Part 9: Scrapyard Shortcut
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We are joined today for this chapter of Killzone 3 by Lazyfire and Kadorhal, who was gracious enough to step in at the last minute to cover for CJacobs, who in turn had volunteered to cover for Blind Sally after he was unable to record that day, but was also unable to record that day as well.
Lazyfire is currently LPing Call of Duty: Black Ops III, and is also currently along for "DoctorStrangelove's Wild Ride" aka the Doom (2016), Ultra-Violence Mode LP alongside Handuar and DA PLANET EARF.
Kadorhal, meanwhile, is a frequent guest on Crow's Ace Combat LPs, in addition to LPing Postal 2: Paradise Lost. He's also a recurring guest on Lazyfire's multiplayer safari videos for his various FPS LPs, and is currently gearing up to LP Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. and H.A.W.X. 2 as companion pieces to Ace Combat.
So after our insane snowmobile jump from the south pole to the desert outside of Phyrrus City, we catch up with our heroes overlooking the wasteland between the scrapyard and the space elevator facility.
The Avenger Convoy remnant has regrouped and is making its push to the space elevator. As you may remember from last time, they have become the last line of defense against Stahl basically murdering every last person on Earth with his irradiated petrusite weaponry.
You can also see in this screenshot that the space elevator (on the left) is ringed with Arc Towers as an anti-personnel barrier. And the Arc Towers, as you’ll remember, were pretty big show stoppers when they showed up back in Killzone 2. So…
Sev quickly realizes things are going south when he catches a whiff of Ozone (O3, for our chemists in the audience), which, I have to say, has a particularly sharp smell to it and one that you don’t easily forget if you’ve ever smelled it before.
Again, this shows just how sharp and worldly Sev is that he can readily identify Ozone—a substance not a lot of people encounter in their daily lives, all told—by smell alone. While Rico continues to be a absolute brick by claiming he doesn’t smell anything.
As the Arc Towers lining the perimeter of the space elevator fire up, their normal blue charge turns green in the irradiated desert, meaning…
Yep. Avenger Convoy has just wandered into a giant irradiated petrusite Arc Tower death trap.
Because remember, when you think of Death Traps, think Stahl Arms, your #1 name in Death Traps!
Narville, having firsthand experience with all the wonderful horrors of IP weaponry thanks to Stahl’s little PR shitshow last chapter, is acutely aware of the danger he’s just walked his men into blindly and commands everyone to stop still.
Now, you will recall from Chapter 2, Evacuation Orders, that loose irradiated petrusite energy is affected by movement, basically making it the T-Rex from Jurassic Park. If you stand really still and don’t flail about like a panicked dumbass, it can’t hurt you. If you DO start panicking, well... We're gonna see what happens in short order.
Really, this is just an excuse to build tension for our heroes.
As Avenger Convoy halts its progress, the wisps of irradiated petrusite energy sweep over the no man’s land ominously.
It’s a stalemate now. Nobody is going anywhere unless somebody can find a way to shut the perimeter towers off… or unless somebody panics.
And right on cue, somebody panics. Despite literally everyone around him yelling at him to keep calm, this poor faceless ISA grunt freaks the fuck out as the energy wisps start twining towards him like ghostly fingers of death.
And he instantly wins the Biggest Goddamn Moron In This Game (…So Far) Award by leaping off the deck of the Intruder in a screaming fit…
And promptly exploding, taking out not just himself, but the Intruder, and everyone else on and in it, and several people around it for good measure.
Rico radios Jammer for an update, and she relays to him the grim news. They are turbofucked.
For his part, Rico is utterly despondent at the news, believing that literally every last ISA soldier on Helghan outside of him and Sev are now functionally dead
So what is Narville’s plan? Well, he’s going to send Killzone 3 MVP Cpl. Hooper in to slowly walk across no man’s land to the closest Arc Tower and try to manually hack it into shutting down the perimeter fence so that Avenger can press forward… and hopefully not explode in the process.
It’s a torturously slow, perilous exploit with a high probability of failure. Hooper would be better off if Narville had told him to go walk through a literal minefield instead.
But because Rico thinks he’s always right and Narville’s always wrong, he immediately takes issue with this plan, believing (and rightly so, surprisingly), that in the time it’s gonna take for Hooper to play a game of “Don’t Wake Daddy” with the perimeter towers and hotwire them into shutting down, Stahl’s fleet will have warped to Earth and we’ll have a right proper terracide on our hands.
It’s at this moment that the back half of Scrapyard Shortcut comes lumbering into frame: the mobile factory.
And suddenly Rico has a very VERY dumb plan.
Rather than take his suggestion to Narville, Rico merely end-runs him by contacting Jammer directly and orders her to grab a buggy and meet them at the edge of the scrapyard.
They’re gonna hijack the factory.
So it’s at this point that we finally get to gameplay. We start out on the overlook above the perimeter fence. You can see the ring of irradiated petrusite energy stringing from Arc Tower to Arc Tower and the main space elevator facility in the center of it.
We also start out this mission with the triple-barrel magnum pistol as our default weapon. Now, there’s a large selection of guns to choose from for this stage, but you would be remiss if you didn’t make a direct beeline for (and never look back from)…
The boltgun.
Yes, making its triumphant return from Suljeva Village from Killzone 2, the mighty boltgun is back for this level and the next one. The boltgun basically trivialized Scrapyard Shortcut. There is one present on nearly every gun rack across both halves of the level, it’s a one-shot instakill if it connects, and even if you miss, it’s still liable to score a rebound kill when its projectile explodes. It’s shockingly accurate both as a hip-fire weapon, and aiming down sights with it, and with a 30 round total ammo capacity and 10 rounds per coil, you have more than enough bolts to clean up a full wave of Helgoons before you have to go back and reload. And by the way, standard ammo refill rules also apply here, which means that you will be practically climbing over ammo crates to get to the end of the level so you will basically never run out of shots for this thing.
And given the hilarious physics fuckery that the boltgun summons into being, I am very happy that Guerrilla decided to be incredibly generous with its special weaponry gameplay for Killzone 3 because if it were up to me, I would main this thing through the entire game.
In addition to living Helghast enemies, drones also appear in this level. Though these guys are more in line with the Killzone 1 style of “utterly useless” drones as opposed to the Killzone 2 and 3 style of “pants-shitting mechanical horrors” that are the ATACs.
They go down in one shot from the boltgun too.
RIP General Lente, the most useless Helghast.
They also tend to cartwheel off in hilarious KILLZONE PHYSICS death spirals. In this case, a drone I killed actually caused a bit of environment damage by destroying a bridge over a chasm that you actually have to cross over. It’s not an end-all case as you see in the video, it just makes your pathing through this part a slight bit more involved.
At the end of the first part of the level, Sev and Rico encounter the first big set piece of Scarpyard Shortcut, the magnetic crane.
Sev quickly spots a roadblock in their path.
Their way forward is behind that big giant gate.
That said, Sev also quickly finds a solution. He intends to Looney Toons his way through the barrier by using the crane as a wrecking ball. All told, not the dumbest plan ever.
And luckily for Sev, the crane just so happens to be holding up a Helghast tank as the perfect wrecking ball itself in a completely dangerous and citation worthy manner for a crane that is currently not in active operation.
Helghan OSHA is gonna have some really harsh words for whoever owns this scrapyard when they find out about this.
However, the crane tower itself is defended by snipers, who quickly draw a bead on Sev who’s just sticking his head out there in the open flapping his gums while Rico does the smart thing and sticks to cover.
Sev doesn’t notice the big giant red laser sight on his forehead, but Rico sure as shit does.
And he pulls Sev’s dumb ass back to safety in the nick of time.
So there are two parts to this set piece, the first of which is the assault phase. We need to get up to that platform to operate the crane. But that platform is crawling with snipers and a squad of Helgoons. Since the troopers are infinitely spawning, priority 1 is to take out all the snipers to secure a path up to the crane.
Once that’s done, things shift from assault to the tower defense phase. As the crane slowly sputters back to life, you then need to hold the platform you’ve just taken from several waves of Helghast who will try to press their way up the tower and onto the platform to take it back. Several waves of Overlord dropships will also drop troopers into the arena, and admittedly having the Scylla chaingun here is probably preferable over the boltgun—due to the Scylla’s heavier sustained firepower—but it’s still easily manageable with just the boltgun itself.
With the Helgoons all cleared out, Rico finally gets the crane working and it’s suddenly Miley Cyrus time.
I CAME IN LIKE A WREEEEEEECKING BAAAAAAAAAALL!!~~
From there it’s a quick run up to the end of the first half of the level. When you get there, you’re greeted by another old sight from Killzone 2, the Helghast Heavy!
You remember the Heavy, right? These guys stomped around in giant suits of armor wielding Scylla chain guns and the only way to beat them was to rope-a-dope them so you could destroy the power cells on their back and kill them.
They’re also pumped full a cocktail of psychotropic pain-dampening and aggression-heightening super drugs. Remember that part?
Good times.
Once again, the boltgun makes short work of the Heavy. The explosive bolts will stun him long enough for you to get around back and destroy his weak spot. Really, the Heavy in this part isn’t that big of a threat. The real difficulty comes from the regular troopers who are supporting him, who will almost certainly catch you in a crossfire if you’re not paying them as much mind as you are the Heavy himself.
But with the Heavy down, it’s on to the second half of Scarpyard Shortcut, the Mobile Factory!
Sev and Rico go through a door at the end of the stage and basically wind up falling down a giant hill of sharp, rusty debris on their backs. It’s all incredibly horrifying if you stop and think about it for more than a second… like the game doesn’t.
To make matters worse, their slide dumps them right down in front of the Factory, which comes looming at them out of the dust like something out of Shadow of the Colossus.
Luckily though, Jammer and an unnamed ISA stooge arrive in the nick of time to scoop up Sev and Rico before the Factory pulverizes them with its various hilariously deadly rending apparatuses.
We also get treated to some Fast & Furious-by way of-Galaxy Quest shenanigans, as Jammer is forced to take the buggy under the Factory to avoid being crushed and just barely misses several of its overwrought impelling devices.
They emerge out the other side unscathed, but Pvt. Shia LaBeouf has clearly had it with Jammer’s automotive bullshit. Like, this guy serves no functional purpose other than to be a screaming wussy. Why did she bring him along, anyway?
Sev and Rico have Jammer swing the buggy around so that they can hop onto the Factory’s caterpillar tread and hopefully climb up into it before it crushes them to death.
Of course, they make it on without incident and it’s time for the back half of this level.
I mention very late in the video that this part is very reminiscent of the finale of the second level of Halo 2 where you have to board and hijack the Scarab and kill all the Covenant troops on it in order to do so, only greatly expanded in this iteration.
Your primary objective is to fight your way through the Factory’s innards and get up onto its top deck, ultimately pressing into its wheelhouse and capturing it. This part of the stage probably takes about as much time on its own as the actual scrapyard part did. It is actually a deceptively big set piece.
Along the way comes some real opportunities for the boltgun to shine, and by that I mean break Killzone 3’s physics engine to the point of Lovecraftian madness. That black spaghetti strand in the center of the screen? That’s a Helghast… or what’s left of one.
Yes, the combination of railings, the sheer concussive force of the boltgun, the instakill pit beneath it, and Killzone 3’s vaunted ragdoll-scripted hybrid death animation engine lead to some truly magical happenings throughout the Factory stage of Scrapyard Shortcut.
The game just cannot process the sheer number of things happening to some Helgoons at the moment of their deaths so it just has a complete breakdown resulting in some things that generally only happen in EA games because I’m convinced that EA intentionally programs their games to glitch the fuck out when you look at them the wrong way.
The jetpack troopers make a return for this level, marking three straight levels they’ve been in now.
What really makes the Factory a chore to clear, however, are the rocket troopers. You’ll get like two or three of them mixed in with any given wave of Helgoons and while your attention is diverted taking out the grunts or the jetpack troops, these guys will blow your face off with a rocket and send you back the last checkpoint you cleared.
It gets to the point where I give in and grab a Scylla because the final push to the wheelhouse is kind of unfeasible with the boltgun alone.
Mounted at either side of the bow of the Factory are a pair of anti-air Scylla Cerberus AA guns which the Helghast turn on you as a last ditch effort to keep you from breaching the wheelhouse. The handheld Scylla chaingun makes these things fairly trivial though, but as is the recurrent theme of this level, it’s not really the heavy pieces that kill you, it’s the grunts that overwhelm you while you’re working to take the “boss” down.
Finally though, Sev and Rico reach the wheelhouse and breach the door with a detonation charge.
There’s one last trio of Helgoons waiting for you in the control room itself, but the Scylla makes short work of them.
With the Factory under their control, Sev and Rico quickly plop themselves behind the controls and try to bring the beast to heel.
The Factory begins to turn, ever so slowly, as Sev wrenches it towards the Arc Tower grid.
Meanwhile, oh hey, Hooper actually succeeded and making it to the tower. He’s got the panel off and is well under way towards shutting the perimeter grid down.
…Kind of makes Sev and Rico taking over the Factory seem like a big wasted moot point now, doesn’t it? Given how in the time it took them to fight their way through the scrapyard, onto the Factory, and then into the wheelhouse, Hooper has already basically got this thing all sewed up and without all the pointless violence and death.
As he works, the ISA troops eye him nervously, all of them remaining tensely still, knowing that if they move even slightly that it’s all over for them.
Hooper too is moving meticulously slowly.
It’s at this point that Narville spots the Factory roaring over the hill towards them.
While Sev and Rico still struggle to keep it on course.
And it’s at around this point that I realize that Jason Narville is basically the unluckiest son of a bitch in the entire Killzone franchise. It must be such an utterly horrifying thing to have your right hand man come within inches of saving everyone, including yourself, with exemplary deft skill, precision and know-how, only to have the two jackass Duke Boys come charging over the hill in a giant dump truck blaring the Battle Hymn of the Republic and shooting off roman candles from their asses to ruin everything with some good old fashioned blunt violence.
I really, honestly, like Sev as a character and a protagonist, but there are times when I get incredibly exasperated with him and find myself firmly on #TeamNarville, mainly because Sev has a worrying tendency to get a little bit too drunk for his own good on the Rico Sauce every once and a while.
Though true to form as a toned-down R. Lee Ermy expy, Narville is quick to snap everyone to attention and quash anyone’s notions about running away in a panic. There may be a giant Mad Max hell factory careening towards them with little sign of it actually making the turn to not crush them all to death, but by god they will all to a man stand there are not move a fucking inch as it passes, GODAMMIT!
And thankfully, Sev manages to make the turn with mere feet to spare between the crawler and Avenger Convoy.
It strikes the Arc Tower head on, knocking it off its base and disrupting the connection to the perimeter network, taking the whole thing offline.
And the peasants rejoiced.
And Narville, to his credit, is proud and relieved by Rico’s insane gambit actually working, while not glossing over the fact that yeah, Rico is still an incredibly dangerous lunatic.
But in taking out the Arc Tower, the Factory has suddenly decided it’s had enough, and begins to catastrophically explode.
Sev and Rico make a quick run for the deck as the wheelhouse is engulfed in flames behind them.
And they’re scooped up by Jammer, who commandeered an Intruder now that it’s safe to fly again.
[ACTION SHOT]
We’re also treated to some nice little post-danger sarcastic banter between Jammer and Sev. It’s a bit of a treat to see Sev being relatively lighthearted and funny for a change, and it’s something I kind of wished there was more of in the franchise. Killzone is often situationally funny, or structurally funny, it’s rarely overtly funny like it is here.
But that quickly falls by the wayside, because we’ve got to re-establish that Rico and Narville hate each other and disregard each other’s authority. Rico quickly falls back into his de facto command position, issuing orders to the Raiders to press forward to the space elevator.
You need to remember that functionally speaking, Rico has only been back to being second in command for maybe two hours, tops at this point. He is still in the headspace he has been in for the past 6 months of believing he is the highest ranking ISA soldier left on Helghan and that his word is law. He still has not adjusted to the fact that Narville is in command here again.
Which Narville quickly reminds him by countermanding his order.
But Rico just can’t leave well enough alone and pushes back against Narville, taking things a step too far.
Resulting in Narville going full R. Lee Ermy on his ass, chewing him out on the a private channel for undermining his authority out in the clear.
He basically takes a rhetorical sledgehammer to any lingering semblance of authority Rico has in his mind that he still possesses and shoves Rico’s well-documented string of failures and corpses and/or craters left in wakes back in his face as the exclamation point to shut him up completely.
Rico tries to fight back with the tried and tested “NO U!” but ultimately relents, either realizing its futile to continue arguing with Narville, or just being too consumed by frustrated rage to continue speaking.
Sev, for his part, tries to placate Rico, but it comes too late and too short. The damage is already done.
As Sev hops off the Intruder, Jammer and Rico are left alone together for the first time since they rescued Sev. She asks him what he’s thinking, and he responds thusly, ordering her to remain with the Intruder as a backup plan, which she happily agrees to. While Rico might be done publically undermining Narville for the moment, he’s gonna make sure he can at least covertly undermine him. And with Jammer being loyal to Rico over Narville, she will prioritize any order Rico gives her over any countermanding order that Narville might give her in reverse.
I said earlier in the thread that Killzone 3 is all about interlinking binary relationships. Sev and Rico. Rico and Narville. Sev and Narville. Narville and Hooper. Rico and Jammer. Stahl and Orlock. That’s (probably) the reason Natko was kicked into the shadow realm of co-op—he’s a third wheel, there’s no room for him in these binaries. He just gums up the works. And in rapid succession in this scene, we have seen three of these binaries play out with Rico as the focal point to each of them.
The core binary of this part of the game is the Rico-Narville conflict. Both men are equally right and equally wrong in their approach to how they plan to stop Stahl.
From Rico’s perspective, digging in and forming a defensive position at the base of the space elevator is pointless and time-wasting. Every second they spend stymied, Stahl gets one second closer to jumping to Earth and eradicating it. Rico believes, but doesn’t say out loud, that basically every last ISA soldier still on Helghan is basically a walking corpse. This is a suicide mission with only one path to victory, and even then “victory” will probably kill them. They need to rush at the space elevator in a sustained assault and throw every last man to the cause of getting up the that space station and getting aboard Stahl’s flagship to kill him and destroy the irradiated petrusite weapons intended for Earth.
Rico is, shockingly, focused on the big picture. Whatever happens here on Helghan, it’s all meaningless if Stahl makes it to Earth and kills everyone. Whoever has to die down here from the ISA, even if it’s Rico himself, if it stops Stahl, it’s worth it. This isn’t about being a hero, or getting a commendation or recognition, or even about redemption any more. This is about doing his fucking job and stopping Jorhan Stahl from becoming the greatest mass murderer in human history.
Now, Narville, on the other hand. This is where the whole “information disparity” thing that the series has been running with for a while boomerangs back around to bite Narville in the ass. True, he as seen what irradiated petrusite weaponry does to people, and he has a vague notion that Stahl is planning to attack Earth with it, but only Rico and Sev saw the hologram outlining the full extent of Stahl’s plan. He is ignorant to the true scale of the danger that Earth is under. Narville is still largely ignorant to the fact that the rules have all changed on him. Him being taken aback by Stahl’s barbarity at Deep South highlights that. He is still acting as a soldier while fighting against a monster… and the monster’s gonna win.
Right here and right now, Narville’s concern is for his troops’ wellbeing. Because he is a decent man and a good soldier. He assumes a defensive position because he doesn’t want to fling any more bodies at what could very well be a futile cause and just get everyone killed pointlessly. He wants to stop, assess his options, and then act in a swift, precise, and surgical manner. A good course of action… if he weren’t up against a ticking clock.
And so we have our character and situational dilemma going into the penultimate chapter. Stopping to prepare for the optimal strike is going to cost valuable time and could let Stahl get away scot-free, but blindly rushing in with sustained force is too big a gamble with too narrow a path to victory when the stakes are this high.
And Sev is caught in the middle. As always.
The clock is running down…