The Let's Play Archive

Dead Space

by The Man with a Hat

Part 4




Welcome back! Sorry about the delay, it turns out that time waits for no man. Shocking, I know.



Today, we visit the command deck. I hope the Captain likes the cut of our jib. Oh, wait.

Part One:
Viddler (Polsy), blip.tv.

Part Two:
Viddler (Polsy), blip.tv.


Mission Objectives

Isaac posted:

Meet Hammond on the Bridge
Hammond is waiting for me in the Captain's Nest. It's clear that Kendra doesn't trust him. As for me, for the moment I've got no choice.

Activate the Elevators
The elevators leading to the other sub decks of the bridge are offline. The controls are in the security room.

Re-Route ADS Power (3)
There are power junctions scattered around the Bridge. I can hack into them and redistribute power to the ADS system. Then Hammond can start it up and the ship will be protected from the asteroid bombardment.

Destroy the Asteroids
One of the cannons has failed to start, which means a big portion of the ship is unprotected. I've got to take manual control and buy Hammond enough time to fix it on his end.

Go to the Tram Station
The ADS is now fully operational. It should protect us from any asteroid collisions. Looks like we've bought ourselves some time.

Text Logs

"A. Dallas" posted:

MINING LOG
DALLAS, A. (SUPERVISOR, 2nd ENGINEER)
The death toll is mounting. Known dead so far:
Arnold-Fernandez, D; Ashik, M; Bagwell, W; Bao, A; Baristiran, O; Briggs, R; Carrillo, R; Centkowski, K; Chan, D; Charlow, A; Chikes, C; Colomar, B; Condrey, M; Deguzman, J; Ding, V; Drinkward, C; Eckert, J; Espeleta, T; Fattouh, S; Feise, D; Felker, T; Fike, T; Fong, C; Fuentes, C; Gamel, S; Gaugy, M; Geraci, J; Gregory, L; Guaman, E; Hartness, E; Hasan, J; Holt, T; Ignacio, D; Jamerson, K; Johnson, M; Keum, J; Kong, C; Krakowski, M; Kuo, D; Lackey, A; Leal, D; Lee, L; Leong, J; Lingen, D; Louie, C; Louie, M; McSweeney, B; Meneses, F; Merenda, R; Molina, E; Natividad, J; Noonan, M; Palrang, J; Patel, J; Patterson, I; Pavey, E; Peterson, M; Pitts, R; Piwenitzky, H; Pugh, D; Ruelas, A; Sarossy, V; Schlegel, P; Schofield, G; Scott, D; Seo, A; Shande, T; Silver, S; Swearlingen, S; Swenson, D; Talens, J; Thibodeaux, N; Thoeun, C; Tuohy, J; Valedez, G; Vaught, C; Vocal, C; Voelker, S; Wells, J; Williams, N; Wrede, R; Zelaya, A; Zittle, K

"Captian Mathius" posted:

REPORT OF INFECTION
CAPTAIN'S LOG
INITIAL INFECTION VECTORS
It's been less than an hour, but they've spread fast. Flight deck was the first to go, after the shuttle crashed. Now almost entirely overrun. We've lost at least half the Medical deck, and about a quarter of Engineering. No information yet from Cargo or Planet Ops, which suggests bad news. This is not what I expected.


Trivia

* See that list of the dead, up above? Well, they're the Redwood development staff.
* Hammond refers to the ADS cannon as a "mass driver" - in this context, a more appropriate term may be "railgun". Either way, the cannon's payload is accelerated along the barrel by a series of electromagnets. Mass drivers are considered to have potential as a method of fuel-free launch into space, while rail guns are generally thought to have more of a military application. Interestingly, the pulse rifle is a coil gun, which works on similar principles. Edit: Note - it is a proven fact that half the stuff that comes out of my mouth is incorrect. Thanks, Argas.
* If the Brute catches you in the instakill move, you cannot mash Action to get out of it. It's one of the few that are inescapable.


