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Apologies for the late post today. The only explanation I can give in my defense is that my alarm clocks only work when I don’t need them to, which seems to be an ongoing problem in the life of Reginald Cuftbert.
Fortunately, nothing even remotely interesting or funny happens in this episode to make up for it.
I Was Wrong About Borderlands 3

I really thought one thing, but then something else. There's a bunch more to it, but you'll have to read the article.
Good to be the King?

Which would you rather be: A king in the middle ages, or a lower-income laborer in the 21st century?
Project Button Masher

I teach myself music composition by imitating the style of various videogame soundtracks. How did it turn out? Listen for yourself.
D&D Campaign

WAY back in 2005, I wrote about a D&D campaign I was running. The campaign is still there, in the bottom-most strata of the archives.
Mass Effect 3 Ending Deconstruction

Did you dislike the ending to the Mass Effect trilogy? Here's my list of where it failed logically, thematically, and tonally.
Is one of those drinks the same as the one that the Hobo asks for in Detroit? La… Latoya, Latasha, whatever. I remember she asks for a drink, but I never checked if you could actually get said drink.
One other thing I found odd, Mei doesn’t offer you sex in exchange for helping her out. Yes, that would be pretty unnerving, but she is a whore. It just seemed to me that she logically would use that as a payment. I mean, you are wandering around a brothel, what else would you be looking for? Some kind of… conveniently located keycard to a medical facility?
She wants Hot Devil Ale, which you pick up in the preceding level, as well as in a couple of places around the Detroit Hub. They don’t sell it in the Hive.
I don’t think she necessarily enjoys it though, it doesn’t sound like they are in a happy working relationship at any rate. I quite like the way she didn’t
I’m pretty sure I also punched out the doorman, after paying him to get in – I tended to do that a lot, just because this is one of the few games in which you can pay people for information then steal your money back after incapacitating them.
The best thing you can do is get the pass card,go through the back door and finish everything in the club,pay the door man,and then clock him.
“Why yes, I do have a pass. I had it laser etched into the knuckles of my high-impact polymer fist.”
I always do that. I justified it as my Jensen being a cheapskate who only buys Praxis Kits, but is otherwise saving up for retirement. Nothing beats knocking out an extortionist.
The bouncer will never wake up? Hmmm…I wonder if it has anything to do with the punch to the face from a metal arm. His skull probably fractured and he slipped into a coma. Non-lethal though.
The funniest thing is that if you clock a guard,even if the scene is the brutal one where jensen breaks their arm,then another guard wakes them up,theyll continue like nothing happened.
You can also get into the Hive by swiping a membership card from a room in the hotel/bordello; that probably isn’t as easy as just doing this though. As far as nightclubs in Deus Ex games go, this one has I think the highest cover charge, but the charge is easily bypassed in comparison to other clubs in the series (you don’t need to expend any resources to break in).
That said, I would have probably enjoyed the nightclub more if there was more to do there. As it stands, it is basically a quest hub, with a bit of sneaking thrown in if you fail the Tong persuasion. The Hong Kong club in Deus Ex seemed to be boring in the same way too, but the charge was a lot cheaper, and at least the place gets attacked. The Paris club was more expensive, but there were also many sources for information and opportunities to access large loot caches as well as progress the story.
I think my favorite, however, was the ugly two-room VIP lounge from Invisible War with the gigantic cover charge, which wasn’t exciting, visually interesting, or filled with treasure, but at least had a blue space Russian that would sell you equipment.
As can probably be gathered from my comment a couple of episodes ago, if Rutskarn doesn’t make any Alpha Centauri references or puns next week, I will be both surprised and disappointed.
Hey, Josh is wearing the new fashionable “Human” tote-bag.
I think Josh was sincerely momentarily confused because he didn’t realize he hadn’t released the body.
Then later the cast thought people were panicking because he’d blown the hole in the wall. That was far enough away to go unnoticed by video game logic. They thought he was dragging another corpse out. “Who’s he got this time?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid to look. I heard if you look at this guy funny he’ll Typhoon the whole room.”
Ah the heavy object aug. I like to use that aug in conjunction with turret hacking.
Step 1: Hack Turret.
Step 2: Pickup Turret.
Step 3: Say hello to my little friend!
I think the best part of the heavy object aug is the x-ray vision that lets you see through the fridge you’re carrying.
I suppose it makes sense, but I was disappointed that, when I through the heavy box at the two guards in the hall it killed one outright and knocked the other one flat (so I could stun him).
