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Blind Sally posted:Ha, are you sure it didn't just take me 4 seconds to get your jokes? The fact that there isn't a "WITNESS" smiley is a goddamn tragedy.
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Aug 8, 2016 08:04
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^^^^ you could be the poster to rectify this problem! Fish Noise posted:Exactly. I refer to your other ongoing LP. Oh, yeah, absolutely. The stealth section in R3 is not really a stealth section at all. Enemies aren't attracted by sound, only sight. So the various Chimeran Snipers just sorta sit there scanning the valley until you walk past them. The Dropships, meanwhile, detect you if you cross into their searchlights. That's it. You can shine your flashlight directly on a Hybrid and it won't detect you unless it's actually looking right at you. Here in the Kaznan Jungle, meanwhile, the Helghast at the very least react to sound. It's a basic stealth section, but it's a stealth section. As you say, the cover isn't the most believable, but as long as you are quite, crouched, and technically "in" the cover, you're okay. Once you blow the cover, though, you have to brute force you way the rest of the level. Which is okay, since that's where Killzone shines. You get a trophy for successfully getting through the entire "stealth section" without blowing your cover and it's a bit of a change of pace from the more frantic levels, so the level is a welcome diversion. Also, unlike the R3 stealth level, which is basically just the White Forest from Half Life 2, K3's level is something wholly new and unique.
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Aug 8, 2016 08:40
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KZ Mercenary has good in-combat stealth. The AI goes after your last known position, so if you move quietly you can go around them in the middle of a massive fight. And then kill people from behind quietly while everyone is laying suppressing fire on that box you taunted them from. You can backstab the final boss, too.
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Aug 8, 2016 09:29
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Blind Sally posted:^^^^ I would,if I knew anything about that kinda stuff. SelenicMartian posted:You can backstab the final boss, too. Wait,really? Is it a glitch,like this? Or is it actually intended by the devs? VolticSurge fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 18:33
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VolticSurge posted:Wait,really? Is it a glitch,like this? Or is it actually intended by the devs? Nah, it's a gameplay mechanic. Mercenary has some pretty awesome alternate objectives and challenges implemented into the game, kinda like Perfect Dark or Goldeneye 64. Just hitting Benoit from behind nets you a trophy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f7WXJ1mBpM (it's an easy one to get since when Benoit uses his shield he moves really slow) But if you take the time to wound rather than kill Benoit (which requires you to play a little more carefully), you do the "Interrogation" mechanic which is just an amped version of Killzone 3's brutal melee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KLizWpBbHk&t=1525s Sally fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Aug 8, 2016 |
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Aug 8, 2016 18:55
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Blind Sally posted:Nah, it's a gameplay mechanic. Mercenary has some pretty awesome alternate objectives and challenges implemented into the game, kinda like Perfect Dark or Goldeneye 64. Just hitting Benoit from behind nets you a trophy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f7WXJ1mBpM (it's an easy one to get since when Benoit uses his shield he moves really slow) That's...actually pretty sweet. Shame I never got around to playing this due to my (possibly unfounded) hatred of the Vita.
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Aug 8, 2016 19:24
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Sev's hair looking real stupid these days.
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Aug 11, 2016 14:53
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Good news, everyone! NASA found Literally Vekta (or Literally Helghan, we don't know yet)! Now we're just 200 years away from Real Life Killzone! 
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Aug 25, 2016 07:38
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One thing I was wondering about : In the timeline, it was said that the group of ships attacking the capital was one of several battlegroups, presumably constisting of multiple ships, attacking Helghan, "establishing a total orbital blockade". Was the Ground-to-Space weaponry really powerful enough to destroy the entire Vektan fleet? How?
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Aug 25, 2016 15:18
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Yes, because it was powerful enough to knock out an ISA Crusier with a single blast as seen in the opening cutscene of Killzone 2. Given how much petrusite is under the planet's surface, the Helghast could've just spent the whole time spamming the fire button while the ISA ran all of its ships into the ground. Presumably, though, not all of Helghan has cities that have ports leading off planet, so my guess is the battle groups (of which there are twelve) only attacked the space-capable cities on Helghan, such as Konstantine City and Pyrrhus. Templar's group is not the first wave that you see getting blown up in the Killzone 2 intro. That's an earlier group, potentially Admiral Grey's group--Admiral Grey being one of the major characters in Killzone: Mercenary. In Mercenary, the ISA actually find their invasion completely halted by the arc cannons. I'm not sure over which city, Konstantine or Pyrrhus, one of the two. Anyways, the ISA actually hires a PMC, the Phantom Talon Corp, to run a demolitions op on Helghan to take out the offending Arc Towers. The characters in Mercenary are successful and the ISA are able to make planet fall and, presumably, run more ground-based ops against other Arc Towers safely beneath the fire range of them. At some point after this, Templar's battle group lands. So yeah, the Helghan weapons WERE powerful enough to destroy the ISA fleet, but after losing a few ships, the ISA kept their cruisers out of range until the weapons were demolished and they could safely (more or less) land.
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Aug 25, 2016 16:01
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Marshal Radisic posted:Two things struck me in that little scene with the senate. First, let's get another look at these guys. I can see what your saying, but i see stahl as a smarter trump like person, a nationalist/objectivist rear end in a top hat who has a flair for the dramatic and immediate and final solutions. he wants to pray on the ISA grunts hopes that they will be given quarter, so he can pull it back and kill them all in a brutal public ways. also next update has some of my favorite lines in game.
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Aug 28, 2016 01:14
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 hey, here's the next update. some fun things happened in it. i stayed up too late editing it and now i'm too tired to write-up the post that goes along with it. i'll work on that later, but it's been a few weeks since the last video, so please enjoy crow's meltdown while you wait! oh, and there were some technical problems in the recording of this video. uh. you'll see what i mean. EDIT: also, Lotish, it's looking like you may have lowballed crow's deaths a bit 
Sally fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Aug 28, 2016 |
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Aug 28, 2016 06:28
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Blind Sally posted:
The video was awesome to record because of the technical problems  For the record, Blind Sally's mic randomly started to fade out about half-way through the video. Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Aug 28, 2016 |
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Aug 28, 2016 06:30
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAGVw5UIyxk&t=155s Yes, its KZ2 but they polished that work for KZ3
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Aug 28, 2016 06:59
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Did Crow manage to double his death count in one video? That would definitely explain the meltdowns. I blame Rico.
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Aug 28, 2016 09:29
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Hold on, so you basically inadvertently Off-World Interceptor Extreme'd your own LP?
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Aug 28, 2016 13:44
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Fish Noise posted:Hold on, so you basically inadvertently Off-World Interceptor Extreme'd your own LP? Basically, yes. And then he died 3/4's of the way into the video. RIP his soul
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Aug 28, 2016 13:48
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Shei-kun posted:Did Crow manage to double his death count in one video? To be more specific, crow managed to double his death count in half a chapter. We've still got to upload the other half.  (but seriously, the last chapter and this chapter--gently caress, i don't know what happened, but crow and i really lost our groove. we get it back for the rest of the campaign, but hot drat, we both dropped the ball here) Fish Noise posted:Hold on, so you basically inadvertently Off-World Interceptor Extreme'd your own LP? Yes!
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Aug 28, 2016 18:19
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Shei-kun posted:I blame Rico. I blame Rico too. ...In that the game takes his lazy rear end away from you for this and the previous mission leading to protracted segments where if you go down, you're dead. Hence why most of our deaths happen within these two chapters. It's kind of a glaring flaw in the game design that you could explain away by saying they intended the game to be played co-op so you'll have a healer there with you through those segments... But that's not an excuse for it being there in the first place in an ostensibly single player game.
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Aug 28, 2016 18:26
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drat it Crow, don't let the Giant Crab Syndrome get to you as well. Throw those grenades with impunity. Especially into rooms.
