Spoiler Warning S5E37: *Puts on Sunglasses*

By Shamus Posted Friday Jun 24, 2011

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 121 comments


Link (YouTube)

It’s sad to run into quests like this. Do we give Obsidian a pass for striking out because they were swinging for the fences? Does than mean we’d rather game developers not dream big? (Although both approaches are better than Fallout 3, where the story aimed low and it still failed.)

This plot of this quest alone is larger and more complex than some games. The number of parties and viewpoints is large and there’s a lot going on. There are several points where you have lots of choices on how to proceed. But in the end, the whole thing is broken and your choices don’t make a lot of sense. (I wonder how many people got frustrated and just killed everyone because they didn’t know what to do next.)

My experiences with Obsidian games always end up conflicted like this.

 


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121 thoughts on “Spoiler Warning S5E37: *Puts on Sunglasses*

  1. Raygereio says:

    For one there’s a glitch related to the water in the room that can cause the game’s engine to freeze (FO3 had the same glitch, so legacy problem).
    This can fix it: http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37351
    And secondly some function that fires as you talk to Chauncey sufferes from critical existential failure and dies on the spot, leaving the game to crash.
    Which this can fix: http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37368

    The weird thing is that the first time I’ve been in this room I had no problems. The second time I had the talk-to-chauncey-freeze glitch, no matter how many times I reloaded.

    Edit: I also recall a bug report on the Bethasda forums where it was determined that there was good chance the game could crash if you talked to Chauncey before this point. There’s probably something weird going on with the conditionals for Chauncey’s dialogue files.

  2. Athatar says:

    If I remember correctly, when I compleated this quest I went the Mortimer route from the get go. I never met the contact or bothered with the detective. If you work for Mortimer I think he sends you to deal with the kid. I persuaded the brat that it was all a misunderstanding and to just go home. I also persuarded the guy in the hut that it was safe to go back to the casino and he became the meal instead.
    Could the Mortimer side quest be linked with with karma?

    1. krellen says:

      It is, actually, although the Cannibal perk is an automatic “get in free” flag regardless of karma.

    2. Moriarty says:

      I always like to kill the son, let the Gloves eat him and then frame his dad so he gets killed by a securitron. That way you get White Glove reputation and a nice reward from the dude outside for killing both Gunderssons.

  3. krellen says:

    Reading back over that old post of yours, Shamus, it’s amazing how much Mask of the Betrayer turned around all my thoughts on Obsidian. I used to sort of agree with you. :)

  4. Museli says:

    Chauncey has started crashing my game too on recent playthoughs, although he never used to. I blame Jabar.

  5. Piflik says:

    I actually tried the quest multiple times – good, evil, anything – and it always ended the same way…with a killing spree…the first time I did something wrong that no one told me was wrong right in the beginning and they suddenly were all hostile, forcing me to kill them all, including the contents of their cold store…I did save him once, brought him back to his dad and then got them some surrogate meal that nobody would miss, but somehow I still messed up at some point, by going into their dining room and was again forced to kill them all…I guess they are just suicidal…I don’t think I ever got out of that casino with anyone still breathing in there…

    1. Hitch says:

      There are too many points in this quest where a decision will make the White Glove Society declare you kill on sight several doors (and autosaves) after said decision. I got frustrated and decided that I would never “solve the mystery” and just killed them all instead.

      Which is a shame, because the lead up seemed to be pretty interesting.

    2. MrWhales says:

      It ended in a killing spree for me too. I didn’t do the wild card or house, I was just going to the casino and the thing was sprung on me by the guy who wants to kill Heck.

      When i ended up getting attacked by the two masked guys, I did have a silent peashooter gun, got it from a guy on the inside i think. But i went to the boiler room and hid from them by closing the door. They lose interest and just walked off. Then I just kept going with the quest. But sort of did all the ways to sabotage the people-eating

      Then I killed everyone in frustration because the plan didn’t work..

  6. kuyo says:

    Mortimer spills the bean if you’re either a cannibal or have low enough karma. Since the only way to raise karma is to kill Fiends and Cuftbert started the episode desperately trying to pickpocket some keys he’d probably get to loot from a corpse later in the quest, I’d say you’re karma is low enough.
    It’s kinda funny, if Mumbles could keep her mouth shut about cannibalism long enough to talk to Mortimer, she’d have gotten some benefit from being a cannibal.

  7. Zukhramm says:

    I’ve played the first couple of quests in Dungeon Siege III and have yet to find any bugs or bad endings. Good job so far Obsidian!

