Deus Ex Human Revolution EP23: Multiple Levels of Failure

By Josh Posted Tuesday Feb 21, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 102 comments


Link (YouTube)

And now we bring you the greatest Spoiler Warning episode of all time. We’re sorry.

 


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102 thoughts on “Deus Ex Human Revolution EP23: Multiple Levels of Failure

  1. Daemian Lucifer says:

    EDIT:Never mind,you fixed it.Off to watch.

    1. Josh says:

      Should be fixed now.

  2. Blargh says:

    Yeah, so. Best episode opener of the season, right there. I didn’t think of this until now (I wonder why), but what happens if you kill Tong right there?

    1. tjtheman5 says:

      You win everything forever.

    2. Friend of Dragons says:

      He’s actually an oblivious, invincible jelly doughnut. I’ve emptied heavy rifle magazines into him and he’ll just ignore it and give you that “I told you the thing, get going” line while his blood spray paints the walls.

      1. Blargh says:

        Aw, that’s a shame.

  3. Daemian Lucifer says:

    And it turns out that Rutskarn is actually both the mother and the father.Or father-mother,if you will.Also,werent you supposed to start DNF lets play?

    Wow Josh,walking around with 2 spare praxis points,and still dying from falls.That really is multiple levels of failure.

    Well at least your options arent save him or waltz in there and piss through his hole.So it is marginally better than in other games.

    As for those triads attacking you for causing problems in their bar,it is their turf after all.They cant just let anyone cause problems in there.Lots of people are probably paying them for protection.

    1. Daniel says:

      Yeah, most of those guys are probably at the Goldfish level of protection, although there may be a few at the Dragon or even Super Dragon level.

      You would never know unless you ran into them at the day spa.

    2. What you’re saying is Rutskarn is the villain from Xeno Clash?

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Well his favourite is gat,so could be,could be.

    3. ps238principal says:

      I still say the record for “shortest distance to insta-death via fall” goes to the many Psygnosis titles I played on my old Amiga 500. Not only did they STRICTLY adhere to limiting your lives like in arcade games, in games like Ba’al, I don’t think you could drop 2/3 of your character’s height without perishing.

  4. Fists says:

    Reginald on karma:
    If you dish out enough bad karma to other people there wont be any left to effect you

    1. Josh says:

      I blew up karma with a pants-grenade.

  5. Tobias says:

    02:30 Do those guys respawn?
    08:30 I love how adam just stands there while he talks and talks without getting to the point of how to save him.
    09:40 In fact some server farms use poison gas for fire suppression. And if he was repairing those he might even have a reason to wear a hazmat suit.
    Of course I doubt that much thought went into him.

    1. ? says:

      If I remember correctly, it’s not poison gas per se, just pumping in some gas with no oxygen to replace regular air, in order to stop the chemical reaction. So it is ‘poisonous’ in a same way that water or vacuum are, because you can’t breathe in it.

      1. Robert Maguire says:

        There’s a bunch of them, but the OP is probably thinking of halon. Useful in any situation where your servers are more important than the people manning them. The Air Force base near where I live had this system.

        1. Peter H. Coffin says:

          Halon’s bad because it wrecks ozone layers, deployment is AMAZINGLY LOUD, OFTEN AROUND 160 DECIBELS IN CONFINED SPACES LIKE SERVER ROOMS WHICH CAN CAUSE IMMEDIATE HEARING LOSS, and if the gas gets seriously hot, it also can “cook” into Really Nasty Things, like phosgene gas, which wrecks lung alveoli, and that can mean someone can suffocate even after being hauled to safety. All of which combine to mean that the whole mess is kind of less personnel-safe than was originally hoped. Still a damned good fire suppressant.

