Particularly glaring as the vanilla version of the map is pretty sparse as well. Not what you’d expect for a major city in China, especially one that is considered to be the largest metropolitan area in the world. Now, I know for this ET, Valiant’s people have cleared the facility of all ICA personnel, and he just doesn’t have a lot of henchmen on the scene, but still.
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Actually there is, you can grab the propane there to easily kill all five clones on Valiant’s floor while they’re crouching together waiting to “reveal” themselves (and take care of the unguarded camera recorder on the way).
(Doesn’t change how empty the area is, but honestly even in the main mission the Block feels very uninspired.)
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A stashed Oil Canister in the vents can do the trick too. And if you place it well enough on the slopped bit leading up to the window, you can also get Valliant in the blast as he starts to give his speech to Pritchard.
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Last time I messed up my rating, so I was really looking forward to this reactivation. With all the talk about SA (the one that doesn’t stand for Silent Assassin), chances were it wouldn’t happen at all.
So I did a practice run in ETA and nailed it first try.
Then I went into the actual thing and blew it again -_-
WTF was going on after 19:30 anyway? Why did they keep just staring there? It didn’t directly cause the fail of course, but threw me off and ruined the flow.
I was this close to rage Alt+F4, which I would totally regret, but managed to finish it cleanly with a slight change of plan. Still, it didn’t turn them pistols back to green.
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The Splitter - Realistic Gameplay (@Heisenberg Style) - No Loadouts
No Speedrunning - Puzzle pieces gameplay.
Method: Weapon Distraction, Wrench + Explosive Golf ball.
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As King Cold said to Frieza:
“I take great pride in knowing that I’ve taught you all the necessary skills of life. Use them well.”
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If both of these NPCs see the gun, one goes to fetch a guard while the other just stands there staring until the first reaches the guard. I think it’s that they’re very scripted to interact with each other, and when one’s script is overridden in favor of “go find a guard” the other just freezes waiting for the next cue. As soon as the guard is notified they can start “interacting” again even though they’re far apart.
Normal distractions seem to not freeze the script in the same way, so the NPC left behind can act normally.
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I see. That’s weird tho, because in ETA it worked differently. Here one of them goes to find a guard, and the other just turns around and behaves as normal.
It’s hard to tell in the jerky gif version, but comparing your two videos above I note you threw the coin farther left in the ETA version. Possibly the woman didn’t turn far enough to see the gun in that case?
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Yeah, I think you’re right - that explains it. Either way, next time I’m placing the gun behind the curtain - no bullshit like this, and it should buy me more time since he takes a longer walk to the guard from there.
Well, took care of this asshole again. And I learned two new things I hadn’t known the first time around or during any of my Arcade playthroughs. 1) If you don’t answer Valliant’s question about how expensive agents are, Pritchard will answer him instead. And 2) if you pull a gun on Valliant, he pulls one on you.
I played through this in my usual way, killing off every clone in accidents to avoid raising suspicion - in-game, Valliant will think this batch were just incompetent failures as he receives the news, so no suspicion on his part. Except for with clone 6, however, where I did the usual thing of punching him in the throat during the demonstration, and I realized that it might not have been coincidence that he was numbered as 6.
Anyway, once they were all done, I went into Valliant’s office and darkened the glass, debating either fiber wire or Silverballer. Since I used the fiber wire the first time, I waited for him to get behind his desk and pulled my pistol, and was surprised when he pulled his. It’s rare that the game has a target that fights back, outside of Freelancer targets who otherwise function as guards. Either way, it surprised me for a split second, but not enough to save him or end my run - either in loss of SA or total failure. Plugged the bastard right in the forehead before he could get a shot off, and nobody was the wiser.
This one really is fun, if somewhat tedious in the setup.
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Valliant and (most of) the clones are guards. Other targets who are guards:
- Noel Crest
- ICA Agents
- Patrick Morgan
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The Rage fights you hand to hand as a guard too.
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I believe that got removed since it caused him to t-pose. Either way, he wasn’t assigned guard AI (and is classed as a civillian), so he wasn’t a guard. He also didn’t get knocked down like one, if you “won” the hand to hand he gets KO’d.
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Those aren’t guards; those are unique targets. I’m talking about actual security guards that Freelancer randomly assigns as targets. And like I said, it’s rare that a target fights back.
The game would like to disagree with you there as they literally have guard AI (and are marked as guards). All those targets I listed (including Valliant and the clones) fight back only because they are guards.
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Irrelevant. I’m not talking about their AI, I’m talking about their role. They are targets; uniquely routed, uniquely designed targets. “Guards,” in the context of anything relevant, are the ones who flank them.
You may know them as targets, but the games calls them guards.
I get your point though. We really should have more targets with guard AI.
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Most especially when the target is another assassin. Reynard, Faba and Bayswater were particularly disappointing. At Least Valliant lived up to the talk of how dangerous he was.
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They’re guards who are targets, but they are also targets who are guards - they are not mutually exclusive in this game (you literally say this yourself in the context of Freelancer targets). If they weren’t classed as guards, they wouldn’t fight back at all.
Lets not forget every NPC is, in some shape or form, uniquely routed (even if they just stand there doing one thing!). I suppose one could argue Suspects with their random routes aren’t, but that’s getting close to being an issue of semantics. None of this applies to Crowd NPCs, although some do have unique “routes”.
I agree with both of you here. Although I think Reynard shouldn’t be one since you could argue she was at home and her guard was down (and female guards in general are a whole other story). Add the Envy assassin onto that list as well (although I guess that would be too unfair).
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