    1. Klay F. says:

      Is it any coincidence that one of the most linear RPGs since Final Fantasy XIII has very few bugs? Even Obsidian should be able to make a linear game relatively bug free.

      Not trying to say that linearity is bad or anything. Its just that there is a huge difference code-wise between Alpha Protocol, Fallout: New Vegas, KOTOR 2, and Dungeon Siege 3.

    2. guy says:

      I’ve beaten the entire game, and didn’t notice any bugs. There’s also no painful railroading.

  8. Kel'Thuzad says:

    The story line for Caesar’s Legion has a part where you go to the White Glove Society and convince them to join you because cannibalism is allowed under Caesar. I think you have to side with Mortimer if you do it that way.

  9. GM says:

    armed bed awesome,demoria sucks? whats demoria?

  10. Eric says:

    I think the problem is that there’s two ways to do this quest: swap out Ted for the other guy at Mortimer’s behest when you agree to help, or start the investigation into Ted’s disappearance. If I stick to one of those two routes, things usually work just fine (except for the ending of the quest, which can get wonky sometimes), but if you try to switch between the paths, I don’t think they ever really managed to make an effective way to do so, so you end up with the weird situation of Mortimer suddenly not remembering he told you about the White Glove Society’s… tendencies.

    This kind of stuff is pretty tough to fix, honestly, in such an open-ended quest. Even with things mapped out in flow charts it can be very hard to anticipate what the player’s going to do and when, sometimes not, say, selectively removing certain dialogue paths, outcomes, etc. at the right time you can end up with things even more broken. It’s generally just really confusing to manage and while I guess that’s not an excuse for Obsidian, it’s definitely something I’ve dealt with and can understand why it doesn’t quite come together.

    1. Hitch says:

      Actually, I think it was written as a wonky muddle. If I remember correctly of what I learned before the logic of the quest made my brains dribble out of my ears and I just murdered everyone, half of the White Gloves Society doesn’t think they’re cannibals anymore. (And this is why Mumbles admitting she was a cannibal to the wrong person got her banned.) Mortimer is conspiring with the chef. Supposedly the chef has a special recipe for making “legal” meat taste like human flesh, but Mortimer is swapping in a real human for the faux-long-pork and is planning on using that to blackmail the rest of the Society into returning to the old ways. (Trying to figure out how that was supposed to work started the ear dribbling.) The plan that I got involved in required me getting several NPCs to move to the proper locations at the right time so I could expose Mortimer and the chef before anyone ate the Soylent Green. Of course, trying to get NPCs to go where you need when you need them to in a Bethesda/Obsidian game makes cat herding look simple by comparison.

      1. Sleeping Dragon says:

        Something along the lines… Far as I remember the White Gloves is the only one of the small factions quests that I haven’t finished. I remember I knew roughly what the Mort’s plan was: trick others into eating actual human meat; but I was never really sure what he was hoping to achieve in this manner.

        Anyway, at some point the quest became a horrible, jumbled mess of people having various conversations with me that did not connect to one another in any meaningful way and I decided to give it a pass.

        1. Keeshhound says:

          Mortimer thought that if he could trick the others into eating human again, then the other traditionalists would side with him and there’d be enough of them to force the others to decide “in for a penny…” especially if he can convince them that man steaks are even more exclusive than Brahmin.

          1. krellen says:

            And he’s right.

  11. Falcon_47 says:

    Did I just hear VtM: Bloodlines reference? Any chance we can see at least an episode of that *crosses fingers* (although i’ll admit, it probably goes against this shows rules, but playing that without any unofficial patches and at least one or two good mods it’s not very fun)…

    1. Littlefinger says:

      I must have missed it. What reference are you talking about?

      edit: also, wtf is jabar?

      1. Irridium says:

        nobody knows…

        1. Alexander The 1st says:

          Jibar, however, is something people know.

          I think they’re that woman in Rutskarn’s hitman stream, but I’m not sure.

      2. Museli says:

        Jabar defies description, but if you were going to describe him/it, you’d use words like ‘corpulent’ and ‘putrid’. Probably also ‘abomination’. Check Chocolate Hammer for further information if you dare…

        1. Andrew says:

          Is it just me, or is Chocolate Hammer down? I haven’t been able to connect for the past few days…

          1. Museli says:

            Same here. I’m using that as my excuse for not being able to spell Jibar’s name right, as I couldn’t spell check it. Nothing to do with me being a complete goon or anything.

    2. Rutskarn says:

      You did. It’s an excellent game with the most hilariously, gut-slappingly, cartoonishly broken stealth mechanic I’ve ever seen in my life.

