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We were kind of giving the series poo poo when we were recording the first part of Mercenary and in the commentary for Chapter 4 of Shadow Fall for Guerrilla not having a consistent map of Vekta across each game, and yet... Props to Guerilla Cambridge, at the very least. They did their homework.
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Apr 18, 2018 06:15
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I was going to ask how much influence the Earth's government has in the war through the PMCs, but it seems like they don't have that much. I suppose allowing them to operate at all in the war is an indication of how they feel about things though.Blind Sally posted:Hella yeah! Please don't appropriate my people's culture.
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Apr 18, 2018 07:26
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Aaron reminds me of Clark of the SNK series of fighting games AND of their signature 80s game, Ikari Warriors
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Apr 18, 2018 14:54
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value-brand cereal posted:True. Much like animes, video games also have the standard 'Beach Planet with Babes in Bikinis [or Studs in Speedos!]' episode that usually gets censored in odd ways.
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Apr 18, 2018 19:24
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there’s still one question I have about the last shadow fall update, hopefully this is not a spoiler has cjacobs made his bed yet?
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Apr 18, 2018 20:58
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nine-gear crow posted:We were kind of giving the series poo poo when we were recording the first part of Mercenary and in the commentary for Chapter 4 of Shadow Fall for Guerrilla not having a consistent map of Vekta across each game, and yet... the coastlines a little different in some parts, but yeah, props to Guerrilla Cambridge. at least Diortem is a more sane city too than Vekta City's giant whatever the gently caress they think they're doing with that dam
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Apr 20, 2018 21:34
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I'm the Suspiciously Cut-off Peninsula.
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Apr 20, 2018 21:39
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Awww yeah, Mercenary time! Arran Danner is the best. Too much of an rear end in a top hat to stay enlisted in even a disreputable professional military, too much of a badass not to be killing people at least 8 hours a day, he washed up at a PMC where they pay out bonuses for head shots. It’s a story as old as the early 2000’s.
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Apr 22, 2018 21:02
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HardDiskD posted:I'm the Suspiciously Cut-off Peninsula.
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Apr 22, 2018 22:07
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Cathode Raymond posted:Awww yeah, Mercenary time! I can't wait to get crow and cjakes pinned down to do some commentary on Mercenary. The incentivation of gameplay is brilliant. Headshot? Cash bonus. Double Kill? Cash bonus. Kill an enemy while ziplining into a killzone? You better believe that's a cash bonus. Benoit has the perfect PMC racket going on. No wonder Phantom Talon Corp attracts the "best".
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Apr 22, 2018 22:17
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From what little gameplay I saw of Mercenary on the night we tried to record it and failed miserably, I was quite entertained by both how it played and how it wasn’t supposed to play. I just hope that the Killzone Physics I saw in action that night return in force for the proper videos, because oh my god Killzone handheld games they’re just 
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Apr 22, 2018 22:30
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i wasn't able to recreate the glitches we saw on that run. if you are able to salvage any of that footage, they were pretty magical.
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Apr 22, 2018 23:18
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 No, not a real update. However, I am pretty much all settled into my new place and my computer is back up and running again--AND--we managed to record a few new updates before I hunkered down for the move, so hopefully we'll be back on schedule or close to it by Saturday. So get ready people we're going back into the Killzone full bore.
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May 7, 2018 08:27
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nine-gear crow posted:
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May 8, 2018 02:22
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May 8, 2018 02:55
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Preeeeeeetty sure that's everyone right now.
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May 8, 2018 04:10
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I’ve learned at this point, the updates are a lie. 
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May 8, 2018 04:58
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Ok sure pal but are we ever gunna get updates re:the bed, it's status being made or not????
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May 8, 2018 06:14
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value-brand cereal posted:Ok sure pal but are we ever gunna get updates re:the bed, it's status being made or not???? The bed will never be made. The bed is an illusion. The bed is a construct of your mind, implanted by the Helghans by means of Petrusite. How? hosed if I know.
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May 8, 2018 06:43
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The bed is a Marker hallucination.
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May 8, 2018 08:57
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value-brand cereal posted:Ok sure pal but are we ever gunna get updates re:the bed, it's status being made or not???? CJacobs' bed will never die, but you will
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May 8, 2018 12:50
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Back Hack posted:I’ve learned at this point, the updates are a lie. i can't help but feel responsible. Cjakes and crow have solid update schedules on their own. my update schedule is nonexistant. i mean, i think about updating a lot, but you know.