          (There’s a much better oxygen displacer mix being used in some fire systems now called “Inergen” or something like that. It’s a mix of nitrogen, argon, and enough carbon dioxide to alarm humans into breathing really deeply and leaving the area while it’s busy replacing all the oxygen-loaded air with stuff that fires can’t use. It also stays a gas, even compressed, so it dispenses at only 130 decibels instead of 160, but the systems that use it take up a lot more room and are heavier, so less useful on aircraft.)

        2. Simon Buchan says:

          I was under the impression just about all server rooms with multiple racks used Halon or equivalent. I mean, you can just drag the guy out and hope he’s not dead yet, but backups are hard!

          1. krellen says:

            Backups are hard. It’s surprisingly complicated to get large amounts of data transferred to other media, especially if the data is being used by people.

  6. Thomas says:

    Josh I hate you. You left Hengsha and never ever got the parachute upgrade, even though that involved walking round with unspent praxis ?!!

    EDIT: 5 available praxis Josh, 5!!!

    1. Lord of Rapture says:

      You think that’s bad? When I left Picus, I was walking around with 11 unspent Praxis points.

      1. Thomas says:

        Why would you do that?! (Unless you were no-aug running in which case it’s cool)

  7. Michael says:

    Slashes are named by which way they travel, bottom to top, assuming your language is read left to right.

    /forwardslash
    EDIT: Won’t let me use a backslash

    1. Paul Spooner says:

      Try using an escape character. Four in a row works for me (//// only with backslashes) . Backslash! \\ Muahaha! I’m guessing the output parser truncates them, to prevent an injection attack. Too bad it’s so easy to get around.
      Note to Shamus: This may be a security flaw?
      Edit: Only one backslash shows up after editing, but when the page refreshes there are two. Looks like some sort of inconsistency in the character display. Probably not worth fixing unless it’s a security issue. Chalk it up to the episode title.

      1. guy says:

        Escape character’d backslash is not the same as regular backslash.

        1. Paul Spooner says:

          I’m not sure what you mean by “escape character”, but I’m using normal old backslashes. Turns out that many text parsing languages use the backslash as the standard escape character.

          1. guy says:

            A double-backslash in those languages is parsed as displaying a single backslash. I think it’s technically a different character, like the difference between a and A.

    2. Sumanai says:

      I memorised them according to whether drawing it is backhanded (back of your hand first) or not, assuming you draw them top to bottom. For some reason starting from the bottom feels strange, but it could be that my mnemonic re-enforces the other way.

      I guess one could also think “do you start from the back (as in back of the drawer) when you draw them left to right”.

      Edit: Also it’s backslash only in Windows, with other operating systems and online it’s slash. Just remember, “the internet runs on slash(fic)”.

      1. Zukhramm says:

        I just remember it by backslash being the rarer and therefore the one requiering a specifier (normal slash is just slash, not forwardflash).

    3. Simon Buchan says:

      First, I find it helpful to remember that backslash is entirely an invention of the computer age. If you keep this in mind, the fact that “slash” is the one that’s easy to hand-write should be easy to remember, and the one that’s easy to remember is the one that follows the slant of handwriting, eg. italic text.

      You can hand-write slash/it’s easy to do!
      But go against the flow\It’s a no go!

  8. Z says:

    That was a surprisingly… accurate comment by Rutskarn when challenged about Spain. He said, in a reasonably convincing accent “¡Por qué no te callas!” (literally, “Why don’t you shut up!”, but in context, really more of a STFU thing), which was famously yelled by the King of Spain (Juan Carlos Borbón) to the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chà¡vez.

    For context, this half-minute clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCcfYwGxocs
    The guy talking at the start is Zapatero, then Prime Minister of Spain, and was being heckled by Chavez, until Don Juan Carlos tells Chavez to shut up, in the exact words and inflection used by Rutskarn.

    Kudos to Rutskarn for knowing the difference and actually talking about Spain when asked about it, not that general “taconess” the others sort of default into (“I hate Castro, that Mexican!” as Bill Maher says). Very …cosmopolitan of him. I love how it utterly baffled every one around until they ended up talking about corn.

    1. Paul Spooner says:

      I was kind of hoping that he would respond in the Don Quixote vein, but the Spanish insult was pretty good too. My guess is he caught the Cervantes reference, but was too hip to acknowledge it.

    2. Zagzag says:

      The odd thing about “corn” not being native to the old world is that corn is actually native to the old world, it’s just not the same as what you americanly inclined folks call corn. As far as I know “corn” is not actually a single thing, but a name given in various parts of the world to the predominant cereal crop. We in Europe use it to refer to wheat, and those of a transatlantic disposition maize.

      ALSO: Completely unrelated. Regarding what Rutskarn was saying about the satellite dish in Deus Ex 1, if it’s the bit I think you are talking about then you can just stun prod everyone in the building on your way up, and then hardly have to fight everyone. I really wish I had tried jumping off though…

  9. littlefinger says:

    My previous attempt to post this has been eaten, presumably by the spam filter. Anyway, to reiterate Ruts’ promotion: you can get Deus Ex GOTY edition from steam, gamersgate, GOG and impulsegamestop.

    All the same price so use your distribution of choice…

    edit: so there’s no actual ‘strike’ function, only the spoiler blocks? Good to know.

    1. McNutcase says:

      And for ten bucks, your reason for not buying it had better be “I already own it!”

      1. swimon1 says:

        I’m seriously considering buying it from GoG. I already own it but DRM free Deus Ex sounds nice.

        1. McNutcase says:

          So am I. I mean, I already own it, but I never bothered getting a no-CD patch onto it, so it’s a pain to play.

          Oh look. It’s that point Shamus is always making: people will pay for convenience! If Deus Ex drops to $5 on GoG, I’ll stop havering and just buy it, despite having bought it twice before, for the sake of convenience.

          1. Bubble181 says:

            I bought it for $5 on a steam sale, days before it went up on GoG. Dammit. :-P

  10. MatthewH says:

    I was quite pleased that the steampowered link went to Deus Ex. I half expected to be trolled and sent to next one up in the registry: 6920.

    My first time playing that section with the two guards in the little office, I did my usual bit where I opened the door to attract the guard and then punch him out -except it didn’t work. The guards didn’t notice the open door. So I leaned out and tranqed the one on the right. The one on the left noticed and ran for the door -and I leaned out just in time to tranq him. He ran to the alarm panel and was just about to set it off when he collapsed.

    Right in front of the camera.

    AWOOGA. AWOOGA.

    1. littlefinger says:

      GAH!!! Why do you post that sucker bait? Goddamn, now I need to clear my browser history, what was wrong with you?

      1. Chris says:

        I remain amazed how much of that game ended up incorporated (in one way or another) into Human Revolution.

        The upper/lower Seattle concept being brought up in Hengsha, the simplification of hacking, the CGI entertainment personality being used world-wide by the Illuminati to control/gain access to information, the religious fervor being used as a front by the Illuminati, etc. Except every one of those concepts Invisible War completely and utterly butchered while Human Revolution (mostly) succeeds.

        Man, to be a fly on the wall during the development of Invisible War…

        1. littlefinger says:

          I never thought about that, but you’re right. (Un)fortunately, I don’t remember much of IR’s plot at all – except for the antartica stuff and the hivemind ending.

        2. Marlowe says:

          Invisible War features a moment, much like this episode, when a trapped Templar soldier, who locked himself inside an animal containment pen, in the wrecked underground animal laboratory of VersaLife (Antarctica), to escape a trangenic Karkian, asks Alex (the player) to free him – even though the Templar knights have orders to shoot him on sight (and if you release the Templar he does become hostile shortly after). At least there is a dialogue wherein Alex expresses incredulity at how the Templar managed to end up in his predicament. IW has a number of situations where one has to clear areas flooded with poisonous gas too. I concur on the resemblances between the 2nd game and this one – I think the developers probably looked at the second and realised how it contained some good ideas that could be used as the basis for a much better design.

