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| Halo [R]Evolved - 343 Guilty Spark | |
| Posted By: SonGoharotto <SonGoharotto@gmail.com> | Date: 5/14/11 5:59 p.m. |
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343 Guilty Spark "Plumb the depths of this installation and meet the only enemy the Covenant fear." {Cutscene} Fade in, panning over a fetid, primordial swamp. Grunts and Jackals flee through the muck, panicked and disorganized. Echo 419 flies overhead, barely visible through the fog. Cut inside the cockpit, behind pilot Carol "Foehammer" Rawley. We pan back, revealing Master Chief in the ops seat behind her. His communications screen shows Major Silva at Alpha Base, formulating battle plans over the sys-ops table. • Maj. Silva: (Directed off-screen) "Get me updated recon. I need to know what's happening now, not an hour ago." (To camera) "Chief, there you are. I can't spare anymore troops for another snipe hunt. Something has changed; the Covenant are recalling search teams and drawing inwards. I need to move against the Truth and Reconciliation before it's too late. It's our only way off this ring."
The connection cuts off. We follow Master Chief as he climbs out of the ops seat and moves to the troop bay. He begins stocking up on ammo. In the cabin, Foehammer calls over her shoulder. • Foehammer: "The last transmission from the Captain's dropship was from this area. That was over twelve hours ago. When you locate Captain Keyes, radio in, and I'll come pick you up." Master Chief loads and shoulders a Shotgun. • Master Chief: "Stay high. This will probably get messy." Well Enough Alone Master Chief disembarks from the Pelican. It is raining lightly in the swamp. Gnarled trees tower overhead and phosphorescent plants wink deep in the gloom. Penetrating deeper into the swamp, Forerunner architecture seems to be interwoven with the otherwise natural terrain. [I would expand the opening swamp area just a bit, incorporating elements from multiplayer maps like Guardian. Just some additional structures to explore or ignore, nothing major. We could even get a Firefight map out of this level. Firefight with Flood; that would be interesting.] Master Chief encounters scattered Covenant patrols, but they are easily dealt with, frightened as they are and firing at shadows. The Chief finds the crash sites of a Covenant Spirit, as well as Victor 933, the Pelican taken by Captain Keyes and Fire Team Charlie. A barely audible distress signal is being broadcast, indicating that Fire Team Charlie encountered non-Covenant hostiles and Captain Keyes may once again be in distress. Cresting some manner of fortress wall, Master Chief looks down into the courtyard of a Forerunner facility that has been reclaimed by the swamp. Friendly contacts appear on his Motion Tracker and ballistics weapon fire drive a swarm of Covenant out of the structure. They take cover in the brush, but no UNSC forces pursue. The Chief deals with these contacts himself and enters the facility. There are signs of Marine fortifications, deployable cover and mounted Heavy Machine Guns, but the room is empty with its only notable feature being a large open pit in the center. Machinery hums and a platform rises in the pit; an elevator. Master Chief rides it down. The facility below is a series of arched chambers connected by tight security passages. Many contain what appear to be damaged machinery, ruptured holding tanks, and rows of flickering holographic consoles. The SPARTAN reactivates minor systems and bashes through sloppy barricades in order to proceed. Covenant are camped in these areas, but are weak in number. There are also several positions that were seemingly abandoned and awash with alien blood, but there are no bodes. Communication terminals transmit sporadic reports, but without Cortana to translate, they are indecipherable. Master Chief eventually comes upon an AWOL Marine who babbles crazily to himself. A survivor of Fire Team Charlie, it sounds like what they encountered was intent on capturing live targets, so he played dead. Upon approach, the Marine fires wildly at the SPARTAN. He is determined not to be taken by "them." This one is no source of answers, so Master Chief is forced to move on. A single shot rings out and the babbling stops. Entering some manner of observation chamber, there is human blood to be found here. A passage down leads to the chamber beyond. {Cutscene} Master Chief finds a Marine-issue Spoofer has been mounted on the Forerunner security door. He hears movement, but finds no contacts. Typing in a command to open the door, a Marine's body falls through. The Chief catches it and cautiously clears the area, still finding nothing. Inside the large chamber, there are half-empty weapons and human blood splashed everywhere. Master Chief pulls a data chip from the helmet of one Private Wallace A. Jenkins and watches the mission recording. Led by Captain Keyes and Sergeant Johnson, Fire Team Charlie touched down in the swamp and entered the facility without incident. They found Covenant dead, but few signs of friendly fire. And in the very chamber that Master Chief now occupies, the UNSC forces encountered a previously unknown xenotype and were overwhelmed. The recording ends and Master Chief pulls the data chip from his helmet. He once again hears movement... and it's getting closer. The Flood {Gameplay} Locked containment cells around the chamber blow open one by one, releasing swarms of the scurrying creatures that attacked