Part 15: The Saul Nystalux Memorial Stadium part 2

Let's get this thing finished! Tonight marks the final episode and the end of Normality. Let's get straight to it!

Last time, Kent had become trapped in a sewer while searching for Saul's secret lab, in order to find a copy of Saul's brain.




We rejoin Kent as he finds a bunch of ridiculous looking rodents in the sewers. I'm not even sure why these guys are here. Yes, they clumsily block off a room Gremlin don't want to have to fill, but you can already see they blocked it off ahead with a gate anyway. There are several such hallways like this blocked off by rats.

To be honest, I'd stay away if I were the rats. Last time Kent came across a rat he baked it in a washing machine.



Elsewhere, Kent comes across a metal-coated cable, but the metal has eroded away in places.

These cables have got a life of their own.



Strange hallucinations fill the air near the cables. Seriously, this shit has to be bad for Kent. Even if they survive this disaster of a plan, you've got to imagine Kent and Saul have some serious radiation poisoning in their future.



Another cable that is just cut off in midair. Visions run between the walls.



There's an "Access" sign here, that you can press. Kent wonders aloud what it does. Honestly, I don't think it does anything. It was probably meant to do something, but it doesn't. I tried turning it on and completing the game, then repeated the last part of the game again without having turned it on and never saw a difference. Just another feature of Normality lost to the cutting-room floor, I guess.



These broken cables are everywhere.



We finally work our way back to the first gate we saw when we entered the sewers, except we're now on the other side. Kent can once again use Brian's guitar, making it the most useful item in Normality! Congratulations, Deluge!



The guitar is apparently trashed, but it looks just fine in the screenshots. Well, not fine, I mean, it looks like ass. But no more like ass than when Kent first started using it to lever metal bars apart and bash down brick walls.



I mentioned this earlier, but removing the roof brace has caused a chain reaction, and a pile of rubble has fallen across the hallway just before the exit.

This all came crashing down when I borrowed that roof brace. That's what I call clumsy!

"I'm trapped forever! Haha, I'm such a klutz!"

I have to say, though, that rubble is, like, knee-high. Even if this sewer is supposed to be really cramped and Kent is crawling on hands and knees, he should still be able to get through there. I think he just feels more natural down here and is looking for an excuse to stay.



Oh what the fuck now? Further down a hallway we come across this totally hip reference. Yes, those are Ninja Turds.



This guy seems to be the sensei of those ninja turds!

It's not good, Normality. It's not good at all.



Yet another bricked-over wall?



Sooner or later Kent is going to snap that guitar completely in half.



This brick wall puts up a stronger fight than the last couple, however. Kent is unable to break it down using the guitar, returning him back to wimpazoid status.



Around the corner, a slab juts out from the ground. When you step on it, you can hear a wall sliding open, but when you step off it, you hear it shut just as quickly.



The solution? The Roof Brace can be extended to hold the slab down.



Kent almost looks competent here. Thank God this game is ending, before I end up warming to him or something like that. Honestly, it's somewhat harder to hate him so much after I managed to get him arrested twice in two separate timelines. At least until he opens his mouth.



Sure enough, the brick wall has now vanished. It's not like it retracted into a hollow section of the wall or anything, it just plain vanished.



Down the stairs, we come across this abandoned lab. It must be Saul's lab!



To the right, a whole bunch of these visions penetrate the wall and shoot into the rubble. Something in there is attracting them.



'YOU HAVE NOT BEEN HERE'?! What a weird poster! Pointless! I'll rip it down.

Sure enough, Kent rips it down. Kent won't touch his shitty Deluge poster, but he's perfectly happy to rip down other people's property.



Tearing down the poster reveals a hole in the wall which looks into the area behind that rubble from earlier.



Bingo! We'll be needing to retrieve that brain.



First though, Kent takes a bit of a look around the lab, to see if anything is salvageable.



An old data safe. Or UNSAFE judging by its present condition!

Yes, yes, you're very clever Kent. Shut up.



None of this equipment is useful. This lab has been wrecked. There is a Norm badge around here that you can pick up, but I guess it's only purpose is to indicate that the Norms destroyed the lab, in case you couldn't guess. No, you can't return to the Plush-Rest factory at this point and show that badge guy the badge. That room was yet another Normality red herring, or cut content at the very least.



Alright, let's head in there and get that brain!

I should be able to squeeze through here...



Wow! Some kind of machine with a brain inside!! This HAS to be what I'm looking for!

The brain is being kept warm inside a nuclear-powered microwave. I couldn't even make that shit up if I tried. Presumably the microwave is attracting the Mood Filter hallucinations, though for all I know it could be the brain itself. It's not like any of this shit actually makes any sense.



Unfortunately, Kent is unable to fit the brain machine through the hole. The prospect of just pushing it through the hole and then climbing through himself never occurs to Kent, because he exists solely to infuriate me.



Fine, let's just get his brain out of the fucking machine then.

I can just slip this brain out of here and into my pocket...

As soon as we do, though, the brain starts speaking to us.

Put me somewhere safe as soon as possible!

Even Kent recognises that his inventory is the opposite of "safe", and just gives up. He places the brain back in the machine, and just leaves the machine on the ground. We'll be back for it later.



There's a whole heap of junk here, but none of it does anything except for this axe.

OK. I got it. I feel a lot safer down here already.



Kent shouldn't feel any safer, though, because the axe doesn't do anything when you click on stuff. Seriously, no reaction, no dialogue from Kent, nothing to even indicate you've used it. Just, nothing. Of course, it will work properly when you use it in it's proper location, but before that point I was worried that the game had bugged out right at the end or something.



Okay, this axe must be good for something. Kent returns to that crate.



That Norm dude is still up there screaming down the hole. Although, it could very well just be another absurd robot programmed to scream down the hole forevermore, just in case we're still there.





Here is the one place the axe actually does anything.
Axe (0:18) - Kent decides to "pick the lock". Except he doesn't know what that means, so he just hatchets the shit out of the crate until the lock breaks. He retrieves some kind of suit from inside the crate.



Let's see what we've got here...

A black PVC suit with snaps and fastenings all over it. Kinky! The label says "Emergency suit. Protects wearer from most types of adversity."

Unfortunately for the suit, nothing could protect it from the most dastardly form of adversity - Kent.



Here's another wonderful Normality bug. So we stuck the roof brace here in order to open that secret lab, right? We can retrieve it again now.

OK. I'll take it.



Yet the secret lab remains open. I don't think that was supposed to happen.



Back inside the lab, Kent places Saul's brain inside the protective suit.



Brain (0:18) - At least, that's the idea. The reality is that Kent places the suit on the ground, opens the microwave, and Saul's brain literally bounces out onto the ground and leaps inside the suit. If I was Kent I'd be bolting the fuck out of here and fetching the Goddamn alligator.



Saul's brain is safely zipped up in here.

There is nothing safe about any of this crap, Kent! You're standing next to an exposed nuclear-powered microwave, with Mood Filter hallucinations passing through your fucking leg while a sentient, mobile brain bounces around inside your pockets. This is fucking whacked and you're just standing around like nothing is fucking wrong!!



Returning back outside the secret lab, we find the roof brace back where it was before, even though we already retrieved it. At this point, I don't even blink. I just get Kent to pick this one up as well.



The two roof braces somehow coalesce into a single roof brace inside the inventory. All's well that ends well, I guess!



I tried pushing this thing again, but nothing. If it does something, I couldn't figure it out. Anybody know?



I think we're all done! We've got the backup of Saul's brain, and we've found the elevator to the stage so we can place Brian's guitar there. Of course, Brian's guitar is fucked, and I'm not sure how we can possibly use Saul's brain in any meaningful fashion short of cutting his current one out and scooping the backup inside his head cavity, but hey, we'll call it mission successful nonetheless!



As you may recall from early, Kent is too weak to open the elevator, but we can now use the roof brace...

I reckon I can jack the door open with this...



And it's time to finish this thing!



Ending (5:15) - Kent's elevator arrives just as Paul enters the stage. Kent is an enormous klutz and drops Saul's brain right at Paul's feet. Paul picks the brain up, and somehow it electrocutes him, or performs a fucking mind meld or something bullshit like that, and then Paul explodes and is replaced by Saul Nystalux, while the actual Saul Nystalux dies. I don't know, none of this crap makes any sense to me either.

Meanwhile, Kent throws the guitar, which has no noticable damage whatsoever, to Brian who kicks off the concert, which he plays in front of a crowd of the rebel crew and exactly zero other people. And like all terrible things, it ends with a disco, where almost every NPC in the game joins Kent and co for some horrible, horrible dancing. There is a final scene after the credits if you want to skip ahead, too.



That's all folks!