Your Name:
	Your E-Mail Address:
	Subject:
	Message: : : Last time on Tour of Duty, we explored an abandoned space station orbiting : L'Howon, listened to a desperate Durandal's musings of his own mortality, : and got teleported out via an omninous terminal. : We get a new chapter screen: : Despair... what does that remind me of? It's synonymous to a certain word : that begins with an M... it's right on the tip of my tongue, but it sounds : like melons or melody. Isn't that a step or a phase of something? Meh, it : probably has no underlying meaning to it. Just forget. Forget. Forget. : Since infinity has no soundtrack, I'm playing this map to the New Pacific : remake by Chibi Usa. Listen along to it with this writeup if you'd like. : We find ourselves at the bottom of a lift, our weapons gone, making us wish : we used that shotgon back on Ne Cede Malis if we didn't. If we're not : careful, we probably will, because this starting area is tricky. At the : top of the lift are many openings and we'll get fried by a patrolling : enforcer if we don't take the southern exit and grab the magnums on the : pedestal. There's a wandering pfhor here, too. If we leave him be, we'll : soon realize that he's not attacking us. Curiouser. : By now we realize we're in a Pfhor ship with a texture set that doesn't want : to make us want to claw our eyes out. Say hello to Infinity's Pfhor : textures. : : They are M2's pfhor textures with a change of color scheme that is much more : subdued. After Ne Cede Malis and now this, we are grateful for the art : direction Infinity has taken so far. : If we climb the pedestals to the southern end of the room, we'll find a : button that... is inactive. Okay. We climb up the pedestals and enter one : of the two doors at the northern side of the room, revealing they both : access the same room. The first thing we'll notice is a Pattern buffer at : the center of the wall. The second thing we notice is the 2x charger on : the pillar behind it, so we fill up our shield before saving our pattern. : The third thing we notice in this room is a pfhor terminal: : : : Tycho? But he's dead, right? Okay, maybe it's one of those clones the last : end screen talked about. So, we're aboard a pfhor ship after being kept in : stasis for a long time. Tycho here talks about the humans transition into : conditioned units... which gives us a hint that we're not when we think we : are because that already happened years ago. That line "if you're a : little lightheaded," nails how the first time player is feeling at : this point. : On a thread on the pfhorums I made some time ago about the misconceptions : players have when they first play marathon a few people thought the : terminal image meant we have become a pfhor on this level. That idea : isn't too far out of the realm of reality as we find out how surreal this : scenario can get. : I always found the revelation that pfhors have a second brain in their... : uh... head flap really trippy. At least, I assumed it was a second brain, : but I think that might be the pfhor captain with his "control : glands" hooked up to the ship. I used to think this was an average : pfhor fighter in it's inactive state, with a whole wall lined with these : holes for them to plug into. Your theories are as good as mine. : Now we know why that pfhor wasn't attacking us, but the enforcer did. Our : mission is to kill all enforcers with the help of some pfhor. Gotcha, : Tycho. We go back to that inactive button from earlier to find that it is : suddenly active. Looks like Tycho didn't want us to leave without briefing : us first. : The map, courtesy of PS: : This is going to be a confusing map to cover. We start out by taking the : doorway in the hall to the left, go through some cramped stairs and jump : across a ledge into a narrow opening to find some hunters brawling out : with the enforcers. We hang back and watch the skirmish until the : enforcers dispatch our (?friends)(?allies)(?slavers) and kill them off : with our pistols. Normally I would always use something other than the : alien weapon to take on enforcers so they'll drop more alien weapons, but : given the nature of this level, it might be best to use their guns against : them if they are our only foes. : We go south to find some slime pool rooms connected by a large hallway. Down : at the southernmost part of the map we'll see a narrow corridor with some : stairs and enforcers at the end. As we enter, the doors close and we find : ourselves stuck inside. The hall fills with slime and we have to swim up : to an opening at the top with a 1x charger. On the other side is large, : somewhat octagonal rooms with a lone enforcer and a terminal. : : : So this is the message to the pfhor Tycho mentioned. Heh. Notice that he told : the Willful rank enforcers not to surrender under the penalty of treason. : He likes the yellow bloodshed =) The captain's control "glands" : are evidently in his fluids... so... he has special blood? I guess that : yellow pfhor blood isn't all natural. : There's only one way out, and that's back to the big hallway. We're at the : top, and the door here is jammed shut. We jump down and explore a bit. The : only way out leads us to a wandering enforcer and up to the cramped stairs : we were when we got started in this section. : We head to the western of the map. There's a platform with some enforcers : fending off hunters and fighters. After helping them out a bit, I run out : of alien gun ammo and switch to the TOZT I got from... somewhere. I think : it was near the second Tycho terminal. I forgot to mention it. Anyway, : this TOZT is clearly begging us to use it right now. There's some stairs : to get us up on the platform so... you know what they say: All TOZT-7 : Napalm Units toast enforcers! : We head up the stairs down south and find ourselves in a room with a long : bridge over a slime pool. When this room is cleared, the door we find at : the end is jammed, so we go back and hang a left and... : : Stupid pfhor... These guys are as bad as BOBs. We punch one so they'll move : out of the way, and the bugger hits us back! Even the pistol bobs wouldn't : shoot us if we gave them one little punch to nudge them out of our way. : Maybe the rest of you don't notice this stuff because that's the way I : play, while other cyborgs have less patience and just kill everything in : sight without discrimination. These pfhor are jerkwads. : You could have simply gotten out of our way, but you decided to chase us, so : it's off to the big TOzT-7 pfhor hell for you. Anyway, there was nothing : to gain from going there. It was just a roundabout circle back to the way : we came. : We head up to the northeast corner of the map we left unexplored. An enforcer : jumps us at the northern door we haven't entered in the slime bridge room. : Inside we find some burnt fighters and dead hunters. I guess we know who : to thank for taking care of them. To the right are a pair of buttons. : Pushing one does something we'll get back to later, but one opens up an : elevator where we came from. Down below is a very dark, creepy, and : claustrophobic area that reminds me of Marathon: Red. : After killing some enforcers and finding another elevator, we head up to a : big room with a new terminal and a skirmish between hunters and enforcers. : Ignoring the terminal, we find a window with some nice scenery: : and a pattern buffer! Okay, now lets look at that terminal: : : Under the false pretense that you are ignorant of everything in Marathon : Infinity: Yes, he said L'Howon command. No, wait, he said Lh'owon Command. : I guess I was spelling it wrong all these years. No, the sun has not been : set into early nova by trih xeem (yet). We've entered a crazy alternate : universe where Durandal left for LH'owo... Lh'owon without us and we got : snatched up in the 2nd pfhor attack. It's interesting to see Tycho's side : of the story here. We now know he's been following Durandal for eleven : years, which is dated on the timeline at year 2800. We also know that, : with Tycho on board, they have no need for the S'pht compilers they've : been so dependent on. I'm not sure who this R'chzne is, but it seems Tycho : has motivations to stop him since he's jamming his signals and sending us : to slay his troopers. : *checks through notes* : Oh, R'chzne is the pfhor captain. He escaped planetside before we could reach : him. Tycho really wants those control glands. Also, he can detect signals : from Thoth even though he should be dormant. Has Durandal begun to : reactivate him? : Tycho can't help but wax poetic about his ultimate goal: DURANDAL MUST : DIE! Tycho wants to get revenge on Durandal for the deaths of the humans at : Tau Ceti at the hands of the pfhor by using the pfhor that captured him to : kill Durandal and his humans. Tycho is a little bit insane, isn't he? : That Durandal's true self-awareness was a fluke is made clear by Tycho's : obvious insanity, *even* though the S'pht attempted to duplicate the : progression of Durandal's rampancy exactly. : Quite. But this isn't about revenge or justice anymore. It's a race to be the : first AI to escape the closure of the universe, and there can only be one : winner. : I suspected that there was a failure message if we hadn't killed all those : enforcers, but according to the story page, we get the same message no : matter how much we've done before (I think). Instead of teleporting out, : we head back to the 2x charger at the beginning for a recharger, and if we : read the first terminal again, we notice it's changed: : I guess I was right about finding the TOZT-7 in that room that's circled. But : why does he show us an image of an (?infravision)(?Extravision) and a : conditioned grenade cyborg? Were we meant to find an infravision there, : too? Anyway, heading back to the exit, you must have noticed the two : pillars rising in the elevator, right? Well, I'm not sure if I've ever : done this (my memory is foggy), but according to the spoiler guide, if we : stand on one of these pillars before it rises, it will take us to a secret : alcove full of ammo. : Remember that mystery button I glossed over earlier? It opens a door in this : alcove to a secret terminal, but alas, the door closes too fast for us to : access it in time. Even though we keep referring to ourselves using plural : pronouns, we are alone and cannot reach it without another cyborg to open : the door for us. : Lucky for us, Martin has joined me to vid the map on co-op and open the : terminal! This is what it says: : Martin and I are teleported off to what is presumably a training area of the : ship, which has a striking resemblance to a certain netmap from M1...
	If you'd like to include a link to another page with your message, please provide both the URL address and the title of the page:
	Optional Link URL:
	Optional Link Title:
	If necessary, enter your password below:
	Password: