The Let's Play Archive

Killzone 3

by Blind Sally, nine-gear crow, et al.

Part 4: Pyrrhus Evac







Ahh, these two gentlemen of Helghan are beginning their dance. I don't have much to say about it just yet as I want to let it speak for itself—Ray Winstone and Malcolm McDowell are excellent at selling their parts. There's just a couple bits of neat blocking I want to point out. First, "Visari's Throne" here. Empty, for the moment, but it's clear from the speech we've seen him give that Admiral Orlock is interested in moving up in power. Now look where Chairman Stahl's hand it. Yeah. He's not just calling out Orlock to antagonize him, Stahl wants to seize power for himself, believes that the Helghast leadership should remain in the hands of a businessman rather than a military officer.



And if that wasn't clear enough, we get a shot of the two men standing with Visari's portrait looming between them. This shot is only seen for half a second, so it's not super obvious.



Back to our "heroes", this level has some weird pacing as crow points out in the video. We go from an on-rails turret section to on-foot to a sniper-section to a vehicle section to back on foot. It makes the level feel a bit frantic, which works given what's going on. I've grabbed this screenshot because it shows that even in the background chatter there's still this push-pull of Rico wanting to disobey orders to win the current fight and Narville's orders to hurry the fuck up because he knows they're on a strict time limit. Again, both of them are right in their way. Defiance, whoever they are, die just as they refuse Rico's order to form up, but if they were to slow down any more, the ISA Cruisers will a) leave without them or b) die.



Then this happens. It's funny because Sev gives Rico, technically his superior officer, the order to move up Pvt. Gutmann and co. Rico giving the order to Sev to provide cover fire would've made more sense, but given what we know about their relationship, it's funny that Sev is still acting like the commanding officer. Anyways, I don't count this as a Guerrilla Games trying to make Rico more sympathetic moment because he's acting under Sev's orders AND because we never see Gutmann ever again. For all we know, Rico gets this man killed trying to move him up.

So it goes.



Here we meet our first ISA woman soldier, Jammer. Though Jammer appears to be a callsign, so I don't totally know what her role on the battlefield is—she's not a Shadow Marshall like, Luger, that's for sure. (Maybe she was originally assigned as an Intruder pilot?). Anyways, time for a bit of trivia. It's been known since Killzone 1 that the game has a serious problem with tokenism with both people of colour and women. Since Jammer has just been introduced, let's focus on her for a moment. Did you know that she is only the fifth woman to appear in this series? That's right, before her was General Vaughton's communications officer in Killzone 1, Luger, Evelyn Batton, and most recently, Hera Visari. If you thought, "damn, we're four games into this series, that's pretty bad," then hey, I agree. Jammer is also the third woman to actively take part in combat and is the first woman ISA soldier we've seen. I really thought Guerrilla should've taken a page from Starship Troopers, but this is what we've got. Only four additional women will come after her in the franchise, bringing the total to nine: Echo and Hillary Massar in Shadow Fall, and Admiral Alex Grey and Valeria Harkin in Mercenary. That number jumps to ten if you include Andrea Parsons, who is also already dead by the time you encounter her in Shadow Fall.



Anyways, Rico tries to disobey orders—Narville catches him, but he makes sure to sent Intruders to pick up Jammer and her crew. For all the shit given to Naville, he cares about his people. Right now he's trying to save as many of them as possible, and speed is really of the essence here.



Seriously, 'cause the Cruisers are getting shot up by some serious anti-aircraft weaponry.



We even get a brief glimpse of General Mandaloniz, the man aboard the Cruiser Compulsion who has been yelling at Narville for the past while. Of course, Rico and Sev have no idea what's going on with the Compulsion and Mandaloniz, they only get a sense of urgency from Narville. Again, considering he's their superior officer, it's surprising the flak they give him. Of course, they see what they see and they act accordingly. I like that Guerrilla shows Mandaloniz talking to Narville, though, because it reminds the player that Narville isn't just giving orders at random. He has a superior officer of his own and there are things going on in the battlefield that he knows that Rico and Sev don't.



Moving on, we have our vehicle segment. crow is right, they do kinda look like walking coffins.



