Part 7: Chapter 1, Levels 10 & 11
"Well, that was fun... Gideon wasn't on board, sadly... but you now have a solid idea as to his whereabouts: the cathedral! That's what the sign out front said anyhow, 'OCT. 30, GIDEON DOES HIS DISSERTATION ON THE RITUAL CRIME OF SIN AND HOW TO GET AWAY WITH IT. GET HERE EARLY AND YOU'LL HEAR HIS MINOR SYMPOSIUM ON A VALVE'S INCREDIBLY ONEROUS HALF-LIFE!' He's not the type to disappoint his fans, so get over there and let him know you're in his audience."
Knowing just how badly Half-Life crushed not only this game but SiN as well, both critically and commercially - to say nothing of SiN also doing slightly better than this game because it had a couple weeks to make a name for itself before Half-Life overshadowed everything - makes the jab at Ritual and Valve in the loading screen just feel badly-timed. It's kind of like making a game where you're hiding to regenerate health every five seconds because your hero dies in about three hits, then having your easily-killable protagonist proudly proclaim that "power armor is for pussies" right before playing through a near-direct copy of a level from Halo 2, except without being seven years out of date.
On the subject of copying and pasting, this is the second time we're retreading the area around Pickman Street Station from level 2. The station itself is off-limits, but otherwise everywhere we could go before is available again, and the whole thing is expanded with an entire separate area we haven't been to before. Like I said, don't get used to interesting retreads like this, we're doing this sort of shit again in Chapter 3 and it just gets old really fucking quick.
"You won't find any nuns in this cathedral! The resident lurker-from-beyond has warped this place into something more to its liking. You might actually find it habitable yourself, if it was up for sale (at a reasonable price), and didn't come with those annoying Cabal doormen. Ah, well. It's time to clean this place out and find out where Gideon's gone. Maybe you'll find time to get a lovely stone rubbing for that empty wall in your walk-in gun closet while you're at it."
As I've mentioned, this is a game that saw the direction the shooter genre was evolving in and decided to do the exact opposite of that, so you've only got yourself to blame if you're surprised that there's a boss fight. If anything, the only surprising thing is that the chapters consist of ten levels on average rather than the standard eight as set by Doom. Anyway, with that we've finished the first chapter of the game. Next chapter will be starting next Tuesday.