      1. Keeshhound says:

        I never noticed it being that bad, just mediocre. Is there something I don’t know about the engine?

        1. Rutskarn says:

          I walk into a brightly-lit room slightly hunched over. Three thugs with pistols walk out and look right at me, then walk past me.

          I pull out a baseball bat, crawl behind one, stand up, and slam him so hard in the back of the head that his body flies across the room. His two partners don’t react. I kill the next thug, who was standing right next to the last survivor. No reaction.

          The third guy is locked on to move towards my location because I’m half-detected. Standing right in front of him, and I’m half-detected. So he always turns to look at where I’m standing, and walks right up to me, but he doesn’t ever catch me. Then I finally chase around him and kill him too.

          I have one point in stealth.

          1. acronix says:

            And to think I always maxed out obfuscation…

          2. Hallc says:

            To easily support this claim with video evidence http://youtu.be/J1pzdZM81mc?t=4m11s

            Not the exact same scene as described but similar enough I think.

            1. Alexander The 1st says:

              So to put it bluntly, unless you’re in combat, you’re stealthy.

              Huh.

          3. Keeshhound says:

            I guess I just never tried to do that sort of thing when my stealth was low. Silly me.

          4. poiumty says:

            That’s weird. I remember the stealth section of the tutorial being pretty hard and, dare I say, realistic. I remember the stealth tries I did in other parts of the game to be just as hard. Do you have the unofficial patch? Because there seems to be a huge difference between your game and mine.

            Anyway, I thought Fallout 3 had the most broken stealth mechanic.

          5. Daemian Lucifer says:

            I was gonna say that the first templar was worse,but when I think about it,its not.At least in that game they spot you as soon as you kill someone next to them.Unless your partner is nearby to slowly creep up behind them afterwards.

          6. Audacity says:

            Just to be fair, there is an excellent fan made patch (Yeah, yeah, I know it should have been bug free before release.) that fixes most of the issues with VtM: Bloodlines. Combine it with one of the rebalanced weapons mods and it makes for one hell of a good game. In the same league, if not slightly better, than Deus Ex in my opinion.

            1. Entropy says:

              Well, nothing is bug-free before release. They should have fixed the more egregious broken stuff though.

              1. Kelly says:

                Oh yes, because Troika totally had complete control of VTM Bloodlines development. No famous Activision and Valve dickery going on in that game, no siree!

                1. Didn’t Valve forcibly delay their release?

                  Meaning they would have had more time to work on it?

                  1. Kelly says:

                    In theory yes, but Valve gave them an amazingly buggy beta version of the engine, and Activision was constantly cutting their budget down more and more, until finally it just shut the company down before the game could be polished properly.

                    1. Raygereio says:

                      To be fair, that wasn’t really Valve’s fault. That was Activion who really wanted to licence the source engine from Valve, even though the thing wasn’t finished yet.
                      Valve just went: “Huh, we’ve got no clue why you want this now, but okay it’s your call and we like money. Just don’t release whatever shitty game you make with it before HL2. We want to make a good first impression with our engine.”

                      Activion didn’t cut Troika’s budget down, but did greenlight a huge project like Bloodlines with a too small of a budget. When it then became obvious Troika couldn’t complete the game in a timely fashion, Activion did increase the budget to allow for a larger team, but then for some really weird reason also decided to cut the time allotted for beta testing down. Orignally the release date was set in spring of 2005, but then Activision decided to go for a release date of days after Half Life 2.

                      Ao only knows why Activion decided to compete with Half Life 2 (the single most hyped up game at the time) during the friggin holiday season. If I were to guess then Activion probably wanted poor sales because they later used that as the excuse to cut Troika loose and let it fall into bankruptcy.
                      Also I recall weird rumors about some Activions exec overseeing the development at Troika ruining the development teams moral. I’ve got no clue how true that was, but considering Activion’s track record for corporate stupidity I wouldn’t be surprised.

  12. Sucal says:

    Shamus, as a Proud Australian I am incredibly offended at this video. How dare you degrade our national delicacy of gourmet buffout feed kangeroo burgers.

  13. Exasperation says:

    Clearly the crash is caused by the engine being unable to handle the complex task of simultaneously holding a conversation and rendering the face of the person you’re speaking with. You need to place an object in a position where it can obscure Chauncey’s face.

  14. Milos says:

    How come every time I check for new SW there is 300-310 views before me? Do we all show up at the same time every day?

    1. Rutskarn says:

      There’s actually more. YouTube registers views in realtime up to 300, then freezes it for a while while it recalculates.

