Part 4: † Comet 4:23 †

Something I want to emphasize is that Jesus does not like you as a player. Not only was all the examination from the last two updates needed to progress, but, had we only taken the biosensor, we couldn't use the switch. Trying to do so would just make Fojii tell us "Use the switch".

We have to search the Biosensor, after we've taken it, to be able to turn on this switch, and searching it is only an option in the Captain's office two floors above us even though we're dragging it around. After we flip this switch, we have to go back upstairs. Despite all of this being necessary, we can't actually use the biosensor until another update's worth of events.

In case you can't tell, this isn't all too clear, and there's quite a bit we'll have to take on faith. Yes, we were told about the freeze ray, but for everything else we'll have to use a guide.




That switch, as mentioned, was to turn on the biosensor, which we aren't going to actually use. Back with the thermal d evice, we have to search the small and narrow VntShft twice with that switch on until we find life and horror (finally) occurs. Are you ready for this horror? It's pretty horrific. Survival horror at its finest. Be prepared.







What a distressing situation! This would be especially scary if we didn't have the right weapon, which is quite possible; the game doesn't actually care which we grabbed in the armory. Had we the Heat Ray or the other two Heat Rays, we would have to think fast on our feet as is laid out below. Please watch this video if you think you can handle the fear:



Thankfully, the LORD has guaranteed eternal life and death scenes are really hard to code . We have less to fear that we think we do. After all, as Jesus said:


Let's do what we actually did last time: grab the Freeze Ray. After all, it's clearly the weapon that Deutschlandmann wants us to use, and now we can tackle that scene as intended:



By running away. I'm sure your on the edge(s) of your seats.



We need to search the floor in the printer room to use the gun we needed to enter the printer room, taking the enepack out of the laser gun here (not from the guns on the armory floor, 神 forbid) and arming ourselves for that "fight". Stopping by again...



We can freeze it. Just imagine if we weren't prepared!

If we try to run when we do have an enepack'd freeze ray, Fojii asks "Are you a warrior? Let's try fighting!" After all:


And then after it's frozen we flee. Faith's more important than acts



Now that our hearts have stopped racing, it's time to consider our goal. I could report back to the Corona, since I now know exactly what's going on and that we successfully looked at some life. At the very least, I could get a second opinion re: should I keep looking around?


On the other hand, that does sound a lot like Hayao, and they drew all these rooms so [Japanese Word meaning Damn] if they're not seeing use.



In the Engine Room (F4) we bump into the monster again, assuming we escaped with the freeze ray and triggered the flag. Our options are the same as before, and again we have to freeze it and escape. They've somehow made battles with aliens a step down in engrossing design from when we distributed cards.



Right! Hayao is being a baby about this and less mature than 3 XL hamburgers man. We need to move beyond running in circles. Time to do the same thing a slightly different way!



The monster has changed by becoming more open to temperature, relocating here because it was warm for one sentence back when. Searching the ceiling begins the grand showdown of dread, which is what I call selecting things from menus to make it sound far less banal. I have not been invited to restaurants for quite a few weeks.

>Search Monster
Bigger than before!
Hey, it's dangerous!

>Search Valve
So, this valve..
Turn it and liquid oxygen comes out.

>Use Valve
No! That'll make the room dangerously cold!

>Speak
What ARE you?
No comprendo…

I agree.

>FrzeRay
That slowed it down.
I think one's enough!

This is a lie. We fire it once more, and if we fire a third time then this happens:

>FrzeRay
Enepack's out, it won't fire now!
You fired it twice now. Enepack's empty?
I need a new pack or I can't..

>Flee
Run Hayao!
No! It's not over yet!


Sadly, the experimental enepack design fell short of traditional magazines in the "Actually useful for weaponry" tests, so we may have to try something else. Time for a baptism.

>Use Valve



Hoo-rah. That was the visual representation of liquid oxygen entering a room, and the monster ran away because it wasn't ready for holy rites at -183˚C. Now, ready to be angry at a game?

