Part 48: Behind the Beard. Enter the Yeti.
Note from Giver in the future: Well, MissEchelon quit the LP in the last update, so I had to find a new replacement. EPM proved ineligible for this due to what I can only surmise as time constraints. At best, I can ask him to cover for maybe 1-2 updates here and there, nothing permanent. So, I turned to none other than General Yeti. He'll be co-commentating this from here on out. For this update, I was forced to take care of other matters regarding my housing situation, so EPM and Yeti were forced to take over for this weekly update. See you next update for those reading this in the archive.For those reading this in the future, when it's finally done and archived: I'm GeneralYeti, the guy who's been helping out with the boss bonus videos. Nice to meet you all
Unfortunately, our pleas did not reach the ears of the Prog Queen. We must go this alone, my friend.
Or almost alone. I, EPM, am still around. And continue my trend of delaying things massively.
This thread is nearing the, what, two and a half year mark?
Let's see... Ominous skull decor, pipes and electricity everywhere, random purple sludge... Yep, we have ourselves a Final LevelTM
Wily's Purple Drank Manufacturing Plant.
But let's forget that for now. Right now, we have to do more important things than 'save the world' or 'stop the megalomaniac' or shit like that.
Pictured: Mr. Progs being amazing as usual. BOO!
This dude has one hell of a narrow target market.
I pick up a few LocEnemy here. They're going to be useful for later, oh yes...
...Buuut one can't call him unfounded in his business acumen.
YES! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!![/b] Haaahahahahaaah! Yess! I've been waiting for this lovely NaviCust program.
See, do you know what this beauty does? It forces the random reward at the end of the battle to always be the chip.
There are exceptions to this. If you fight something that can only give you a Zenny reward, Collect will cause the "No Data" result, and you get nothing, which is otherwise impossible to see. This is very rare though, especially given how late in the game you receive Collect. If I remember correctly however you can trade NaviCust programs in this game via multiplayer, so if you had the Game Link Cable, you could get this as early as the NaviCust itself. Although if you've got someone willing to fork over the most useful NaviCust program in the game, odds are pretty high you're going to be breaking everything already, not to mention abusing the hell out of the Number Trader and whatnot.
As usual, these games have a difficulty curve that's entirely optional if you know what you can do!Additionally, Collect will not enable the CustomStyle chip drops if you don't have a CustomStyle. In the case of a virus that can drop multiple chip codes, Collect will usually result in the chip appropriate to your busting level. So it forces a chip drop, but won't auto-bias which drop it is.
Not giving me Zenny are you anymore, scum?
WHERE'S YOUR ZENNY NOW, FUCKERS?
Hmm... This is going pretty well, but I think we can make this better.
Yeah thanks, Giver Jr., I'm sure you couldn't just say that you picked up those chips!
Thanks to Yahoot, we can compress Collect and now have about 15% more NaviCust. (The number might not be right, but I think it's close)
As mentioned before, the reason why quite a bit of the game's content is virtually impossible to discover in-game is because of Capcom's multimedia approach. The Collect compression code was featured in the BN anime several times, at the curry restaurant Yahoot ran after the MMBN1 story arc.
As usual for Battle Network, Capcom was ahead of its time in this sort of approach, but it wasn't implemented very intelligently, nor was it remotely useful to anyone outside Japan. I do recall owning a BN3 strategy guide, and it contained many of the Number Trader codes, compression codes, and even the chip inputs for things like GutsImpact or VarSword.
Here's all the viruses you can find in here. Dominerds!
Hey, wait, wasn't there something we were supposed to be doing? Like saving the world?
This is a video game, thankfully, so we have an arbitrarily large amount of time to do so.
Oh, right. Wait, why is dirty water purple?
I told you. Wily makes Drank. One has to emphasize the sheer
of Anetta (PlantMan's operator) by the way. Here's a full-blown Drank waterfall into the ocean and she believes Wily's an environmentalist.
Pictured: Wily being both a genius and a sadistic mother-fucker.
I'm just really hoping that chair doesn't end up being a bad thing.
Welcome to the Matrix, Mr. Anderson...
Right, okay, this actually makes sense (unlike the radiation elevators
)
Blink Animation, you are the LP's most successful, consistently hilarious commentator. The unsung hero of BN3. "Lan, just do what we ALWAYS do, do I really need to suggest this?"
Wait, what? Oh, crap. This is bad. We can't solve things through the internet!
And those with an eye for pattern recognition know what this means!
Odds of this being a Plot DeviceTM?
Who said that? Was it a ghost?
...No... It can only be...
Woo!
BEEEEAAAARDMAAAAAN!
At long last, it's time to reveal Beardman's secret identity.
None other than Dr. Mikhail motherfucking Cossak.
For those not paying attention, this is important. You can tell by the Capital Letters.
Chaud asks him what he's doing here.
So yes, our dear Beardman is in fact one extremely important character. But we knew that already!
Whaaaaaa
Once again a case of Capcom being eerily precognitive with these games.
