: Here's post number 2/3 in the Rubicon Volunteers' series today. This is the
: meatiest level of the 3, and a lot of fun to play.
One of my favourite levels of the scenario.
: All right – a real mission! And lots of action! This is what Marathon’s
: all about! The Chimera’s AI is failing and we must keep the Pfhor from
: plundering it's core. In addition, Haller is based on “wetware
: technology”, combining biochemical and electrical components. We must
: retrieve Haller’s wetware chip before the Pfhor can plunder him. And the
: Pfhor are everywhere .
: Interestingly, we have a third incidence of Durandal misleading us. First,
: he neglected to mention an obvious shortcut in Honk if you’re an
: Underpaid Cyborg ,
he did???
:and then he told us to cross a bridge that we didn’t
: need to cross in Like Flies on a Corpse .
What the??
: Now he tells us to be sure to
: destroy any wiring we come across. Although this will help to seal off one
: of the major breaches through which the Pfhor are entering the area, it
: also deprives the player of the fusion rifle. Obviously, one can grab the
: rifle (no grenade jumping needed - just some fancy hopping) and then
: seal off the breach, but why didn't Durandal tell us about this? Yes, the
: information he has is incomplete, but there seems to be a pattern emerging
: here. Bottom line – don’t trust everything Durandal tells you!
: This is a very complex level with two completely separate parts and no
: going back from the second to the first (unless, of course, you picked up
: that SPNKR).
Ahhh!!! I obviously haven't played this game long enough.
:The first part involves finding and inserting 3 access chips
: so that you can open access to the second. As Durandal tells you, making
: use of the air vents is essential. To get to them, at one point you need
: to do some pretty fancy crate hopping. Although some people find this
: difficult, it’s nothing out of the ordinary compared to other Marathon
: tricks. One big hint – if you can see some ammo, there is a way to
: retrieve it. Keep looking and you'll find it.
Yes, shamefully I had to use the spoiler guide to find out about the crate hopping :( Very tricky.
: The terminals on this level fill in some additional holes in our knowledge
: of two things – teleportation, and rampancy. I won’t bore you with the
: stuff on teleportation, which basically tells us that the phenomenon is
: poorly understood. Nice to know this now that we’ve been teleporting all
: over the galaxy. The information on rampancy, however, is one of the more
: controversial aspects of Rubicon. The team really goes out on a limb here
: by discussing background, mechanisms and inevitability. A lot of people
: think that the Rubicon team should have left well enough alone. I think
: that what they’ve presented is not only plausible, but it ties together
: some aspects of the Marathon story very nicely. Their coverage of Bernhard
: Strauss is another story, but we’ll get to that later.
I think the Rubicon team can do whatever they want. It's their scenario, let them tell their own story. It's a damn good one!
: The Calix Temporum Syndrome (CTS) was discovered in late 2104 by notable
: artificial intelligence researcher, Arnold C. Maxmin (Couldn't they have
: come up with a more original name?) . . . [CTS] causes the affected AI to
: constantly round up in memory-usage calculations, thus upwardly spiraling
: the amount of free space allocated for the AIs usage . . . Due to the
: subtle nature of CTS, it is very difficult to detect until the AI has
: expanded its memory base to the point at which it controls most upper tier
: system functions.
: Sadly, Haller has begun to remap small sections of his core routines with
: more liberal coding. I fear that he may soon have to be purged from this
: vessel and a new AI installed in his place. Such a shame. He showed grand
: potential as one of the first wetware AIs..
:
:
: So Haller is showing signs of rampancy, which will be clearly confirmed in
: a terminal in the second part of the level. Wouldn’t Durandal be
: interested? Once we do get to the second part of the level, we once
: again have to dodge innumerable bad guys, crawl through air vents and
: solve a switch puzzle to gain access to Haller’s chip. Once we do,
: Durandal gives us a lesson in FTL technology:
:
: Faster-than-light engine technology utilizes a rare compound as engine
: coolant, mercuric enexomer, a substance that is a superfluid at nearly all
: temperatures . . . It takes a monstrous amount of mercuric enexomer to
: cool the engine of a decent-sized ship. How is the relevant, you ask?
: Simple. About seven hundred thousand gallons of superfluid coolant is
: currently spilling out of Chimera's engine structure and into the decks
: below it. Namely, the decks where all evacuation pods are held.
Umm, if you don't pick up the chip, but you walk around it anr read the terminal you get a message from Haller saying something along the lines of:
'You don't seem to have much control over your own destiny.'
I'll check in the game and post back later. I thought everyone knew about this?
: Well, at least now we have an idea about the chemicals that were spilling
: out in Honk if You’re an Underpaid Cyborg . So we're off to take a little
: swim in I’d Rather be a Lutfisk, but wait. Go back to where you first
: enter Haller’s core and look out a window, where you can see a terminal
: you visited once before (the one with the boring info on teleportation).
: Tab on it and you’ll be greeted with:
:
: DTB is for pansies the player should not be here. escape will make me
: god . . . we demo space kill game coincidence? i think not.
:
: This is the second of 3 known bugs in Rubicon. The first, which allowed you
: to leave Honk if You’re an Underpaid Cyborg without inserting the second
: chip, makes it impossible to leave Five Finger discount . So if you’re
: playing along right now and you fell prey to this bug, you’re screwed.
: Have a nice day.
:)
