Update 5: The Least Sensical Escape Ever
Delta Six won the poll, so let’s go with him for now. There’s a scene from last update I didn’t show just in case we wound up going with Azriel instead. Fair warning: There are a LOT of pointless text dumps I’m going to be shortening or skipping outright because this part of the game has some serious pacing issues. This happens immediately after the giant purple text dump from the last update.
BLU Chamber 2 sounds like part of a TF2 map. If you’ll remember from the last time we played as him, Delta Six had his meal ticket stolen the day before - so logically, there’s no reason for us to go to the mess hall at all (since without a ticket, there’s no way for us to get food). Still, the game won’t let us into the testing area until after breakfast, so we have to head there because bullshit event flags.
The trip there is exactly the same as before: go to the elevator, go to the fourth floor, and go through the screen of faceless NPCs added in to make it look like Center 7 has more than about four NPCs who actually matter. Just like before, there’s a single person sitting by the food dispensers.
This is Balder. Balder has a really overblown New York accent and sounds like an asshole, probably because he is. He also sounds suspiciously similar to the guy who kicked Delta Six down and stole his food ticket.
: “Oh… you don’t remember me, do you?”
: “I told you not to go through with it, man. I told you not to do it.”
: “Who are you?”
: “I’m Balder. Somebody stole your food ticket, huh?”
: “Yes.”
: “Don’t worry, you can have the rest of mine.”
: “We’re friends, Charlie. We’ve stuck together since day one.”
: “Have you talked to anyone else yet?”
There’s a Yes/No option here, both of them work out the same. I picked yes.
: “Who?”
: “It was Epsilon-Five, wasn’t it?”
: “I…”
: “I know it was.”
: “Okay, listen up. Before you tried to escape, some bad things happened because of her.”
: “It’s because of her that everybody hates you now.”
: “… There’s a reason nobody will talk to ya.”
: “If she pretends to be your friend, don’t believe her. She’s trying to trick you again, alright?”
: “Okay…”
Another choice here. Not surprisingly, both options work out the same. I picked the top one.
: “Don’t ask me, man.”
: “I’m not the one who wanted to erase his own memory.”
: “All I know is I saw you talking to Giselle the day before you did it.”
: “What?”
: “Maybe you should go find her.”
For reference, the brown-haired woman (actually come to think of it, everyone but Epsilon-Five has brown hair in this game) that Delta Six met right after waking up from the memory wipe is Giselle. A bell rings, and the intercom sounds off.
: “Guess I’d better get going. I’ll be in the gym after testing’s over if you need me. Keep in touch.”
Yeah, screw this jackass. Let’s go shoot some stuff. I’ll save you the elevator ride and having to scan Delta Six’s eyes on a couple of retinal scanners on the way there.
Just like before, the room before the test chamber scans Delta Six for contraband before letting him in. If Update 3 was Cover Shooting 101, this part is Cover Shooting 201. It’s essentially an advanced gun tutorial.
: “Alright, let’s get down to business..”
A less classy LPer would have just plastered that damn song from Mulan right here or done a “TO DEFEAT THE HUNS” in italics but I’ll spare you.
: “Today, we will continue with your gun training.”
Why did they send me dialogue, when I asked for guns?
This game kinda sucks at pacing, and you can bet before we’re through
Readers I’ll, make you realize it too
Game, I’ve already built a sentry nest on the enemy’s intelligence by the time that text and the following 10 that I’m not going to show have popped up.
Anyway, what the speaker ultimately wants us to do is hit each target for a total of 10 points of damage. Bodyshots are 1 point, headshots are 2.
There’s also a little red light on either side that is basically a stand-in for the enemy shooting at you. The idea is to clear this without getting hit.
The light moves predicitably between sides, and is super easy to avoid. It’s almost identical to the shooting pattern of the Boryokudan goons we just took out in the last update.
There’s an achievement for doing this without taking a “hit”. It’s pretty easy to do as long as you’re not trying to rely on headshots (which are slower anyway).
Unfortunately, that’s not our “real” test for today - so we don’t get a meal ticket. Guess what we have to do.. again.. for the ticket?
That’s right, we quit out of the game, drop it forever, and go play a better cover-based shooter. I mean.. of course we do the same training again. Why wouldn’t we?
Okay, that’s over. Now, if you’ll remember the last update, we need to walk Epsilon Five to the mess hall.
: “Hello.”
: “Well, I’ve finished my computer training for the day.”
: “Did you get your ticket?”
: “Yes.”
: “Are you okay? Do you remember anything else?”
: “Not really…”
: “We usually go back together after the testing. You stopped them stealing my food tickets that way.”
: “Okay..”
: “Shall we go then?”
Basically, we now get to go do the same elevator routine to the mess hall we literally just did, only now with Epsilon Five in tow.
Anyway, we drop her off at the mess hall. Delta Six won’t eat with her because he is dense, but we can use the meal ticket on the dispenser to get a meal.. which he won’t eat.
You know what, let’s just be a lunkhead and go right to the gym. I bet Balder’s there just waiting to stab Delta Six with a prison shank and steal his kidneys.