This is actually technically correct; it's been theorized that this type of technology is possible. In fact (and take this with a grain of salt, because I'm not an expert) this is how the whole 'use your mind to control the mouse' thing that they're working on these days.Precisely. Essentially, that technology works by reading the electrical signals of the brain, just as Cossak/Beardman here stated. I live in Chicago, and the Museum of Science and Industry here actually has a game called Brainball as an exhibit. You and an opponent put a headband on, and relax as much as possible. Relaxation produces a particular type of brain wave, and it rolls a ball back and forth on the table based on which player has the strongest waves of that type. The winner is whoever gets the ball into their opponent's goal. No implanted electrodes necessary, just a headband is sufficient to read brainwaves.
This same technology has been adapted for prosthetic limbs in production as well. Tests with chimps (in full possession of all functioning limbs!) have even shown that they could learn how to operate mechanical arms to retrieve food over time, and would even in some cases grow to prefer doing so over using their own arms. So yes, the brain can essentially learn how to use "body extensions" it never had in the first place!
On the spooky side, I recall reading about experiments in visualizing shapes a volunteer was imagining in their head. They'd be shown an image and told to picture it in their minds as clearly as possible while their brainwaves were interpreted. The resulting black-and-white resolutions were total garbage, but undeniably had read the basic shapes!
Combine this with VR, and presto, a Pulse Transmission System.
....Annnd, this is where we cross into the realm of 'sci-fi'.
Yet, eerily plausible sci-fi. Actually, fun fact, this is a giant case of coming full circle. The term "cyberspace" itself was coined in the short story Burning Chrome by William Gibson (who later helped popularize the entire Cyberpunk genre with Neuromancer) in 1982. Burning Chrome's plot? Doing more or less exactly what we're (about to be) doing here: Pulse Transmission to break through security.
I'm a fan of these kinds of stories, so hot damn. More reading material.
I'm trying so very hard to not make a reference to the Matrix - wait shit EPM already made one
I'll clarify right now that it's not a 1:1 thing, though keep in mind that even since BN1's Hub.bat cutscene these games have had this concept. Who knows, maybe there's some really weird quantum entanglement thing at work. But to get to the point, damage to the Pulse Transmission avatar does damage the physical human, but not in the same way the cyberworld avatar was damaged. Presumably, there's a degree of psychosomatic damage, but at the very least it's a big no-no to screw up someone's brainwaves with electric feedback. You'd basically end up with uncontrolled shock therapy.
The obvious answer is "just use a fricking surge protector", but MMBN has been very consistent with that kind of thing not existing here.
This raises a lot of questions, regarding certain technology(/magic) seen in BN5 and BN6, honestly.
A fun fact - now that Cossak has 'jacked in', his headshot has disappeared (since he's now speaking through the speakers). It's a nice touch, and it shows just how much love the developers put into this game.
Fun fact, if you use a cheat device to access this room (which only exists in this cutscene otherwise) it does have a name on the pause screen. I forget what it is, I think it's "ElevatorRoom" or something to that effect.
Ominous fuzzes? I think we remember what happened last time those showed up.
It's time for a reunion.
Cossak turns to leave, but...
Shit. Hi, Bass.
Bass showing up at all is an oh shit moment. Here and now? When Bass HATES humans?
And Dr. Mikhail 'Beardman' Cossak knows Bass well. Very, very well.
Most likely, Wily promised him the power of Alpha. Or, he's going to take it by force. One of the two.
It's a case of intersecting motives and not much else. Releasing Alpha fucks over humanity, leaves the UnderNet (which Bass resides in almost exclusively) alone, and if Bass can harvest some strength from Alpha, even better.
The Cyberspace actually warps with the force of Bass's concentrated power and/or rage.
Bass has a theme of his own in 4.5, being a remix of his original series theme.
And a remix of the 4.5 remix itself.
As mentioned, it's implied Cossak was involved with the Navi who saved MegaMan from the encounter with Bass after FlameMan.
The Independent AutoNavi project mentioned in the scene explaining Alpha's history?
Bass. SciLab's scapegoat for why Alpha was malfunctioning in the first place.
You know Bass's icon?
This.
Oh, that's not good, Bass. If you keep picking at it it won't heal.
For being betrayed by his own progenitors, the very humans he'd formerly trusted and assisted.
And Beardman/Cossak is the creator of Bass!
How would that work? I mean, I know we sometimes get HP+ rewards from battle, but still...
In a moment of pure existential irony, BASS was the MMBN series' MegaMan Classic counterpart, essentially. Much like how Classic MegaMan's Weapon Copy system originated as Dr. Light enabling him to serve as a backup for no longer functioning robots, Bass here's GetAbility program was (as revealed in supplemental materials) bestowed by Cossak for the sake of debugging SciLab's prototype systems. If something ended up not working, Bass would be able to copy the original function as a backup until an improved replacement was made.
After being blamed as the cause for Alpha's malfunctions, the Navi Elite Corps, sort of the precursor to the Official NetBattlers, attempted to delete Bass. The manga had a special on Bass' origins, which was provided for free in the 2003 issue of CoroCoro magazine in Japan (where the manga was published monthly), and showed the events of all this. I'd link, but the previous sources of translations I'd used for it are no longer providing it.