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Aug 28, 2016 18:50
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VIDEO NOTE: Due to a technical hiccup on Blind Sally’s recording computer he wound up basically falling out of the Discord call about halfway through the video. So while he was still recording his audio for the majority of the remainder of the video he ended up screaming into the digital abyss while Jobbo and I carried out without him. And that’s why the commentary in this video kind of goes off the rails at a certain point. So Sally and I have decided that in order to split up the work load a little more for Killzone 3, each update from here on out is going to be helmed by the poor unfortunate soul whose turn it was behind the controller for that video. Which, in this case, was me, Crow. Since it’s been a while: a recap (unless you’re binging this on the LP Archive, in which case, READ THIS poo poo ANYWAY DAMMIT)! As you’ll recall last time on Killzone 3, things went even further to poo poo for Our Heroes(?) as we found them hiding in a very inhospitable jungle somewhere on Helghan waging a full-on guerrilla campaign against the Helghast and trying to hold out until Vekta or Earth sent another fleet in to rescue them. Ooooonly to find out in rapid succession that 1) Earth strongarmed Vekta into signing an armistice with Helghan, 2) the ISA/UCA/EarthGov would not be sending any rescue or recovery mission to Helghan to extract the remnants of Battle Group Mandrake, 3) every ISA soldier on Helghan has now been officially classified as prisoners of war, and 4) oh yeah gently caress you Stahl found out where they were hiding and had his PMC assault the base and now Sev and Narville have been captured and are on their way to Sathl Arms Deep South so that Stahl can parade them in front of a camera and execute them while all of Helghan watches.   We begin this chapter inbound to Stahl Arms Deep South, which, as you can imagine by all the ice and snow (and by the intro level), is situated somewhere close to the southern pole of Helghan, a far cry away from Phyrrus City and the Kaznan Jungle. This is where Killzone 3 really starts unfolding its varied environments and opening up its colour pallet a little more than the previous games did. Also, take note of the namedrop in this little intro bit, we’ll be seeing Vigilant Base itself up close and personal in the next video.  Sev has been taken on a separate transport to Vigilant from Narville. You can see we’re slowly filling in the gap of the “how did we get here?” puzzle the game opened with.  Though for some reason Sev starts running his mouth off trying to rile up the two Helgoons keeping watch over him on the Vulture, prompting one to even try taking a swing at him by bringing up Visari’s death. And if there’s one man alive who knows exactly how Scolar Visari died—aside from Rico—it’s Tomas Sevchenko.  But if it seems like this is wildly out of character for Sev to be acting like, well, Rico, fret not. It’s all a ploy. Remember, Sev isn’t your average ISA grunt, he’s a smarter blend of bean. We've already established many times over that he's a clever, level-headed voice of reason in the swirling tempest of insanity around him. He's able to talk sense into Rico in his darker moments. He's able to make Narville confront the moral cost of his actions, even if turning a blind eye to them in the moment is the tactically sounder solution. He was able to stand face-to-face with Scolar Visari as the man came fundementally unhinged in front of him trying to break him and calmly told him he was going to rot in prison for what he'd done... ignore that whole "AND THEN RICO SHOT HIM" part. My point is: Sev has a plan already worked out in his head. And it starts with riling up his captors verbally to throw them off guard. Whipping his rhetorical dick out and taking a nice long piss on Visari and everything he stood for? Eh, that’s a personal bonus for Sev at this point.  Eventually, Sev gets his wish and the Helgoon does haul off and punch him for talking poo poo about Visari, allowing Sev to grab the soldier’s knife and jack him in the leg with it.  Unfortunately, because these are Helghast soldiers, they just kind of… shake off getting stabbed. Because they can.  But Sev keeps pushing and when the trooper goes to stab him back, well—HOLY poo poo WHAT  The Helgoon is ripped clean out of the Vulture—along with the door—by the harpoon tow cable. …Is this it? Is this a Shakespeare?  No, no it’s not Shakespeare, it’s just Rico with the save.  Rico will never not be a massive shithead, but he does know how to stage a rescue.  Or maybe not.  Or maybe yes. Well, here we go, after six months and one level, Sev and Rico are finally reunited, and it feels so… good? Can anything associated with Rico be classified as good? Anyway, Rico and his collection of ISA remnants had been working their way down here to the south during the six month interlude between Chapters 3 and 4. His team caught word that Stahl had been bringing ISA POWs down to Deep South for unspecified purposes and he brought his team here to investigate it. Because Jammer had tapped into the Helghast comms network, they were able to pinpoint the Vulture convoy taking Sev to Stahl Arms Deep South because the Helghast just wouldn’t shut the gently caress up about how they’d captured “Visari’s killers” out on wide open channels for anyone to hear it. And I guess we can just assume that Rico was smart enough to know that Stahl hadn’t captured him, so then by extension that would mean he must have at least Sev, right?  