A bit of its body fell.
Shut the valve… better leave.
Yes, I'm fine. You'll freeze

>Look Floor
The freezer.
Fojii.. Isn't it odd?
Looks normal. But it is kind of warm.

Liquid oxygen tends to be, indeed. But examining the valve just reminds us "That'll make the room dangerously cold!", so this clearly didn't update, and maybe we should look somewhere else.

>Speak
It was astounding!
A bit scary, too.


>Search By Pipe
Hm… Let's go look for Eline.
Ya

>Take







…







…






Nope, we can't interact with the piece that fell, at all, until we trigger more ridiculous flags. Now armed with even less of a goal and finding our meek forgiveness-ing put to the test, we need to recall the most crucial clue of all:


I won't belabor the explanation; we're going to the Machine Room and meeting Eline.



Poor machines, serving functions that might have been different from other machines'. We won't ever know what you did, as nothing is done on this screen except letting us see that some pixels were carefully arranged. This is by far my favorite room.

>Speak


I've been surprisingly lax about not derailing my own explanations this update, and I feel bad about just writing sentences easy for humans to read. In order to remedy this, here are some possible things that sign says:

1. No Fimger! A poorly outsourced and thus mangled warning that the giant metal glove (left picture: thumb to the left and non-index fingers center) is incomplete and thus not to be worn.

2. No-Fi Mger!, representing the alarmingly terrible quality of all extant recordings of Armenian pop sensation Mger. A shame.

3. No Film GER!, warning against flash photography with a growl to make it more threatening, along the lines of "Rawr! The Floor's Wet! Hiss!", but which was widely perceived as a non-grammatical call to avoid filming Granular Ectoplasmic Reticula and confused more than clarified the point.

4. No Filling Me In On Canadian Soldier Francis Alexander Caron Scrimger!, from a series of posters showing disinterest in Victoria Cross recipients which many felt was run into the ground.

I'm content.

>Go
Can we rest a while?

>Speak
Comm cut out. I came to investigate.
I was so scared I hid. I was in the other room when it appeared.

If I understand this correctly, during the "science" part of this fiction, Kaiser was piloting the ship, Balkas was failing to look at a flask, and Bellini was studying his visage while ostensibly monitoring the scene. Eline was… in the other room? What is Eline's function on this ship?

Seriously. She's ostensibly a mathematician, but they have robots to help with Sudoku and I'd hope they'd have worked out, say, trajectories before the launch from Earth. Furthermore, because Japan, Eline is 17. Even if she were a savant for her age, what would her math skills entail? Knowing what an integral is?

What's more likely is that "Mathematics" was a thin pretense to justify taking her on, and the crew were more concerned about the area under her curves.

Because they want to have sex with her.

>Speak
Bellini's dead…
He told me to run. I was scared to death, and I ran here.

>Speak
I saw it before, but it changed forms.
And it actually enters rooms.
It's so scary.

Ignoring that we knew that from the email and it very much didn't change form, apparently aliens are generally vampires (or notably courteous, I guess). I love having this discussion broken across fifty "Speak"s.

>Speak
It's OK now. I'll track it down.

>Speak
But, this monster truly is nasty. It's also living so a biosensor should find it.
Yes.

>Speak
Do you have one?
Yes, I do.
Better use it

I was going to make fun of her for not thinking we'd considered this, but given our protagonist she's probably safe. Note that, assuming Eline's not a zombie, we would have found her had we actually used the sensor we had to set up and not use. Dammit, Hayao. Why aren't we playing as Soviet Galaxy Man?

>Speak
Are you injured?
My ankle's sprained, nothing bad.

>Speak
Is Huyler alive?
Unfortunately, he was attacked… Of the crew, only you live.

>Look Eline
Best go to ship 2.

>Look Fojii
Look at Eline, not at me!

Fojii, Hayao's only friend, is trying to guide us through efforts to talk to a woman. It fails to work.

