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Tour of Duty - Fatum Iustum Stultorum
Posted By: MartinDate: 12/17/13 10:26 p.m.

TOUR OF DUTY

26 – Fatum Iustum Stultorum

The name. The Story page gives us the translation: The Just Fate of Fools, namely Tycho, who gets destroyed by the not-so-dead-after-all Durandal in this timeline, at around about this point – D brags about it in his I’m alive speech, but I’m getting ahead of myself, we haven’t started yet.

Last time on Tour of Duty we had no idea what we were doing. It required some of the most brilliant minds of our time to postulate, and another to capture it all on the Story page, that we might be enlightened, follow where others have gone before, and put the pieces of the puzzle together for ourselves. God that sounds pretentious, but I for one missed a lot there. We released the Pfhor refuelling ship Hfarl from its docked state and killed its crew with impunity … and a couple of shotguns and a flamethrower, two turntables and a microphone, two switches to hit, and some dumb Pfhor slime.

Now we get a new chapter – there were no simulacrums on either of the last two levels, so it was about time for a switch up. On Rental Trucks we activated the ancient S’pht ansible to somehow contact the Eleventh Clan, and now here they are in all their glory:

They really bring to mind an old joystick I used with our Amstrad CPC in the ’80s – I can’t find a picture that does it justice but the design concept was similar to this. The bottom part had more of a curve like the S’pht’Kr does … yeah that picture just doesn’t do it.

They’re pretty fierce-looking, and glowy, and the shots fired there look pretty nice, yes indeed. And, if we move at the start of the level, we meet them pretty much straight away. On TC though, the best way to survive the start is to quickly jump into the water and wait until the fighting stops … things get pretty deadly otherwise. You can make it to the one active switch and through the door, but why not take a dip?

To explain: we start in a central octagonal room with walkways leading to four closed doors with associated switches, only one of which we can hit to start with. And where there aren’t walkways, there’s water. Once the fighting stops we come to the surface again and take in these surroundings, find that active switch to the northeast, and open the door, revealing a pattern buffer, and beyond, another water with walkway room – ironically now that we are done with the sims chapter, this area is packed with them. Some teleport in accurately onto the walkways while others gradually fill up the pools of water … and they seem to be able to survive indefinitely down there! They also have a habit of spawning behind us as we carry on around the place.

In the second of these rooms we get a small ammo cache, and see an oxygen recharger under the water. In the third, the Pfhor fight off the S’pht’Kr but are no match for us. Then there’s a terminal, and it’s quite the reveal.

With no dramatics, and no explanation, Durandal makes his return. He seems to be well aware of what is going on, and finally we have some easy to follow instructions again. Fight alongside the S’pht’Kr – okay! When I said Durandal brags about destroying Tycho, well that’s not actually quite how it reads; the ship has been destroyed and annihilated itself, but I imagine he was involved … his reaction was certainly representative of his massive ego.

Carrying on, none the wiser, we come to a fourth room of much the same thing. There’s the entrance to a secret here, but we’ll come back to that shortly. Much better to carry on to secure a health recharger first. And that’s just in the next room, beyond the corridor. Troopers waste on some S’pht’Kr and then come after us – just now I was on absolute zero health here, courtesy of a silent but deadly sim having blown up in my face. I survived thanks to my trusty Tozt, and the corner before the door :). When the Troopers are dead, we march forward to find a 2x recharger on the end wall, with some ammo in front of it. With that security established, we head back through the door and find another door to the left. This room is where we end up after visiting the aforementioned secret, so it’s not a bad idea to clear it here and now. Troopers and sims teleport in on a distant ledge across the water, and S’pht’Kr do what they can from above, then we clear up the leftovers. That ledge also has some nice ammo and weapon supplies, so it’s worth a swim, or we can just go to that secret - another one that I visited for the first time a few months ago!

So, back to point A on the map, where we stand on a differently textured floor tile, underwater naturally. This teleports us to point E on the map, where we meet heaps of sims milling about. The two ends of this area teleport us out to that other ledge if we stop, but they also have lots of weapons and ammo, so we should keep moving – although we can of course visit the secret again. The Tozt is really good for dealing with lots of sims, and it stops them blowing up, into the bargain!

