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	Message: : : Last time on Tour of Duty, we stopped the humans from escaping via the : volcano, like the right bastards and traitors we are, or have been, or : have dreamt of being, only we’re not quite sure.... We switched switches, : ran through an awfully long corridor, flooded the basement with lava, and : found our way to some fairly interesting secrets. As a reward, Tfear : wanted to send us to a nice resort to get brainwashed, or something like : it, while Thoth told us he was waiting far beneath to be joined with : Durandal, and presumably needed us. : We are spared any further secret levels, but where we end up now is something : like a compromise – we’re not in either of the places we might have : expected to be; rather this is where the different sides fight over us, : and our Destiny, but we are finally taking a bit of control, and we’re : only going to leave on our own terms, not their comm terms :). : We start looking at a window to a room with a Fighter and a terminal, but we : can’t get in there right now. We’re still in a natural, rocky environment, : and nearby, the way we can go, we find a pattern buffer, and then a drop : off to a river. At least it’s not lava! Not being big on just abandoning : everything to a big dive, we look across and find a likely candidate for : one of those great feats of falling with style ... over to a small area at : the top of some stairs, with what is actually a lift up from the river, in : the corner, so we needn’t have worried about falling in. We may find some : Drones waking up from nearby around the river, and there’s a Fighter up : here, and several more down the stairs, where we find something of a : courtyard, with a terminal in one corner, and a couple of pillars in the : middle. The brown one with a hole through the middle is actually the level : exit; it’s just not ready for us yet. There is a small window in one wall : here that actually grants us a view of the switch to open the exit, and : permits its activation via grenade or similar. Unfortunately, I’m stuck : scratchstarting ... and I realise now I’m really going to have to do : another start from By Committee to tell the full story here, so I’ll see : you in a few hours.... : Right. Let’s continue. We still won’t be hitting that switch, as it would : kind of ruin the writeup, but there are a few other things I wanted to : check out – like that raised passage off to the side. I found I couldn’t : get in there except as a corpse, but there doesn’t seem to be anything : there, anyway. At least I feel like I’m doing my job :). Also in this room : our map starts picking up other bits and pieces we can’t access yet. I : just started playing Halo with the release of the Master Chief Collection, : and man do I miss the overhead map! Here’s the whole picture for this : level. : : And next would be the terminal, which has Pfhor High Command telling all : Pfhor patrol units to drop everything in favour of tracking down and : killing -us- even if it costs them their lives. Apparently they still have : that transport ready to take us to Gr’ndl Prime. So one has to ask again, : where are we and how did we get here!? The terminal shows a screenshot : with distinctly M2 textures, and a segment of the map from much later on, : rotated – why? It reveals a secret, but not a big one – still, : interesting. Then it shows us a full map image, including the locations of : a bunch of other terminals, and actually the level exit as a white circle. : When we finish reading the terminal, it does us an intralevel teleport, : just like we had on slimy things. Again, exactly why is a bit of a : mystery. Who is in control here? I tend to think we are, and this is our : way of giving the Pfhor the run-around, while we work out how to get out : of here, but it’s a bit hard to make sense of properly. I know, that : doesn’t sound like Infinity at all! : : : The teleport finds us on a stepped ledge above the river – over to the west : on the map, for what it’s worth. Some Drones shoot at us from behind, and : further that way we see a couple of Troopers on a platform. First walking : up the stairs, however, we see similar ledges just across the river, a : lower one that is kind of useless, and a higher one that leads up to a : courtyard with a structure in the middle, but it seems to be just slightly : too high for the distance we have to jump – I’m sure I remember going that : way in the past, but have not been able to make it in testing recently. So : that leaves us heading towards the Troopers instead. Up some stairs the : other way, we find a dropoff to their ledge, and to another terminal. This : one is from Thoth, who mentions threads pulling, just like all of the : parties vying for some kind of control over our Destiny, and wills us to : [a]venge the hotspur, which I’m taking to be Durandal, and referring to : what we do on the next level, using the upload of his primal pattern to : merge with Thoth. But why are we here reading all of these disparate : items? Somehow we can only reach that place “far beneath” from here, but : how did we get here and know that? In Volunteers, Mark Levin suggested : that this place was something of a key to Thoth’s mind, something we : didn’t find in M2 – I guess something he would only share with us when he : knew we could follow through on the merger ... cos Durandal was dead at : that point, and stuff. : : Before we leave this area, we can explore a bit more, to the large closed : double doors heading east, and across to a staircase that heads down to : the river, another safeguard against our falling in, and we do generally : seem to be better off avoiding such. And so we teleport again, to a ledge : above the courtyard we looked at from the ledge just earlier! Too many : ledges, not enough time ... well actually plenty of time. There is no : sense of urgency at all here, as compared to when we were working for : Durandal while he was trying to fight against the Battlegroup. : We find ourselves in the company of a Trooper again, and there is another : just through a door, along with another terminal – this is a very short : stop. We may notice the middle pillar in the courtyard opening at least : from one side – I’m not fully clear on how/when that occurs, but Narcogen : had it as happening when one approached from the river side. Anyway, there : are a couple of Troopers inside, kind of, probably dead ones, and not much : else of interest. Maybe this was another special teleporter like our exit : one? Anyway, it’s easier to