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So it begins.
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Jun 18, 2016 20:47
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Also just another little note on the Senate, because it'll be a couple of updates before we see them again. I'd gone back and forth on how to portray them in their character potrait, because with the exception of two specific senators, who's specific deals we'll touch one when they become plot-relevant, the Helghan Senate is primarily meant to be viewed as a singular entity. I kind of struggled on how to portray them without throwing too much focus on any one individual senator, leading to some rather absurdist takes on the whole thing, which I kind of felt was appropriate for an entity as inherently ridiculous as the Helghan Senate: There was even an animated .gif version that spun them all around like a senate pinwheel, but I seem to have lost it, sadly.
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Jun 19, 2016 02:00
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Marshal Radisic posted:After working my way through the LPs, I'm wondering if the the gameplay and the storytelling of the Killzone series are in conflict. I mean, you guys have pulled out a lot of associations and themes from the art design and the cutscenes...but games 2 and 3 have you in a Call of Duty mode of run-run-run-shoot-shoot-shoot that keeps the player more focused on simply surviving rather than paying attention to the environment and story, and a lot of what you've guys have talked about regarding the backstory of the conflict comes from outside sources. I'm not entirely sure it could be remedied while keeping the gameplay the same; in this sort of game, diary-reading would just kill the tempo. Like we mentioned in the first game, KZ2 and 3's gameplay became a lot more CoD-esque as part of an overcorrection to the complaints leveled against the first Killzone's somewhat turgid pace and stiff gameplay. Killzone: Shadow Fall does a lot better job of inserting lore directly into the game itself via audio log and intel collectables, but I'd hesitate to call the ancillary information "outside" sources, seeing as how it all comes straight from Guerrilla in one way or another. I do see your point though, and it will be interesting to revisit this if/when we get around to doing Shadow Fall itself. quote:I'm tempted to say something like Killzone's friendly rival Resistance might be a better fit; the player is a lone character behind enemy lines, so there's an excuse not to be in firefights all the time and to search nooks and crannies. (Speaking of which, Resistance: Fall of Man is something that needs a decent LP. There's weird stuff going on with the story in that one.)  quote:The other thing I'm wondering is...why was Natko written out of the story after Killzone 2? As you guys pointed out, he's introduced as an rear end, but when the chips are down he's willing to rise to the occasion. Could they not get the voice actor (though I don't see why that would stop them), or was it something else? I'm not aware of any official statements on exactly why Natko was excised from single player (he's present in co-op as the Player 2 character, however; relegated to becoming Killzone 3's version of Liberation's Hakha), though I have a personal theory on that. Thematically speaking, Killzone 2 was about Rico's squad, specifically about Rico's squad falling apart under his godawful leadership. Killzone 3, meanwhile, is a more interpersonal game. It's all about direct binary relationships; Sev and Rico, Sev and Narville, Rico and Narville, Narville and Hooper, Rico and Jammer, Stahl and Orlock, etc. Throwing in Natko adds an unneeded third wheel into a lot of those relationships. The first third of the game is mostly focused on Sev and Rico figuring out how the hell they're going to live with one another in the wake of Rico ventilating Visari, and the lingering tension that one moment of frustrated stupidity leaves on their relationship, no matter how much Sev protests he's forgiven Rico. And honestly, Natko really didn't offer much to the situation beyond unhelpful smartass comments and being an extra gun. He was always an outsider in the group. The strongest relationships were always between Sev and Garza, who were close friends and showed it often over the course of KZ2, and between Sev and Rico, where Sev slowly became the check to Rico's unhinging anger, eventually supplanting him in all but name as squad leader, as seen in the final confrontation with Visari. So effectively from a narrative standpoint, there's just no room for Natko in this situation anymore. quote:It's sort of weird, isn't it? We've got Admiral Orlock with the mustache, and we've got Jorhan Stahl with the name. I wonder if Guerilla is just pilfering the historical library for associations to totalitarianism, or if there's something more is going to be developed. It's both, but that's all I'll say about it for now. When we get a better look at the Senate in a couple of updates, you'll see the "Guerilla pilfering the historical library of fascist, communist, and totalitarian history" on better display, as several of the senators are modeled after Adolf Hitler, one is a dead ringer for Rudolf Hess, and two more are modeled after Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Jun 19, 2016 |
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Jun 19, 2016 05:33
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Blind Sally posted:What the heck is a "Zeon"? Gundam bullshit.
