump Lebedev in front of him as a warning for if it turns out he's been bulltroutting us about UNATCO.
He asks us to go to the NSF HQ (which has just been raided by UNATCO) and find proof of MJ12's dodgy dealings and send a distress code to the NSF's allies in Paris and Hong Kong. His killswitch has been activated by the suits at UNATCO and he has about 18 hours to live. Tough break.
Downstairs, Mr Renton, the owner of the hotel, is getting some grief from his hooker daughter (Sandra) and her pimp. He asks us to give him a gun, but he can go smurf himself if he thinks he's getting his chubby fingers on our carefully-refined hardware.
Looks like it's time to finally meet Jojo Fine.
Nope, it's definitely not EoFF's Jojo, as he's at least 5 feet tall.
Jojo smokes the unarmed Renton. What a shame. I don't know what to say. What a rotten way to die.
Then, inexplicably, he turns on Sandra.
JC WHITE KNIGHT MODE ACTIVATE
M'lady. Time to head to NSF HQ.
In 2050, terrorist operations make their headquarters in large warehouses just off the main street and in plain sight.
The UNATCO goons patrolling the area are friendly to JC who is still ostensibly working with them. We know differently. The building is comprised of 4 levels. The objective is in a small room on the roof. We are going to booby trap the whole building. Bear with me:
There is a large collection of TNT in the basement.
As well as a hefty amount of toxic gas barrels (and a few explosive ones). We will bring them all upstairs.
Behold the stash. Time for some very careful placement.
Here's the ground floor. The TNT on top of the big green metal crate is placed so that if it explodes, it should set off a chain reaction detonating all other boxes and barrels on the floor. Also, notice the barrel with the red symbol balancing precariously on the wall upstairs...
Here's the full view from the top floor. Detonating the TNT on the green crate on the ground floor should also detonate the one above it (next to the targeting reticule), which should detonate the one above it...you get the idea. If done right, we should have a cacophony of nuclear proportions.
But! We're not going to set off the fireworks yet - we have an objective to complete. To the roof.
A bit of manoeuvring with the satellite dishes and JC sends off the NSF signal. Suddenly, all hell breaks loose. Walton Simons busts onto JC's infolink and tells him it's game over and sets UNATCO on him. His killswitch is activated. To arms!
The goons from outside come rushing in. Puny mortals.
Time to party. Fingers in your ears...
The screams of dying UNATCO troopers and the strained chokings of those who have survived the blast yet suffocate on the gas whilst thinking of their families is music to my ears.
Time to head back to Paul and get him out of here. This is where my game screwed up. Firstly, I got back to the hotel and spontaneously received 100 skill points and a very weird message:
I don't even know. Then I went into Paul's room and this happened:
...did Lebedev eat him?
Cue a good half hour of faffing about between the hotel and the NSF HQ and finally I returned to find Paul sitting in his rightful place. Still have no idea what happened there.
trout.
With no warning, Men in Black and a smurfload of UNATCO troops pile in. Paul tells us to get the hell out of there and leave him. Of course, we will completely ignore his request. We sit and watch as Paul decides to take them all on himself.
What an absolute boss.
More troopers in the foyer. We don't even need a weapon. Paul is a one-man army.
He even takes them on with a knife. He takes them on with a knife.
He then runs out the front door and disappears. We can't leave without Lebedev - he's not taking all the glory.
We get to the subway and are jumped by Gunther Hermann. He knocks JC out and we awake...
...in a cell?
there was a picture here
You DESERVE those skill points for hauling Lebedev along on this epic journey while somehow managing to keep him completely invisible to the other characters.
Well earned
Good effort on the lots of killingPaul does seem like a boss.
I'd like to play this game now. I got the PS2 port at home but I found the controls to be intolerable.
Another fine chapter. The warehouse scenario is great.
Part VI: What Lies Beneath (UNATCO)
(SPOILER)
We left our two heroes last time just as JC was waking up after finding Lebedev and himself interned in a cell. Will they escape?
Just as JC begins to ponder the logistical possibilities of flushing himself down the toilet, he gets a message from 'Daedalus'. That name rings a bell from somewhere...who is it?
The lights briefly go off as the power goes down and we hot foot it out of there.
Obviously, we're totally unarmed. Can't risk bringing Lebedev along for the ride so we leave him in the cell for now. There's a handy baton on top of the crate in front and an MJ12 guard wandering about.
JC's frantic swishing about of the baton hits nothing but thin air and the guard rushes to set of the alarm. Luckily we clobber him at the last moment and he goes down, so we can take his pistol.
Looking in the cells:
Miguel here has also been locked up and we hatch a plan to escape. The plan involves telling him to stay here then coming back to him when the place is totally clear of MJ12 troops.
While creeping through the vents, we get another message from the mysterious Daedalus. Paul's alive!
We need to get to the armoury to pick up our confiscated kit, but we can pick up a load of other crap on the way.
Including a new cattle prod. Useless of course against the Metal Gear-looking bad boys patrolling the armoury perimeter.
Lock and load mothersmurfer.
Looks like they sportingly kept our cache of mind-altering drugs safe as well.
Hidden in the back is the PLASMA GUN. We'll keep this for later.
Hidden in a filing cabinet somewhere is a datacube containing the usernames and passwords of everyone at UNATCO. Just in case MJ12 one day require the ability to log in to Private Lloyd's computer and read his saucy emails to Agent Navarre.
Paul! You're alive!
He tells us we need to go Hong Kong to get our killswitches deactivated by a bloke called Tracer Tong - precisely the guy we were supposed to be assassinating next. And the bombshell...
We're underneath UNATCO! Deus Ex has gone full Resident Evil and placed a smurfing humungous bioweapon research lab complete with detention centre, armoury and command centre underneath another bunker with a detention centre, armoury and command centre. Yo dawg...
Bored of sneaking around, JC decides to go postal on anyone and everyone (except Paul, who will immediately annihilate us should we even look at him wrong), so all the scientists run out the door.
Right into the path two giant Karkians that they have been breeding, who eat them for lunch. Karma.
Time to clean house. We gun down everyone in the command centre which leaves the exit clear.
Let's not forget Miguel and Lebedev, though!
Upstairs we find ourselves in the familiar corridors of UNATCO. This time though, everyone wants to kill us. Everyone except Doc Reyes and Alex, anyway.
JC gets his one liners ready for smoking the Chief.
We pass by Alex's office on the way upstairs for a chat about this 'Daedalus' character.
Alex denies everything.
Either Alex is actually what he looks like - a poor man's Jeff Goldblum posing as a hacker - or Daedalus is someone to be taken seriously. Alex reckons he's an AI born out of the government's Echelon IV that has gone rogue (and he'd be right).
Upstairs, time to hunt down and deliver the righteous fist of violent justice down on the one person in this building who deserves it most.
That's right, a shotgun blast to the face of Janice Reed. That's the penalty for having a horrible southern accent. Good riddance.
Time to get out the plasma rifle we picked up earlier. Looks like we're interrupting a conversation between Manderley and Simons.
No, JC! That's not a pithy one-liner!
Manderley, the snake, tells us we can leave freely, before waiting before our back is turned to pull out his shotgun. Unforgivable. He gets plasma'd.
Picking up Lebedev and Miguel...
...we bust out the front doors. At this point, Miguel is supposed to thank us profusely for certainly saving his life and leave. Unfortunately he does neither. He continues to follow us about a bit, before disappearing completely into the ether when our back is turned for too long. What a swindle. I'm just going to shoot him next time.
Time to get to Hong Kong (By helicopter. Assuming this is a pretty fast 2050s blackops chopper which I'll ballpark as cruising at a sharp 150mph, with 8000 miles from NY to Hong Kong, that's 53 straight hours of helicoptering. Grab a Snickers).
