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  (You should listen to the main theme above, it's pretty good) What's this all about? Shadowrun Returns is a 2013 RPG based on one of the more well-known tabletop RPG settings originating from 1989, Shadowrun. It was developed and published by Harebrained Schemes, a company founded by Jordan Weisman who is one of the original designers of Shadowrun, following a successful Kickstarter. It's not the first Shadowrun video game released - even many people not otherwise familiar with the setting remember the 1993 SNES game simply called Shadowrun or the 1994 Sega Genesis game simply called Shadowrun which were joined by the less famous 1996 Japan-only Mega-CD game simply called Shadowrun. And yes, these are all completely different games. There were also a couple of fairly unremarkable games carrying the Shadowrun title released in 2007 (called, you guessed it, Shadowrun) and 2015 (called Shadowrun Chronicles - Boston Lockdown), but their existence is usually ignored and we will do the same in part because the former is barely connected to the setting and the latter takes place long after this game. The SNES and Genesis games have their own LP's in the archives, the former by Danaru and the latter by Turtlicious. Check them out if you haven't! Shadowrun Returns itself was followed by two more titles from the same design team using the same gameplay systems, Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut (originally released as an expansion to Returns and simply titled Dragonfall) and Shadowrun: Hong Kong. These two are largely considered the pinnacle of Shadowrun video games, and Dragonfall in particular enjoys the reputation of a modern classic. So what's the setting all about? The real short version is that Shadowrun takes place in our world's alternate cyberpunk future where magic became real in 2012 and with it came all kinds of previously slumbering otherworldly creatures, such as dragons, with the classic fantasy races such as elves and orks mutating from previously ordinary humans. Animals mutated as well, with results you can probably guess. Most countries as we know them have ceased to exist or at the very least have changed dramatically, and the world is ruled by the immensely powerful dragons (though more in the "holding all the strings behind the scenes" -kind of way than in the "burn down cities" -kind of way) and gigantic megacorporations. Corruption, drugs, violence, crime and cyberimplants are commonplace. Overall life tends to be pretty lovely in most places unless you're rich. Basically the classic fantasy staples mixed with classic dystopian cyberpunk stuff that each and every day feels a little bit more real. There's still much more to the setting of course, but it'll be easier to cover it as it comes up instead of having it all here in an enormous wall of text. Also I'm by no means a Shadowrun expert and will no doubt miss something here and there, so all corrections and additions are welcome as long as they don't contain spoilers. See the spoiler policy below.  So where does this particular game fit in? As I mentioned earlier, this game's two follow-ups are both considered quite good, excellent even. Shadowrun Returns itself on the other hand tends to get a more mixed reception for various reasons that we'll get to when they become relevant. In many ways it feels like a prototype for its successors, and it had some particularly rough edges at the time of its release such as the complete lack of manual saves (!) which didn't help its case. Some particularly hard-to-deal-with bugs were also a fairly common complaint. All that being said, I personally think the game's semi-negative reputation is maybe a little undeserved, though also understandable especially now when you have Dragonfall and Hong Kong to compare it to. Still, it's a fun and relatively short romp in one of the cooler fantasy settings around. The game's main campaign itself, which goes by the name The Dead Man's Switch, takes place in the year 2054 and the location is the city of Seattle, the most common "default" setting in Shadowrun which is also where the SNES and Genesis games took place (the SNES game in 2050 and the Genesis one in 2058). Outside of some references and perhaps a familiar face or two, Returns' plot isn't connected to the two and prior knowledge of them isn't necessary. Also unlike the previous protagonists Jake and Joshua, the main character in Returns is a blank slate completely created by the player. Spoiler policy - No spoilers, preferably not even in tags unless it's something particularly inconsequential (e.g., related to game mechanics). If something hasn't happened yet, don't talk about it or even allude to it. And don't be the guy who has seen the movie and constantly keeps talking about how the good bits are coming up, nobody likes that guy. - If you haven't played the game but are otherwise familiar with the setting, be especially careful. This LP assumes the viewer is not intimately familiar with Shadowrun, so even if Banana Jackson actually being a killer android is common knowledge to those who follow the setting, don't bring it up here unless it has already come up in the LP as it might turn out to be relevant to the plot. - Related to the above, remember that the game doesn't take place in the most up-to-date version of the tabletop game, so if you're not 100% sure if something has happened by the time this game takes place, assume it hasn't. - Otherwise discussion is encouraged so don't be afraid to  or ask questions, and for example talking about the older Shadowrun games or what have you is totally fine.Updates Part 01 - The Dead Man's Call Part 02 - Create-a-Criminal Part 03 - Blood in the Water Part 04 - The Chop Shop Stop Part 05 - Auspicious Beginnings HD Remastered Part 06 - CSI: Seattle Part 07 - Getting Unionized Part 08 - A Night at the Market Part 09 - Ten Ways to Move Up in the World Part 10 - Painting the Penthouse Part 11 - Meeting the Locals Part 12 - Meeting the Locals Continued Part 13 - Paranormal Activity Part 14 - Crusader Queens Part 15 - Watts on My Mind Part 16 - Warehouse Warfare Part 17 - Re-Enter the Matrix Part 18 - Madness and Mercy Part 19 - Puppets and Puppeteers Part 20 - The Calm Between the Storms Part 21 - The Graveyard Shift Part 22 - Welcome to the Hood Part 23 - A Look Under the Hood Part 24 - Dawn of the Metal Age Part 25 - A Tale of Drones Part 26 - Corporate Raiders Part 27 - Corporate Raiders Continued Part 28 - Duty Above All Part 29 - Friends in High Places Part 30 - Final Preparations Part 31 - The Spirits Within Part 32 - The Finale Part 33 - The Aftermath Kanfy fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Dec 6, 2017 |
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Apr 24, 2017 18:58
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Reserved just in case
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Apr 24, 2017 18:58
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Part 01 - The Dead Man's Call For the sake of getting things moving, we're going to leave the character creation to the next post. For this initial bit our hero will be the mysterious bald Street Samurai known only by his nickname, "L-P".  oh poo poo wait that's not the right game goddamnit sorry im new to this  Here we go. As the game has fairly simple graphics and no cutscenes, it tends to paint its pictures using text descriptions with loading screens such as this serving as summaries. It's just like the old days! In-game descriptive text will usually be in [square brackets]. Also a couple of notes here right off the bat - As tends to be the case in Shadowrun, our protagonist is a Shadowrunner, one of many freelance operatives that get contacted and paid to do all kinds of shady jobs for corporations and other entities who don't want to get involved directly. Nobody really likes them, but everybody in power needs them. Fixers are people who act as intermediaries between Shadowrunners and their potential employers. "SIN" is short for System Identification Number and is basically all of one's personal information, history, legal papers etc. in one convenient and easily trackable package. Not having one basically makes you an outlaw, a "SINless", someone with no legal rights. This obviously makes life in society somewhat tricky, but being outside the system also means that one isn't subject to its constant surveillance. Nuyen (New yen, get it?) is the currency. Anime won as we all knew it eventually would and Japan became kind of a big deal in the Shadowrun continuity. As a result, theirs is the primary monetary unit of international trade which is used practically everywhere. You'll also notice some Japanese words amongst the dialogue here and there. Finally, best get used to the fragging slang as you'll be seeing a drekload of it, chummer. .jpg)  Too real, game, too real. Sorry about the small text, I do a better job with cropping in the later updates. To start things off, there are a few things we can take a look at in our hero's crummy yet surprisingly spacious apartment.   Who keeps a broken computer on their desk for 3 whole years? Maybe we're not getting paid because we're the laziest Shadowrunner in the business. There's also a notebook with a list of contacts and a calendar on the table. Let's take a look at the list first.  [The list goes on. All either dead ends or just plain dead.] Great. As for the calendar...  Fantastic. Never has a life of crime felt so thrilling. But just then, we get a call!  New objectives and other similar messages such as picked up items appear in the top-left corner. We walk over to the vidphone (in case it wasn't yet clear, this isn't a world of smartphones) and pick it up.  Dialogue is a big part of the game, and the words you choose can sometimes make a major impact when it comes to resolving things. I'll mention any noteworthy choices that I'm aware of, but otherwise I'll just be picking whatever sounds the most natural or entertaining. Oh, and I'll switch to italics for my own commentary whenever dialogue is happening to avoid confusion. Anyway, Sam Watts was one of the runners mentioned on the contacts list. .jpg) Where've you been, Sam? I haven't heard from you in months. Oh, okay. No wait hold on, what was that? .jpg) When you're an unsavory character like myself, you tend to associate with other unsavory characters who often partake in unsavory business... like you, for example. So why am I dead? Who knows. Probably my fault. I wonder where you are right now. I bet you hit a big payday and you're living high on the hog somewhere. Some of us are born winners and some of us are... me. Hey, you remember that Renraku run when things went to hell and we lost Dowd? Or that makeshift saloon on the docks afterward? I really had your back that night, didn't I?In a world where megacorps dominate practically all aspects of life, Renraku is amongst the biggest. They're based in Japan and specialize in computer technology. [Dowd. That's a name you haven't heard in a long time...] Flashback!  Ah, the middle of some rainy docks with no roof or walls, just the place to go for a drink after a hard day. Or did they put up this makeshift bar complete with shelves, bar stools and even a lit-up sign while waiting? In that case these people were in the wrong business. A couple of new faces here, let's talk to the  Nice shamanic tattoos. You know you're playing Shadowrun when something like "urban shaman" is a completely ordinary combination of words. Also, at the time of this game, Fuchi is another dominant Japanese megacorp who specialize in computer research and particularly Matrix (cyberspace) tech. Fuchi eventually got dissolved, in this case figuratively which is not a given, for reasons unrelated to this story. Ready to bolt? Neg - not yet. Let's give the Fixer another five minutes.Before we chat with the other fellow, we look around the docks a bit. It's a fairly large area with not much to see, but we do find a Basic Medkit lying around in one of the crates. Lootable stuff is marked by a small pick-up icon, as opposed to the magnifying glass which indicates things you look at.  This is as good a time as any to take a look at our inventory screen. We could also view our equipped cyberware here, had we any installed.  Medkits are your basic healing item and unlike magical healing, they always heal for a flat amount. Putting points into Biotech increases their effectiveness.   We're also holding a good ol'-fashioned frag grenade which does exactly what you'd expect, as well as a Trauma Kit which can bring back a downed character in battle, although with a short delay. Characters can die for good if not brought back in time.    Last but not least we have the classic leather jacket, and we're packing some decent firepower in the form of both a pistol and a shotgun. Pistols are a little lacking in stopping power but come with the largest variety of skills, whereas shotguns are close-combat destroyers which need to be reloaded often and are inaccurate at longer ranges but can also hit multiple characters (including friendlies) if fired from far enough. But enough wasting time, our other friend's looking a little antsy so let's go see what's up.  