Part 9: Episode VIII: The Stereotype
Welcome back. We rejoin Captain Briggs as he stands in the company of a man he inadvertently caused the violent eye gouging of just minutes earlier. So, the first order of business is to, of course, steal shit from the newly blinded fellow.
In the upper right part of the room is a glass vial we can pilfer right from in front of Bugsy with him being none the wiser. Being blind and all, you see. It seems Briggs has worked up a thirst. At least, that's how I'll justify this...
In this same room is a functional sink which we can utilize to fill up the vial for...some yet to be seen reason. This is actually sort of a pain in the ass to do. Firstly, the button to activate the sink is about a pixel large. Just using the sink in general is asking for too much.
This automatically dumps us to the sink screen (which we can also check out by looking at the sink...though we cannot turn the sink on from said screen...) Intuitive game design, I know. The trouble here is that the sink is apparently one of those automatic jobs department stores seem to love and thus there is about a five second window to quickly rush the cursor to the top of the screen, scroll through the items to the newly collected vial (which is at the end of the clusterfuck collection) and then mouse that over the stream of tap water.
So basically, unless you know this is coming up, you've got fuck all chance of doing it right the first time. Failure results in having to scroll to the bottom right of the unusually large still portrait of the sink to find the exit button and starting from square one. I should mention that despite the fact the game is hard locked to 800x600 resolution...the developers never really figured it would be a great idea to standardize everything to display in that resolution; resulting in sinks requiring two seconds of scrolling to exit and other such dopey anomalies of oversized cutaway screens.
Anyhow, we have yet another jar of filthy water. Maybe this one we'll fill with a can of flat Pepsi and pass it off as whiskey?
There is one final item of note in this room. A grub. Why do we need a grub? This is Limbo of the Lost. We needed a worm out of a guy's ear earlier. We'll need it for something eventually. However, there is a catch...
"I hate creepy crawlies!"That's right. Benjamin Briggs won't bat an eyelash tearing multiple ribs out of a corpse, mucking about with severed gangrenous limbs, and shoving his hand down a decomposing head's eye socket. But fucking around with a bug...? Nope...not happening... That's icky!
EXCEPT YOU HAD A FUCKING WORM SLITHERING IN YOUR POCKET FOR HALF THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER, YOU DICK!
So, since grubs are apparently the line of grossness where Benny pussies out, we'll have to come back later after whatever hoops the gigantic prick requires to handle the thing presents itself. In the meantime, we can double back and check out what was in the pathway we skipped earlier.
I'd like everyone to take note of this room. Just, file its image in the back of your head for a bit.
Hello, Mr. Huge. Nice to meet you.
...
Why is "huge" capitalized again?
It seems the fearsome "wood gator" dwells in these depths. Granted, other than the sign and err...scattered wood...we'll just have to take the game's word on it. There no way to summon this wood sprinkled flesh eating beast at the moment.
The gate refuses to open due to...just refusing to open...
Also, our assortment of wood based items, including ones long obsolete from the previous chapter like the cook book and torch, fail to satisfy the particular woody tastes of the creature that devoured a man's eyes because some saw dust got in them. It seems the full sized wooden coffins are also not pleasing to its delicate palate.
Moving on...
Welp that was a waste of time... Let us see what is behind door #2...
You know...
...I'm getting a feeling...
...of déjà v-oh it's Arach (excuse me ARACH)...hanging from a spider web... Arach... Arachnid... A pun... Terrific...
Where is a fly swatter when you need it?
"Keeping eyes for CHRUNCHY CRAWLIES!!" "Crunchy Crawlies???"
And he skitters off into the nothingness to screen right not unlike characters in Mass Effect. Only just a bit more awkward...a bit.
Gee, I don't know, Ben. Maybe that bug your delicate soft hands couldn't bear to be soiled with earlier...? You are the worst protagonist ever, Briggs.
There is a door off to the right which is, surprisingly enough, locked. Upon returning to this room Arach will be chilling around next to it. I think if the main character himself causes backtracking for the player, you may have fucked up somewhere in puzzle design.
Several of the dullest corridors of the worst level in Painkiller (outside that godawful carnival stage) later...
I held out hope that vial early belonged to the ONE GUS. Sadly, someone mentioned it appeared to stay O'NEGUS like a bad Irish stereotype... Guess who we're about to meet...?
I suppose we can write off that near unintelligible dialogue as atypical Irish drunkenness...
This conversation is particularly noteworthy for being one of the very few which lacks both parties wobbling back and forth toward the camera like they'd had a handful of liquor shots then smoked a bowl of pot before standing up to talk.
Don't worry, that will change quickly enough.
Oh great... It's one of those drunks.
Pictured: The seldom talked about Jeb O'negus: Head of Character Design at Majestic Studio the night before he swallowed a bullet from a snub nose in a hotel bathroom.
Ah. We have something in common.
Long story short, giving this Irish jerk the bottle with his name on it results in...
We're not going to speculate how it ended up in Bill Nilmates' rectal cavity. That's just between you all undead folk...
In the European version of Limbo of the Lost, it now cuts to a sexy QTE sex scene between Benjamin Briggs and Lucas Kane set to...wait...I'm mixing up games again...
Ben moseys on in to the curio shop...
"Hey, didn't we already have a character wearing glasses...?"
"What?! Who?!"
"The Keeper bloke at the beginning of the chapter? I think he was sporting a pair."
"What...? Fuck! I already rendered that cutscene!"
"Well, want me to remove the glasses on Gus?"
"No! We can't do that. They'll know it's Nilmates' model without the zombie textures. Umm... Let me think..."
"..."
*snaps fingers* "I've got it!"
"Yeah?"
"Let's put TWO pairs of the glasses on him!"
"..."
"..."
"Brilliant!"
I'm just going to go ahead and continue to assume he is indeed drunk.
This could still pass for a drunken booze euphemism.
"An empty bottle... Now that be a sad thing indeed."
Which is why it was lodged in some random coffin and later embedded in a zombie's backside...? Very professional.
Maybe it's just me but this portrait of Ben is just downright disturbing for reasons I cannot put my finger on.
It's in a broom closet in the back of a 7/11 in Wentworth, New Hampshire.
If we're talking "fresh" in the cheeky/asshole slang meaning of the word, then Briggs' is as fresh as they come.
There is a cutscene that is ludicrously poorly rendered and runs at about 12 FPS despite just scanning past a couple rows of barely animated, stationary bottles.
...says the man who lost his soul half a mile from here in essentially a fancy trash bin.
...says the man who was also locked behind a gate guarded by hellhounds up until twenty minutes ago.
"Beggin your pardon sir?" "You know...the cook." "I cook me own food, lad." "Down in the dungeon. Cranny Faggot." "I don't associate with heathens." "Oh never mind!"
And that's that with chatting with O'negus. Now, the first order of business is of course...
...ignoring the twat. In his back room there's a new item to steal.
I'm really not sure what Ben's obsession with jar collection is at the moment. But, most collections are a bit questionable to an outsider... <places Limbo of the Lost box alongside collection of noteworthy titles such as Dirge of Cerberus, Clock Tower 3, Resident Evil Survivor, Dead Aim, and Final Fantasy 13>
Benny can also check out O'negus' collection of souls. The Soul of a Warrior is the only one that can potentially be interacted with. Sadly, we've nothing to swap it out with to complete our theft. Take note of the Sole of a Shoe front and center. Though, I will admit Arse Soul isn't too bad... I think we need a running pun counter for this game...
Backtracking all the way to the central room...
Alright...time for the third and final door before resigning ourselves to the looming menace of a truck load of backtracking. Let's hope for something more fruitful in this direction.
Seriously, are you sure...
...we haven't...
...been here before? Meh...must be my imagination.
Keeping with the going left first theme...
Ben is greeted by some crazy ass demonic gargoyle in the next room.
Scratch that...it's a straight up demon. One that speaks in some alien tongue that sounds akin to a dog growling combined with a man with a lisp choking on a bagel.
If only, Briggs. If only...
Welp, we somehow have to get past this fearsome "Gauardian" in order to access the clearly marked secret passage "hidden" behind it. Quotation marks. It would help if we could understand what the hell it was jabbering about.
If we recall the mysterious note we got way back in the beginning of the chapter, it gives us a clue. Granted, when I think of "dead" I think a zombie like Nilmates...not a giant stone monstrosity in a storeroom barking in some unknown tongue. But, details...
So, the seal that has been sitting idle in our inventory since
For reasons I'm sure were absolutely hilarious to the developers at the time, between snorting lines of blow, the guardian monster speaks like a bad stereotypical floppish Englishman. A drunken one at that.
I'm more concerned about how many degrees of bullshit item swap will be needed to obtain it, personally.
Where is a loan warrior when you need one?
Heading back out and down the previously passed passage...
I don't know who thought having Briggs bitch about the scenery in each and every new screen in this chapter was cute. But I hate them almost as much as the guy who decided taking screen caps of two different rooms from different angles and repeating them three times was acceptable.
Oh who am I kidding? It was probably the same asshole.
Eventually, we come upon a new room with things for Ben to vandalize. Namely: a stone statue. Though, it's not the statue we're interested in.
It's the lovely lens flare cup it holds aloft. And yes, there is an animated lens flare. It is very fancy...circa 1993...
Taking ACTION on the statue causes Ben to aggressively hump the base of the structure and knock down his prize. Well, I guess that's one way to do things.
Aww...good for Bugsy. I bet he was so proud of his creation too before Benny Briggs lumbered into his life and soured their relationship.
A handful of, you guessed it, empty rooms later...
There are many, many things wrong with this following cutscene. Buckle up.
It's a toss-up whether the animation of this twin headed crow or the voice acting is worse. Probably the latter, given we need not see the former again while the voice sample pictured loops in the background whenever we're in this room.
Benjamin finds a rather dejected looking
"Rotten Injun."
Seriously, Briggs? It's a zombie Indian sitting on a throne of bones with a pentagram behind it and a twin headed bird screaming it wants to eat your liver above it... If Hitler shows up are you going to chat him up for directions to the nearest vending machines?
"You're really going to go with that manner of speech?"
"What wrong with speak like that? Blackhawk always speak like this! Blackhawk not like Paleface's dodgy capitalization."
Who says something like this to someon-oh right...talking down to the dumb minority... Stay classy, Briggs.
"I thought you said birds were your friends, Blackhawk." "Blackhawk not like when Paleface poke holes in Blackhawk's claims."
"How?"
"Being condescending bag of douche not help Blackhawk."
Benjamin puts on his best "oh shit" face for getting his BS called out by the savage.
He means help him relocate to a designated reservation in a shithole in the desert out west. I mean, that'll get rid of his bird problem, correct?
I bet you thought I was adding in that Paleface stuff to stay in racist Native American caricature character. Never doubt the depths the writing of Limbo of the Lost will sink, plebes.
"A fine vessel under my command which lost its entire crew out at sea and I can't seem to muster the interest to bothered really looking into the status of any of them since ending up here."
"Birds are my friends... But that bird is annoying... I don't trust you, you're a useless white man... But I'll take your word on things..."
Why did I think LPing this game would be a good idea...?
Bonus Content:
Movie -
Meeting O'negus
The Gauardian
Meeting Blackhawk (You should probably watch this.)