And of course, because Rico still has a bug up his rear end about Narville, he takes any excuse he can get to cut the captain loose and book it back to base. Sev, however, isn’t having any of that and has to goad Rico into following the remaining Vulture to Stahl Arms Deep South to save him.  But to his credit, Rico relents and now we’re off to storm both Vigilant Base and Stahl Arms Deep South to save the last link in the ISA chain of command on Helghan.  Most of this mission is going to be spent hopping from ocean rig to ocean rig. As you can see by the blue piping, the area outlying Vigilant and Stahl Arms DS is dotted with Petrusite extraction platforms all linked up to a central refinery complex further along the ice flow. The Petrusite is funneled to the refinery through massive pipelines that are cooled with seawater.  Said refinery. This is where the bulk of this chapter is going to be playing out.  Again, we get to see Killzone 3 really indulging itself with its colour pallet here. In addition to the harsh white with the snow, we also get to see more pinks and blues in this level than we do elsewhere in the game, maybe even the whole franchise outside of Shadow Fall.  In addition to being a refinery complex, the run up to Vigilant and Deep South is also an ad hoc breakers yard. As you’ll see in the video, the entire area is clogged with the hulks of old tanker ships that have been just frozen in place by massive glaciers and the Helghast have seemingly built the rigs right out from the roots of their wrecks. It really shows off how unrelentingly hostile the entire Helghan ecosystem is. Everything on this planet wants to crush and kill and rend every last bastion of life on it in the most brutalistic way possible. It hammers home the idea that there is just nowhere you can go on this planet for safe haven.  This stage also introduces us to what was surely—alongside the PlayStation Move and 3DTV compatibility features—the core element of Killzone 3’s marketing campaign: the StA-X6 Jetpack. The first official gameplay trailer for Killzone 3 is curbed from Icy Incursion and heavily features the jetpack in it.  You might remember we briefly encountered a prototype version of the StA-X6 in Killzone: Liberation. Which means that…  Yep!   The back half of this part of Chapter 5 is an extended jumping puzzle of sorts once we get access to the jetpack itself. Just like the jetpack in Liberation, the StA-X6 functions as a rife/machine gun as far as the game is concerned. When equipped, it takes up the rifle slot in your weapon inventory and has infinite ammo, though you can only fire its built in assault rifle for a limited time before it overheats. The segmented display on the left handle there shows your boost fuel. You have two modes of movement, vertical and horizontal. You get three vertical thrusts—denoted in orange—and two horizontal thrusts—in white—before the jetpack runs out of power and has to recharge for a few moments. This is basically prime schmuck bait. I’m not trying to excuse my meltdown in this level, but there are a lot of jumps around the rigs that look doable, but actually aren’t, and the only way you’re able to gauge whether they are or not are to actually take the leap and find out. And while the game is generous about respawns, it doesn’t do you folks much good who guessed in this dumb death counter that we thought up post-facto after we’d recorded everything.  At the end of the video there’s a set piece on the refinery itself where you need to blow the thing up using timed charges.  And I love the utterly low tech solution to this problem. They just literally duct taped the timer to the standard remote detonator charge and hotwired it to the detonation circuit. It’s like a special all-warcrimes episode of the Red Green Show. “If the women don’t find you handsome, they’ll at least find you… on trial for making improvised explosive devices.” Still, I love how detail and story conscious Guerrilla Games is when it comes to things like this. They didn’t have to make a unique model for the dem charges for this mission, but they went and did it anyway. After suffering through the work of lazy-rear end devs like Level-5, it warms my heart to know that studios like Guerilla and Project Aces exist who actually put hard work into the little details of their games instead of just  ing out on them.Moreover, this helps to show just how far up poo poo creek Rico, Sev, Jammer, and co. are that they’ve had to scrape materials together with literal wire and duct tape in order to mount something resembling a credible resistance to the Helghast. Visual storytelling!  With the Petrusite refinery blown into the drink behind us, we then move on to Vigilant Base itself, which we will be covering in the back half of Chapter 5 in the next video.  /   StA-X6 Jetpack An upgraded version of the SL-06 jetpack commissioned from Stahl Arms by General Armin Metrac. The StA-X6 features a suite of upgrades gleaned from both the SL-06’s combat trials during the siege of Southern Vekta, and from the successful implementation of the ATAC drone platform during the invasion of Helghan. The StA-X6 incorporates a similar thruster and stabilizer system to that of the ATAC’s, and features a modified version of the StA-3 Stova LMG mounted on its right control arm.   Air Trooper The Helghast Air Troopers return in this mission from Killzone: Liberation. Though unlike in Liberation, where they were a one-off thing for that part of that particular chapter, we haven’t seen the last of the Air Troopers in Killzone 3 quite yet. Really, the jetpack enemies in this game exist for one reason: creating hilarious ragdolls as you damage their jetpacks and they go careening into things in hilarious fashion ultimately ending in an explosion. The game doesn’t send them at you in choking waves like it does other enemies, though it will usually send one or two in as a supplement to waves of normal Helghast grunts to keep the combat interesting.  And here is some more artwork to round out the “Icy Incursion” part of this chapter before we move on to Vigilant Base. 
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Aug 29, 2016 09:32
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Still the thing I notice and like the most is the radio banter that occurs on a level below what Sev and Rico usually says. It's so good and I wish more games did that for flavour sake. Another prop to Project Aces then as well.
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Aug 29, 2016 13:59
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Some interesting differences in that trailer you posted, crow. It's always interesting to see how things changed from development to the final product. For one, Sev is seen hiking up the snowy cliff as the Dropships fly by instead of a random Helgoon. Rico then says something early on about how "he's bringing POWs down here", so I wonder if originally Sev was meant to go back for Rico so the two could go on to rescue Narville once he was captured. It also appears that Guerrilla might have been planning to include a sweet as heck side kick attack to stun enemies. Kinda wish that one stuck around. Otherwise, it looks more or less like the Chapter 5 we wound up getting, including the back half of that trailer which we will see in the next video.
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Aug 29, 2016 20:56
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As I said earlier. ISA and Vekta simply never stood a single chance. From the start of the war. ISA had been plagued with internal treachery and fighting an enemy who is politically more motivated and actually dealt with their dissent. If KZ1 is proof. It is Vekta has no loyal military brass at all. With Templar dead the war was basically over. There was simply no way the ISA can win and Sev and Narville bear the brunt of the shotstorm.
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Sep 21, 2016 10:13
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"Fighting a losing battle" is pretty much Killzone's MO plot-wise. Personally I kinda like that, because the games so far haven't really ever had the characters give in to the futility of it all (well except for Sevchenko at the end of 2 but that's mostly because of Rico's actions). Our boys are soldiers, and so they keep fighting, even if they pretty much can't win the war against the higs at this point.
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Sep 21, 2016 10:20
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A few of the ISA's big wins on Helghan have been thanks to the intervention of PMCs hired to do their dirty work  Specifically, an Earth PMC.Anyways, my Casual Thread LPs are done (Turok: Dinosaur Hunter Remastered, Off-World Interceptor Extreme), so I am back to focussing all my energies on Killzone 3. Next update is recorded and I'm currently editing the commentary.
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Sep 21, 2016 15:24
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Blind Sally posted:A few of the ISA's big wins on Helghan have been thanks to the intervention of PMCs hired to do their dirty work Meanwhile Helghast is united enough to not sell each other out. So why did Vekta's elite sold their own out? Is it proof that Vekta never could win the war in the first place?
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Sep 21, 2016 19:24
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gyrobot posted:Meanwhile Helghast is united enough to not sell each other out. So why did Vekta's elite sold their own out? Is it proof that Vekta never could win the war in the first place? I think it's proof that Vekta isn't as pure and noble as would be expected from the player-faction in a game like this. The Helghast are just as corrupt, but their society is set up in such a way that corruption is encouraged - how else do you explain a guy like Stahl (who is not an elected official, but a businessman) being so involved with the senate?
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Sep 21, 2016 19:52
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Apep727 posted:I think it's proof that Vekta isn't as pure and noble as would be expected from the player-faction in a game like this. The Helghast are just as corrupt, but their society is set up in such a way that corruption is encouraged - how else do you explain a guy like Stahl (who is not an elected official, but a businessman) being so involved with the senate? Yeah, this. The ISA are not unified, but neither are the Helghast. Once free of Visari's sheer force of personality, the petty Helghast "warlords" who were once held under his heel come bubbling to the surface willing to destroy each other to gain power. The ISA never had a "Visari" figure to round up such disparate personalities, so corruption was a lot more obvious and immediate, what with Stratson and Adams. Reminder, the most comparatively noble faction in the Killzone series has been EarthGov and the lone Earth-human character, loving Aran Danner the PMC merc, whereas both the ISA and the Helghast have been committing war crimes left, right, and centre--and that's a conscious story-telling choice from Guerrilla's part. No black and whites, lots of shades of grey. Despite playing as the ISA, you shouldn't necessarily feel like the hero.
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Sep 22, 2016 02:11
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Blind Sally posted:Reminder, the most comparatively noble faction in the Killzone series has been EarthGov And even then, that's a hilariously lovely metric, because like we went over in the Killzone 2/Liberation thread Earth is basically the Capitol of Panem in terms of its exploration of its colonies for resources and looming-over-shoulder-with-big-stick style imperial rule.
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Sep 22, 2016 02:21
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nine-gear crow posted:And even then, that's a hilariously lovely metric, because like we went over in the Killzone 2/Liberation thread Earth is basically the Capitol of Panem in terms of its exploration of its colonies for resources and looming-over-shoulder-with-big-stick style imperial rule. As I see it Killzone is like a hypothetical war between Australia and New Zealand. Helgan is Australia, a mineral rich death world run by Nazis, while the ISA is New Zealand, a much more habitable environment, but one populated by people just as bad. Worse is you consider Rico. While Earth is Britain and doesn't care much as long as it's resource shipments keep coming in. Britain looks better because it isn't fighting and committing war crimes, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't if given the chance.
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Sep 22, 2016 21:31
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  We begin the second half of Chapter 5 right where we left off, with Rico’s Raiders making landfall at the Providence Bay harbor entrance to Vigilant Base.  True to form, Rico is the first one off the first Intruder and the tip of the spear for the assault.  However, the Helghast unveil a brand new weapon against the ISA remnant, the W.A.S.P. Multi-Missile Launcher.  With frankly devastating results.  A few volleys of W.A.S.P. fire basically halts the ISA push into Vigilant in its tracks, taking out a good number of Intruders and forcing the remainder to wave off until the landing zone is clear.  What few ISA troops made it ashore to Providence get caught in a shooting gallery, as the Helghast turn their anti-air bunkers on the advancing troops.   Rico quickly drills down to the root of the problem.  And in the meanwhile, we finally get to see what has turned this landing into a shitshow up close and personal.  From their elevated posts above the dock wall, the W.A.S.P. gunners have near impunity with which to frag the ISA troops.  As seen here.  And of course, we see Sev’s solution to this problem: get a W.A.S.P. of his own and turn the tables on the Helghast with it.  Which is basically what he does. The interesting thing about the Providence Bay set piece is that it’s a twist on the press assault we’ve already seen across both Killzone 3 and Killzone 2, such as in Salamun Bridge and the highway out of Phyrrus City. In this instance, we’re on overwatch duty providing support as our ISA regulars move up through the jetty. There are four principle targets you need to destroy in order to clear the way into Vigilant Base itself: two gun nests, an Overlord Dropship, and a hovertank. As you clear each one, the ISA troops will push up closer and closer to the blast doors at the end of the harbor. Sticking to the high ground isn’t essential for this part of the chapter, but it will improve your chances of survival an awful lot compared to Rambo’ing out on ground level, even if you do have the W.A.S.P. at your disposal now. Of course, you’re softly encouraged by Guerrilla to stick to the overwatch posts by the general level design. There’s next to no cover on the ground for you to utilize effectively and ammo crates are few and far between, whereas up above you’re practically tripping over them.  