Enough talk, Let's Play: Shadowrun

You can't even drink your iced tea, the item only has a 'give' option. Hmm... the patron sitting at the table is too tired to talk to you, but maybe our iced tea will ease him?





Yep. Okay, so that wasn't too hard to figure out, but where that leads us isn't so clear. He drops a lot of info about tickets to the Maria Mercurial concert. Sure enough, just down the street you can find another club and the bouncer there won't let you in without a ticket. This is were we have to go next, but unfortunately none of the other NPCs respond to the ticket keyword to tell us how to get them. Figuring out what to do isn't so obvious, especially when the player has just started the game.

The solution is this shady businessman next door (and you know he is shady because he has different dialogue music).






Ask him about the Lone Star keyword (Lone Star being the police), and if you are willing to take the risk he'll sell you a badge allowing you to impersonate an officer. The clue was supposed to be the 'Grinder' character the patron mentions who was fragged by the cops and hauled to the morgue. Hamfist'll fill in some more details that Grinder was a ticket scalper (yeah... don't mess with the cops in Shadowrun). The roundabout process we must take to get tickets is to arrive at the morgue wearing the badge and ask to see Grinder's file. Apparently he had extra tickets on him when he died.

*I'm not a zombie! Look, I'm wearing a badge, see?


However even if you figured all that out there's another barrier: the morgue guys still remember us as the dead guy who got up and walked out the door. If you try to open the closet door the morticians play the old Looney Toons gag: "No one in here but us mice!". All we have to do though is wear our sunglasses to pass as a normal, not-undead person. At least in a nice touch there is some separate dialogue if you aren't wearing the Lone Star badge and need more clues to figure it out.





Since you can take off neither your shades nor the badge they probably figured the player would eventually stumble their way through.

Besides the tickets, when the mortician unlocks the cabinets we also can rummage around and find a credstick. It probably belongs to the one of them, but I guess they won't mind if we run up a few phone calls on it. We can just steal it and nonchalantly keep talking to them. They have a few funny lines to offer, but we'd better not overstay our welcome.








Now, I always thought the origin of using 'frag' to mean 'kill' came from the Shadowrun. I've never read anything supporting this, but Shadowrun (the pen and paper RPG) has to be one of the first references using the term in this sense.



*Fellow ghouls! Don't attack me, I'm a friend!


We'll wrap up this segment with one sidequest that needs to be done before going to see the Maria Mercurial concert. If we head over to the graveyard a voice can be heard calling out for help. All we gotta do is fend off the ghouls while searching each of the crypts. In one of them we find an Indian shaman gravely injured and lying unconconscious, using the slap patch will fix him right up though. Prying open the crypt doors is where the scalpel item is needed, and it's the only use of the item in the game. This is a somewhat unfortunate trend for the items, because by the end of the game our inventory list will be cluttered up with all sorts of scraps of paper and random utensils that we used once and no longer need but cannot get rid of.






As a thanks we get a little gift: a magic fetish. The only description the game leaves us is "an amulet with a bat engraved". Aside from a little info about 'Dog' (finally!) there's no reason for us to stick around. Curiously, the coffins can be inspected to reveal either a random amount of nuyen (?) or a ghoul encounter.




- End of Segment 2 -
Time of the run so far: 9:26

Not so sure about that. Fragging is Vietnam War slang.

Yea, I looked that up too, but it's a different usage. The "fragging (video games)" webpage says that the modern usage probably originated with Doom players and was inspired by the military term. Shadowrun may have been inspired by the military term too, and its usage matches the modern usage exactly, but well before Doom.

I never figured out the Lonestar badge thing on my own. Nintendo Power got me past that.

A Game Genie got me past the caryards, and I didn't even feel guilty about it. I don't think I've ever played all the way through this game without using a cheat(or emulator savestates) to get through some aspect of it.

Here's one of the very few examples of the uncensored dialogue that people were talking about.



"Chop shop" is the typical the term used in the Shadowrun universe, but it was apparently edited out. Before I was under the impression that the uncensored version was just an early and very limited print run, but HG101 says it was a beta version that was unreleased. There's a gamefaqs walkthrough which mentions all the places where they made edits, and its overall a pretty minor censor job.

I believe the usage in Doom refers to the fact that you're killing your own "teammates", rather than killing the AI monsters. Shadowrun just uses it as a generally cool-sounding term for killing people.

No microwaving hamsters, then.

Did you get around to fixing that loose brick in the basement yet?

Also: the character portraits in this game are somethin' else.

All the shots of Jake's eyes have done measurable damage to me. If we have to put up with multiple shots of Anders, I'm done for.

Hmm.. Anders? I don't remember his portrait being anything special. He's full of himself for sure, so maybe that's why you don't want to see his mug?

Shadowrun Update 3:

With Maria Mercurial tickets in hand, its time to shove off from the opening area. The happening place holding the concert is 'The Cage'. The bouncer is gigantic troll; we won't bump into their kind very often.







