Hitman (Pt. 3)

Well, dear gentlereaders, I suppose that, in a way, it wasn’t exactly unexpected that I should return to the subject of the Hitman: World of Assassination trilogy.

Not only does it feel very on-brand to do three articles about a trilogy of games, but it’s also not the first time I’ve dealt with gripes and observations about the same game multiple times.

And you could argue that it’s sort of a testament to the quality of a game that I’d cover it multiple times, since it means I’ve played it a lot.

Or more specifically, you could argue that… until you remember that at the time of writing this, I have written eight VERY detailed articles about Skyrim and why I detest it so much.

However, you needn’t worry. This article is not about me being angry and shouting. I’ve made it no secret so far that I really like this series, and while there are parts that frustrate me, I still consider them among my all time favourite games.

That said, I will still share some nitpicks and observations with you all about them, since that’s kinda what this blog is all about. So let’s get cracking.

Now, the first thing I’d like to talk about has to do with one of the targets in the second game: Nolan Cassidy.

I find Nolan Cassidy an interesting target, because he is wildly different from all the other targets in the trilogy. He is one of the targets in Another Life, the fifth mission of the second game, and he works as the chief of security for Janus, a legendary KGB Spymaster and the former Constant of Providence. But really, when you take a closer look at him, his history and his actions, he really stands apart from all the other targets in the main story.

As described in his background briefing, he is a former member of the US military, who enlisted at 18 and served with distinction in Kosovo, before joining the secret service. During his time in the Secret Service, he was assigned to protect Daniel Morris, then US Vice President, when the latter was assassinated. After this, Cassidy was dismissed and eventually began working for the Moreno Cartel as a security consultant, before being recruited by Providence and granted the position of Herald.

The reason I bring all this up is because, compared to other targets, Nolan Cassidy doesn’t really seem to fit in as a target of assassination. He doesn’t have any egregious skeletons in his closet, he hasn’t designed any killer viruses, pushed any loved ones out of windows, gunned down natives while looking for lost treasure, lead any spy rings…

In terms of targets, he’s practically an innocent bystander! And the kicker is, there’s no real reason why he had to die!

Keep in mind, the reason he becomes a target is made very clear in the briefing. 47, Diana and Grey plan to frame Janus, making him seem like the person responsible for the attack on Providence. But Nolan Cassidy, the chief of security, cannot be allowed to contradict that narrative, which is why he must be eliminated.

Except there is nothing in this plan that actually necessitates him to be eliminated! Nolan Cassidy was assigned as Janus’ chief of security as a direct result of Grey’s attack on Providence. That means that Janus would have enacted all this BEFORE Cassidy was assigned!

I remind you, Janus is a legendary spymaster, with a genius level IQ and an expert in counter-intelligence. If anyone could arrange to send messages and organize this under everyone’s noses, it would be him! Janus was never under suspicion himself, so planting evidence that he was sending secret messages without anyone noticing should be extremely easy!

From what we see, in terms of actual insight into Janus’ habits and actions, Cassidy is actually very uninvolved. The surveillance of Janus’ home was extensive, certainly. They had surveillance cameras, armed guards, replacing various labour workers like garbage men and plumbers, and running investigations on suspicious neighbours…

But none of that was focusing on what Janus himself was up to! The most invasive thing they did to him was deciding he couldn’t smoke! They could plant a transmitter in Janus’ trophy room and say ”this is what he used to contact Grey and assign him orders”, and Cassidy would never know it was a scam!

You can’t say no one would believe it! This is a man who was in the KGB during the Cold War, a time when the KGB built cameras hidden in cigarette cases and signet rings, and the CIA designed a radio meant to be carried and hidden inside a fake scrotum! I am not fucking kidding!

Neither the ICA and Providence knows that 47 and Diana are working with Grey, nor do they have any reason to suspect this is the case, so this ruse would be extremely simple!

If anything, eliminating Nolan actually raises problems, as seen in the following mission! We can actually overhear Arthur Edwards, AKA the Constant, trying to make sense of it all, and he even remarks that it’s strange that according to this narrative, Janus managed to make Cassidy turn traitor so fast, describing him as “loyal to a fault”.

I suppose the reason this bugs me is just because when it comes to Nolan Cassidy’s background, his goals, his motives, his methods? None of that is accidental! They were written deliberately! They could very easily have written him as a heartless mercenary, a vicious ex-soldier who was court martialed for his sadistic actions, but his war record was scrubbed clean by Providence, who recruited him, seeing his skills and lack of scruples as a boon.

They could have made him a former CIA operative who specializes in security systems and espionage, overseeing various unsavory black-ops missions. They could have written him as someone who was truly heinous!

But instead, they gave him the background we see in the game, and a very flimsy reason for why he has to die.

By contrast, let’s look at another target, from the first game, who many fans of the games consider an arguably virtuous person: Penelope Graves.

Penelope Graves is a high ranking member of Grey’s militia and one of the four targets in the mission Freedom Fighters. She’s a former Interpol anti-terror analyst, who left the organization after uncovering widespread corruption, but was shut down when she tried to bring it to light. After this, she joined Grey’s militia, assigned to the compound in Colorado.

And people seem to think she is someone bordering on innocent, a moral character who turned on a corrupt system. Someone who does the wrong thing for the right reasons.

Except those “wrong things” she does is to willingly work with murderers and terrorists. The head of operations of Grey’s militia is Sean Rose, a man who is viewed by his own men as unstable and nasty at best, and dangerously insane at worst.

In dialogue between two militia members, Rose is described as an impressionable fanatic, alongside this very succinct summary.

Rose yearns for a cause, sure. But any cause will do. Because deep down, the only thing he’s really looking for is justification to blow people up.

Hell, Penelope Graves HERSELF describes Rose as a monster! And she should know, seeing as when she was still at Interpol, she was assigned to the task force to track him down! Ezra Berg, one of the other targets in that mission, admits in that same conversation that he’s puzzled why it is, when he himself was brought in specifically to limit unnecessary cruelty, that Grey tolerates Rose, who Berg charitably describes as “an extremist”.

All this is to say, it’s pretty clear that Graves is not here out of altruistic reasons or because she believes Grey’s militia is doing the right thing. Her own briefing mentions how her analytical mind just couldn’t tolerate a broken system, which is when she decided to leave Interpol.

But think about that for a moment. If you are in an organization which is, at the face of it, a force for good, trying to bring down terrorists responsible for large scale destruction and mass murder of civilians, including children, and you then find out that organization is flawed and permissive of corruption and abuse of power?

Call me a bit idealistic, but I think there is a very big difference between leaving that organization… and deciding to sign up to work with the aforementioned child-murdering terrorist! This is not a moral decision she’s made, but instead, she’s just abandoned the concept of morals altogether! Because one side isn’t perfect, might as well join the guy who kidnaps children and forces their parents to commit murder, because they’re basically the same, right?!

But again, Penelope Graves is considered a moral and upright and basically decent person, while Nolan Cassidy gets ignored completely and gets murdered for no good reason.

Is Nolan Cassidy perfect? No, he isn’t. He’s no saint by any stretch. But he certainly doesn’t do or say anything that makes him deserving to get murdered.

The worst thing that has been confirmed about him is that he worked for the Moreno Cartel. But firstly, this was a security consultant. Again, they COULD have written him to have worked as a hatchet-man or an assassin or any number of horrible jobs, but they deliberately picked security consultant.

But secondly, the only reason he was working for them in the first place is because he was dismissed from his job in the secret service, as a result of Vice President Daniel Morris being assassinated while under his protection.

And here’s a fun fact that’ll tickle fans of the franchise: US Vice President Daniel Morris was assassinated by Agent 47! He’s one of the targets in Hitman: Blood Money!

So Nolan Cassidy’s entire career was upended because of Agent 47, and now in this game, 47 gets to finish the job! Is it any wonder that I feel sorry for Cassidy in this situation?! For all their talk of Diana Burnwood being 47’s conscience, and her disapproval of unnecessary cruelty, Nolan Cassidy just feels like such a bizarre decision, especially with all the other choices they had available!

Again, going back to what I said last time, it would kind of make sense if Grey was actually meant to be a surprise antagonist, deliberately pushing both Diana and 47 to more extremes in his quest for revenge, but at some point, there was a change in direction. But as it stands, it’s just a big question mark for me.

Now, the second and final thing I’d like to talk about is actually a bit of a return to a thing I looked at last time, regarding Arthur Edwards, AKA the Constant, talking about his personality. See, we actually get what might be a bit of expanded information in Hitman 3.

In the first mission of the game, On Top of the World, your targets are two out of the three Partners, the leaders of Providence. One of them, Carl Ingram, can be found walking around and speaking into a dictaphone, leaving messages for his successor about leading Providence, his worldview and other such details.

And at one point, he starts talking about recruiting, and that patience is a key factor. To illustrate it, he shares a story, or a ”fable”, about a man he calls “Jeffrey“.

The short version is that Jeffrey was a gifted boy from humble beginnings, who’s intelligence was noticed from a young age. Over time, his talents were recognized and he gained scholarships, being admitted into prominent schools, eventually graduating from an Ivy League college. Now, this Jeffrey was ”brilliant, but idealistic”, wanting to change the world. But there is something very important about the story Carl tells, about Jeffrey’s rise.

Everyone believed that it was because of his brilliance, you know, that ‘fate’ had dealt him such an generous hand. Now, this is partially true, except ‘fate’ is not an abstract. […]. ‘Fate’, however, felt that he would be more useful in the private sector, and set itself out to lure him to his true calling: working for the hand that fed him. Grooming him in ‘fate’s’ own image, for when he was needed.

Now, it’s never stated in the game, but the implication is that the story about ”Jeffrey” is in fact about Arthur Edwards. If that is the case, then it really puts his whole character in a very interesting light. Remember, the entire point of Ingram’s story is the importance of patience.

If this story is indeed about Edwards, it means his rise to prominence wasn’t a case of him being chosen by Janus to be the new Constant because he was clever or liked or because he excelled. He became the Constant because Providence had decided he should be, and had decided before he was even out of his teens!

But crucially, Ingram does specify that ”Jeffrey” was idealistic, wanting to change the world, but that ”fate” intervened. In other words, what I said last time does still hold true. Edwards was an idealist who was offered power and accepted, abandoning his principles in favour of ambition.

What I find interesting, though, goes back to Carl Ingram and his messages. Like I said, he talks a lot about Providence and its role, his philosophy about why Providence is needed, how the masses need to be guided and secretly want to be controlled.

Now, you can argue about how misguided or arrogant or self-righteously rationalizing this is, but the point is, we do at least get an idea of how Carl Ingram views Providence.

What’s interesting is that we never really get anything like that from Arthur Edwards. We get a lot of plotting and planning and attention to detail. We see over time his plans for Providence, his scheming and his methods, but we never get any idea of what Arthur Edwards really believes. Never any vision or goal or what he thinks the PURPOSE of Providence is.

We hear him describe Providence to Diana as ”the lesser evil”, but beyond that? There’s really not much at all. At most, there’s some scattered dialogue here and there, but the most we get is one exchange between him and Diana in the third game.

You and your friends pulled off the impossible. You stormed the heavens, took down the untouchables, and yet, here we are. Status Quo. It just goes to show, you can’t fight power, Miss Burnwood. Power never dies, It only changes hands. The best you can do is to claim it […] Power is a tool, Miss Burnwood. It’s the thing that gets you to the thing.

That last part is perhaps the most important, because Edwards presents power as a means to an end, and yet we never get any idea of what that end might be for him!

Now, where am I going with this? Well, it circles back to the idea of Edwards being an idealist, who abandoned his values. The thing is, I’ve come to believe it goes much, much deeper than I suggested last time. It’s not just that Arthur Edwards is cynical. I think his worldview is one that almost borders on nihilistic, to where he doesn’t actually believe in anything at all!

Unlike Ingram, it’s not about being necessary. We don’t get many details about the other partners, but from what I’ve gathered, Marcus Stuyvesant views it as a way to enrich himself, and Alexa Carslise seems to view it as a matter of birthright and hierarchy. Her father created it, so it only makes sense that she should inherit it and control it.

But Edwards seems to work for Providence and later lead it… simply because it is there. Providence isn’t a power for good or bad in his mind, not a question of order or chaos. It’s just a force of nature, an immutable fact of life. He does describe it as a concept very briefly, summing it up as “a singularity so dense that nothing escapes its gravity”.

I admit, this is only speculation, but if we suppose that yes, ”Jeffrey” in Ingram’s story is in fact Arthur Edwards, then you have a man who was once idealistic and wanted to change the world. It stands to reason something happened to change him. What if, by the time he became Constant, lured in by the power he would wield, he found out exactly how far reaching Providence was? From how Ingram describes it, Edward’s entire life was secretly controlled for the express purpose of some day recruiting him, for the sake of his true calling of ”Serving the hand that fed him”.

Try, for a moment, to put yourself in Edward’s shoes. Try to imagine what that revelation is like. This isn’t just a shock. This is you finding out that everything you’ve ever thought you knew is a lie.