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Jun 19, 2016 20:03
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Blind Sally posted:Wait, what? Where? That's just straight up pulled from the concept artist's website. It's done up a one-sheet style that a few artists on DeviantArt and the like have used for depictions of planes from Ace Combat and other similar things.
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Jun 20, 2016 05:24
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VolticSurge posted:Well,now I want a game about Cormorant Squadron's  wedidthatonealready
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Jun 20, 2016 05:31
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I have three words for anyone thinking of lowballing this contest: "Kaznan Jungle Meltdown"  Get. loving. IN.
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Jun 28, 2016 09:29
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 WHICH OF YOU FUCKERS VOTED FOR SEV 
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Jul 1, 2016 01:03
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I'd say that's enough to call the vote then. Sad Meme Hooper is our chosen portrait. Now we just need to wait for Sally's self-inflicted probation to expire.
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Jul 1, 2016 02:55
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Also, I do hope you're all watching the commentary-less single player videos, for which I apologize there being no commentary for because Blind Sally is  I might do a solo commentary run at them or drag in CJacobs or some else from my Ace Combat commentary pool just to have a commentary version of them too if I get some free time soon.
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Jul 1, 2016 07:04
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#hexit
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Jul 1, 2016 14:49
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Blind Sally posted:one more dank Killzone meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4-En48Rkmk killzone.mov
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Jul 4, 2016 01:32
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FoolyCharged posted:I love how 90% of the horrible poo poo in that video is all Rico. Yeah. I think the only things you can't pin directly on Rico are Templar and Evelyn's deaths and Visari detonating Red Dust, though I'm sure if you were keen enough to you could work Rico into the equation.
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Jul 4, 2016 02:59
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SgtSteel91 posted:Doesn't Rico unknowingly help the Helgast get the Red Dust Bomb in the first place? Stratson gave Metrac and Cobar Red Dust shortly before Templar, Rico, and Hallucinatory Hakha arrived in Rayhoven. He just tried to pin it on Rico by sending him on that double blind covert ops mission into Metrac's camp and then burning him once Rico had feigned his defection. At most you could say that Rico unknowingly helped Metrac smuggle Red Dust off of Vekta, but at that time it was still useless to the Helghast because they didn't get the detonation codes out of Evelyn, nor any information they could use to reverse engineer the detonation trigger. But I can definitely see how the case can be made.
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Jul 4, 2016 03:35
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So we just recorded the alternate Single Player commentary for the first third of the game. So Missions 1 and 2 should be up either later tonight or tomorrow, so soon you too can experience the wonder that is "a solid minute of Jobbo and Argate belching before we start the video"
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Jul 6, 2016 03:34
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Presented against my better judgement and the will of Blind Sally, in loving memory of CJacobs, and in defiance of peace and sanity, I give to you here and now, Let Us Playeth Killzone the 3rd, the Alternate Reading. Joining me for the duration of these first three chapters are visiting scholars ChaosArgate and Jobbo_Fett.    I [Crow] have been progressively dragging ChaosArgate closer and closer into my orbit of insanity via Ace Combat and now Killzone, and he has, up till now, been a rather good sport about it. Argate has tackled LPs of (among other things), Saints Row IV, No More Heroes 1 & 2, Sleeping Dogs (with Jobbo), and the Restless Leg Syndrome-curingly* amazing Devil's Third (with Jobbo and my LP nemesis Artix). Jobbo_Fett, meanwhile is no stranger to the Killzone LP threads. In addition to joining Argate for Devils Third, Sleeping Dogs and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, he also helmed an LP of 007 Legends with Argate, and is currently running LPs of Panzer Corps and  )* NOTE: Watching the Devil's Third LP will not cure Restless Leg Syndrome. Please consult a doctor before viewing.
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Jul 6, 2016 08:22
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Well in light of the co-op portion of the game coming to a close, I will try to get the alternate single player videos with Jobbo and Argate up later tonight as well.
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Jul 22, 2016 20:40
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Apep727 posted:Just want to say, I love that one or two of the guys on the Helghast senate have the giant muttonchops/mustache look going on. I can't for the life of me remember what that's called, but I just love it. That, and the one guy with the oxygen-tank nose plug. Well, like I said in my section in the intro post, you can tell which senator favors which of our two claimants to the Helghan throne through their reactions to certain events. Senator "Combover John McCain" is in Stahl's camp (or Stahl's pocket, I should say, more on that later), while Senator "HitlerVape" as I've come to call him, is clearly Orlock's man. The rest of the Senate are easily swayed wildcards. But good on you for catching that, it's gonna be important to an extent in the relative future.
