Blade Runner Part #14 - Act II - Serving and Protecting

Part 14: Act II - Serving and Protecting

Act II - Serving and ~~Protecting~~

Well, here we are at DNA Row. All our other leads turned out to be dead ends so far, so we’re coming here to talk to Tyrell’s genetic subcontractors. If the Replicants killed Marcus Eisenduller because he worked on their design, they might also come after these guys.

First stop is Eye Works. In the film, a couple of the Replicants come here looking for answers. We actually get here shortly before that.

I’m trying to think of a reason why a genetic scientist would need a fruity neon sign and public storefront access. It looks more like a hip clothing chain. Like, are people suppose to walk in here off the street? “Hi, I need a new eye, could you go ahead grow one for me? Thanks.”

Again, they got the original voice actor from the movie for this little scene. The more I do this LP, the more I realize they must have had a really big budget for this game. Just the money they spent on developing the new engine, and painstakingly recreating all the sets, and on top of that, all the dialog is voice acted by the original people.

Time to pay this Miraji guy a visit, whoever he is.

That looks like his place. Dermo Design. Sounds like a skin designer.

This is Miraji. I’m just going to call him mushroom head because even if he wasn’t horribly pixilated from the voxel engine, I still wouldn’t be able to tell what the fuck kind of getup he’s wearing. He’s suppose to be East Indian, so I guess it’s some sort of glittery white space turban.

Oh, and there’s also a bomb on the table. I would click on it, to be the hero and snip the right wires or something, but all of Ray McCoy’s previous adventures to date has not inspired any confidence in me, so I shall leave it alone.

We shoot the handcuffs off Miraji. Ray’s only a crack shot when there’s no Replicants around. Otherwise he’d get taken down by a knife. Or a katana. Or water pistol.

I like the way Ray thinks. “Fuck the mushroom guy, I’m jetting!”

That part was actually quite annoying. You had to click madly on the bottom of the screen to make Ray run faster to it and escape the bomb. Sometimes Miraji gets in your way, sometimes Ray just doesn’t run fast enough and it’s game over. I had to try that part like 3 times.

The game’s major randomization bit occurs when it decides at the beginning exactly who’s a Replicant and who’s not. I think there’s only 2 people are always Replicants (Zuben, the sushi chef, was one of them), the rest are up in the air. After playing a few times, you start noticing the little clues about the people’s Rep status.

For example, the Rastafarian bomber guy; if Ray notes that the bombing was precise and could only have come from offworld experience, you’ll know that he’s a Replicant - they were used for offworld fighting. If Ray notes the explosion was sloppy, it’s an indication that the Rastafarian guy was just a human working with the Replicants.

The twins are another set of DNA designers who worked on the Replicants.

They weren’t home, so they weren’t harmed by the explosion. But we did find an envelope full of cash from Runciter. Hmm.

The Bradbury Hotel, where the last bit of the original movie took place. It’s another one of those places where they must have spent an inordinate amount of time recreating from reference.

We get greeted with Sebastien’s talking toys. They just wander around bumping into things, and generally being very creepy.

J.F. Sebastian was another character from the movie, a slow but brilliant DNA designer whom the Reps conned into gaining access to Tyrell. But he’s not home right now.

In the book he didn’t exist; instead there was a guy named John Isidore, who managed the apartment where Reps were hiding out. He was a ‘chickenhead’, which was the term used to describe the people who became retarded from the radiation fallout. They couldn’t breed or travel offworld, and most of them couldn’t hold a job, so they were just kinda castoffs from society.