Archive for May 5th, 2009

If my understanding of NYC geography is correct, it should be at least a few miles to walk straight from Battery Park to LaGuardia through the subway tunnels, but if you discount the time I spend dodging cameras, hacking computers, and destroying droids, it only takes me a few minutes. My objectives at the airport are to retrieve the remaining Ambrosia and kill Juan Lebedev, the NSF commander. The only problem is that Lebedev has put a lot of security in place to keep anyone from infiltrating the terminal.

The first obstacle is a wide-open lobby with a guard and an inconveniently-placed security camera. One canister of Amrosia is there, and beyond the lobby is a heliport I need to get to; if I try to run straight across, the camera will pick me up and sound the alarm. I shoot the guard before he can see me, and end up dodging the camera by heading into one of the hallways leading off the side of the lobby. There are several offices there, but picking the locks on the office doors allows me to retrieve some ammunition and, more importantly, hide from patrolling guards. Using the offices as hiding places allows me to ambush the guards and take them down with my knife, keeping both the noise and the ammo consumption down.

From the hallways, it’s possible to climb some stairs that bypass the lobby and lead to a catwalk around the walls of the heliport, the floor of which is patrolled by several guards. The catwalk itself has a sniper on it, and I give him a 10mm pink slip because his position is redundant now that I’m here. I use my sniper rifle to pick off some of the guards directly, and take out others by blowing up some of the fuel barrels scattered throughout the room. This whole sequence is actually pretty interesting to play, because the lobby and the helipad both give the enemy a wide-open field of fire against direct attacks, forcing me to sneak around the edges and side passages to pick them off one by one. Playing this way is quite tense, but fairly rewarding.

The helipad contains an elevator that goes up to ground level. The area I find myself in is walled off from the rest of the airport, complete with gun turrets and guard towers; the 747 hangar I need to get to is behind yet another tall wall and locked gate. Security droids and guards patrol a maze of stacked crates and shipping containers. There don’t seem to be any locations which aren’t covered by a patrol route or a security camera.

The most convenient way I find to clear this area is to use my Speed enhancement to jump onto some of the crates and run along the top of them. They’re all metal, so it makes a lot of noise which can alert guards, but at least it keep me away from eye level and out of sight of the security cameras. I use this vantage point to take out any guards or robots I see, although this requires me to expend almost all of my EMP grenades.

After clearing out all the opposition and looting the guard towers (reprogramming the cameras and gun turrets in the process), I’ve found a second Ambrosia container and the key to get into the hangar. What’s the NSF going to throw at me next?

It’s Paul! He’s working for the NSF! Not entirely shocking, given what we already know! Paul says the Gray Death is a man-made virus, and that UNATCO is controlling the populace by controlling the supply of Ambrosia.

Most of JC’s lines are spoken with a somewhat flat affect, which I originally chalked up to an attempt to make him seem cool and badass. In this conversation, though, it actually creates some interesting ambiguity. When JC asks Paul “Do you really believe that?” it’s not clear whether it’s meant as an honest inquiry or a skeptical retort. For the time being, I’ll assume that this is intentional; JC’s words are scripted, but it’s up to the player to decide JC’s state of mind, and the meaning behind his words.

Paul goes on to say that he and Lebedev are going to ship the Ambrosia to Hong Kong, where someone named Tracer Tong will use the sample to help them synthesize more. I warn Paul that UNATCO is on the way, and Paul urges me to talk to Lebedev.

Lebedev’s jet is nicely-appointed 747 which includes a bar, multiple bedrooms, a swanky conference room, and probably a swimming pool in the cargo hold. 

It also contains Juan Lebedev, who shares the Denton Brothers’ affinity for long coats and leather vests. He surrenders and is about to tell me why Paul defected from UNATCO when Anna Navarre arrives to take charge. Anna orders me to finish the job, and when I tell her that UNATCO regs forbid the killing of unarmed prisoners, she orders me to do it anyway. I have a full magazine in my pistol; now I just need to decide what to do with it.

I talk to Lebedev again. He tells me I didn’t have parents, and that the people I thought of as my parents were actually employees, and that they were murdered so they couldn’t tell me why I was created. This is interesting, but let’s be honest: it also sounds like crazy talk. Lebedev doesn’t have any proof, and while UNATCO’s top agents seem to be trigger-happy Eurogoons, the NSF hasn’t really shown itself to be much better. And the longer I talk to Lebedev, the more agitated Anna gets.

At the end of the day, I’m not about to turn on UNATCO based on nothing but Paul and Lebedev’s accusations, and even if I did, I don’t know if I could survive a fight against Anna and her assault rifle in the plane’s close quarters.

And who is Lebedev, anyways? Paul makes him sound like some sort of altruist, but at the end of the day his grand plan was to hijack vital medicine and fly it out of the country. To do this, he and his private army have engaged in armed insurrection, taking hostages and sowing chaos throughout the city.

Yes, he surrendered. Yes, killing him now would be an act of perfidy. But will arresting him do any good? Will he really be punished? In a corrupt society, is it reasonable to believe that a man who’s wealthy beyond belief will really face justice? Maybe Anna is right; murdering him might not be legal, but maybe death is the only thing that will stop him.

Walking away may be an option, but it’s almost certainly a meaningless one. It will just piss off Manderley and my fellow agents, and may cause them to see me as a traitor like Paul. Even worse, if I do that, Anna will no doubt kill Lebedev. After infiltrating his stronghold, killing his guards, and leading UNATCO to him, can I really say my hands are clean just because someone else pulled the trigger?

Maybe it didn’t have to come to this, but I can’t change the past. I’m working from incomplete information, and I’m not going to learn anything more while Anna’s here. The only thing I know for sure is that whatever decision I make, someone is going to die. I’ve got a pistol in my hand, and no more time to think.

I pull the trigger.

So, as luck would have it, entering the Land of the Mole People requires me pass through a disused and no-doubt filthy public restroom in the subway station. This means I’m already in a bad mood when I enter the Mole People’s tunnel complex and am greeted by the sight of an NSF goon standing across the tracks with his back to me. For some reason, murdering him in cold blood doesn’t do anything to make me feel cleaner.

Clearing out the NSF is an interesting challenge. There are plenty of pillars, crates, and other obstructions which I can use to hide myself from sight. Unfortunately, these tunnels are where the Mole People live, so there are lots of noncombatants around, including several children. When I start shooting terrorists, they all freak out and start running around. While they generally move away from the firefight, they do tend to running into the crossfire while doing so. Luckily, I manage to avoid getting anybody killed while I clear the tunnels of bad guys.

One particularly chatty civilian seems to be in charge. I forget his name, so let’s call him King Mole. King Mole tells me about a secret room (accessed by pressing a switch cleverly disguised as a brick, no less!) where the NSF commander is hiding. I find the place and barge in ready for a fight. Instead I’m greeted by a most stirring speech:

“Don’t shoot! I surrender! I’m an accountant, not a soldier. I know the body armor looks intimidating, but I’m just a part-timer. . . like a reservist.”

In all fairness, the NSF uniform does look sort of intimidating.

 I accept the guy’s surrender, and search his office to find the key I need to continue my trip to LaGuardia. Naturally, this requires me to trek through yet another grody bathroom. If I ever meet the dude who designed this level, I have some very pointed questions to ask, although I doubt I’ll like the answers.

The next stretch of tunnel has only a few human guards, but relies heavily on electronic defenses. Most of this section is smooth sailing for me. This is where techinical skills come in handy; I might not be terribly effective in a straight-up firefight, but once I can get my hands on a security computer, it’s trivially easy to disable just about any automated security system. Typically, each security computer controls up to three different locations, and allows you to control cameras, doors, and turrets in those locations.

The one curveball I encounter in this section is a pair of commercial security droids, which are pretty scary. Military droids are even scarier, but they’re only available to government agencies or intergovernmental organizations like UNATCO, which means that whenver I see one, it’ll be on my side. Luckily, the droids are disabled by a couple of EMP grenades I’ve been saving for just such an occasion.

It’s probably worth noting that robots are more or less impervious to small arms fire; at least, I’ve never been able to destroy a robot with bullets before it killed me. The easiest ways to disable them are with EMP grenades or with explosives, neither of which particularly care about the robots’ armor. Since EMP grenades aren’t exactly common, and explosives have uses other than robot demolition, it’s often a good idea to avoid robots whenever possible.

One thing I haven’t really touched on yet is datacubes. These are essentially little messages, much like the recordings you can find in the System Shock games. Often they contain useful information (like computer passwords), plot development, or both. Some of the datacubes and emails I find during this mission are correspondence involving two NSF members called Decker and Erin. Their communications with each other, and with other NSF soldiers, contain useful information about the security setup around LaGuardia, but also make it pretty clear that there’s something going on between them. It’s all very cute, right up until the moment I realize that as one of the commanders on the scene, Decker probably doesn’t have much longer to live, assuming I haven’t killed him already.