    2. noahpocalypse says:

      Dive for those orbs, Jack! Dive!

  11. Paul Spooner says:

    At this point in the game I had only lethal weapons, no cloak aug, no battery recharge, and no candy bars. That wouldn’t have been a problem, except that I felt super bad about just murdering all of these dudes who are (presumably) doing a good job for their employer with a clean conscience. That made this section one of the only really challenging ones for me, as I had to navigate the entire complex without being seen. Turns out its possible!

    1. Thomas says:

      I’m pretty sure a no-aug, no weapons, ghost stealth run of the game is completely possible. I spent most of mine on a no-killing, no tranqing stealth playthrough and although I started using cloak towards the end it felt like I was using it just to make extra safe with the timing and it’d be fine without

      1. littlefinger says:

        I can’t speak for the full game, but I started a ‘ghost’ runthrough the game when inspector streetwalker asked me to stay undiscovered. Until then I’d been 100% nonlethal, with the exception of the intro. I kept this going through the entire game, not touching any npcs or turrets. No tranq, stun, K.O. or lethal takedowns. I finished the game this way. (Boss fights not included obviously)

        With 3 exceptions.
        One: I killed Zeke after he gave me the intel in the alleyway near Sarif HQ, because I felt like it.
        Two: after I find Windmill and the mooks invade, I kill all the mooks, and was very annoyed that I couldn’t save the npcs. I figured if the enemy is this indiscriminate, I can be too.
        Three: I won’t spoil it, but the first fight we get into when we return to Hengsha. You know the one, with the big robot. Whip out the sniper rifle and start shooting.

        All this was on my first (and so far only) playthrough. It gave me enough praxis points to max out all but 7 or so skills. (Seriously, I had almost everything, say I needed about 5-8 more praxis points)

        1. Thomas says:

          If you’d said the first two and one other time, that would be hint enough. I was going for a no-touching playthrough first time round and I wasn’t even stealing stuff to be moral and I still ended up reloading and pumping a few people in the face with a shotgun a couple of times before playing through the area properly.

          Did you manage to do everything in Pangea? That’s the level I had to start breaking out the tranqs and using the cloak aug because there were just a couple of parts I couldn’t see a way to get round. A couple of walkways without any obvious way around

  12. Gamer says:

    I always saved that guy. There really isn’t a reason not to. (Unless you’re trying to be Reginald Cuftburt.)

    Also, I never knew you could go down that way. I always hacked that terminal, pushed the button ad saw the bridge move, and went in through the vent on the top floor. I just assumed that was the way to go and didn’t even consider another possible path. So where Shamus didn’t know about the bridge, I didn’t know there was any other way.
    I don’t know if I should applaud the game for this, or be ashamed that I didn’t realize there was a direct way.

    1. MatthewH says:

      Ooo! Ooo! It’s a secret Voight-Kampf Test.

      You are sneaking through a lab when you come upon a man trapped in a gas filled room. He asks you to help, and in return he will allow you to slip through into the main complex unhindered.

      But you don’t help him. Why aren’t you helping him Adam? The gas pours in around him, he is baking. All you have to do is turn over the valve. But you don’t. Why don’t you, Adam?

      1. Gamer says:

        Because no witnesses.

      2. Hitch says:

        Because it’s too obvious of a moral choice. “You’ve got to save me. Don’t let me die. All you have to do is go into the next room and turn a valve. There’s no danger and no challenge. It’s the simplest thing in the world. There’s absolutely no reason not to.”

        Well this is an obvious trap. Sorry Dude, you’re dead.

      3. guy says:

        Because I couldn’t find the door to the room with the valve.

      4. MatthewH says:

        Well, I suppose I should count my blessings that none of you decided to just up and shoot me for asking about your humanity…

  13. guy says:

    Why does Josh have five unspent Praxis points?

    On another note, that piracy webcomic Shamus posted encapsulated my experience with Game Of Thrones perfectly.

    1. Hitch says:

      Because Praxis points are like incinerators. You don’t just waste them and throw them away. At least not until the very end of the game when maybe you’ll get the chance to spend them on something you’ll never use.

  14. Khazidhea says:

    Off topic, but would anyone in the Spoiler Warning cast considering playing the Mass Effect series again in the lead up to ME3? On the one hand I really enjoyed ME1 and wouldn’t mind playing through a character from start to finish in the few weeks left, maybe checking out the DLC that I never played. On the other hand I replayed ME2 when you did your playthrough on Spoiler Warning, and even after a year I don’t think I could summon up the effort to play it again so soon; thinking back on it I can’t think of even one set piece or plot point of interest.

    1. guy says:

      Garrus’ Loyalty Mission
      Garrus’ Recruitment Mission
      Tali’s Loyalty Mission
      Legion’s Loyalty Mission

      I could go on, but I think you get the point.

      1. Khazidhea says:

        You’re right, I wasn’t really thinking about the characters missions. But are there any integral to the story missions that cause any excitement? From memory it goes something like Medical vessel, find crewmates, Horizon colony, find crewmates, Collector ship, crewmate loyalty missions, Reaper IFF, crewmate loyalty missions, human terminator/reaper boss. The crewmate parts contain some fun, but it’s all the “story” bits in between that I’d dread playing.

        I guess what it comes to is that I’ve got no compelling reason to play through the second game again, which is a problem when trying to enjoy the series as a whole. In the first game I would have some drive to finish the game, reasonable story, interesting main villain, a few boss battles and diverse planets. The second game, out of that list only really has diverse locations.

        1. Ringwraith says:

          Just switch the difficulty to easy and laugh them off while skipping the conversations as much as possible.
          As easily as I can solve it.

        2. Khazidhea says:

          Meant to add to the edit but ran out of time: both games have interesting characters, and are compelling in that reason, but while ME2 improves on the gameplay front, I can’t think of any reason to play it that would keep me going til the end, other that the insufficient reason of me wanting a save file for ME3.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Seeing the beginning of the demo tells me that they went the “ME2 never happened” route,so I see no reason for replaying it.

          2. Thomas says:

            The problem is, even those missions you listed out, only Garrus’ recruitment mission is actually interesting.

            And of the remaining non-interesting missions, only Garrus’ loyalty has solid story all the way through. Tali’s has nice idea and nice atmosphere the first time, but the paragon/renegade system and there so inflexible conversation system wrecks the actual case. Can you imagine if you actually had to think about what you said, like you do in DX:HR?

            And Legion’s loyalty mission poses an interesting moral question. But most of the time you’re just shooting stuff, and when it comes down to it, you can’t really answer it in a meaningful way because it goes through the Paragon/Renegade grinder.

            ME2 is such a love/hate thing with me, but the greatest failing is there is no mix between gameplay and story in the missions. You have some story, walk down a corridor, shoot some stuff and then get some story again. It’s needs to be like KotoR1/2 or DX:HR or Planescape where the fighting and the talking is all intermingled

            1. MatthewH says:

              I agree on many of these points. Especially regarding the Paragon Renegade system.

              I’ll note in passing that I like ME2, and I don’t even find the main plotline bad, so maybe take this with a grain of salt.

              But while I agree that the boss conversations and the multiple-approach repeating dialogue system is a great innovation, I’m not sure how much I should judge ME2 by it.

              Was there such a dialogue system prior to Alpha Protocol?

              In other words, ME’s dialogue -even modified in ME2 -was superior to what came before. So is it a good line of criticism that it isn’t as good as what came later?

              1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                It wasnt superior to the huge dialogue trees of hordes of the underdark and planescape:torment and baldurs gate.And those were games where you couldnt just save before the last fight/conversation and then witness all the endings with a simple reload.