Unlike with Sangoma, the paint on this guy is just kinda lame. Incidentally, both of them were listed as "dead" in the contacts list from earlier. Guess tattoos alone don't protect against bullets. .jpg) [He shakes his head.] I hate this fragging city, L-P! It's wet and the rain feels like acid and I want out of here.Seems like in his case the personality matches the tattoo quality. Shut your screamer about the rain. We lost a man tonight. So ka, sorry... I'm just really ready to go home. Portland's way more my speed.TL note: So(u) ka is Japanese and means roughly "Is that so", but here it tends to be used as an equivalent of "I understand". .jpg) I don't know, L-P.[Sam is a good guy and can hold his own in a fight but he's been hitting the bottle pretty good lately. Never on a run - so far - but he needs watching.] [He shakes his head.] That run went sideways nine ways to Sunday. Now the Fixer is late. What do you think we should do? I dunno. I'm not the brains of this operation but I'm thinking we slot and run. The money's just not worth... what happened to Dowd. Cut the drek, Sam. We both know why Dowd went down and it wasn't the Fixer or some other paranoid chip-dream of yours. [Sam smiles a toothy smile.] I've been waiting for this all night. New Larry has something he wants to say, dont'cha Larry? Go ahead, spill it.Uh oh, internal tension. You were sloppy. [He laughs.] Sloppy? You think *I* was sloppy? You've been twitchy all day, son. Look at your hands - they're shaking. You been drinking, Sam? On a run? No. Not a drop. Not today, not ever. Oh boy. Also note Sam's healthier-looking complexion here compared to his portrait from earlier (later?). A nice little touch. [New Larry checks his watch. Licks his lips. Looks over your shoulder at the darkness. He's looking for someone and it's not the Fixer.] Okay, I can see where this is going. You chummers are damaged. I'm out. How much did they pay you to sell us out, Larry? [He stops and a smile slowly appears on his face.] Honestly? It didn't take much. Just enough to get me back to Portland and set up with a cush corp job. I'm out of this racket. Five minutes in and we've already experienced our first betrayal, firmly establishing the recurring pattern of people in Shadowrun being a bunch of assholes. [New Larry relaxes and throws you a drek-eating grin.] Looks like my new Renraku friends are finally here. They're gonna take that hard drive off your corpse... buddy. We should choose our friends more carefully, L-P. Buy you a drink after this?Next time: Lots of people get shot, but only one gets sent to the morgue. But first, let's make a proper character. Kanfy fucked around with this message at 23:07 on May 10, 2017 |
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Apr 24, 2017 19:00
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Part 02 - Create-a-Criminal Now before we go any further, there's a couple of things to take care of. I didn't want to scare anyone away by opening with this as there is going to be a bunch of  about game mechanics here and not everyone cares about this stuff or they might already know all about it. That said, if you're not familiar with Shadowrun at all, it won't do any harm to be aware of the basics as these same rules govern all the characters we'll meet. Almost. First off is the difficulty setting. After this comes the character creation. First is a choice between male or female, but this has no gameplay impact. Next up are the races:           If you've played any classic fantasy game, there are no real surprises here. Humans are probably the "best" choice as they get the most stat ups outside of trolls and going past 9 in a stat is both expensive and pretty unnecessary, but it's a very minor advantage. For the same reason trolls are the most limited in their usefulness despite their absurd physical caps - Having 17 points in Body, which primarily governs your hit points, would require investing roughly 75% of all Karma points (used for both stats and skills) earned throughout the entire game on that stat alone. Sure, you could probably disarm a nuclear bomb with your face and survive, but old age would be a bigger threat than you in combat. After that we have the "classes", although in practice they only serve as preset skill builds for those who don't want to deal with building a character from scratch. In other words, choosing one will simply allocate most of your Karma for you (poorly), so not picking one is the smartest choice if you know your way around. Still, nearly all characters will fall under one or two of these archetypes so it's good to know what they're about. One catch here is that your loadout in the game's first battle is decided entirely by your class choice, for example a Mage will have a few spells. All custom characters get the same one consisting of a couple of firearms however, meaning a custom spellcaster will be practically useless in the fight due to not having a single spell.          They couldn't quite figure out how to pluralize "shaman". Or how to spell "raccoon".     I'm just going to cut to the chase here, we'll be playing a Decker in order to get the most out of the game. Only the main character can attempt the various Decking skill checks you'll come across in the game, even if one of your party members is a Decker. Yeah, it's dumb, and also fixed in the later installments which usually allow you to ask your crew member to do the hacking for you. Accessing the Matrix, the main job of the class, can be done by any Decker even here so it's still not the end of the world even if you don't play one. The upside here is the fact that the Decker is the most important party member, something that remains true in all three games. Very nearly every mission from here to Hong Kong has something only a Decker can accomplish, so if you're not one yourself then you're going to have to bring one with you or accept that you'll miss out on things. This way we can pick whoever we feel like and still do nearly everything possible. Whether you picked one of the above or not, next up will be the Karma allocation screen. This isn't a guide so I'm not going to go through every single stat and skill, but I'll quickly cover the basics. There are 6 different stats (Body, Quickness, Strength, Intelligence, Willpower and Charisma) and all skills are divided under them. You can't increase a skill past its governing stat, meaning you can't increase your Dodge to 4 unless you increase your Quickness to 4 first. Here are the skills we're looking at, most of them are pretty self-explanatory:  Some skills also govern other skills, for example you can't increase your Melee Weapons to 4 unless you first increase your Close Combat to 4 which in turn first requires increasing your Strength to 4. Like so:  As you can perhaps tell, skills also come with special abilities or beneficial passives every now and then. 8 points in Melee Weapons allows you to disarm enemies, 3 points in Rifles allows you to shoot an inaccurate but powerful burst in full auto, 2 points in Biotech allows you to see enemy HP and so on. Also, increasing a stat or a skill requires Karma equivalent to the level you're increasing the stat or skill to. Meaning, increasing your Strength from 2 to 3 costs 3 Karma, whereas going from 7 to 8 costs 8 Karma. You start with 34, or 37 as a human. This is why going past 9 or so in a stat (or especially a skill as it'd require increasing the stat to the equivalent level first) is unlikely unless you're specializing to an extreme degree, and why the troll Strength/Body stat caps are largely irrelevant whereas their low Intelligence/Charisma caps are quite limiting. And then finally, the most important part - Our incredibly cool/lame streetname.   End of character mechanics Now, I already made the call that we were going to be a Decker, and I'm going to add a couple more limitations to that: We won't make spellcasting our primary fighting style as it conflicts with cyberware which Deckers come with by default, and we won't be a melee character because the thin stat spread means we'll be real weak in combat for quite a while. Plus plain melee and nothing else is a bit boring anyway. Beyond that I'm not super picky. Trolls are a terrible choice for a Decker, their Strength bonus is wasted and their Intelligence cap is so low that they literally can't equip the top-tier deck (which is what governs a Decker's power in the Matrix), but I also can't claim the game's unbeatable with a troll Decker or anything. So I'll leave the rest up to you, thread. What shape will our hero take? Pick one for each category! 1. Our sex: Male or Female 2. Our race: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Ork or Troll 3. Our primary murdering method: Pistols, Submachine Guns, Shotguns, Rifles or the ever-trendy Drones. Some of these are better than others, but they'll all do the job so just pick whatever seems coolest. 4. Our streetname: 2-12 characters. If you're like me and coming up with names is the single hardest part in an RPG, you can just skip this one if you want. We'll pick the most popular choice in each category and from them, we'll mold some unholy Frankenstein's cybermonster. Flip a coin in case of ties. If only one guy shows up to vote then they wield all the power, hail democracy. If nobody at all shows up then this whole thing'll look real pathetic so please participate out of pity if nothing else. And if you don't care, at least quote someone else's answer and go "Yeah I'm fine with this" instead of not posting at all. Yeah, I know your type, you lazy bum.  Kanfy fucked around with this message at 18:26 on May 8, 2017 |
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Apr 24, 2017 19:01
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Fat Samurai posted:No Adept, no effort. I don't actually have any idea how good they are in base Returns as I've never tried one. I know you can make a real strong one in the later games what with the omnipresent cover and everything, but cover and the whole damage system are different here. But I understand the sentiment, and if we could hack terminals with magic punches then this wouldn't have even been a vote.
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Apr 24, 2017 19:54
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I was a little surprised to see nobody had done an LP of any of these games myself. I've always thought they'd fit this format really well and one'd probably be interesting to follow even if you didn't know anything about Shadowrun, assuming the terms and such got explained. But that's not a promise that this one won't end up as a complete trainwreck.  I guess they do get a little dialogue-heavy, especially in Dragonfall and Hong Kong, which is not something everyone has patience for.
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Apr 24, 2017 21:20
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Danaru posted:Male Lies, your LP is great and I'm extremely envious of how good you are with writing dialogue for complete non-characters, I don't have talent for it at all. But that's why I'm LPing this instead since it does dialogue for me! Well, except when it doesn't. Stupid Returns and it's lack of a proper crew... Consequently I'm afraid this game's dialogue choices will be all too sane to do Norbert proper justice, unless you pretend he's taking heavy doses of elephant tranquilizers the whole time. cardinale posted:This game looks interesting. It is, and I'm glad there's at least one person around who hasn't played it before. We need more fresh blood amongst all these scarred veterans.
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Apr 24, 2017 22:16
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MagusofStars posted:This is awesomely perfect. This is true, there's also an in-game glossary that gives a brief explanation for a bunch of terms.  The swear word avoidance gets a little silly sometimes. The drone-using female elven Amazon brigade is looking real strong right now. It's not set in stone yet but if that's how things'll end up going, here's the portrait I was thinking of going with.  She clearly suffered a drone malfunction and now understands the importance of safety goggles. That said if people are extremely uncool with this then we can certainly put it up for vote as well, I'd just like to get things set up properly sooner rather than later is all.
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Apr 25, 2017 08:32
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Xander77 posted:Are you kidding me? Please don't steal the exact character I use. Yeah well I don't see a copyright anywhere, chummer. The coolest one if you ask me is one of the Street Samurai ones, but the visible hilt on her back doesn't really work here.  But like I said people can still, at least in theory, get something else in. Here's where we're at by my count: Female: 17 Male: 8 Elf: 12 Dwarf: 5 Human: 4 Ork, Troll: 2 Drones: 14 Rifles: 5 Pistols, Shotguns, Submachine Guns: 2 Amazon: 8 Dragon Lady: 3 Frosty, Norbert: 2 Argilla, Boozehound, Cat, Kanfy, L.P. Superstar, Mara Jaded, Old Glory (or "like Independence I dunno"), Punch Hack, Trollface, Wintermute: 1
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Apr 25, 2017 09:03
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That reminds me, fun fact about naming your character: The character limit isn't actually 12. It's 110.
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Apr 25, 2017 09:45
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anilEhilated posted:Alternately, we could make full use of the character limit and come up with some kind of decking/computer related joke like filling the thing with ones and zeroes. There's gotta be someone tech-savvier in the audience though. Oh, I'm sure someone could come up with something. Which is exactly why I set the limit to 12. I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I know the wily ways of the people here.
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Apr 25, 2017 13:41
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I think we can officially close the voting here. And so a result, we will be playing Xander77's character under a different name, the female elf decker who uses drones and is known only by her handle Amazon. Congratulations to LightWarden who got exactly what they wanted, meaning nobody else's vote really ended up meaning anything. The system works. And I finally get to play the video game, so that's cool. Update probably tomorrow, maybe today if the stars align real well.
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Apr 25, 2017 15:11
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GoneRampant posted:I actually was going to use nearly the exact same character voted for here- female Elf Decker, but with more of a focus on Rifles over Drones. There's just too much content that's locked behind Decker powers to be anything but for at least one playthrough. I did predict that the character would end up being female and a drone-user, but I was actually a little surprised about the popularity of elves since everyone always seems to complain that they're the worst. I was about 70% sure we'd end up with a troll after I mentioned how they make for the worst Decker. I guess when you have a setting where pretty much everybody is a dick, you might as well be a decent-looking one. Kanfy fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Apr 25, 2017 |
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Apr 25, 2017 16:19
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RickVoid posted:This LP got me to pick this back up. I finished Dragonfall and Hong Kong, but never did get all the way through this one. Playing along with the LP, though I'm quite a ways away from the start now. Interested to see where you put your Kharma, I ended up rolling with rigging and rifles. Most of our Karma's inevitably going to go to decking and drone stuff, though I'll probably skip ESP Control since it's not really needed. Maybe we'll dabble in some minor magic stuff at some point. Iretep posted:Troll decker with a minigun is compleatly viable build at least in future expansions. Though i had to install cyberware up my rear end to do it as well just to get the STR reqs for the minigun. Cant remember if this one even had a minigun though. The 6 limit in decking isnt a big deal since decking isnt hard to require the 7 decking rig. Yeah, a troll Decker can get through all the games just fine. Being a troll Rigger is more actively shooting yourself in the foot since not having access to the top-end drone stuff hampers you more than not having the Fairlight Excalibur with a Decker. Das Panzer posted:I booted up this game again due to this, and started a Street Sam run through. No spoilers for late-game stuff but let's just say now I remember why I only played SR:R all the way through once. Still a solid game, but... I much prefer Dragonfall and Hong Kong. I do too, but DMS is Kanfy fucked around with this message at 12:19 on Oct 20, 2017 |
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Apr 26, 2017 07:33
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Dragonfall does tend to get the spotlight, but I think Hong Kong's great as well in part because the city itself is interesting and also because it has my favorite crew. But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves about endings or the follow-up games, keep it as spoiler-free as we can here. Update should be soon. Turned out to be a bit longer and wordier than I anticipated. Kanfy fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Apr 26, 2017 |
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Apr 26, 2017 11:02
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Part 03 - Blood in the Water (We still have some mechanics to cover so this first half will again be a bit of a block of but it'll mostly go away after this, so please do your best to bear with it a bit longer. And hey, at least we get to shoot people this time.)The people have voted on the character creation, and the results are in! Our down-on-their-luck protagonist whose social connections consist of a single dead guy will be a female elf going by the streetname Amazon who fights primarily using drones. We thank Mr. L-P for his services in the first update, and wish him luck in the eternal limbo we have doomed him to. Have fun with that busted computer.  (Remember your safety goggles when handling killer drones with claws, kids. Just having them on your forehead isn't enough!) Credit for the name goes to forums user LightWarden, whose powerful reasoning won the people's hearts: quote:If you're going to be a Decker then you've got the Intelligence to make Drones your thing. You could be human but that's boring, so might as well be an elf lady. And if she's going big on computers and drones while operating out of Seattle then you might as well call her Amazon.   The choice of using drones means we will be a Decker-Rigger hybrid, a combat nerd if you will. This is a popular combination due to the fact that the effectiveness of both decking and drones are governed entirely by the Intelligence stat, allowing us to focus most of our Karma in one place. Efficiency! That said we'll still go and dip a little into Quickness both to get some evasion and to have at least some firearms skill to fall back on. We'll go with shotguns, because in the end they're the only friend you can truly rely on. Also, being an elf gives us a +1 Charisma boost which reminds me of something I maybe should've covered last time but hey, nobody's perfect. Charisma is the primary stat used by the Shaman class, but it also comes with a secondary benefit: unlocking additional Etiquettes.  What this means in practice is that having a certain Etiquette will sometimes open up additional dialogue options in conversation, either for added flavor or some tangible benefit. For example "Academic" will give you smart-sounding options and "Street" will get you laughed at on the streets because you picked Street which is practically useless in this campaign. Therein lies the problem with this otherwise neat system - Etiquettes aren't all equally useful, but you have no way of knowing that ahead of time outside of looking it up. The good news is that none of them make a dramatic difference in The Dead Man's Switch, so it's mostly just an "eat drek" to perfectionists who lose sleep over not making the optimal choices. Anyway, we'll get enough Charisma for two Etiquettes, we're no Shaman so going any further is a huge waste of Karma. Even two aren't really necessary, honestly. But seeing as we're such a smarty-pants and considering the line of work we're supposed to be in, Amazon's Etiquettes will be Academic and Shadowrunner. Now, the very last thing to cover before we can finally give New Larry some new hardcore face piercings to go with his tattoo is cyberware. L-P had none, but anyone with points in Decking or Drone Control start with a datajack which allows them to do their thing, namely using their mind to enter the Matrix or to take direct control over a drone. Both, in our case.  As you can see, cyberware comes with an "Essence cost" which in this case is 0.5. Essence is a central concept in the world of Shadowrun, and is best described as the connection between one's soul and physical body. Lifeforce, basically. By default, people have an Essence value of 6, and the less you have (most commonly, but not exclusively, reduced by replacing your fleshy parts with mechanical ones) the less "human" you become. Hit 0 and your soul no longer has a place to hang out in and so it flies away to star in From Software's popular video game series or whatever. Point is, you die. Except if by some highly questionable means you go to negative Essence instead. That's a pretty bad scene and a tale for another time, but if I someday end up doing Dragonfall, you'll see, oh yes. Essence is also directly tied to your magical aptitude and in gameplay terms, for every point of Essence below 6 you lose a spell slot (E: This also apparently increases spell cooldown which is another major downside). Since this always rounds down, our datajack already costs us one slot. This is why specializing exclusively in magic for the purposes of dealing death is a suboptimal choice for anyone relying on a datajack, although some basic spellcasting ability can be handy if you're not planning on going all-out with cyberware. Anyhow, where were we? Oh right the flashback to the betrayal and the ambush. Shadowrun. .jpg) (A quick word about the soundtrack, most themes in the game are divided into an ambient part and a combat part. I encourage clicking these music links as some of the combat themes in particular are quite good and there's a decent variety of them. No Return isn't my favorite of the bunch, though. Oh and sorry for the hackjob loop.)  Sure enough, a couple of Renraku goons charge in from the... southwest? I'm not really sure with this camera angle, but we'll go with that. Predictably, New Larry who you can see next to the table there also turns hostile. Oh by the way, the combat's turn-based with the entirety of each side acting on their turn. Enemies like to get their turn before you get yours which can sometimes be problematic. Here, too, New Larry and co. act first, and in fact the two Renraku fellows act twice in a row because I guess their initial entrance is some scripted thing and thus doesn't count. Oh well, this is the literal first fight in the game so we won't have any pr-   Okay, so I didn't actually switch to Easy, but that is some  -rear end start. Apparently Sam wasn't kidding about Larry's lightning bolts, seeing how he immediately crits the hell out of Sangoma's 40 health before I even get to move. Normally the AP damage would be enough to knock her out for the next turn to boot, but for some reason it didn't apply here. I'm guessing it's the same weirdness that allowed the Renraku duo to move twice, but who knows.Let's look on the bright side, Sangoma is a Bear shaman which gives her a magical area effect healing spell. Magical healing always heals the last instance of damage taken, so even though we took 20 here we should be able to heal it all ba-  Pictured, Sangoma taking a relatively harmless pistol shot from a Renraku guy after the lightning bolt. This is the big catch about magical healing in these games; it's extremely powerful if you cast it right after taking a big hit, but if a mosquito bites you between the shotgun blast to the chest and the healer getting to you, your itch will go away but your lungs will still be on the wall. This makes MedKits the more reliable option, with the primary downside being that they take inventory slots and can't be used from a distance. Well, I've never seen a start this bad, but at least we finally get to act.  So, combat. If you've played the modern XCOM games then you're sailing in pretty familiar waters here. All characters have 2 or more Action Points and doing things such as moving or shooting consume them. Once you've spent them all, you can't act until the next turn (unless someone casts Haste on you or something). Whether you hit or miss and how much damage is dealt are decided by the almighty RNG, taking a bunch of things into account such as one's skill in handling a weapon, cover, distance and what have you. There are some strange mechanics in play here relating to cover and damage which were completely revamped in the later installments. I won't go into the nitty-gritty details but in short, cover isn't as big of a deal here and damage can go from half damage to double damage. Which end is more likely depends on one's beefiness (Body stat, armor) and the other guy's offensive skills. But anyway, now that it's our turn it's time for Amazon to show what she's made of! That's right folks, it's time... TO UNLEASH THE DRONES!! Haha psych, we made a custom character so we don't have any drones in the first battle. We have a pistol, an SMG, a couple of grenades and absolutely no skill to use any of them. Our odds of hitting anyone float at around 15% and our Strength is so low that we can just barely toss a grenade far enough not to hit ourselves with it.  