A recent update shows the devs' pre-occupation with dotting i's and crossing t's. Though possibly 90% of the player population is level 50, they have been working to make things more accessible for new people, always a good thing. The collectors thronging the Uriah hardline are one example, and this cool new mish for Mercury is another. This new mission, designed for new redpills, is a very nice introduction to the world of the Exiles, showing quite well their diversity and their puzzling obsessiveness. I liked it.
I had forgotten just how accessible Mercury is. When I arrived at the Uriah South hardline, I saw things had changed. There was a new collector standing off to one side, a Codebase, looking for chopper keys of all things, and for no reason that I could see, pimping for the Machines (as if they needed help!).
Downstairs, I could see that Mercury had come up in the world. Of all the dozens of exiles scattered across the code-reefs of MegaCity, only he had rated a new mission all his own. And not only that, he had groupies now, too! As I approached him, I passed by no less than gushing attendants, eager to give me advice on staying in touch with him, and enlisting others to help me do his bidding: how to find him, run his missions, contact friends, etc. I never would have thought this from the first time I worked for him, but he obviously somehow caught the devs’ eyes, and was firmly on the Exiles fast-track. No doubt he would soon have his own construct and line of work gloves!
But the good times have not corrupted him yet, and he remains as personable and balanced as always, without Silver’s sinister obsessions. In fact, this new mish is all about the domestic and romantic entanglements of the Exiles. Very satisfying!
Honestly, this single adventure is more in the nature of an errand that a mission. Mercury is not just an inventor, he is a mechanic as well, and needs the keys to the car of his Exile girlfriend Pepper so he can finish working on it. She wants the car back quickly, apparently not being able to complete her unspecified “deliveries” downtown without it. Complicating all this is a third Exile, Raini, who’s been nosing about Mercury’s garage with a few members of her gang, the Five Points.
So what happens? You go, get the keys, fight some Five Points, and turn the keys over to one of Mercury’s guys, fighting some more Five Points along the way. Mercury gives you a letter of commendation which you give to Codebase, who then gives you an Industrial Jacket in exchange. And for a new player, the Industrial jacket has some very nice buffs.
That’s it! But other things unfold. The mission explores their personalities as well. Mercury is not the player he styles himself as (Raini dumped him, according to a mechanic, and good riddance!). Pepper is an impatient little twit, just as she is when you do her missions downtown. Raini is a menace that cannot let go. For a first mission, there are some very nice qualities to this:
1. Not too intimidating.
2. Introduces the Exiles, and gives you three names.
3. Not bad loot.
4. You learn about Mercury from his groupies.
5. You see the benefits of talking to everyone in an area before and after completing that area’s task.
6. You see how personalities drive events in MegaCity along with the war between Zion and the Machines.
For new people who’ve been getting nothing but Tyndall’s micro-managed missions this early in the game, this is a welcome change. Good variety, good background, and good loot. Nice work, and it makes me hope that other Exiles may be getting new missions and new background as well.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Sugar Shack 61: Synn: The End of the Line
As the code trickled and faded last night from my eyes, I felt unaccountably nervous. I had done so many exile missions (hundreds!), made some friends, made some enemies, scored some trivial loot, found many answers and more questions, and now this was the end. I hesitated, feeling at a loss. Had Dorothy felt like this, confronting the Wizard? Synn impatiently beckoned to me from the opposite corner. Like all the Exiles, she could only imagine her own self. For her, I would come and go like a stray thought at a drunken revel.
Synn has no club, no bristling band of angry followers. She stood (-660, 339) on the corner across from the Murasaki NW hardline, watching from afar the idling Black Tigers in the Yeung Park. Like them, she favored dark colors: tightly-zipped, grey leather that drew attention to her busty form and quirky blonde hair. She seemed evilly, eternally young; her voice was distant and cold.
1. The New Plague
Her first, trivial, mish involved putting “virus trackers” on two Machine systems. The first was a “Machine sorting station” and the second was a “listening outpost” used to monitor bluepill behavior. More likely the latter was a spy outpost directed at Zion, to whom Synn was going to offer the take. But Agent Gray would soon read my report, and be able to send them all the dummy traffic he wanted. Nice try!
These were straightforward tasks that a child could have done. I was disgusted that in the first one, I had to kill a bluepill to get a key to a locked room. This went very much against my nature, and I wish there had been some alternative, as there would be in the next mission. There, at least I could complete the mish without killing everything I encountered.
After hearing about the carnage, Synn remarked in her clipped style, “So far so good. Come see me again when you need a job”. Some new plague… “The New Pest” would have been more apropos.
Odd: One thing about this seemed strange to me. Sending me in through armed guards to insert viruses to steal information did not seem very stealthy. I can only surmise that this first, test mission was a diversion to distract Machine attention while a genuine mission took place elsewhere.
2. Crackdown
Last time Synn wanted the interception of important information. This time it’s papers from a courier (a “low-level” program). And it’s easier than it sounds! Go to the site and nose around. You discover a bluepill and an exile (named “Cockroach”!) planning to kill the courier. Explain this to him, and he gladly forks over the papers to you without a shot. Done! Alternately, you can kill him for the same papers, but why be direct? As Synn put it, “This just adds to your cred. Nice job.” And the “crackdown” is…where?
Odd: After I got the papers, I swung by to taunt the schemers. They did not seem to even notice I had them! This seems odd; it would have made more sense for them to have attacked me.
3. In Her Fear
Ostensibly, this seemed annoying: I had to go talk to a candidate for Synn’s organization. But when I arrived, the ostensible applicant attacked me! This led me to think that she would not be suitable material for Synn or for anyone else, and I definitely had no desire to watch her bob for apples at Synn’s Thanksgiving party. So I killed her. I fretted about telling Synn the news, thinking that she might question my motives in killing the aspiring Synner. However, when updated, all Synn said was that I had “come out of that well”.
Odd: For a serious plan to kidnap and interrogate me, I was puzzled that only one person had been sent. Am I so slightly regarded by Synn’s enemies? I only rate a single attacker? Huff! And, as any reader of the first two mission reports can attest, there would not have been much to report.
Odd: Also, why kidnap and interrogate someone like me who had been so little in Synn’s employ? Someone, somewhere, must be desperate to find out something about this fairly trivial exile. Perhaps she has an admirer who wants to know her favorite snack food or her shoe size.
4. Nudged
Once more, not very complicated, even though it’s supposed to be part of a scheme of Synn’s. Get some “incriminating evidence” from an obnoxious contact (“you’re not exactly what I had in mind” he purred when I arrived), kill someone, and leave the “evidence” on him. The reason for all this was not made clear. And who was meant to discover this “incriminating evidence”? And do what? More generally, Synn never really explains the reason of her missions, and you never have the slightest sense of what their purpose is. You are always regarded as a hired contractor and an absolute outsider. But I am not doing these for love, so I turned in my report with one hand, accepted payment with the other, and felt the great wheel turn.
5. The Wheel
Now you learn that the previous mission was to set a trap, and it is about to close. Apparently a Merv crew has been causing trouble for Synn and “her operations” one time too many. The plant last time brought them all in, and now you will take them all out. They are separated across the floor, apparently looking for something, and you can take them down piecemeal. That’s it! Synn remarks at the end, “you’re getting quite good at this” but has no further work she is willing to entrust to you.
Odd: In one room there is a mysterious locked cabinet, but I did not have pick lock loaded, and none of the enemies had a key. Thus the cabinet was left unopened, but the mission was completed nonetheless. Not sure what was happening with this. Rumor has it that it contained three FM-1500s, but no one will ever know.
At the end I felt disappointed. What were Synn’s “operations” which she was safeguarding? Who were her enemies? What did she seek? Did she have a larger plan or was she simply an idle schemer trying to be like others, like a less comely, less engaging version of Rose? Who even cared about her? For the life of me, after working for her I could not see why anyone would give her any thought whatsoever.
And that’s how my survey of MegaCity’s exile contacts ended: in puzzlement. Not that it was not a great ride, and in one of my next posts, I’ll review the best on International. For now, her missions are worth doing, since there’s a small amount of story behind them. However, of all the Exiles in International, hers and Rickshaw’s are the absolute weakest.
Synn has no club, no bristling band of angry followers. She stood (-660, 339) on the corner across from the Murasaki NW hardline, watching from afar the idling Black Tigers in the Yeung Park. Like them, she favored dark colors: tightly-zipped, grey leather that drew attention to her busty form and quirky blonde hair. She seemed evilly, eternally young; her voice was distant and cold.