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Jul 23, 2016 03:49
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As promised (partly):
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Jul 23, 2016 05:05
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I stand by my assertion that Stahl is the Helghast Donald Trump  
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Jul 23, 2016 05:27
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Apep727 posted:Back to the game. I think I have a new Most Interesting Senator. Forget Sen.s Creepy Pedo and Hitler-Vape, I want to know more about the random guy with the actual Hitler-stache. I mean, how ballsy is this guy? Every other Helghast is tip-toeing around the Nazi imagery, but this guys just says "gently caress it" and goes all-in. 
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Aug 5, 2016 21:48
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Jobbo_Fett posted:"If I LP'ed It: The True Blind Sally Story" Jobbo_Fett: The Worst at Audio
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Aug 5, 2016 23:15
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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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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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 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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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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  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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Safetyland posted:Crow, this is really well written and entertaining. You should be proud of yourself; you're very talented! I am going to print this out, tack it to my wall and look at it any time I get depressed or feel like a hack whenever I write anything. Thank you
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Sep 26, 2016 21:43
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Mraagvpeine posted:If you don't mind me asking, how many of Shakespeare's plays have you guys made references to over the course of these games? Off the top of my head:
nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Sep 27, 2016 |
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Sep 27, 2016 23:27
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Let's also not forget the LP Archive blurbs for each game: http://lparchive.org/blurbs/Killzone/ http://lparchive.org/blurbs/Killzone-Liberation/ http://lparchive.org/blurbs/Killzone-2/ I'm especially proud of KZ2's because that is one of the most boss rear end lines in Titus Andronicus, hell, probably even all in Shakespeare's works 
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Sep 27, 2016 23:38
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It's been a long while in coming, but it's finally here: the last of the single player Killzone 3 videos. Step back all those months to Chapter 3 and round out our last few moments in the Natko-less true timeline with ChaosArgate and Jobbo_Fett before we jump ahead to our first moment of actual progression in the Killzone 3 timeline with Stahl Arms Infiltration in Chapter 6. Also I would say "Apologies to Orlock for getting completely covered over by the text now" in this chapter slice, but... nah, gently caress it, it's more thematically appropriate that Orlock gets buried under bullshit and only Stahl remains visible
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Oct 3, 2016 06:31
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RareAcumen posted:So basically, the updates follow in order as long as Blind Sally and Nine-gear Crow are in them but other ones are just bonus versions that have more people and that's why they're showing up just now-ish? Okay, I think I got it. Yes. Going forward, the updates from this point forward are doing to have only two videos attached to them, the regular commentary version and the no commentary version. Chapters 1 through 3 have three videos: the co-op video (which can be take as the "main" video of that update), the single player video, and the no commentary version of the single player video. From Chapter 4-onward there are no more co-op videos because we're running under the conceit that "lol natko died during the Pyhrrus evac". The single player videos are not required viewing for the LP, they're just an alternate take on ground that's already been covered. The reason they came out at their sporadic pace was that they were recorded long after the three co-op videos, and then I got caught up in finishing Ace Combat 2/starting Ace Combat 04 and got distracted.
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Oct 9, 2016 01:58
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Apep727 posted:Okay, so if Stahl is Trump, Orlock is Hillary, and random Stahl officer is Pence (and Sen. Hitler-vape is probably Kaine), who is Bernie in this analogy? No, no amount of thought is "too much." Also yeah Sen. Pedocombover has a very Pence-y look to him, now that I think about it. As for who is Bernie? Well, it's obvious that Templar was Bernie: a bright and inspiring figure and hero to a younger generation who had categorically the best (if somewhat implausible) ideas, who ultimately failed because for all his high-minded rhetoric, he was actually kind of a lovely campaigner. Plus, Templar also felt the bern... of the New Sun's reactor exploding in a thermonuclear fireball.  I'll show myself out.
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Oct 17, 2016 03:32
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Jobbo_Fett posted:You know, putting Haka in the top 5 isn't too hard when there are only 9 or so characters in the entire series. For the record, the number of named Killzone characters we've met in order of appearance (for context, female characters will have an F by their name):
Italicized names are deceased as of the time of this update. Characters with names in brackets are either names we've made up for characters or ones that appear in Killzone: Mercenary.
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Oct 17, 2016 04:26
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CJacobs posted:That's Corporal Billinghurst to you! Technically it's Staff Sargent Billinghurst now, because you get a posthumous two-rank promotion when you die in combat
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Oct 17, 2016 04:32
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NEXT!
