Hit a FC5 sweet spot: Faith's dead, no peggy action in henbane river. Jacob has me slated for more shooting gallery BS, and John wants to meet me at Fall River chapel for his shitass pathetic finale.
Oh gosh, no thank you John, fuck you very much.
So I'm tooling around the valley with unlimited cultist targets all lit up, and plenty o' critters to harvest for bullet money.
Suweeeet!
“I don’t know where you came from, but I’m sending you back.”
I finished ND yesterday. Two final battles, one great fun with a good ethical dilemma at the end, but the second is one of those tedious grinds in a small arena with an overpowered boss. I failed several times, quit and went back into the game world to take advantage of one of its innovations - unlimited upgrades of some skills and weaponry. I increased my health pack and ammunition capacity to fuckninja levels and powered up an elite SMG and LMG to 11, then returned and defeated the last boss without much effort. Another ethical dilemma at the end of the second boss fight and an OK final cutscene.
The game world is now mine, with all quests & subquests complete unless I've missed something, but there's plenty to do: scavenging the camps on the hardest settings with my choice of guns for hire, killing monstrous fauna and building up my stats even further.
I've found a splendid bug. I often find myself a vantage point and use bait to lure animals to their doom to build up my resources (there's an exchange of different skins for specific materials in ND). I've discovered a location next to a cliff where, when I throw bait, animals throw themselves off the edge of the cliff and fall, either to their deaths, or to lie unconscious for a few moments, then spring several feet into the air.
"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked." James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
Speaking of bugs, hit an odd one couple of days ago in FC5: a weird ground-to-sky giant 'box' that looked like it was made of sepia-colored, vertical venetian blind slats. I could see through the interstices, enemies could drive through it, I could walk into and out of it, but inside everything was all jumbled up. I quick-travelled elsewhere, haven't seen it again.
“I don’t know where you came from, but I’m sending you back.”
I love bugs and glitches and that sounds like a goodie. I once found a npc in FC 4 walking on the surface of a river. The most common one I come across in FC is assets stuck in mid-air - I came across an arrow just the other day. Sometimes stuck things will react if you walk into them, sometimes not.
The first one I ever came across wasn't a glitch per se, but bad map design. In an early level of Tombraider 2 it's possible to run, jump and walk to a place in the map where you can look (or jump) into the void of blackness beyond. At the time I found it very affecting - a metaphor for existential oblivion.
"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked." James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
As I remember, get shot of the acolytes ASAP with the grenade launcher, duck & weave, duck & weave, & then heavy machine gun fire.Keep taking the health packs.
"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked." James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
Oh, the kill jacob finale. Nah, I just want to make it through the 3rd repetition of the 'cull the herd' shooting gallery and get some more play time in the spectacular white mountains. Hopefully I can skip the finale altogether. I've been off my game so to speak, I realized when I sent my GFH home and got killed about thirty times. Guess I just got to hunker down, remember where the ducks are sitting and beat the clock.
“I don’t know where you came from, but I’m sending you back.”
There's a nasty trick played on you at the end of that the scene and it suckered me in. I'd be fascinated to see what the consequences are if you don't fall for it. You'll know what I mean when you get there.
"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked." James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
Yeah I've played it through before. It's a nasty surprise and I suspect you have to go through with it or go back to the beginning. I tried again a few times but couldn't make it through the SMG level (which I believe is the last one before the LMG at the end). Anyway, fuck Jacob and fuck the horse he rode in on, I just tried out the arcade. First "featured" map I tried crashed FC5, then I browsed the solo & coop maps and tried a "Jacob's Realm" (or some such) outpost map. There were a lot of enemies, and the building were from FC4. I used the "sniper" loadout but was able to customize it more to my liking from a weapons shed soon after the mission started. The terrain was a bit OTT, and some aspects were a bit rough around the edges, but it was pretty fun. I was able to take it without getting shot or triggering an alarm, so pretty easy, mainly because the enemies were highlighted (must try it with that turned off). The best part was killing Jacob who appeared in all his glory in a tunnel. Hard to kill, took a lot of rounds and a pipe bomb, but I finished him with several head shots from the desert .50, he wasn't really dangerous.
“I don’t know where you came from, but I’m sending you back.”
Well, now I feel stupid. All I had to do to beat Jacob's trial was to go into options and dial down difficulty to "easy" (I thought it said you couldn't change difficulty in game +). Got it in one, and now I've got the run of the White Mountains again. :-$
“Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.”
Stumbled on Jacob's main Nasty Place (looks like an abandoned asylum/Catholic orphanage) where the shooting gallery stuff happens, you eat dogfood &ct., so I essayed an assault. Funny thing happens there. You can kill guards from across the pond, but when you approach the gates you pass out and wake up... across the pond. This was shortly before I did the kill Jacob finale. Luckily I have the option of not doing the rescue the Whitetail fuckups who got themselves locked up in his bunker, so that leaves me free to roam around the mountains killing plenty o' beasts and cultists who like me don't know when to quit. Last night I walked right up to one of his super-sekrit 'hunters' (they don't get the red markers, and are meaner than snakes) and shot him in the head with an arrow, making me realize I had left difficulty on easy after the Only You mission.
OH yeah almost forgot: in the final Jacob's shooting gallery trial, I killed the Whitetail's leader-hero dude (again), but this time instead of dumping me back at the wolfs den to get shouted at, it segued immediately into the kill Jacob finale.
“Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.”
That was the sucker-punch I was referring to. As I remember, you turn a corner and the game jump-scares you into shooting him (though I only played it the once and I have teh 60s.
I'm interested if anything different happens if you don't kill him.
"We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked." James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951