And now, as a result, he believes in nothing! Edwards doesn’t really serve Providence or the partners, so much as the idea of Power itself! You cannot fight power. You cannot escape it. To him, it’s a fixed law of the universe, and all you can do is to try and control it.

I said it last time, that he is desperate to convince Diana to join him, because he sees the same idealism in her, and he needs her to be as weak as he was. Yes, he was manipulated, but he still chose power. My earlier point is still true, that he could have used his brilliance and his influence to improve the world, but he didn’t. And he cannot stand that someone else could stick to their ideals no matter what, when he couldn’t.

As a result, he is tricked by Diana pretending to accept his offer, simply because he cannot fathom how anyone could possibly reject power! In his mind, it’s no less ridiculous than saying you can decide to just reject the concept of gravity!

Again, this is just speculation, and hinges on ”Jeffrey” being really about Edwards, but I think it’s an interesting thought all the same, giving some more insight into a character about whom so little is really confirmed or established.

And with that, I think I’ll end things for today. As promised, I got a bit a bit less angry and critical this time around, and really just wanted to expand on what I’ve already praised about this game: the details.

I honestly would really love some sort of “ghost mode” or “free roam” mode, where you can just wander around the maps without any targets, locked doors or restricted areas, and just drink in all the details they’ve crammed into the maps.

But even without that, this is still a phenomenal line of games, and easily among my absolute favourites. It may not beat Fallout: New Vegas, but damn if it doesn’t get close.

God of War (2018)

Summer is practically here, ladies and gents. Personally, I have enjoyed it quite a lot after the dreariness of the past winter.

So let’s celebrate by taking a look at the 2018 God of War game, which in my opinion is not just great, but it’s up there as one my favourite games of all time.

(Though obviously, Fallout: New Vegas’ top spot remains untouched).

I have of course very briefly touched on the sequel, God of War: Ragnarök, back when I talked about Heimdall in my Top Five Broken Mirror Characters list, but I figured I’d give this subject a more detailed look, since I really, really like these games.

I like the story and the characters, the acting is superb, as is the music, and even though it’s not usually a major thing of interest for me, I still cannot get over how comfortable and intuitive the controls are, even after all these years. 

But of course, as much as I like this game, there are still a few things that bug me. And while they don’t detract from the enjoyment, they do still make me scratch my head, and it’s those quibbles I wish to share with you all today.

Now, obviously, this article will contain spoilers, and while I will focus on the 2018 game, there’s also some minor spoilers for Ragnarök, so consider yourself warned.

With that out of the way, let’s get to it, shall we?

The first thing that really puzzled me has to do with Modi, son of Thor. You first encounter him right before a boss fight against him and his older brother Magni, ending with Magni being killed by Kratos.

Later, as Kratos, Atreus and Mimir are about to enter Týr’s vault, they are ambushed by Modi, and while the Aesir god is chased off, Atreus becomes sick.

Here’s my question, though:

How did Modi find them?

Remember, at this point in the story, Kratos and Atreus are wearing protective staves given to them by Freya, to keep the pair hidden from the Aesir. 

It is so effective that Baldur, who is pursuing them, can no longer track them, which is what brought him to the top of the mountain to (unsuccessfully) get help from Mimir.

So if Baldur, who we are repeatedly told is “Odin’s best tracker”, couldn’t find them, I really don’t see a way for Modi to even stumble across them by accident.

Though really, the issue isn’t that he manages to find them. What’s got me scratching my head is that he does it TWICE.

After Atreus is cured, you come across Modi again, this time finding him severely beaten by his father Thor for failing to avenge Magni’s death. 

But just think about that for a second. Not only did Modi find Kratos and Atreus, despite them wearing the protection staves. Not only did he manage to find them again once the stave was removed, but he did so while beaten to near death and barely being able to stand… and he still found them before Baldur did.

So either Modi is secretly an amazing tracker, far exceeding his uncle… or Baldur is nowhere near as good a tracker as the game has lead us to believe. 

Then again, one has to consider that Baldur may just be a great tracker compared to the other Aesir, who we’re told are almost universally lazy, unfocused, hedonistic and crude… so perhaps Baldur being “Odin’s best tracker” is really just damning him with faint praise.

And maybe there is something to that, since throughout the game, there are several instances where you’d think Baldur, who’s entire goal is to find what he believes to be the last giant in Midgard, should probably take notice.

Not long before you first meet Mimir, for example, you fight the dragon Hræzlyr. It’s a loud and fierce battle, ending with Kratos impaling the dragon on a massive, crystalline spike and then causing it to explode. 

10 minutes later, you reach the summit of the mountain where Baldur is asking Mimir where “the tattooed man” who is “travelling with a child” might be heading next.

…Because I guess it’s easy to miss the lightning-spewing dragon that blew up on the other side of  the mountain ridge you’re currently standing on?

Sure, you might argue that Baldur probably wasn’t at the mountain yet when Kratos fought the dragon. But Baldur travels around by flying a dragon, so you’d think he’d still notice the fight on the way there, right?

Later, while trying to get a part of the giant chisel made by Thamur, Kratos and Atreus release an enormous hammer, sending it crashing through the ice surrounding Thamur’s corpse.

This is enough to catch the attention of Magni and Modi… but not Baldur. But if they are all looking for Kratos and Atreus, shouldn’t Baldur also be there? At the very least, he shouldn’t be that far away, in case these two, in his own words, “idiots” manage to find the people Baldur himself has been told hold the key to releasing him from his curse. 

And sure, Baldur isn’t exactly a master tactician, but we’re talking a piece of rock and metal weighing about a thousand metric tons toppling over.

I don’t care what he’d be doing, that’s exactly the kind of thing that’d grab my attention if I was out looking for giants.

And if I was looking all over Midgard for giants, and there are only two left, one of whom is the enormous snake living in the great big lake, and only speaks the Jötnar language… 

Well, call me presumptuous, but I think I’d probably take note if someone blew the big horn at the lake that’s apparently built for the purpose of summoning said enormous snake.

And as it happens, that actually brings me rather neatly to the next thing I want to talk about.

I mentioned earlier that the second encounter with Modi, after he somehow managed to track Kratos, Atreus and Mimir down, ends with Atreus falling ill after he loses control of his latent godly powers.

Kratos brings Atreus to Freya to be healed, and as they make their way to her hut, the horn on the bridge can be heard, with Mimir remarking that someone has summoned the world serpent Jörmundgandr.

Now, my question, and part of the reason it took me five years to write this article at all, is this:

Who blew the horn?

Like I said, it’s apparently a pretty well known fact that Jörmundgandr speaks the giant tongue. So with that in mind, let’s consider who might have had a reason to blow the horn.

Baldur wouldn’t have done it, since not only does he not speak the Giant tongue, but Jörmundgandr also hates the Aesir. Which means we can also rule out Modi. Given the massive thunderstorm that follows, one could perhaps speculate that it was Thor… but seeing as Jörmundgandr and Thor are both alive AND the Lake of Nine isn’t a warzone and Týr’s temple isn’t razed to the ground, I think it’s safe to say it wasn’t Thor either.

Neither Brok nor Sindri seem to have any reason or interest in the world-serpent, and Freya clearly couldn’t have, since she’s at her hut.

In fact, there’s only one person in the entire game, at that point, who could converse with Jörmundgandr, and therefore would have had any reason at all to talk to him… And that’s Mimir. You know, the guy that’s currently dangling on Kratos’ hip, which means he couldn’t possibly be the one who did it.

So it would seem this was a deliberately mysterious plot point, to be expanded on in the sequel. Was it perhaps Odin in disguise? And if so, for what reason?

Personally, given the discussion made about Jörmundgandr having travelled in time, I was kind of expecting the sequel to include a time-travel plot, with Kratos or Atreus travelling back through time for some reason and blowing the horn,

Yes, it was a bit of a leap, but I was looking forward to find out the answer!

And then the sequel came out and… there was nothing. No explanation at all. After Atreus is cured, the only reference that’s ever made about it is that the water has lowered further and the boat has been washed up on the shore. After that, it’s never brought up again in either game.

And that bugs the hell out of me!

Was there some rewrite in between games? Was it a plotline that was scrapped and they just never got around to addressing it?

I don’t really need there to be some deep, convoluted lore reason, just so long as there ANY reason! They could have had some passing mention that it was just a random raider who happened to walk past it, blew the horn and was then eaten by Jörmundgandr, and I would honestly be fine! Question answered, mystery solved, everything’s fine and dandy. It’d be a bit disappointing, but it’d be better than the literal nothing we have now!

It’s not even like it’s a massive plot hole in the story, in the grand scheme of things! It’s just that it’s so very frustrating, given everything we know, that there’s just nothing at all!

But that’s the final thing I’d like to bring up in this article. And let me reiterate, these nitpicky quibbles aren’t intended to detract from or criticise the game. They are pedantic, yes, but they come from a place of love, as the rest of the game is so enjoyable, these things just happen to stand out that much more.

And even with these issues, I still adore this game. I may have focused on the negatives a bit in this article, but that’s just because I’m a self-admitted nitpicky asshole. And if you’re a seasoned reader, this article will in no way be surprising.

But if there’s some kind of comfort to draw from all this, perhaps it is this: I have often said that no game is perfect, but this game is proof positive you don’t NEED to be perfect to still be incredible.

Hitman (Pt. 2)

I believe it’s about time we talked about a video game again on this happy little blog. At the beginning of last year, some of you may recall that I wrote an article about the game Hitman, specifically the World of Assassination trilogy, and I’ve decided to revisit that subject today.

Now, I think I made it pretty clear in that article that I do really enjoy this game series, and those reasons have not changed in the intervening time.

However, I have found some more things about it that I feel are worth writing about and sharing with you fine people. So let’s not beat around the bush and get to it, shall we?

The first thing I’d like to talk about is less a criticism or an observation and more of an simple lament, when it comes to the Elusive Targets.

Now, for those who may not be aware, the Elusive Targets are special, limited time targets that appear in these games, starting with the first game in the trilogy, back in 2016. The big gimmick is that these missions alter the standard missions in certain ways, like adding or changing NPC behavior, change what areas you can freely enter or add or remove items to the map. But the more pressing change is that you can only attempt these missions once. Once you start, you have to play them. If you die or fail, the mission is gone forever.

Now, this is quite an ambitious decision, I will not lie. However, it does bring with it certain inherent problems. Like I said, the Elusive Targets change missions. They can add extra guards or additional security messures. Some of them have certain special criteria included.

But that can also be very frustrating, when you only get one chance to familiarize yourself with the mission and behavior, and if you fail, the chance is gone forever. In addition, you only have a limited time to play these missions, after which they’re, again, gone forever.

However, this is not really what I want to talk about, mostly because of the added Elusive Target Arcade Mode, which allows you to play through several sets of Elusive Targets.

No, what I wish to talk about and lament has to do with one specific Elusive Target. Other targets, from all three games, have been reactivated and appeared in Hitman 3. But one specific omission stands out.

I’m talking about Mark Faba.

Mark Faba was the first Elusive Target of Hitman 2, a former MI6 agent turned assassin who was infamous for cheating death, which earned him the nickname The Undying.

And he was based on Sean Bean.

I don’t mean he was just inspired by Sean Bean. I mean he was voiced by him and his likeness was used for Mark Faba’s appearance.

Now, something similar happened in the 2016 game, with celebrity Elusive Target Gary Busey. But this was a very different approach. You see, they just went all out with Mark Faba! In case you have been living under a rock, Sean Bean is an actor who is renowned for appearing in movies where his character dies.

So having him appear as an assassin who is infamous for cheating death is absolute genius! But it doesn’t just end there, since several of the ways he’s supposedly been killed over the years mirror ways Sean Bean’s characters have died in movies!

Even his name is a deliberate joke, with Faba being the latin word for ”Bean”, and Mark being Sean Beans middle name.

Basically, this game presents us with an alternate reality, wherein Sean Bean did not become an actor, but instead became a legendary assassin.

Now, I’m a huge fan of Sean Bean, (he played the villain in my favourite bond movie GoldenEye) so seeing him make an appearance in this game, and them playing around with the idea to such a degree was absolutely joyous! They even had him appear twice, with his second appearance being the exact same as the first, only now Mark has a bandage from the first time you tried to kill him!

But this is where the lament comes in. Because like I said, he was never brought back for Hitman 3, and most likely, he never will be. And that, to me, is heartbreaking. So much care and work went into his missions. So many details and references. They even made a special, live action trailer announcing his appearance!

And we will never see him again. In a way, I suppose that makes him he is the ultimate Elusive Target. He’s the one target we all wish we could play, but we never can.

And it’s not like I don’t understand why, of course. We’re talking about using someone’s direct likeness and voice. That’s not exactly a simple or inexpensive thing to do. Now, in the realm of makebelieve and wishful thinking, having him added as a DLC mission? I’d pay good money for that.

But like I said, that’s not gonna happen. That’s why I specified this is a lament, not a criticism. I understand why this situation is the way it is, but it doesn’t change that I’m very sad about it.

That being said, there is actually one piece of criticism I’m willing to bring up, in relation to Mark Faba.

You see, playing Elusive Targets isn’t solely for the satisfaction of dealing with difficult missions. There are actually rewards for playing them. Specifically, you can unlock special suits.

And completing 12 Elusive Targets, which I remind you means completing the mission on your first attempt, without knowing the changes and quirks added to that particular mission, awards you with The Undying Look, a special suit based on that worn by Mark Faba.

So what’s the problem?

Well, it’s quite simple really

The problem with The Undying Look is that it doesn’t Look like The Undying!

It’s the Haytham Kenway’s Overcoat thing all over again! I was pissed off when it happened in 2013, and I’m pissed off when it happened here! If you’re gonna call something The Undying Look, and have me go through all the hassle of getting it, then I expect it to actually BE The Undying Look, not just a random grey suit!

And no, I’m not just being facetious when I say ”random”. Because in Hitman 3, the first mission has 47 infiltrating a skyscraper in Dubai, sneaking in through a coat room. While there, he picks a suit from a hanger and puts it on. That random suit is literally the Undying Look suit, except it has a dark grey tie instead of blue!

And look, I absolutely understand if there’s legal and licensing issues with Mark Faba’s face and voice. I accept that. But you can’t tell me there’s legal issues with the fucking SUIT! And that suit is IN THE GAME! The model exists! It’s all there, ready to be used!

In fact, it’s even easier when you realize that The Undying Look is just a modified version of another outfit in the game!

Sure, it’s a different colour and has a flower, a flatcap and glasses, and slightly different gloves. But the design itself? It’s the same as the Undying! Even IF the files for Mark Faba’s suit wasn’t in the game, we still could have had this all along! I remind you, this isn’t something you’d just blunder into! It takes work to unlock it!

You couldn’t unlock this suit until you’d finished 12 missions! And this is where the whole “time limited” aspect of the Elusive Targets becomes an issue!

If you bought Hitman 2 in November 2018, in time to play the FIRST Elusive Target of the game, you literally could not unlock The Undying Look until August 2019! Nine fucking months, and all you got was a pallet swap of the wrong pissing suit, when getting the real deal was absolutely a possibility! Nine months, and that is assuming you didn’t fail a single Elusive Target in the process! SON OF AN ACTUAL BITCH!

OK, I think we should move on to something less aggrevating, before I accidentally rupture something.

So let’s close things out with something of an observation I’ve made about Arthur Edwards, AKA the Constant.

Edwards is a character who is kept deliberately mysterious, with very little detail given about him. We don’t even learn his name until the end of the second game, after all. Even the information we do find is very clinical. It’s all second hand information, like a file of his scholarship application.

We know he’s intelligent, we know he has great influence, being the second-in-command of an organization which effectively rules the world. But we know very little about him as a person.

However, there is one brief moment, one sliver of information which I find rather interesting, and it happens in a cutscene between missions in Hitman 2, during a meeting between the Partners and Edwards.

During this meeting, the Partners express concern about Edwards approaching Diana Burnwood, though Edwards himself appears unfazed, leading to this exchange between Edwards and Carl Ingram.

Edwards: I can handle Miss Burnwood. Everyone hates power until you offer them some.
Ingram: Heh. You oughta know…

I think that’s an interesting line from Ingram, since it gives a small but surprising bit of insight into Arthur Edwards. We know for a fact that Edwards is not the first Constant, having taken over from Janus. That line, combined with what we know about the Constant based on his behavior actually says a great deal about him.

See, one thing that is noticeable about Arthur Edwards is how cynical he is. And I think that is also the key to his interest in Diana Burnwood. The game implies that his reasons are rooted in pride, being determined to turn Diana to his cause as revenge for her outsmarting him. While I’m sure that’s part of it to an extent, I’m not sure that is the whole story.

I believe his interest in her is also ideological in nature. Remember that the reason the Providence Partners were reluctant about involving Diana was because Erich Soders, the head of the ICA, had warned them about her, with Ingram calling her a ”Crusader”.

I’m reminded of a quote by George Carlin, which I think really fits Arthur Edwards.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist

Now, I wouldn’t say that Diana Burnwood is an idealist in the traditional sense. But she does believe in the power a single individual can have. In fact, the ICA is pretty much based in that, with a single assassin being able to alter large events.

But crucially, what sets Diana apart from Edwards is that she is not doing it for power. And that is something Arthur Edwards seemingly cannot accept. I believe Arthur Edwards sees a lot of himself in Diana. Ingrams comment implies that Edwards at one point ”hated power”. He was once a man with morals. Someone who believed in something.

But all those years he spent working his way to the top changed him. He was offered power, and found that he enjoyed wielding it over others. He scrounged and clawed his way to the top, until he became one of the most powerful men on the planet.

And that is also why I think he not just wanted to turn Diana to his cause, but NEEDED it. It wasn’t just because he wanted to prove he was smarter than her. It was because he saw someone who was stronger than him. Someone who didn’t want power or control. Someone who believed in something bigger than themselves.

And at the same time, wielded more control and power than Edwards possibly could, even with all his influence and connections. After all, the planned coup in Morocco? The Ether Virus? Those plans weren’t toppled because an army marched in and took over. They were undone by one lone assassin, which Diana ostensibly controlled.

The same assassin who kidapped him and who killed the Partners, who themselves shaped and controlled events on a global scale!

He needed to turn Diana to his cause to prove something to himself. That when given the chance, she would seize power. That deep down, she was just like him. Because that’s what cynical and ruthless people do. They assume that everyone else is just as ruthless and cynical as they are.

That’s also what led to his downfall. He was willing to believe that Diana had turned on 47, when presented with the prospect of power and revenge. Because that’s what he would have done. The man who was so sure he knew how people worked, how the world worked… and that certainty blinded him from the possibility of him being wrong.

And he held this belief right until the end. In the final mission of the series, he is practicaly mocking 47 for trusting Diana with control over Providence.

Edwards: Do you really think she’ll be able to resist all that power? This is not how people work.
47: She rejects the power. Not the responsibility.
Edwards: A noble idea. But please join me in the real world.

And the irony of it all is that when you really think about it… all those decades of work? All that effort and clawing and scraping and climbing to gain power and influence? Where did actually that get him?

And I don’t just mean being taken out by 47.

See, Edwards played the game. He worked within the system, and he was GOOD at it, enough to become one of the most influential individuals on the planet. He was loyal and determined and ruthless and all the traits this system favors and values. He was a man who ”hated power, until it was offered” and he abandoned whatever morals and ideals he once had in pursuit of that power.

And in the end… all it got him was a poisoned chip in his neck and the kill switch given to someone who hated him. That’s what all his hard work was worth. So in the end, what good was all that work, which could have been spent putting his skills to better use? He could have used his incredible skills and his intelligence to make the world a better place. But instead, he decided being powerful was more important. And in that pursuit of power, he went to great lenghts to erase all evidence of himself. All traces of him were meticulously scrubbed, so he could be as powerful as possible.

And as a result, when he was taken down by 47… he was just forgotten. No legacy, no influence, no evidence that he ever existed at all. In the end, his pursuit of power was completely and utterly meaningless.

Of course, I may just be reading a bit too much into a passing line of dialogue in a cutscene. That’s definitely a possibility.

In any event, I think I’ll end things here for now. This article was a bit less critical than the last one, which isn’t really in my wheelhouse most of the time, but I think it’s important to be positive now and then.

I’m still gonna be sad about Mark Faba, though.

Resident Evil: Village

Ladies and gents, I have returned after a brief lull in my writing. And during that impromptu vacation, the thought occurred to me that it’s been quite a while since I wrote about a video game on this blog. The last time was way, way back in January, when I wrote about Hitman.

So today, I’ve decided to remedy this, by taking a quick look at Resident Evil 8, AKA Resident Evil: Village.

And in case you’re thinking that this would have been perfect to write about two weeks ago, around Halloween, you’re absolutely right!

Anyway, this game directly follows up on events from the previous game and the life of Ethan Winters and it really feels much more refined than the previous game. There’s much more to explore, and it leaps between different types of horror, on account of the four Lords of the Village all being different types of monsters. You have probably the most well known character, Lady Dimitrescu, modeled on vampires. You have Donna Beneviento who, being based on ghosts, subjects you to psychological horror. Moreu is mutated body horror, and you have Karl Heisenberg, the industrial Frankenstein-inspired mechanical horror.

And there’s also an incredible amount of replay value in the game, on account of probably one of the greatest features I’ve ever seen in a game: The Extra Content Shop, unlocked once you’ve completed the game once.

It means that completing various challenges, i.e earning trophies, such as completing the game on different difficulties or killing enough enemies with different weapons earns you credits, which you can use to unlock new features. These include small things like concept art or character models, the Mercenaries challenge mode or, perhaps most importantly, new weapons to use in the game, including infinite ammo versions of the weapons in the game.

I can’t begin to tell you how satisfying it is to having played through the game once, scrounging and struggling to survive… and then play it again, but this time having much better weapons, just breezing through enemies. And it’s extra satisfying because these are upgrades you’ve earned. You’ve worked for them and earned them, and now you get to reap the rewards!

(Take notes, Snake Eater…)

All in all, it means the game has much more replay value, encouraging you to play it again and complete more challenges. It’s a very good mechanic, and I would love to see it in more games, honestly.

However, let’s be honest here. You didn’t come to this blog to hear me gush about game mechanics. You want to hear me gripe about things I found puzzling about the game. Well, ladies and gents, I’m not one to disappoint. I just wanted to stress that, while I will nitpick the game, I don’t believe it’s bad.

So let’s get to the nitpicking, shall we?

Overall, I only have one major issue with the game, and it has to do with the central antagonist of the story, Mother Miranda.

You see, I’ve replayed this game multiple times and… I genuinely don’t understand Miranda’s plan.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I get the general goal of her wanting to revive her child. THAT part is clear and easily understood.

What trips it up for me is how our main character Ethan Winters is supposed to factor into this. Keep in mind, Miranda is aiding Ethan in his quest while in disguise, and yet, as far as I can tell, Ethan doesn’t actually do anything that helps Miranda achieve her goal.

Let me explain.

Miranda, at some point following Ethan and his wife having a child, kidnaps Mia and takes her place. The game starts with Miranda, disguised as Mia, telling a story to the child, and it’s pretty clear, we later find out, she’s been here for a while by now.

Except… why the hell is she still here? The only reason she ended the charade was because Chris Redfield attacked.

We’ll just gloss over the fact that Chris does this in possibly the dumbest way possible, by just riddling the house with bullets, in the hope that Ethan will NOT be caught in the crossfire, before taking both Rose and Ethan away without so much as an explanation. And because Chris apparently thought that, when dealing with a SHAPESHIFTING MONSTER, the best solution was simply shooting her a lot with a handgun… you know, instead of BURNING THE REMAINS or something, Miranda then attacks the truck Ethan and Rose were traveling in, abducts Rose and takes her to the titular village.

In the village, she disguises herself as an old crone, who directs Ethan to the Castle Dimitrescu, where he gets captured and brought before the four lords and Miranda.

He then escapes and makes his way into the castle, where he becomes menaced by the first Lord of the village, Lady Dimitrescu.

Once she’s been defeated, Ethan retrieves one of four glass bottles containing Rose’s parts (how Miranda managed to do this to Rose is never explained), after which… he runs into Miranda disguised as the hag again, and she gives him a key, with which to proceed further into the game.

What I don’t get is… why is she helping him? Him killing the four lords in no way helps her! It’s not like he’s somehow crucial to the ceremony, like he has to be the one to put the bottles into the pedestal or something.

Much later in the game, Heisenberg says it’s all a test, to see if Ethan is worthy to join the family… except after killing Heisenberg, Miranda appears again, and this time she rips Ethans heart out!

So what was the point in having him go through the entire game? She could have killed him at any time! She had the bottles already. It’s not like she needed the other four lords dead to accomplish this.

She could have killed Ethan as soon as she replaced Mia, and disappeared with Rose, and her plan would probably have succeeded. So we get this weird disconnect where on the one hand, we’re manipulated by Miranda, but at the same time, the manipulation serves no purpose!

She could have kept all four bottles with her, rather than giving them to the four Lords for “protection”, given how much stronger she is than all of them.

Yes, that wouldn’t make for a very entertaining game, but that’s not the point here. There are few things that annoy me more than villains in stories who are almost deliberately obtuse and self-defeating.

It’s one thing to make Miranda insane. She’s a selfish, deranged sociopathic monster concerned only with her own goals. But there’s a difference between a character being crazy and being stupid. Miranda is, at no point, presented as irrational to the point where it’d explain her actions. She’s just being stupid, for the sake of the plot!

And sure, this isn’t really apparent the first time you play through the game, but this is where I actually come back to what I talked about earlier, regarding the game having replay value. The game REWARDS you for playing it over and over, which means you are encouraged to view the events and decisions of characters with more context.

Which means that you’re inevitably going to see the cracks in the story, and see where it doesn’t quite fit together.

So with the benefit of hindsight, could the story be made to make more sense? Well, we see that Karl Heisenberg is opposed to Miranda, wishing for power so he can destroy her.

Suppose this was something that carried over to the other Lords, to where Rose being divided into 4 pieces wasn’t actually Miranda’s doing? After all, dividing up Rose and scattering her all over the village doesn’t serve her purposes at all.

If the Four Lords actually rebelled against her, and stole Rose from her, for various reasons? Heisenberg wants freedom, Dimitrescu wants more respect, Moreu is desperate for Miranda to acknowledge him and Beneviento wants more “friends’‘ to play with… These motivations are admittedly based on what we already see in the game, but they needn’t be. Point is, for various reasons, the four Lords have banded together and now hold Rose hostage.

Miranda herself can’t just waltz in and retrieve the bottles, because all the Lords would have to do is threaten one of the bottles, and at this point they’re just waiting for her to get involved so they can start dictating their terms.

So, Miranda decides to manipulate Ethan, someone who also has a vested interest in getting Rose back, into taking out the four lords.

She directs Ethan towards them, and he then takes them out. Now they can’t destroy the bottles, because they’re hoping they can use the bottles as leverage against Miranda.

I admit, it’s not perfect. I am, after all, just a random pedantic guy, not a professional writer working at a video game studio.

And like I said, Miranda’s plan and how it doesn’t quite fit together is really my only major issue with the game. I do still enjoy it, despite all my ranting. After all, the reason I noticed these issues is because I’ve played the game several times, and I did that because I enjoyed it!

I honestly think that, had the plot been ironed out a tad more, I would have had no complaints about this game at all. It’s got action and puzzles and explorations and, as previously stated, several different flavors of horror.

It’s just a shame that, for all the good things I can say about the game, the writing lets it down so badly.

Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (2017)

Ladies and gentlemen, I have decided that, despite having covered a Star Wars fan theory last time, I’m not quite finished with that galaxy far far away just yet.

With that in mind, I’d like to talk about Star Wars: Battlefront II. I really enjoyed the PS2 game, and I recently decided to pick up the modern iteration which was released a few years back, and I’d like to share a few… observations about it.

I should stress that I do like the game, but there are still a fair few things about it which really confuse or frustrate me. So let’s not waste any more time and just get started.

Now, an inescapable fact about this game is that it does share the name of a highly popular, older game. This means that comparisons between the two are pretty much inevitable. And to me, one of the noticeable differences has to do with what was, in my opinion, one of the best parts of the PS2 game: The space battles.

The interesting thing about the space battles in the old game was that… well, you weren’t just a ship zipping through space. You played a pilot, piloting a ship. At the start of the battles, you picked a pilot, and then you picked your ship and flew off into battle.

In the newer game, you just select your ship at the start and get dropped into the action. No takeoff, no choice in pilots…

Now, both games do give you the choice of three types of ships. But the newer one leaves something pretty big out. In the older game, there was also the fourth type of ship, the gunship.

And all of this leads me to the biggest disappointment about this mode in the newer game: You can’t land in enemy ships. That was the whole point of the gunship, after all. You could just land the ships in the enemy hangar and drop off a pile of allies, and you could destroy auto-defences, life support, shields generators and engines from within.

All that is missing from the newer game and it’s such a shame, because here, you could have the opportunity to play around with all the different capital ships of the Star Wars franchise, with different layouts depending on the type of ship. After all, there’s no reason the inside of a rebel alliance cruiser should be identical to a separatist dreadnought. You’d still have the choice to do the whole space dogfighting, but you could also lead landing parties.

Now, there might be some among you who think that this is ridiculous. You may argue that this would be a gargantuan effort, adding maps and additional mechanics, all in order to harken back to an old game.

And on the one hand, you may have a point. But on the other hand, I want you to remember two things. Firstly, they didn’t call this game Star Wars: Intergalactic War. They didn’t call it something like Battlefront 4 or Star Wars: Combat Frontier or anything like that.

They chose to call it Star Wars: Battlefront 2. And the problem, like I said before, about naming this game after a highly lauded older game means that people WILL make these kinds of comparisons. Yes, you get a lot of fans of the old game buying the new one. But those old fans will have some expecations of the new game.

And secondly, in the single player campaign, you DO land your ship in the hangar of an enemy capital ship and sabotage it from the inside. But in multiplayer? Not happening.

That’s not to say, of course, that the space battles are all disappointing. Far from it. After all, there are several space battle missions in the game. For example, you’re tasked with destroying or defending a Star Destroyer under construction, or you can fight in the skies over the cloning facility at Kamino, either attacking or defending it.

But having missions like these, with the addition of the landing parties… that would have added more facets to the game.

Just as an example, going back to that aforementioned attack on the star destroyer, at one point you have to disable the shields by disconnecting the holding clamps connecting it to the construction dock, so you can blow it up. Imagine if you could land inside the construction dock itself and disable the clamps from inside. You’d still have to deal with enemies inside the construction dock, and if you die, you’d have to fly all the way back and try again.

So you’d disable the shield, while your allies outside fight to blow up the star destroyer.

Again, I freely admit this might seem fanciful, but if you’re going use this name, then you’d better try your damndest not to be outdone by a game that was released a decade and a half ago!

But on that note, I will give some credit to the mechanics done to the various classes, both with their various cards, and with the choice of weapons.

Playing a class well enough, racking up kills, eventually unlocks new weapons for that class. So if you’re playing a specialist, i.e a sniper, you unlock better rifles. And using those rifles eventually earns you modifications, granting reduced recoil, improved zoom, faster projectiles etc.

But these unlockable weapons, combined with the weapon mechanics of the game, actually provides another headscratcher to me.

You see, all the various rifles in the game feature an overheating meter, so if you fire for long enough, the weapon needs to cool down. You also have a small quick time event where, if you click at the right time, you instantly cool down the weapon or, if you manage to get it exactly right, the weapon becomes temporarily immune to overheating.

However, this becomes extremely confusing with one particular unlockable rifle for the specialist: The cycler rifle.

You see, the cycler rifle is what in the Star Wars universe is referred to as a ”slugthrower”. It is, in other words, a normal rifle, firing bullets rather than blaster bolts.

But if this is the case, then why is it overheating like a blaster rifle? Not only that, but it overheats far worse! Three shots, and it needs to cool down. Meanwhile, your standard rifle shooting superheated plasma bolts can fire 10 shots until it overheats.

Which to me raises not only the questions of what kind of crap material these cycler rifles are made of, but also why they would be given to soldiers at all, given the aforementioned crap materials!

But this is really only one quibble in what, again, I think is a pretty solid set of mechanics.

Now, the next thing I’d like to talk about concerns the various heroes and villains of the game. It’s not that I dislike them, but there are a few… weird things about them. The first, and lesser problem has to do with the unlockable appearances.

Mainly, the problem is that there are so many outfits you’d think would be here, but aren’t… and there are some that have no reason to be there, but are.

For example, you have Rey as a playable character. Rey has six different outfits, one of which is just her jedi robes, but with a hood on. Meanwhile, you have Finn, who only has two outfits. They couldn’t even give him the bloodied stormtrooper armor?

You have Obi-Wan Kenobi, who has three different outfits, but there’s no old Ben Kenobi skin. In fact, there’s no old version of any character. There’s no old Luke, Leia or Han outfits.

There’s not even an old version of Iden Versio, the main character of the solo campaign, despite being a playable character!

Now, you might be saying that it’d be a bit weird if, say, an old Luke Skywalker appeared during the battle of Hoth or an old Leia was at Endor…

But at the same time, you can unlock young versions of both Han Solo and Lando Calrissian for play on maps where they really shouldn’t be, and you have Yoda fighting for the rebel alliance, so it’s not like anachronisms are that much of an issue.

And also, you can’t really argue that it’d look weird, when you have Count Dooku, who has three different outfits… one of which are his damn pyjamas!

It’s just this weird confused disconnect. Do you want it to be serious? Then why give us pyajama party Dooku? You want to go all out, then go all out! Give us young, Episode 3 Darth Vader and Palpatine. Give us old Luke Skywalker and bloodied armor Finn.

But this is the lesser issue I have. The bigger issue with the heroes are just the choices of heroes. More specifically, who they decided to add, and the ones they decided to leave out.

Keep in mind, these are the designated central characters of the Star Wars franchise. You have Finn and Rey and Kylo Ren and Luke and Leia and and Obi Wan Kenobi and Bossk.

That’s right. Bossk. You know Bossk, right? Who can forget about good old Bossk, the lizard guy who was in ONE SINGLE SCENE in The Empire Strikes Back. A scene wherein he didn’t say or do anything!

But sure, HE got to be in the game, but not Wicket the Ewok? We got Bossk instead of, say, Assaj Ventress?

I played the old Shadow of the Empire game for the N64, and let me tell you, if we could have played as IG-88, that would have been amazing!

After all, why not? He had just as much screentime as Bossk, and at least he made an appearance in a video game. But no, there’s no IG-88.

There’s also no Mace Windu, no Jango Fett, No Qui-Gon Jinn, no Ahsoka Tano, no Cad Bane…

And it goes further! This game has Scarif as a map. They have special models for the shore troopers, who were on Scarif.

But they don’t have a single hero from Rogue One! No Jyn Erso, no Cassian Andor, no Saw Gerrera, no Director Krennic, no K-2SO, not a one!

Meanwhile, you play a battle between the rebel alliance and the Empire, and you can have Darth Maul as a playable character, despite A) not being associated with the Empire and B) being dead at the time!

And among the dark side heroes, fighting for the First Order… you have BB-9E, the little sphere robot who was barely a character in The Last Jedi!

If you’re just gonna cram in characters who make no sense, why not just give us Supreme Leader Snoke as a character? At least he was shown to be incredibly powerful! And don’t tell me it’s because he didn’t do any actual fighting, because neither did BB-9E!

Now, I’m guessing they wanted an equal number of good guys and bad guys, but even with 11 for each side, there are times when one side will still have more heroes than the other.

For example, circling it all back to the space battles, there are three different versions of the Millenium Falcon available, giving the heroes 7 heroes compared to the villains 5 And the dark side has Darth Maul, flying the Scimitar. And what prequel trilogy starfighter do they have for the light side, as his opposite? Do they have Anakin Skywalker? Maybe Obi-Wan in his Ep. 2 starfighter? That would make sense, seeing as Obi-Wan actually had a dogfight in space against Jango Fett…

But no, instead you play as the immensely famous-as-a-starfighter-pilot Yoda! And while yes, he DID fly a spaceship in the Clone Wars tv series (which also makes you wonder why we didn’t get Ahsoka Tano in this game) they didn’t get his ship right! It’s just the ships Obi-Wan and Anakin flew in episode 3, but painted green!

You see what I mean about their bizarre choices in heroes?! They could have had either Anakin or Obi-Wan, with only different voice clips and a colour change, and it’d that much more sense, but they DELIBERATELY picked the green muppet!

Anyway, I believe that’s all my quibbles with this game. Overall, I do still enjoy it, but it’s such a shame that you can spot so many missed opportunities and strange choices.

Hitman

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I do believe it’s time for the first article of 2022.

Normally, my holiday hiatus shouldn’t have taken this long, but the truth is, having to deal with several fan theories about Shrek and THEN deal with a ton of stupid, vaguely christmas-themed fan theories… turns out that took more out of me than I expected.

But that’s all in the past. This is now. It’s a new year, and I’m rested and recuperated, and I think it’s only fitting that I talk about a subject I’ve not mentioned before on this blog.

And with that in mind, I’d like to talk a bit about Hitman.

Specifically, I’d like to talk about the most recent entries, the World of Assassination trilogy.

Right away, let me just clarify that I really like these games. As it happens, it is somewhat related to what I love about RPG’s, namely the amount of choice you have. These games thrive on choice, giving you several venues of how to approach the various assassinations.

Do you prefer using poison, or staging a tragic accident? Do you like to manipulate others to take out the target or maybe you‘re content to wade through hordes of bodyguards and kill them yourself? Maybe you like the idea of taking out a target with a long-distance sniper rifle, or perhaps you prefer simply going up to them and shooting them in the head?

Whether you like it loud and flashy or silent and subtle, it doesn’t matter. You’re able to approach it however you want.

And the more you play, the more useful weapons and tools you unlock to help you.

And of course, the various levels are so crammed with details that you could quite literally play these games for MONTHS and still find new things. Hidden dialogue, easter eggs, references and minor bits of intel, you name it.

What all this means, of course, is that these games all have an amazing degree of replay value. And for a single player game, particularly a game that’s not an RPG, that is an incredible achievement to me.

I guess my point with all this gushing and raving is that yes, I do really enjoy these games immensely. However, that doesn’t mean I believe they’re perfect, or that they don’t have things that annoy or puzzle me. Hence why I’ve decided to write this article.

Now, I should of course warn you that this article will contain spoilers and, more to the point, I will assume you are familar with the story already, so if you haven’t played them, you might have problems following along. So in case you haven’t played these games, just consider yourself warned.

Seeing as we are actually covering three games here, rather than just one, there are of course quite a large number things I’d like to talk about with this article, But I will try to stick to issues regarding the overall story, rather than get bogged down with the more pedantic stuff. Let’s begin.

The first thing I’d like to talk about has to do with the mission “A Gilded Cage”, the third mission of the first game, set in Morocco.

You see, at this point in the plot, we have seen that Lucas Grey, the mysterious shadow client, is secretly using the ICA for his own vendetta against Providence.

My problem, though, is that in terms of that agenda, I don’t actually see how this mission factors in.

I’ll explain. When it comes to the first mission, “The Showstopper” Lucas Grey approaches Viktor Novikov, leader of the spy ring IAGO, and helps him wipe the slate clean of his past, in exchange for information the spy ring has gathered. After this, he leaks information to ensure the ICA eliminates Novikov, to cover his tracks.

Next, he uses this information to gain information about Silvio Caruso and his work on the Ether Virus, which is the focus of the second mission. The death of Caruso, his assistant Francesca de Santis and the destruction of the virus leads to Providence sending a Herald, one of their high level operatives, to Italy to survey the damage. Grey then follows this operative to Johannesburg and kills him, taking the key he carries. This key then allows him access to a New York vault, in order to steal information about Providence operatives.

Later, in the fourth mission, Grey arranges for rock musician Jordan Cross to be eliminated, and it’s revealed this was to draw Jordan’s billionaire father Thomas Cross out of seclusion, kidnapping him and stealing his money, in order for Grey to fund his militia.

This is what leads to the ICA becoming suspicious, and finally taking steps to hunt down the Shadow Client.

But with this in mind, the mission “A Gilded Cage” doesn’t fit. There was no actual reason, in Greys plan, why General Zaydan and Claus Strandberg had to die, and the coup in Morocco be averted. Judging by their dialogue, neither of them were Heralds, and at that point, Providence were unaware of Grey, and believed that Cobb, whom Grey murdered to get the first of the two keys he needed, died in an accident.

But it is because of the failure of the Moroccan coup that Providence becomes suspicious and discovers the break-in. In other words, this entire thing served only to draw attention to the fact that Providence was under attack. It’s what led the Constant to notice the pattern and discover the break-in at the vault.

Seeing how cautious Grey is otherwise shown to be, for him to do something this careless… it just does not fit with everything else we see.

Then there’s the part of ICA figuring out the pattern and going after Grey, which is another thing that makes me tilt my head a bit, simply because their motivation seems a bit backwards.

After Thomas Cross was kidnapped, robbed and then murdered, we see Diana and Agent 47 discuss it, with Diana talking about how the ICA is tracking down the shadow client.

I know you don’t care about politics, 47. But ICA is neutral, always has been. We cannot afford to let ourselves be manipulated.

Here’s the thing, though… if you’re neutral, then what does it matter? The ICA is an independent organization, working for whoever pays. It’s a group of killers-for-hire, and as we see later on, they employ people from all over. They have information brokers, mercenaries, cyber-terrorists…

We’re told that one of their most important operatives, Hush, is a cyberterrorist working with organ harvesting and human trafficking. So clearly, morality isn’t really something the ICA are concerned about. Just because Agent 47 doesn’t take contracts on innocent people doesn’t mean nobody else does.

In fact, I would argue 47 sums up what ought to be the entire credo of the ICA when he finds out about the Shadow Client.

Someone got rich. The contract was just. How is this our problem?

Is it really that big of a deal, or even surprise, that someone other than the client might have benefitted from the death of a target? You’d think this shouldn’t be that much of an issue, especially for an organization with the motto “Malus Necessarium“.

“Necessary Evil“.

Ultimately, nothing Grey has done has directly affected the ICA one way or another. He hasn’t damaged or exposed the organization, so there shouldn’t be any particular reason why the ICA should be at all bothered. And really, their only evidence of foul play is that their clients got anonymous tips, leading to them seeking out the ICA. But 47 points out that he doesn’t see the pattern, and he is right. To the ICA, Thomas Cross’ death was the only clear consequence of their actions. Unless they can point to other occurrences resulting from their missions, drawing parallels between them is a wild leap at best.

The next issue I want to bring up is a rather bizarre moment right at the end of Hitman 2, after the final mission at Haven Island.

As a quick refresher, 47, Grey and Diana have captured Arthur Edwards AKA the Constant, Providence’s chief controller and second-in-command. From him, they learn the name of the leaders of Providence, the Partners. However, as soon as the Constant was compromised, the three leaders faked their deaths and went into hiding.

After first infiltrating a New York bank and stealing a computer core, and then going to the Maldives and taking out the three leaders of HAVEN, an organization working to set up new identities for the Partners, 47 and Grey are finally able to pick up a trail to find them.

But this is where things get… weird.

Diana and Olivia Hall, Lucas Grey’s hacker associate, track down the new identities of the Partners, but in the process discover that their assets and fortunes, and indeed the control of Providence itself, is being transferred elsewhere, namely to Arthur Edwards, who they discover has escaped.

And we see Greys phone light up, him checking it, and then telling 47 “Message from Olivia. Everything is going to plan”.

But if this message is from Olivia, who we just saw finding out that all of Providence has changed hands and presumably would know that the Constant had escaped… Why the hell would she say everything was going to plan?

Because right now, pretty much everything has changed.

It honestly feels like there was some sudden rewrite between games, because the way the sequence is shot is making the whole thing seem really ominous. The implication, at least from where I was sitting when I first saw it, seemed to be that Grey was up to something.

When I watched it, I was expecting it to be revealed that Grey was working for Edwards all along, and this was all part of some very convoluted plan for Edwards to take over Providence.

And then the third game came out and… that didn’t happen. It made the whole thing really confusing, in my opinion. Why was it depicted in such a strange way, if that wasn’t going anywhere?

At this point, I can only assume that either the plot was changed between the second and third game, or that Olivia saw Diana hurry off upon hearing the name Arthur Edwards, and just figured “That probably doesn’t mean anything” and just texted Grey, telling him everything was A-OK.

It may seem an unfair assumption, but I do have reason to believe that yes, Olivia would actually do something that phenomenally idiotic.

After all, we only have to look at her contribution to the mission “End of an Era” to see that.

This is the mission where 47 has to infiltrate the ICA facility in Chongqing, China and reveal their confidential data to the world in order to take them down.

After killing the two overseers of the facility, you access the data core and prepare to leak the files to the public. As soon as you’ve done this, however, an alarm goes off, and you have to escape. And Olivia, who at this point has taken over Diana’s role after the latter was captured by Arthur Edwards, decides to be helpful.

So she locks down the server room in order to buy you some time to escape. But she then decides to try and divert attention, so she causes the data core to overheat, causing a fire.

This genius move, as it turns out, not only does absolutely nothing to draw attention, but instead fills the ventilation shafts with fire.

The ventilation shafts that would otherwise give you a quick and easy escape from this very bad situation.

To make matters worse, the reason the alarm went off in the first place? Why, it was because Olivia, who I remind you specializes in hacking, and who we’re told was trained by the aforementioned former cyberterrorist and tech-genius Hush… failed to spot an alarm in the computer core which goes off AFTER you’ve finished uploading.

In other words, this current situation is her fault, and her solution was to make it all worse by setting the building alight and CUTTING OFF YOUR FUCKING ESCAPE ROUTE!

So now, you get out of the server room, and you’re rapidly being surrounded by an army of guards.

Now, I’m not saying it’s impossible to escape, but it’s just really frustrating that this problem only occurred because your so-called expert hacker failed to do the ONE THING you needed her to do… and then figured the best way to remedy this colossal cockup was to set the fucking house on fire with YOU STILL INSIDE IT!

But then, what would you expect. After all, this is the same hacker who failed to properly cover her tracks from the ICA twice already, with one of those occasions resulting in the death of no less than four prime operatives of Greys militia within less than one hour of each other!

Anyway, I feel I should finish this rather lenghty article not with a nitpick or criticism, but more of an observation.

And it goes back to Arthur Edwards and his takeover of Providence.

While it is true that determining what is canon or not regarding the individual missions is difficult, again given the sheer amount of choices you have, there are one or two things we can take as fact.

For example, we know that canonically, Viktor Novikov died by being crushed by the light fixtures of his fashion show, according to 47’s own memories. And we can be reasonably certain that Jordan Cross managed to finish recording his song before he died, because we can hear it in later levels, playing over the radio here and there.

The reason I bring this up is because in the mission “The Ark Society“, wherein you capture The Constant, one of the mission stories appear to be another canonical moment.

It’s revealed at the start of the mission that the Constant has a poison chip injected in his neck, with the triggers being held by the missions two targets for elimination, Zoe and Sophia Washington. Now, one of the mission stories centers around Sophia Washington plotting to discredit the Constant, by setting a trap for him. She has approached the engineer of the poison chip and asked him to offer the Constant to disable the chip.

The mission story involves you taking the place of the engineer and informing the Constant of Sophias plan, leading to a discussion between the two. And this, I believe, is the crucial point.

Later on in the story, it’s revealed that Arthur Edwards decided to enact his takeover of Providence because he realized that, despite all his hard work and loyalty, he would never be seen as an equal by the Partners. And it’s important to note that he was still loyal to the Partners before this mission, which is the last time they met. We know this because this is the point where they ordered him to inject himself with the poison chip, and while he protested… he still followed through with it.

So he was loyal before the mission, and after the mission he wasn’t. In other words, something must have changed during the mission. Something made him reevaluate his loyalties. And I believe that something was Sophia Washington.

Because when he finds out about her scheme, he confronts her about it.

-You think just because the Partners have noticed you, you have their trust? Their confidence? I have served them for decades. And you don’t even know their names.
-And yet, you are the one with the poison chip in your neck, and I’m the one holding the trigger.

Sophia goes on to mock him, telling him that despite all his hard work and all his authority, he still ”reeks of middle class”.

Sophia is the one who flat out tells him that in the eyes of the partners, he will never be good enough, because the partners value people with class and pedigree, like the Washington twins, whereas Edwards ”carries the stink of public transportation”.

It’s my belief that this is in fact the moment Edwards decided, no matter what, to take control of Providence, even if he perhaps didn’t have a plan lined up. This is where it became clear to him that this kind of power isn’t shared. It’s seized.

And in fact, there is more evidence to support this idea, because of a moment where 47 asks Edwards about his position.

-A humble advisor, nothing more.
-Power without responsibility. Nothing humble about that.

And later, right at the end of the game, when 47 faces off with Edwards onboard his train, this line returns.

-Do you really think [Diana] will be able to resist all that power? This is not how people work.
-She rejects the power. Not the responsibility.

This follow up, to me, suggests that their conversation at the Isle of Sgáil, and therefore the entire mission story, is in fact canon.

As an additional observation, it’s worth noting that 47, Grey and Diana were unwittingly laying the groundwork for Edwards takeover.

After all, the Partners were already shaken and desperate following Grey’s decimation of their operatives. Then Janus, the first Constant, was murdered by 47, with Diana setting up a fake report proving that Janus was the real Shadow Client, with Lucas Grey being a figurehead.

This, in turn, is what made the Partners so paranoid and desperate, they insisted on Arthur Edwards injecting the poison chip worrying that ”treachery is contagious”.

Admittedly, I don’t have any solid evidence to support this, and it’s therefore just a personal assumption, but I believe it holds up to scrutiny.

But either way, I think that’s all I wanted to share for today. It’s true there are more strangeness to be found in these games, but those are more technical than story-related.

You could very easily question why it is that three dollar coins take up the same amount of space in your starting loadout as a crowbar, a lockpick, a fiber wire or an explosive rubber duck, or why bringing a briefcase with you somehow gives you LESS room, depite you presumably having the same number of pockets…

Or why, with enough tools and custom made equipment to make James Bond blush, is the humble multitool utterly unheard of, forcing 47 to scour the maps for wrenches and screwdrivers?

But like I said, I wanted to focus primarily on issues regarding the story.

Again, I do really enjoy these games, and if you haven’t played them, I heartily recommend them. I freely admit these points are all nitpicks, and none of them actually detract from the games in any meaningful way. The core of the games are the missions themselves, and they’re pretty much all enjoyable, no matter how you approach them.

Here’s hoping that bit of praise is enough for me not to have to worry about monotone, bald men in suits coming after me. If not, I suppose I can at least take comfort in that I most likely won’t see it coming.

Fable III

Ladies and gentlemen, today I’d like to take you for a small stroll down memory lane.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of RPG’s. In fact, it’s that love that led to the creation of a part of this blog that I am very passionate about, namely The Skyrim Chronicles, created because of how poorly written and constructed and endlessly frustrating unlike an RPG that game is. But although we’re not here to talk about Skyrim, it is with the Skyrim Chronicles we should start.

You see, during my pedantic and furious ranting, I made passing mention of other RPG’s, most notably Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. But I also mentioned another game series that I’m quite fond of: Fable.

And Fable is a very important game to me, because it really was my first real introduction into RPG’s as a genre.

Granted, I had played Baldur’s Gate when I was young, but I should make it clear that I was around 8 or 9 years old at the time, and played it in english, a language that I did not understand. So while I did play it, I didn’t actually get it. 

But then, a few years (and much linguistic education) later, I came across Fable for the original XBox. Now, opinion regarding the Fable-franchise is somewhat divided, mostly owing to its developers sometimes promising more than they ended up delivering. 

But I was completely oblivious to this, and just picked it up out of curiosity. And I am not ashamed to say that I absolutely loved it! 

I have described it as simplistic, and I do stand by that… but I don’t mean that necessarily as a bad thing. It’s simple and straightforward, but I still enjoyed it. Your choices were simple, but they still existed. In fact, that was the whole credo of the game. “For every choice, a consequence”. 

And I’ve said it before, but it begs repeating: the whole point of RPG’s is choice. Making decisions and having your choices have consequences. And for all the criticisms you might level at this franchise, they still understand this fundamental principle.

So Fable was hugely influential for me, because as a game, it was easy to get into and get a basic understanding of the genre.

A few years later, when they released Fable II, I was excited to play it. In fact, the reason I bought an XBox 360 was specifically so I could play Fable II. It was the first game for that console I ever owned.

Now, this may all seem a rambling and uncharacteristically positive rant, but there is reason to my madness. You see, while I do love these games dearly, there are still some nitpicks I’d like to share about the third game in the series, aptly named Fable III, a game that I do like, though I have to admit it is sadly the weakest of the three games I’ve played. I wouldn’t call it “bad” by any metric, but it just didn’t have the same… oomph as the other games.. But at least now, it’s clear that my observations, while pedantic, still come from a place of affection.

For example, unlike when I wrote about Skyrim, the risk of me smashing my keyboard to pieces out of sheer rage while writing is tenuous at best here. 

Anyway, let’s begin. The first problem I’d like to talk about has to do with this game in relation to Fable II.

You see, we’re told that the hero of Fable III, the Hero of Brightwall, is the child of the Hero of Bowerstone, the hero of Fable II.

But this is something that has bothered me ever since I first played it. While it’s never explicitly said in the game how long it has been between the two games, supplementary information claims it’s 50 years.

But if that is the case, I have to say that Albion has changed an awful lot in that time. In 50 short years, you have the city of Brightwall, with its academy hiding catacombs that look like they’ve been abandoned for centuries, despite very definitely not being a thing in Fable II. You also have the Dwellers who also were never mentioned in previous games, yet claim a long heritage of living in Mistpeak. With the exception of Bowerstone, Bower Lake (renamed Millfields) and the Castle, none of the locations from Fable II remain. Westcliff and the Crucible are both completely gone, and there’s no trace left of Bloodstone or Wraithmarsh, or of Oakfield and Rookridge. The Tattered Spire remains though, but you can’t visit it.

In Fable II, you have the option to get married and have children. One of the quests in the game has you marry someone as the “good” outcome of the quest! And yet Fable III clearly decided to ignore this, since you don’t end up with a little baby Logan in Fable II. Sir Walter talks about having been close to your hero parent… except Walter was never seen or heard of in Fable II. We’re also shown the “Sanctuary”, which Walter says belonged to the Hero of Bowerstone, but I sure don’t remember ever visiting a sanctuary in Fable II.

My point is, I feel like it would have been better to have more time between games. If memory serves, it was around 500 years between the first and second Fable games, so having it be another century or two between the second and third might’ve been better. At least then, I can understand that so much of the map would have changed and altered. I remind you, It was 500 years between the first two games, and you can still find the remains of Oakvale, as well as the ruins of the Heroes Guild, so having all of Albion radically changed in a mere 50 year difference just raises a whole heap of questions.

And really, in terms of plot, all that would really change is that Sir Walter never fought alongside the Hero of Bowerstone. But he could just as easily have heard stories passed down throughout Albion about the royal family bloodline, and used to be an advisor to the late king.

The other slight issue I’d like to discuss about this game has to do with its main antagonist. Throughout the first half of the game, it seems the main villain is your tyrannical older brother, King Logan, and your mission is to mount a revolution and take the throne. But as it turns out, Logan’s tyranny was not arbitrary, but rather actions he believed to be necessary to deal with a threat to all of Albion, in the form of The Crawler.

Now, I do like the Crawler overall, in that he’s this weird, monstrous creature who spreads despair and corruption. 

And this is, I think, something that is both a strength and a weakness. The first game had Jack of Blades as the main big bad, a mysterious man and legendary hero, who seeks the powerful Sword of Aeons, in order to wreak destruction on Albion. Fable II had Lord Lucien, who tried to control the Tattered Spire, an ancient conduit of powerful magic, in order to remake the world in his own image. 

Both Lucien and Jack of Blades seek to dominate or control Albion, though Lucien seems to be motivated by a twisted desire to make the world better. His actions, while heinous and cruel, are still justified in his mind, since his goal is to improve what he views as a cruel and uncaring world.

The Crawler, meanwhile, is very different from either of these two. To Lucien, people suffering is a means to an end. To Jack of Blades, it’s a nice bonus to acquiring his goal. To the Crawler, causing suffering and pain is an end in itself. 

In some ways, he’s similar to the main villain from another game I’ve mentioned on this blog: The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask. Though whereas Majoras Mask seems to simply amplify negative personality traits in whoever wears it, seeing as the Skull Kid carries out increasingly malicious “pranks” while under the masks influence, when we see The Crawler take possession of people, he still remains very much in control. Him possessing people really is just another tool to torment his victims, as seen when he takes control of Sir Walter while fighting the Hero of Brightwall.

But I’m getting sidetracked. My point is that the Crawler is interesting as a villain because, compared to the other villains, his motivations are so actively malicious and, for lack of better words, alien. It’s not motivated by greed or ambition or revenge. It’s cruelty simply for the sake of cruelty.

But while this is interesting, it does also feel a bit out of place in this franchise, to just introduce some weird, lovecraftian creature and say “Yes, this has always been here, across the sea”. 

It’s apparently from the Void, the same otherworldly realm where Jack of Blades came from, but given how different the two are, this just seems somewhat bizarre. From what we see, the two have no other connection to one another, when they very easily could have created a link between the two. 

Jack of Blades was seemingly destroyed when the Hero of Oakvale threw his mask into a pit of lava, but we know Jack’s essence could separate from the mask, since it happened before when he turned into a great big dragon. Suppose some small sliver of his spirit escaped his apparent death, and has spent centuries building power, becoming more and more twisted and corrupted. After all, both the Crawler and Jack are capable of possessing bodies and taking control of them. Having Jack of Blades return, even in a horribly twisted form, would do a lot to make the Crawler feel less out of place. 

But these are my main points of concern when it comes to this. Sure, there are minor details here and there that rub me the wrong way, but they are small things like how they changed the menu to that weird walk-around-the-sanctuary thing, or changed how magic works, or other things that aren’t that important in the grand scheme of things. And the fact is, none of these issues, big or small, take away from the fact that I do still really like this game and this franchise in general. 

They’re funny, they’re exciting, they’re downright heart-wrenching at times, but above all, they’re accessible. Like I said, Fable was very much my introduction into the genre of RPG’s, and it is fantastic for that.

It only remains to be seen how the upcoming game stands up compared to its predecessors. Will it continue the story? Is it a reboot? A sidequel? 

Maybe all we can hope for is that it leads to more people getting interested in this genre. And if you ask me, if that is all it accomplishes, that’s more than enough.

Fallout: New Vegas (Pt. 3)

Well, folks, Autumn is fast approaching, and as the weather is growing steadily colder and more grim, I feel compelled to look at something that fills me with warmth.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to once again write about Fallout: New Vegas, my favorite game of all time.

I enjoyed it a lot when it first came out, and as should be pretty clear by now, I have only grown to love it more over the course of the decade since.

So, given how this blog normally operates, it may seem strange that I would write what is likely going to be a pedantic, nitpicky article about something I profess to love so dearly. But the truth is, to paraphrase the game itself, there are many reasons for it. I will illuminate three.

Firstly, while I do adore this game, I have never claimed it is perfect. There are still things that I question, which is why I’ve written about some of my quibbles with this game twice already.

Secondly, I don’t want anyone to suggest that I’m not able to hold the things I like to the same level of scrutiny as the many, many things I lambast or condemn. I believe this game is good enough that my nitpickings won’t ruin the experience.

And thirdly… I don’t have much choice in the matter, since if I don’t write about it, I’ll just turn it over in my head, which is bad for my mental health. And while that may not seem important to you, it is actually the whole reason this blog exists at all.

So with all that out of the way, let’s get this show on the road.

The first thing I’d like to talk about has to do with who I think most of us can agree is one of the main bad guys in the game: Edward Sallow, AKA Caesar.

Granted, one of the strong points of New Vegas is the fact that you have so much choice, to the point where you can actually join what are ostensibly the villains if you want, which means calling them the main bad guys is a bit subjective… but on the other hand, in three out of the four quest lines, Caesar’s Legion are the main antagonists. Not that surprising, given their behavior in the game, where they are depicted as slavers, murderers and sadists, as well as being extremely authoritarian and also heavily implied to be rapists and pedophiles.

But going back to Caesar himself, you can actually ask him about his own views, opinions and motivations. And when you do, he states that his opposition towards the NCR isn’t based on personal animosity, but founded in Hegelian Dialectics.

When pressed on the matter, he explains it as history being a sequence of “dialectical” conflicts, where there’s first a thesis, which creates or contains its own opposite idea, it’s antithesis. The inevitable conflict between them leads to a synthesis, wherein the flaws in both are eliminated, leaving behind their common elements.

However, I’ve recently learned that this might not actually be describing Hegelian Dialectics at all.

But the problem I have is, since I’m not a student of philosophy, I don’t actually know enough about this subject to tell if that is the case or not. So as you can imagine, that makes writing about this a tad complicated.

I’m not even competent enough on this subject to know where to start looking to find out if it’s accurate or not.

So why, then, am I writing about this, if it’s a subject that, by my own admission, I don’t know enough about to discuss?

The answer is that, while I may not be able to confirm or deny if Caesar’s views are a case of hegelian dialectics, what I CAN do is share my opinion on what it would mean if he’s shown to be wrong.

Because I believe, if he is actually wrong… it makes a lot of sense. Partly because it’s understandable that Caesar’s knowledge of philosophy might be a bit piecemeal, seeing as more than two hundred years have passed since the printing industry went up in smoke… or rather, went up in a great big mushroom cloud, along with pretty much every other industry on Earth.

What books do remain on the subject could easily be damaged, or incomplete, leading to bits and pieces left out or people adding their own interpretations, diluting and bastardizing the basic idea over decades. Since we never get to see the books he based his ideas on, we don’t know how accurate they were to begin with.

But even if that is not the case, there is another important issue to consider, and this, I feel, is more important and reliable to explain potential problems. You see, Caesar is clearly not an idiot. He’s skilled in strategy and logistics and organization. Even if we take into consideration that he based his Legion on Imperial Rome, there’s a big step between using something as inspiration and successfully implementing it, and yet that is exactly what Caesar has managed to do. Say what you will, but Caesar is smart.

However, as Arcade Gannon so eloquently put it when discussing Caesar:

Being “smart” doesn’t matter if you’re insane!

And that is the crucial fact when it comes to Caesar. For all his skill and tactical know-how and clever rhetoric… he’s very obviously completely delusional! Case in point, if pressed about his ideas of Hegelian Dialectics, he explains that the Great War effectively brought cultural progress back to zero.

And he goes on to explain that the NCR has all the problems of the Roman senate, and that therefore, it is natural, even inevitable, that a military force should conquer it.

Or to put it in clearer terms: Caesar’s worldview is so unhinged from reality, he genuinely believes history itself has reset! In his mind, he is Julius Caesar incarnate. He campaigned in Arizona, just like Julius Caesar campaigned in Gaul and he is poised to cross the Colorado river like Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

And in fact, to illustrate this further, it’s pretty clear his understanding is still incomplete. For one thing, he misrepresents the idea of Pax Romana as describing a type of society, rather than a period of time, but he also speaks of himself as an emperor, despite Julius Caesar himself never actually being an emperor.

Following Julius Caesar’s victory in the civil war, he was elected Dictator Perpetuo, or Dictator for Life. What Fallout-Caesar is suggesting is instead a martial conquest of Vegas, which is very much NOT the seat of power of the NCR senate, and he views this as what will make his legion a true empire. In doing so, he is conflating Julius Caesar and his successor Augustus Caesar, since Julius Caesar didn’t actually form the Roman Empire.

Whereas Julius Caesar campaigned in Gaul on behalf of the Roman senate, Fallout-Caesar led a conquest of Arizona and New Mexico specifically for the sake of his own rise to power. He was ALREADY a dictator, before he ever reached the Colorado river!