No, we're all but a complete waste of space and pretty much 100% on nurse duty here. We're actually the worst Shadowrunner and completely deserve the predicament our current self is in.  Sam here, who comes with a shotgun and an SMG, on the other hand actually has some basic firearms skills, giving him some combat options such as the old classic of blasting the hell out of your enemies' kneecaps with a shotgun, the joke that never stops being funny.  He can also give up all pretense of aiming and paint the walls with bullet holes with his SMG. Great party trick, always leaves an impression.  He immediately puts his skills to good use, blasting Larry for 11 points worth of damage with a shotgun after taking cover. Notice the 76% hit chance by the way, on Normal that'd be 99% without question thanks to the invisible bonus you get. Even from this distance it'd probably be at least around 90% on the enemy further away. Since they can hit multiple enemies from long ranges, shotguns are particularly strong on lower difficulties. As for Sangoma, the eagle-eyed amongst you might've noticed a skull icon on top of a glowy puddle in an earlier screenshot. This is related to a shamanic ability, namely the ability to summon spirits from certain pre-determined parts of the environment.   What a cute fellow. Typhoon here comes with a ranged attack, a Dodge buff and the Manabolt spell which ignores normal armor and targets Willpower. Unfortunately this thing's damage output is a little lacking, and it harmlessly splashes some water on Larry with a missed shot.  Sangoma compensates for her watery pet's shortcomings with an aimed shot from her AK-97 assault rifle. Rifles are the "balanced" weapon type that focus on taking down one target at a time.  Larry doesn't take it well, opting to use his pistol instead of his magic but still landing the shot.  ...And both of his friends join in adding some ventilation to the poor ork. Quit with the aimbotting you jerks.  Note the "Weak!" shot, the opposite of a critical that deals decreased damage.  Inbetween trying to keep Sangoma from bleeding all over the cooled drinks in front of her, our heroine's decking experience does at least allow her to mark enemies, making them slightly easier for more competent people to hit. The odds of landing the mark itself aren't great, but it sure as hell beats the comedy routine that's her trying to hit someone with a gun.  On subsequent turns after they're initially summoned, spirits like Typhoon here can be given different amounts of AP to use on that turn, but they also have a chance to go rogue and start attacking anyone nearby with the odds increasing the more AP you go for and the more turns they've been around. Extra AP is so powerful that I almost always to go for the maximum possible, especially since the escape odds don't really increase that much. Thankfully the 10% disaster doesn't strike here, and while Typhoon isn't particularly strong, having twice the AP of anyone else certainly compensates for it. And where Sam whiffs trying to go for New Larry with his shotgun despite standing right next to him, our spirit friend's cute lil' blasts of water finish the job, showing that the little guy really can make a difference in changing the world for the better.  Guess he'll never get to be Old Larry. The next turn is spent the usual way with Sangoma eating a bullet and Amazon failing to do anything of any real worth. The most competent member of our team, however, continues their rampage.  Meanwhile...  I'm not kidding when I say these guys would be in more danger pouring their morning coffee than in front of our weapon. The annoyingly hard-to-see red color for some of these combat texts was thankfully changed after this game. Also these Renraku jokers have 20 hitpoints, making them pretty much complete paper. The frail grandma section of the security forces must've been the only ones available for this gig.  And bingo night must've just ended as while we're chasing after the remaining enemy, two more come out of the shadows behind us. Dick move, but mostly an annoyance due to our lack of firepower.  Typhoon continues to show off its amazing magic trick of turning water into blood. I don't know what the rest of us are even needed for.  We do proceed to learn a valuable lesson about staying too grouped up as suddenly a grenade flies in from seemingly a hundred miles away with pinpoint accuracy and shreds the hell out of everyone. I didn't even know these guys carried grenades, so this was purely an oversight from my part. Grenades are the single biggest reason to keep your people spread out whenever possible, at least until Hong Kong which introduces a hilarious countermeasure to them.  The grenadier's friend grows overly bold and we ask him kindly to calm down. Despite our injuries there's now only one of them left so... wait.  More reinforcements from the northwest? Did I somehow stumble into Fire Emblem? These two are actually a Mage and a Shaman which makes them a little scarier than the rest of the bunch, so it's fortunate for us that they didn't bother showing up in time. Seriously, these guys are terrible at this ambushing business.  Things go from Fire Emblem to Pokémon as the Shaman proceeds to summon a spirit of her own using a consumable item. I've never been into Pokémon so you have to come up with your own hilarious in-joke to insert here, sorry.  Sangoma demonstrates her Bear healing ability which is incredibly satisfying in a situation like this. She did get nailed by another pistol shot before I could get it off though, resulting in her healing for 3 instead of 12.   By this point Typhoon is starting to seriously wonder if maybe a career in accounting would be preferable to being a serial murderer, but thankfully those sweet sweet hit chances convince it to stay faithful to us a while longer.   You may not have been with us for long my friend, but I gotta hand it to you. You really knew how to make a splash. Oh, and the shaman's death automatically caused its spirit to vanish as well.  Sam cleans up the grenade-tossing nuisance, and then it's over. No more reinforcements come.  [Sam's breathing is heavy and he looks shaken.]  That was a helluva thing. Part of the life, Sam. You know that. You were born for this gig, Amazon. Me... not so much. I think I'm gonna hang it up - find a nice brothel somewhere. Stay drunk until I croak. What about you? I'll find a safehouse out of town. Lay low. Renraku has a long memory. I do too. I don't forget my friends.End flashback! [You stare at Sam's face on your commlink. Shake off the memory. Focus.]  ...I had your back that night, didn't I?Well, a water spirit carried everyone on its back but you did alright. Now, I'm asking myself - who would care if I die? Who would give a rat's rear end? Better or worse, your name is at the top of the list. Maybe it's the only name *on* the list...Man, this is one sad relationship we have going here.   Rather than real life yen, the value of nuyen is roughly the same as the real life dollar. The hell did he get that kind of insurance from? Contact my law firm - Rogers, Mengert & McCain - when the job is done. They'll know what to do.[He turns to his left.] Chet? [Sam straightens up. Talks seriously. First time.] You could say he's now a serious Sam. Look, Amazon... I've led a drek life and I probably left a drek corpse. I've hurt people... hurt myself... I don't know. Maybe I just want the last word. Maybe I just want someone to give a crap that I sucked air for awhile. What do you say?I'd say that this is a hilariously dodgy proposition in more than one way, particularly since we have literally nothing to go on, but also let's be honest... I'd say my schedule's pretty clear right now. I've got a locator chip slotted in my head these days. If... when... my heart stops, it'll activate. That's how you'll find me. See you on the slab. Well... Seattle can't be any worse than this.Spoilers, Seattle will be all kinds of worse than this. But that's for next time. Concept art: Seattle docks 
Kanfy fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Aug 15, 2017 |
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Apr 26, 2017 12:29
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Snorb posted:Interesting thing about the fight with the Renraku goons on the docks: It's impossible to lose the fight. Neither you nor Sam can be reduced to 0 HP, and once you both hit 1 HP, everyone starts missing you when they attack. Huh, I figured you'd just get a game over. I suppose that's understandable for the first battle of the game. Ah well, neither Sam or Amazon got hit even once by anything except for that one surprise grenade. Sangoma healed herself twice and on top of that I pumped two 15 HP MedKits into her and she still ended the fight with around 10 HP. And all she got for her efforts was an off-screen death. 
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Apr 26, 2017 14:50
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Xander77 posted:The first two games allow you to circumvent the whole spirit control thing by sending them right into the midst of the enemies. They go after the nearest NPC when free. HK makes them prioritize the summoner. Ah, I see. I'm not gonna lie, the overall style of the games is so similar that I sometimes have a hard time keeping all the mechanical differences straight in my head, particularly the subtler ones.
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Apr 26, 2017 16:30
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By the way, if anyone has any good ideas for drone names then feel free to fire away. This isn't an official vote or anything, it just dawned on me that going with "our drone" or similar the whole way is a little awkward.
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Apr 26, 2017 21:55
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Thanks for pointing out the spell cooldown increase from cyberware. I said I'd explain the mechanics, but I never said I'd do it accurately.Cathode Raymond posted:Getting Hong Kong cyberware is rough though because the game is super stingey with money. Not sure if the extended cut corrected this or not. Nope, money's just real tight over there. It's especially harsh on shamans because summoning fetishes cost an absolute fortune and you can barely keep your spells up to date with the money you get. Keeshhound posted:The obvious answer is that Renraku did it's research. On you, and assumed that anyone desperate enough to run with you had to be of similar competency. Incredibly rude, but also fair. Joke was ultimately on them though, seeing as they didn't include getting murdered by a small puddle in their calculations. It is a bit weird how they leave custom characters without any personalized gear for the initial bit though, especially since they clearly do have a system in place for it.
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Apr 27, 2017 08:26
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Psion posted:On another note, it may be of interest to play the Dead Man's Switch campaign in the Dragonfall Director's Cut version of the game - you can do this, and it's much improved over the original version of the engine. Yes it gets a bit confusing that each campaign module also had an updated version of the game engine, but eh. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=343908392 Yeah, I was considering using that myself but ultimately ended up going vanilla both to give the authentic experience and to minimize any potential issues. It's probably what you should go with otherwise. Also I have to say, you don't quite realize the chattiness of some NPCs until you go through the dialogue manually. Might have to end up dedicating the entirety of the next update to the initial investigation setup after all.
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Apr 27, 2017 18:23
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LightWarden posted:Yeah, there are several ranks of drones (C, B, A, S-rank), both combat and support (though it only goes up to A-rank), so multiple names can be used. We could save Prime for a later rank. Sure, or I can throw the names in a figurative hat and see what comes out whenever there's a new drone. Alternatively we can go with "Prime 2.0" or something like that. Update should be soon. I can say right now that this kinda pace isn't going to hold up, but I had some extra spare time and this one had almost no manual cropping or precise screenshot timing due to all the dialogue so it wasn't as much work.
