T w e n t y S i d e d

I apologize in advance for how this devolves into a mess. We probably would have called a do-over on this episode if not for the fact that we needed to wrap up the session because I needed to get going.

Fun fact: I had no idea that the game re-rolled conversations until this week. I thought the solution to a conversation would be the same for all playthroughs.

I count four ways into the alley behind the police station:

1. The lightning alley, which requires the lightning-proof aug. (EMP shielding, I think?)
2. The chain-link fence, which requires the Mario Jump aug to get over, because it’s impossible for Jenson to climb a chain-link fence. I consider this to be an egregious oversight. You can also use the super-strength mod to stack up dumpsters and crates, although the stacking physics are, like most videogames, horrible fiddly.
3. Sewer. Sigh. The sewers are filled with armed foes and traps because hey, videogame.
4. Speech-check (or murder) your way into the police station, and then exit through the side door.

It’s pretty screwy, but the thing that bugs me is that there are quest-relevant people back in that alley. How did they get there?

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I have no comment, other than the fact that I’m really enjoying this season. This game is good enough to be fun to watch, but flawed enough to make for interesting discussion.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I like that a few of your abilities were already acquired on the level up menu. At the very start of the game, Jensen has apparently already “spent points” on the HUD and other things. It connected the gameplay mechanics and contrivances with the leveling mechanics. It also showed that Jensen had been gradually easing into his augmentations on his own during the 6-month recovery time.

In this episode I talk about how cities are tough to do. This is one of the reasons I make such a big deal about Grand Theft Auto IV. That’s pretty much your worst-case scenario for environment design. It’s hard to manage that much texture data at so many different resolutions, it’s hard to manage all those buildings at so many different detail levels, all changing in real-time, it’s hard designing a tool set that will let multiple artists all work in the same open world without getting in each other’s way, it’s hard having all those interior spaces available without loading screens, it’s hard with so many cars, people, sound effects, global actors (like the train) and getting AI to drive around in that mess without making a fool of itself. I don’t really hold it against other games for failing to live up to that standard.

However, you can see the technology gap here. In Human Revolution we’ve got a very limited section of the city, no traffic, few pedestrians, and there are still loading screens all over the place. I don’t fault the game too much for it. This isn’t an id Software game and I’m not here to gawk at graphics spectacle and coding prowess. However, there will be one point later on when the game will really, really be undermined by the technology to an embarrassing degree. Josh is apparently displeased with my habit of looking ahead, so we’ll save that discussion for when the time comes.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I still think that the choice of letting Zeke go was a bit odd. For one thing, I thought, “Let Zeke go” sort of implied “in exchange for the hostage”. I thought that was the option for everyone to walk away, and the option on the right was if you wanted to capture Zeke AND free the hostage. Letting him go WITH the hostage? Why would Adam pursue that? It was strange leaving the room and finding the hostage dead, cops all around, Zeke gone, and no clear indication for how that set of circumstances came about. How did Zeke extricate himself from that many foes with itchy trigger fingers, escape unharmed, AND shoot the hostage? I mean, we can contrive our own scenarios to explain it, but I think extremely unlikely outcomes deserve some kind of explanation.

If nothing else, we need to know what happened so we know what to think of Zeke. Did he really shoot her, or did the cops do it as Rutskarn joked? Did he shoot the hostage once he no longer needed her, or was the shooting done when he was cornered?I don’t mind having a bad or sub-optimal option. I agree that dumb choices should have appropriately non-victorious outcomes, it’s just that this one didn’t feel like a failure, it felt like we skipped a page.

We’re not going to have a do-over every time we have one of these conversations, but I’m glad we did in this case.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.