Continuity Issues

* The captain's death. The captain's death... is fucked.
* In Downfall, the design of the bridge is completely different - instead of having a elevator system in the center, the movie's bridge has the holographic map from the captain's nest set on a raised platform in the middle.
* The captain says that the "flight deck was the first to go", followed by Medical. Technically, this is untrue. While the flight deck was the entry point for the infection - a shuttle from the colony came up with a Slasher and an Infector on board - the Necromorphs actually fled into the air ducts, rather than attacking. They struck first in Medical. Plus...
* If the Flight Deck was the first area to get infected, how were people still getting packed up and trying to leave, as Kendra said in the first video?
* In Downfall, immediately after the captain's death, fifty escape pods leave the ship - all unoccupied. One of the officers says, stunned, "That's all of them. All emergency shuttles are gone." And yet, Hammond still manages to magic up a broken escape pod and jam a Necromorph in there. I suppose that it's possible that Hammond made a pod out of his supply of pure, refined badass, but still. (Thanks, limited! Can't believe I forgot that.)


New Enemies

Brutes
Easily twice the size of a normal human, Brutes are golemic thugs with huge plates of heavy organic armor. A head-on attack is unwise; instead, pump as much ammo as possible into the vulnerable sections in the limbs and back. Use stasis to slow it down, run to the back, and blast it. The pulse rifle is quite handy, as is the contact beam. That said, if you don't have stasis charge, you may want to use the flamethrower, which goes through the armor and burns into the sensitive areas. That said, be very careful - these fuckers hit very, very hard.

Wandering Limbs
This isn't actually their name, but for the sake of spoilers, it'll do for the time being. Wandering Limbs appear in two forms - heads and hands. They're basically infected body parts, propelled by Necromorph tentacles. Sadly, they don't have any distinct limbs, so just pour on the ammo until they die. It won't take too much, but these bastards are hard to hit.


New Equipment

RC-DS Remote Control Disc Ripper
A compact saw blade launcher. Clearly the safest tool in an engineer's inventory. It fires titanium blades at up to 17,000 RPM, meant to cut through the toughest rock. It's also great for cutting through dry Thanksgiving turkey.

Primary fire: fires a single saw blade, which pauses at a predetermined distance and rotates at high speed. If there's an enemy near you, fire one of these and keep it on them to hack at their limbs.
Secondary fire: fires a single untethered blade. Excellent for attacking large enemies at a distance.

Upgrade diagram.
Concept art of the Ripper in action. Note: it is not actually possible to use the Ripper like this.


New Clues
* The Marker is aboard the ship, in the cargo bay.
* There were massive casualties before the Captain's death.
* Dr. Kyne was responsible for Mathius' death. He claims that it was accidental.
* According to the Captain's log, the infection stemmed from a crashed shuttle on the Flight Deck.
* The Necromorphs are now officially recognized as "bio-recombinators", organisms that infect dead bodies and rebuild them to meet their needs.
* Necromorph biomass is a "habitat changer".
* Temple is going to hydroponics to look for Elizabeth. Maybe she works there?
* When Temple arrived at the command deck, the ADS was working/irrelevant/unknown.

Bonus Stuff
Isaac's suit has a built-in air tank! It has failed me once before, it will not do so again.
The bridge is a sinister place.
Less so when brightly lit.
Please line up and enter the bridge in an orderly manner... uh, never mind.
This is where the captain goes to chill out after a long day of fanaticism. Oh, and where he goes to get stabbed in the face.
Nothing is safe!
A beautiful view of the Ishimura. Minus the meteor hail, of course.
The Brute.
An early concept of the Brute, unless I miss my guess.


Well, that's enough of that. Thanks again for your patience, I'll see you next - wait, double update? Oh shit, right.

LAAAAAAADIES AND GENNNNNNTLEMENNNNNN



ChibiSoma, I promised you a small reward for your guess. Well, here you go! As I said, it's not too bad. unless you hate silly jokes about boxing

I've made some slight technical changes this time - I've got a new mic, and I've boosted the volume a bit. If people don't like it, I can tweak it some more.

Schadenfreude Run!

Part One:
Viddler (Polsy),blip.tv.

Part Two:
Viddler (Polsy), blip.tv. Note: the blip.tv link does not have an FLV.