The first weapon Bass copied? The FireSword attack that gave him his scar. He used it to delete the Navi Corps and escape.
Yeah, the JudgeTree was involved and everything. Heavy stuff.
Particularly tragic is that Cossak had installed limiters on Bass during his captivity, as a plea bargain for his 'son' to be spared, believing in Bass's innocence. As Bass's creator, however, he was himself detained afterwards, and prevented from intervening in the planned deletion of Bass. Bass did not know this, and only saw that his creator had subdued him and then abandoned him to be deleted. That's why Bass hates humanity with genocidal fervor.
And when you think about it, also the origin of his pride. He was, after all, consistently better than what SciLab's other Navis and programs could do, and essentially cleaned up after their mistakes with his GetAbility. In the manga, Cossak himself speculates that many of the scientists resented Bass for always outclassing their hardest efforts, though to be fair Bass was kind of oblivious to the results of his straightforward attitude to the process. He could have been less direct with "This program was not up to par, I'm doing a better job than it now", you get the idea. Cossak argued (and had a valid point) that Bass was improving SciLab security and program quality control by identifying flaws, similar to a white hat hacker.
So to Bass, he was scapegoated by humans, despite working for them, purely because they envied how they could not surpass him. His creator, the one scientist at SciLab who cared about him, Cossak, was shown to openly view Bass with affection as his son. Compare and contrast with Yuuichiro and Hub Hikari's situation with being made into MegaMan. And then, Bass was betrayed by his father, abandoned to be deleted after being weakened. It's a logical assumption that Bass hates how fickle humans are, how they're 'inherently defective' much like the programs they'd made that didn't meet the bar he himself set, and that in a sense the humans themselves had gone malignant like Alpha had.
Cossak had thought Bass had been deleted for many years. And you can see why he said he once WAS with SciLab, as obviously he left after that disaster and the apparent deletion of his 'son'. No word on what Tadashi Hikari or Wily thought of the matter, or if they were involved, however. Wily certainly at least was aware of Bass, though it's never said if Cossak and Wily ever even met.
Arguably, Cossak doesn't want to admit that Bass very much already IS a threat to mankind, especially in these circumstances.
Cossak. Cossak no. Don't do this, please.
Incidentally, yes, it's "Cossak", not "Cossack" as in the original series.
More importantly, he's one of the best programmers who ever lived, Bass' own creator, and now has a direct neural interface with the Cyberworld. In this situation, Cossak might as well be everything a Deus Ex antagonist could dream of.
Cossack raises his hands.
In yet another instance of irony in this scene, Cossak is more or less pulling a Bass on Bass: Earthbreaker is after all literally just an insane amount of sheer power output directed at a single point. So all the power Cossak has access to in his situation, including the signals of his own brainwaves, are going to be put to the same use.
You may have guessed that this is my favorite scene in the entire series.
The thread brought up the fact that every programmer has their kid die. If Bass is considered Cossack's kid, then, well... Look, I'm not saying the BN gods have it out for programmers. I'm just saying that the correlation exists.
Bass winds up an Earthbreaker...
I KNEW IT! I knew it was a murder device!
Oh, damn it, he's still alive. And probably in excruciating pain... Eh, batting .500 isn't bad.
The fact he's conscious period is astonishing.
Cossak and Bass, the opposed contrast to Yuuichiro and MegaMan.
There's a poetic lesson in this. If you try to play God, don't be surprised if you create a devil.
Cossak passes out, probably from the immense pain of being electrocuted.
Y'know, I just noticed, it's kind of weird that the text has a dedicated ellipsis character but also uses three consecutive periods here too. Emphasis, I guess?
No way they can get back to Beach Street quickly enough, despite the player being able to go back at their leisure, which is something of a necessary break from the narrative for the sake of gameplay. Hell, that kind of electrocution, sufficient to fry the machine itself? Cossak's probably got some very nasty electrical burns all over, not to mention the danger of cardiac arrest. Him surviving that is a miracle, though I wouldn't lump this in with the Gospel Server Radiation incident in terms of Capcom Science. Later on, there's an explanation guessed at for why he's not dead. Bass couldn't bring himself to kill his father.
Thanks, Dex, yer a peach. Anyway, the elevator has been unlocked.
Next time: The Gauntlet
EPM's Archive Bonus:
In the original LP megathread, I put out a request for a picture of this scene, given how several bits of fanart had been made already.
Who answered the call?
MissEchelon. So this update, even with her absence, still gets at least one funny picture from her.Additionally, some time later on in the thread, Shaezerus (the one responsible for my Anger Impact avatar when BN4 came along later) provided this bit of hilarity, as a look into the SciLab days between Beardman and Bass:
I made that middle panel my desktop background, and it's available on the LP archive for the 4-6 LPs.
Sometime around MMBN5, gnome7 would go on to color that frame, which remains my desktop to this day:
