Part 32: Breaking and Later Entering

Part 32 - Breaking and Later Entering





NEW MUSIC:



(It's been a while since we last had some completely new music to listen to. Everist handles most Director's Cut tracks and they're always well worth a listen.)




This place looks like it hasn't seen a street sweeper in years. And judging by the size of the spider web attached to that bike rack over there, the sweeping might best be done with a flamethrower.



That's our target. Sutterlin BioScience. I wonder what happened in there.

It might still be happening, for all that we know.

There's a cheerful thought. Come on, chief. Let's get this over with.



We're here to find Ezkibel's precious biotech, but to do that we first have to figure out a way to enter the facility itself. That's what today's update will focus on, so let's get started by looking around.



This courtyard was probably a pretty nice sight once, but now it's just a damn mess. Only particularly ill-natured garden gnomes could call this place home, the kind that stab you in the shin while you're passing by and steal your credsticks while you're on the ground.



No sense in getting all fancy with our entry methods before trying the front door first.



Doesn't look like we'll be kicking this thing down anytime soon. Still, we did bring the ol' reliable which hasn't let us down yet.





Man, and you had such a good streak going too. Kinda disappointed in you Eiger, not gonna lie.

There a couple of Strength-based options available here. Strength 4 allows for pounding on the door (why that requires so much muscle is anyone's guess) which normally gives this result:



I mention this because there's a cool detail here; if you have a cyberarm installed, the description also changes appropriately:



Dragonfall's pretty good with this kinda stuff already, but Director's Cut content definitely stands out when it comes to this sort of care and detail.

Now curiously, you can in fact successfully force the door open with Strength 6 despite Eiger failing to do so with the same. This is obviously not an option for our goup, but it's impressive enough to be worth showing off:



Just physically forcing open what is in practice a vault door with your bare hands, no big deal.



Those of us who lack the musculature or physical enhancements required for such astonishing feats will have to find some other way in. Perhaps this strangely inviting garbage pile can somehow help us accomplish the task?



God damn, that's rank. I'll stay back here, if you don't mind... I have better things to do than dig through a pile of decomposing trash.

That steam might not be comin' from the trash. Could be there's a vent or a grate underneath all of that.

Yeah, well. I ain't touching it.

Fine fine, we'll do it. This isn't exactly what we meant when we signed up to do other people's dirty work though...





Well what do you know. Good call, Dietrich.



As the description states, a dwarf can hop into the vent but all other races are out of luck regardless of how much yoga practice they might have. Fortunately for us, there are other things that come in dwarf-sized packages.





Max embarks on his grand quest and finds itself in what appears to be a small maze of vents.



Most mazes are a plague on gamekind, but luckily this is one in name only as there's only two very short paths and one of them quickly leads to our destination.



Convenient... though it probably stands to reason that this system was specifically designed for drones rather than dwarves.





If you thought Max was only capable of murdering (and occasionally tasering) people, I hope this serves as an eye-opening lesson about drone prejudice.





And we're in! From here it's just a matter of returning back to street level and heading in through the now open doors.

Now even though we are free to proceed, for the sake of completeness and having enough material for a proper update we'll cover the remaining available methods as well.



If it so happens that you lack awe-inspiring muscles, a dwarf or a drone, the next option is making use of a jack-in point found close by. Obviously if you brought Blitz you can simply use the drone method, unless you for some reason chose not to ever return Max to him.



There's a minor twist to this Matrix bit as well. The node you need to reach is visible pretty much from the start, but the direct path to it is blocked. The White IC protection here includes a pair of ranged and one melee IC, one support Sentry and one charge-up Sparky.



Since the melee IC can't do anything and the Sparky takes multiple turns to charge before it can attack, this is a pretty advantageous setup and clearing everything out before heading through the arc to the south is not a problem.



The aforementioned pathway simply leads to the other side, and from here you're free to just waltz over to the door node which upon activation also causes the central barriers to vanish. No bothersome reinforcements or anything either, that's Director's Cut quality for ya.

Now normally this would be the final way to get in as there's nothing else our group can interact with in the courtyard. However, if you start the run without meeting the requirements for any of the aforementioned methods, the game is kind enough to provide a fallback. To show this final method off I had to go back and make sure not to bring Blitz as it's only possible to trigger if you have no other way in.



This backup method can be found on the western side of the courtyard near some loiterers who can't be interacted with. Fittingly enough, your garbage crew building decisions force you to dig through the very stuff.



Mm-mm. Time to dig in!



[Dietrich coughs and chokes on the stench that's wafting out of the dumpster.]

That's pretty vile, boss.

Blitz can also make a similar comment in Dietrich's place, though the only way to trigger that which I can think of would be to bring him after unequipping both his cyberdeck and his drone.



That's not gonna do it. Gotta really get in there, oh yeah.



This has got to be the developers' way of mocking you for managing to completely miss all the other methods, right? You knew you were going to have to break into a locked down building, shoulda maybe brought an electronics expert. Enjoy swimming in literal trash and shit you idiot garbage-dweller.





Victory. But at what cost?





And the hardships don't end there.



To add insult to injury, you now get harassed by some ganger wannabes. Ways to deal with this situation include Street etiquette:


Paying them:


Or the usual method of not having any of that shit.




Taking that last option then leads to a fight against the trio who are actually surprisingly strong for random thugs literally off the street, the mage especially packing quite a punch with his Flamethrower spell. There's still only three of them though, so you shouldn't have any real trouble doing your part in cleaning up the neighborhood.



And that just about covers everything. Our group didn't have to rely on dumpster-diving, so we can proceed inside confident that our body odor won't invite anything worse than maybe a rat or two. It's not like we've showered in a while.

We didn't exactly make a ton of progress today, but hopefully it was at least interesting. What horrors await our heroes(?) within the sealed-off facility? Let's find out together! Next time!