I mean, they survive Jensen’s fist to the face, but a heavy box all over -nooooooooooo.
was annoyed to. Was the only guard I killed in that 5 minute stretch.
Step 1: Pick up fridge
Step 2: Throw fridge at guard’s head.
(Wait, I forget. Can you throw fridge-sized objects? It has been quite a few months since I played DX:HR…)
You can, although you don’t get great range on them.
Did Josh take the ‘Bug Hunter’ aug without us knowing? I’ve never seen so many glitches from a single non-Bethesda product before. This series is a gold mine.
So far, Zombie-Chan is definitely my favorite, even though it affected nothing. (His name was Chan, right?)
Nah,thats a perk he has from birth.He isnt called Josh the glitchmeister for nothing.
He’s mister Glitchmeister, he’s mister “Oh god WTF just happened?”
chan’s not dead. ‘E’s resting!
sorry, monty python had to be done.
laughed so hard… out of breath… face sore.
I’d tell you to feth yourselves, but it was just too damned funny.
The “I’m not a lizard-brain, I augmented myself… to a Newt-brain! Wait…” exchange is one of the, if not the, best accidental self-insults I’ve heard.
Pretty sure that wasn’t accidental… Josh’s weird that way
You need to make him unalive.(shameless choplifter hd endorsement).
Huh,bladurs gate.Why would mentioning that one make Shamus angry,I wonder.
Yeah I know, It’s weird isn’t it? I mean, the Tiefling wasn’t THAT annoying…
“I want these guys to embrace”
And Josh promptly leaves them inconscious in an awkwardly sexual pose. Good work, Josh.
When I did my pacifist game, I left people in compromising positions until it got boring.
It never gets boring.
Currently: My unaugmented game. Entire game, unlocking no augments. I might try ‘without using any augments, even the ones already unlocked’ if I determine that that is actually possible.
Its not because youll be using your hud.
And hacking here and there I think. Like that Windmill’s computer.
You know,youve just made me wonder what happens if you purposefully fail that first mandatory hack?
Don’t you just have to wait 30 secs before trying it again? The only penalty for failing in hacking is that it triggered the alarm but you still can hack it again after awhile.
You can retake the mandatory hacks all the time.. You just have a temporary time-out.
Is there no way to acquire the password, or just skip to where he actually is? I tried skipping the ‘reboot’ part at the end of the prologue, and the doors that ‘need’ to be hacked can be opened with explosives, right?
The hardest part is getting over the “I’m not getting all the XP!” feeling… even though the only thing that XP does is count as a ‘score’ for a game different than the one I’m playing.
Unless the door is undistructible. Like that door in Sarif plant.
I’m pretty sure you can’t tunnel through breakable walls, but most doors you can shoot your way through (unless they’re marked indestructible). It’s pretty silly to shatter a wooden door into a million pieces by shooting it with 10 pistol rounds.
As for Megan: she’s not important to the plot (aside from her involvement with the Illuminati stuff), she’s important to Jensen as a character. She’s the reason he goes to the end of the earth, but I think the disconnect between Jensen’s emotional response and her actual behaviour and role in the game is entirely intentional. It’s meant to highlight both how Jensen is self-deluded about her, as well as how she is basically a lying, manipulative psychopath who was probably in on the whole plot from the beginning. The game is a bit subtle about it, but there are several hints at it throughout and it’s the only reading that really makes any sort of sense.
No its not.There are plenty of things in the game that are left ambiguous for a reason,and this is one of them.It still can be interpreted as straight as the game tells it,or as something in between those two extremes.
I have to agree about it being ambiguous, but there is a reason the game gives so many not-so-subtle hints. Frankly if you interpret it as a straightforward “your princess is in another castle” story, you probably just weren’t paying attention (the general you, not you personally, mind). It’s like watching Full Metal Jacket for the action scenes, and not seeing or understanding any of the blatantly anti-war commentary.
Sure,there are plenty of hints.But the problem is that they are contradictory.You have to pick few of them in order to form a consistent narrative.
I wouldn’t say contradictory and I agree that part of the story is that you built up this save the girl image and then realise right at the end it’s not so simple as that at all. I do think the whole disconnect is deliberate.
However I agree that there is no certain thing about what she was doing yet, just that if Jensen survives he’s going to need some serious questions answered first
@14:35
Your grenade seems to have detonated at the brown note and now everyone is looking around for a toilet.
2:40: I think that happened because you shot him AFTER he was dead. As extraordinary as that may seem. XD
5:54: Sooo… Like a Silent Assassin Agent 47 from Hitman?