                EDIT:Just remembered,there was one such system before alpha protocol.Fahrenheit had it.It was really interesting.Sadly,it got dropped mid-game.

                1. MatthewH says:

                  I’ll have to take your word for it on that one, as those are 3 games I never played. My point of comparison is KOTOR, the original Deus Ex, No One Lives Forever 1 & 2, and the first Neverwinter Nights (never got to the expansions).

                  And while some of them did better than others, conversation always seemed clunky. You get to a pause in the conversation and then stop to read 8 different options which all say about the same thing and have only minimal influence on the end result (maybe you get an extra piece of intel or some extra backstory). I’m not actually positive that huge dialog trees is a selling point on “you got your creative writing class all over my videogame” grounds.

                  There were various ways to get around that problem. Jedi Knight dispensed with player input entirely. NOLF never gave more than a couple of options, same with Deus Ex.

                  So ME was a major step forward by giving us a quick and easy way to select dialog and tone without the conversation breaking down (just giving us the options before the other character stopped speaking helped a lot there). I remember when it first came out people lauding it – we no longer had to read 6 answers while the character stood there dumbfounded -and then repeated what we’d just read.

                  Human Revolution has improved on the innovation, but is still using the basic technique. It just dispensed with the karma meter and gave a third tonal option so that you had a 2/3 chance to not botch it rather than a 1/2 (if I read the wiki right, every conversation has a +, -, and a neutral/slight +).

                  1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                    However,ME lead to stupid moments where youd choose something like “support”,and shepard would say “You idiot!Get over yourself!”.Not to mention this(the second one in hell).Human revolution gave us back the option to fully read what was meant by the short blurb,and thats a good thing.So I wouldnt call the dialogue system in ME an improvement.It was more of a step in a different direction.It has some things that are better,but also some that are worse.Human revolution is an improvement to that system.

                    Also,youve played the original NWN,but not the good stuff?I am so sorry.

                    1. MatthewH says:

                      Fair enough.

                      And yeah, got through Port whatever it was in NWN and promptly lost all interest in the game. Have all the expansions (got the Diamond edition), but never played them. I think I was spoiled by starting with KOTOR 2.

                    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

                      The expansions are worth it.You get kobold bard in shadows of the undrentide,and a great story in hordes of the underdark(your decisions matter,you end up influencing whole races in the end).Plus,in hordes you also get to play with prestige classes,and use some of the most fun things 3rd edition has to offer(banshee howl is still my favourite spell).

                      But the original…ghh…And it had so much potential(if you read your henchmen dialogues,you get a glimpse of what bioware is capable of,but never uses in that game).

              2. Thomas says:

                Knights of the Old Republic 2 !! KotoR 1 had essentially the same mistakes as ME2 but packaged nicer and the focus wasn’t on badass so it didn’t show so much but Obsidian have been doing this for a decade now… The wheel isn’t the problem just the stuff they put on it

                Apparently previous Bioware games were better at this and The Old Republic is better at this just not Mass Effect :(

                On record I have put aside some of my differences with ME2. I lowered my expectations and erase the combat bits from my mind and remember how awesome and beautiful that opening cutscene is

                1. krellen says:

                  You mean the opening cutscene that immediately told me I was in store for stupid because they killed the main character?

            2. False Prophet says:

              Yeah, that was my biggest issue with ME2 as well. Something like 95% of all missions boil down to “walk down a corridor and put a bullet in the head of everything standing in your way”.

              That’s why I appreciated missions like Samara’s loyalty mission, Kasumi’s loyalty mission, Thane’s loyalty mission, and both Garrus’ recruitment and loyalty missions. I appreciate the attempt to mix in different styles of gameplay and story instead of formulaic “cutscene/Gears of War-style combat/cutscene”, even if it didn’t always work. What really annoyed me is that Tali’s loyalty mission started out differently–and ultimately ended up being another shooting gallery.

              1. Thomas says:

                Oh yeah, Samara’s was pretty darn good. They even almost had a proper conversation system for it :D I’d enjoy that one. Start of Kasumi’s was pretty good too but the end was worse than normal because Kasumi is really really fragile. Thane’s was a bit bust but the idea was there.

  15. Gamer says:

    I just noticed someone coming into frame as the episode ends. Will this spell the end for our intrepid hero(?)? Will the audience be forced to take a drink? We’ll find out soon on… SPOILER WARNING.

  16. zob says:

    This is how far anti-piracy measures go in the future. If you try to install pirated software, your servers explode and release poison gas.

    1. Indy says:

      Yes, but it won’t actually affect any of the pirates. Instead, you’ll just hear stories of people changing graphics cards or losing their internet for a few minutes and getting gassed.

    2. Peter H. Coffin says:

      Apparently they’re building server to the same specifications as used on film sets.

  17. Fat Tony says:

    Wait, there’s an increadibly specific and ludicruis way to kill people, why does josh not have this?

    1. Indy says:

      Because it’s useful in other circumstances. Death by parachute might sound fun but using a parachute? God forbid.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        Plus it doesnt kill them,just knocks them down for a bit.

        1. Thomas says:

          But you can troll so much with it. Yes Jensen tough as nails, conflicted security guard, jumps off a hotel floats down in a ball of light, knocks everyone down beneath him and then walks into the club.

          It works even better at the beginning, where you tell everyone how your struggling to cope with the changes to your body, whilst parachuting down the Sarif building in a glow of gold because the escalator was boring

  18. Gruhunchously says:

    I can imagine the aftermath of Jensen’s little episode in The Hive.
    “Where did all the bouncers go?”
    “They all went to the restroom”

  19. silver Harloe says:

    RE: DX1, Rutskarn talking about going up to the top of the building to adjust the radar dish, then jumping back down. Assuming we mean the NSF radar in the mission where you are forced to Join The Paul Team whether you want to or not – Rutskarn describes it as laborious to go back down and fight more enemies. Just to point out: you only have to fight the UNATCO guys if you didn’t stun them all on your way up. The Bad Guy Who Mysteriously Can Use Your Radio even comments, “oh, I can’t contact the captain of the UNATCO team, but we’ll get you next time” or something.

    1. Hal says:

      I’m a bit of a pyschopath in that game. When I play that portion, I laboriously haul all of the poison gas barrels down to the lower level, then block the ramps with heavy crates. Then, after sending the satellite message and triggering their hostile response, I throw a TNT crate down into my mess of barrels and turn the entire lower level into a green swamp.

      Well, it amuses me, at least.

      1. Chris says:

        The TNT crates in that section are far too valuable to waste on the guards, you need them for the ‘Ton hotel bit.

  20. CalDazar says:

    Wow, thats a large killcount at the Hive, to quote a master assasin: “Thats a lot of bodies”. I have never had combat inside the Hive, I didn’t know those “worker bees” comments were ture.
    I was looking for the catch when you have to save the guy. Will I save him only for him to realise I’m not supposed to be there? Will I save him and get nothing as a reward? It reminded me of Deus Ex: IW more than a Bioware game.

    Mage the what now? Is that one of the rulesets that take place in the same setting as Vampire: The Masquerade?

    1. McNutcase says:

      Any Noun: the Gerund game is by White Wolf, and is in the World of Darkness line of games. Essentially, what we think of as normality is what the various supernatural nasties allow us to think.

      However. There has been a split; Old World of Darkness, as it’s known, was a horrible mess and while all the games had roughly the same “say what you want to do, roll a fistful of d10s” mechanics, there was a serious power mismatch. As in, a godlike vampire facing a marginally competent mage was toast. There was also the issue of White Wolf providing too much plot in their splatbooks, which could (and did) conflict with the games people ran. This is where you’ll find Vampire: the Masquerade (as opposed to the NEW World of Darkness’s Vampire: the Requiem).

      So they came out with the new World of Darkness. Instead of buying the book for whatever supernatural thing you want to be and hoping you can make it work with the other entities in the game, they all use the same core rulebook and have roughly comparable power levels. The system’s been made simpler to use. This is where you’ll find Mage: the Awakening (as opposed to Mage: the Ascension, which is OLD World of Darkness)

      So, same publisher, different game line, different iteration of the system. You can see it as roughly comparable to the shift from AD&D 2nd Edition to D&D 3rd Edition: cleanup and rationalisation.

      1. CalDazar says:

        Does it ditch the lore of the previous setting?
        Because I liked that.

        1. krellen says:

          Yes, the new World of Darkness is an entirely new setting with entirely new lore.

          Personally, I really like the new system, it is way better integrated and balanced than the old. But the new lore sucks hard. I want the Technocracy back.

        2. DrKultra says:

          Yes it does, it introduces new lore for most everything to avoid any conflict.

        3. guy says:

          Yeah, it did. Apparently that is because old WoD became sufficently kudzu-like that there was an alien space virus inside an ancient conspiracy inside another ancient conspiracy inside a religious movement inside a nationalist movement. And three of those were named “The Black Hand”.

  21. tengokujin says:

    I thought it was just a hapless researcher working on hazardous materials in a lab equipped by a company with no concern for OSHA, when one of the tanks he’s working with explodes, knocking stuff around, sending shrapnel everywhere.

    Considering how that can happen in “safe” labs, I can totally see that happening in a TYM lab.

  22. Zaxares says:

    1:40: … OK, I have to admit. The conga-line of goons as they all got Typhoon’ed was pretty hilarious. XD

    2:00: Also, it is absolutely ridiculous how a TOILET WALL can stop bullets. Seriously, have you guys seen the thickness of those walls? A hard kick could probably knock them over.

    8:57: Actually, there was an explosion in the gas pipes which caused all that damage. You could actually hear it in the game just about 20 seconds earlier (before Josh hacks the door).

    19:02: I love it how the video fades out JUST as you see the security bot roll into view. XD Cool cliffhanger for the start of the next episode.

    1. MatthewH says:

      In the game’s defense -it is a Triad hang-out. I’m sure they’ve seen the Godfather and the possibility of getting shot in the toilet must have occurred to them.

  23. Jokerman says:

    I honestly think this is the best spoiler warning yet (or maybe since Fallout 3) Both games allowed you to be insanely stupid without much consequences. Funny stuff

    1. silentlambda says:

      Although none of those bouncers are giving radio broadcasts from beyond the grave.

  24. Since I started working tech support, the two slashes have become…
    that one that lives with the question mark and the other one. Sadly this only works with QWERTY keyboards, but most people can recognize a question mark when you ask. The ampersand, |, or tilde, well, those are a bit more difficult ;)

    1. Tse says:

      The “and” symbol, the vertical line and the wavy line.

    2. Sumanai says:

      QWERTY US and UK keyboards. I have Swedish/Finnish and slash is behind Shift+7, backslash is Alt+plus sign (where ‘-‘ is in US and UK layouts)

  25. Johan says:

    I think the labtechs don’t mind the hacking maybe because you’re playing on a lower difficulty?

    EVERYONE gave me problems when I tried to hack anything and someone saw me.

    Oh, and on the subject of DX 1, I only EVER descended from the “send a satellite signal to the French people because Paul asked nicely” tower with legboosties. The other legs enhancement seemed basically pointless, and that one was so awesome that I always had it at at least 3 by that point.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      “I think the labtechs don't mind the hacking maybe because you're playing on a lower difficulty?”

      Its because they had their backs turned.You can hack plenty of stuff while people are doing something else.

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