Back in the charger room, we find two switches raised above the water. The first activates another switch in the starting area, and the second opens what turns out to be the second door back there, so that’s already 3/4 opened! The new one to the southwest takes us to some narrow underwater passageways with raised areas interspersed. These have sims hanging around on them, so again we toast their deaths. Heading left from the first raised area we find another with a 1x recharger, which might be useful if we’ve been blown up on, and some fusion ammo. To the right of the first raised area, we find yet another secret that was new to me – I think it was how the spoiler guide described the ones here that confused me. On the north wall above the water level we find an actionable wall, and then swim up to find another ammo cache.

To the south we find twin oxygen rechargers, the opposite of overkill, and then above the water, we find more sims and some Troopers. This time I also found that I was out of napalm, and promptly managed to SPNKR myself in the face. Once they are dead instead of us, we find rather a lot of mysterious closed doors, and one partly open one, behind which a Trooper and some sims spawn, regardless of their being stuck … and then dead. So we have an bit on the map that we can’t explore, don’t you hate that?

There’s also an open door, to the west. This takes us to a room where Troopers shoot us from a white square raised above the water, in the corner to the right. There is a matching square to the left, but it is curiously underwater instead. Both of those squares have napalm canisters if we go and stand on them. There is a large structure that comes down to just above the water level, with an opening just by our way out – what is this place?! Lots of pools with walkways, random dead-end rooms, inconvenient water systems, and a totally isolated pool room with a water level switch and secret terminal – I’ve never been and don’t know how, and the Story page seems to indicate that there is nothing written there … unless it’s just that well kept a secret :).

The final room in this area has two switches, one above the water to activate the last door switch in the middle, the other under the water to open a door that links back to the start of the area, with quick access to the middle, as well as our 2x recharger and pattern buffer. A sim also decides to teleport in here, which can be a problem as we’ve been through quite a few fights since saving – he killed me in one of my plays just now ><.

Now for what’s behind door #4. It starts with a fight between Troopers, on a far ledge as usual, and S’pht’Kr. Then we get to enjoy the really inconvenient water system here – the pool here is too shallow. We have to jump in and find a switch to hit in order to get to the next room. We can either go straight through, or around a side route. More Troopers, S’pht’Kr and sims await. And then we have to hit that switch again to swap the water levels back. Once is bad enough, but if we go back to save and/or recharge, it just gets annoying, and makes one question the designers of such a system … not that that’s a first :). Oh, and, more areas we can’t explore!

Then we have the final two rooms. Squares divided into four smaller squares on different levels, connected by stairs, x2. Both populated with Troopers, sims and S’pht’Kr, and both best handled from outside the entrances with a Tozt in hand. When everyone is dead, we reach the final terminal.

So it seems not even Durandal was aware of our little mission to the Hfarl. And with his very third-party of Tycho’s demise, where was he?

Nice to hear the last news from Blake and co, and interesting to note that Durandal did realise they didn’t really like him. It’s a shame we aren’t offered the opportunity to express any emotional response to him. I really like the “You know I’ll never let you go” here, and how it plays alongside the final terminal of Aye Mak Sicur. But I’m getting ahead of myself, we’re not up to that yet … or perhaps we’re past it, everything always happens quicker in Infinity. Then again, perhaps none of this ever happened.

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Replies:

Tour of Duty - Fatum Iustum StultorumMartin 12/17/13 10:26 p.m.
     Re: Tour of Duty - Fatum Iustum StultorumMartin 12/17/13 11:10 p.m.
           Re: Tour of Duty - Fatum Iustum StultorumVikingBoyBilly 12/18/13 3:47 a.m.
     Re: Tour of Duty - Fatum Iustum StultorumHokuto 12/18/13 6:06 a.m.
           Re: Tour of Duty - Fatum Iustum StultorumMartin 12/18/13 8:12 a.m.
     Re: Tour of Duty - Fatum Iustum StultorumPerseusSpartacus 12/18/13 8:13 a.m.
     Re: Tour of Duty - Fatum Iustum StultorumGodot 12/19/13 10:41 a.m.

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Pre-2004 Posts

 

 

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