There's a video phone here, so we can ring up Sassie's number that we found in our apartment.





Yikes! We got dumped Sassie says some Glutman guy keeps calling and gives us his number. When you call Glutman's office he's not there, but calling the number is an event trigger which makes him appear at the club.





The only required thing to do here is talking to Glutman. However, if you're like me you'll want to rock out a bit and let the music loop a few times (ah.. brings back memories). If you want a few laughs the bartender comments on Maria's nice moves and the bub in the corner thinks we're trying to steal his seat, but there's not any meaningful info to pickup. On the dancefloor you'll run into a familiar face dancing with some ugly dude:





Geez Sassie, you left me for that guy!? We can try to ponder the reasons why she broke up with us:

1) creeps like Drake and Glutman keep calling and leaving messages
2) Jake stays out all night drowning himself in iced tea at the bar
3) Jake's best friend looks like this:



Yea, I'm going with 3).

Like I said, there's not a lot to do here. Once you get tired of asking the troll bouncer about 'magic fetish' it's time to talk to Glutman:







Well ain't he a happy fella? Once again, the shady dialogue music pops up. It's not made very clear at this point who Glutman is and how he relates to Jake. Later you can hack into his office computer and get a little tidbit that explains Jake was Glutman's 'courier'. What happened is we successfully swiped some intel from the Matrix Systems corp. which caused Drake to send a hitman squad after us. Drake's cranky message on our machine was talking about the files we have in our head computer.

After that brief conversation we are whisked away by his men:





*It's not one of your "la-de-da" places, but hey if you like dank.. fuggetabouit!


Okay, so Glutman's idea of 'protection' is dropping us in some shithole caryards. The orc in charge - 'The King' - is the one blocking the only exit.





If you talk to the other shmoes locked up in here you learn that the King lets wanted people hide out in the caryards - for a price. Or is it that he lets you out for a price? The text is kinda contradictory.

The way out is to win enough fights in the arena, and the little kid grimly tells us that most folks die trying to leave. However, provided we survive, fighting in the arena is an awesome boost of experience and money.





The arena is your standard fight to the death (first one to die loses). The rewards get better each time you win. There's really no risk involved since if you lose you're dead and if you win you go save. The first fighter is a 'gang member' enemy, the first enemy to use a melee attack. If you are quick on your feet you can maneuver his path into the barrel, causing him to run up against it indefinitely... what a maroon!





You might think that there's not much strategy to arena firefights given the combat in this game. Since standing in one place looks really dull, the programmers thought of the idea to make the AI contestants run from place to place occasionally (and sometimes this breaks your target lock). This leads to a trick where if you stand in the right places you can maximize the time the other fighter is walking and not shooting. Even better, the waypoint programming is full of bugs: For several of the fighters you can stand in a certain spot and when they walk away they don't turn around and shoot back once they stop!




e.g. for the second contestant if you stand here he usually won't even fire more than a single shot.




The third contestant was the 2nd one's brother and you can take him down the same way from a different spot.






The mage enemies in the arena shoot in rapid fire bursts and love to break your target lock. You can glitch this fighter like the previous ones, but it takes a while for him to finally stop shooting you.




Sweet legal tender! If we add up all the fights so far we've earned 8 karma and fat stack of 4,000 nuyen.

Really, making use of glitches can only do so much in the arena. These guys however would still have been chumps without 'em. Even with the measly 1 karma point we spent before coming into the arena, we could still have beaten them provided we healed up and spent our karma after each fight. But with the glitches we've beaten them consecutively with no healing and no level ups in between!

It's time to level up our skills, and Body and Firearms are all that matters at this point. Not spending karma wisely is often why people get stuck in the caryards and have to grind a little bit to win enough fights. Man I used to waste lots of karma on the 'strength' attribute before I knew any better, but it has no direct effect on combat, only on what class of equipment you can use.





We are going to level up firearms just once to level 3 and then body twice from 3 to 5. Now our stats are comparable to what you'd normally have entering the caryards, but let's not complain about what we've got. The jump from firearms 1 to firearms 3 has an enormous effect, making early firearms by far the most important level ups. Further level ups are incrementally less impressive because you're already hitting most of your shots (you'll still see 0 damage quite often because of armor, but missed shots have a different graphic). After about firearms 8 or so there isn't any difference, and going overboard with firearms is another cause for slowed progress in the caryards.

The next arena fighter is a mage again, this time even tricksier than before, as he consistently breaks your target lock. We've burned through most of the glitches and this guy has none to exploit. You could still try to find a good spot to maximize his walking distance, but we don't want to waste time so we just stand and shoot.





He also gives crap for karma, so no level ups after this fight.