      1. Milos says:

        Oh, well that explains it. Although now I’m slightly disappointed SW fans aren’t acting as a single hive mind.

  15. Keeshhound says:

    The official explanation for why brahmin steaks are exclusive is that brahmin are only common in the NCR territories (and Washington. Somehow.) and the major source of domestic meat in the Mojave is the Bighorner; giant mutated goats. This is undercut by the fact that brahmin are used as pack animals by traders. Although aside from Dusty’s ranch in Novac, you only really see them in NCR controlled areas.

    1. Someone says:

      I think what Marjorie was trying to say is that they can, and are willing to, make only so much steak at a time. They have no need in the quantity of steaks Heck offers.

      What Heck wants is to capitalize on the fabled Ultra-Luxe restaurant. Families from other casinos don’t have restaurants and the street vendors are small-time.

  16. Hal says:

    “Note to Obsidian: I don't want to have anything to do with your games in the future.”

    “This is the most reprehensible flaw in the game, and the one that has put me off of Obsidian games for good.”

    *Cough*

      1. krellen says:

        I don’t think they’ve ever done anything as horribly railroad-y as that bit that prompted those comments again, for what it’s worth.

      2. Alexander The 1st says:

        Just excuse it as a Bethesda game – they’re the one doing the QA on it, after all. Oblivion’s just the writer/content creators of the game.

  17. Kelly says:

    I really can’t see how you call this quest broken, aside of Marjorie not being an option to report Mortimer (and considering her personality I’d argue she wouldn’t believe any non-member about this kind of thing regardless of your speech points). Or the Chauncy thing but that’s mechanics not writing (I have not personally experienced that freeze issue by the by). You can fix that with this by the way: http://newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37351

    And yes, if you have high enough speech to lie or cannibalism, you can easily get info out of Mortimer.

    As for the Omertas, the Gommarah isn’t exactly a restaurant joint, though I suppose the Chairmen at the Tops DO have one, which would be valid. If I had to guess, it’s probably just because the White Gloves have the most money that Heck went to them.

    1. Rutskarn says:

      Every time I try to do the quest the “right” way, something goes haywire. There’s a couple things that always break, and some things that only break sometimes, but unless you do things exactly in the order on the wiki–and usually not even then–the quest breaks down and doesn’t work.

      I’ll list more specific grievances as we progress.

      1. Hitch says:

        Sure, I could try to read the wiki and very carefully follow the script to get the intended ending to this quest chain, but it’s so much more satisfying to release my inner Cuftbert on the White Glove Society.

        1. SaraPickell says:

          “I really can't see how you call this quest broken”
          “Sure, I could try to read the wiki and very carefully follow the script to get the intended ending to this quest chain”

          I’ll just let that sink in.

          1. Kelly says:

            You don’t need to read the wiki. The game tells you how you can do each and every one of the quest’s numerous completion paths.

            1. decius says:

              I found the multiple paths with little explanation refresing: It was slightly more than “I shoot it in the eyes with my gun.” that most other quests boil down to. It even allowed me to use my maxed survival skill for something other than tanning golden gecko hides.

  18. JPH says:

    See, this is the same problem I had with Alpha Protocol, and from what I’ve heard about KOTOR 2 and NWN 2 it sounds like it’s just a problem with Obsidian in general. Their games just try to do too much, and ultimately collapse upon their own weight.

    1. Kelly says:

      Alpha Protocol’s main problems for me were setting timers on dialogue options, only explaining attitudes and not the actual line of dialogue, and being poorly optimized.

      KOTOR 2 is good but you need the restored content patch so you can get the non-raped by Lucasarts version. With that done, it’s INFINITELY better than KOTOR1, because Obsidian are better writers than Bioware could ever dream of being (though I admit, the lack of Bindo is a sad thing).

      1. Eärlindor says:

        There’s a “raped-by-LucasArts” version of KotOR 2? I’ll admit, I’m a bit out of the loop here, but I’m intrigued. Could you please elucidate as to what that means?

        1. Kelly says:

          KOTOR 2 was given an insanely short development deadline for a sizable RPG by Lucasarts, something like 13 months, and then they cut it down even further to force it out for the holiday season. Consequently there’s LOADS of cut content and the game becomes extremely strange and bare bones near the end. Lucas Arts refused to let Obsidian patch in the cut content and fix the bugs.

          Having said that, even without the fanmade restored content mod, it’s still very arguably a better game than the first KOTOR just because the characters aren’t nearly as boring. No lame Zalbaar or that dumb cat girl, annoying Carth or Mission, or boring Bastilla.

          No, instead it’s an entire team of utter lunatics, each of whom you can make even LARGER lunatics because the influence system let’s you redress the characters as you please, meaning you can make an entire team of Dark Jedi and fanatical droid servants.

          The only problems are Bindo is gone and the Disciple SUUUUUCKS.

          1. Irridium says:

            Fun fact about KOTOR 2, it uses SecuROM, and does not work on Vista. You have to then look for a download for a patched .exe that works on Vista, which takes a while.

            You’d think Lucasarts would release a no DRM patch for KOTOR 2 since it’s old, not sold anymore, and doesn’t even have that much interest commercial-wise.

            But no, that would be the sensible thing to do. And we can’t have that.

            /min-rant

            1. Kelly says:

              Actually it still IS sold apparently. I remember seeing about 8 copies, brand new, sitting on a shelf in Target last year.

              1. Irridium says:


                Really?

                Huh. Did not know that.

              2. acronix says:

                There´s some copies on the not-so-bargain bin on certain retailers of my country, too. But I don`t know if count them: they have bargain bins with a lot of stuff I hadn`t seen in a decade, and stuff I`m sure came into existence around the same time I learnt to type “cd simon\simon.exe” (at 3 years old, if you are wondering).

            2. Eärlindor says:

              Aw, really? My PC is Vista. Suck.

          2. Eärlindor says:

            Thanks much for the fill in! :)

            I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that LucasArts pulled such a jerk move, but even still, I couldn’t help but think, “You’re kidding me.” They are a strange beast.
            I have only recently within the past week jumped back into the first KotOR. It’s been YEARS since I first played it and I was beginning to miss it terribly.
            I have not played the second game. I hear it had a terrible ending.

            Also, you don’t like Z, Carth, and Bastilla? Sad face.

            1. Kelly says:

              Zalbaar is a textbook wookie. He doesn’t annoy me, but he’s boring. Carth and Bastilla are whiny and annoyingly condescending respectively.

              1. Soylent Dave says:

                Carth and Bastila are whiny and condescending, and in EVERY BIOWARE GAME SINCE.

                Sometimes they get different voice actors.

          3. aldowyn says:

            I just want to mention something…

            The combat is horribly balanced at the end game. The dang enemies can only get to lvl 20, but your lvl cap is 30… and by the time I get to the end I’m one-hitting everything. Shucks, I nearly one-hitted the boss once or twice.

            1. Eärlindor says:

              Wait, is that KotOR 1 or 2?

      2. poiumty says:

        Man, Alpha Protocol was awesome. I’d love to see another game like tha-

        *looks at Deus Ex 3*

        *squeals*

        NEVERMIND!

        1. JPH says:

          Hell yeah. Already got it preordered.

          I will say, I really liked Alpha Protocol. Definitely more than New Vegas. But those boss battles can go fuck themselves.

    2. Raygereio says:

      Their games just try to do too much, and ultimately collapse upon their own weight.

      They are ambitious, that’s true. Certainly when compared to other developers. But I always felt that Obsidian’s main problem is a combination of having poor projectmanagment and for some reason being utterly unable to throw any weight around when negiotating with their publishers.

      That and perhaps employing a lot of creative people, but not enough codemonkeys.

      1. Keeshhound says:

        Their troubles where negotiating with developers are concerned likely stem from their first project with LucasArts; as a fledgling company they had very little power to negotiate with their developer, and KOTOR II suffered for it. That kneecapped any subsequent negotiations as they couldn’t point to some huge commercial success they’d had in the past to say: “look, just let us work and you’ll get something like that.”

        The result is a long list of projects that simply couldn’t achieve their potential for a variety of reasons, and the effect just snowballed.

  19. Eärlindor says:

    This quest drives me crazy. When I tried to rescue Gunderson’s kid, Marjorie attacked me, and a group of non-cannibal White Gloves. There was no way around it. I got so frustrated I just up and left the casino.

    1. Kana says:

      This is the same problem I had. No matter what I did, the moment I showed myself and Ted Marjorie would attack me with a bunch of White Glove members. Eventually I just killed them and took Ted back to Heck. Somehow the White Glove hated me at that point, but everyone talked to me like I was perfectly fine and played out the same voice files.

      Except Mortimer who was mad and Marjorie who was dead. At least it was still a completable quest.

