Part 18

This place has horrible feng shui.


[ Hosted / Viddler / Blip ]



[ 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 ]
Age: 26

"Marin is a smart, independent woman who has an insatiable thirst for adventure. An elusive and infamous smuggler during the Independence wars, she was hired as the executive pilot for Covenant Industries, the leading contractor for the Federation military. This gives her the opportunity to fly, test, and use cutting edge military technology."

One of the first things you'll most likely notice about Marin is how annoying her voice actress is. Really, in general, I think Marin's character is a little botched. The concept art gives a really strong impression of her attitude and style, and feels like it has a much deeper personality than you see rendered in the game. Her model is bland and her idle expression has such a lifeless look to it that every time she's featured in a cutscene, you feel really put off.

I'd say she's actually fairly well-represented in the final game as how she was intended to be, but what I can't say is that I particularly like it. Snarkiness is okay in the right amounts, but I've always felt they overdid it with her and at a point were just using it as an excuse to give her something to say. She's still better than Olivia, though.

Overall, I think they could've done a lot better with the female characters.



[ 1 ]
Level one: 4
Level two: 4
Level three: 4/1
Level four: 4/2
Level five: 4/4

"Uses a form of telekinesis to tighten surrounding threads of torpid gravitational energy and snap them loose in a desired direction. The resulting waves of force can knock even the most stable enemies to the ground. With further training, the same energy can be focused onto enemy weapons."

Surge is frontal blast of energy that pushes objects, enemies, and grenades away from you. Each push causes a decent amount of damage, and several blasts can be fired in a second, if your energy permits. Surge is strangely effective against Seeker Shock Troops if you let loose a few, and at this early stage of our psychic power collection, it's invaluable as an actual weapon.

This is one of only two psychic powers that you can actually charge to make a stronger attack. This charged blast works the same way as the normal, uncharged one, except Gideon does a little animation where he takes a step forward and pushes both hands out. It can also be fired in the air where Gideon will do the same animation and float briefly, stopping his fall. You can combine this later on with two other charge moves to make a pretty ridiculous combo. While charging, your psychic energy drains until empty, so it can be somewhat of a gamble to use it.


Surge's alternate fire is Weapon Steal, which does exactly what you would imagine. Targeting an enemy and activating the power swipes their gun from their hands and puts it right in your opposite arm. This can be interesting since it leaves Seekers no other choice beside physically attacking you, and in some cases it can actually be really useful, but it eats up so much psychic energy in its early levels that you'll rarely find it as part of your standard arsenal, just like the charged Surge.

I also want to point out that you don't necessarily have to flick target something to steal its weapons. If you go into first-person mode, you can pick your targets that way, and you can in fact steal from your teammates and use their weapons. For example, after defeating the Seeker Elite, you can steal Marin or Ethan/Olivia's Faust. Unfortunately, most of the friendly characters we'll be buddied up with for the rest of the game won't have weapons we can take from them. (Well... using normal means.)

Surge was originally called "Energy Push," as well as "Push & Pull."