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Oct 17, 2016 04:49
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Blind Sally posted:Radec's most interesting character conflict Really, not the smouldering rivalry he and Templar had throughout Killzone 2 of them being the principle representatives of their respective governments on the field of battle which ultimately came to a head aboard the New Sun when Radec popped about a dozen holes in Templar and then shot Evelyn just because he's a prick?
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Oct 17, 2016 06:42
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It's not exactly indicative of anything concrete, but several of the senators are decked out in medals. That might imply they were in the military in some capacity--probably ceremonial posts or fast tracked to flag officer positions through money or connections like Metrac was. They could also be meaningless decorations for the purpose creating the air of authority, like a lot of other dictatorships tend to deck their leadership out in. Either way it's a moot point now, as now that they've named Orlock Autarch, their role in the narrative is figuratively and literally over. I might be wrong here, but I think we've seen and heard the last of the Senate as of this update. It's all Stahl and Orlock from here on out.
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Oct 19, 2016 23:15
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Just a slight heads up for those who are interested while Sally and I work on the video/post for Scapyard Shortcut. This weekend, I will be co-hosting several blocks of the Team Frog Nugget Pre-Halloween Extra Life 24 Hour Charity Stream! Join me and fellow LPers Faerie Fortune, ChaosArgate, poorlywrittennovel, FPzero, Artix, liquidypoo, JamieTheD, Lunethex, Tyty, Blastinus, Mysticblade, Captain Fargle, Ryushikaze, Fizzicist and MANY MORE for 24 hours of stupidass video games in support of Extra Life, a charity which helps sick children by purchasing video games and other entertainment to help them resume a sense of normalcy while staying in the hospital. The stream begins at  12:00 PM EST (9:00 AM PST) on Saturday, October 29th, 2016 and will run through to 12:00 PM EST on Sunday, October 30th. You can check out the action on our Hitbox account, including donation information, donation incentives, raffle prizes, and much more.Last time around, we raised $950, and this time we're hoping to go for $1500. See you there!
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Oct 27, 2016 23:58
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  &  We are joined today for this chapter of Killzone 3 by Lazyfire and Kadorhal, who was gracious enough to step in at the last minute to cover for CJacobs, who in turn had volunteered to cover for Blind Sally after he was unable to record that day, but was also unable to record that day as well. Lazyfire is currently LPing Call of Duty: Black Ops III, and is also currently along for "DoctorStrangelove's Wild Ride" aka the Doom (2016), Ultra-Violence Mode LP alongside Handuar and DA PLANET EARF. Kadorhal, meanwhile, is a frequent guest on Crow's Ace Combat LPs, in addition to LPing Postal 2: Paradise Lost. He's also a recurring guest on Lazyfire's multiplayer safari videos for his various FPS LPs, and is currently gearing up to LP Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. and H.A.W.X. 2 as companion pieces to Ace Combat. So after our insane snowmobile jump from the south pole to the desert outside of Phyrrus City, we catch up with our heroes overlooking the wasteland between the scrapyard and the space elevator facility.  The Avenger Convoy remnant has regrouped and is making its push to the space elevator. As you may remember from last time, they have become the last line of defense against Stahl basically murdering every last person on Earth with his irradiated petrusite weaponry. You can also see in this screenshot that the space elevator (on the left) is ringed with Arc Towers as an anti-personnel barrier. And the Arc Towers, as you’ll remember, were pretty big show stoppers when they showed up back in Killzone 2. So…  Sev quickly realizes things are going south when he catches a whiff of Ozone (O3, for our chemists in the audience), which, I have to say, has a particularly sharp smell to it and one that you don’t easily forget if you’ve ever smelled it before. Again, this shows just how sharp and worldly Sev is that he can readily identify Ozone—a substance not a lot of people encounter in their daily lives, all told—by smell alone. While Rico continues to be a absolute brick by claiming he doesn’t smell anything.  As the Arc Towers lining the perimeter of the space elevator fire up, their normal blue charge turns green in the irradiated desert, meaning…  Yep. Avenger Convoy has just wandering into a giant irradiated petrusite Arc Tower death trap. Because remember, when you think of Death Traps, think Stahl Arms, your #1 name in Death Traps!   Narville, having firsthand experience with all the wonderful horrors of IP weaponry thanks to Stahl’s little PR shitshow last chapter, is acutely aware of the danger he’s just walked his men into blindly and commands everyone to stop still. Now, this is just me talking here, but I don’t really know why irradiated petrusite energy has suddenly began working on Jurassic Park T-Rex rules here, but apparently if you stand really still and don’t flail about like a panicked dumbass, it can’t hurt you now all of the sudden. Really, this is just an excuse to build tension for our heroes.  