1. The New Plague
Her first, trivial, mish involved putting “virus trackers” on two Machine systems. The first was a “Machine sorting station” and the second was a “listening outpost” used to monitor bluepill behavior. More likely the latter was a spy outpost directed at Zion, to whom Synn was going to offer the take. But Agent Gray would soon read my report, and be able to send them all the dummy traffic he wanted. Nice try!
These were straightforward tasks that a child could have done. I was disgusted that in the first one, I had to kill a bluepill to get a key to a locked room. This went very much against my nature, and I wish there had been some alternative, as there would be in the next mission. There, at least I could complete the mish without killing everything I encountered.
After hearing about the carnage, Synn remarked in her clipped style, “So far so good. Come see me again when you need a job”. Some new plague… “The New Pest” would have been more apropos.
Odd: One thing about this seemed strange to me. Sending me in through armed guards to insert viruses to steal information did not seem very stealthy. I can only surmise that this first, test mission was a diversion to distract Machine attention while a genuine mission took place elsewhere.
2. Crackdown
Last time Synn wanted the interception of important information. This time it’s papers from a courier (a “low-level” program). And it’s easier than it sounds! Go to the site and nose around. You discover a bluepill and an exile (named “Cockroach”!) planning to kill the courier. Explain this to him, and he gladly forks over the papers to you without a shot. Done! Alternately, you can kill him for the same papers, but why be direct? As Synn put it, “This just adds to your cred. Nice job.” And the “crackdown” is…where?
Odd: After I got the papers, I swung by to taunt the schemers. They did not seem to even notice I had them! This seems odd; it would have made more sense for them to have attacked me.
3. In Her Fear
Ostensibly, this seemed annoying: I had to go talk to a candidate for Synn’s organization. But when I arrived, the ostensible applicant attacked me! This led me to think that she would not be suitable material for Synn or for anyone else, and I definitely had no desire to watch her bob for apples at Synn’s Thanksgiving party. So I killed her. I fretted about telling Synn the news, thinking that she might question my motives in killing the aspiring Synner. However, when updated, all Synn said was that I had “come out of that well”.
Odd: For a serious plan to kidnap and interrogate me, I was puzzled that only one person had been sent. Am I so slightly regarded by Synn’s enemies? I only rate a single attacker? Huff! And, as any reader of the first two mission reports can attest, there would not have been much to report.
Odd: Also, why kidnap and interrogate someone like me who had been so little in Synn’s employ? Someone, somewhere, must be desperate to find out something about this fairly trivial exile. Perhaps she has an admirer who wants to know her favorite snack food or her shoe size.
4. Nudged
Once more, not very complicated, even though it’s supposed to be part of a scheme of Synn’s. Get some “incriminating evidence” from an obnoxious contact (“you’re not exactly what I had in mind” he purred when I arrived), kill someone, and leave the “evidence” on him. The reason for all this was not made clear. And who was meant to discover this “incriminating evidence”? And do what? More generally, Synn never really explains the reason of her missions, and you never have the slightest sense of what their purpose is. You are always regarded as a hired contractor and an absolute outsider. But I am not doing these for love, so I turned in my report with one hand, accepted payment with the other, and felt the great wheel turn.
5. The Wheel
Now you learn that the previous mission was to set a trap, and it is about to close. Apparently a Merv crew has been causing trouble for Synn and “her operations” one time too many. The plant last time brought them all in, and now you will take them all out. They are separated across the floor, apparently looking for something, and you can take them down piecemeal. That’s it! Synn remarks at the end, “you’re getting quite good at this” but has no further work she is willing to entrust to you.
Odd: In one room there is a mysterious locked cabinet, but I did not have pick lock loaded, and none of the enemies had a key. Thus the cabinet was left unopened, but the mission was completed nonetheless. Not sure what was happening with this. Rumor has it that it contained three FM-1500s, but no one will ever know.
At the end I felt disappointed. What were Synn’s “operations” which she was safeguarding? Who were her enemies? What did she seek? Did she have a larger plan or was she simply an idle schemer trying to be like others, like a less comely, less engaging version of Rose? Who even cared about her? For the life of me, after working for her I could not see why anyone would give her any thought whatsoever.
And that’s how my survey of MegaCity’s exile contacts ended: in puzzlement. Not that it was not a great ride, and in one of my next posts, I’ll review the best on International. For now, her missions are worth doing, since there’s a small amount of story behind them. However, of all the Exiles in International, hers and Rickshaw’s are the absolute weakest.
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