Part 7: Assault On Vigilant Base

• Chapter 5.2, with Blind Sally, nine-gear crow, and Jobbo_Fett
  
• Chapter 5.2, no commentary

We begin the second half of Chapter 5 right where we left off, with Rico’s Raiders making landfall at the Providence Bay harbor entrance to Vigilant Base.


True to form, Rico is the first one off the first Intruder and the tip of the spear for the assault.


However, the Helghast unveil a brand new weapon against the ISA remnant, the W.A.S.P. Multi-Missile Launcher.


With frankly devastating results.


A few volleys of W.A.S.P. fire basically halts the ISA push into Vigilant in its tracks, taking out a good number of Intruders and forcing the remainder to wave off until the landing zone is clear.


What few ISA troops made it ashore to Providence get caught in a shooting gallery, as the Helghast turn their anti-air bunkers on the advancing troops.




Rico quickly drills down to the root of the problem.


And in the meanwhile, we finally get to see what has turned this landing into a shitshow up close and personal.


From their elevated posts above the dock wall, the W.A.S.P. gunners have near impunity with which to frag the ISA troops.


As seen here.


And of course, we see Sev’s solution to this problem: get a W.A.S.P. of his own and turn the tables on the Helghast with it.


Which is basically what he does.

The interesting thing about the Providence Bay set piece is that it’s a twist on the press assault we’ve already seen across both Killzone 3 and Killzone 2, such as in Salamun Bridge and the highway out of Phyrrus City.

In this instance, we’re on overwatch duty providing support as our ISA regulars move up through the jetty. There are four principle targets you need to destroy in order to clear the way into Vigilant Base itself: two gun nests, an Overlord Dropship, and a hovertank. As you clear each one, the ISA troops will push up closer and closer to the blast doors at the end of the harbor.

Sticking to the high ground isn’t essential for this part of the chapter, but it will improve your chances of survival an awful lot compared to Rambo’ing out on ground level, even if you do have the W.A.S.P. at your disposal now. Of course, you’re softly encouraged by Guerrilla to stick to the overwatch posts by the general level design. There’s next to no cover on the ground for you to utilize effectively and ammo crates are few and far between, whereas up above you’re practically tripping over them.


But when that’s all done and dealt with, the way into Vigilant Base itself is clear and open and we get a brief moment of hammering the RICO REDEMPTIVE ARC button one more time.


As if it wasn’t readily apparent from their last few interactions, this sequence really hits home that Jammer has effectively become Rico’s Number Two and replacement Sev in the six months since Phyrrus Evac and now. While she doesn’t quite reach Garza or even Natko-levels of feeling like “part of the team,” we can at least see that Rico has taken her under his wing and actually helped her flourish as a soldier whereas under the regular ISA command she was just another replaceable cog, someone who Narville didn’t even hesitate to cut loose when saving her became tactically inviable.


Speaking of Narville, Rico orders the remaining Raiders to break off and go after the rest of Avenger Convoy who got captured by Stahl. While he might have been hesitant to go into this rescue mission, he’s all in now, and his rationale for it is surprisingly mature. The Raiders pitch a fit, but Rico stands by his order.

The Rico Redemption Train steams ever onward, and this is probably the only time that it doesn’t ring hollow… mostly because there’s no one around who will actively challenge Rico’s authority and his claiming of the moral high ground. Though this is, I will concede, one of the few times that Rico is unambiguously right in his choices and orders in Killzone.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.


Rico basically understands that storming Stahl Arms Deep South is a suicide mission, and he makes no bones about it. He orders everyone but Sev (and two ISA mooks whom we never see again) to head back and work on getting Narville’s men to safety, praising Jammer’s work one final time and giving her a parting pat on the shoulder like any good commander should.

Again, I think this is meant to show off how much Rico has grown as a person and a commander in the six months we’ve missed, but it still comes across as Guerrilla desperately trying to reel his characterization back in from “murderous, hair-trigger psychopath” and somewhat wildly overcorrecting to the point where just having him act like a normal human being all of the sudden comes across as incredibly jarring.


Anyway, we come at long last to the final stretch of Chapter 5, Vigilant Base itself. That little tunnel the cutscene took place in is effectively your last rest area for the chapter. There’s a weapons rack stocked with W.A.S.P.s there for the taking and an ammo crate to refill your stocks with because the push up the mountainside is going to be a hard one.


Over all, for this stretch, I’m reminding of the runup to the catapult base in Chapter 10 of Killzone 1. There’s a similar aesthetic/gameplay flow to this section, and I think that was done intentionally on Guerrilla’s part.


At the top of the hill is the actual base of Vigilant Base. Clearing out this building will clear the chapter and allow us to move on to Stahl Arms Deep South and our rendezvous with the beginning of Killzone 3 at long last.


With the landing platform for the cablecar to SADS clear, Sev and Rico take up flanking positions, because, well…




We’ve got company.


A pair of Helgoons from Stahl Arms Deep South itself arrive to inspect what the unholy fuck has just happened down here at Vigilant and why everyone’s suddenly gone very quiet.


Of course, while these guys may be part of Stahl’s elite private military, that doesn’t mean they’re not idiots, so Sev and Rico get the jump on them and cave their naturally irradiated faces in with some brutal efficiency.


God DAMN


Yep, now THERE’S the Rico I remember.


And of course Rico gets a sassy one-liner that our poor dead Helgoons will never hear on account of them both being dead.


Just then, the operator at Vigilant calls in to the two dead Helghast mooks over the radio, and… wait… “Argus 2”?

Hmmm.

Where have we heard that squad name before?


Sev, being the smart cookie he is, picks up one of the dead Helghast’s masks and does his best Helghan accent impression in order to fool Vigilant Dispatch into thinking he’s one of the recently deceased members of Argus 2 and giving a surprisingly convincing Han Solo-esque “Everything’s fine here. How are you guys?” report.


Though he takes things a step further than just talking like a Helghast grunt, much to Rico’s shock and horror. We hear some clothing rustling sounds in the background, and by the time we cut back to Sev—


Bam. This is it. We have solved the mystery of “how did we get here?” When we catch up with Sev and Rico incognito as Argus 2, we will, in no uncertain terms, be revisiting the intro to Killzone 3 beat-for-beat.

But that’s all still to come.



And now, a note on the W.A.S.P.:


StA-X3 W.A.S.P. Launcher

The back half of Icy Incursion introduces us to the second of the game’s four heavy weapons: the WASP. We’ve already seen the Scylla chaingun get some judicious use up till now, and the Boltgun from Killzone 2 will be making its return in the near future. The fourth and final heavy weapon will be getting a starring role in the next chapter, and we’ve already glimpsed it earlier in-game, as a matter of fact, but let’s not dwell that right now.


The StA-X3 W.A.S.P. Launcher is a rocket-propelled autonomous target-seeking rocket launcher/mortar weapon. The WASP has two fire modes to it. The primary fire mode launches a burst of missiles at a soft locked target, using roughly half a clip per shot. The secondary fire mode is the mortar mode, which allows you to hard lock on to a single target—usually a vehicle—and launch a single, devastatingly powerful shot at it that usually scores a one-hit-kill if it lands.




The WASP has two PSN Trophies attached to it, both of which can be earned here in the Vigilant Base segment of Icy Incursion. Killing a single Helghast soldier with the secondary fire mortar mode nets the trophy “Excessive Force,” and killing 5 Helghast with the mortar shot earns the trophy “Spread the Love.”


The acronym “W.A.S.P.” has no official explanation. No one knows what WASP stands for. We come up with our own explanation for it in the video, but feel free to come up with one on your own. Whoever comes up with the best WASP acronym will receive a forums upgrade of their choosing paid for by guest commentator Jobbo_Fett.

The X in the numerical designation of the StA-X3 denotes an experimental Stahl Arms weapon, as we’ve seen with the Jetpack already. I don’t exactly know what it says that for an “experimental” weapon, they’re just absolutely littered across Vigilant, but there you go.

Actually, I kind of do. You don’t really see any X weaponry outside of the immediate vicinity of Stahl Arms Deep South, so it makes a kind of sense that Stahl is basically hoarding all his best/prototype weaponry for himself and his private army to use first before handing them over to the rest of the Helghast military. And of course it would be right up Jorhan Stahl’s alley to be a dick and foist the unstable prototypes that would be prone to horrific malfunctions on his own men so he could laugh as they killed themselves with them.

Because Stahl is a prick.

The thread was kind enough to provide us with the following guesses as to what Guerrilla actually intended the acronym W.A.S.P. to stand for:


Thank you, goons!



Concept work of Providence Harbor



The W.A.S.P. Launcher