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Apr 27, 2017 19:40
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Part 04 - The Chop Shop Stop Landing on the Sea-Tac airport and heading off to the infamously crime-ridden Redmond Barrens in order to investigate the fate of a murdered man is a surprisingly popular pastime in the Shadowrun universe. Death and Bleach is also the name of my goth anime club, by the way. We're pretty cool. .jpg)  Y'know, for a body part chop shop called "Organ Grinders" located in what is probably the worst part of town, this place is surprisingly tidy. Also as little of any use as we had in the flashback, now we literally have nothing outside the clothes on our back. Someone here better have at least a zip gun for us or things'll get hairy in the slums.  Understandable when visiting a cheap morgue, distressing when visiting a cheap dentist. Might as well go say hello to what one would assume is the coroner over there.   Sorry, didn't expect any visitors at this hour. And some rear end in a top hat at corporate took my receptionist. What can I do for you, ma'am?Someone using the word "rear end in a top hat" is weirdly refreshing amongst all this drekking and fragging. Are you the coroner? I'm John Dresden, the Organ Grinders Branch Manager here. So yeah, that makes me this franchise area's coroner, too. And you are? Amazon. I'm here about Sam Watts. [His grin fades.] And what makes you think I know anything about that? Sam had a locator chip embedded in his skull. I followed it here. I see. Well, you're right, he's here. Not too many people know about the murder yet, though... the press haven't caught wind of it yet, what with it being all the way out here in the Barrens. So who told you he was dead?Now we could immediately spill the beans about the entire 100k deal to this complete stranger, but as jolly as he appears to be, that seems like a real dumb move. Let's be at least a little more vague. Sam's digital ghost. When his heart stopped, I got sent a recorded message asking me to bring his killer to justice. Guess he had a hunch.[The dwarf raises his eyebrows, a smile wiping the suspicion from his face.] A dead man's switch, eh? Fascinating! I was working on him earlier. He's over here.We follow him to a small side room behind the pair of curtains.  Poor Sam, you seemed like a decent enough guy. At least whoever killed you was nice enough not to dump your body into the ocean or something. I hate underwater levels. He's my second Emerald City Ripper victim. The third one was downtown. Ripper, huh? I guess the classics never go out of style. [He sighs.] Not my title. That's what the Seattle press insists on calling the killer. All I know is that like the original Jack, our Ripper knows how to handle a scalpel. But this one's even more twisted... he or she always removes an internal organ from the victim. Delicious. A trophy hunter. What was it? Watts' liver was cleanly cut out.Hey, what do you call someone with no liver? A deader! Haha get it, because How about the other lucky contestants? The first victim's heart was missing, and the third had the spleen removed.  An ork calls Dresden back to the main room, leaving us alone with Sam and a defenseless Basic Medkit which we snatch from the nearby tray. As you can probably guess, the open palm icon indicates things you can operate or manipulate in some way. Let's see if we can find any clues from the body.  [Next to Sam are several plastic envelopes containing the evidence found on his body. You can examine evidence through the bag without spoiling it.] Well that's convenient enough. First off there's a business card.  Huh, did Sam have an interest in sewing? Then again that could just as well be the brothel he was talking about. Next up is an unsecured credstick which we immediately slot for 300¥, completely disregarding the previous notion of not tampering with the evidence. Stealing from the dead has never been so convenient! After that there's a purple shirt.  Lovely. Finally, there's a handwritten note of some kind, because in Shadowrun those apparently still exist in 2054.  At least we have a name to work with, although it's hard to tell what her relationship with Sam was beyond the fact that they were at least somewhat close, apparently had had some kind of a disagreement, and were going to meet somewhere. That's all we can do here, so let's head back to see who's visiting.   So this new Ripper vic, Watts... name's familiar. Didn't his mother kill herself a while back?[The coroner frowns.] So you insisted at the time. [He chortles.] C'mon, she offed herself... I had it on very good authority. Now let's go, Dresden - give me something to work with here. This Ripper case is my ticket to a Lieutenant's badge.I can already tell we're dealing with the force's finest here. I've already posted everything I know. The killer stuns the target with a combination of drugs and magic, then removes a single internal organ while they're still alive. The perpetrator is most likely right-handed, with a slim hand that knows its way around a scalpel. Has a decent understanding of human and metahuman anatomy, too. So... I'm looking for a whacked-out surgeon? Not necessarily. I don't know any surgeons who still use scalpels, anymore. These days it's all done with computer-controlled lasers. Could be anyone from a military field surgeon to an antique medicine aficionado. You're no drat help, dwarf.[The Lone Star detective finally notices you. You note his superhuman powers of observation.] Even the in-game description's getting all sassy. The Lone Star Security Services is, to put it briefly, the private security and policing firm in North America and handle most law enforcement and security work amongst other things. It goes without saying that even the police are a literal corporation in Shadowrun. Who the hell 're you?With a Strength check of 4 we could tell him off and call him "Lumpy" but alas, all that time spent on the internet and playing with drones has left Amazon with the muscles of a toddler. I'm new in town. You the welcoming committee? If you're new in town, then let me be the first to tell you that I run the show. If you get in my way, you'll end up back here on a slab. [He looks back at the dwarf.] Dresden, get me more. I am putting someone in a cell or a box THIS week and claiming my promotion!The meathead detective walks away, but it doesn't take a gambling man to bet that he'll come back to get in our way in the future.  Well, he didn't really seem like my type. [He cocks his head to one side.] Be straight with me. You really gonna work for the dead man? Sam was there when I needed him. I'm going to return the favor.Plus we're jobless, friendless, broke and had literally nothing else to do aside from counting days until we got kicked out of our figurative trash can into a literal one. Fascinating again! Detective McKlusky isn't interested in anything but Detective McKlusky. He'd convict his own mother if it meant another 10 nuyen a week in his paycheck. Plus, he's on the take.[Dresden pauses, considering.] You have honor, after a fashion. I try to honor the dead in my work, so we have that in common. What can I do to help you?There's a variety of topics we can ask him about now. Like I said in the first update, dialogue is a big part of these games and this guy's particularly chatty since we need to get the basics set up. McKlusky's on the take? Who's paying to hold his leash? I don't know, but someone with some major pull has been looking out for McKlusky's career. And wallet. And what was that he said about Sam's mother? The official report is that she committed suicide about a year ago. Aren't you the "official" in that sentence? My name's on the report, but my actual findings left some... doubts. I can't say that it wasn't suicide, but there were unusual bruises on her upper arms, and she didn't use her dominant hand to pull the trigger. I was told to drop it, so I dropped it.Hey yeah, now that I think about it I bet Sam surgically extracted his own liver as well. Case closed, hand us our hundred grand. What are organs worth these days, anyway? Who still uses scalpels? Doctors still learn how to use them in their first year of medical school - as do coroners - but neither profession uses them much any more. It's possible some of the slimier chop shops still use scalpels, I suppose, but I wouldn't know where to look. Have you heard of the Seamstresses Union? It's a nearby club in the Barrens that attracts lowlifes. You'd probably like it.Wow, wait, what, did we just get burned? Me, I'm not really the going-out type. Always too much to be done around here. Plus, the dead are just easier to get along with. Okay, then I just need to know one more thing. Where was Sam killed?[Dresden looks up at you intently for a moment before speaking.] You know, I might be able to do you one better. Why don't you poke around those body lockers in the back and see if you can find anything... useful.Ah come on now, we've been here long enough already. Just spill the beans so that we can get moving. Do you know where the murder site is or not? Goddamnit fine okay, but for that you can say goodbye to the rest of your medical supplies. It's not like dead people have any use for revival items anyway.  Our chat with Dresden awarded us with 2 Karma as well. Unlike in most games, Karma is primarily received from advancing the plot and resolving situations rather than from killing. "Resolving situations" and "killing" are not mutually exclusive though, not by a long shot.  This better be worth it. Man, what if Dresden's the killer and this is all some kinda sick joke where it turns out that he murdered Sam right here and there's just gonna be a pile of organs in the locker and he'll knock us out and take our nose or something [The cold storage locker is labeled "John Doe" but the internal thermostat is set to 21 degrees celsius.] Wait, that's room temperature. What kinda cold storage is this even supposed to be?  Oh look there was a fresh corpse in the corpse locker, you're such a loving funnyman Dresden. How is this supposed to  ...The hell? Concept art: The Morgue 
Kanfy fucked around with this message at 13:53 on May 24, 2017 |
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Apr 27, 2017 20:43
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Ze Pollack posted:This Armitage guy, what a joker. Yeah, he really holds the spirit of a jester.
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Apr 27, 2017 22:41
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Poil posted:Hopefully not literarily. I will proclaim right here and now that the Jester Spirit still being stuck in Jake's pants because he forgot to use it on Drake is Shadowrun canon. Catalyst or Weisman or whoever can come and fight me about it. David Corbett posted:This looks like fun, and it reminds me rhat I've got Dragonfall sitting around about 30 minutes into the game. Worth waiting this thread out to see how it goes before playing? If I end up having the time and stamina for it and people want to see it then I'd certainly like to do Dragonfall eventually, but as mentioned it will take some time still no matter what. Dead Man's Switch isn't super long for an RPG and I'll do my best to keep a decent update pace but we're only really just getting started. What counts is experiencing Dragonfall in one form or another, it's a very cool game. And for what it's worth, it's not tied to this story one bit, what with taking place in Germany and all. FredMSloniker posted:You might want to consider recording your gameplay with OBS or something, using lossless settings, if your computer can handle it. It makes getting the exact frame you want trivial, and you can do up some GIFs too if you feel the urge. Yeah, I do take most of my combat screenshots from a recording and I had a couple of gifs in part 3 too. But I'm a little picky about my images and I need to manually crop practically everything that isn't dialogue-related, a portrait or a loading screen so screenshot-heavy updates inevitably take more time than dialogue-heavy ones. Kanfy fucked around with this message at 08:09 on Apr 28, 2017 |
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Apr 28, 2017 08:05
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Cathode Raymond posted:The game is pretty big and dialogue heavy though so if you absolutely need to read every paragraph it'll be a bit of a time commitment. This is a big part of why I didn't start with Dragonfall myself, I'm not yet entirely sure how I'd handle all the dialogue in it or Hong Kong. It's not so much the fact that there's a lot of it, anyone reading a screenshot LP of an RPG probably isn't averse to reading, but the structure of the games causes most of the talking to be in really big chunks inbetween missions. I enjoy the dialogue in Dragonfall and Hong Kong quite a bit, especially the chats with your crew, but entire updates of just that seems like it could be tiring to follow. Then again people LP and read LPs of visual novels as well (nice work with Root Double by the way, TheMcD) so maybe it's not as big of a deal as I imagine.
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Apr 28, 2017 15:44
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I'd appreciate it if we didn't link to the literal final boss music of the game just yet, especially since the very next update is going to have an example that works just as well.
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Apr 28, 2017 17:21
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No worries. But yeah, like I said we'll have a track that demonstrates it soon anyway and I'll make mention of the connection there.