But when that’s all done and dealt with, the way into Vigilant Base itself is clear and open and we get a brief moment of hammering the RICO REDEMPTIVE ARC button one more time.  As if it wasn’t readily apparent from their last few interactions, this sequence really hits home that Jammer has effectively become Rico’s Number Two and replacement Sev in the six months since Phyrrus Evac and now. While she doesn’t quite reach Garza or even Natko-levels of feeling like “part of the team,” we can at least see that Rico has taken her under his wing and actually helped her flourish as a soldier whereas under the regular ISA command she was just another replaceable cog, someone who Narville didn’t even hesitate to cut loose when saving her became tactically inviable.  Speaking of Narville, Rico orders the remaining Raiders to break off and go after the rest of Avenger Convoy who got captured by Stahl. While he might have been hesitant to go into this rescue mission, he’s all in now, and his rationale for it is surprisingly mature. The Raiders pitch a fit, but Rico stands by his order. The Rico Redemption Train steams ever onward, and this is probably the only time that it doesn’t ring hollow… mostly because there’s no one around who will actively challenge Rico’s authority and his claiming of the moral high ground. Though this is, I will concede, one of the few times that Rico is unambiguously right in his choices and orders in Killzone. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.  Rico basically understands that storming Stahl Arms Deep South is a suicide mission, and he makes no bones about it. He orders everyone but Sev (and two ISA mooks whom we never see again) to head back and work on getting Narville’s men to safety, praising Jammer’s work one final time and giving her a parting pat on the shoulder like any good commander should. Again, I think this is meant to show off how much Rico has grown as a person and a commander in the six months we’ve missed, but it still comes across as Guerrilla desperately trying to reel his characterization back in from “murderous, hair-trigger psychopath” and somewhat wildly overcorrecting to the point where just having him act like a normal human being all of the sudden comes across as incredibly jarring.  Anyway, we come at long last to the final stretch of Chapter 5, Vigilant Base itself. That little tunnel the cutscene took place in is effectively your last rest area for the chapter. There’s a weapons rack stocked with W.A.S.P.s there for the taking and an ammo crate to refill your stocks with because the push up the mountainside is going to be a hard one.  Over all, for this stretch, I’m reminding of the runup to the catapult base in Chapter 10 of Killzone 1. There’s a similar aesthetic/gameplay flow to this section, and I think that was done intentionally on Guerrilla’s part.  At the top of the hill is the actual base of Vigilant Base. Clearing out this building will clear the chapter and allow us to move on to Stahl Arms Deep South and our rendezvous with the beginning of Killzone 3 at long last.  With the landing platform for the cablecar to SADS clear, Sev and Rico take up flanking positions, because, well…   We’ve got company.  A pair of Helgoons from Stahl Arms Deep South itself arrive to inspect what the unholy gently caress has just happened down here at Vigilant and why everyone’s suddenly gone very quiet.  Of course, while these guys may be part of Stahl’s elite private military, that doesn’t mean they’re not idiots, so Sev and Rico get the jump on them and cave their naturally irradiated faces in with some brutal efficiency.  God drat   Yep, now THERE’S the Rico I remember.  And of course Rico gets a sassy one-liner that our poor dead Helgoons will never hear on account of them both being dead.  Just then, the operator at Vigilant calls in to the two dead Helghast mooks over the radio, and… wait… “Argus 2”? Hmmm. Where have we heard that squad name before?  Sev, being the smart cookie he is, picks up one of the dead Helghast’s masks and does his best Helghan accent impression in order to fool Vigilant Dispatch into thinking he’s one of the recently deceased members of Argus 2 and giving a surprisingly convincing Han Solo-esque “Everything’s fine here. How are you guys?” report.  Though he takes things a step further than just talking like a Helghast grunt, much to Rico’s shock and horror. We hear some clothing rustling sounds in the background, and by the time we cut back to Sev—  Bam. This is it. We have solved the mystery of “how did we get here?” When we catch up with Sev and Rico incognito as Argus 2, we will, in no uncertain terms, be revisiting the intro to Killzone 3 beat-for-beat. But that’s all still to come. And now, a note on the W.A.S.P.:  StA-X3 W.A.S.P. Launcher The back half of Icy Incursion introduces us to the second of the game’s four heavy weapons: the WASP. We’ve already seen the Scylla chaingun get some judicious use up till now, and the Boltgun from Killzone 2 will be making its return in the near future. The fourth and final heavy weapon will be getting a starring role in the next chapter, and we’ve already glimpsed it earlier in-game, as a matter of fact, but let’s not dwell that right now.  