But again, this is all in line with what we know about Caesar, and how he’s described by Arcade. He’s an insane, delusional despot who wants to play dress-up and reenact ancient wars in the name of a deranged idea of historical inevitability. Instead of learning from the past, he seeks to repeat it, and he picks and chooses and twists facts to suit his own purposes and ideas.

And despite all this, it has to be said that he doesn’t actually come across as badly written. He’s insane, but not deranged, and he’s still a very effective and believable antagonist for the game.

Now, I do have some more things to talk about, so let’s leave the insane megalomaniac and move on.

As it happens, my other two points are actually pretty closely connected, since they both have to do with Dead Money, the first of the four storyline DLC’s for the game. Dead Money, if I’m brutally honest, is probably the weakest of the four story DLC’s for this game, and it’s not as polished as the other, later ones. But it’s still a good story, and it does offer an interesting change of pace, with how it leans into survival horror. It’s an interesting experiment, even if some things might be a bit rough around the edges.

I still enjoy it, and I think no proper playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas is quite complete without it. But I still feel it necessary to mention some minor issues I have with it. Specifically, it has to do with two of the characters featured in it: Dean Domino and Christine Royce.

Let’s start with Dean. From what we are told, he’s been at the Sierra Madre for quite some time. Actually, that’s a bit of an understatement. He’s been there since the bombs fell two centuries ago.

He has spent a lot of time surviving in the Sierra Madre, long before you or even Elijah heard of the Sierra Madre, or were even born. He has stashes of supplies hidden all over the place.

So that makes me wonder… how exactly is it that he’s got a bomb collar on?

Keep in mind, you and Christine have them on, because you were knocked out and Dog put the collar on you while you were unconscious, before bringing you to the Sierra Madre. So I just don’t see how Dog could have managed to sneak up on Dean and put a collar on him.

In addition, when you first meet him, he asks if you are the one who put the bomb collar on him, and we later find that Dean doesn’t seem to know who Dog or Elijah is, even though he must have had some interraction with both, and known about them since, again, he was there when they arrived!

We then find out that Dean is the one who locked Christine in the Auto-Doc, programming it to tune her vocal chords to make her sound like Vera Keyes, so he can open the vault.

But… what was his plan before that, then? For someone who has apparently planned to rob this place for 200 years, he doesn’t seem to have much of an actual plan!

In fact, the reason he wanted to rob the casino in the first place was to ruin Frederick Sinclair. But Frederick has been dead of CENTURIES now. Robbing the place will accomplish literally nothing!

And sure, there’s the motif of ”learn to let go” and the dangers of obsession and greed… but if Dean is still alive after the heist is carried out… he leaves! He didn’t manage to rob the place, so he decides to leave, after obsessing over the place for 200 years! So what the hell was the point in staying around?

Really, the big problem here is the idea that Dean has been at the Sierra Madre for all these years. That simply doesn’t make a lick of sense! He can’t have helped Elijah trigger the Gala event, because if he had… he’d be stuck inside the Casino, just like Elijah! In fact, when you consider that, then he should be inside regardless of if he helped or not, because he would have run inside first chance he got!

However, I think this could have been easily solved. Suppose Dean LEFT the Sierra Madre, and then found himself compelled to return, and THAT is when he got caught and fitted with a collar? THAT makes sense.

And it also plays into the theme of the DLC, as outlined by Elijah when talking about this legendary casino.

Finding it, though… that’s not the hard part. It’s letting go

Now, let’s move onto Christine Royce, and rather bizarrely, my issue with her is kind of the opposite of Dean.

Because if she is still alive at the end of the DLC… she decides to stay!

And I cannot, for love nor dead money, figure out why!

The ending claims that, with her mission complete, she found new purpose as the warden of the Sierra Madre. Except it doesn’t need a warden! The place is under a great big toxic cloud, its streets teeming with ghost people and murderous holograms… the place just seems pretty self-policing, is what I’m saying.

And as for her seeking new purpose… the whole point why she sought out the Circle of Steel was Elijah using his influence to separate her from someone she cared for.

That someone being Veronica Santangelo, one of your companions back in the Mojave!

Seems to me this might be a good opportunity, now that Elijah is dealt with, to maybe try seeking Veronica out! At the very least, going back to the Circle of Steel might be a plan, since that was her purpose before going after Elijah!

Either way is better than staying around the Sierra Madre, seeing as the place doesn’t need her! She’s worried someone might take the secrets of the Sierra Madre and use it to hurt others… but those secrets are in the vault… which can NEVER BE OPENED AGAIN.

Even IF you killed Elijah and he didn’t accidentally seal himself inside the vault, you still need to know how to open the casino, via the Gala event. For that you need someone freakishly strong to flip the old corroded levers, and someone with lots of technical cunning to operate the switching station. The casino itself is a nightmare to find, and all the stuff you brought with you are removed when you go there, making surviving the aforementioned ghost people, who are a nightmare to kill, even MORE difficult…

Elijah needed four other people to trigger it all, and you all nearly died in the process! And once inside, you need the voice command of Vera Keyes, AND know the pass phrase to get into the vault… and THEN, if you press the wrong button in the vault?

The door slams shut, the elevator locks and you’re trapped forever anyway! And all this hinges on someone else knowing of the stuff the Sierra Madre has, and having the know-how to use them!

And that list is very, VERY short! By which I mean, it consists of literally two people! One is Elijah, and the other is the Courier! Elijah is dead or trapped forever, and the Courier sure as shit doesn’t need the Sierra Madre when he has access to the Big MT!

Hell, they changed the radio broadcast, so it’s no longer sending out an invitation! So why the hell would Christine ever think she needs to stick around? Elijah ruined her life. And now he’s gone, so maybe this is her chance to… you know, BEGIN AGAIN!?

And with that, we’ll conclude our look at Fallout: New Vegas, but I urge you to not misunderstand me when it comes to this game. I know I may seem harsh, especially there at the end, but I assure you, it comes from a place of love. I am passionate about this game, and like I said, I think it’s good enough to survive my nitpicks, fervent as they may be.

There is a reason, after all, that I made comparisons to this game throughout The Skyrim Chronicles. It’s because it is, to my mind, the gold standard by which I judge all other RPG’s. I’ve loved it for over a decade, and I suspect that’s never going to change.

Mafia: Definitive Edition

Some of the more astute among you might notice something a bit odd about today’s article. Or rather, something that is oddly absent from it. And you’d be right.

There is no Dave in attendance today. In fact, in a bit of a break from my usual schedule, there are no fan theories at all this week.

The reason for this is because we are swiftly approaching June 6’th. In other words, it is the seventh anniversary of the first article I ever wrote for this blog, way way back in 2014.

And I thought I’d mark the occasion by doing something special. Nothing as grand as my look back on the Best Disney Villains (as well as the worst), but instead, it’ll be something of a revisit to those early days, and in particular one of my very earliest articles, when I wrote about Mafia II.

Back then, I mentioned and drew comparisons between that game and its predecessor, Mafia: City of Lost Heaven, and some issues I had with its sequel.

So you can imagine my excitement when I found out they were making an HD remake of that game, called Mafia: Definitive Edition.

And it’s that game I’d like to talk about today.

Now, it’s not just a reskin of the original game. It’s been remade from the ground up, with new voice actors and a few tweaks to the story.

One of the most notable, to me, is how much they changed the main character, Tommy Angelo.

In the original game, he was very straightforward and earnest, and though he admittedly was also a member of organized crime, and during his career killed, stole and carried out full on assassinations, he was still shown as a man who sometimes wrestled with the morality of his work.

By comparison, in the remake, he is decidedly more ruthless, eager to enact revenge and prone to violent outbursts.

In a pivotal moment in the game, Tommy is tasked with killing a prostitute at a brothel. In the original, when he arrives, he discovers the woman is someone he knows from the bar, and he decides against killing her, giving her some money and telling her to leave town.

In the remake, he has to be prompted by Sam not to kill the woman, and is given money to pass unto her to help her disappear. But even then, in the situation where he goes in with the intention of helping her, his method is to barge in, gun drawn, backing Michelle into a corner and putting the gun to her head, threatening her, before giving her the money.

It’s an approach that’s slightly less smooth around the edges, is what I’m saying.

I should perhaps mention that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just… different. But the result is that if you go into this game, expecting Tommy to behave in a certain way, it can be a bit jarring at times.

Then again, it does make sense, since you’re not likely to last long in the world of organized crime unless you had that ruthless streak.

Some differences between the two games I’m a bit more frustrated at have to do with the changes made to the individual missions. Because with a few, things are changed to the point where situations balloon into massive firefights.

For example, one mission has you infiltrate a birthday celebration for a politician, held on a boat. The plan is for you to disguise yourself as a sailor, retrieve a hidden pistol, and kill the politician. That part goes without much of a hitch. But as soon as you kill the politician, you then have to run a gauntlet of enemies, shooting at you, while you work your way through the ship to where you can be retrieved.

This is in contrast to the original, where you just had to run as fast as you could to the pickup point. Because you’re just a lone gunman, getting lost in a crowd of people, not a one man army leaving a trail of dead in your wake. 

Another mission has you assassinate a politician from the top of a tower, using a sniper rifle, and once you do that, you’re beset by every policeman in the city, sending an unending wave of people trying to kill you, making your escape very difficult, whereas in the original , you just had to leave the building. Because again, a lone gunman being surrounded by hundreds of policemen, and somehow still breaking through their blockade?

It doesn’t quite work, especially since you have to wonder how they managed to mobilize so many, so quickly! You fired one shot, from a pretty big distance, and yet they pinpoint your exact position within moments, and the building is suddenly crawling with police! If there was some timer or something, if you stayed too long, the police would arrive, that’d be one thing, but this is instantaneous! 

And of course, there’s the mission where you infiltrate a mansion to steal some files belonging to the prosecutor. You sneak in, very carefully, making sure you don’t raise suspicion, bringing a safe cracking expert with you to open the safe… and as soon as you get the safe open, an alarm goes off and you have to shoot your way out.

Just… why!? In the original, you have to sneak out of the building, trying to avoid the prosecutor who just got home. And if you got into a firefight, it means you messed up.

And the problem, at least for me, is that taking Tommy Angelo, who is just this guy, who got into organized crime by chance, and making him this unstoppable killing machine… it takes something away from what I felt was one of the strongest points of the original game.

I mean, how notorious wouldn’t Tommy Angelo be, given the piles of bodies he’s left in his wake?

Another problem I have, and I realize this might make me seem like a bit of an asshole for complaining about, but it has to do with changes made between this game and Mafia II.

Because many of my quibbles with Mafia II were seemingly addressed in this game… but taken to the other extreme.

You can no longer carry an arsenal of weapons… but instead, you can only carry one pistol at the time, and have to discard the old one when you pick up a new one. Again, in the original, you could pick up smaller handguns, but you could only keep one big gun with you.

But what that meant was, that you could carry a shotgun in your coat, and a tommy gun in your arms, and switch between them, but you had to drop one if you wanted to be unarmed. Meanwhile, you could carry several handguns in your inventory, and switch between them at your leisure. 

I just don’t get why they couldn’t use that system here, of all places.

Another thing they did rectify was bringing back Free Ride for this game, or rather, they combined Free Ride and Free Ride Extreme. 

However, there are a few stark differences between the two. For example, they removed the ability to make money from the original. You could make money from killing gangsters walking around town, as a cab driver or from speeding.

And you had the ability to buy weapons to use, by going to Yellow Pete’s Gunstore, visit Luca Bertone and pay to repair your car or the hospital to heal yourself.

All of these have been removed, which is a bit of a shame. In Mafia II, you could use your money to buy suits, which would also have been a fun addition here, rather than just the suits you unlock.

Again, it might be a bit of a dick move to complain about this stuff, given how frankly harsh I was when I talked about Mafia II all those years ago.

So let me just make it clear that I don’t dislike this game. It’s not just a watered down GTA clone, like I said Mafia II was. It’s an honest attempt to give the original game of the franchise a bit of a polish. And despite my nitpicks and ranting, it does it pretty well.

And one thing this game made a lot better was the ending, when we see an elderly Tommy Angelo being visited by Mafia II’s protagonist Vito Scaletta and his friend Joe Barbaro.

In the original, they approach him and address him as “Mr. Angelo”, with Tommy reacting with surprise, and his last expression is shock at being shot to death by a sawn off shotgun.

Here, as soon as they address him by name, a name he hasn’t heard since he entered witness protection, he pauses, before calmly stopping watering his lawn and turning around to face them and answering in the affirmative. No shock, no surprise, just calm resignation.

And where the original had Tommy’s dead body lying alone on his lawn, the Definitive Edition has his family run up to him, and him reassuring them that his death means they’ll be safe, and he dies surrounded by his loved ones.

It makes his death a bit less cruel and mean spirited, and is a more bittersweet note to end on, since while he was murdered, he died at peace.

So yes, I do like this game more than I liked Mafia II, though I will concede that I was very harsh towards it. And hopefully, this article might remain as a testament to how much I’ve grown over the years, how I’ve become better at writing and more discerning on where to direct my vitriol and rage.

And with this little celebration, I believe I’ve earned a bit of a vacation. With that in mind, this blog is going on a bit of a hiatus for a few weeks, while I rest and recharge. But don’t worry, I will be back. I’ve no plans of ending this blog any time soon, and I’ve plenty of stuff I’d like to talk about.

So until then, thanks for reading for these last 7 years, and I hope you’ll keep reading for all the years to come.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Today, I thought I’d write a bit about a franchise I haven’t covered before on this blog: Metal Gear.

It may seem a strange thing to write about, but the truth is that this is a franchise that has had a very important impact on my life. I have mentioned before that I have a fascination with old west weapons. For example, I brought it up when I listed my Top 5 sci-fi handguns, and when I talked about Red Dead Redemption 2. In fact, that fascination was a major reason why I bought Fallout: New Vegas, which has since become one of my all time favourite games, and as anyone who has read my opinions on Skyrim can confirm, is the gold standard by which I tend to judge other RPG games.

But the point I want to make is that all of that stems from one occasion, many many years ago, when I played Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, and encountered the character Revolver Ocelot, who famously uses a Colt Single Action Army revolver as his weapon of choice.

Now, as for the rest of the franchise, it strangely enough never interested me. The only exception is the game I’d like to talk about today, namely Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

I only recently got a chance to play this game, and I will admit I did really enjoy it. But the reason I’m writing about it now has to do with a few things that really confused me in this otherwise really enjoyable game.

Of course, some of you might be rolling your eyes, and I can’t really blame you, if I’m honest. This is, unquestionably, a ridiculous franchise. It is shock full of things that are silly or over the top or nonsensical.

And while this is true… I will still bring them up. Because this is my blog and I can talk about what I like. And some of these issues, I feel it’s worth talking about.

The first thing I’d like to talk about actually has to do with Revolver Ocelot. Or rather, Major Ocelot, as he’s known in this game.

See, I don’t really understand why he’s called Ocelot here. I mean, I understand in a meta-sense why he’d be called that, as a way to inform us about who he is. But in universe… why wouldn’t they just call him Major Adamska, since that is his name? They mention he is the head of the Ocelot Unit, but why would that make a difference?

It’s not like The Boss is also known as “Major Cobra” because she is the leader of the Cobra Unit.

And in fact, it makes you wonder why the Ocelot Unit is called that to begin with! Why would a Russian special ops unit be named, of all things, after a wild cat slightly larger than a house cat and, on top of that, one that isn’t native to Russia, or even Asia in general? Ocelots are native to the Americas, not Asia.

I could understand them being called something like the Tiger unit, since siberian tigers are a thing. In fact, that’d be kind of interesting. Suppose, if he was just “Major Adam”, leader of the Tiger Unit, but Snake nicknamed him “Ocelot”, because he’s not ferocious enough to be a tiger. And then, he took on the nickname and made it his own.

After all, we already see how much of an impact meeting Snake has on him, since it turns out it was Snake that inspired him to start using a revolver.

But that only leads to another head scratching moment for me. In his first appearance, we are shown he uses a Makarov semi-automatic pistol. But from what we are told, he uses it as if he was using a revolver. Not only does he do the gun spinning thing more associated with western revolvers, but Snake remarks that Ocelot also bends his elbow to absorb the recoil of the pistol, which leads to his pistol jamming on him at a critical moment.

Except… doesn’t that suggest he is more accustomed to using a revolver? From what we’re told, he’s never used a revolver before meeting Snake. But if he’s a trained military officer, and he would HAVE to have had training given his great skill as a marksman, he would have been trained how to use a semi-automatic pistol. So did they just train him wrong on purpose?!

It’s especially weird, since he already seems enamoured with the whole western thing, not just because of the gun spinning, but also when he first meets Snake, he walks around with spurs on his boots despite very definitely NOT being any form of cavalry.

And then, when he’s told he’d be better off using a revolver, he gets his hands on a Colt Single Action Army.

This, may I remind you, is just a week after his first meeting with Snake. And he managed to get his hands on not just any revolver, but a very heavily engraved one. Even today, with a fairly open market, that would be a very expensive piece of weaponry, and very difficult to come by. And this is during the Cold War!

And then, he gets himself three more in less than a day! And as we are told, these are very early, black powder models, meaning they’d be even MORE difficult to get hold of in 1960’s Russia, as well as just plain less practical than later models of the gun. But practicality notwithstanding, where the hell is he getting his hands on these incredibly rare revolvers, in the middle of nowhere?

It’s weird enough that some old armory just happened to have a super special customized Colt 1911 for Snake to use, but did they also have old west revolvers just lying around in a military stockpile?

Or did Ocelot actually go to Colonel Volgin and ask him for some new guns?

And even without that, it just seems so strange that it would take him this long to start using a revolver, given everything we see about him, as well as just how adept he is with it! Again, it’s been only a few hours, and he is skilled enough with revolvers to be able to not just spin two of them, but also carrying out very complicated twirls and spins and techniques completely flawlessly.

Is it just that he’s the son of the Boss, and gun control is just genetic?

Speaking of the the Boss, that brings me to the next thing that kind of bugs me about this game, and it has to do with The Cobra Unit.

You would think, with a name like The Cobra Unit, that the different members would… you know, be named after cobras.

But instead, we’re told, they are named after the emotions they carry into battle. This would, of course, be confusing enough on its own, but then we actually find out the names of the different members. It’s all well and good with The Fear, the Fury, the Sorrow and the Joy… but then you get The End and the Pain, and that’s where it all falls apart for me.

The End is… well, I would say that at best, that would suggest an absence of emotions, but I suppose “The Indifference” hasn’t got the right ring to it…

But my real problem is with The Pain. Because pain isn’t an emotion! Pain is a stimuli, something that usually leads to an emotional response. You hurt someone, they might display anger or sorrow or fear (or joy, if they’re a masochist), but pain in and of itself is not an emotion.

And then, you start to look at the other members, and they don’t make a ton of sense either.

The Fear and the Sorrow kinda work, I will admit. The former stalks you while invisible, firing darts at you. In real life, that would be terrifying. And the Sorrow pins you against all the people you have killed over the course of the game and all the pain you have caused. But the Fury doesn’t add up for me.

The Pain wants to inflict pain, sending swarms of hornets on you, and like I said, the Fear seeks to instil fear in his victims. But with the Fury, on the other hand, it seems he’s more driven by fury, which just doesn’t fit with the others.

And even then, he doesn’t actually come across as angry. If anything, he seems almost gleeful, to the point where he laughs madly while fighting you. You would think he would be howling in rage, not laughter.

Not that I know how he would be able to inspire anger, exactly. Hit and run tactics, maybe?

Then, there’s the End, who starts off his boss fight saying he will deliver Snake to his Final End, and we’re told that he embodies oblivion. As for how that is meant to connect to emotions, your guess is as good as mine. But when he fights you, he uses tranquillizer darts, meaning that he can’t kill you! If it was poison rather than sedatives, that’d make sense. But having a boss fight that, by definition, you can’t lose… that makes no sense!

And then, of course, there’s the Joy, who never shows any happiness whatsoever. Again, you would think, during the final battle with her, that she’d be giddy with laughter, or growing more and more excited as the battle goes on.

But no. She remains calm and collected throughout! And yes, I understand, she’s a professional soldier, apparently one of the best in history. But it just begs the question of… why the whole deal with the emotions?

To me, the whole concept just feels poorly executed. What’s the point in having them embody emotions, if you’re not going to commit to the idea?

They could have been named after practically anything, and it’d make just as much sense! If they had just been named after animals, that’d work much better. Just off the top of my head, imagine if instead of Pain, Fear, End, Fury, Sorrow and Joy, you get the Wasp, the Spider, The Chamelon, The Salamander, The Crow and, for the Boss, perhaps Fox, with the FOX unit having been named after her?

Obviously, it’s far too late to change now, but my point is… what’s the point in going with a half-assed idea that doesn’t quite work, rather than take the extra 15 minutes to come up with another idea that works better?

But as annoying as I find this, it is NOTHING compared to my final issue with this game. And this is an issue that isn’t head-tilting, so much as it is actively infuriating.

See, there are a few special items for you to unlock in the game, given as rewards for fulfilling certain conditions. You can, for example, unlock the Patriot, a special machine gun used by The Boss, which has unlimited ammunition. You can unlock a Colt Single Action Army revolver as one of your starting weapons, or a special tranquillizer gun that is noiseless without the need of a silencer.

(We’ll just ignore the fact that silencers don’t actually wear out as they’re being used, making this pistol a bit meaningless anyway).

However, it is one of these rewards in particular that I want to talk about. But first, let me explain the conditions you must meet, in order to earn it.

You must either play through the entire game without raising an alarm. Needless to say, it’s not easy. The second method is to achieve the special ranking “Kerotan”, which requires you to find and shoot 64 frog statues hidden all over the game, including a few in areas which you cannot return to, or during several segments towards the end, where you’re riding on a motorcycle, meaning you can’t stop and aim.

In short, it’s a nightmare. So why go through all that, you may wonder?

The reason is that if you do, you unlock Stealth Camouflage. Unlike the other camouflage in the game, which takes the form of uniforms you can wear, this is an equippable item which renders you invisible when used. Used alongside another uniform that eliminates your footsteps, it renders you impossible to see or hear.

It’s all well and good apart from one teeny-tiny microscopic actually incredibly glaring flaw with it.

It doesn’t fucking work on bosses!

Now, you might be wondering “Yeah, so what?”

Well, call me a bluff old naïve optimist, but I would have thought the entire fucking reason you’d want something like this is specifically so you can use it during boss fights!

Let’s not kid ourselves here. You use stuff like this to make the game facile! After all the hardship you have gone through, you have now unlocked God Mode!

If I may reference another videogame, let’s look at Majoras Mask. In that game, if you manage to unlock every single mask in the game (which ain’t easy), you can play some games with the kids on the Moon (this all makes sense in context… kinda), but you have to give them the masks. After giving away all the masks, except for the three transformation masks, you unlock the Fierce Deity Mask.

This mask is only usable during boss fights… but wearing it makes you an unstoppable whirlwind of death! You lock onto the boss, and swing your sword, and you fire a magical bolt which cannot be blocked. It makes the final battle, which is otherwise a complete nightmare of an ordeal, into a one-sided massacre where you destroy Majoras Mask, one of the most evil and powerful creatures in the entire franchise, in about 35 seconds.

You have an insurmountable advantage, making you unbeatable unless you actively TRY to lose… but it’s an advantage you have earned! You have gone through the effort of collecting them, which means scouring the entire game for who to help with what in order to earn them. Collecting fairies, hunting gold spiders, finding invisible people out in the wilderness, doing every last thing there is to be done in the game, over god knows how many hours, and you are rewarded with the ultimate weapon.

Now, in MGS3, you scour every inch of every area of the entire game, looking for these frogs that are hidden in lakes, on hills, in trees, behind logs, on roof tops. You find them, and you shoot them all and finally, FINALLY earn that illustrious reward… and then you find out bosses see straight through it?!

What, and I cannot stress this enough, the absolute fuck!? How?! I want… no, I fucking DEMAND an explanation! How can they see through it? How can they see something which lights bends around and is, by definition, invisible?!

You go through all this bullshit, for the express purpose of gaining the ability to go up against one of the bosses and just vanishing in front of their eyes, and following them around and taking potshots at them. That’s what stuff like this is for, and it CAN’T FUCKING DO IT!?

That is not just annoying. That is top level, grade A, pure fucking bullshit! It’s a middle finger to your hard work!

If I had unlocked it through a cheat code or something, that’d be one thing. That, I could actually understand. But I didn’t! I did what I was supposed to do, so don’t give me stealth camo that doesn’t work!

And as a final insult, if you DO use it, they have the fucking brass balls to add a little note on your final score, because you “used a special item”. Yes, I used the special item THAT I EARNED, because I wanted to play on super easy mode, which I worked hard to attain, and not only did you not let me, but now you’re judging me for it?!

Fuck you, game, FUCK YOU A LOT!

If you’ve ever played this game, you will know that I let a lot of stuff slide while writing this. I’m not going to question why a man can somehow generate electricity with his body or why they never bother to explain it. I’m not going to ask how the flying hell a machine gun is meant to have unlimited ammo, just because it has a magazine shaped like an infinity symbol. I’m not going to argue the hows or whys around a Russian major being the spitting image of Raiden, despite having absolutely no connection to him whatsoever!

But here is where I draw a line! This is too much for me to ignore. And the thing is, this isn’t a bad game! Far from it! It’s a really solid game, and I can see why a lot of people praise it. Like I said, I like the game fine, despite the strangeness of it. But stuff like this that pisses me off. Shit like this is how you make people not want to play anymore, because the final reward just isn’t worth it!

It’s like it WANTS to be a parody, but then it tries to get serious. It wants to give you silly stuff, but then it holds it back. And to me, that doesn’t make the game “the best of both worlds“. It just makes it feel confused.

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