Session 4

Ok. So re-load. Let's not bother with the basement right now. I've trawled the house for better weapons but can only find kitchen knives. Stupid guards on the stupid Toronto pinching my gun. Mind you, knowing my luck it'd have had no bloomin' ammo with it.

Anyway, I explored the house a little more and found there was a SECOND basement! This one wasn't a first-person basement and was "A little cooler" than the ground floor (this was something Tom spontaneously announced when we got down there. I didn't think it was significant myself, but since the game made a point of mentioning it, I wonder if maybe it will be...)

The second basement if full of people who've been injured in the hunt. They're all wandering around saying things like "I could do with a sleep - I hope I don't get infected". Only one of them would have a conversation with me:

"Dsarii-Ma" (this is alien for "hello")

"Hi, can you tell me about your job?"

"I am a hunter, but I got effed up by a Krondir and now I have to recouperate in this basement. Giria's looking after me" (Giria is Mandy's real name).

"Giria's nice isn't she..."

"Yeah - she looks after us all really well. But she's quite sensitive so be careful what you say to her..."

"What can you tell me about the hunt?"

"I can't say anything about that."

"Really? But you're a hunter. And it's not a secret hunt because everyone else is allowed to talk about it... Are you sure there's no tips you can give me about dealing with Krondirs? I mean, you never know when I might come across some in a basement at the other end of the house..."

"Goodbye human"

"err - ok... Mental"

Nothing much else to see down here (apart from an open cesspool, which doesn't seem to ME like the kind of thing you should put in the same space as all the sick people - no wonder they're worried about infections!) so I set off out for the big city.

Before I leave, I stopped by Giria's room so that she can join my party if she's going to. This being an RPG I guessed that she might be a healer character class who would be handy to have with me.

"Ah! Tom Driscoll! I'm glad you're actually ok and not horribly dead from getting up before I told you it was safe to. Repairing a human was a fun change from repairing half-dead isaki who've been badded up on the hunt"

At this point the game offers me two dialogue options that went along the lines of:

1) "Thankyou for looking after us Giria - without you we would've died!"

or

2) "Geeze Louise! I got better quickly so I didn't have to look at YOUR hideous face and listen to your shrewish winging!"

Normally I wouldn't be sure which was the right option, but thankfully that mental huntsman told me that Giria was sensative - so I probably SHOULDN'T call her a horrific shrew.

My instincts prove right! I talk sweetly to her and she gives me some lovely healing potions, but so far she's not offered to come along.

I ditch the shrew and head out of the front door...

Now I have to make a small confession. When I said I'd never played this game before that was only MOSTLY true. Back when it came out I played the demo of it - which I think must've been on a cover-disk of PC Gamer. That was definitely the magazine I read the review of it in. I only very hazily remember that demo so all of the stuff I've seen so far has been ALMOST as fresh to me as if I was seeing it for the first time - but I'd like to announce that from this point on everything that happens is 100% new to me.

And here's a surprise! The town is in 3D! Stepping out of the front door I find myself in first-person mode looking across the crazy, mossy, canal addled streets of whatever-this-place's name is (I've never quite got round to noting down the name of this town I don't think... Unless it's "Jirinaar"... I know the continent is "Nakiridaani"... I'll make a note to clear this up next time I switch the game on...)

My glimps of the street is only brief as an Isaki soldier strolls up and announces

"Ah! I'm glad I arrived when I did! Janiis the Sebainah wants to see you RIGHT NOW!"

and off I'm whisked to the council house in the centre of town!

The council house is back in isometric view and it looks pretty much exactly like the house I woke up in, only laid out differently. Janiis's office has it's own little in-door moat which is cool - although it does mean that when you go to talk to her you have to listen to the running-water sound effect for the whole conversation. At this point I just took my headphones off. The music's not interesting enough to be worth being made to need a wee.

"Hello humans - I'm interested to have a look at you. We have powerful magic here, but your ship is something else! It nearly killed a bunch of people when it arrived - but I'm sure you didn't mean for it to..."

"Yeah. Sorry about that. And if you thought our rubbish pod was good, wait 'til you see the massive space station that turns into a planet eating robot with invulnerable robot minions that help tare up the whole world".

"woah!"

"Sweet eh? Yeah, it should've arrived by now though. You've not heard anything about it have you?"

"Um no, nothing so far..."

"Oh, don't worry though - even though everyone else on board is a corporate puppet out to make money with no regard to the well-being of the locals, they DEFINATLY won't destroy the world once they see you guys!"

"Phew! Well in that case, why don't you come to my great great grandnephew's coming of age ceremony in 2 day's time? After that I'll arranged transport for you to other continents where they might've heard about a giant killer mining robot touching down..."

I'll be honest I was a little suspicious about this. She basically told me to hang around for a couple of days "Getting to know about Isaki culture" until this celebration occurs. But why would they need ME there for that? I mean, you don't see the Prime Minister saying to aliens on first contact "Yeah, you can go off and find out if any of the rest of your species are here... BUT FIRST, you absolutely MUST come to my son's christening!"

Anyway, I decide to make the most of it and go for a first-person stroll around the town.

Technical limitatins aside, the town IS pretty impressive. When I step outside it's night time, but it's ok because I can "Wait" wherever I like until it's daylight. Irritatingly, a slip of the tracker-ball (I'm actually using a rolee polee: http://roleepolee.com/ ) means I wait 21 hours and it's dark again already so it's done me no good at all. But still the town looks good at night too. The large buildings all have huge glowing domes and there're huge areas of flowing water breaking up the streets. It's not got any rows of buildings as such, instead it's broken down into large clustry buildings like the one I started in. Lots of people all live in one huge house rather than each family having an individual property. Having this section in first person mode really does bring home the sense of wandering around a strange city gorping like a tourist at the sights! It's a shame there aren't tourist attraction style things to go look at, but then the developers had probably put all their resources into building what's already there before they start thinking about complimentary nicities...

I wander around until I accidentally wander right out of the city altogether and suddenly we're in another view-point again!

Outside the city walls the game is isometric again, but this time greatly zoomed out so that you get a great view of the amazing countryside with it's green and orange trees.

The city is surrounded with a high mossy wall that's been grown out the ground and just outside is an itinerant farmer with his herd of "minins"

I can't accurately describe what a minin looks like alas because from this distance they're about 5 pixels wiggling around like digital worms. But their owner tells me their meat is nicer than the stuff the hunters bring in and cheaper and easier to get.

"EVERYONE IS TIRED NOW!" cry my characters when I've finished chatting with the farmer, so I have a rest out in the open.

When I awake, it turns out that it's time for adulthood celebration and I have to go directly back to Janiis in the council house.

So here we are, standing around in the main hall and Janiis introduces everyone:

"Everyone, this is Tom Driscoll. Tom this is Akiir - he's the head of the "formers" (the Dji-Fadh, y'know, the ones who use magic to grow all our buildings)"

Akiir steps forwards and says hello.

"And this is everyone else" (Janiis can't be bothered to name everyone. They're probably not important.)

JUST THEN! A masked figure turns up! Tom is startled to see that it's another human!

Another human?!?!

But before anyone has a chance to say anything, the human lobs a spear at Akiir and scarpers! "STOP THAT MAN!" shouts Janiis... But it's too late. He's vanished, and Akiir... IS DEAD!!!!