Update (Delta) Six: His Name Was Winston Lucas
I kind of wish I had saved Delta Six for this update so I could get away with the whole (Delta) Six pun. Anyway, we’re Azriel again.
There’s a short cutscene here mostly to establish what Azriel’s goals are:
: “Must’ve been a pain during the war.” : “They turned off the machines so we didn’t get soaked all the time.” : “Stopped mining. Halted space exploration for about a year.” : “What was the address Matthius gave?” : “What? Are you just gonna go up to the front door and ask them to hand over the location?” : “I’m going to try.” : “Azriel…” : “I’ll find out where this Center 7 is, and I’ll get out. I’ll make this quick.” : “…We’ll see. The address he gave is Brookview Avenue 4388.” : “I’ll get back to you when I have the coordinates.” : “If I’m going to do any sleuthing, I’ll have to fix my lockpick.” : “I’ll need a carbon ray stabilizer to do it.”
The astute among you might remember that back alley behind the shop from two updates ago that we went into briefly to avoid the Boryokudan. That’s actually where we need to go in the long run, but just like last time, there are some dickish collectables that we can only get during this particular event flag state.
If we head back to this screen, just east of where the shop is, there’s now an extra magazine underneath the dumpster. As far as I know, this does actually add to Azriel’s total ammo. I haven’t played this game in something like five years prior to doing this LP, but from what I remember this ammo actually sticks around.
This screen actually contains an event flag we need to progress, but screw that! Let’s go all the way back to Hibiscus Highrise instead, and climb the stairs up to near the top floor.
Hello, Mr. Boryokudan goon! There’s an object on this screen that wasn’t there the first time we came by - we’ll have a look at that in a bit. Can you tell what it is?
Funnily enough, the achievement trigger happens before you ever even see the next Cowboy Bebop cameo on screen. Unlike Spike (whose portrait was a hasty edit), Jet doesn’t get one at all.
So okay, let’s head back to that intersection.. or not! There are two more ammo magazines to grab, so I’ll just go ahead and sequence break a little bit.
The new object on this screen is that pile of muck in the gutter. Azriel won’t go through it with his hands, but he’ll gladly use his foot to kick it for some reason.
The first kick gives us an ID card. Let’s take a look at it.
Interesting. Azriel can keep kicking at the trash, but his next two attempts don’t cause anything more to pop out. On his third attempt, though…
Oh look, someone left ammo just lying around on the ground again! Damn Boryokudan, always dumping perfectly good magazines full of pistol ammo that just happens to match the caliber of whatever pistol Azriel uses.
Let’s sequence break a little more. There’s a screen to the left of where we started the game that Azriel will refuse to venture into until this point - it’s kind of bad game design since it makes you think there’s nothing there, only to have Azriel suddenly go “Oh wait there’s stuff here now”. On the way back, though, we get stopped by the Boryokudan.
Okay, NOW let’s go to that new screen.
The third spare magazine is located here - it’s a little gray object you can see in the first two shots. Two of the three dead guys have nothing on them, and we have to kick over the third to inspect him.
: “Only thing that looks useful is his ID card.” : “His name was Winston Lucas.”
Remember how we needed a citizen ID card to access the terminals? Now we can do that again. There’s an achievement for looking up a bunch of shit we’d have no reason to normally, which I’ll do as a mini-update after this one. So now it’s time to go make progress, right? Nope! We still have another bullshit easter egg to find, which gets locked out almost immediately after we make progress.
Oh boy, a box! My psychic sequence-breaking senses are tingling!
Just like the wall in his last segment, Azriel can’t reach the ladder because he has not yet learned to jump. Instead, we do another weird-ass Mario physics thing that at least kind of makes more sense than the last time.
Yeah! We’re breaking za law, breaking za world, breaking a random window, kowase! Judge-o-ment! Man, I miss Yakuza Zero.
Anyway, this is an apartment building we have no reason to be in yet.
Let’s go up the stairs for no particular reason! Maybe we’ll get a third-person brawler segment where we’ll get introduced to Azriel’s unique combat style of being kinda mediocre with guns.
Or we’ll find another Cowboy Bebop reference. Ed’s dialogue is voiced, and the end result sounds like one of those girls on Youtube who try way too hard to be “kawaii uguu”.
Ein is the best-written character in this game. I wish I was kidding. Anyway, that makes all of the event-flag locked stuff we can currently access.. for now. Thankfully, picking up the two cards and breaking the window into this apartment are all things we needed to do anyway.
Back at this intersection, there’s a boarded-up door right behind where those Boryokudan guys were. We could have kicked this open a long time ago, but there’s nothing we could actually do here until right now.
Azriel has a very short memory. This is the building the Boryokudan guys were talking about burning down. The Carbon Ray Stabilizer we need to fix Azriel’s lockpicks just so happens to be in one of those crates on the far side of the screen, but Azriel can’t get over there due to that support beam and his staunch refusal to ever duck or go prone.
For a very brief moment, a figure appears in the doorway and then leaves. This is actually where I got stuck the first time I played Gemini Rue, because I missed the figure in the door entirely. What we need to do is go back to the back alley.
There’s a random, un-named woman rifling through a dumpster who kinda looks like the figure we saw through the door, assuming we screenshotted that exact moment and didn’t miss the half-second she’s on screen. Like Giselle, she has a metric assload of dialogue. I’ll go through the first part (which is kind of important) and then summarize the rest.
: “Hello?” : “Can I at least know your name?”
Azriel Odin, professional creeper.
Wait a second.. this person looks familiar, even through the undetailed portraits.
: “Okay…”
Okay, I just KNEW Azriel Odin coudn’t be his real name.
: “Azriel Odin..” : “Does that name mean something to you?” : “You’re Azriel Odin..” : “That’s right. Do you know me or something?” : “…No… but the Boryokudan do.” : “And I take it you know the Boryokudan?” : “They say you’re a pain to them. An annoyance that keeps coming back.” : “They say you were an assassin your whole life, but just recently you betrayed them all and now you’re hunting them down as a cop.” : “Is that what they say?” : “Is it true?” : “…People say lots of things. Just because they said it doesn’t mean it happened.” : “You don’t seem like an assassin to me. If you’re really Azriel Odin, that is.” : “You don’t have death in your eyes.”
She then gives us a dialog menu.
Most of these options don’t get us anything - she’ll refuse to show her face, and seems to know about Center 7 but keeps denying that she does. We can ask her for a favor, but she won’t do anything until we find her security card. Strangely, there’s no different dialog for if you’ve already found her card.
She’ll follow us to the place where Azriel kicked the boards down. I accidentally took this screenshot while trying to get her to go under the board.
The context doesn’t really help much. Anyway, she’ll go to the other side and inspect the crates, one of which contains the Carbon Ray Stabilizer we need. As soon as the girl gets us the item, she walks out, leaving Azriel her name.
We can only use the Carbon Ray Stabilizer in a dry place - so it’s either here or in one of the two apartment buildings. Using it fixes Azriel’s lockpicks.. which we’ll use next time when we run into another massive text dump.