Update 4: Boom, Headshot
Fair warning, most of this update is basically a cutscene. There’s going to be a lot of dialogue.
When we return from Delta Six’s segment, we wind up with the ominous autosaving message again. Matthius walks around on screen for a minute before Azriel shows up.
: “…Matthius.”
: “You sure nobody followed you?”
: “You’re alone…”
: “Azriel… I-I’m sorry.”
: “Look, I tried to call you, but you were in hyperspace. By the time you got here it was too late.”
: “They got him?”
: “The Boryokudan tracked him down here two days ago.”
: “They got him while I was getting my family off-world to Colony 4.”
: “Somehow, I knew this was going to happen.”
: “Which is why I gave him the tracking device.”
: “You what?”
: “I gave him a capsule before they got him. I traced it onto a transport that’s been sent off-world.”
: “I would’ve followed him, but you know how the planetary regulations are. Can’t get a ride anywhere these days.”
: “So he’s still alive? Where did they send him?”
: “I don’t know. That’s the trouble. The ship goes straight off into deep space. Uncharted areas.”
: “I just need to re-calibrate these coordinates then-”
With that, Azriel clumsily takes cover behind the dumpster on the left as two Boryokudan goons show up.
You can see here that Azriel has a health bar - I didn’t do so well with this combat because I was still getting used to the controls. The two goons have a very easy to discern pattern on the standard combat difficulty - they pop out of cover, fire six shots, then take some time to reload before coming back out of cover. The trick here is to pop out of cover as soon as they reload, wait a few seconds, and then start the headshot meter.
.
For reference, Azriel starts the fight with 24 rounds - 8 in his magazine and 16 to spare. I managed to pop both enemies in the head after missing two shots. Once the fight is over, Azriel and Matthius run back into a small alleyway on the left, and a third goon shows up.
: “What’s the problem?”
: “I need immediate evac from Pittsburg. Punching in my current location. How soon can you be here?”
: “Roger that, ETA five minutes. Closest available landing spot above ground level is on top of Hibiscus Highrise.”
: “Are you with your brother?”
: “Azriel?”
: “No. I’ll be there soon. Over and out.”
The Boryokudan goon will start shooting at this point. Humorously enough, you can use the gun on him to have Azriel fire back - none of the shots will hit him, but you can keep doing this to the point where Azriel is definitely firing bullets he doesn’t actually have. This is actually another crate “puzzle”. The game tells you that you can use Matthius like an item, so let’s do that.
It’s like Matthius is dense or something.
Matthius jumps the wall without being asked, leaving Azriel to climb over himself. Unfortunately..
For some reason, despite being the same height as Matthius, Azriel can’t climb that wall from this position. Instead, we have to push the box to the left…
Yeah, Azriel basically does a goofy-ass cartoon jump that kind of makes no sense. It doesn’t look any better in video format - this is one of the few points where they kinda skimped on the animation.
No shit, Matthius! Climbing that wall puts Azriel right behind that locked gate from earlier in the game.
The “puzzle” here is as simple as “use pistol on lock”, boom done. Now, get ready for a chase scene straight out of Dagger of Amon Ra.
As we leave the first screen, the camera cuts over to the Boryokudan headquarters. They know we’re here, meaning we’ll have to evade them.
Basically, continuing to the right from the shop would put Azriel right in the Boryokudan’s path. Instead, we can walk down this alleyway and bypass them completely.
Uh-oh. Let’s hope by “that building”, they mean the one we just came from. That’s what they mean, right? Once the Boryokudan have left, we’re free to go two screens to the right and visit Hibiscus Highrise again.
Autosave! Of course they meant this building.
: “The only way I know of is a shaft on the sixth floor of the building.”
: “Then take 'em out already.”
: “I’m on my last magazine. I can’t risk it.”
Wait, what? Azriel, you had twenty bullets left! Ninteen if you count the one you put into the lock at the gate!
: “Oh come on, just give me the gun already.”
: “I thought you said you would never use a gun again.”
: “Oh yeah, right. The vow. Got it.”
: “…We’ll have to sneak past.”
So, stealth segments in point-and-click games. They’re usually absolute shit - the stealth segments in Broken Sword 3 were why I was never able to finish that pile of crap. Fortunately, Gemini Rue is kind of really nice about this one, even though you have to do it twice, once for Matthius and once for Azriel. The guard by the counter doesn’t move as far as I can tell - only the one in front of the elevator does.
Fortunately for us, his patrol route takes him off the screen entirely, giving you plenty of time to get both characters across.
This is another kind of weird stealth bit that I don’t really understand why the developers put in. There are Boryokudan goons on the third floor - there’s no way to know this other than that the text boxes from their chatting are coming from above. Going above the second floor at all causes them to spot Azriel and instantly kill him. The thing is, you can’t see them until after you’re in kill range, so there’s no real way to know exactly where they are other than trial and error.
To avoid them, we can simply go to the second floor and take the elevator.
: “Isabel’s well… the kids are fine too.”
: “What have you got, three of them now?”
: “Yeah… they grow up fast, huh?”
: “…Wouldn’t know…”
As soon as they get out of the elevator, the Boryokudan show back up. Azriel and Matthius take cover in a doorway that is somehow deep enough to give them both total cover.
Wait, WHAT?!
Welcome to the second real combat segment of the game. This one is exactly like the first, only we have very limited ammo. It is possible to kill the enemy with bodyshots, but every single bullet has to hit for that to work. This enemy uses the same pattern as the previous ones, so we wait for him to reload, jump out of cover and start charging the headshot meter.
Boom. One shot, one kill.
Fortunately, the door to the roof is just beyond where Azriel was previously taking cover. He then proceeds to waste his remaining ammo (he’ll fire seven shots even if you used all but one of your bullets) and lets Matthius open the door.
Oh boy, we’re being chased! It’s a good thing I’ve played Dagger of Amon Ra and know that the first step to any chase scene is to shut and lock the door! Let’s do that.
We can’t get the door open by ourselves, so let’s have Matthius do all the work for once.
There’s a bunch of different options when Matthius asks us what to do. Pushing against the door is the correct one. We can then use Azriel’s foot on the door…
And we’re good to go! Kane comes down to urge us to get into the ship, and it quickly takes off.
: “…Guess so.”
: “And what about your friend here? What’s his name?”
: “Matthius. Used to work with him about five years back. He defected to–”
: “Azriel!”
: “Ugh. Now what does he want? It’s bad enough he wanted to hitch a ride with us off the planet.”
: “He left his family on Colony 4.”
: “Oh. Well then.”
The rest of this part is a big giant plot dump akin to Act 2 of Dagger of Amon Ra. I’ll just cover the highlights.
Basically, Azriel’s brother has been taken to Center 7, which is somewhere in a nebula that screws up spaceship navigation systems. The Boryokudan have the exact location of Center 7, and Azriel is going to go get it so he can save his brother and we can all go home. Then there’s a flash to white.
Oh boy, another exposition dump immediately after that last one! Seriously, this is like ten minutes of solid cutscene and it kinda sucks. Wadjet Eye does this a lot. However, after another short dialog dump I’ll put up later…
Finally, we get to go back to actual gameplay. So, I guess I’ll ask the question. Who goes first?
- Azriel
- Delta Six