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May 9, 2018 03:42
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 The thing literally no one wanted! The no-comm version of Chapter 3, at long last  Still, this should at least be proof that I'm allegedly back up and running properly.
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May 9, 2018 07:30
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nine-gear crow posted:
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May 9, 2018 07:38
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I don’t know if it was explicitly said before, but Mercenaries really laid out the history of the Helghast in black and white in terms of why they were so laser focused on messing with Vekta. It makes the species specific plague warfare an even more idiotic gamble. I keep thinking about it and it leads to some pretty dark conclusions and I suspect that it could very likely be the path that the game is going. Looking forward to more insane ramblings from Doctor Blight
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May 9, 2018 08:04
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The vidoes for Chapter 4 are being exported and uploaded right now, so I should have the post up for you fine people in about an hour-ish.
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May 13, 2018 04:36
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 NOTE: Blind Sally was unable to join us for this chapter, so CJacobs and I pressed on without him. He will be back for the remainder of the game going forward, however.   Chapter 4 starts off with Kellan on an ISA VTOL en route over Vekta City back to VSA HQ for a round of celebratory applause and hamburgers for him letting one of the most dangerous minds in the entire galaxy be carted off to the Helghast while he just pissed himself like a chump. Well done, Lucas.   Security is extra tight on the ground level at VSA HQ. And even as Lucas is escorted past a waiting line of civilians just trying to get into VSA Plaza, he’s still stopped at a checkpoint that scans him to confirm it’s really him through biometric IDs. We also get to see a brief flash of Lucas’s face on the checkpoint scanner.  Lucas is cleared through and immediately wanders into audible range of a TV broadcasting one of Hera’s latest rants, specifically her response to Lucas blowing up her daddy’s big ugly statue a few days ago. Over on a bench to the right of the screen is the Newspaper Intel pick up for the chapter which references the Cassandra suddenly diving into the sun. Her cover as a solar research vessel is referenced in the article, as is the latest development in the burgeoning Solar Dawn scandal, which highlights how racially charged Vekta has become since the arrival of the Helghast as a famous and popular movie star suddenly faces the end of his career because rumours have begun circulating that he’s part Helghast. It even has one of those old school Glenn Beck style “prove you’re not what I say you are” / “when did you stop beating your wife?” hooks as the leader of a prominent yet fringe Vektan political party demands he take a DNA test to disprove the allegations.  But back to Hera. Much like how her father was portrayed by galactic media at the start of Killzone 2, Hera is also mostly laughed off as a tinpot dictator with no bite behind her bombastic words, even more so than Visari was in his time, because Hera doesn’t seem to have much to back up her rhetoric in the way of a military whereas Visari had a fighting force that was the envy of the known universe before Lente, Metrac, and Orlock pissed it into a meat grinder on Visari’s order. The chyron on screen even boldly asks if she’s FIT TO LEAD HER PEOPLE?  Lucas continues on his merry way into VSA HQ, coming up to the main entrance plaza which proudly displays a globe of Vekta that, curiously, does not appear to line up with any of the previously canonical depictions of what Vekta’s continents are shaped like. Not that we really get a good look at it anyway, because...  EXPLOSION!!!</terrycrews> A massive bomb rips through the lower levels of the tower, devastating the building and killing and injuring god knows how many.  Lucas is thrown across the plaza and knocked out cold by the shockwave, but miraculously survives (mostly) uninjured. I mean, come on, the dude’s an FPS protagonist and the game isn’t even halfway over yet. One devastating explosion isn’t going to keep him down.  Amid the panic, the ISA soldiers previously guarding the building rush into action, escorting the survivors out of the area and checking on the injured. And yet there seems to be a couple of soldiers striding about through the chaos who seem markedly unperturbed that the biggest explosion Vekta City has witnessed since the end of the war just tore its intelligence headquarters several new basements.  The “ISA soldier” calmly strides up to the injured woman, pulls out a Helghast pistol, and promptly shoots both her and the soldier helping her dead. Is it too soon to proclaim “VSA HQ was an inside job”? “Sinclair Did 6/29?” Anyone?  As the unknown soldier turns and spots Kellan, a faint yellow shimmer ripples across now just his uniform, but his whole body.  The soldier’s hologram unit either fails or just deactivates as he crouches before Kellan.  