Part 8: Stahl Arms Infiltration
Here it is, the moment where we catch up with opening chapters! Now we get to move forward with the resolution of the plot—
Second verse, same as the first. This first part of the chapter is all a revisiting of the first part of the game. Thankfully, we only have to go back through the first few minutes. When it comes time to hit the firing range, that gets skipped over in favour of some new content:
Though not an admiral or a general, Captain Narville is a pretty high-value hostage. Even though he's about to be executed, you'd think they might allow him a little dignity and let him walk to his death, but not so. A lot of hatred here from the Helghast, but these are also members of Stahl's person army and not the rank and file Helghast. Honestly, I do wonder if Narville would've been treated better had he been in Orlock's custody. After all, Orlock has an interest in respecting the Vektan capitulation.
Anyways, there's not a lot of new stuff going on in this level. For the most part, this is a pretty simple shooting gallery where we walk from killzone to killzone to get to the next plot video. Stahl Arms has a lot of machinery in the background, catwalks, glass, crates, and other miscellaneous stuff, but none of it really stands out other than to point out that, yes, Stahl owns a lot of big, fancy factories.
We eventually get to the body scanners, which I find to be one of the most unintentionally hilarious moments of the whole Killzone universe. All this rhetoric about the Helghast being different from human beings, having evolved to be bigger, stronger, more resilient, having become an entirely new species—and nothing out of the ordinary pops up when these Helgoons point their scanners at a bunch of humans. No alarms, no emergencies—heck, there's not even a throwaway "hmm, their readouts look a bit strange". For all the surface differences between Helghast and Vektans (i.e., Helghast have less hair, paler skin, and denser muscle and bone tissue), they're all just human after all.
(Note: there are three scanners because one of them is needed for Natko in the co-op campaign!
)
Moving right along, we find ourselves back in the execution chamber where Sev originally revealed himself to Malcolm McDowell. This bit we've seen before, but I always enjoy watching Stahl chew the scenery in this game.
Posted this in the Killzone 2 thread eight or so months ago, and I still love it.
The speech is expanded here and we get to see a bit more of Stahl attempting to rally the nation to his support. He looks like such a salesman in this screencap, I love it. I feel like he's about to start selling me the Slap-Chop.
The man'll be Autarch for sure!
Anyways, it's all the little flourishes of this speech that really make it brilliant: the ever modest Stahl downplaying his oratory skills, the cuts to soldiers huddling around a monitor in a factory or around a PSP in the cold just to hear their leaders speak—
—the Helghan Senate watching the events unfold—
—and Admiral Orlock having a rage anuerysm.
Back in the facility, Narville prepares to die—
—Sev reveals his identity to a hilariously flabbergasted Stahl—
—and opens fire, officially, finally, at the very last, bringing us to the moment in the first chapter where we cut away to "SIX MONTHS EARLIER".
What we didn't see back then was that Stahl immediately started throwing his Helgoons in front of the Irradiated Petrusite Cannon's energy to act as human shields.
Eh, this is basically what they're being paid for.
Anyways, this leads to Orlock getting upset and some people on the internet attempting to make a meme out of him:
This is Helghan (Outrage!! Sparta Remix)
Admiral Orlock's "This OutRage!" Remix
I don't know why this didn't catch on.
Anyways, Rico pulls of his helmet and Narville is understandably shocked, doing the whole "You're alive?!" double-take. Rico's response is a suitably passive-aggressive "yeah, no thanks to you", and here we get a wonderful little character building moment—
Narville is surprised.
I mean, yes, he's surprised that Rico is alive in the first place, but he's taken aback by Rico's comment as well. We've been with Rico for four games now, this is not a surprise to us. We know that Rico is petty, vindictive, and has a fundamental distrust for his superiors (not counting Jan Templar). Of course he's got a chip on his shoulder for Narville and of course he's going to back-talk his commanding officer about it. Heck, he had to be convinced into going to rescue Narville; he was happy to leave the man to die. Narville, though, for all his shitting on Rico and threats of court martial at the beginning of the game, is glad Rico is alive.
Throughout Killzone 2, Narville was portrayed as a shallow R Lee Ermey knock-off. He was abrupt, no-nonsense, and quick to get in soldiers' faces when shit went bad and they needed a kick in the ass. Thanks to extended Killzone lore, we know that Naville is, to some extent, compensating. Just as a reminder: he was away on Earth on secondment during the Vektan invasion. The news of his homeworld being attacked and his being unable to be there really hit him hard. The Helghan invasion and his assignment to Avenger Convoy were in part his way of redeeming what he saw as a failure of himself to project his home. To review, the ISA had three main objectives with this invasion:
- Remove the Helghast as a military threat.
- Capture Autarch Visari for a public trial.
- Establish a more easily controlled regime on Helghan that avoids the oppression that sparked this conflict.
Now, by the time Visari had set off the nuke in the last game, there wasn't really much hope of removing the Helghast as a military threat. That said, Narville's Avenger Convoy was tasked with capturing Visari and were within striking distance. In the wake of Red Dust, the ISA could have still potentially put Visari on trial and in doing so seen a more Vekta-sympathetic regime installed.