7:42: You know, another odd thing is that despite these silent takedowns with the stun gun and tranq rifle, how is it that the guards never hear the noise of another guard falling unconscious to the ground? Try it; just try falling limply to the ground. Even on carpet or another soft surface, you will still tend to make a fair bit of noise. Even more so if you’re a guard wearing body armor and carrying guns and other equipment.
8:47: Aww, you guys missed the three seashells in the bathroom! :P
10:57: “Buy Broccoli AND LUBE.” … Buddy, that was WAY more than I needed to know about you. XD
17:50: Actually, there was that side-quest for Megan’s mom. Also, it’s been 6 months since then, so logically most people who weren’t particularly close to Megan would have moved on by then.
Wow, the 3 shells, never noticed that before!
Huh?
You say that like it’s important… Is it a reference, or a religious practice or something?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrWcEGDXOUg
Don’t watch movies, so it went right over my head. Thanks for clearing that up.
On the falling-to-the-ground-issue:
I really don’t think (most of) Hengsha has the same building standards as western countries either. The walls are most likely paper-thin, making it even easier to notice the sound of a body hitting the floor!
They could have got around this by having Jensen lower bodies to the floor gently. Sam Fisher did this in the earlier Splinter Cell games. I guess it’s not BADASS enough or something.
Yeah… I guess. And it would be hard to lower a body slowly to the floor when you shot him with a stun gun.
Speaking of which, shouldn’t people be shouting uncontrollably when you zap them with a couple of thousand volts in the butt? You’d think the “ARGHABLARGHAGARGHARLBRH” would attract some attention from their buddies.
Seeing how this stun gun is strong enough to knock them out,I guess theyd only gargle a bit.And maybe bite of their tongues.
Maybe not.. If the electricity pulse locks up all your muscles, it ought to lock up your throat/vertebrae/lungs/mouth as well, so.. maybe if the effect is to collapse the lungs, then some air would rush outside, possibly producing a sound – but then it would be a single sound, not a changing arghblarghyarghsnarfgjarrr. Maybe something like NGHHHHHHHHHHHH…., I’d say.
He may be dead but Diamond Chans are forever.
You know, after you found the Praxis Kit, all I could think was “He should probably go to the LIMB Clinic and buy two more of those.”
Maybe then, he could afford a parachute.
Why would you think that Josh will make things easier for us to watch? You should know this by now :)
I think it makes perfect sense that you can just walk in after knocking out the bouncer at the night club. It would have been weird if everyone attacked you instead.
Well, they do have guns…
I feel that beating up the bouncer is a perfectly acceptable way to establish yourself in a nightclub. You wouldn’t shoot that guy, and when you check out the military grade augments, grenades, assault rifles and landmines he’s brought with him to hit the floors with, you’d probably stop charging for his drinks too
While Ming tells you how thankfull she is for the death of Chang he still lies unconscious on the floor two meters in front of her. I wonder what would have happened if Josh had just dropped that version of Chang from the balcony instead of going to the other zone and killing the normal version of him.
They’re not the same person.
Diamond Chan is who you throw from the rooftop, and is the guy who actually owns the place.
What would have been funny is if Josh could have found a way to drag Chan to the roof of Mai’s building, and managed to drop him so he fell past her window.
No, no, nothing to be seen here.
Punching the bouncer out was priceless.
No, no. He dropped him from the roof, carried him all the way back to Mai, and went “alright, I threw him off a building. Now what do I do with him?”
Or… he could drag his limp body to the top of that building, drop him past her window onto the street, then follow it down with the icarus landing-bubble, pick him up and throw his broken body up to her balcony for proof. Look, he’s dead! And it was an accident! Totally!
SURF him down in an Icarus buble?!
But hey… They’re all look the same, right? (Note: not a racist joke but a reference to a response that Jensen could give to the bouncer.)
Oh, I thought they where the same guy in different clothes. Then it all makes more sense.
“Fortunately, nothing even remotely interesting or funny happens in this episode to make up for it.”
That’s a lie, Josh. You’re a liar. And a terrible person.
Neverwinter Nights 2.
I heard Shamus is a big fan of that game! Posters on his bedroom wall, fanfic, and everything!
And now the quarantine is lifted. Have a nice day.
I’ve been playing a bit of Neverwinter Nights 2 recently and have had a lot of fun with it. The story is complete cheese so far, but at least the characters are pretty entertaining. Have I not got to the “bad part” yet?
Have you arrived in Neverwinter yet?
That’s actually where my last save left off, yes. I have yet to explore the bustling city of fog and a thousand thieves and escaped convicts (yeah, the first game really, really sucked). Are you saying I can’t expect something on the level of Sigil from Planescape: Torment? :(
The part where you first kill a couple of hundreds of bandits, then kill a couple of hundred of orcs was the part it got a little tiresome to me.
Numbers might be slightly exaggerated.
They are not. You rack up triple digits easy.
I haven’t played Planescape Torment, so I can’t compare it to Sigil.
I actually meant the door quests to get to a man named Aldanon. Shamus has a post here about it.
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=945
Long story short: About a third of the game is doing quests to open a single gate where a dude may or may not be able to answer your question.
They were trolling Shamus. Planescape: Torment is an amazing game and lacks stupid plot doors, partially because anything in that world could be a “door” but you can’t do a thing if you don’t know how to open it.
I’ve heard that Planescape: Torment is an awful game with an amazing story. Something about having to completely gimp your combat stats in order to actually experience the best the story has to offer.
The combat is easy even if you’re gimped. That’s what companions are for.
I wouldnt call it awful.Not the best,sure,but not that bad either.At least for the time when it appeared that is.
It’s perfectly playable. Baldur’s Gate was far worse, even with GOOD combat stats.
Most combat stats in PS:T can be improved high enough through various means to get by. Plus, as others have mentioned, companions make combat easy enough by themselves.
Besides. Anyone who thinks the game in Planescape: Torment is the combat has completely missed the point anyway. The game’s the dialogue and exploration.
You have Mask of the Betrayer expansion? While not quite on par with P:T, it’s rather well written and does exercise one’s brain. Although I did like original NWN2 campaign as well, warts and all.
Bad part for me was when I bored through the prologue,and then the game crashed.I tried two more times,with two more saves,and had the same crash.So I said fuck it,and thats it.
To me, the game only got better as it progressed. I loved how the initially cliche plot just kept thickening and thickening, with more and more enemy factions emerging and piling on you (and on each other!).
YMMV.
Comment the First: I’m not sure why you guys doubt that Josh is a ghost. I mean, he walked right through the wall!
Secondary Comment: Preeety sure that the quest was confused because Josh stungunned the corpse.
Tertiary Comment: One thing that drives me crazy sometimes is that I can’t tell whether you’re ignoring something or that you guys actually don’t know it’s there, in this case the Hive Membership Card in the Whoretel.
OMEGA COMMENT: It really does make sense that Megan is being ignored by the story at this point. I mean, she’s dead. Riiiight?
I don’t know whether Josh is a ghost or not. All I know is that he is definitely not a mercenary.
Ghosts are dead. But in order to get paid, mercenaries need to stay alive. Josh is not a mercenary, therefore he’s not alive and must be dead. So he has to be a ghost. QED
Haven’t played much beyond this point yet, but I’ve gotten the impression that Jensen, Malik, and to some extent Sarif are operating on a combination of getting things done, and the thirst for revenge on the people who killed Megan. Probably Pritchard too. So they don’t talk about it much because they don’t want to, but it’s there in the background every time they talk about “the people who hurt us.” Sure, sure, lot’s of people died, and it hurt the company.
But they killed Malik and Pritchard’s friend, Serif’s Golden Girl, and Jensen’s ex-girlfriend.
Oh, and a few dozen researchers and security guards. But hey, who cares about those nameless goons.
Well, yes, but that’s my point. I mean, he doesn’t list Megan, Vasily, and the other woman who we meet at the beginning. It’s always “Megan and the others.” Sure, the loss of the team is bad, but it’s the loss of Megan that motivates them.
Hrm… would it be cool or narmish if Jensen listed off the names of everyone killed in the attack, Shepard in Mass Effect 2 style?
I know it’s not an RPG (not exactly), but I can’t believe no one has mentioned System Shock 2. I mean, that game was downright notorious for having a paper-thin story. It was, however, partially redeemed by the dusty, gritty, realistic graphics. Where was it, um… I don’t know, somewhere in the Middle East? All I remember was lots of pretty HD brown terrain that all looked identical. And the refrigerator armor, we can’t forget that…
You. Me. Outside.
NOW.
I’ll hold his arms, you work the midsection!
Help, help, I’m being repressed!
Josh, were you at any point involved in the IT-HE Website? Any relationship? Or is the Josh gene to break a game as hard as possible not limited to one person?
Also, Shamus: go read that website and weep/laugh at the hilarious ways they break Deus Ex/System Shock (I).
So, instead of dropping the guy off the building there’s the option to plant some drugs or something. I thought, let’s just do both and planted the drugs and knocked the guy out. Problem was, when I dropped him and he died, I failed the quest.
I dont remember if you get the reward for both if you plant the drugs first,but thats how I did it.And I too did both.
Well that is odd as doing both made me fail the quest.
Shamus,will you be doing a review of rage once youve finished?Reading your tweets about it is quite fun.Also,did you get the dlc that gives you additional sewer levels?
You know, I preordered the game and so I should have gotten those levels for free. Spent the entire game on the lookout for sewer entrances. Never found a one. I know they’re there, but for the life of me I couldn’t find them – either they’re quite easy to miss or hidden far away from the main quest lines to make players who don’t have them not feel so bad.
Yes,they are quite easy to miss:
http://www.ps3trophies.org/forum/rage/127943-wasteland-sewers-locations.html
And they dont give you anything important anyway.
Thats how i dealt with the bouncer too, he deserved it….
Oh my gosh, I made a fort in that EXACT same spot on my first playthrough!
I guess those vending machines and that narrow hallway are just too tempting…
Shooting a man sized hole in a wall with bullets worked for Kurt Russell during Escape from New York so why not?
The goons occupying the apartment felt very reminiscent of the Templar squad manning an observation post at the Nassif family apartment building in the initial Cairo level of Invisible War. A lot of Human Revolution comes across to me as IW done right rather than Deus Ex revisited. The setting feels closer to the second game e.g. the Cairo arcology and the way the various factions interact: the first game had a stronger police state atmosphere with UNATCO stormtroopers constituting the sole lawful authority (and the Chinese Military Police in the same role for Hong Kong) whereas IW had something closer to HR‘s PMCs in the form of the WTO, SSC, Templars & the Church who acted more as a collection of agencies of equivalent power duking it out.
I haven’t played Invisibe War (though it is now on my list, just for completion value -I get that it’s not that great, it’s also only $10), but I’ve been feeling more of an original flavor done with yellow spice.
Shamus points out the use of the same old (bad) Chinese accents. You start the game with terrorists seizing your base and you have to slip past them. Go to China and get mixed in with the Triads trying to steel something from a Dragon Lady inside a major biomedical research center.
It has almost a (depending on your variety of nerdiness) Legend of Zelda/Requiem Mass type feel to it. All the words are there, all the high points are there, but the music is different (and it’s colored yellow).
Invisible War also introduced the religious fanatics opposed to human augmentation as a major force of antagonists which the third game has continued. No such opposition seemed to exist in Deus Ex (even though it takes place chronologically between the periods covered by the other two). Friction occurs between the old mechs facing obsolescence and the new augments primarily as rivalry & resentment at being surpassed and rendered redundant but no group actively campaigns against this form of technology in the original setting. The initial terrorist raid on the Tarsus Academy at the start of IW has more in common with the takeover of Sarif than the NSF occupation of the Statue of Liberty in terms of motivation (violent opposition to augments) and also location: company laboratories and offices in the latter two. IW also features the sub-plot of tracking down Dr. Leila Nassif, the scientist who disappears during the attack on the Tarsus academy by terrorists, much like Jensen’s interest in finding Megan.
Obviously your alarm clock’s afraid you’d punch it to death if it woke you up. :)
Or that you would put a grenade in its pants.
I don’t remember Jensen telling her his name in the first place, do you guys ?
“You saved us Mr Jensen” … ? X )
She knew who you are all the time.
Josh: Fortunately, nothing even remotely interesting or funny happens in this episode to make up for it.
Me, 4 minutes in: *in tears from laughing*
If you look the point where Josh breaks the sidequest is 1:15, whilst he’s still dragging the body. I guess they just selected a general area and if the body was in that area the quest is complete and if not but Chan is dead go on to next.
I’d be interested if it would be fixed if Josh had dragged the body back or whether they really were prepared for Josh trying to screw around with the autopsy
YES! PUCNH THE BOUNCER!
This is one of the little touches that makes me like this game so much.
If this was a Bioware game, or a Valve game, or 2K, if there was a goblin/splicer/combine blocking a door and saying you can’t get in before paying him/doing some errand for him, there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.
In Deus Ex: Occan’s Resolution (ok, I’m half cheating on this one, I’m pretty sure I’ve used Resolution already), the simplest answer really is the best answer, and an arbitrary barrier you can’t circumvent is the exception rather than the rule.
I think you failed the Chan quest because you shot him with the stun prod