continue if we don’t go down there at all! : This terminal is a pretty clear-cut teleporter, without preamble, and all : it really does is deal with the fact that this place is just packed with : doors that won’t open – we’re still overlooking that courtyard! : : This time a switch opens a door out onto the open ledge, and carrying on : further takes us to a dropoff. Down below, a Fighter is waiting, as is a : locked door – yay. But that’s not the only way we can go, as more incoming : Fighters make clear. On past another two locked doors, we find another : terminal, but much more interesting, something of a base of operations, : wherein a 2x recharger, oxygen recharger, and switches, lots of them! It’s : hard to keep track of what these all do, and hard to say it better than : Mark did 13 years ago, although I’ll reorder and edit it slightly, so: “On : the south column: – The north switch opens a door next to the point where : you jumped down from the third area; going through this will bring you to : a ledge which overlooks a courtyard full of Troopers and a 1x charger. : – The east switch opens the northern of the two doors you passed on the way : here, leading to another perspective on the Trooper courtyard. : – The west switch opens the southern of the two doors you passed on the way : here, and the south switch opens a door beyond that one, ultimately : leading to a ledge overlooking the first courtyard we came to, with the : level exit. : The south switch on the north column opens the door that separated the two : ledges above the third area; you'll notice that none of these switches is : required to actually complete the level.” : Curiouser. Five switches that just don’t matter, and eating the paths opened : up by which is really just going to slow us down! Falling anywhere on the : level just means we have to repeat teleports; even when we open up : connections, they tend to be at incompatible heights! : The terminal to our next useful point is another straight-up teleporter – : “coil hot!” – but with slightly different cryptic epithet strings. : : It takes us to a ledge over the river, just south of our first courtyard, and : very much the same as the western one at our second area, but the way : towards the middle is open here. It brings us immediately to a pattern : buffer and another terminal – the first one that is not a teleporter! : Instead, it tells of Pfhor experiences with investigating an “alien : artifact", which just happens to be our exit from the level! : : : : : Basically they sent several teams down below, and they all wound up dead as : best they could tell. I especially like the last part, where the author : tries to get out of investigating this stuff further, lest he be sent : through the teleporter :). Anyway, I guess those Pfhor teams loosened the : lid a bit, because there really isn’t much resistance when we get there! : Spoiler! Nearby we find the switch that opens the exit square, if we : didn’t already hit it from the first courtyard, and another switch that : opens the big doors into the same. And so we have come full circle, and if : we read and understood what this last terminal was on about, we could head : straight through to the exit spot. : But that would leave quite a bit unexplored. I certainly remember carrying on : to the rest in my first playthrough back in ’96 or maybe ’97 – the game : wouldn’t run on our LCIII, and was almost bigger than its hard drive : anyway, but my brother had bought a PowerMac 7200 and I got to play while : he was in at university and I had school holidays :). I also remember : understanding very little of the story, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t put : two and two together here, but I did find the exit without -too- much : trouble. Anyway.... Not exactly hidden, in a room just opposite those : switches, is another terminal, which contains a memo that kind of forbids : the Pfhor from talking about the alien artifact any further. For whatever : reason, it also teleports us away again! : : This time we head south across the river to a high ledge. A short walk later, : we find ourselves in the room we looked into right at the start – we kill : that Fighter, if we didn’t do so through the window at the start – and : find a pattern buffer, and yet another terminal! This talks about : preparations for the Pfhor getting the hell out of this place. And I’ve : never understood this until now! This all explains the situation we see : when we return in Bagged Again! They blow the place up, hence all the : blocked off passages and such. Oh, and for now, it teleports us AGAIN. : : Now we’re above the first courtyard, through some narrow openings that we : could see on the map but not reach. Along from here we find another : no-nonsense teleport terminal, but there’s plenty more to explore. Through : a door we enter a horseshoe stairwell, going up around a small water pool : – there’s a lift in there to save us from a fall-in. Through the door at : the top is a very strange pool, that appears to have a completely : impossible current … there is nowhere for the water to go, but go it does! : Nothing else to see here. But back in the stairwell, we remember : something, as if from an old dream, or just an earlier terminal – halfway : down is a secret door! : This takes us through to a narrow bridge over yet more (troubled) waters, and : to a very elegant secret. It’s no use to the scratchstarter, as you need : to have weaponry that can flip switches. Up above, over to the right, is a : corridor with a closed door at the end – and the switch to open it is on : the wrong side for our purposes; we have to shoot it from this bridge in : order to get through it. And it is worthwhile, netting us a Tozt and some : ammo, yum. : For our last trick, we finally jump into the river. The near side here is : connected to the rest by an underpass – they really did think of : everything to prevent suicide traps here. If we head north, we find : various nooks and crannies mainly underwater, and eventually one final : terminal hidden away. And to keep things interesting, it’s from Thoth. It : reads as if it might be the level exit, but it repeats its message with a : screenshot of the actual exit teleporter, which we have seen a few times : now, to be fair. FIGURE IT OUT! : : : And with that, we are teleported back to the start of the level … *ahem* we : find ourselves starting back, sorry couldn’t resist. And now it really is : time to leave – step into the quantum leap accelerator, and vanish.
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