Instead, Rico does what Rico does and Visari winds up dead.
Now the ISA have failed all three primary objectives. We're back at the beginning of Killzone 3 and Narville isn't as confident as he once was. He's pissed off at Rico and can still do a mean impression of R Lee Ermey to let Velasquez know his place, but as far as his confidence in the mission? It's, well, kinda gone. The first section of the game is Narville trying desperately to pick up the pieces, to salvage what's left of the mission. For Narville, who has always been about protecting his home and his people, that means saving as many ISA soldiers as he can and getting them off Helghan as quickly as possible. This goes back to our conflict of leadership. General Mandaloniz's ships are crumbling before Orlock's navy and he's put a strict deadline on Narville's evacuation. Rico doesn't know this and would rather find shelter and hole up—a wise strategic move in the moment, but it means being left behind on a hostile planet surrounded by hostile soldiers. Narville is left with no choice and pushes the ISA straight through to the cruiser, taking damage to his convoy and losing soldiers. Thanks to his deadline, it even means leaving behind soldiers like Jammer and Rico. It's nothing personal. Narville wants to be able to save everyone, but his commanding officers are screaming in his ear warning him that they're going to leave him and ALL of his people behind.
So Narville does what Narville does and triages the situation.
He tries to save as many soldiers as he can. This means leaving behind Rico and Jammer. Unfortunately, Mandaloniz's forces are unable to hold out, and despite Narville's best efforts, Avenger Convoy and the remnants of the ISA invasion force are largely left behind. Not only has Narville failed to save Rico and the remnants, but he's failed to save the convoy that managed to keep up with him. This has go to be devastating for the man, but how could he know?
The intervening months are of Narville hiding his people in the jungle, doing what he can to keep their spirits up and to keep them alive, waiting for good news. That window of opportunity arrives when the ISA high command informs Narville that they're surrendering. Not an ideal solution, but as prisoners of war they can be negotiated and exchanged as hostages back to Vekta. Now, if the regular Helghan Army had managed to find the ISA, this might have been what went down. Orlock, for all his faults, is a man who believes in the rules of engagement. Unfortunately for Narville, it's Stahl's private army that finds them.
Which brings us back to this moment. Narville's pretty beat up, had his confidence shaken, but every decision he has made up to this point has been to protect his people. It hasn't gone well and those decisions have certainly been weighting on him. He's on his knees awaiting death and judgement when Rico, a literal ghost of his past, someone he effectively condemned to death, shows up. This is a glimmer of hope for Narville. This is proof that not all of his orders have destroyed his people. So when Rico responds the way he does, Narville is genuinely taken aback. He damned a few in order to try and save the many and presumably he thought Rico would recognize that.
Anyways, we shoot a few more of Stahl's Helgoons and get a cutscene where someone finally gets around to telling Rico about the ISA's white flag. Sev is correct from a certain point of view, it doesn't seem like the Helghast are going to honour the surrender, but it's clear he doesn't realize that they've been captured by and are currently fighting Stahl's private soldiers. Again, if Orlock's forces had been able to capture them, this whole situation might have played out very differently. Of course, though, Narville, Sev, and Rico can't know about the schism in the Helghan Senate, about the rivalry between Orlock and Stahl. For all intents and purposes, the Helghast at large really are getting ready to reignite the war.
We also get a moment where Narville and Rico's competing views on the matter are laid bare: Rico mistrusts anything to do with the Helghast and would rather fight to the death, whereas Narville was willing to do what it took to save as many of his soldiers as possible. This argument is yet to reach its crescendo, but Sev is going to have more and more to say about it, caught in the middle as he is.
Quick break to shoot some badguys and we find ourselves at he next plot dump.
If you hadn't realized that Stahl and his creepy irradiated petrusite experiments are bad, we are treated to a brief moment of Sev and Rico grimacing as they see what Stahl does to his prisoners.
Then Sev and Rico find Stahl's deep, dark secret: invasion plans for Earth!
(Note: the Earth hologram has been visible the whole time in gameplay. If you go back through the video, you can plainly see it. Heck, you briefly see it right before the cutscene.)
(Note 2: goodness, Sev's stupid face. The guy makes the stupidest expressions sometimes. There are Killzone 3 memes. Did you know there are Killzone 3 memes? There are. I like the ones that make fun of Sev's gormless expressions:)
The simulation starts and—
uh
okay
Considering all the pains the Helghast went through to get a single nuke from the ISA, I'm not sure if the regular army has access to this much ordinance of this scope. I'm guessing this is all from Stahl's personal stash of war crime weapons. I'm going to go even further and guess that this is the projected yield from highly experimental petrusite and irradiated petrusite weapons. According to this simulation, Stahl has developed a cruiser and armament capable of eliminating every major city on the planet. Hard to say how well Earth's defenses could handle such an assault since we know so little about Earth, but if Stahl has more than one of the cruisers and is able to warp in before Earth can muster its forces then they are well and truly doomed.
Fast foward to Stahl returning to that same hologram room. His speech has been ruined, his big plan a wash, all thanks to Sevchenko and Velasquez, so he is now desperately trying to advance his invasion plans for Earth. Stahl figures that if he can follow through with his plans, he can still win over the Helghan Senate and become Autarch, his slip-up on national television forgiven.
