#7 Defying Topan

The story so far: We're playing a fool-punching shadowrunner who betrayed a Seattle employer to save thousands of lives in the Antumbra nightclub. Transferred to San Francisco, he's been connected to the company that owns the nightclub in hopes of discovering damning evidence on the most evil megacorporation of all: Aztechnology. Now that our plucky sidekick Hailey has decked (hacked) into their systems on the ground floor, our heroes are about ready to crash the corridors of power.

Just a reminder of our loading screen:

We start out in a corridor, facing down a guard just standing around minding his business.

Ima punch him.

That was actually the second punch because I missed the first one. Alarms blare as we attack. Hailey marks his gunner buddy in the back...

...and her drone finishes off the guy in front.

The gunner runs for cover behind a chair in the corner, firing wildly at our ork but misses. We follow her into cover and the drone blasts her - but she survives.

Outnumbered, she doesn't last long.

I haven't talked much about the cover system in the game. Cover (in the Dragonfall and Hong Kong engines) mitigates ranged damage and also makes it harder to hit an enemy with spells, even AoE spells. One of the reasons melee is important, despite seemingly being so suicidal, is that it knocks enemies out of cover and makes it easier for ranged, rigger and mage allies to hit them. Without a melee character, firefights can turn into long slogs.

Beyond the security checkpoint is a kitchen and dining room. We swipe an Advanced Medkit from a First Aid station on the wall...

...the minute we leave it though, the game puts us into combat mode.

We reach the end of the corridor, only to spy ambushers waiting in the office next door.

1nv4d3r busts in. Hailey's drone pings the guard to the left, and our hero almost kills the guy right in front of us. Almost. We take a couple of bullets for our efforts.

But the enemy's turned his back to Hailey.

They both pay for it. Then it's my turn, 1nv4d3r starts running for the door, only to be ambushed by a third guy I didn't see before. We take our revenge.

The next corridor leads us to another elevator.

I guess the implication is that if we had passed all the right Etiquette checks, we wouldn't have fought any of those guards.

Still, 1nv4d3r is only missing ten (out of 55) health - and we have half a dozen or so medkits. It could be worse. Speaking of worse...

The elevator brings us to a small room featuring a medkit, a decking point and an 'elite security' guard.

Not elite enough.

Hailey's dialogue trigger fires after the guard is dead, which definitely doesn't count as 'working as intended'.

We stand around awkwardly as Hailey plugs in. Hailey, on the other hand, is having a more exciting time than her boss is.

The battle with the White IC is quick and dirty - we take a scratch but it goes down quickly. Its Sentry IC big brother comes our way for revenge.

We don't give it the satisfaction.

We pass through a bright gate and - oh ho ho! This looks promising.

This IC apparently has a big brother too.

After blasting it, we realise that it doesn't have a big brother. No, it has two of them.

We summon our Assassin ESP to help us finish the one below but Hailey loses most of her IPs and has to heal. With a debuff from the recently deceased reinforcement, one hit can knock her right out of the Matrix.

Once the last one is down, we send our assassin to hack the turret...

...and run off in the other direction to save time. The red gate takes us to another turret room.

We attack and immediately it's like we poked the metaphorical Black IC tiger.

Sometimes, all a girl can do is lick her wounds and bide her time.

Meanwhile in realspace, the turrets are turning on their masters.

We ambush this poor woman before she can react.

Hailey's not doing as well as 1nv4d3r is, taking actual damage in the virtual world.

We get two consecutive misses at "80%" chance to hit..

...and get blasted again for our efforts. We do finally succeed and I follow the same procedure, having Hailey run for the exit while her ESP hacks.

Meanwhile, hacked turret #2 literally kills someone.

One of the other guards blows it to pieces out of revenge.

Newly unplugged, Hailey joins us as 1nv4d3r takes out the last guard, soaking up a shotgun blast to the chest.

Our reward for escaping that room is yet another ominous corridor, painted red with alarms.

We prepare for breach.

After a little hiccup (1nv4d3r getting shot), our drone manages to snipe the enemy mage.

Though valiant to the end, the security captain falls before our onslaught.

En route to the executive office, we pass through a luxuriously decorated corridor - and hear a single gunshot.

We're too late to stop a murder we didn't even know we were trying to prevent.

In the grim darkness of the 2050s, there is only freeware.

The glass breaking sound effect is a nice touch.

With nothing left to do, we rob the safe of its Premium Medkit and head for the exit. With luck, Johnson will be waiting out in the car by now, and...

...oh. Convenient.

LOOK WHO'S TALKING

He runs for the door and we follow in his wake.

SO very ready.