Revealing a new enemy in the game: a Black Hand trooper. Though “trooper” is kind of a misnomer. As you can tell by how he seems to be just some hipster thug in a Gortex hoodie, the Black Hand isn’t exactly the same kind of stock as the proper Helghast military we’ve been encountering thus far. These are teenagers and 20-somethings in at most minimal armour, if not just outright civilian clothing. Yeah they have the same high powered weaponry that the proper Helghast military does, but they are clearly not outfitted for any kind of actual fair two-way fight. They are an offence only outfit. And this is the point where the Killzone franchise’s “history of every 20th century war ever” finally rolls over into Century XXI and we start experiencing modern asymmetric warfare. KIllzone 3 kind of played at it with Rico and Narville’s disparate bands of insurgent ISA remnant troops on Helghan, but Shadow Fall is where we go whole hog on the concept.  The Black Hand are, no bones about it, a terrorist organization. They represent the modern era’s unmooring of military power away from centralized nation states and towards any given charismatic thug who can pool enough people, weapons, and money together to become a threat to... whomever they plan to fight. Mercenary also tackles this unmooring of military power, but from the other side of this coin through PMCs or private military companies. The Black Hand itself was originally a New Helghan labour movement that was co-opted and radicalized into a terrorist organization by a man named Vladko Tyran. Tyran has sworn unending vengeance against the Vektan government and population for the genocide and destruction of Helghan, though his ire also extends to Hera Visari’s government on New Helghan (Hera outlawed the group two years ago after their extremist ideology and actions became a public menace). The news articles from the intel pickups have namedropped the Black Hand already, claiming they were responsible for a bombing in a New Helghan market that killed six people. So what was seemingly just a Helghast problem has now spilled over across the Wall and into Vekta too.  VSA HQ is functionally totalled. The bomb has ripped through the lower levels of the tower and even penetrated the basement. The Black Hand have already secured the lobby and are keeping any VSA attempts to reclaim the building hampered by suppressive fire. With the comm network and security systems down, Lucas has to get into the lower levels of the tower and get the mainframe back online so that Sinclair can start coordinating a counter strike. Also of note, as CJacobs points out in the video, you get to see Guerrilla playing around with Color Theory again in this set piece. At the beginning of the chapter when everything was calm and under control, VSA HQ was awash in blue lighting, subtly denoting it as friendly territory (ie: Vekta=Blue). However, once the bomb goes off and the fires start consuming the plaza, everything turns orange because it's now a warzone under the control of the Black Hand (Helghast=Orange). It's a similar progression to the Cruiser chapter in Killzone 2, where the lighting on the ISSC New Sun starts off as blue when the ship is fully under ISA control, but as the assault on Templar's fleet progresses and the New Sun takes more damage and is overrun internally by the Helghast, everything turns progressively redder. In this chapter, the inverse is going to happen. The color pallet shifts progressively bluer and cooler as we retake each part of Vekta from Black Hand control and put down the threat instead of being overwhelmed by it.  With the comms array back up and running, Sinclair phones in and tells Kellan to meet him up in the plaza. This attack on VSA headquarters is actually just one of many Black Hand strikes across Vekta City and the entire VSA is basically blind and paralyzed right now with their network offline.  When Lucas makes it topside, Sinclair is already giving orders. Running right up to him triggers the next phase of the mission, but if you hang back just a few steps away from him, he will run through his whole dialog which takes at least a full minute. And why would you not? David Harewood is one of the best parts of this game, the man is the Martian Manhunter for Christ’s sake, when he talks, you shut up and listen.  An explosion goes off in the distance, prompting Lucas to exclaim “Jesus Christ, that’s near Templar Park.” So there you go, that’s your one and only reference to Jan Templar in Shadow Fall. Dude gets a park named for him in his honour, which promptly gets blown up by the Black Hand. The man has been dead for 30 years and was one of the singular unambiguously Good People in Killzone, and the universe is STILL relentlessly making GBS threads on him. Also one thing to point out that you’ll hear more of if you watch the No Comm version of this video, but all around in the background there are medics checking on the wounded and rattling off actual Doctor Speak as they tend to the wounded.  Sinclair starts getting his John Bolton on as the VTOL him and Lucas board takes off and they get a fuller view of the damage from the air. Chapter 4 is loaded for bear with all sorts of post-9/11 imagery, allegory, and phraseology. The opening segment is even titled “On Vektan Soil” just to put the pin on it, though you only ever find that out if you go though the chapter select option on the main menu. Regardless, this is Guerrilla straight up parodying its post-9/11 FPS cohorts with perhaps an overly straight face. Sinclair sounds like a cartoon character when he starts ranting about “Oh, I knew they would hit us on our own soil one day!” …But everything he’s saying is curbed from things that real world politicians, military leaders, and media figures have already said, and in some cases STILL say in this Year of Our Lord Two Thousand And Eighteen (or later—hello future people!). Hell, if anything, Sinclair himself—the wild-eyed, froth snorting cartoon parody of a war-hawk conservative—has become quite quaint since Shadow Fall dropped back in 2013.  A broadcast signal interruption cuts in over the VTOL’s monitor and a screaming propaganda video starts playing from the Black Hand’s leader, VladkoTyran. He announces to all of Vekta that this is its day of reckoning for what it has done to the Helghast people since the Terracide. Again, Tyran’s rhetoric is curbed from the propaganda of contemporary terrorist factions and wouldn’t look out of place beside some of the stuff put out by ISIL which also teeters on the knife-edge between professional and ramshackle in its production values. Sinclair barks at tech officer on the VTOL with him and Lucas to track down Tyran.  From high above, plumes of smoke and fire drift up from all around the city. The Black Hand is throwing all its might at this attack and trying to do as much damage as it can before they’re inevitably put down. Again, this just serves to make Sinclair even MORE murderously angry, openly confiding to Lucas that he repeatedly lobbied the Vektan government to pre-emptively wipe out New Helghan militarily using the brewing threat of the Black Hand as an excuse. This is quite the escalation from “purely a deterrent” (he says about a literal genocide virus). Please, Thomas, tell us how you really feel about the Helghast, preferably without using any variation of the term “motherfucker.”  The intel dude chimes in to exposit that the Black Hand have commandeered three FlyRail sky trains, loaded them with explosives, and are preparing to use them as high speed projectiles against Vekta Stadium.  This transitions us into the second set piece of the mission: the FlyRail lines themselves.  This is where Shadow Fall really starts to put it’s Level Design foot forward in front of its predecessors. The rail lines are a multi-level maze of platforms that you can navigate in whatever way you feel like, but each way has certain risks and benefits. I'm not a huge fan of a lot of Shadow Fall's level design choices over all, but the FlyRail lines are some of my favourite areas of the game. At the very least, they really nailed this whole chapter.  Sticking to the elevated platforms is slower, but you have more cover from enemy snipers and soldiers picketing the route to the objectives.  Sticking to the tracks is faster, but infinitely more treacherous, because…   The FlyRail trains are still running through the depot along the tracks. And if you get hit by one of them, it is an insta-kill. You’re given these octagonal rest platforms every 50 feet or so as safe spaces to avoid getting hit, but even then it’s not a guarantee of safety. You can still get clipped by a train even if you’re in the “clear”. The trains come about once every 12 seconds or so, usually just enough time for you to sprint from one safe zone to the next. You will have a couple seconds warning before a train arrives as the warning lights on the track will flash red immediately before the train spawns in, but if you see them and you’re still out in the open, then just stop and eat the death, because the trains move so fast that you’re already dead anyway.  When you get to the stopped trains, be ready for a fight. This is also where the Tactical Echo starts showing its limitations, because the Black Hand troops on each only spawn in either as you approach the train or as you’re boarding it.  That said, each train is loaded with the fuckers. Clearing out the trains allows you to reach the bombs nd deactivate them.  Tyran is also on every screen on the train screaming away his revenge manifesto. If you want, you can sit there and listen to the whole thing because it repeats after a while, but it is honestly a LONG sit for a rambly rant that repeats itself quite a bit, even if it does help establish his motivations. The gist of it is that Tyran is incredibly pissed off that the Vektan destroyed his Homeworld and killed his family and now treat his people like slaves and prisoners, and he’s had enough and is just out for petty revenge. …Revenge for a homeworld and family he didn’t even know, because he was born in the immediate aftermath of the Terracide and evac’d off Helghan along with his adoptive father, but I’ll cover that more in depth in his character profile.   There isn’t much otherwise interesting to say about this section, despite it being one of the more intriguing bits from a gameplay perspective. You can see for yourself in the video.   When Lucas makes it to the front of the final train, it’s bomb has already been rigged to blow and there’s no way Lucas can stop it in just… 69 seconds. Nice.  Sinclair swoops in on the VTOL and orders Lucas back to him. They’re going to have to take out the bomb from the air now that the train is already en route to the stadium.  Did you say “Minigun?”  Well, you know what I always say: (asymmetrical) war gets more fun when I get a bigger gun!  You’re then thrown int a brief rail shooter section where you literally have to shoot at a rail. Destroying the rail hooks will send the train plummeting down to (hopefully) unoccupied ground below the rail line.   For our wanton property destruction and systematic murder of unemployed, desperate and destitute New Helghan youth, we receive a congratulatory platitude from the Martian Manhunter. And we are also now 2/3rds of the way done this chapter. Later chapters are much longer than this, but Chapter 4 is a rather busy chapter in the variety of its set pieces.  And all the while, Tyran is STILL screaming into the abyss, making Sinclair even more pissed off than he already is. I think we’re at about 50/10 on the Rico Scale now in terms of how angry Thomas Sinclair is at this current moment in time. The good thing though about Tyran being physically incapable of shutting the gently caress up is that his broadcast location has been traced to a penthouse in West Vekta City, near the Wall. A tactical team is on its way and the elevators and escape routes have been sealed, but Sinclair wants Kellan in there to take out Tyran personally. This is the first time he’s even appeared on the Vektan side of the Wall, despite making life miserable for the VSA for a long while now from the safety of the slums of New Helghan.  Sinclair makes no bones about it that he wants Tyran dead, going so far as to tell Lucas, off the record, that rescuing the civilian hostages Tyran’s also taken is secondary to putting a bullet or blade though one side of him and out the other. For contrast, in the pauses between Sinclair’s orders, we can still hear Tyran ranting away in the background, very pointedly saying “there’s no such thing as an innocent Vektan.” It’s something Sinclair agrees with, only in the opposite direction. To him, there’s no innocent Helghast. So Lucas is caught in the middle of the madman screaming at him in the foreground, and the madman screaming at him in the background, both of them functionally espousing the same ideology, only from different positions of power in society. And this is going to become a recurring theme as the game progresses. Even more than Sev in Killzone 3, Lucas Kellan’s theme song is practically “Stuck In The Middle With You.”  Lucas zip lines down to the roof of the building and is informed by the ISA team lead that there’s two ways into the building; breaching directly down through the pool skylight, or sneaking in and finding another way. Breaching is the direct route, but will trigger a fire fight immediately. Sneaking through will allow you to take out enemies quietly, but is the longer and more riskier process all told.  On the roof, the a weapons cache has been set up for you to restock after the train section, and floating there loose in the open for the only time in the game is a returning favourite of longtime viewers of our Killzone LPs: the Dickshot 5000! AKA the LS21 Valk silenced submachine gun. This was the weapon wielded by the OG Shadow Marshal Luger in Killzone 1, and to, ah, “great” effect by Blind Sally in his play through of KZ1 as Luger where the Valk had a troubling tendency to shoot Helgoon right in the groinal area when fired from crouch height. No scrotum is safe when the Valk is on the prowl! That said, they reworked it slightly for Shadow Fall to somehow make it even MORE lovely and unwieldy than it was in KZ1, so perhaps it for the best that it doesn’t show up in single player all that often beyond this segment. The only reason this guy is even here is for nostalgia bait for old school players.   Because I’m the most unstealthy motherfucker to ever play a game where you’re supposed to be a stealthy super agent, I go in guns blazing. Taking this route has no bearing on whether the hostages die, mind you. The Black Hand are considerate enough to leave them be while you gun everyone down around them.   There’s three sets of hostages in the building: a man by his lonesome in the bathroom, and then a pair of dudes in the kitchen across the penthouse, and finally a woman on the upper levels all by her lonesome who is the wife of one of the dudes in the kitchen. Again note the green Tactical Echo highlights on the hostages. I said that civilians normally don't appear on the echo unless they're mission critical. This is the lone instance where they're mission critical.  The last hostage is a woman bound up and positioned in front of the camera Tyran was screaming into. The dude in the kitchen gives you a hint to her location and she doesn't appear on the Tactical Echo until the other three dudes have been saved. Again, it brings up parallels to certain disturbing hostage execution videos put out by modern terrorist organizations, with the implication being that this woman was probably minutes away from being executed on live television as the finale to Tyran’s endless ravings and was spared only because the raid spooked Tyran into running and just leaving here there handcuffed and bound to the chair for Lucas to rescue.  She tells Kellan that Tyran has hosed off and just left here there, no doubt as a distraction for the VSA troops while he escaped. So with the upper levels of the tower clear, and no sign of any aerial extraction having gone down, there's only one way Tyran could have gone.   So Kellan has to repel down the side of the building off of OWL to continue the pursuit.    He makes a DYNAMIC ENTRY on this poor Helgoon’s face, teabagging him and then snapping his neck for good measure.  It’s at this moment that Tyran comes running out the shadows with a knife drawn and ready, still screaming his rear end off.  He comes face to face with Kellan and then stabs him in the chest plate for good measure.  We get to see some of Tyran’s dark humour as he runs off saying “Keep the knife, you’ll need it.” Jeez, Vlad, I can’t see how a sentence like THAT will possibly come back and bite you in the rear end… repeatedly.  When you get back into gameplay, even though Tyran just leisurely strolls out of the room, he’s already despawned, so tracking him with your Tactical Echo is useless. Luckily this floor is just one round hallway and the chapter is minutes away from being over anyway.  Kellan makes it outside just at Tyran hops on a commandeered ISA VTOL about to escape off over the Wall.  He makes a daring jump for a rope line that’s dangling from the VTOL for... some reason.  And is left holding on for dear life as the VTOL careens through the skyline. This section seems like a cutscene, but it’s actually the last playable event in the chapter. You have full control over Kellan during this sequence. Your primary objective is to drag your rear end up the line towards the fuselage in the hope of stopping Tyran somehow.   The dropship door pops open and Tyran starts siccing the Black Hand goons in the ship with him on you. Note: you can totally die during this segment, either if you really gently caress up taking out the troopers and let them shoot you, or if you fall victim to other hazards we’ll talk about in a second.   Such as this wall! You need to climb up the rope a sufficient distance in order to clear this part here and avoid Lucas getting Lieutenant Dan’d and losing everything below his knees. This death isn’t in the video because the jump for the VTOL is a pre-scripted sequence and thus incredibly easy to edit around seamlessly   Kellan gets a hand on the doorway and gets ready to pop Tyran right in the face with his pistol.   Only for Tyran to kick the gun out of his hand. Hmm. I wonder if we have any OTHER weapons we could use against him at our disposal?  Tyran takes another moment to gloat before leveling a gun at Kellan’s head. Also just an interesting detail to point out, but Tyran is left handed, or at the very least ambidextrous, because he's holding the gun here in his left hand, while in the previous scene he came at Kellan with the knife in his right hand.  “OH THE IRONY!” - Vladko Tyran, 2390  With Kellan getting a moment of meaningless immediate cathartic vengeance on Tyran by giving him back his knife in the most visceral way possible, Tyran kicks him off the VTOL and sends him plummeting to the ground below.   Though OWL, being the bro bot it is, detects Kellan is in terminal freefall and deploys an airbag to his projected landing point to cushion his fall. gently caress, this thing really DOES do everything!  Kellan impotently watches the VTOL zip over the Wall and into New Helghan airspace, scot-free from any Vektan AA reach. Tyran has gotten away with his day of wrath and will now slip away into the shadows of New Helghan’s underbelly, but not for long if the VSA has any say in it.  The chapter ends on a silent fade to black after such a bombastic start.  So what the hell was the point of all this then? Was this just a random attack? That doesn’t seem likely when you take into account the events of Chapters 2 and 3 where the Helghast had acquired intel on the ISC Cassandra, Dr. Massar, and the Ethnic Bullet virus, got their hands on Massar herself and all her research and intel when she defected, and had a monument to their most beloved father of civilization destroyed in what no amount of plausible deniability could cover up as a direct Vektan action on New Helghan soil. Was the Black Hand really acting alone in this? It’s too early to say just yet. Given how antagonistic they are towards the current Visari government in New Helghan, it seems unlikely on its head that they would be acting in any kind of conjunction. Moreover, for all her rhetoric, Hera does not appear to be the kind of person, let alone leader, who would stoop to state-sponsored terrorism to get what she wants. And this whole situation seems to be counter-intuitive to what she apparently wants. Now the wedge between Vekta and New Helghan is deeper than ever, and the two states might be on the road to open war after 30 years of “peace” thanks to the Black Hand. Vladko Tyran may well have given the VSA the excuse it’s wanted to finally strike back at the Helghast across the Wall. For now though, all of Vekta holds is breath and waits to see how things develop from here. Regardless, today someone’s plan either went spectacularly right, or spectacularly wrong and we probably won’t have to wait very long to find out the answer.   Uugh. Even in his portrait he’s running his goddamn mouth  Vladko Tyran is the leader of the Black Hand terrorist organization, and as of today the most wanted man in Vekta, at the very least. Tyran was born in the immediate aftermath of the Helghan Terracide and was hailed by Helghast state media as a “miracle baby,” and the unofficial last child born on Helghan before the planet was abandoned. He was brought to Vekta by his foster father Kris Howl and raised in the newly established New Helghan quarter of Vekta city. His hatred of Vekta and the Vektan people were fuled by Howl recounting the last days of Helghan to him as a boy, including the death of his mother and family, and the deaths of Howl’s wife and children following the Terracide as well. Watching his people suffer and die around him in the slums of New Helghan only worsened his disposition and by the time he reached college age, it took very little to fully radicalize him into a full-blown terrorist. After reading the works of Scolar Visari, he became inspired by Visari’s rhetoric to strike back at his Vektan oppressors and together with Howl formed the Black Hand out of an already existing radical labour group. Some reports claim he wrested control of the Black Hand away from Howl through violence, others claim he simply took up Howl’s charge after the man’s death. The actual story remains shrouded in mystery, known perhaps only to Helghast Intelligence. Tyran is voiced and modelled after Crispian Belfrage, whose IMDB page consists mostly of bit parts in small films and miniseries, and a guest star role on ABC’s Castle.   LS21 Valk The ISA submachine gun of choice. The Valk is the successor firearm to the ISA M66-SD machine pistol once famously wielded by Shadow Marshal Luger during the Second Extra-Solar War. The Valk is a jack-of-all-trades weapon designed largely for close quarters combat with an effective range of just under 25 feet. With it’s 24 round magazine, the Valk can fire roughly 560 rounds per minute, making it a prime weapon for engaging single targets. However, the LS21 falters when facing multiple targets in prolonged firefights. The Valk comes equipped with a laser dot sight standard, which can be swapped out for a holo scope or ACOG sight by more advanced users. It can also support an underslung shotgun attachment or laser pointer for increased hip fire accuracy if its stock front grip is swapped out.  VnS12A Purger Our first Heavy Weapon of the game and the successor to the Helghast StA-62 minigun. Manufactured by the Visari Corporation, the VnS12A is one of the most abundant heavy weapons found in the modern Helghast military arsenal. It sports a similar triple-barrelled chassis to its Stahl Arms-produced predecessor in addition to a suite of upgrades meant to correct the StA-62’s shortcomings. However, the Purger is still obtrusively heavy to wield, with even Helghast troopers straining under its weight and having their mobility severely hobbled. The Purger also requires at least one full second to spin its barrels up to firing speed before it will start launching bullets at a target and can fire 75 rounds continuously before overheating. With a firing rate of 888 RPM, the Purger can potentially blow through its entire 450 round magazine in under a minute of sustained fire. The Purger is non-reloadable. When its ammo is expended, the minigun is useless and must be discarded. This was done to try and redress the slightly game-breaking exploit from Killzone 3 where heavy weaponry functioned on the same ammo rules as normal weapons, which led to players just cheesing whole stages by picking up a heavy weapon early on and just running with it for the whole chapter. See: Scrapyard Shortcut and the Boltgun, or Evacuation Orders and the StA-66. You can no longer do this in Shadow Fall for better or worse. As it is a heavy weapon, the VnS12A Purger has no attachments or customization options for multiplayer.   FlyRail Train The FlyRail system is an elevated light rapid transit network encircling and crisscrossing Vekta City, with its main lines running along the rim of the massive retaining dam that forms the backbone and boundary of the main city into the mountains. Hundreds of thousands of people use the FlyRail every day on their commutes to and from locations all around Vekta City, and the Vektan Transit Authority prides itself on its thus far spotless safety and security record.   Insurgent Also known as the Terrorist in this mission. Insurgents are fast infiltration units that can operate behind enemy lines and with minimal resources, but with the drawback of having virtually zero protective armor. According to the in-game lore, the Black Hand Insurgent units appear to be operating with antiquated weaponry, equipment, and armour, despite their optical camouflage infiltration hologram tech shown off in Chapter 4. This is the only time this tech is seen in action anyway, so it’s 100% a story mode feature and sadly not a special skill in multiplayer. In multiplayer, however, Insurgent characters have two special skills: Hack and Steal. The Hack ability allows players to co-opt enemy ground automata and turn them into allied units. Steal allows the Insurgent to swipe not only weapons but different class abilities off of downed enemies, however the use of stolen abilities is limited. The DLC pack also comes with three new* weapons (actually old weapons from prior Killzone games): the ISA M82 Assault Rifle, the ISA LS12 Submachine Gun, and the Helghast StA14 Sniper Rifle. The Insurgent class was added to multiplayer via the Insurgent Pack DLC, the same DLC package, by the way, that also includes the Elite Difficulty mode, which was added to the game post-facto rather than be in it from the start like it is in every other Killzone game. Yes, Guerrilla charges you $10 USD for Shadow Fall’s fourth difficulty level. Look, this game didn’t sell very well, they had to fund Horizon: Zero Dawn somehow! Also of note (and I’ve included artwork of them in the Misc section), there are indeed ISA Insurgent character models, though they don’t appear in the single player storyline mode and only show up in multiplayer. Though it could be argued that you actually do get to see one in-game next chapter, it’s just that we’re in Lucas’s POV when we’re wearing the skin so, womp womp.  AUDIO LOGS   DOSSIERS   NEWS  COMIC PAGES      Artwork for Chapter 4: VSA HQ:  Vladko Tyran, the Plastic Pope:  Vekta City FlyRail Artwork:            Vektan Apartment Tower Artwork:    Black Hand/Helghast Insurgents:           ISA Insurgents:    
nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 07:09 on Sep 27, 2021 |
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May 13, 2018 05:47
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nice
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May 13, 2018 06:16
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The mask on the insurgents looks so sad. Poor insurgents.
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May 13, 2018 07:01
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Black Hand is an interesting name for a terrorist group since the first thing the actual Black Hand did was assassinate of the king and queen of Serbia and invite a member of their rival dynasty to be the new king. The name has been used before because it sounds cool, but it looks like more foreshadowing that some Helghans want Hera dead. Only there doesn't seem to be a Karađorđević to replace Hera the Obrenović.
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May 13, 2018 07:48
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Calling your evil gas mask wearing special forces ‘The Black Hand’ reminds me of the evil gas mask wearing special forces from Command & Conquer, ‘The Black Hand’.
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May 13, 2018 08:06
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I forgot adult Lucas was vertically challenged. Also, Spetzghast 
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May 13, 2018 09:36
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MrLonghair posted:I forgot adult Lucas was vertically challenged. Also, Spetzghast Oh yeah, that's the real  about Shadow Fall; Guerrilla still hasn't figured out what height the camera eyeline should be at for an FPS player character perspective. So just like Tomas Sevchenko before him, Lucas Kellan also apparently sees out of his sternum.
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May 13, 2018 09:41
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I think you got the order of hostages encountered wrong. The woman was the last one you encountered not the first one.
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May 13, 2018 12:06
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quote:No scrotum is safe when the Valk is on the prowl! They say the same thing about me on saturday nights
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May 13, 2018 12:13
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White Coke posted:Black Hand is an interesting name for a terrorist group since the first thing the actual Black Hand did was assassinate of the king and queen of Serbia and invite a member of their rival dynasty to be the new king. The name has been used before because it sounds cool, but it looks like more foreshadowing that some Helghans want Hera dead. Only there doesn't seem to be a Karađorđević to replace Hera the Obrenović. I mean, I might be wrong here, but wasn't Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, a member of the Black Hand as well?
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May 13, 2018 14:55
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Lazy Bear posted:I mean, I might be wrong here, but wasn't Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, a member of the Black Hand as well? He was a member of Young Bosnia, which was supported and influenced by the Black Hand but not a member.
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May 13, 2018 16:40
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White Coke posted:He was a member of Young Bosnia, which was supported and influenced by the Black Hand but not a member. 'The Black Hand' was also, notably, merely the group's popular nickname in the media. Its actual name was Unification or Death. ...Which I suspect the writers of this game were aware of, and didn't pick the Black Hand name out of a hat.
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May 13, 2018 16:57
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Cooked Auto posted:I think you got the order of hostages encountered wrong. The woman was the last one you encountered not the first one. And the explanation for that is when I was writing the post I didn’t have access to my footage, so I watched someone else’s run of Chapter 4 on YouTube and they got the woman in the camera room first so that was the way I wrote the update. When I went back and reviewed my run, yeah I totally did the hostage rescue in the reverse order, but gently caress me if I was changing the post after all this.
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May 13, 2018 19:18
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| # ? May 15, 2024 18:19 |
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tsk tsk :T
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May 13, 2018 19:26
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