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Apr 28, 2017 17:38
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Part 05 - Auspicious Beginnings HD Remastered In the previous episode of Shadowrun Returns, in a shocking development we found a living man in a body locker.   I told John to wake me up at six in the morning. Is it six yet? It doesn't feel like six yet.This is, of course, the legendary dragonslayer, the savior of the Matrix, the 1996 SNES game protagonist and the world record holder in the category of "Most slayings of the exact same vampire in a single day", Jake Armitage. Sorry. Didn't expect you to be so... alive. Yeah, Dresden thinks he's pretty funny. You're not the first person he's pulled this one on. [He chuckles.] Well, so much for a good night's sleep. On the plus side, I notice you haven't killed me yet, so... that's good. If you aren't after me, then what's your story? I'm looking into the death of Sam Watts. The coroner seems to think you can help me out. Sam, eh? Glad somebody cares. We used to drink together every now and then, over at Union. Decent enough guy. Always in trouble over something or other though...Pretty rich coming from the guy for who had half the city trying to murder him from bushes and apartment windows while carrying a time bomb in his head. [Jake yells towards the other side of the room.] John! Is this lady cool? Yeah, she's on the level. Working for Sam, believe it or not... some sort of dead man's switch. I thought you could help her out. *Maybe* even stop moping around the shop all day... Thanks for volunteering me.[He pauses. Might be sizing you up, but it's hard to tell behind those shades.] Alright then. The name's Jake. And you are...? Call me Amazon. [He winces.] drat. Maybe I need some soykaf after all. John, could you grab me a cup?Soykaf is a cheap coffee substitute made out of soy, the real thing being noticeably more rare and expensive. Get your own drat cup! My hands are dirty anyway. Now what's wrong with this intestine...[You hear a loud *squelching* sound as Dresden continues his work.] Thanks John, you're a real pal. Anyway, there's a big fat corp bounty on my head. Like I said, my last job didn't exactly go according to plan. Out in the alley, a few Halloweeners got the jump on us. drat gangers thought they could turn a quick profit off of my head.[Jake smiles, and you get the impression that didn't work out so well for the gangers.] I can't decide whether "Halloweeners" is the best or the worst fake gang name I've ever heard. Sam stumbled off during the fight, though, and that's the last I saw of him. Until he turned up here, dead on arrival. Reminds me of my last stay in this place. You've done this before? Yeah, Jake here's a regular. Should've started a rewards card, Jake - a few more visits and you'd get a free night's stay. [Jake laughs.] I'll hold you to that, John. Anyway, they found Sam's body less than a block away from the Union, missing liver and all. Tell you what. You look like you can handle yourself in a fight. I could use some backup to settle the score with those Halloweeners out there. Their leader, John Paul, has got the whole gang searching the Barrens for me. I need to get rid of that rear end in a top hat. In return, I'll take you to the place Sam was murdered. It's not safe to hit these streets alone at night, trust me.We don't "handle ourselves in a fight" Jake, we delegate that job to machines. Or would, if we had any. Why are we always so poorly prepared for these jobs? [Jake eyes you up and down] ...And maybe I'll throw in some decent supplies while we're at it. What d'ya say?We could take him up on his offer right away here, but I know for a fact that Jake stole tens of thousands of nuyen during his grand adventure while we have ¥300 and even that's only because we looted our friend's corpse earlier. So let's see if we can coax a little something out of him. I don't work for free. I fight, I get paid. In nuyen, not tours. Guess I'd say the same, in your shoes. Fine. There's a credstick with 1,000 nuyen with your name on it. Help me dust those gangers and it's yours. Make it ¥1,500. Hard bargainer. Alright, ¥1,500 it is, but you'd better be worth it... Don't worry about me.Oh yeah, our skills in combat are the stuff of legend, just ask Renraku. We have two points in Biotech and we're not afraid to use them! Woe betide anyone who tries to come between us and our Basic Medkits. Jake will actually pay you the ¥1,000 even if you don't ask for it because he's just a cool guy like that, but this'll net us an extra 500 which is not bad at this stage of the game. Great. I've been hiding out here ever since that run-in with those Halloweeners. Whiny bunch of gangers, but this stretch of the Barrens is their turf. Hell, I'm surprised you even made it to this morgue in one piece without packing some heat. [He yells over his shoulder.] Very funny Jake. You can sleep in the dumpster tomorrow. So, you need a weapon?We're given a choice between a pistol, a shotgun, an SMG, a rifle or a melee weapon. Of course we're equally terrible with them all and we'll just end up selling what we get, so we'll go with the most valuable choice. I like to keep my distance. Got a rifle? You don't like library windows do you? Never mind. Here's a rifle you can borrow. You may recall that this is the same weapon Sangoma used in the flashback. AK-97s cost ¥750 in stores, so it's a nice freebie. On the opposite end, if you're a sucker and ask for a melee weapon you get a ¥10 baseball bat. So, ready for an evening out on the town? If you're buying... Let's roll.  Mm-mm, you can just smell the cancer. .jpg)  Ahhh, it's good to finally be out of that morgue. Hello beautiful streets of Sea... hm?  That's weird, think my graphics settings got reseted for some reason. Should be fixed now. Wonder what happened to that sign up there. My stash is just around the corner, in the alley.Jake is now in our group, so let's take a look at him.   Now here's the thing about the SNES game Jake starred in - It didn't really give a drat about actual Shadowrun rules. While technically the SNES Jake could've been considered a Decker/Shaman -hybrid, by the end of the game he was a master at everything, including hurling spells at impunity despite being cybered up to the gills. Interestingly enough, here Jake has zero skill in either shamanism or decking despite having a Datajack. Apparently this is explained in the Shadowrun Returns Anthology novel (which is part of the game's Deluxe edition/DLC); He lost his datajack in a run that got messy, and Dog which was his shaman spirit skipped town because he got tired of Armitage's reliance on technology. All in all he's obviously far weaker in Returns than in his own game for balance reasons, but he does retain very impressive base stats which handily beat ours across the board.     Equipment-wise he comes with a few low-level Mage spells and a solid mid-range pistol. It's no Enfield AS-7, but it'll do.    The locals seem pretty talkative. This must be the Barrens chat I've heard so much about. On our way to the stash, we stop to exchange words with a drugged-up shaman in a nearby alleyway, knowing that they always have the coolest stories.  Unfortunately he's too messed up to be of much help, but he does mention being freaked out by some kinda spirit which he saw across the street from the Seamstresses Union. I dunno how big spirits are on surgeries, but crazy ramblings tend to be relevant surprisingly often in RPGs so we make a mental note of it and move on.  Here we go. I was hoping the billboard was advertising literal skeletons, but apparently it's just a rock club of some kind. Bummer. We dig Jake's safe out of the pile of garbage and open it up.  Jake's stash is interesting in that what it contains depends largely on where you've allocated your Karma. From what I can tell it'll always have at least a Medkit and a frag grenade and it'll never have a weapon from the categories Jake offered you earlier, but beyond that the contents can vary a fair amount. Our skill in Biotech nets us an additional Medkit, but more importantly...    We finally get our first drone which we promptly name Murphy as per a random thread suggestion. Drones come in two categories, attack drones and support drones, and their class can vary from C to S with higher class drones being stronger than lower class ones. While the Doberman isn't exactly a battlefield terror, coming in with 40 HP and a medium-range 10 DMG shot, it does allow Amazon to contribute properly in fights. It's also possible to get a cyberdeck from the stash which is needed for jacking into the Matrix, but it seems we'll have to get ours elsewhere.  Too impatient to wait until they can see Murphy in action, two enthusiastic men volunteer for a field test.  Maybe a little too enthusiastic. Hands off!  Oh come on, even street punks carry hand grenades now? Unlike the last time we got nailed by one, there's nothing we could've done here due to the enemy getting the first move. Murphy taking a big hit could be especially unfortunate as drones can't be healed by magic or Medkits, instead requiring separate repair kits. As you can see, the AI also doesn't really care about friendly fire. Bet those two aren't friends anymore though, not that it matters what with their imminent deaths and all.  Jake motherfucking Armitage doesn't even give him the chance to regret his actions.  All drones go into weapon slots, and remain passive until activated which allows one to take direct control of them. All active drones reduce the character's available AP per turn by 1.  Dobermans make for excellent guard dogs and will not hesitate to gun down anyone threatening their master. Yeah, these losers go down in a single turn so I didn't even bother giving them the honor of having proper combat music. At the end of each battle all characters will heal their latest instance of damage as if a healing spell had been cast on them, and luckily this does affect drones as well.  So I shouldn't invest in real estate around here? Only by the hour. Hey, you've seen where I stay the night. Anyway, now that you've got some gear... let's go deal with those Halloweeners.More like Halloweeners am I right? Wait En route, sensing the aura of not just one but two video game protagonists, a scared-looking fellow approaches to offer a small sidequest.  Might as well, seeing as it's just down the street and all potential extra nuyen and Karma is welcome.  Sure enough, we find a couple of ruffians harassing people over at the market.   Eh? Who the hell are you?Again, we're given a few different options here. We could trick him if we had the Gang etiquette, intimidate him and take his money instead if we had 4 Strength, or we could be complete idiots and pay him the ¥300 he's trying to extort which'll just cause him to come back the next day anyway. Bet your mom's real proud of you right now. Like I ain't never heard that before. I don't see a badge, so why don't you mind your own? Business. Dusting you is going to get me paid. I knew you were just lookin' to cause static. Dash, ice this lady!Oh no, not the legendary Dash!  Ahahaha are you kidding me  I feel legitimately insulted that I had to waste a bullet on this guy, and this game has infinite ammo. You might notice some glowy circles on the ground there. Those are Ley Lines, they come in three size variants and standing on one powers up spellcasters, Mages in particular.  The head thug has a more respectable 30 HP, but on his own all he manages is a couple of weak shotgun blasts before Murphy brings him down.  The grateful woman offers us ¥48 and we also get 1 Karma. A pretty pathetic reward, but it was a pretty pathetic job so whatever.  We also bump into a woman named Sarah who warns us that the gangers we're looking for, including John Paul, are making trouble nearby which pretty much just confirms that we're on the right path. And indeed, right around the next corner...  This is one of the two that got away. If I hadn't missed my shot, these idiots would have given up and moved on by now. Wait a minute... you're rolling with Jake? Bad idea, chummer. The Halloweeners are collecting that bounty. And killing you? Well, that'll be a nice bonus. .jpg) (The soundtrack also has callbacks to the older games and Null Sheen which is based on the gunfight theme from the SNES Shadowrun is one of the more obvious ones. In fact, both of the tracks were composed by the same person; Marshall Parker and Sam Powell who did the music for the SNES and Genesis Shadowrun games respectively returned to compose the music for Returns.)  We're up against three gangers and one of them is a mage, so you could probably consider this the first "real" fight of the game. It's not particularly tough though.  Jake shows off his magic with an accuracy boost for himself. Aim gives a flat increase to your hit chance so while it might be a simple spell, it's also amongst the most useful. Doesn't work on Murphy, unfortunately.  This is just getting old now. I'm taking grenade hits off of my annual Christmas tradition list for good. Another ganger follows up the grenade with a shotgun blast, but only manages to scratch Jake a bit.    Jake and Murphy team up to teach these hooligans an important lesson about road safety and what happens when you play on the crosswalk.  The remaining mage is smarter and tries to hide behind a bike, but Jake Armitage doesn't give a flying gently caress about probabilities and practically blasts her head clean off with a single pistol shot from across the road. Meanwhile we're hiding behind a bus stop.  The big man himself makes an appearance, but apparently he took his strategy lessons from Renraku security and waited until everyone else had already been put down. This ends now, rear end in a top hat. John Paul actually has a decent amount of health and his attacks can hurt, but he's alone and on top of that we managed to land Mark Target on him, giving Jake 99% hit chance against the poor bastard. A couple of well-placed bullets later...  What do you think, Jake? [He smirks.] Hey, I'm already at "shoot on sight" status with these guys. Killing John Paul means one less 'Weener to shoot me in the back while I'm buying smokes. Hell - they'll be doing the same to you as soon as there's a profit in it.We could let him go, but Jake's been in this protagonist business for much longer than us so we'll defer to his judgment. You're right. Let's finish this. Ultimately John Paul's life ends in the most humiliating way imaginable: He actually gets shot by us. With that business settled, we start heading towards the crime scene nearby, but...  Sorry friend... I think this is where our paths diverge. Thanks again for the help with those Halloweeners. Here's your payment - they don't take nuyen where I'm going, and you look like you could use the funds.Aw man. Returns would probably be the best game in the series if the whole thing was just you and Jake solving crimes and blasting fools. Likewise, Jake. Give me a call when you're in the clear. Yeah, sure. Well - nice knowin' ya.[Jake turns, and disappears into the shadowy depths of the Redmond Barrens.] And so does this update! Concept art: Redmond Barrens 
Kanfy fucked around with this message at 12:00 on Apr 30, 2017 |
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Apr 29, 2017 22:58
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The wiki actually lists Jake with slightly lower stats but the same skills. Makes me think that they bumped them up at some point, either to have him be a bit closer to his original strength or just to make the Redmond Barrens easier.
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Apr 29, 2017 23:54
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Xander77 posted:I'd link to the SNES Shadowrun LP at some point in that update. There's a link in the OP, I encourage everyone to look there and read it in order to catch all the hot references. Plus it's a very good LP. On an unrelated note, the best I could get out of Jake's stash was a Mage weapon, three spells and a summoning fetish. You'd have to have a pretty weird build to get those but hey, it's great value. 
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Apr 30, 2017 11:21
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MagusofStars posted:In case you're wondering this isn't true in Hong Kong. How do I know? Because ah poo poo, I just wiped in the very first battle. The shadows are rough, y'all. If memory serves Dragonfall has the harshest first battle, probably because it was initially an expansion. All in all Returns is downright leisurely at the beginning compared to how quickly things escalate in those two.
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May 1, 2017 12:12
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By the way, for those of you who listen to the music clips, are the audio levels okay? I've been pulling them directly from the soundtrack but I started to wonder if they're too loud, or if the combat themes are too loud compared to the ambient ones or something like that. For The Seamstresses Union I tried recording in-game audio directly since that place plays a mix of two themes, plus it comes with some suitable background noise which isn't in either of them, but because of that I had to manually amplify it. Does something like this sound alright?
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May 1, 2017 17:54
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OAquinas posted:Previous ones have been just fine. I left it a touch quieter, yeah. Since the music actually goes completely silent for a short moment between the two tracks I should be able to put it together fairly easily from the soundtrack too, without the crowd if that's preferable.
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May 1, 2017 18:11
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Part 06 - CSI: Seattle (This one will be a cute lil' mini-update to wrap up the Barrens.) On our own again, it's time to focus properly on this murder investigation!  Ooh is that a donut stand over there  A little something for the road. Dan also tells us that he was closed at the time of the murder so he didn't see anything, adding that it's nothing particularly unusual in the Barrens anyway. We've only been here for about 20 minutes and we've already gunned down like eight people so I suppose that checks out.  The crime scene is right across the road, although it seems like we're not the only ones interested in this particular alleyway.     Hey... I got rights! Look, you SINless garbage. I've got a job to do. Find a new blanket, or I'll find a reason to use my stun baton. Typical. I hate all you pigs!The grumbling bum backs away. [He looks in your direction.] Now what?Of course, Kuprik here won't just let us pass either. We could try to tell him that Dresden sent us over or talk some bullshit about looking into "spectral DNA", but neither works. A simple ¥100 bribe or the Security etiquette which we don't have would do the job, though. Alternatively... Long night, eh? You looked cold, so I picked up a donut and some soykaf for you. Hey... thanks![The officer's face lights up as he takes a sip. He seems pretty trusting, for an officer of the law.] You know... when my dad was a cop... this was back when cops actually worked for the government... he said folks would buy him coffee all the time. But I ain't seen it 'till now. So what can I do for you?Sad to sacrifice a perfectly fine donut, but maybe it's better this way. The jelly was probably made out of gasoline or something anyway. My pleasure. I'm here from internal affairs to review the forensics guys' work, to find anything they might have missed. Sure dig in. I certainly wouldn't mind those guys getting taken down a peg or two. Man do they put on airs if you know what I mean.Wait, seriously? You swallowed that one without question just because I brought you a donut? You people are all hilariously terrible at your jobs. Alright, let's see, what do we got here...   So we're looking for an opera singer with an interest in chemistry, gotcha. We take the test tube piece with us as a souvenir.  What a coincidence, that's exactly where Sam was murdered! We also find the old man's coat and blanket. Might as well return them while... huh?  The Seamstresses Union again? Alright, alright, I get it already, we'll go visit the place. Geez. We take the receipt, and receive 3 Karma for our investigative efforts. Back on the street...  I think this coat and these blankets belong to you. My stuff! Might decent of ya... don't see that kinda thing too often out here. Know anything about the murder that took place here? [He squints at you, suspicious.] You a copper? Or... working for some corp? Nope, I'm as SINless as you. Mind answering a few questions? Hey... what makes you think I'm SINless? Har! Just messin' with ya. 'Course I'm SINless. System I-dee number, my rear end. What kinda questions you got? So... it sounds like you live in this alley? Sure... for the last coupl'a months I been sleeping there. But I spend my days out doin' odd jobs for the street merchants, or panhandling tourists over near the Seamstresses Union.The Seamstresses Union you say? Can't say I've heard of the place, maybe I should write down the name in case it comes up again sometime. Did you see the murder? Nope - and I can't say I'm sorry I missed it. I was hauling crates for Mrs. James up at th' market. Can't carry as many as I used to... so it took awhile. Got back here in time to see a coupl'a tourists puking all over my home turf. By then, that jerkface in the uniform had already set up shop in my alley. What else did you see that night? Hmm. Well... you know, earlier in the night I saw a big 'n ugly troll in green hospital scrubs snoopin' around the block. He bought some donuts and two cups of soykaf off'a Dan over there. Seemed nervous, and he did everythin' with his left hand because his right was all screwed up with some cyberware.Well this doesn't seem at all relevant. Must've been from internal affairs, you can tell by the donuts. Can you tell me more about the troll's cyberware? Well... it was big, and I think it must've had some hospital attachments because I saw some needles. It was a lot like one I saw back in '44, when I got captured by elves. They did all sorts of experiments on me, let me tell you. Never trusted one of them cyber-people.Hospital attachments on his right hand? What, like stethoscopes or something? I don't get how any of this is supposed to help us at all, but I guess that's to be expected from some crazy hobo who believes in elves. That's all I needed to know, thanks. See ya around.Well, our next destination has been made clear enough. First we go back to Dan the Donut Man, which I genuinely hope is just his full name, to see if he remembers this mysterious donut purchaser.  Ah well, guess that would've made things too easy. We chat up a couple more locals as well, and one of the merchants closing up for the night mentions something interesting.  We already knew about the lights, but nobody had mentioned any explosions. Murphy, I think we have a mystery on our hands! Last and probably the least, there's this chump hanging around outside the Seamstresses Union entrance.  Bobby here is our first merchant, peddling some cheap  The +2 Body from Kamikaze is probably the most useful effect here, but to be honest I'd rather just carry an extra Medkit since inventory space is quite limited. There's no addiction mechanic or other adverse effects beyond what's stated in the descriptions, though.  Time to go see what all the hubbub is about. Kanfy fucked around with this message at 09:20 on May 2, 2017 |
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May 1, 2017 20:41
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chiasaur11 posted:Having never used either... Judging by the fact that the "Use 5 drugs" -achievements are some of the rarer ones in the latter games, you're not the only one. Personally I just tend to forget to use them most of the time. Psion posted:When in doubt, it's an obvious backer portrait. I don't really pay any kind of attention to whether something is a backer portrait or not, to my eyes the majority of them fit into the game totally fine.
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May 2, 2017 07:20
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Part 07 - Getting Unionized  (Rather than a "proper" track, the music here is actually a mix of two tracks which we haven't heard yet, Dark Alley and Eyes in the Dark, alternating a small portion from both. Incidentally, this is also the first bit of music composed by the Genesis Shadowrun composer Sam Powell that we've heard.)  Nice jukebox. Our best bet is probably to start with the scantily-clad bartender.  We've had a pretty long day so far. Something dirty in a clean glass. Oooh, a hard-case - I like that. Okay, "Hard Case", I'll get you something stiff.  I think plenty, Shane! I'm getting a Ph-freaking-d from UW in neuroprosthetics, studying under Ojemanns! And how am I paying for it? Bartending. Tips. There are faster ways for a Barrens girl to earn that kind of scratch but I'm not taking 'em. So what do you want from me?Uh, should we go elsewhere for a while or  I want what you want. A better life. A better world for everyone. The Universal Brotherhood can give you that... I've heard all this before. This isn't some trick to get us back together. Things are different now. The Brotherhood...Don't you just hate it when two people you don't really know start arguing about something personal and you just kinda stand there feeling super awkward? [Cherry Bomb's pretty face is hard, armored in lipstick and low expectations] The Universal Brotherhood is for other people, Shane. Rich Bellevue types, who can afford their membership fees and "voluntary donations". This isn't about the money. It's about binding the world together in brotherhood. Come with me. Attend a Discovery Meeting. Get to the core of who you are. I heard Lynne Telestrian give a talk last night called, "The New Family of the Sixth World"...Oh good, it's one of those. I've got a family right here, Shane. They're drunks and lowlifes and whores and I'd choose them over any of your Brotherhood members. Now buzz. I need to get back to work.[With body language that leaves no question that the conversation is over, Cherry Bomb turns her back on him.] Thankfully the goony guy takes the hint and leaves. Sorry, I got interrupted. Sorry you had to go through that. Sounds like you've got big plans for yourself. [Her pretty eyes soften.] Yeah... I do. Can't stay here forever. You've got a look that says you're not here just for the entertainment. Are you a badge? I think you know the answer to that.I mean, we managed to open the front door without assistance so we're clearly overqualified for that particular job. [She regards you with a smirk.] Mmm hmm. I do. You're... independent. We're trained to spot a bronze the minute they walk in here. Something I can help you with? I have a few questions. Ask away.Yep, it's that time gain. Tell me about this place.  "People like you"? Why does everybody keep saying that?! Who was that you were talking to? Shane. Old boyfriend. He used to work here. Then one day, he saw a billboard for the Universal Brotherhood and that was that. Went to a meeting, made new friends... moved in with them. I was happy for him, until he started coming around trying to recruit me. I don't need that drek. That guy mentioned Coyote. She here? [She looks worried.] No. I think she's... away on business.One day we'll get something done easily without facing yet another speed bump. Today is not that day. Business, huh? Is she a shaman? With a name like "Coyote"... I'm sorry, what? What is wrong with everyone in this place? Is it all the crap in the air? [Her face falls.] She's been missing for a couple of days, now. Some people think the Ripper got her, but I know her. Coyote can take care of herself. Ever heard the name Sam Watts? [She nods.] Sam was a regular customer and a regular pain in the rear end for as long as I've been here. Talked a big game but he was always broke. As soon as he got any money in his pocket, it went straight to his head - chips, drugs, or booze. Coyote had a soft spot for him though.She's not talking about potato chips by the way, but rather Simsense ones which are basically like virtual reality except with practically complete immersion. BTL or Better Than Life chips are an especially hardcore version which mess up your brain and can cause serious addiction similar to hard drugs. Did you see Sam on the night he died? No. That was Coyote's shift. Who runs this place? I want to talk to them. That'd be Mrs. Kubota. She's in the back room. You can't miss her. Thanks for the intel. I appreciate the help. Gutterpunks have to stick together.Next up is the big fella next to her.  Eric doesn't have much to say, but he's a very important character nonetheless, being our very first opportunity to upgrade our armor.  While he technically has a real impressive selection, in practice everyone who can afford it just buys the Alley Punk outfit for its high armor value. Plus it's the set featured in the promo art. On the other hand I think we should try to avoid attracting too much attention, we don't want to look too threatening y'know? So really, the choice here is obvious.  Hell yeah, they'll never see us coming.  Going further in, we find another merchant. As a sidenote, Kickstarter backers could chat with the ghost of Jordan Weisman back here as well.  We probably won't be firing any guns anytime soon, if ever, and despite what she says Jin doesn't carry anything except the most basic weaponry anyway. The tech part is of interest to us though. She's our first source of Drone Repair Kits and more interestingly, she sells the first available support drone.   Now, it's very easy to overlook the Smoker. You look at the description and go "Smoke? That sounds lame, I'm not going to give up my damage for that." But what the description doesn't tell you is that as a support drone, the Smoker comes equipped with a mini-mortar which is just as damaging as the Doberman's gun. The downside is that it needs to be reloaded after every 3 shots and it's slightly less accurate, but on the other hand mortar hits also damage enemies (and only enemies) directly adjacent to the target.  In addition, the Smoker comes pre-equipped with a pair of smoke grenades (hence the name) and a concussion grenade which deals AP damage to everyone hit. Like all drone items, they automatically replenish themselves between missions. The Smoker also appears to be slightly sturdier than the Doberman, with higher HP and armor. What I'm saying is that welcome to the team, Hello World. We also get a couple of repair kits because if our drone gets busted, we'll become useless again until the next time we can access our item stash. Watching the back room is this well-dressed giant.  I'm not going to draw further attention to it but I'll mention here that various characters in the game are drawn after Kickstarter backers. Mr. Kluwe here is based on the former American football player Chris Kluwe who was a backer, with the horns referencing the Minnesota Vikings which is where he spent most of his career. Apparently. Funny place for the architect to put a wall. Load bearing, too. You have business here? Looking into the death of Sam Watts. Heard about that. Real shame what happened to him.[There is a sharpness in Kluwe's eyes, the look of a man who has seen much and earned wisdom at a young age.] I figure Sam was the type who needed to be thrown out on occasion. Encouraged to call it a night, I'd say. Sam was a drunk, but he usually wasn't a violent one. Usually? What about the night he died? Hmm. Thanks for the info. No problem.Last up is the back room.  Fancy-looking place, they got elven dancers and everything. Although...  ...only one of them is putting any kind of effort into it. Or maybe "The bus driver" is the hottest dance of 2054, hell if I know. Anyway, let's see who's around back here.  Yeah, first time. Just getting a look at the place. Well enjoy yourself. This looks like your type of place. I'm just sweeping up a bit.I swear to god if you people don't stop with the "your type of place" comments...  ..."Noog", huh.  *mutter*... THAT was why I said to use mustard instead of catsup!... *mutter*... Forgive me, Jean. I was a fool... *mutter* [He looks you in the eye, his other conversations on hold.] You may peruse my magical wares and see their glory. He sells all kinds of stuff for all three caster classes. We have zero business with this guy, at least for now. Only one person left, so that has to be...   My, but aren't you the pretty elf! Are you enjoying the Seamstresses Union? There should be plenty for a woman like you to enjoy.[She eyes you closely.] Or is this business? I just need a moment of your time, Mrs. Kubota. I have topics to discuss. So ka. And why should I help you?She actually uses "So ka" correctly, which if intentional is a nice touch. Sam Watts. I'm looking for his killer. [Her face brightens - amused.] Ah! So *you* are the "little insurance policy" he would go on about when he was drunk. His avenging angel who would strike back for him from beyond the grave.Guess he was one of those people who get all dramatic after drinking. What do you want to know? Why is this place called the Seamstresses Union? During the gold rush years, there was a census, and the politicians wanted as high a number as possible to gain power and revenue. To bolster their numbers, they decided to include all the "working girls" - of which there were many - to the rolls. However, given the times, they could not list the girl's true occupation so they entered them all as "seamstresses".From what I can tell this is a thing that actually happened, at least as far as the euphenism is concerned. When a girl accumulated enough money to open her own place of business, she named it the Seamstresses Union so potential workers would know that they would be treated fairly there. And thus, a rich tradition was born. So you're a former... seamstress? No. Perhaps when we know each other more, I will reveal more about myself. For now, enjoy the Union.As you might've guessed, we'll be sticking around for a while. How well did you know Sam? I knew him - we all did. Sam was a regular here, whenever he could beg or borrow enough nuyen to become altered in some way. Drugs, chips, alcohol - it didn't matter to Sam. As long as he was bent. He was always looking for his next fix.And yet somehow he had a 100k insurance going. Did he put all of his money into it? Does it even exist? Or did someone else pay for it for some reason?  He clung to this place like it was his lifeline and we treated him as part of the family, even if none of us truly liked him - except Coyote. Did you see him on the night of his death? They got harassed by gangers and Sam stumbled off to get murdered, we know that part. One more question. Can you tell me where to find Coyote? [Her face darkens.] Would that I could. I have not seen her in two days. She is a smart woman, and quite dangerous, but I fear for her. If she's smart, why fear for her? Because she is in a dangerous line of work and there is always someone smarter. More prepared. Maybe we should name our drone Watson with how much detective work seems to be getting thrown our way. Ah well, upstairs we go.  Now technically she never said which room was Coyote's, so it's best we go through them all. You know, just in case. The first door seems to be locked with a security panel, but maybe she just forgot to mention it.  Our choice of profession begins paying off. You don't have the option to guess the password, so it's decking or nothing.  There's nothing of value inside at first glance, but we do find some Nitro stuffed inside a teddy bear. I'm sure nobody will miss it. The second room's empty, so we head on to Coyote's room at the end of the hallway.  At least when it comes to size, our place was like a manor compared to these apartments. We've got a few things to look at here.    Doesn't tell us much, except that she might very well be a goon. There's also a diary with several papers sticking out of it on the bed. The first entry: There's also a receipt on the page.  Hell, same. At the very least Coyote seems to have been armed. The second entry: Guess things were looking up. There's a few other things here, but only a couple of receipts stand out as relevant. First is the receipt to a wall safe complete with its combination, and the second...  Sure I get it, everyone has those days when you're really just craving to bite into a good ol' chunk of zebra meat.  We find the aforementioned safe behind the broken mirror, open it up, and loot ourselves a frag grenade. The last thing we can look at is Coyote's computer.  What we have here is a small puzzle. The password recovery system consists of a series of questions, and the answers can mostly be found amongst all the things in the room we've looked at so far. I invite everyone at home to play along and see if they can figure out the answers by themselves. Should be fun. Ready? Let's go!  Just kidding, puzzle-solving is for peasants.  Hopefully the truth is in here. We've got three options: "Contacts", "Access History" and "Calendar". The contacts only list Paco but has no actual contact info, so it's not very useful. "Access History":  You gotta be careful when you order hot dogs in Shadowrun, could make for a nasty misunderstanding. "Calendar":  Wait, today? Hasn't she been missing for a couple of days already? Well whatever, guess we have our next destination. Back downstairs and to Mrs. Kubota. Coyote has a date with Paco at Pike Place Market in the next half hour.Or it might've been in a half hour two days ago, but who's really counting.  Man, not even a moment's rest. I don't think we ever even got our drink, now that I think about it. At least we have a nice relaxing stroll at the local market to look forward to, next time. Kanfy fucked around with this message at 22:44 on May 3, 2017 |
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May 3, 2017 20:54
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Poil posted:To be honest, the added Japanese feels kinda forced and reeks of weeaboo rather than any meaningful flavor. No surprise I don't remember any of it from the later games. Eh, Kubota's half-Japanese and it's a fairly common trope for people speaking a foreign language to throw in foreign words here and there. Aside from her, I think so far there's just been that one "So ka" from New Larry. But yeah, it's part of the slang which they mostly drop in the later games. You don't see nearly as many "drek-eating grins" or what have you anymore either, thankfully.
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May 3, 2017 21:56
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Poil posted:English is my second language but I have no inclinations whatsoever to randomly add Swedish words for no reason when I speak/type in English. I'm with you, in fact I've successfully managed to get through the entire LP so far without a single word in Finnish, but it's still a fairly a popular trope in fiction so I can usually let it slide. It's been a while since I last played it, but I'm pretty sure you see the occasional "herr" and "frau" in Dragonfall as well.
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May 3, 2017 22:31
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PMush Perfect posted:Was this intentional, or just serendipity? What, from my part? Intentional, of course. On a related note, I don't actually know if Noog is a direct reference or not but I wouldn't be surprised if he were. Fish Noise posted:This is going to be That One Outfit You Eventually Switch Away From But Never Leaves Your Inventory, isn't it? You can only have outfit with you at a time so that's literally impossible, but that just means we'll never switch away from it. Reminder: Kanfy posted:Spoiler policy Let's just play it safe here. Kanfy fucked around with this message at 07:38 on May 4, 2017 |
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May 4, 2017 07:29
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