The StA-X3 W.A.S.P. Launcher is a rocket-propelled autonomous target-seeking rocket launcher/mortar weapon. The WASP has two fire modes to it. The primary fire mode launches a burst of missiles at a soft locked target, using roughly half a clip per shot. The secondary fire mode is the mortar mode, which allows you to hard lock on to a single target—usually a vehicle—and launch a single, devastatingly powerful shot at it that usually scores a one-hit-kill if it lands.   The WASP has two PSN Trophies attached to it, both of which can be earned here in the Vigilant Base segment of Icy Incursion. Killing a single Helghast soldier with the secondary fire mortar mode nets the trophy “Excessive Force,” and killing 5 Helghast with the mortar shot earns the trophy “Spread the Love.”  The acronym “W.A.S.P.” has no official explanation. No one knows what WASP stands for. We come up with our own explanation for it in the video, but feel free to come up with one on your own. Whoever comes up with the best WASP acronym will receive a forums upgrade of their choosing paid for by guest commentator Jobbo_Fett. The X in the numerical designation of the StA-X3 denotes an experimental Stahl Arms weapon, as we’ve seen with the Jetpack already. I don’t exactly know what it says that for an “experimental” weapon, they’re just absolutely littered across Vigilant, but there you go. Actually, I kind of do. You don’t really see any X weaponry outside of the immediate vicinity of Stahl Arms Deep South, so it makes a kind of sense that Stahl is basically hoarding all his best/prototype weaponry for himself and his private army to use first before handing them over to the rest of the Helghast military. And of course it would be right up Jorhan Stahl’s alley to be a dick and foist the unstable prototypes that would be prone to horrific malfunctions on his own men so he could laugh as they killed themselves with them. Because Stahl is a prick. Concept work of Providence Harbor  The W.A.S.P. Launcher 
nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Sep 26, 2016 |
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Sep 26, 2016 07:41
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I think you'll find that what happened at 8:45 is called being Isaac Clarke'd. Unfortunately, Sev has not experienced sufficient LP Convergence to survive and continue fighting in such a condition.nine-gear crow posted:Again, I think this is meant to show off how much Rico has grown as a person and a commander in the six months we’ve missed, but it still comes across as Guerrilla desperately trying to reel his characterization back in from “murderous, hair-trigger psychopath” and somewhat wildly overcorrecting to the point where just having him act like a normal human being all of the sudden comes across as incredibly jarring. Now imagine this: Sad Dad Rico. Sev has so many questions
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Sep 26, 2016 11:16
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I'm not sure what's worse in this case, the level being dickish with the tanks the second part or crow's playstyle.
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Sep 26, 2016 13:16
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WASP clearly stand for "We Are Spreading Peace".
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Sep 26, 2016 14:45
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Crow, this is really well written and entertaining. You should be proud of yourself; you're very talented!
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Sep 26, 2016 16:42
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W.A.S.P. Winter Approaches Silent Protagonist Weaponized Anger Sent Posthaste Wagner's Avant-garde Silent Performance (Silent but Deadly)
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Sep 26, 2016 17:14
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Weighty Angry Spite Puker
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Sep 26, 2016 17:26
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They must have known Rico's team was coming as their new weapon is inspired by him "What A Stupid Plan"
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Sep 26, 2016 17:43
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Da_Higg posted:They must have known Rico's team was coming as their new weapon is inspired by him "What A Stupid Plan" Ding ding ding we have a winner
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Sep 26, 2016 17:45
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