We'll see you guys in two and a half days time, I suppose...
there was a picture here
Can't wait for the next episode
Part VII: JC Denton, in Da Fresh
(SPOILER)
So after our short break we're back on the road to Hong Kong via a stupidly long helicopter journey to get in touch with Tracer Tong so he can deactivate JC's killswitch. One wonders why the 'killswitch' takes 18 hours to work rather than it being just an instant thing. Don't expect this to ever be explained.
Things have gone tits up, though. We've arrived in Hong Kong but the navy has remotely taken control of the helicopter and flown it into this hangar bay. Noticing that even though we have landed, MJ12 are making absolutely no effort to actually detain us or anything, Jock kicks JC out of the chopper and sends him (and Lebedev) to get us out of here.
Of course I don't know whether you have noticed, but ever since we saw him in person in Hell's Kitchen, Jock has been permanently welded to the hull of his helicopter and as such he is unable to just get out and leave. Instead we must reactivate the chopper's weapons and open the hangar bay.
We dump Lebedev and crawl about in the air vents, bringing us over the bathroom. Does this look familiar?
Facility-1.jpg
Long story short, a bit more solidsnaking it and some running away from the guards gets us into the control room where we can switch on Jock's weapons via a handily-placed button, and open the way out.
Jock fires off his noob tube and blows open the exit door.
Wait, Jock, where the hell are you going!?
The deserting scumbag leaves us here with two gun bots and tells us to take the lift down instead.
trout, we forgot Lebedev!
5_minutes_later.jpg
Yes folks, we're here...
Wan Chai Market. You wirr never find a more wretched hive of scum and virrainy. We must be cautious.
We'll let down Lebedev on the counter of the chicken stall so he may sleep amongst the fowl. I hope he's comfortable as he is in for a long wait.
Wan Chai market is infamous for having some of the worst voice acting since Jill & Barry first went exploring a haunted house in the hills. Louis Pan here provides the brunt of the cheese.
JC potters about and talks with the locals. None of whom utters a lie as big as the one told by this security guard:
Which is delivered like "The SHOPKEEPERS here are OWNEST. You WIRR find a good bargain HERE."
The locals talk a lot about some kind of gang war going on between two triad groups: the Luminous Path and the Red Arrow. Of course, JC decides to meddle in their affairs like the stinking American imperialist he is. At the gate to the Luminous Path compound is a bald-headed guard with a shotgun. JC approaches and asks about Tracer Tong.
This guy is Gordon Quick, and, funnily enough, he is the leader of the Luminous Path triad. Yes, the head of one of the biggest criminal organisations in Hong Kong is standing guard with a shotty outside his own compound. I don't understand either.
He tells us that he won't help us find Tracer Tong until we help the Ruminous Path. Apparently they've been framed for the murder of the Red Arrow leader (the event which kicked off the gang war) by a young lady named Maggie Chow. We must meet with her and find the sword that she stole from them to prove she is the traitor.
On the way, though, we can go into the Canal Road tunnel and see the gang war happening LIVE AND UNCENSORED!
Alas, all this set piece succeeds in is showing us the age of the engine the game is using and the sheer uselessness of the AI. They just kind of gather together and clunkily swing swords at each other, with the occasional death scream.
They take their fight further down the tunnel to the scene of a car crash, where the police will simply stand there stoically clasping their weapons while taking no action on the wanton carnage happening literally right in front of their noses.
We enter a pretty dingy bar on our travels.
This guy rushes up to JC and starts shouting about blueprints before realising that it isn't actually Paul he's speaking to and then pretending he has made a mistake. This is something that always bothered me about this game. Aren't JC and Paul supposed to be identical twins?
We cross his hand with a bit of silver and he starts to perk up. Apparently Paul (who we must remember has been spending most of his time over the last few years operating in Hong Kong) asked this guy to get hold of the blueprints to the VersaLife building - the place they are brewing the Ambrosia.
JC goes full Jack Bauer. It's interesting to note that this game more or less pre-dates the current trend of 'you can role-play as a bad guy if you want' dialog choices in RPGs that is common in say, Mass Effect. You get the feeling that the game was on to something but didn't really know how to execute it. In this case, this line is said without any input from the player, so even if you haven't hurt anybody in the game so far and have been going through it as some sort of God-fearing paragon of virtue, JC will still threaten to kill this guy.
After grilling the bloke with the mutton chops, JC turns to the barman for info on Maggie Chow. All things point to her being a nasty piece of work.
There's a lot of optional stuff to do in Hong Kong. If I were to go into all of it we'd be here till Christmas so here's a brief look. We can go behind the bar here into the kitchen:
And leave the fridge door open like a boss.
I bit more crawling around in vents and we get into this secret underwater passage. Looks like there's been some kind of cave-in in the underground highway and it's filled with water.
A dead body is washed up nearby. Note that to even get to this point without sustaining a trout-ton of damage requires lots of skill points to be invested in swimming. Of course we have long since established that that is a fools' errand, and so instead we are reduced to swimming with a medkit in hand and using it every time JC chokes to within inches of watery death.
In classic Resi style, he spent his last moments writing a perfectly well-spoken diary entry into his 500-page tome that he obviously carries with him at all times. He references the hellspawn that are swimming around nearby and indicates that these have been specially bred by VersaLife. Classic evil-corporation fare
Enough of this. Let's go clubbing.
The Rucky Money! (SPOILER)No, I will not be ceasing with the L=R jokes for the forseeable future
At the entrance we find these two girls putting on some absolutely horrific attempts at Australian accents.
I refuse to believe that one of them is actually meant to be Australian because the accent is just wrong. It sounds like a South African trying to talk cockney. They let slip that the place is run by the Red Arrow, and ask JC for a really big favour.
No, smurf off.
In hindsight I have no idea why I didn't just shoot them on the spot for crimes against voice acting but I let them live and just went in myself.
I wanted the kinky looking girl on the left but the game wouldn't let me for some reason. All in all though, this is a bad idea as you're just paying 100 credits to have some bimbo follow you around pestering you with one of the three English sentences she knows.
JC hatches a plan to get rid of her. We go into the back room and place a large crate blocking the way in. We then place a few more crates at the top of the stairway leading out.
The AI is too dumb to just walk around them or climb over them, so she will trot around this room eternally.
On with the game, then, and it's time to meet this Maggie Chow in her apartment. For some reason, she is expecting us. I have no idea how or why.
Dr. Feng is the dead guy in the waterlogged tunnel we came across earlier. Conspiracy?
A short trip up to the penthouse and we find Maggie. Time to ask her about this missing sword.
So she claims that it is in fact the Ruminous Path that are the bad guys! Who is telling the truth? We shall find out next time.
there was a picture here
Great read so far, keep it up Manus.
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
I wonder where Lebedev will end up
Part VIII: Secret Underground Labs: THE GAME
(SPOILER)
Not dead yet! So when we last left Jonjo, we were about to find out whether the svelte Maggie Chow is telling the truth, or is actually the ugly conspirator turncoat that the game has made plainly obvious she is. To the police evidence room!
She may have given Denton PI the code to their dank little police shack in the Wan Chai market, but neglected to inform the sweeney that we were coming. As such, all aggressors will be liquidated.
A brief check around reveals absolutely nothing corroborating her testimony, and instead we find a datacube that actually implicates her in the murder of the Red Arrow leader. Something tells me she wasn't actually expecting us to go and check this out. Let's head back.
As we arrive on the penthouse level, we get jumped by her maid.
Knowing that the game is up, Maggie disappears and suddenly ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE WHAT THE trout
It turns out MJ12 troops had been hiding in the walls locked and loaded the entire time. That's some top-dollar security.
Reloading, we approach the apartment block and decide to finish the job much more quickly.
Strangely, nobody seems to give a trout that I just fired an anti-tank missile directly into a civilian block of flats from the middle of a vaguely busy street. We go back inside to survey the damage. The receptionist even welcomes us as we enter.
One bottle of plonk is all that survived. We take it as a memento of the late Maggie Chow. All the furniture and chinese giblets have disintegrated in the blast. The perfect crime.
In a bizarre twist, the maid is still waiting patiently at the end of the entrance corridor, ready to greet us. All loose ends must be tied up.
The explosion also seems to have opened the way to - gasp - another secret MJ12 lab!
The clincher - this confirms that Walton Simons is actually one of the big bods at MJ12. We've just iced one of his lieutenants, so maybe that has made a dent in his plans...
Toss away all your existing melee weapons - we've just found the real deal. This thing will smoke pretty much anybody in a single swing, along with crates, bots, and furniture. It also has a permanent blue glow, which is useful for when we're fumbling around in the dark and can't be bothered to turn on the flashlight-eyes. The triad, having made such a huge fuss over this thing that they sent some completely unknown American hardman to go and get it, will curiously never actually ask for it back, and as a result we can keep it forever. It's turned a little more ridiculous later on in the game when pretty much every man and his dog is swishing one of these top-secret unique ancient weapons about.
To demonstrate...
SWISH SWISH SWISH
Time to head back to the Led Allow in the Rucky Money club to present the sword to their leader and reveal the conspiracy.
Yep, she's still here.
No sooner does the boss finish spitting out his tea over hearing such a ludicrous story, does MJ12 suddenly bust in to the club and start smurfing trout up. JC deadpans "They must have followed me.", betraying absolutely no guilt for the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents going on out front.
MJ12 are now spitting out these 'commandos', who have double the HP of a regular grunt, and have a dual attack strategy where they will pepper you with machine-gun fire if you get too close, then fire rockets at you if you're further away. The worst part about them, though, is they only drop smurfing useless 'biocells' rather than ammo once you kill them. Knocking them out with a baton or electric prod is impossible, I don't care what anyone on the internet has been saying. It's impossible, god damn it!
The barman who was chatting trout about America earlier is among the dead. That's what happens, mothersmurfer.
He says while standing on top of a corpse.
Heading back to the Luminous Path compound, we can inform Doorman/Dragonhead Gordon Quick of recent events and maybe we can finally stop with this Triad trout and do what we came here for, which is to find Tracer Tong and get this damn killswitch deactivated.
We're in.
Alex is down here, and will from now on be of absolutely no use to us in the game and play no further part in the story, other than providing us with a few speculations on MJ12 whenever we ask. What a waste of time.
Tong instructs JC to step inside a very unnerving-looking contraption so we can un-switch the killswitch.
I'm half expecting the Combine to start piling through wormholes at any minute.
Some cool special effects and we're good as new.
More triad grunt work? This isn't what I signed up for, Tong!
It's time to go to VersaLife HQ and find the schematics for the Dragon Tooth sword so both Triads can wield it, because if everyone runs around with lightsabers, only then can we have true peace, or something.
Let's mosey.
Okay, there's a kind-looking receptionist at the desk. This place looks pretty normal so far. Let's wander into the offices...
Oh, for God's sake, evil company.
JC grills this guy working late for a way to get into the (SPOILER)secret labs.
We have ways of not getting caught? Yes, we do, actually. It's called quicksave, you may have heard of it.
This is the supervisor he wants us to ice. We could always just speak to him and hand him a bribe to get downstairs, but we have a brand new sword to play with.
With the supervisor now giving the cleaning staff a nasty stain in the carpet to clean up, we can get ourselves a pass to take the elevator to the (SPOILER)secret labs and find out what's really going on at VersaLife. I've got a tenner that says they're secretly working on a huge comeback for M People.
Take the lift down, and...
SECRET UNDERGROUND BOND VILLAIN LAIR ALERT
there was a picture here
Subtlety is for douches. Displaying overt signs of your nefarious intentions is simply showing good communication skills.
All those spoiler tags.
Bow before the mighty Javoo!
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