Are all of these Americans here because they're excited to finally see Terror Billy die, or are they here because they're afraid of the regime? We can't tell because the writer never bothers to characterize this country at the center of this conflict.<\/div><\/p>\n
Even if you’re okay with the idea of putting heads onto new bodies, there’s still a lot that makes this scene hard to believe. This execution takes place in front of tens of thousands. Security for a politicized event of this scale would be phenomenal for any country, much less one ruled by the most brutal and authoritarian regime the world has ever known. And yet these five people managed to sneak into the very heart of Washington DC with all of this complex medical equipment? And I guess they knew ahead of time exactly how the execution would goSure, you could make an excuse that this is sort of public execution is a regular televised event. Even better is if the WRITER had used that excuse. It would have helped justified the prescience of the good guys while also serving as a bit of worldbuilding.<\/span> and where they needed to be? If Engel had even hung onto the head for an extra three seconds then this plan would have failed. Then they snuck out of DC through this massive crowd and back to their submarine with no problems, despite the fact that every one of them is a wanted terrorist?<\/p>\nI’m not saying it’s impossible for this small team to get here, I’m saying its a daunting enough challenge that you shouldn’t just casually pretend it’s no big deal. The writer spent so much screen time lingering on the execution, having the player experience the beheading from a first-person perspective. Then they lingered on Engel’s moment of triumph and the black screen that follows. But they couldn’t spare a couple of lines of dialog to help sell this crazy turn of events?<\/p>\n
BJ Never Asked for This<\/h3>\n
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Apparently the Nazi super-soldier body doesn't have nipples. This makes me wonder what ELSE they left off.<\/div><\/p>\n
So BJ has a new body. This one is stronger, faster, and more durable than his last one. Mechanically, the game shows this by raising your max health from 50 to 100, and then lowering your max armor from 200 to 100 to reflect the loss of the power armorI wonder what the Nazis did with that thing, anyway. It was pretty sweet.<\/span>. His enemies all think he’s dead, and he’s able to resume his mission stronger than ever.<\/p>\nThe bright side is that this super-soldier body finally gives us an excuse for why BJ is so unstoppable. New Order never explained to us how our main character was able to kill so many Nazis with impunity. Isn’t he just a regular human being? What keeps him going? Gordon Freeman has the HEV suit. Crysis has the nanosuit. Master Chief is both cybernetically and biochemically enhanced. But BJ? BJ was supposedly just a regular guy with big muscles. But now his superhuman combat prowess is explained by the fact that he’s literally more than human. <\/p>\n
I mean, you don’t need<\/b> an explanation for those kinds of questions, but it’s nice when you get one. <\/p>\nCybernetic Door-Opener<\/h3>\n
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At this point BJ is a head in a jar, and the good guys are asking which door-opening superpower he wants.<\/div><\/p>\n
Before the surgery, you’re given a choice of a physical augmentation to add to the new body. You can get telescoping leg extenders to enable you to reach overhead catwalks and such. Or you can get a thing that lets you collapse your chest down and fit into really<\/strong> narrow vents. Or you can get something that lets you run through specially-marked walls.<\/p>\nAugmentations sound like a good idea, but all of these powers are different variations of “open a door”. None of them are really combat powersAlthough the running-through-walls one lets you plow into foes at high speed and do damage. It’s not as practical as killing them with melee, but it’s fun.<\/span>. The game designer can’t let you use these powers to create shortcuts, since that would mean skipping gameplay and there’s barely enough of that to go around as it is. They can’t make any particular power a requirement for progress, since you’re only going to have one of the three. <\/p>\nWhich means this ends up being a non-choice. Imagine if they gave you a choice of carrying around a red, green, or blue keycard. And then about once a level you come to a red, green, and blue door arranged next to each other, all leading to the same room. This is effectively what we end up with. <\/p>\n
From this point in the game you’ll occasionally run into situations where you need one of these abilities to reach a cache of resources. Sometimes you’ll see a secret you can reach, and sometimes you’ll encounter secrets that require one of the other powers.<\/p>\n
After the surgery the game drops you into a tutorial for whichever power you chose. That’s understandable from a game design point, but it exacerbates the ongoing problems with pacing. The main plot of “liberate America” slammed on the brakes about an hour ago when BJ began wandering around his childhood home. Since then we’ve been mostly watching cutscenes. The player isn’t engaging with the mechanics and the characters aren’t taking action to advance the plot. The player is very likely restless at this point and eager to get on with things, and so this is a lousy time to make them sit still for a two-minute obstacle course. It’s not the the tutorial itself is wrongAlthough at two minutes it’s at least twice as long as it needs to be.<\/span>. It’s that the previous cutscenes are continuing to take their toll on our enjoyment of the game.<\/p>\nOnce the whole “our hero dies and is miraculously resurrected” distraction is over, we can return to the main plot of liberating America. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As promised, BJ is dragged around the country and put on television like a trophy. The Nazis call him “Terror Billy”. He’s given a show trial and sentenced to death. Worst. Daydream. Ever. As he’s sentenced, one of the guards turns his back on BJ and you’re able to do a melee attack. No wait, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[612],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrospectives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42131"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42258,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42131\/revisions\/42258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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