      Worst for me was the steam room. Crashes became so frequent, I just had to load the game and spam auto-save while running for the door. Made it in after 9 crashes. :<

      1. Bodyless says:

        I guess you wandered into the dining room without having an invitation. You need to sneak and wait till mortimer ended his speech or they will attack you for breaking in.

      2. Eärlindor says:

        Right, the steam room bug is interesting, I’ve never encountered that one before. Must be annoying. 0.o

  20. Ringwraith says:

    I found that getting Mortimer to oust himself works but you have to do the last part with the speech carefully, I found that you have to be sneaking before opening the door to the banquet hall from the kitchen with Ted in tow, and have you companions wait before you go in. As long as the waiter who takes the meal up doesn’t see Ted as you take him through the kitchen and you don’t move from the spot after entering the banquet hall until Mortimer has finished his speech, all is fine and dandy.
    It gets quite funny if you let him go after ratting him out then shoot him, as the rest of the White Gloves tend to turn on him and beat him to death with canes (maybe they’ve got lots of metal in?).

    Then you steal his hat off his body, as he’s never failed to drop it as much as I’ve seen.

  21. Irridium says:

    Saw this video, figured you all would get a kick, or cry, out of it.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCmX4jVwRdo

    As for Spoiler Warning… this quest eventually became unsolvable for me. Like, it just froze, and no matter who I talked to or what I did, I couldn’t advance the quest. I was mighty pissed. Think they patched it though. Should probably check it out again.

    1. Keeshhound says:

      … Well.

    2. Simon Buchan says:

      If it’s any consolation, Jeff Gerstmann of Giant Bomb thought the marketing was dumb as shit too, but what he played of it at E3 was far more Mass Effectey. The main story still sounds dumb as ever, but I’m up for more stuff like ME2’s Loyalty missions, and I heard the inventory might be a good midpoint between ME’s endless lists of dross and ME2’s “U WANT SHOTGUN??? OR SN1PER5? LOL”.

    3. Raygereio says:

      That video combined with this:
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMcVZQI6ybw
      And this one:
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KjM9SouVN8
      Really don’t depict EA/BioWare’s marketing department in a good light.

  22. GiantRaven says:

    As Hecks go, I found Steven Heck of Alpha Protocol to be positively trustworthy.

    1. swimon says:

      that is so strangely true and not true at the same time ^^. Easily one of the more entertaining Hecks at least.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Well of course.He tells you he is a psycho from the start,and he delivers on it.

      1. Someone says:

        To be fair, I also usually flip my shit if I loose a key.

        1. GiantRaven says:

          Having currently completely lost my house keys in the void that is my home, I sympathise entirely. I don’t quite think I’m at the level of pouring bleach down somebodies throat though (unless it’s that shifty looking Wen character, I’m pretty sure he deserved everything he got throughout the course of Alpha Protocol).

    3. Keeshhound says:

      To be fair, he doesn’t call himself “Heck.” He calls himself “Steven,” and would thank you to call him that too.

  23. Tiberius Gracchus says:

    Huh. Usually I just feed Boone to Mortimer, and it is surprising to see people doing the quest differently.

    Yes, you can feed any human companion to the Society. And, yes, it is very fun.

  24. David F says:

    My character is somewhat more lawful than Cuftbert, so I always relinquish my weapons when I enter the casino. That would have been a huge problem for that ambush, except that Veronica and I were both wearing power armor, so we just spent a few minutes punching them to death with our bare hands. For when Benny’s goons ambushed me in the suite in the Tops, I had picked up one of the pool cues while I was waiting, so I was able to survive that one as well. Oh, and my character is completely not a melee/unarmed fighter.

    Also, while my game never crashed at the point where Josh’s is crashing, it did keep crashing right after the conversation with Chauncey, so it’s not just Josh’s machine.

  25. Daemian Lucifer says:

    I think alpha protocol was less buggy.Its problems come mostly from poor balancing.

    1. Littlefinger says:

      …and some strange design issues, such as not being able to return to a previous area in a level.

      1. JPH says:

        And not being able to quicksave.

  26. decius says:

    Did you try *accepting* the quest from Mortimer? Like, saying “Ok, I’ll do the job you proposed.”? That might open up a few dialog options…

    Because that’s the line *I* would make trigger the next phase. Granted, I’d force a choice between “I will” “I won’t” “I haven’t decided yet.” and “What’s in it for me?”.

    I could even tolerate the options “I will” and “[lie] I will”.

    1. modus0 says:

      This is the second time Josh has done this, he did it with Boone’s quest too.

      1. decius says:

        I’m fine with -Josh- having issues accepting quests. But why did three other people watching not notice the dialog option?