Unfortunately, he's interrupted by a call from Orlock. As Visari's image looms over Orlock's shoulders, we can already begin to guess the reason: in the wake of Stahl's embarrassment, the Senate has moved to vote Orlock in as the new Autarch.
Stahl is forced to concede to Orlock.
At least publicly.
But the gears are turning in that twisted head of his.
The invasion plans hover before his eyes.
You just know Stahl isn't going to take this lying down.
More shooting, some jetpacks, and an ATAC later, the tension between Narville and Velasquez boils over again. Sev is once again caught in between, but his reaction is different this time. In the first third of the game, Sev leaned towards Narville. Sure, Sev wasn't entirely on board with Narville's plan, but he understood that he didn't have a complete picture of the battlefield. He trusted Narville's orders and he reminded Rico to fall in line. The reaction makes sense. Rico had recently disobeyed orders by killing Visari, making him a martyr in the process, ensuring that the Helghast would be inspired to fight even harder, and in doing so, effectively dooming the remaining ISA. The sensible choice was to shut up and stick to the evacuation plans.
Since then, Sev has seen Helghast soldiers kill ISA POWs with a gun that fires radiation and causes the human body to disintegrate explosively. He has seen heavily armoured Helghast soldiers stab fleeing ISA soldiers with toxin-laced blades. He has witnessed Helghast forces descend upon the ISA and butcher them—AFTER the ISA had surrendered. He saw that the Helghast planned to go further and execute Narville on national Helghan television. He then found plans for a Helghast invasion of Earth. As far as Sev is concerned, the Helghast aren't to be trusted and the remaining ISA have been forced into a situation where they basically have to fight to the last person because there's really no chance they're getting off the planet alive. (That all the horrible things Sev has witnessed has been at the hands of Stahl and his private army are besides the point—as far as Sev can tell, this has been the fault of the Helghast at large).
Thus, where Sev once used his sway to get Rico to shut up and follow orders, he's now going to use it to get Naville to gather his forces for a last stand.
I really like that Sev is not a silent protagonist. This happens a lot in FPS games and it would have been easy for Guerrilla to make Sev just another voiceless grunt. Instead, he has a personality of his own, with conflicted ideas that change over the course of the game and help affect the narrative.
Regardless, it's hard not to feel a little frustrated when Jammer flies in bad mouthing Narville.
Rico has clearly been fostering a distrust of command amongst his Raiders. Still, it makes sense from a narrative perspective to provide balance. If Narville has Hooper as his trusted right-hand person, it makes sense that Rico would have his own second in the form of Jammer.
One short (forgettable) action sequence later—
Helghast forces are gathering. Again, our heroes do not know that these are a rogue Helghast faction acting under Stahl's orders.
All that they know is that a scout ship has been launched in preparation of an invasion.
crow and I are joined for this video by Cirvante, or Cirv, also known on the forums as Mersenne. Cirv is, like nine-gear crow, yet another weird anime plane game enthusiast. He hasn’t done any LPs himself, but he has appeared as a guest commentator on a number of LPs, including crow's weird anime plane game, crow's other weird plane game, in CJacobs’ Spec Ops: The Line FUBAR Mode bonus stream, and near the tail end of Dash Rendar’s Emily Is Away stream LP for the Casual Games thread, among other various things.
StA-5X Irradiated Petrusite Cannon
Utilizes irradiated petrusite, stored as a plasma-like substance in canisters and fire as a concentrated stream of gas. Will cause lightly armoured opponents to explode violently with a blast or two. Can be charged to release a more powerful stream of gas. Due to the properties of irradiated petrusite, one only needs to fire it in the vicinity of a target—the gas is attracted to the weak bioelectrics of living organisms and will gravitate towards them.
In cutscenes, it is seen fired as a constant stream (imaging the Gluon Gun from Half-Life). In-game, it is fired in a blast.
Overheats quickly. Ammo is not traditionally found in the game environment, requiring players to either pick up a new petrusite Cannon or to use an ammo box which inexplicably contains every possible type of ammunition ever made forever. Truly, the ammo boxes are Killzone 3's greatest inventions.
This gun is great! There are a lot of waves of enemies in this section of the game that can easily bog you down. The petrusite Cannon is meant to eliminate that problem and get you through Stahl Arms quickly and efficiently. Like other specialized weapons, the Arc Cannon of Killzone 2 and the Jetpack, its appearances in the game are limited, so have fun with it while you can.
Ice Saw
A big militarized snowmobile. Has a minigun and lock-on missiles stored in pods of five. The Helghast certainly don't mess about when it comes to transportation.
Sev and Rico looking out at the space elevators and Stahl's fleet. I'm wondering where this irradiated petrusite crater came from. Clearly related to the New Sun's crash (
Templar ), but were the space elevators always there or did Stahl have them set up after the fact around the crater to hide their presence from, say, Orlock?
MAWLR assembly line concept art. Stahl's mass producing these things.
Concept art of the scientists in Stahl Arms.
Bonus Killzone memery:
