Part 18: Wrapup

This will be the final update for this thread. I have a few videos and miscellaneous things to show off.

I’ll start with a little easter egg. Remember the Shanghai disk from Chapter 5 that Thorn found on his desk? It was found in Ying’s place after she got away.



It is playable, and it can be an entertaining diversion from the main game.





However, there’s also a reward for finishing it:





It’s information that can also be found by decrypting the notes, but it’s nice of the developers to leave a clue if the player gets stuck.

The Pit

If Thorn does not successfully retrieve the nuclear pit from Procat (either by talking or fighting), things go off the rails pretty quickly.




http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xq...s-01_videogames


http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xq...us-2_videogames

Going Rogue

It turns out that it is possible to join Procat, if only briefly. I showed the beginning of this path in Chapter 11, but I gave Procat the wrong file. They ask for the file showing payments, and I think I selected the one with contacts. Anyway, if Thorn brings the correct file, Procat will ask him to complete the hit on the President.

As you can see in the video, Thorn gets killed whether he goes through with the hit or not. So there’s still no future in Procat. Just a bit more than I had let on.


http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xq...us-6_videogames

Killing Blake

Here are a few videos of character reactions if Thorn kills Blake and does not recover his computer.


http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xq...us-5_videogames


http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xq...us-4_videogames


http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xq...us-3_videogames

Reflections

The Game:

I had a great time reliving the Spycraft experience. I got this game while I was in high school, and I aspired to be a CIA agent throughout a lot of my childhood. I think the game does a good job of bringing realism into the spy genre without sacrificing excitement. The acting is well done except for a few outliers, and the plot generally makes sense.

There are three main strands to the plot: the assassination of President Brooks, the sale and recovery of the nuclear pit, and identifying the mole. The nuclear pit section was too brief and too easily resolved. The mole hunt lent a fun atmosphere of paranoia to the game, though this could have been expanded. After all Colby’s talk about the motivation for treason, Warhurst’s reasoning seemed banal. And whatever the player might have suspected about Holt, Seaton, or Warhurst, there was no way to act on these suspicions. There were no instructions or information from any of the three that the game gives the player any reason to distrust.

Of course, there are some silly parts and things that were not completely thought-out. It would have been nice to have some closure with Ying and Birdsong. They both disappear completely with no explanation, as does Blake if the player leaves him alive. Why does Harmonica use the Pyramid as an assassination weapon, after the PEG did so well against Dubansky? Why was the special forces team available for one mission, leaving Thorn to face gunfire and physical danger in all the rest? I understand, from a design perspective, the desire to show off new game mechanics and puzzle types. But logical consistency seemed to be lacking in some areas.

All this is counteracted by the fact that games with subject matter and gameplay like this just don’t come around very often. Spycraft doesn’t succeed perfectly at what it attempts , but there are no other games attempting this sort of thing that I’m aware of.

I wish the web content was still live. It would be also be interesting to see a CIA game like this set in the post-2001 Agency. There would be a lot more room for moral ambiguity and difficult decisions.

The LP-ing Process:

This was my first LP. I had it in my head to do this game for years, mainly because it seemed to be overlooked and I remembered it fondly. I went into the process intending to work far ahead of the updates, but I underestimated the time and work involved in putting something like this together. It wasn’t uncommon for me to spend 3-5 hours playing, cropping screenshots, putting them into order, transcribing dialog, and editing it into a whole.

Technically, this game caused a few issues. It was on my HD from a previous install, and the game ran fine without going through the install process. However, it would not save or load, and I got tired of playing through the same puzzles to get to the later stages. The installer would not load on 64-bit operating systems, so I ended up having to install it on an older computer, take screenshots, and transfer them to my main machine. At least it doesn’t require DOSBox or anything like that.

I’ve got a couple other ideas for LP threads, but I’ll take a few months off before I start anything. Thanks to everyone who’s watched and I hope you enjoyed Spycraft.