Mako Ballistics objectives - two birds, one stone!

Salokin on 5/3/2006 at 15:20

I don't know if anyone has mentioned this before - I couldn't find a mention of it using the search, but it is possible to complete the two seemingly opposed objectives in the Mako Ballistics level of DX-IW.

Due to the inherently spoiler-rich nature of the rest of this topic, I'll move to spoiler tags from here in...

[SPOILER]I noticed in the walkthroughs for the Seattle missions on Denton's Databank ((http://www.planetdeusex.com/denton/dx2/walkthroughs.shtml)) that many of the supposedly mutually exclusive objectives could actually be completed together, notably the whole Omar agent assassination thing (killing a member and still being rewarded by the rest - crazy bio-engineered fools!).

I attempted to continue the same theme into the following missions, and believe I have achieved something unique, or at least, something not documented in the above walkthroughs.

In the Mako Ballistics level, you are given the following objectives:

Primary Goal: [Order] Mag Rail: Assassinate Scientist
Primary Goal: [WTO] Mag Rail: Upload Spec

Since the only way to get your hands on the spec is to have the scientist lock himself in a secure bunker, it seems as if you are forced to fail to complete one of these goals, but by dropping a metal crate in the path of the door after the scientist has entered, you can wedge the door open. Grab the mag rail when it becomes available, and then jump over the crate to get to the scientist.

The next bit is a little tricky. The scientist has now become very, very tough. It will take several minutes of thwacking him with an energy blade to kill him. During this time, you have to make sure that the guard in the bottom room doesn't become aggressive, because if he comes for you and knocks the crate out of the door, you are going to be locked in. You could try killing him and the robo-dog before going for the scientist, but if the scientist tries to run for it, and knocks the crate, you are similarly stuffed. By crouching down and hitting the scientist in the back of the legs, whilst out of sight of the guard, you can, in time, kill him without alerting the guard.

This completes both goals and you can then walk down the stairs, jumping over the crate (or even removing it for the Houdini-esque murder) and strolling past the unsuspecting guard![/SPOILER]

Sadly, I don't think it is possible to remain so apolitical (or amoral even) for the whole game. If I am wrong, please let me know...

Vraptor7 on 7/3/2006 at 16:34

I also was able to do this kind of thing in other places. It's one of the few things I really didn't like about the game - overall I don't mind the faction system of choices the game uses, but it should at least be implemented so you feel that there's an opportunity cost with every action, along with the consequences. Small differences in dialogue doesn't really differentiate actions much.

There are a number of places where you can make a combination of choices that has obviously not been forseen by the developers and for which there is no real acknowledgement just because they didn't program it in. It wouldn't be such a problem if the game didn't rely so much on the choices you make to appropriate the dialogue and allegiance of the characters. If the plot were less tight and made allowances for emergence it wouldn't stick out as much.