Part 33: The Aftermath
Part 33 - The Aftermath
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Welcome to the final update! The insect menace has been stopped, at least for the time being, so the only thing left now is to wrap up Dead Man's Switch for good.
There are several familiar faces around the scene, but the first thing that catches our attention is Harlequin who's in the middle of recounting our underground adventures to Telestrian. Mr. Quoth seems to be by his master's side as well.



This part would obviously be a little different if Jessica had ended up as insect food, but James (who incidentally is a canonical sociopath) doesn't care much either way.

Yes yes, a grave threat to the whole world and all that, but first things first.




Uh oh.


Aw come on, that was like ages ago. Does ancient history really matter between business partners?

Pff. Although, he seems to have forgotten about the "divided between living team members" clause, so perhaps we should consider ourselves lucky.

Had we negotiated ourselves an extra million with the Corporate etiquette before the mission, the damages would've instead been twice as bad and we'd have ultimately ended up with the same 15k. How's that for an unjust universe?

This is the second "big" final decision of the game, our very own free wish! Our choices are as follows:
1. We can ask for the position of Telestrian's Vice President of Security, previously held by Erik Silverstar
2. We can ask for (more) money
3. Had I not missed an earlier conversation, we could ask him to cancel the city's plan to shut down the power grid in Touristville where the Union is located (I'll explain this in a bit)
4. We can ask for McKlusky to get fired
Now this is a pretty big decision and careful consideration should be





It was all worth it in the end after all.
Regarding the other choices, the position of Telestrian's VP of Security is only available to elves. Any other race (including humans) who asks for it will be given a position as the future VP of Security's Executive Consultant instead. We are in fact an elf so this hilariously blatant racial discrimination wouldn't apply to us, but I think we've seen enough about Telestrian corporate life to say with some confidence that it's not our scene.
Now, the power grid choice isn't available to us because it turns out I missed a conversation with Mrs. Kubota at the Seamstresses Union before the Telestrian run. See, that particular conversation only becomes available after the meeting with Baron Samedi where he tells you about the Aegis, but because Kubota was upstairs at the Union's front door where we no longer had any reason to go to, I completely forgot such a conversation even existed.
All credit to forums user OutofSight for pointing out my mistake.
In any case, what she would've told us had we spoken to her is that the city authorities are planning to shut down the power grid in Touristville because they don't want to continue devoting police manpower to protect the citizens who go there for seedier entertainment. Had we had that discussion, we could now ask Telestrian to pull the required strings to revoke that plan. This is how that particular conversation would have gone:
quote:
I hear the city's going to shut down the power grid in a part of the Barrens called Touristville.
I am sure you appreciate a good slum as much as the next shadowrunner. However, I fail to see the significance of the Redmond Barrens or its energy resources in the context of this conversation.
That's unimportant. Just fix it.
By "fix it", you mean convince a municipal government to abandon a bureaucratic process that has likely been in the works for several years. You do not have a grasp on how governments work.
You're James Telestrian the Third. Municipal governments are nothing to the man behind the throne of Tir Tairngire.
[He sighs.] Very well. I will speak with my contacts on the city's Zoning Board. I am certain there are better uses of their time than shuffling the city's criminal element from one part of the Sprawl to another. Good day.
Alas, since this choice isn't available to us it looks like Touristville and the Union are both doomed. My bad!
So ultimately we're just going to have to go for the "immediate personal gain" -option. Real shame, pains my heart really, but what can you do.


That's the one thing we have in common, buddy. Well that and our shared dislike of McKlusky.




We're now free to have one last chat with everyone who bothered to show up.

We'll go through the area in a counterclockwise manner, starting from Coyote here.





Coyote was with us almost the whole time of course, but she's too tough to complain about it unlike our whiny ass.



If we hadn't saved Gino, she'd instead be planning on "taking a flamethrower to that whole slagging business".



You're one hell of a lady yourself, and almost made it feel like we had one proper crew member in this game populated by boring non-personalities. Thanks for everything.

Ol' clownshoes is up next.

Here's a cool little touch: If Harlequin dies during the final mission, there's some extra dialogue available here where you can ask how he's still around. Not only that, but there's also a slightly different variation if he went down more than once. In both cases he jokes about it and then pretty much shrugs it off as something you shouldn't question too much since the Sixth World is full of much weirder things.


Something brewing in Berlin, huh? Bet you could make a game about that.




Although we were here to see its beginning, the whole Brotherhood/insect spirit mess is something that will continue to be relevant in the setting for a long time after the events of this game.




As it happens, Ares are the ones who end up being the most involved in dealing with bug spirit activity elsewhere.






Turns out I was wrong about Harlequin swearing normally being a nice touch. Also this whole lesson would've missed its mark pretty spectacularly had we retired from running in order to work for Telestrian.



Your presence here might've been pure fanservice, but at least you brought some much-needed lightheartedness to this otherwise dry endgame.

Ah, this should be good.

We got a whole bunch of different skill checks here, all aimed at humiliating our detective friend - Charisma 4 (to make him think that he got his lieutenant's badge and he's getting a surprise party), Intelligence 4 (to claim his shoelaces are untied in order to cold-cock him while he's distracted), Strength 5 & Close Combat 5 (to knock him out with a haymaker or a flurry of punches).
Of course we don't need to resort to any of those.






He runs to James, presumably to plead pathetically. Unfortunately we don't get to listen in.

Even Armitage has showed up for the denouement, despite presumably still having a bounty on his head and there being police everywhere. Or maybe the devs just forgot about that detail.




He's not wrong, it's surprising Seattle is still intact with how much crap is constantly happening in this city.



I think we deserve a break after all this, but it's always nice to have something to fall back on.


Thanks for the help Jake, time will tell if this ends up being your final video game appearance of if you'll pop up again in Shadowrun Re-Returns or something.

It's only fitting for our last stop to be manned by this guy.




Remember when all that happened and was relevant? Feels like it was a different story altogether. Some might say a better story, but that's neither here nor there.




Good thing Dresden never met Erik Silverstar, that guy's habit of butchering language would've probably had the poor dwarf end up a customer in his own establishment.


Hey, just because we got one 100k doesn't mean we don't have space for seconds.





You were always one of the few legitimately good people around, Dresden. At least as far as we know.

This is the point of no return. We've done everything we can and talked to everyone we can, so let's just go ahead and make this final call.

Man, has it really been just a few days?

Oh hey it's... Chet, was it? Wait, did Chet have a facial tattoo?




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Technically the job was done a while ago, but we got a little sidetracked somewhere along the way.
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From the looks of it I doubt you knew what time of day it was, much less what we have or haven't made right since then.


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Boy howdy. If only Sam and this whole family had managed to figure out their numerous issues when they still had the chance...
[He straightens himself. Shakes it off. That grin is back.]
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Excuse me?


...
...
...This is exactly how it was going to go from the start, wasn't it. You really were a real fucker of a guy all the way to the end, Sam. It's honestly kind of impressive. But it also can't be denied that at the end of the day we did dig ourselves up from the hole we had fallen in thanks to you, even if it was in a roundabout way. But still, fuck you man. For everything, and in behalf of everyone involved.


And with those wise words, our story has reached its end.


The ending is entirely in text form, something that'll remain true for the entire series. Hong Kong does feature simple ending cutscenes in addition to the text though. And unlike this game, both Dragonfall and Hong Kong feature multiple endings.
So, this has been Shadowrun Returns. I hadn't actually played it in a long time before doing this LP, so it was interesting to go back to it after having played the later games. I stand by my opinion that it's overall a game worth playing, and I especially came to appreciate what a good job it does at easing you in to the Shadowrun universe. That said it's plain to see why it's so overshadowed by it's follow-ups, and revisiting the original has also made me appreciate just how much Harebrained Schemes learned and improved going into Dragonfall (and especially its Director's Cut version). One thing that I grew more negative on was the endgame which was even weaker than I remembered, and the game doing such a bad job at sticking its landing undoubtedly contributed to the unfavorable aftertaste a lot of players ended up with.
Still, Shadowrun is one of my favorite fictional settings and I'm glad this game got made despite its rough edges. And hey, without it we wouldn't have Dragonfall and Hong Kong either.

Thanks for reading, and special thanks to everyone who posted in the thread. You've all been great.