Update 7: Our Name is Ed Spiegel
Fair warning, this update is going to feature a massive text dump that I am going to summarize most of because it uses far too many words to say far too little. I think in total, it’s something like 10 to 12 minutes of dialog assuming you listen to all the voices and don’t just skip right through when you start getting bored.
After using the Carbon Ray Stabilizer on the lockpicks, there’s something else that’s new on this screen - specifically, a flyer nailed to this boarded-up doorway. This is an event flag we’re going to need to get for later, so we might as well get it now.
Good stuff to know. We could go for the withdrawal medication right now, but the Boryokudan HQ is on the way there and we have no reason not to stop there first.
The guard will stop Azriel and ask why he’s here. There’s a short dialog puzzle which is basically asking if you’ve paid attention to the ID card we found in the last update.
Man, whoever wrote this was REALLY into Cowboy Bebop. It doesn’t matter which fake name you pick, so long as you give the guard the name off the Boryokudan ID card from the dump. It does strike me as kind of strange that this works, though. I mean, if the Terminal system knows that Winston Lucas is dead, it’s surprising that the Boryokudan doesn’t.
This entire bit is kind of inconsequential. The guard on the stairs accosts us, there’s a dialog option that is a blatant Monkey Island reference, and then we get to go see the Boryokudan leader. So, why the autosave?
The second option is the answer here: obviously, the Boryokudan know Azriel isn’t with them, and telling them he’s a cop goes over about as well as you’d expect it to. The boss more or less confims what we already know, with a slight twist: Center 7 was originally established during the war ten years ago as a means of non-lethally eliminating enemy soldiers (though technically it’s the same as killing them). It was re-opened to deal with the Boryokudan, who promptly took it over and started snatching people off the street to turn them into assassins.
Naturally, the place is heavily guarded against entry from space.
…and I just saved you all from rifling through about a hundred screenshots worth of monologue. Basically, we need to find the Boryokudan’s drugs. The boss gives us a phone number for the cargo pilot, a guy by the name of Kenneth who is not a citizen of Gemini (thus he won’t be in the terminal system).
Azriel leaves the Boryokudan HQ and immediately calls Kane.
: “They want the juice, we want the coordinates.”
: “Az… don’t tell me you’re going to help them get back their drugs.”
: “You know what that stuff does to people.”
: “Kane… you should know that I’m not going to do that by now.”
: “Okay, Az.”
: “Anyway, I did some searching for Center 7.”
: “An old news document turned up some kind of escape attempt.”
: “Turns out there was a guy who managed to escape from that facility and landed in the city you’re in.”
: “From what it looks like, they never caught him.”
: “You think he’s still around here?”
: “I don’t know, but it’s worth taking a look.”
So, I’m just gonna skip calling Kenneth altogether, because all he really tells us is that he lives in Hibiscus Highrise. When we go there..
Oh look, another dipshit pointing a gun at Azriel. Surely we’re going to get to kill him and..
Nah, it’s a stupid dialog puzzle. Basically, all we have to do is tell him we’re not with the Boryokudan and then that we’re looking for the Juice shipment to destroy it. Kenneth whines about his hand being broken. Seriously, at this point I was about to kill this LP because of how bad the pacing issues with it are.
Anyway, Kenneth’s story is basically that he was smuggling the drugs onto Barracus when he stopped at a space station outside the planet. The drugs were stolen at some point between when he got there and when he left for the planet. He takes approximately twenty lines of dialogue to say this before dropping a photo of the last ship to leave the station before he did. How he has this (or why the Boryokudan didn’t bother to get it themselves) is unclear a result of the game having a decent concept but not having the writing to back it up. Pacing!
We can stick the photo in a terminal and do the whole CSI “ZOOM. ENHANCE.” thing three times until we get the serial number on the ship.
In case you can’t read it (it’s hard to read even in-game and I can only imagine how bad it is if you’re colorblind) the number is 36325. Honestly, this entire section is just filler and I hate it.
Notice how the number on the terminal entry for the ship’s serial number doesn’t match the actual serial number. Remind me why I haven’t dropped this game yet?
Interesting. Paul Erickson is a freighter pilot and lives in the District 6 Apartment Building. This building is not labelled anywhere on the map - it has a terminal entry with the address, which is not on the map. Game design! Fortunately, I’m using a guide because fuck this ENTIRE section of the game, and I happen to know that the District 6 Apartment Building is that one we broke into for no reason last update to find the Cowboy Bebop reference.
Basically, the puzzle here is finding out which apartment Paul Erickson is in. The paper at the abandoned apartment desk tells us that they left a note on his mailbox to pick up his packages. You can see the piece of paper on the mailbox for 2A (the apartments in both this building and the other one go from A to E, with A on the left).
Once we get there, we find Paul unconcious from juice withdrawal. How convienient that we happened to find that note on the door about juice withdrawal medication. Time for another filler puzzle!
Apartment 2A in Hibiscus Highrise (where we were told to get the meds) has a bunch of goons waiting outside. So, what do we do?
On the other end of the floor is a puzzle identical to that one we did to climb the wall however many updates ago that was. By sticking Azriel’s foot in the hole, he can reach the power conduit in the corner and shut off the power by jamming his lockpicks into it.
This causes two of the goons blocking the apartment to run down to the lobby, leaving us free to kick the last one to death.
A mystery woman shows up and hands Azriel the withdrawal meds after spouting off like twenty lines of pointless dialogue! Pacing!
On the way back to Paul Erickson, there’s an achievement we can get for using the withdrawl meds on three of the addicts in this area: these two, plus the one near the shop.
Using the magic of editing. I can skip the literally thirty screenshots of Paul telling us that he actually owns a company that leases cargo ships and that he had absolutely nothing to do with the smuggling but that we can check his terminal to get the name of the guy who leased it. Pacing!
Anyway, before we go to find Barry, we can now find the last Cowboy Bebop reference, which is located all the way back in the room where we got the carbon ray stabilizer. This gets locked out the second you find Barry, so it has to be done now.
The game expects us to try using the terminal to find Barry Adama, then expects us to ask the shopkeeper about him, and then expects us to just kinda wander over to Hibiscus Highrise and ask the clerk. We can skip all that BS by going right to the apartment building.
We can then raid Barry’s personal terminal and oh look he’s going to go blow up a weather control tower. Mercifully, there’s a fade to black, and next update, we’ll wake up as Delta Six for a much less boring update.