        1. Gale says:

          The other people involved are watching the proceedings through an unreliable blurry box on their screens. Josh is scrolling through lists, clicking through dialogue, and can usually be trusted to point out anything sufficiently amusing to comment on, so I assume they stopped putting much effort into reading the words on the screen a long time ago.

  27. GTRichey says:

    All but my most recent attempt at this quest have been siding with Mortimer and all of them went flawlessly. The one time I attempted to take the ‘good’ path I got the bug here at the end, and near the end of the quest I apparently did something wrong best guess is that when you’re supposed to drug the wine OR cook the fake human meat, I did both and then had the waiter for the wine go hostile for no reason resulting in his death and subsequently being unable to get the end to trigger.

  28. Fang says:

    The quest didn’t bug up I think at least with Mortimer telling you about the main course being human. Your Strip rep might have cause that. Seeing as he say “Ah. I’ve heard of you. Yes you’d be prefect for the job.” paraphrasing of course.

    Maybe not. I don’t know.

  29. superglucose says:

    Ah, see, the great open-ended RPGs of our time have had bugs and flaws in them… or they’ve been dull and flat.

    As an example, there are some really absurd Morrowind and Oblivion bugs (and Daggerfall… well there are a number of ways to break the game in the first dungeon). But look at the scope of these games. There are more bugs because the games tried to do more, and frankly that makes me happy. Anyone could release Final Fantasy 13, a “game” where you follow a bunch of cutscenes and only press one button (“x”) for forty hours, but that’s boring as hell.

    I can excuse the bugs because the dialogue is, for the most part, expertly written. What strikes me as very strange is that you seem to have [i]tried[/i] to avoid every single awesome character in the game. Sure, you hit Yes-Man and Benny, but what about Mr. Fantastic or No-bark?

    The dialogue in this game (and in Knights 2) are head and shoulders above anything that Bioware has ever dumped out… and frankly, the game is a lot more fun than Mass Defect or Mass Defect 2 could brag (and don’t even get me started on the woefully inadequate Dragon Age line).

    1. Kelly says:

      Well you see if you just choose not to show the game’s strength’s off, you can pretend it doesn’t have them and just go out of your way to break shit. You COULD do the quest and talk to one of the major faction’s leaders and get some perspective on the major antagonists, but it’s SO MUCH MORE ENTERTAINING to just steal some random assholes clothes and go in shooting. You COULD take the game’s first companion with you and learn about his tragic story and go to war with him against his hated enemies, but it’s more funny to push him out of a dinosaur’s mouth for no reason.

      At least they seem to be trying to do quests properly now, instead of just ignoring everything like they did in Dead Money or earlier episodes.

      1. Shamus says:

        We had fun. Viewers had fun. And it gave you another thing to bitch about. Seems like everyone wins.

        1. mixmastermind says:

          Spoiler Warning is really at its best when things begin to go askew. Luckily, Josh is very good at making that happen.

        2. Kelly Fowler says:

          Pot, kettle, black, etc.

          1. Shamus says:

            No, I don’t think this is actually a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

            You’ll notice in the show that sometimes we have positive things to say. “Man I love this quest.” “This is a great character.” “I love the artwork here.” We’ve made it clear we really like some things and we talk about our own multiple play-throughs.

            Also worth noting is that we’re discussing the game among ourselves, for the benefit of an audience. We’re not addressing the creators directly. If some of the folks at Obsidian were to join us, we would not fill the show with a bunch of passive-aggressive accusations.

            Me: Man, it looks like nobody was even trying here. It seems like the creators couldn’t be bothered to finish this part of the game. Look at how many bugs they put in, just because they thought it would be funny. Don’t you agree, Bob?

            Bob Obsidian: Er. Actually, we didn’t do those on purpose.

            Me: Sure you did. You make everything stupid and horrible. And that’s fine. I’m not judging you. If you want to make a game that’s stupid and a waste of time that’s your right.

            You comments are

            1) Always negative
            2) Usually accusatory
            3) Often seasoned with anger or a sense of entitlement

            This show is not going to change in any significant way. This is our shtick. This is what we got. You’re fee to hate it, but if you’re hoping to harangue us into becoming a different show then it’s not going to work out for any of us.

            When pressed, you always claim to like the show in some non-specific way, and then you go right back to sneering at the show. Our coverage of Fallout 3 was less negative.

            1. Kelly says:

              The thing is, I do like the show. It has some really funny moments. I thought Josh trying to fight Victor was funny, along with him putting grenades in the pants of Benny’s whole entourage. There’s lots of funny things like that. I like the goofy stealth shenanigans and all that.

