Part 2: The Story Begins

When we rejoin our heroine, she's in an office giving her account of the incident to Domremy to her superior officer, General Heimann.

...That's as much as I can remember.

Officer: The following day, Lt. Koenig, you were found by the Metz highway, along with Sgt. Robert and eight survivors.

The mustache lives!

Yes, sir.



It's quite a story, but it seems we'll have to believe you.



General, just give me another-

Officer: Lieutenant!



Meanie...



Karin, I've already decided to do that. I'm sending you back to that village, but this time you'll be a guide.



Me, a guide?

Remember that one kid in school that would always buy a little time by repeating the teacher's question before answering? They weren't even necessarily one of the dumb kids, but they pulled the parrot act all the fucking time? Karin is that kid, grown up. The sad thing is, once you meet the other female party members, you realize that it's not at all annoying by comparison.



Our forces invaded France from the north, and have managed to push back the Western Front beyond the Meuse River, but that village alone has stubbornly refused to surrender to us and continues to remain outside the Empire's grasp. Domremy may be beautiful, but it has absolutely no strategic value to us...

Problem solved then - don't bother with it.



...But for the honor of the Empire, we must not allow anyone, or anything, to stand against us.

Goddamn national pride.


Who's the guy with the faaaabulous fashion sense?

Even if we have to face a demon itself.



Is that clear?



Yes, sir.
It's clear that the Empire is run by idiots.


An officer walks up to the general and apparently says something because Heimann nods at him and he walks off.


The officer lets the man in the gaudy priest outfit in. This must be the "guide" job Heimann was talking about.



This is Cardinal Nicholas Conrad. He's come all the way from the Vatican.


He's awfully young to be a cardinal in the Catholic church. Hell, he's young even for a bishop.






God, I want to smack him right in that smug, pretty-boy face.

Nicholas: Heh heh.





Narrator: 1915, early spring. The world is in the middle of a huge upheaval.



Narrator: It started with a single shot, and the fire of war spread within a single instant.



Narrator: All of Europe was engulfed, and the struggle soon grew into the first world-wide war the human race had ever known.



Narrator: From a corner of this battlefield...



Narrator: ...our story begins once again.


What in the hell is THAT!?


Is that...a door? What kind of freak would live in something that looks like it might transform into a spaceship at any moment?


No, they're not some bizarre bio-mechanical experiment. They're called Claw Soldiers, and those blades are just (unwieldy and impractical) handheld weapons. We'll be fighting them in quite a few of the early areas of the game. I like to think of them as expendable punching bags.


This is their boss, Lenny. He's big and stupid and possibly not as mean as he'd like everyone to think. But he generally follows orders well, if somewhat literally, and that's why the real bosses keep him around. Right now, those orders seem to entail kidnapping midgets.



Yep.






We'll see more of the big guy later. For now, the opening is finally finished, and next time we'll get to the actual game.