Enough talk, Let's Play: Shadowrun

Just a quick update for today. The rest of the game doesn't fit into one update, so we'll do 2 smaller ones instead.

Shadowrun Update 6:

As promised, the Dark Blade club left the front gate open for us. Cue 'Bloody Tears' - it's time for vampire slaying.





There's quite a few branching ways to go about the Dark Blade mansion, but they all lead to the same (gruesome) outcome. When we come in the doorman will stop us, and if we ignore him he'll open fire. This causes the house will be filled with bad guys and Vladimir will secretly retreat to the basement. The diplomatic way is to remind the doorman about the magic fetish (geez, he forgot about it already?) and then we can wander around freely and meet Vladimir in his office.











And after meeting Vlad there's a couple more options. He asks for the magic fetish in exchange for telling us the Jester Spirit's real name. We can give it to him, or we can call off the deal and just start shooting. Either way, Vlad disappears through the wall after the conversation ends.







After he leaves the computer can be hacked for 10,000 nuyen and a data file. If we played fair and traded the amulet, the data file is supposed to be the really important hint that Vladimir lied and Nirwanda is not the Jester Spirit's real name. No matter what branch of this little scenario we take, the final step now is to fight our way to the basement and force him to tell us the Jester Spirit's true name.

The Dark Blade club is the only other place in the game where an enemy drops armor. One of the street samurais drops a mesh jacket which we will kindly take. As a plus, we can give the obsolete leather jacket to Kitsune to boost her defense a bit. Any weapons/armor you give to other shadowrunners can always be taken back later, even if they die and respawn back at their club. Outfitting your runners is an interesting extra avenue of strategy, but it can get pricey and really it is entirely unnecessary.





In the basement there are endless respawning ghouls, making it a well known farming area for karma. The trick is to hire a bunch of runners and stand behind one of the coffins. The ghouls usually get stuck on the coffins so you won't get hurt very often. It'd be nice to stop and get some karma, but we're on the clock.





The only way to fight Vladimir is with the strobes and the stake. We gotta blind Vladimir by using the strobes at close range and then use the stake to torture the Jester's Spirit's real name out of him. He won't tell us until we ask him repeatedly. The proper sequence is to stake him, ask about the Jester Spirit, exit the conversation and repeat. Once we learn the Jester's true name to be Laughlyn we can stake him again to kill him and get 4 karma + 5,000 nuyen.








I never think twice about murdering Dracula in Castlevania, but I always feel bad about the encounter with Vladimir. Everytime you use the stake Vladimir screams and begs for his life, and further you have to willingly stake him three times in a row to actually kill him. It may just be the same scream sound effect the game uses everywhere else, but it has a way of making you feel anxiety and then remorse.

At this point our wallet is filled with nuyen: there were the two Drake bank accounts, the Dark Blade account, and the money Vladimir had on him. There's a somewhat hidden weapons shop on the Dark Blade grounds, and we trade our Ruger for a trusty shotgun. This is the best weapons shop in the game, and the inventory is updated a couple times with better equipment.





With our cortex bomb ticking past the 15 minute mark it's finally time to get it taken care of. Dr. Maplethorpe isn't too far from the Dark Blade masion, and he disarms our cortex bomb for 2,000 nuyen. Maplethorpe also runs a cyberware business. The best piece to have installed is the Boosted Reflexes which increases our firing speed. It's super expensive - 15,000 nuyen - but it will save a few minutes in clearing out rooms later on. It's a great upgrade and worth prioritizing even when playing normally.









The route we want to take is through the docks to Bremerton where, according to Vladimir, "the bones of an old ship" houses the Jester Spirit. But the boat owner Captain Jack won't take us there on account of some killer mermaids in the waters. I personally feel this is the most cryptic puzzle in the game. The only hint is that the mermaids enjoy the warm run-off from the sewers. In other words, the solution is to cool the waters by dumping ice in it. Of course! Earlier the Wastelands bar was out of ice when we asked for iced tea. If we go there now the ice man has arrived and for a small fee he will dump a shipment at the docks for us.

The shipwreck is a nest teeming with gang members and orcs. The area is mostly one firefight after another, but we only have to fight a handful of enemies at a time. Compared to Drake Tower, Bremerton is nothing for our three runners. The attack dog here drops a dog tags item which we'll take in order to learn the summon spirit spell when we get back.





If one thing causes us concern it is the numerous narrow corridors. We really wish we could run past the enemies but the path is too small. Also, the corridors have the unusual property of stopping the battle music even though there are enemies further down the screen. When the screen scrolls to reveal them the battle music starts up once again, counting twice against our shadowrunners. In all likelihood any runners that have been with you for a while will leave by the end of Bremerton.





As the end of the ship nears we enter a portal leading to an otherworldly dimension containing attacking bubbles, a giant Naga and more respawning ghouls. The Jester Spirit is just ahead, all we have to do is run past the enemies.

Bosses are becoming rather lethal starting with the Jester Spirit. We found all the clues so we know that speaking his name will bind his power to our will. We still have to eliminate his hp first though, and his fireballs won't make it easy.





The Jester Spirit's attack is deceiving because as he loses hp his pattern changes. At first it seems like one could fight cautiously and slowly by moving from spot to spot so you are never standing where his attack will hit next. Unfortunately this strategy is ultimately fatal because by the end his pattern changes to aim directly at Jake making dodging far more harmful than helpful. The best strategy is to stand still and end the fight quickly, healing to survive the waves.

Since Kitsune is with us there is another tactic worth employing: summon spirit. We are perfectly safe from the Jester Spirit when he is way off screen, but he isn't safe from the spirit fox.





Once the Jester Spirit starts taunting us it means we've eliminated all his hp. This is the chance to utter his name. Doing so grants us his power and he says we may call upon him exactly once. Guessing his incorrect name does not instantly vaporize you like the game suggests, but if you fell for Vladimir's trap and didn't have the correct name you'd likely try to keep fighting and die quite easily anyway (I know I did).







Jake of course can only think of one place where he wants to use the Jester Spirit: against Drake. In the next and last segment we will finally hunt down Drake inside the volcano and settle the score.





- End of Segment 6 -
Time of the run so far: 64:27

Well, you're well past the farthest I've ever been able to get.

Come to think of it, I'm not 100% sure I was able to even meet the Jester Spirit in the Sewers.

Things I Have Learned: Even in the future, Bremerton is a cesspool.

Oh it's better than that. In the timeline, as the first nations are starting to lose ground in the war, a new Ghost Dance takes place; causes Rainier, St Helens, and Adams to erupt simultaneously mid-August 2017. Puyallup gets buried under tons of ash. As all the Anglos are forced off the newly Indian-only land, a lot wind up squatting there, and the place becomes a huge slum.

In 2029, there's the worldwide network crash, which is bad news for Redmond; goes tits-up and becomes a ghost-town, then a squatter's camp, and now it's just the Redmond Barrens, #1 (giant, sprawling) ghetto.

Lone Star (the cops) doesn't patrol either, just writes 'em off.

How I miss Bremerton.

In that so glad I will never return sort of way.

I always liked Kitsune and thought it was a nice touch that she can become loyal to you. When I played the game back in the day I never knew about Akimi so I tried to keep Kitsune alive throughout the game, which was not easy.

Didn't you find Akimi to be about as sturdy as wet kleenex? I just remember her getting shot dead over and over again by security guards.

Akimi has a leveled invisibility spell though. Not a big surprise but I'll be using Akimi this game.

Whoops.

Guess I should have cast a spell or two in that playthrough.

Okay gents, last update.

Shadowrun Update 7:

The last leg is the most difficult. The enemies really start hurting and we haven't upgraded our body since the caryards. The unavoidable fights in Bremerton have been a boon to our karma though, and we now have 33 karma. Steelflight is gone so we have to start working on our computer skill. We also max out our new summon spirit spell and put the rest into magic.





Drake's volcano headquarters is reached via the helicopter pilot ontop of Drake Tower. The troll deckers here are twice as tough as the enemies we are used to seeing and half as good looking.





For the most part we can ignore them and run past focusing just on hacking the necessary computers. The matrix sections here are a step up from Drake's Tower; there are a lot more ICE's and they deal more damage. It hasn't been a concern until now, but the damage ICE's deal is way out of proportion with regular enemies. A single hit is typically high double digit damage, probably 5 or 10 times more than a gunshot. Taking a path through the matrix which minimizes the ICE's fought is an important part of the strategy.





For our trouble the computers do reward us with some very lucrative bank accounts. The best one is guarded by a lengthy matrix section and yields 25,000 nuyen.





Kitsune is still alive and well, and the Volcano is the real reason we hired her because her invisibility spell is a life saver against sentry guns. Ordinarily, these things are a pain to fight and stun lock you when you try to run past.





The maximum security level is where things get really dicey. Kitsune's level 2 invisibility lasts a mere 10 seconds and that's really pushing it. The first room is filled with sentry guns and trolls. The quickiest way is to just make Jake invisible and run through. Everyone else takes hits, but there aren't many better options.







The next room contains no less than 3 troll deckers. Here is where the whole run can be ended if things go south. In the time it takes for Kitsune to make herself invisible she's almost dead. Jake can't survive much longer, so Kitsune has to cast it on him as well. Having shadowrunners cast spells is significantly slower than casting your own spells, and casting two spells eats up a lot of those precious 10 seconds. Halfway through the room Kitsune must refresh her invisibility or die, while Jake can push through with healing. Sadly Norbet is sacrificed as a decoy, and his body will be left behind. R.I.P.

It's all worth it though, because we've made it to Drake.





The Jester Spirit item should be used immediately to knock off most of Drake's hp. After that we cast one summon spirit after another while avoiding the icicles and staying out of range of Drake's fire breath. Since we conserved Jake's mana and have been such a magic whore with our karma we have enough castings to cheese Drake this way. Kitsune can also back us up with her summon spirit if we run out. Normally one would use freeze which works even better than summon spirit, but freeze takes more time and money to obtain.







Drake is really menacing in a fair fight. With patience and the right strategy it is quite possible to beat Drake with your gun alone, although it has to be at least as strong as the Ruger and realistically speaking you need the shotgun or better. Drake's pattern is really simple: icicle phase for a set amount of time, then fire breathing phase for a set amount of time. So the strategy is to shoot him during the icicle phase and run off screen during the fire breathing phase. Of course, being frozen by an icicle at the last second would be disastrous, as the fire breath can take out 100+ hp.

Once Drake is dead the game is nearly won. Drake is easily the climax of the whole game, but there's still one last moping up operation to do. The next room contains the scientist Pushkin, the guy we were supposed to deliver the anti-AI program to before we were killed. He reveals the final enemy to be the Aneki corporation which has developed a new advanced AI and wants to use it for some evil purpose (it's kind of a cliched story, although in the early 90's it may have been less so).





Waltzing into the Aneki corporation as we are now would be a bad idea. Normally the player would be much more of a powerhouse, but we had to pull out all the stops just to get through the Volcano. We need a new trick to get through Aneki. I've already spoiled it but we are going hire the last and most expensive shadowrunner in the game: Akimi. You can only contact her by finding her phone number from one of the data files inside Drake Volcano.

Akimi is a first class female mage with tons of mana and high level spells. If you were expecting a flirt like Kitsune then guess again, Akimi is the queen of ice.





Akimi's price is 10,000 nuyen, but money at this point means very little. As long as we have enough left over to afford the 40,000 nuyen assault cannon there's no cause for concern. She has a level 5 invisibility spell which is exactly the ace we need to get through Aneki.

Speaking of which, purchasing the assault cannon is a top priority. It's the last and best weapon available in the game - point the assault cannon at a normal enemy and they'll die instantly.

There's a handful of enemies in the game which can see through invisibility, and oddly the security team outside the Aneki building are among them. We don't need to fight them though, we can just ignore their warnings and run past while they shoot. Humorously, everytime you enter or exit the building they will still be there demanding to see your pass.





The Aneki building is basically Drake Tower on steroids. Fighting is much simpler for us this time around though: Akimi can make us both invisible turning each firefight into a one sided slaughter. Kitsune no longer has a useful purpose and is allowed to die in the first room.





As we start ascending floors troll security guards will be popping out of elevators. Akimi's freeze spell can handle this situation excellently, although the casting has to be timed perfectly so they don't get any shots off.





The dangerous part of Aneki are the computers. It's the same drill as Drake: hack the elevators for each floor. However the matrix sections in Aneki are absurdly long and difficult. The ICE's are stronger than ever and can routinely kill us in two hits. I don't know for sure but I believe the ICEs can deal 50 damage here. With only 50 hp ourselves we are flirting with danger - but Shadowrun's wacky damage rolls make one hit death an outside possibility.





The good news is that for once the matrix sections have paths through them which don't go through a single ICE. Mapping out these paths in advance will be our savoir.

The last room is the most well defended with troll decker Otto leading the charge. Invisibility makes clearing the room as easy as the rest, and we reach the very last obstacle: the final computer terminal.





The final matrix level is relatively short and all that needs to be done is to destroy a couple of CPU sections. However there are several unavoidable ICEs to fight. Just as Jake nears the final CPU he takes his first hit and is left with a sliver of hp. The correct thing to do here is jack out of the matrix, heal, and start over. My lousy muscle memory is faster than my brain though, and I order Jake to keep going.

Luck is on our side and Jake wins the next ICE encounter. So all is well and Jake uploads the anti-AI program, beating the game. Nevertheless this was insanely stupid, had Jake lost again the whole run would be over. My jaw was still hanging as the ending sequence started up. At least it turned out okay and I won't make this mistake again.





Roll credits! The anti-AI program triggers a self destruct. The final scene shows Jake escaping to the roof and fighting his way to the helicopter as the building blows. At this point any runners you have with you will be killed in the firefight, except for Kitsune who will survive and follow Jake into the helicopter.







The major characters make a return for the ending and leave us with a few last words.












Still waiting for that one.






- The End -

Total time of the run: 90:33

And now I know what the ending is. Took me 13 years to see anything past that stupid vampire.

Also:
So... Drake actually was a giant dragon? I... find that more unexpected then I really should.

Well done! I had a lot of fun looking back on SR (and my brief flirtation with living in the Pacific Northwest.)

What's the record on a speed run?

Kitsune nooooooooooooooo!

Yep. There's no indication that Drake is a dragon either until you call his phone number or (more likely) actually fight him. Those familiar with the pen and paper rpg might see it coming though. I'm not sure but it sounds like Drake and the Drake corp. is a pseudo reference to the Draco corp. from the pen and paper game.

Edit:
There is no speed running record for Shadowrun that I'm aware of. The sole attempt on the Internet is a practice run on Youtube that spends time getting a lot more unnecessary things.

Hmm... neither Speed Demos Archive or TAS Videos has it...

Then I think we have a winner!

For anyone going, "Buh? Matrix? Where's Keanu?!"

Gibson came up with a kind of virtual-reality internet wayyy back in '84 and called it the matrix (possibly with inspiration from a Doctor Who device). Hackers, called "console cowboys", had computer decks that allowed them to plug their sensorium into this network, so as to actually "be" present there. Intrusion countermeasure electronics - ICE - was the general term used to describe the defenses that a computer system might have.

Shadowrun decided "console cowboy" wasn't cool enough, coined "decker", and fleshed out the hacking aspects. ICE became IC (dropping the 'electronics'), and it was used as a term for a whole host of different sorts of programs, roughly categorised into white (did not attack player, usually did stuff like sensors and tracing), grey (could attack the digital persona and knock you offline), and black (could send biofeedback and kill the hacker; "black ICE" is also a Gibson term, FASA just expanded the colors). And there were different sorts of IC within each of those categories, and you had the ability to load all sorts of different programs into your deck to attack IC and systems in different ways.

The systems themselves were built like a dungeon: you had several different types of "nodes" (CPU, slave, datastore, et cetera), nodes could have different system operations performed in them, the nodes could be guarded by one or more IC programs, and each node was connected to usually only one other node, something like: entry node---slave---datastore---CPU -- with probably branching paths to dead-end nodes and different security designs. This changed starting in a sourcebook update late in the 2nd edition lifecycle, and the change was put into the 3rd edition core book, where a lot more system operations were introduced and the process of creating a security system got a hell of a lot easier, and better represented a real, modern network, rather than the cool (but strange) designs of Gibson's matrix.

The SNES Shadowrun game uses the same basic node setup but reduces everything to a flat 2D plane, and makes you move around each node as if it was a dungeon room, finding all kinds of hidden IC; in tabletop, you would just roll to scan for IC, and say, "I attack that, scan the datastore," et cetera. You're not REALLY blindly stumbling around virtual 10x10 stone corridors.

The Genesis Shadowrun game has a more faithful matrix representation; you can get all kinds of programs, and do several operations in each system (including things like breaking into a building's network, finding the node that controls the elevators, and shutting it down). At least, if you pick the decker character (you can pick one of three classes in this version of the game).

Basically the SNES/Genesis debate boils down to - other than the obvious "I only had this system, so obviously it was best" - whether or not you really like matrix hacking or don't care so much. The Genesis version generally gives a better shadowrunning feel, in the way you take jobs, and have some better character growth and it's all rather freeform, for the most part, despite having a basic plot for a beginning and end to the game. The SNES version, however, does really very well with the atmosphere, has a strong plot moving you through the whole game, and since the main character isn't a decker and hacking is only a means to an end for a couple of objectives, there's not a lot of need for a fullblown system.

Anyway, I played this one first and beat it.. once, a long time ago, and've had a few aborted runs since then, but it was cool to see some of the glitches, and I'm really amased at how fast you can go through the game. I always took forever working up karma and money and magic and such. Also never hired allies (I ain't spendin' my iced tea and gun money on some dang elf!) and really wish I had, seems like it makes all the really difficult parts of the game.. not. ;D Thanks dosboot!

There's still a lot that could be done to change the route drastically and improve the time. There's a lot of freedom in how to finish the game once you reach Daley Station. In particular there's a whole bunch of choices that could save around a minute in the long run but cost about a minute too.

One big thing is while picking up Akimi is faster than getting invisibility yourself, getting the money costs time. I didn't realize how long matrix sections take until I recorded the run. A good idea would be to try to skip the 25,000 nuyen bank account in Drake Volcano. It also never occurred to me until recently that you could try using Spatter in the Aneki building. He'd be another alternative to using Akimi or getting invisibility yourself.

My pleasure. I didn't know about the ICE vs IC thing. I knew the game called it IC but I also knew "black ice" was common slang so I went with that.

It's one of those "They were really that unimaginative?" moments, isn't it?

What's the ending with Kitsune?

Exactly the same except she isn't killed by the trolls on the roof in the final cutscene and she follows you into the helicopter. No picture of her snuggling up against Jake in the helicopter ride unfortunately.

Ooh, a screenshot to save for the next "welcome the newbie" thread.

That would be perfect for the new guy in the Fun Club suggestions thread suggesting Unlimited Saga.