Aaaaand right afterwards we find out that the rescue Intruders were shot down. Narville looks genuinely distressed here. Let no one say he doesn't care for his people. However, I understand that he can't send anymore resources to help Jammer. He has literally run out of time. Furthermore, a bunch of people died trying to get to her. At this point, given their time is up, he'd just be sending more people to their death.

So of course, Rico volunteers to ignore orders and go save Jammer.



Perhaps somewhere deep down Rico knows it's a suicide mission. He has to realize that Sev can't actually get Narville to "wait". Rico is aggressive, he's rude, he's not the sharpest tool in the shed (what the fuck is a Shakespeare?) but he's not stupid. When it comes to the battlefield, Rico is downright savvy. This right here, this line, this is a man who realizes he's made mistakes. Lots of mistakes. That line, "I gotta do this, man", is a man who desperately needs to do something good. A man who is beyond redemption trying to do something right. Yeah, Rico is disobeying orders here, but he sends away Sev. He knows he's probably not coming back, but he has to try. So he goes to try and save Jammer and her squad. It's not going to make up for all the pain and suffering Rico has done, but it shows that he's self-aware. It shows that he feels guilty. It shows that he wants to try and do the right thing.

So good for Rico. That one line, short, almost a throwaway line, speaks volumes about this character.



Anyways, Sev doesn't have long to dwell on it since the culmination of the Helghast military industrial complex begins to loom over him. Behold the MAWLR (Mounted Artillery Walker/Long Range), the single largest non-starship vehicle in Killzone and the final evolution of Cobar's Spider Tank from the middle of Killzone: Liberation in terms of mechanized warfare. And it's finally caught up with the ISA cruisers.



crow is mistaken in the video, the in-game audio confirms that at least one of the ISA Cruisers, the Arcturus, made it safely to orbit and presumably returned to Vekta. It's the Dauntless we see fall on Rico and Jammer. The Compulsion, again, is the one with General Mandaloniz and is seen falling to its death at the end of the cutscene.



And oh, Rico almost made it back.



So many mixed feelings at this point.



Yeah, Rico is trying to do something good, but at this point it almost feels like too little too late.



Like, seriously Rico, maybe you shouldn't have waited until the sky was literally falling on you. Better late than never, I suppose?



Pvt Gutmann and General Mandaloniz have such minor roles in the game that I don't think it's worth even making portraits for them. They're about as relevant as General Mandrake, if anyone remembers who that guy was. Anyways, one notable new character:



Jammer is a competent hand-to-hand fighter, marksman, and pilot. She's also quite skilled around computers and technology, Vektan and Helghan. Given her skills, she could very well have been a member of Alpha Squad. Instead, she's relegated to a minor token role in Killzone 3. At least she has more personality than Natko.

Apparently she was modeled after Eva Mendes.

Jammer will wind up being to Rico as Hooper is to Narville. Rico and Narville will wind up playing the roles of the Devil and Angel sitting on Sevchenko's shoulders and Jammer and Hooper wind up being the sidekick to both of them.




MAWLR

It's 280 metres tall.

Like, seriously.

MAWLR stands for Mounted Artillery Walker/Long Range. Somewhat contrived, but it makes for a cool acronym. It's basically a walking battleship. Anyways, its primary weapon is the massive arc cannon we saw blow the Dauntless into smithereens. It also has dozens of missile batteries and auto-cannons place all over its exterior, as well as machine guns and mortars. Literally. This thing can attack in all directions with its armaments. It's slow, yes, but literally covered in guns. Such is Stahl's madness.

They're also pretty mobile. It's Killzone canon that these things are able to scale vertical surfaces. True story.





More returning guns. The shotgun gets an optical scope this time, which may not make a whole lot of sense at first, but trust me, it's a good thing. In Killzone 2, it didn't have a scope and you couldn't aim down the sights. You had to hip-fire. It was fine—I guess. I didn't like it. But it was especially useless on Elite difficulty, which eliminated onscreen crosshairs. Without that, using the shotgun was an exercise in frustration. Since you couldn't aim down the sights, it was effectively useless. This optical sight means the gun is still useful on Elite difficulty. Also, it seems to fire faster. I dunno. Whatever it is about the Killzone 3 version of the shotgun, it's a lot better than the previous game and, for once, I kinda like using a shotgun in a mainline Killzone game.

The flamethrower is identical. If you enjoyed it in the previous game, you'll like it here. It is what it is.




Sevchenko vs. The MAWLR