The only thing we can interact with (other than Balder) are the weight shelves in the background. There’s a trial-and-error puzzle coming up that I’m just going to solve now.
One of these weights is not like the other. One of these weights is useful. Hint: It’s the 4-pound one. We can also talk to Balder, who takes something like twenty lines of text to say what he could have said in two. In fact, let me just do that.
: “Hey Delta Six, you should go talk to Giselle. She’s on maintenance duty.”
Thanks, Balder! I knew you were written by people who had a sense of pacing. Now let’s go on to talk to Giselle, who will not in any way use over 50 dialog boxes (boxes, not lines) to tell us the same thing four times!
Pacing! There’s a dialog puzzle here but you can just brute-force your way through (she’ll ask you why you’re here and you pick the most dense option possible). Now, let’s listen to her short dialogue where she tells us what we need to know quickly without repeating herself four times (note: all the following dialog is my own)
: “Oh hey Charlie, pleasure seeing you here, considering you had your memory wiped. Why the hell are you here?”
: “Epsilon Five told me everything.”
: “Well, that’s just great. One more person who knows about my escape attempt.”
: “You see, I’ve been using people to purposely try and escape so they can get a map of the facility so that I can escape myself.”
: “I’m kind of a manipulative sociopath in case you haven’t picked up on that by now.”
: “Did you know that if you don’t take your final exam they stop giving you meal tickets and you eventually starve to death?”
: “Also this is a prison facility for rehabilitating criminals, so they mindwipe you when you enter.. and when you leave.”
: “That’s why I won’t take my final exam, because I don’t want to forget who I am.”
: “And really losing your memory is kind of the same as dying isn’t it?”
: “Why am I not beating your face in right now?”
: “Nevermind. Anyway you can’t escape with me because you’re useless and I hate you.”
: “I could get you a gun.”
: “You are now my best friend. Go get me a gun so I can tell you to mindwipe yourself again.”
Boom. By the way, this is how many dialog lines it would’ve taken had I showed the entire coversation with Giselle here. Each screenshot is one box.
Also we can con Giselle into letting us into the tool closet (which requires us to enter the room but she never mentions this) to grab a screwdriver but only if we give her our meal.
: “This meal tastes like sadness. As a sociopath, I enjoy feasting on the sadness of others.”
Now, let me just point something out here. Delta Six has access to one gun. He has no idea if the gun is even real or not (given that it reloads with a magic “download more bullets” button), and he’s going to get it anyway.
Back at the testing chamber, we can use the screwdriver to pop off the grate on the drain in the floor.
We then solve the puzzle in the most predictable fashion possible, by taking the gun and dropping it down the drain hole. The four-pound weight is used to replace the pistol. Wadjet Eye have often been accused of not doing their homework, and it kinda shows here: not only does this entire situation not make a whole lot of sense, but four pounds is quite heavy for a handgun. For reference, a Colt M1911 (a .45 pistol you’ve probably seen a million times in games) weighs about 3 pounds. 9mm handguns are usually even lighter (around 2.5 pounds). 4 pounds is more or less a Desert Eagle. You can find out how much the gun weighs by looking at it in your inventory, but it’s easier to get the weight on the way up here.
The gun falls down and gets lodged in a pipe. We’ll need to grab one more thing before we go and dislodge it.
Inside Delta Six’s toilet is a pipe. We need this for a “puzzle” we’re going to get to solve four times.
We first have to use the screwdriver on the left-most vent in the mess hall. A less classy LPer would have put one of those Archer “PHRASING!” memes here.
Once we do that, we get a closeup of the gun being lodged behind a flap that we have to push with the pipe.
Delta Six now gets to have Balder move one of the weight racks by himself, which Balder will do without questioning it even though (as we learn later) he doesn’t know about the escape attempt.
A less classy LPer would have positioned Balder just right so it looked like Delta Six is giving him a handjob.
We then go back to the mess hall to get Epsilon Five, who we use to open the door to the women’s cellblock.
Azriel looks on in disapproval from the corner.
Finally, we need to do a stupid “light up the blocks” puzzle! Hooray! Game design!
Fuck doing this, I just looked the answer up. The gun falls into a pipe on the right side of the screen, where it gets stuck one last time.
Humorously enough, Delta Six will walk right through that steam without flinching only to complain that it’s making the obviously wooden crate too hot to touch.
There’s a wheel over near the door we can use to shut the steam off, allowing Delta Six to push the crate to the pipe and use his own pipe to knock the gun loose. Since I hate Giselle, let’s just sum up her dialogue.
: "Gimme that gun!’
: “Okay.”
: “Your map sucks and I hate you but you’re in. What did you write here, your handwriting sucks.”
: "It says ‘space cargo bay.’ "
: “I also want Epsilon Five to come along.”
: “Spess mehreens! Battle brothers! As you know, most of our battle brothers are stationed.. in space! Space! Spess Mehreens!”
: “She can hack computers.”
: “I’m going to go write a thirty-page thinkpiece about how if you watch Code Geass closely you can see Nunnally in the flashbacks.”
Then, mercifully, the screen fades to black. Next time, we’ll get to play as Azriel again and hopefully never see Giselle ever.