"Friends & Lovers." [Arc ID: 26757]

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Cranebump presents: "Friends & Lovers." [Arc ID: 26757]

 

A 5-mission vigilante arc for lvls 10-15

 

Your "mischief" has gotten you tossed in the klink. But fear not. The enigmatic Triistanna Caine of the "special" PPD detachment is willing to make a deal. Investigate the possible reformation of the leaderless Vahzilok in exchange for your freedom. With Doc Vahz in the Zig, how hard could that be?

 

 

[cranebump]

Some details: arc relies mostly on stock enemies, with a selected use of 2 new factions. Play tests showed some nice timing of events. I changed my creation procedure by touring the map first. Haven’t yet used random map insertion, which I may at a future date, just to give some variety. All in all, this arc is pretty clean, though I thought the bosses played too easy.

[Kyksie]

1) After a sudden sneeze blasts out all the windows in the Skyway City Super Duper Mart, Hayfever Lass finds herself in the PPD jail, where she is approached by one Tristanna Caine, who works for "Section 41", a top-secret off-the-books division of the PPD (a bit cliche, but oh well). In exchange for losing my paperwork or something, she sends me into the sewers to rescue her friend, Juliana Nehring. The sewer just happens to have computers containing the details of Dr. Vahzilok's plot to have his minions pee in the city's water or something.

 

2) Into the sewers again to recover more data on Dr. Vazh's new project, the "menuloks", who I guess are zombies make up from restaurant scraps or something. I dunno. Tristanna warns me not to touch the machines in there, but Hayfever Lass manages to break all of them by sneezing on them. Oh no, the 5th column is involved!

 

3) So now it seems that Section 41 doesn't exist, not in a top-secret 'disavow all knowledge' way, but it really doesn't exist, and Tristanna isn't real or something, so we go into (wait for it) a warehouse, where we find Tristanna, who is really someone else, and she was trying to infiltrate Section 41, which actually does exist. Or something.

 

4) Off to an office to collect evidence on Section 41, which really does exist, really. This mission has custom mobs, about half a dozen types, with bios and varying powers. This mission suffers from a bit of Objective Overload, with 12 glowies to click, 2 things to smash, and Defeat All. Interestingly, this office is the one with the hole in the floor that leads to the sewers, which suggests that Section 41's off-the-books budget is rather tight. since they can't afford a office with intact floors. It must kinda suck to work for a black-ops group with a tiny budget. I'm imagining their agents taking the bus to their target's home to assassinate him, then waiting for off-peak hours to report the job done.

 

5) Now, we head into a 5th column base to put an end to the Menulok project. Again, a bit of Objective Overload, with 6 glowies to click and 5 thingies to smash. Then we pummel Dr. Menulok, who is actually a brainwashed Tristan Caine. After the mission, we try to get the brainwashing undone, but Section 41 can only afford Big Jim's Discount Deprogramming, which is really just the back room of a Major Flanders' Fried Chicken, where the assistant manager splashes expired Orange Crush on his face while saying "Snap out of it, okay?"

 

Friends and Lovers is another very well executed arc, with excellent writing and a well done custom group. My only nitpick is too many objectives in a few maps.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Kyksie

[cranebump]

What you don’t like clicking 12 computers? 🙂