As Avenger Convoy halts its progress, the wisps of irradiated petrusite energy sweep over the no man’s land ominously.  It’s a stalemate now. Nobody is going anywhere unless somebody can find a way to shut the perimeter towers off… or unless somebody panics.  And right on cue, somebody panics. Despite literally everyone around him yelling at him to keep calm, this poor faceless ISA grunt freaks the gently caress out as the energy wisps start twining towards him like ghostly fingers of death.  And he instantly wins the Biggest Goddamn Moron In This Game (…So Far) Award by leaping off the deck of the Intruder in a screaming fit…  And promptly exploding, taking out not just himself, but the Intruder, and everyone else on and in it, and several people around it for good measure.  Rico radios Jammer for an update, and she relays to him the grim news. They are turbofucked.  For his part, Rico is utterly despondent at the news, believing that literally every last ISA soldier on Helghan outside of him and Sev are now functionally dead  So what is Narville’s plan? Well, he’s going to send Killzone 3 MVP Cpl. Hooper in to slowly walk across no man’s land to the closest Arc Tower and try to manually hack it into shutting down the perimeter fence so that Avenger can press forward… and hopefully not explode in the process.  It’s a torturously slow, perilous exploit with a high probability of failure. Hooper would be better off if Narville had told him to go walk through a literal minefield instead.  But because Rico thinks he’s always right and Narville’s always wrong, he immediately takes issue with this plan, believing (and rightly so, surprisingly), that in the time it’s gonna take for Hooper to play a game of “Don’t Wake Daddy” with the perimeter towers and hotwire them into shutting down, Stahl’s fleet will have warped to Earth and we’ll have a right proper terracide on our hands.  It’s at this moment that the back half of Scrapyard Shortcut comes lumbering into frame: the mobile factory.  And suddenly Rico has a very VERY dumb plan.  Rather than take his suggestion to Narville, Rico merely end-runs him by contacting Jammer directly and orders her to grab a buggy and meet them at the edge of the scrapyard. They’re gonna hijack the factory.  So it’s at this point that we finally get to gameplay. We start out on the overlook above the perimeter fence. You can see the ring of irradiated petrusite energy stringing from Arc Tower to Arc Tower and the main space elevator facility in the center of it. We also start out this mission with the triple-barrel magnum pistol as our default weapon. Now, there’s a large selection of guns to choose from for this stage, but you would be remiss if you didn’t make a direct b-line for (and never look back from)…  The boltgun. Yes, making its triumphant return from Suljeva Village from Killzone 2, the mighty boltgun is back for this level and the next one. The boltgun basically trivialized Scrapyard Shortcut. There is one present on nearly every gun rack across both halves of the level, it’s a one-shot instakill if it connects, and even then it’s still liable to score a rebound kill when its projectile explodes, it’s shockingly accurate both as a hip-fire weapon, and aiming down sights with it, and with a 30 round total ammo capacity and 10 rounds per coil, you have more than enough bolts to clean up a full wave of Helgoons before you have to go back and reload. And by the way, standard ammo refill rules also apply here, which means that you will be practically climbing over ammo crates to get to the end of the level so you will basically never run out of shots for this thing. And given the hilarious physics fuckery that the boltgun summons into being, I am very happy that Guerrilla decided to be incredibly generous with its special weaponry gameplay for Killzone 3 because if it were up to me, I would main this thing through the entire game.  In addition to living Helghast enemies, drones also appear in this level. Though these guys are more in line with the Killzone 1 style of “utterly useless” drones as opposed to the Killzone 2 and 3 style of “pants-making GBS threads mechanical horrors” that are the ATACs.  They go down in one shot from the boltgun too. RIP General Lente, the most useless Helghast.  They also tend to cartwheel off in hilarious KILLZONE PHYSICS death spirals. In this case, a drone I killed actually caused a bit of environment damage by destroying a bridge over a chasm that you actually have to cross over. It’s not an endall case as you see in the video, it just makes your pathing through this part a slight bit more involved.  At the end of the first part of the level, Sev and Rico encounter the first big set piece of Scarpyard Shortcut, the magnetic crane.  Sev quickly spots a roadblock in their path.  Their way forward is behind that big giant gate.  That said, Sev also quickly finds a solution. He intends to Looney Toons his way through the barrier by using the crane as a wrecking ball. All told, not the dumbest plan ever.  