Fire Team Charlie. These 'Infection Forms' are individually fragile, but can drain the MJOLNIR suit's energy shields precipitously when attacking en masse. If the player is left unshielded, the Infection Forms will latch on and deliver chip damage over time, but can be swept off with the use of a melee attack. [That last bit is important to me. I hate the feeling of being completely defenseless when Infection Forms are all over you.] The door to the exit blows open and more Infection Forms attack, but they are accompanied by something even more hideous and formidable -- Elite warriors that appear twisted of limb and covered in fleshy growths. These 'Combat Forms' attack mindlessly, swiping at Master Chief with enormous claws and tentacles. Even when their limbs are blown off, they continue to pursue and must be destroyed completely, or else they can be reanimated by an Infection Form. Now realizing the folly of which Cortana spoke, Master Chief must escape the facility. These new creatures run rampant throughout, assaulting Covenant patrols and barring the Chief's path. He makes it back to the elevator, but it is now damaged and malfunctions. A hard drop leaves him deeper in the facility. Here he finds more bodies of Marines. Their fallen weapons replenish Master Chief's rapidly depleting ammo, but this is little comfort. Even more horrifying, Infection Forms can burrow into the fresh corpses and mutate them into new Combat Forms, many of whom are now armed and capable of firing back. Master Chief eventually fights his way to a hub room of some kind, where there are a number of empty gateways, but no doors. At the opposite end, one of the gates unfolds and reveals a wavering blue portal that his HUD automatically tags as a Slipspace distortion. Hostile contacts begin streaming down into the room from ceiling ducts and the Chief has little choice but to plunge headlong into the mysterious portal. He comes out in a new room, small and empty. There are holographic consoles and a single exit. • Foehammer (COM): "This is Echo 419. Chief, is that you? I lost your signal when you disappeared inside the structure. What's going on down there? I'm tracking movement all over the place!" Master Chief can now see survivors of Fire Team Charlie in the next room; it is the foyer of the facility. They are firing down into the elevator shaft; one or two Infection Forms slips past them but are quickly handled. The door struggles to open, so the SPARTAN punches through it, alarming the Marines. Seeing the Chief is uninfected, they stand down. [May seem like a pointless change, but I needed to define some sense of continuity from room to room for myself. How is it you can take two elevators down, but only one to get back up? That may sound like a stupid question, but considering you never pass through a second floor on your way back to the foyer, this confuses the hell out of me.] • PFC Chipps Dubbo: (Desperate and afraid) "Sir! Thank God you're here! We've been lost out here for hours. After we lost contact with the rest of the mission, we, we headed to the RV point, and then these... these things... they ambushed us. We've gotta get out of here!"
Master Chief leads the Marines outside, but even in numbers there is little safety, as the creatures descend upon them from all angles. They soon find the Forerunner tower and begin climbing it, but a resounding howl in the swamp signals a fresh swarm of hostiles. Master Chief and the Marines defend themselves from wave after wave, but there is no sign of Foehammer. [This structure is now scalable, as in Backwash, which is in fact based on this very structure. A couple rooms and platforms from which to mount a defense and intercept the Flood. The finale of this stage always felt a little random to me, because there's no clear indication of when it will end. Perhaps that's the point? Regardless, this set up adds a bit of playtime to what is actually a rather short level and we can now differentiate between the difficulty levels by simply adding more waves of Flood.] Suddenly, lances of light penetrate the fog and strike down their mutated attackers. Curious floating robots of seeming Forerunner make descend from the tower and set about subduing the enemy contacts, apparently happy to ignore the human interlopers. {Cutscene} A different kind of robot descends from within the tower, behind the Master Chief. He whirls to face its single glowing blue eye, but it appears non-threatening. • 343 Guilty Spark: "Greetings. I am the Monitor of Installation 04. I am 343 Guilty Spark. Someone has released the Flood. My function is to prevent it from leaving this installation. But I require your assistance. Come. This way." Master Chief and Guilty Spark are enveloped in rings of golden light, then disappear in a flash, abandoning the remaining Marines. • Foehammer (COM): "Chief, I've lost your signal! Where'd you go? Chief? Chief!" Fade to black. Level ends.
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| Replies: |
| Halo [R]Evolved - 343 Guilty Spark | SonGoharotto | 5/14/11 5:59 p.m. |
| Re: Halo [R]Evolved - 343 Guilty Spark | Dagoonite | 5/14/11 7:15 p.m. |
| Re: Halo [R]Evolved - 343 Guilty Spark | SonGoharotto | 5/14/11 7:43 p.m. |
| Re: Halo [R]Evolved - 343 Guilty Spark | The Loot | 5/15/11 1:42 a.m. |
| Re: Halo [R]Evolved - 343 Guilty Spark | ZackDark | 5/15/11 3:40 p.m. |
| Re: Halo [R]Evolved - 343 Guilty Spark | SonGoharotto | 5/15/11 5:07 p.m. |
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