On deck is the street samurai, and he should be pretty memorable if you've played the game before. He's the first enemy in the game with an automatic weapon. But his big weakness is that he has a secondary melee attack (very few enemies do) and it happens to be far less deadly. The strategy? Stand close to him so he puts away his gun and claws you while you shoot him in the face. Works like a charm. Somehow though I managed to mess it up the first time and nearly died before the arena owner threw in the towel on my behalf. This was pretty lucky; if the other fighter deals damage too quickly the arena owner won't stop the fight in time.

We'll end this segment by finally getting out of the caryards. There are two ways to leave alive: pay the King for you freedom or challenge the King in the arena and win. It'd be quicker just to pay and go, but it costs 4,000 nuyen plus an opportunity cost of 3,000 nuyen you would get for beating him. We have a strict budget we must adhere to in this speedrun, so we'll challenge the King.





The little kid will sell you slap patches for 100 nuyen each if you ask about 'Heal'. The problem with the King is he has a lot of hp, so slap patches are good for letting you hang in there just a little bit longer. We'll buy 4 for later, but we won't need them right now. We can use the first glitch to our advantage against the King and stand on the left side of the arena. This maximizes the time he walks back and forth and we get lots of free hits.





After a while the second glitch kicks in and the King stops and you can pick him off from a distance. Actually, that's not quite true. What happens is the King taunts you and runs off screen. If you follow him too closely he will resume firing back, but if you keep your distance you can shoot him and he won't move. Unlike before, activating this trick doesn't require standing on any super special spots, so I'm not so sure this isn't something that was intentionally put in the game. Maybe to push struggling players along or to increase the tension? Could be.






Hooray!

- End of Segment 3 -
Time of the run so far: 17:02

Mercurial's a Shadowrun fixture; gets referenced a lot in setting material, had an adventure or two based around her that were published for (I think) 1st edition. Her background is the absolute most ridiculous thing; some bizarre mix of a couple of Gibson characters plus whatever messed-up fantasies the writer decided to call on. =/

I always had a hell of a time in the caryards, never knew how easy it was to exploit.

Do you ever fight a troll? I can't remember seeing any besides from the bouncer. Plenty of orks around, though.

She left Jake for a Juggalo. I blame Jake's sex face; it must be frightful.

I got stuck in the caryards for so very long. Like you said, it all came down to bad leveling. Ah, well; I eventually beat the game.

Yea, orcs are everywhere in this game. You can fight a Troll in the arena (but we won't here), and there are troll deckers (har har.. given their size I always find that image funny) in Drake's Volcano and in the Aneki building.

Edit:
Yea, I was hoping everyone wasn't aware of the arena tricks. I only knew about the King trick myself back in the day.

Dunkelzahn's Will! HATE HATE HATE

HATE FOREVER

Shadowrun is the gold standard of how not to run a game line.

Never knew that Maria was a big Shadowrun character. Are there any named band members she ever plays with? The game names some of them, but the sprites with names attached are reused throughout the game (so everywhere you go it's always "Johnny-The drummer" playing).

Gee that's one f-ed up will.

It's actually an interesting sourcebook if you use it for plot hooks unrelated to all the shit they pushed through with Dunk. FASA was drunk on metaplot, ten times worse than White Wolf ever was, and the company faithful ate it up. Tonnes of novels, plus sourcebook stuff.. this is talking all their lines, mind you (Shadowrun, Earthdawn, BattleTech.. whatever smaller fish they had going also).

I think her bandmates in the game are just stand-ins. They might not be but I definitely can't remember.

dosboot: Since you're doing this as a speedrun can you add timestamps to the beginning of each update?

I can see the appeal of something like that as a source of game ideas or the like, but it turned out to be the worst example of the 1990s school of RPG world design, in which the PCs were forever subordinate to the schemes of freelancers working for White Wolf or FASA or whoever.

Some people get off on watching a story happen one $30 sourcebook at a time, but I'm not one of them.

EDIT: Metaplot. They called it metaplot. Long may it rot.

Sure, I can add timestamps. I was planning to upload a video and link it after the whole LP was finished (in case anyone wanted to see the nitty gritty time savers), but I'm having second thoughts. The video record feature and codecs are a little wonky. I'm really unsatisfied with the quality I'm getting (after a while the video lags behind the sound by several seconds, and the compressed video stream isn't nearly as pixel-y and sharp as the real game).

My favorite part of this game is this random dude who looks like John Candy.

I always thought he looked like the Russian drug dealer from the Fugitive movie.

I used to swear that the arena owner looked like a weird, older version of one of my friends. They reuse this character portrait later on, so we'll see more of him.

Though it's worth noting that while Earthdawn and Shadowrun were linked, Battletech was in an unrelated separate universe.

It really is kind of a shame, as the original set-ups for all three were wonderful, but each got basically ruined by the relentless march of the metaplot and books filled with basically nothing but hints about all the cool stuff they were totally going to let you know about someday.

Yeah, FASA sucked.

You are shitting me.

I don't think words can contain it.

BTW, do you post over at rpg.net? I could swear I saw your avatar there once or twice.