And luckily for Sev, the crane just so happens to be holding up a Helghast tank as the perfect wrecking ball itself in a completely dangerous and citation worthy manner for a crane that is currently not in active operation. Helghan OSHA is gonna have some really harsh words for whoever owns this scrapyard when they find out about this.  However, the crane tower itself is defended by snipers, who quickly draw a bead on Sev who’s just sticking his head out there in the open flapping his gums while Rico does the smart thing and sticks to cover.  Sev doesn’t notice the big giant red laser sight on his forehead, but Rico sure as poo poo does.  And he pulls Sev’s dumb rear end back to safety in the nick of time.  So there are two parts to this set piece, the first of which is the assault phase. We need to get up to that platform to operate the crane. But that platform is crawling with snipers and a squad of Helgoons. Since the troopers are infinitely spawning, priority 1 is to take out all the snipers to secure a path up to the crane.  Once that’s done, things shift from assault to the tower defense phase. As the crane slowly sputters back to life, you then need to hold the platform you’ve just taken from several waves of Helghast who will try to press their way up the tower and onto the platform to take it back. Several waves of Overlord dropships will also drop troopers into the arena, and admittedly having the Scylla chaingun here is probably preferable over the boltgun—due to the Scylla’s heavier sustained firepower—but it’s still easily manageable with just the boltgun itself.  With the Helgoons all cleared out, Rico finally gets the crane working and it’s suddenly Miley Cyrus time.  I CAME IN LIKE A WREEEEEEECKING BAAAAAAAAAALL!!~~  From there it’s a quick run up to the end of the first half of the level. When you get there, you’re greeted by another old sight from Killzone 2, the Helghast Heavy! You remember the Heavy, right? These guys stomped around in giant suits of armor wielding Scylla chain guns and the only way to beat them was to rope-a-dope them so you could destroy the power cells on their back and kill them. They’re also pumped full a cocktail of psychotropic pain-dampening and aggression-heightening super drugs. Remember that part? Good times.  Once again, the boltgun makes short work of the Heavy. The explosive bolts will stun him long enough for you to get around back and destroy his weak spot. Really, the Heavy in this part isn’t that big of a threat. The real difficulty comes from the regular troopers who are supporting him, who will almost certainly catch you in a crossfire if you’re not paying them as much mind as you are the Heavy himself.  But with the Heavy down, it’s on to the second half of Scarpyard Shortcut, the Mobile Factory!  Sev and Rico go through a door at the end of the stage and basically wind up falling down a giant hill of sharp, rusty debris on their backs. It’s all incredibly horrifying if you stop and think about it for more than a second… like the game doesn’t.  To make matters worse, their slide dumps them right down in front of the Factory, which comes looming at them out of the dust like something out of Shadow of the Colossus.  Luckily though, Jammer and an unnamed ISA stooge arrive in the nick of time to scoop up Sev and Rico before the Factory pulverizes them with its various hilariously deadly rending apparatuses.  We also get treated to some Fast & Furious-by way of-Galaxy Quest shenanigans, as Jammer is forced to take the buggy under the Factory to avoid being crushed and just barely misses several of its overwrought impelling devices.  They emerge out the other side unscathed, but Pvt. Shia LaBeouf has clearly had it with Jammer’s automotive bullshit. Like, this guy serves no functional purpose other than to be a screaming wussy. Why did she bring him along, anyway?  Sev and Rico have Jammer swing the buggy around so that they can hop onto the Factory’s caterpillar tread and hopefully climb up into it before it crushes them to death.   Of course, they make it on without incident and it’s time for the back half of this level.  I mention very late in the video that this part is very reminiscent of the finale of the second level of Halo 2 where you have to board and hijack the Scarab and kill all the Covenant troops on it in order to do so, only greatly expanded in this iteration. Your primary objective is to fight your way through the Factory’s innards and get up onto its top deck, ultimately pressing into its wheelhouse and capturing it. This part of the stage probably takes about as much time on its own as the actual scrapyard part did. It is actually a deceptively big set piece.  Along the way comes some real opportunities for the boltgun to shine, and by that I mean break Killzone 3’s physics engine to the point of Lovecraftian madness. That black spaghetti strand in the center of the screen? That’s a Helghast… or what’s left of one. Yes, the combination of railings, the sheer concussive force of the boltgun, the instakill pit beneath it, and Killzone 3’s vaunted ragdoll-scripted hybrid death animation engine lead to some truly magical happenings throughout the Factory stage of Scrapyard Shortcut. The game just cannot process the sheer number of things happening to some Helgoons at the moment of their deaths so it just has a complete breakdown resulting in some things that generally only happen in EA games because I’m convinced that EA intentionally programs their games to glitch the gently caress out when you look at them the wrong way.  