>Speak
Let's return to ship 2.
But only one can..
You go on the Sirius. I'll follow on the Inaduma soon. You should see Dr. Hoka.

Let's clarify the story with these ships. The collective we started off on the Jesus, which housed the Corona and Comet. The Corona itself housed the Sirius, which we used to reach Comet (not comet) as it came from the comet (not Comet), and the Comet that went to the comet (etc) housed Inaduma Serve Da Super Beach Volley.

Put another way, Yo Dawg, I heard you liked overplayed memes, so I put an overplayed meme in this explanation of ships so I can explain that, because you like ships, they put a ship in your ship, in your ship:




Hope that's clear.

>Speak
Oh, this synthesizer..
The thing came and I dropped it. Thanks.

>Speak
To the airlock, then.




>Look Biosensor
No biosensor signals.

>Speak
Quickly, board.
Come after, OK?
Yes.
Sirius prepped OK. Ignition



Despite bing directly told to do this, we can't head back until beating the monster. Thankfully, since Hayao's burnt more calories today than in the last several weeks, we can do it without leaving the room. I want to reiterate that all the exploration in updates 2 and 3 was required to make all this work, and that we're killing the monster offscreen. I wonder if there's something about all this in the Quran…

>Use SPanel
Using this isn't doing much.
Stop it, what if something comes? We need a card anyway…

>Look biosensor


Can't we detach it then?
Cut it off now!



Just for fun, though, let's visit the warehouse. We don't need to, but this is a thorough LP.

>Look Rm



No place to hide. Is i t looking for food and water?
Best not to thing of i t as an animal.

>Speak
Truly nobody's here.

That treats it as more than an animal!



The room detaching mechanism was put in the airlock rather than, say, where the crewmembers work, but it does let us keep a good distance from monsters who suddenly act like they're shy. The first time we do this there's no indication of which we have to press, so we just choose three randomly until we're blatantly told the answer since puzzles are hard.



Why would you set up this system? It's like making a weird password -- say, "smcoe9rbyis278" -- such that you can't remember it in a period of high stress, but then writing it on a post-it note next to your screen. Maybe it's a "safeguard" from something, but if you only have four people I'd hope you wouldn't space-live with some dick who'd think "I'll just launch the kitchen! For fun!" Maybe it's just so the colorblind can't save the ship.















A clear visualization of what occurred.



For some reason, we have to contact Gingrich before the game lets us escape, though there's very little to tell him now since everything's fine.

>Look Floor


Apparently the body just dissolved.

>Use CommDev
Now to contact. Come in, this is the Comet.
Corona here.

What? You thought contact was down? You thought something prevented us from calling the Comet (not Bolide) before sending Hayao? You've put far too much faith in this game.

Captain, Hayao here. Maybe Warrior Hayao.
Roger. Return soon. Oh, Carson's here.
It's Carson. You said a part fell off the beast? Can you bring it for my research?

I don't think we mentioned that, since last time we spoke you were mentioning data and mugs. Do they even know what the warrior comment was about or do they just think we're one-person space LARPing and trying to be as cool as Space Newt? It's probably true.

Roger
That is indeed my name.




[/i]>Search By Pipe
Could the monster's remains reach here?

>Take piece
Let's take this back to Carson.

That screenshot above isn't from after I took it; the piece of the monster isn't here by the time I have to get it, and when it was here I couldn't interact. This is probably the clunkiest setup and interface I've ever seen in a game.



Back in the airlock, Fojii calls into question our taking this gun. Let's swap it with a flamethrower, or something, since we clearly don't need this anymore.



Alas, it would be Bette R to plainly show our hand. The game actually does a reasonably impressive job of pretending to end here, but this is a pretty obvious clue that we;re only half done. Believe it or not, there are still three more updates to go.

>Speak
Let's go to ship 2
Inaduma prepped OK.
Takeoff!




This has not been the half I'm LPing the game to show off.