              MY complaint is that often you do these things without showing off the characters and quests themselves, you just straight up blast through them. Now, that’s no skin off MY nose personally, I own this game and play the hell out of it. The ones it hurts are the viewers that HAVEN’T played the game. I see comments under these episodes all the time where they’ll say things like “wow I don’t want to play this buggy game with plotholes the size of the Hoover Dam itself, thanks for saving me Shamus” and things like that. These people trust you guys to give a good analysis of things, and when you just skip over dialogue and quests that explain things, then complain about how it’s a huge plothole, you’re giving these viewers that haven’t played it horrible impression of the game.

              Take Caesar for example. You guys spent a lot of the early videos of the season talking about how the Legion not being fleshed out was a big problem with the game (And I would agree with you), but then you kill off the guy who fleshes out most of the stuff that they DO have going for them. Not only do you skip significant portions of the story itself in doing this, you also miss out on chances to take specific elements of this big issue you have with the game and break them down in greater detail for the benefit of the viewers.

              So NO, I’m not trying to harangue you. I’m pointing out that when your aims are to inform, entertain, and analyze, doing just one of three isn’t the best route. Now, it’s your show and your blog, you’re free to ignore me or whatever you care to do obviously, you’ve obviously got a nice little happy fanbase going on here, I’m just offering my own thoughts on the matter.

              Incidentally, I can’t remember if you guys have done this (watching 2 New Vegas LPs at once for longs periods has caused things to blend together), but you should do the Centurion Interrogation quest if you haven’t.

              1. GiantRaven says:

                Anybody who believes that a Let’s Play provides an accurate synopsis on whether or not a given game is good is being, well, plain dumb.

                It’s the same with (to use another example) Zero Punctuation, where Yahtzee’s obviously over the top nitpicky negative ‘reviews’ cause a bunch of people to go “oh well now I don’t have to buy this”.

                Sometimes people are overly negative for the sake of humour, stop being Sheep people!

                [/fairly pointless rant]

              2. Soylent Dave says:

                MY complaint is that often you do these things without showing off the characters and quests themselves

                That’s the entitlement part Shamus was referring to.

                Spoiler Warning isn’t about showing off the game. Adverts show off a game, marketing departments show off a game.

                You keep criticising them for not doing something they aren’t trying to do. Can you not see that you’re barking up the wrong tree?

                They make the videos. You decide if you enjoy the videos. Telling them they’re “doing it wrong” really isn’t going to get you anywhere – because they don’t think they’re doing it wrong.

                They’re not trying to do what you want them to do.

              3. Even says:

                I don’t see why anyone who was really serious about getting properly educated about the game would still be watching, if that’s really all they care about. If people really are taking the game as it’s shown in this show, then I’d say the shame is on them for their lack of critical thinking.

              4. evileeyore says:

                I would note that it is specifically because of Shamus’ Mass Effect Let’s Plays that I picked up ME1 and 2 and played them.

                1. Chuck says:

                  Ditto, and Fallout 3, amazingly enough.

            2. Jarenth says:

              If some of the folks at Obsidian were to join us, we would not fill the show with a bunch of passive-aggressive accusations.

              Syuuure you wouldn’t. I’m betting you also wouldn’t hold a twelve minute angry rant about plot doors and the ending of Neverwinter Nights 2.

        3. Daemian Lucifer says:

          Besides,most people dont watch spoiler warning when you do a game they havent played,but want to.So playing the game in a way that none of us has is way more fun to watch then if you did something most of us did already.

        4. Milos says:

          Stop having fun you guys!

  30. Chris says:

    I played Alpha Protocol on the XBox and don’t remember a single bug, maybe it’s platform dependant?

    On a related note, Saint’s Row 2 has been pissing me off with its “Vehicles you need for the Chop Shop turning a bend and despawning”

  31. Ateius says:

    “I wonder how many people got frustrated and just killed everyone because they didn't know what to do next.”

    Me. I even had a walkthrough open on another screen, and I still didn’t know how to proceed. So I just murdered everyone that seemed even tangentially guilty, then told Old Man Rancher he could off the rest with his posse.

  32. Adam says:

    For what it’s worth, as of the Ultimate Edition (or the collection of patches and DLCs I’ve got, which amounts to the same thing) this quest works mostly as intended. There are still some weird bits (if you interrupt Mortimer’s speech at the end it won’t let you enter dialogue with him and everyone at the dinner party rushes you with canes) but for the most part the quest works nicely.

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