Well, folks, this will probably be my last post in the Volunteers series for a few days - I need to get back to work! This is my 5th post over the weekend, so please start commenting on them. These levels cover some interesting territory and have nice tie-ins to the Marathon series. And the more you post, the more inclined I am to continue!
It is time to follow the dark side. You must free Tycho from the hardware bonds that keep him shackled while the S’pht work on deactivating the software bonds. This is a really simple level, but there’s still plenty of action to keep you busy, and a puzzle to solve to get access to the circuits you must destroy. According to the Spoiler Guide, Chris Wondra’s level Corpses Needed was originally planned for this spot in the plot, but significant bugs made it unusable. Hence we have this wonderful swampland to explore. I do hope that the Rubicon Team will one day find a way to make Corpses Needed work, so that we can all enjoy it.
The Okefenokee Tourist Trail consists of a raised plank trail threading its way through a swamp surrounding the circuits you must destroy. You need to find some switches, a couple of which are up an elevator, that will deactivate the force fields that protect some of the switches that need to be flipped to access the circuits. If I’m not mistaken, this is the first use of force fields in Rubicon. It still amazes me that Bungie didn’t think of using force fields in the Marathon Trilogy – they’re such a staple of 3rd party scenarios. What’s even more amazing is that 3rd party map makers were able to conceive of multiple ways to model force fields using a game engine that doesn’t really support them. More power to Marathon fandom!
Along the way, you’ll read that the Pfhor are once again set on destroying that rogue conditioned unit. After 50 years, you’d think that they would have given up on you! There is obviously no such thing as a permanently conditioned unit. In any case, once you manage to deactivate the force fields, expose all three circuits and destroy them, you’ll be presented with an interesting choice. Log onto one terminal, and you’ll be taken to Frog Blasting. Log onto the other, and it’s off to Blasted Frogs. The two levels are very similar and will be discussed together in the next Volunteers’ installment, but they are unnervingly different. From a development standpoint, the Rubicon Team couldn’t decide on which was better, so they chose to include both. From a Marathon Universe standpoint, these twin levels tend to support the notion of multiple paths. Here is a place where two universes come together that are nearly identical, but with their differences . . .
