The offensive continues. Elf even gets to melee with one of the soldiers, though it turns out she only has a baton equipped. Someday, Elf — someday you will stab some dudes.
By the end of a single round, we’ve cleared the room out completely.
Bogey took out the officer who tried to detain us, and somehow even managed to blast him… out of existence, apparently. He literally just vanished the moment he died. Is that a bug or a foreshadowing of his otherworldly origins? You decide!
Well done. Now let’s move out.
It ain’t gonna be that easy, boss.
I believe we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
The enemy’s turn takes about a million years (a bad sign), during which it becomes obvious that we’re totally surrounded. Several soldiers dart past the windows outside. There’s also no less than three that we can hear moving around on the floor above.
Not to mention this guy, who thinks he’s being sneaky but, uh… Not much use hiding behind a door with that many holes in it, bro.
After we’ve wasted that one, everyone takes positions to hold the foyer. Nessie moves up into the east doorway to watch for soldiers coming from further into the house. Doug covers the south stairway and Jerzey gets the north. Elf ducks into a dark corner and waits. Meanwhile, Viper’s taking pot shots at anyone who moves outside the window.
Two of those guys up above attempt to make a move on us, but it doesn’t go well for either of them.
A few minutes into this shootout and it’s looking pretty good for us. We’ve only eaten a single bullet across all six squad members. On the other hand, Viper’s got two kills through the window, another soldier got exploded by Nessie when he tried to come at us from the east, and there’s four bodies split between the two staircases. Resistance is thinning out, but there’s still at least two making noise on the second floor.
Elf is getting antsy sitting in the shadows, so she’s gonna inch up the stairs and see what they’re up to. I’m still not sure how the stealth skill works, but those stairwells look pretty shadowed. This’ll be her first real test.
Welp. She becomes visible again, which I assume means she’s been spotted. Dangit.
Plan B: Pull back a few steps and fire through the floor.
Brilliant! Look how clever I am! Surely this is a perfect plan and nothing will go wro–
Oh geez.
This scrublord somehow had line of sight on Elf even though she couldn’t see him. One burst of SMG fire later and Elf is down. Not dead, but out for the remainder of the mission. Characters are “incapacitated” when they get to 0 HP; they’ll only die if they drop significantly below that, and thankfully Elf took just enough shots to incapacitate but not kill her.
I got too cocky there — but lucked out big time.
We’re takin’ fire here! Might be time to bail on this operation!
Alright, clear a path!
Jerzey annihilates the guy who took down Elf, and then we make our move — out the front door.
A rolling firefight ensues between our guys and a few stragglers away down the path, with Bogey trying his best to patch up the squad as we go.
While the rest are involved in the shootout, Doug kindly deals with the soldier we saw at the gate way back in the cutscene.
With him gone — as well as the last two soldiers on the path taken out — it actually looks like we might be in the clear. Everyone regroups back at the manor’s front door.
That seems to be the last of them. For now.
Someone fetch Elf, please.
On it, sir.
Excellent. I suppose it’s about time we departed.
Captain, the… mission…
Oh, whoops. I got so caught up in escaping, I totally forgot we had other business here.
Yes… right. Nessie, Jerzey — you will find Newhouse. We’ll remain here and watch the gate for reinforcements.
Yeah, I bet you will. Come on, Jerzey.
…
They start with a secondary building to the south.
The door’s open, so it’s likely it was guarded at one point. Carefully peeking in now, though, we find it’s totally empty. Except for a couple trunks from which we pilfer two mines and a bit of medical stuff.
Back to the house, then.
Jerzey and Ness make their way SWAT-style through the manor, checking each room for evidence — or for Newhouse himself.
There’s a super handy feature, the strafe button, which orders your characters to always face the same direction regardless of which way they’re moving. That gets a lot of use in times like this.
We keep low and quiet, but the only person alive on the first floor turns out to be this nice lady in the kitchen.
There’s also the microfilm evidence we’re looking for — behind a locked door. Jerzey shoots it off its hinges and Ness grabs the film.
…which he needs to get on top of the table to do. Everyone in my squad is a genius, I tells ya.
Did y’all hear that gunfire?
I’m sure it’s nothing.
Next stop: the second floor. Head up them stairs, mates.
This is the part where we need to keep our eyes peeled. At some point earlier, somebody either caught a glimpse of an enemy through a window or heard them from the floor below. Either way, there’s a “ghost” in the far room — which means there’s at least one bad guy on this floor.
Interestingly, the brown “leave” button indicates that we’re allowed to leave the mission area now. I think because we’ve completed at least one objective. I can never bring myself to bail on a mission, though, no matter how badly we’re doing.
Anyway, remember how I said there was at least one bad guy left? Make that two.
We somehow manage to get the drop on him, even though I sort of would have expected him to be on the lookout after the protracted shootout a few minutes ago. He doesn’t last long.
Moving up, Jerzey watches the two south doors while Nessie scopes out the rooms on the northern half of the hall.
But there’s nothing to see in either of them. One more to go before we bust in on Newhouse. Let’s see what’s in here–
Ouch ouch ouch ouch.
Nessie opens the door and triggers an “interrupt” — basically an attack of opportunity. If you move into an enemy’s field of vision (or they move into yours), and they have any action points saved from their previous turn, they’re free to use them. Like to shoot you, which is exactly what happens here.
Ness takes no less than four pistol shots directly to the face — from Newhouse, as it turns out. 25-ish damage a piece, one after the other, and there’s nothing I can do but sit there and watch as this guy slowly chips away at his HP. Mercifully, the enemy runs out of AP — two shots away from killing Nessie. Not only that, but whoever’s in that last room moves up and looks like they’re going to bust through the door any second.
I panic for a minute. Everyone’s exchanging fire and it looks like this could go very badly. We’ve got to pull our boys back to a more defensible position or we could lose both of them. Ness gets the heck out of there, and Jerzey covers their retreat.
We could use some help in here, man!
Bogey makes it up in two rounds, and we just try to hold this one room while he works his healing magic. He gets Ness up to about two-thirds HP and then declares:
You’re the medic on this team, Bogey. You are the help.
…But that’s all he can do. Great. Such an inspiring leader.
Meanwhile…
One of the guys pokes his big dumb head in and gets super owned when he steps into the doorway and triggers an interrupt action from us.
Another one of Bogey’s pathetic healing job later (this time on Jerzey), and it’s now or never.
I think it’s about time Newhouse gets what he deserves. Guys, do me a favor and “knock the suspect unconscious.”
Yep, that’s about right.
We collect two more documents from the offices, pick up Newhouse, and all seven of us hump it to the gate.
Well, I’d call that a resounding success! Command will be ecstatic, no doubt about it.
On to the next episode!
— or return to the Table of Contents