The jetpack troopers make a return for this level, marking three straight levels they’ve been in now.  What really makes the Factory a chore to clear, however, are the rocket troopers. You’ll get like two or three of them mixed in with any given wave of Helgoons and while your attention is diverted taking out the grunts or the jetpack troops, these guys will blow your face off with a rocket and send you back the last checkpoint you cleared.  It gets to the point where I give in and grab a Scylla because the final push to the wheelhouse is kind of unfeasible with the boltgun alone. Mounted at either side of the bow of the Factory are a pair of anti-air Scylla Cerberus AA guns which the Helghast turn on you as a last ditch effort to keep you from breaching the wheelhouse. The handheld Scylla chaingun makes these things fairly trivial though, but as is the recurrent theme of this level, it’s not really the heavy pieces that kill you, it’s the grunts that overwhelm you while you’re working to take the “boss” down.  Finally though, Sev and Rico reach the wheelhouse and breach the door with a detonation charge.  There’s one last trio of Helgoons waiting for you in the control room itself, but the Scylla makes short work of them.  With the Factory under their control, Sev and Rico quickly plop themselves behind the controls and try to bring the beast to heel.  The Factory begins to turn, ever so slowly, as Sev wrenches it towards the Arc Tower grid.  Meanwhile, oh hey, Hooper actually succeeded and making it to the tower. He’s got the panel off and is well under way towards shutting the perimeter grid down. …Kind of makes Sev and Rico taking over the Factory seem like a big wasted moot point now, doesn’t it? Given how in the time it took them to fight their way through the scrapyard, onto the Factory, and then into the wheelhouse, Hooper has already basically got this thing all sewed up and without all the pointless violence and death.  As he works, the ISA troops eye him nervously, all of them remaining tensely still, knowing that if they move even slightly that it’s all over for them.  Hooper too is moving meticulously slowly.  It’s at this point that Narville spots the Factory roaring over the hill towards them.  While Sev and Rico still struggle to keep it on course.   And it’s at around this point that I realize that Jason Narville is basically the unluckiest son of a bitch in the entire Killzone franchise. It must be such an utterly horrifying thing to have your right hand man come within inches of saving everyone, including yourself, with exemplary deft skill, precision and know-how, only to have the two jackass Duke Boys come charging over the hill in a giant dump truck blaring the Battle Hymn of the Republic and shooting off roman candles from their asses to ruin everything with some good old fashioned blunt violence. I really, honestly, like Sev as a character and a protagonist, but there are times when I get incredibly exasperated with him and find myself firmly on #TeamNarville, mainly because Sev has a worrying tendency to get a little bit too drunk for his own good on the Rico Sauce every once and a while.  Though true to form as a toned-down R. Lee Ermy expy, Narville is quick to snap everyone to attention and quash anyone’s notions about running away in a panic. There may be a giant Mad Max hell factory careening towards them with little sign of it actually making the turn to not crush them all to death, but by god they will all to a man stand there are not move a loving inch as it passes, GODAMMIT!  And thankfully, Sev manages to make the turn with mere feet to spare between the crawler and Avenger Convoy.  It strikes the Arc Tower head on, knocking it off its base and disrupting the connection to the perimeter network, taking the whole thing offline.  And the peasants rejoiced.  And Narville, to his credit, is proud and relieved by Rico’s insane gambit actually working, while not glossing over the fact that yeah, Rico is still an incredibly dangerous lunatic.  But in taking out the Arc Tower, the Factory has suddenly decided it’s had enough, and begins to catastrophically explode.  Sev and Rico make a quick run for the deck as the wheelhouse is engulfed in flames behind them.  And they’re scooped up by Jammer, who commandeered an Intruder now that it’s safe to fly again.  [ACTION SHOT]   We’re also treated to some nice little post-danger sarcastic banter between Jammer and Sev. It’s a bit of a treat to see Sev being relatively lighthearted and funny for a change, and it’s something I kind of wished there was more of in the franchise. Killzone is often situationally funny, or structurally funny, it’s rarely overtly funny like it is here.  But that quickly falls by the wayside, because we’ve got to re-establish that Rico and Narville hate each other and disregard each other’s authority. Rico quickly falls back into his de facto command position, issuing orders to the Raiders to press forward to the space elevator. You need to remember that functionally speaking, Rico has only been back to being second in command for maybe two hours, tops at this point. He is still in the headspace he has been in for the past 6 months of believing he is the highest ranking ISA soldier left on Helghan and that his word is law. He still has not adjusted to the fact that Narville is in command here again.  Which Narville quickly reminds him by countermanding his order.  But Rico just can’t leave well enough alone and pushes back against Narville, taking things a step too far.  Resulting in Narville going full R. Lee Ermy on his rear end, chewing him out on the a private channel for undermining his authority out in the clear.  He basically takes a rhetorical sledgehammer to any lingering semblance of authority Rico has in his mind that he still possesses and shoves Rico’s well-documented string of failures and corpses and/or craters left in wakes back in his face as the exclamation point to shut him up completely. Rico tries to fight back with the tried and tested “NO U!” but ultimately relents, either realizing its futile to continue arguing with Narville, or just being too consumed by frustrated rage to continue speaking.  Sev, for his part, tries to placate Rico, but it comes too late and too short. The damage is already done.  As Sev hops off the Intruder, Jammer and Rico are left alone together for the first time since they rescued Sev. She asks him what he’s thinking, and he responds thusly, ordering her to remain with the Intruder as a backup plan, which she happily agrees to. While Rico might be done publically undermining Narville for the moment, he’s gonna make sure he can at least covertly undermine him. And with Jammer being loyal to Rico over Narville, she will prioritize any order Rico gives her over any countermanding order that Narville might give her in reverse. I said earlier in the thread that Killzone 3 is all about interlinking binary relationships. Sev and Rico. Rico and Narville. Sev and Narville. Narville and Hooper. Rico and Jammer. Stahl and Orlock. That’s (probably) the reason Natko was kicked into the shadow realm of co-op—he’s a third wheel, there’s no room for him in these binaries. He just gums up the works. And in rapid succession in this scene, we have seen three of these binaries play out with Rico as the focal point to each of them. The core binary of this part of the game is the Rico-Narville conflict. Both men are equally right and equally wrong in their approach to how they plan to stop Stahl. From Rico’s perspective, digging in and forming a defensive position at the base of the space elevator is pointless and time-wasting. Every second they spend stymied, Stahl gets one second closer to jumping to Earth and eradicating it. Rico believes, but doesn’t say out loud, that basically every last ISA soldier still on Helghan is basically a walking corpse. This is a suicide mission with only one path to victory, and even then “victory” will probably kill them. They need to rush at the space elevator in a sustained assault and throw every last man to the cause of getting up the that space station and getting aboard Stahl’s flagship to kill him and destroy the irradiated petrusite weapons intended for Earth. Rico is, shockingly, focused on the big picture. Whatever happens here on Helghan, it’s all meaningless if Stahl makes it to Earth and kills everyone. Whoever has to die down here from the ISA, even if it’s Rico himself, if it stops Stahl, it’s worth it. This isn’t about being a hero, or getting a commendation or recognition, or even about redemption any more. This is about doing his loving job and stopping Jorhan Stahl from becoming the greatest mass murderer in human history. Now, Narville, on the other hand. This is where the whole “information disparity” thing that the series has been running with for a while boomerangs back around to bite Narville in the rear end. True, he as seen what irradiated petrusite weaponry does to people, and he has a vague notion that Stahl is planning to attack Earth with it, but only Rico and Sev saw the hologram outlining the full extent of Stahl’s plan. He is ignorant to the true scale of the danger that Earth is under. Narville is still largely ignorant to the fact that the rules have all changed on him. Him being taken aback by Stahl’s barbarity at Deep South highlights that. He is still acting as a soldier while fighting against a monster… and the monster’s gonna win. Right here and right now, Narville’s concern is for his troops’ wellbeing. Because he is a decent man and a good soldier. He assumes a defensive position because he doesn’t want to fling any more bodies at what could very well be a futile cause and just get everyone killed pointlessly. He wants to stop, assess his options, and then act in a swift, precise, and surgical manner. A good course of action… if he weren’t up against a ticking clock. And so we have our character and situational dilemma going into the penultimate chapter. Stopping to prepare for the optimal strike is going to cost valuable time and could let Stahl get away scot-free, but blindly rushing in with sustained force is too big a gamble with too narrow a path to victory when the stakes are this high. And Sev is caught in the middle. As always. The clock is running down… nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 14:20 on Jan 5, 2017 |
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Nov 6, 2016 06:09
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