Ephemerality

Tutorial finally complete, it was time for questing!  First order of business: inform the widower of the Bile Hurk’s former first officer that she died in glorious combat…or I’m assuming anyway.  If you recall, Kur’P Ud Wakk more or less stumbled into that scene, so the particulars of her death, beyond that the former captain dunnit, were left to speculation.  Still, Klingons.  I imagine if I told her family that she died like a bitch (like the captain), then the streets would flow with the blood of Klingons.

But I didn’t have the choice anyway.  For an RPG, this game doesn’t exactly have a whole lot of decisions built into it.  But this is an older game from a time preceding RPG character repercussions, so I had no choice but to be the good guy.  Following the GPS embedded into the upper-left corner of my eye, I found this guy and delivered the news (yes, by pressing “A”).  Button mashing commenced, because I really didn’t care at all about this guy or his reaction.  Kur’P Ud Wakk’s short command career had apparently already made him incredibly callous.  I left the Klingon to grieve, which probably meant blood wine…because they’re Klingons and that’s all I’ve ever seen them drink in any of the Star Trek series.  Klingons have blood wine, Romulans have Romulan ale (which is illegal in the Federation because of some embargo, like Cuban cigars–this gets mentioned a lot), and the Federation has their non-alcoholic synthesol (although Picard has been known to enjoy some genuine wine from his family’s estate in France).  The future of alcohol seems pretty sad I must say.  I muse on this while I pour another glass of bourbon from my decanter.

I think Hugh Janus had to do this as well, which seems a little odd.  Imagine an enormous Klingon runs up to you and tells you that your wife is dead, all the while someone else stands awkwardly close to your conversation, only to interject the moment you finish talking to tell you that your wife is dead.  I’m no Klingon, but that might make me a little violent.  To recap, it went something like this:

Kur’P Ud Wakk:

‘Hi, your wife is dead.’

Widower:

‘Uh, okay.’

Hugh Janus:

‘Hi, your wife is dead.’

Widower:

‘…Yeah, okay, I got that.’

Kur’P Ud Wakk and Hugh Janus high-five and shout in celebration, then take of running at full speed, because no one ever walks anywhere in an RPG.

But the Klingon did not get violent, and despite the nature of the quest, we celebrated having successfully completed an objective together.  We had figured out game mechanics.

But the quest was not yet completed.  For some reason, this objective was lumped in with the next: going to a warehouse, shooting some people, and activating terminals.  So we do just that.  Kur’P Ud Wakk skillfully balances pressing the right trigger and “A”, dropping foes with his disruptor.  Hugh Janus, on the other hand, goes in ineffectually swinging a bat’leth.  Kur’P Ud Wakk suspects he was impressed after witnessing his own mad break-dancing moves earlier and wants to show off.  I anticipate a bat’leth duel between the two at some point.

On the way out, a bigger baddie shows up, which requires many more pushings of the right trigger.  He drops, we leave the warehouse, and then we run around the station for several minutes trying to figure out where to go.

Which brings me to my next point: email!  How many RPGs have you completing objectives, but you have to physically return to the quest-giver?  And these are futuristic games.  We have video conferencing and voice chat, yet when it’s time to send a message back, the player character is apparently incapable of initiating the communication.  Like some old geezer who can’t figure out his cell phone and says “Fuck it, I’m just going to go pay this guy a visit.  I’ll go jump in my Buick and drive 20 in a 45 while everyone else is trying to get to work on time.”

Eventually, perseverance pays off when we collectively explore the entirety of the compound’s physical space, and successfully complete the objective, thus officially completing our first quest together.  I celebrate with a glass of bourbon.

–Simon

So it turns out that these inexplicable conflicts with the Federation are centered on this mystery prisoner that I had neglected to mention before, since really he was just another source of skippable dialogue, and what dialogue I did read didn’t offer much of an explanation since the game was wanting to keep this little bit of intrigue as a hook to get people to finish the tutorial.  From memory, I’ll try to reconstruct a conversation Kur’P Ud Wakk had with this NPC:

Kur’P Ud Wakk:

“Haha, I have you in the brig.  Why is the Federation after you?”

Prisoner:

“Haha, I will only answer you with a vague foreboding of future events, hinting at wide-spanning politics of which you know nothing about.”

Kur’P Ud Wakk:

[Something Klingonese]

Prisoner:

“I’m also going to escape, like 3 friggin times.”

I mention this now because apparently I was recapturing this guy and picking him up from a penal colony.  So I do that, and we have another variation of the above conversation.  Then I leave, hopefully to get hammered in-game, because the dragging tutorial was killing my real bourbon-induced buzz.

I was then instructed to go to another planet, which I presumed was the Klingon homeworld, because although I might be a bit of a nerd, I really don’t remember the name of the Klingon homeworld.  I beam the prisoner down to the prison.  In fact, the cutscene showed me beaming him down between two guards, immediately outside of a holding cell.  He then walks 5 feet into the cell and the forcefield activates.  That seemed unnecessary.

Now, I do remember from a TNG episode where they were beaming a prisoner between holding cells, and they had to drop the forcefield and energize at the same moment, because the forcefield interferes with that.  But that doesn’t explain why I couldn’t beam him into the cell when its forcefield was deactivated.  Star Trek seems to struggle to maintain their technological canon, like if you can beam into a ship when its shields are up, or fire weapons from a cloaked ship.  I guess when things interfere with a plot device, the technology changes.

Anyway, prisoner delivered, I needed to talk to him again, which was another variation of the above conversation.  Then, having received no further information on the mysterious prisoner plot, I got to leave the prison and enter the station proper.  Now I was free from the eternal shackles of Tutorial, right?

Nope.  Now I had to go to the proving grounds or something.  Apparently, even though I had violently usurped the captain’s chair, I had to prove my worthiness through…more violence.  Were the Klingons always this single-minded?

The proving grounds was a raised platform in the middle of the station, where during Klingons’ much needed downtime, in order to relax, they hack at each other with bat’leths.  The ringmaster informed me that in order to challenge someone to a spar, I needed to talk to them.  Thanks, ringmaster.  You just advised me that in order to communicate intent to another being, to use our shared language to do so.  I’m not sure if the game’s regressing, or if it’s just always going to treat me like an idiot.  Then again, I did fly the Bile Hurk directly into an asteroid cloud twice, so maybe this treatment is justified.

First, however, I noticed a passing Orion in the 20 feet between the ringmaster and the ring, so I had to stop and take a gander:

That isn’t my screenshot, but it is a true rendering of a Star Trek Online Orion.  Is that their work attire or casual evening wear?  If the game mechanics allowed it, Kur’P Ud Wakk was about to bury his bat’leth into a giant lizard’s face and then go grab that Orion (they don’t).

Back to the sparring now.  So, I walked up to any number of giant lizards who apparently just hung out around the ring, waiting to be challenged, even though I had to talk to 3 of them in order to find one open to accept.  Guess how I talked to them?  That’s right!  I pushed “A”.

Then something unexpected happened.  When battle initiated, I was given a mini tutorial inside the main tutorial, which explained how to use a bat’leth.  And no, it wasn’t “A” or the right trigger alone.  There were combinations, involving patters of the right trigger and the right bumper.  I failed to commit the extensive list of commands to memory however, so when battle began, I fell back on my Soul Calibur experience, and with the deft dexterity of a master gamer, proceeded to button mash as quickly as possible.

Kur’P Ud Wakk responded by having a seizure.  The giant lizard, uncertain what to make of the apparently break-dancing Klingon, must have figured he was simply getting served, for he stood motionless and made no attempt to decapitate his foe.  That would be his undoing, for in the midst of Kur’P Ud Wakk’s flailing, enough blows landed upon the lizard that he tapped out.  Victorios, Kur’P Ud Wakk returned to the ringmaster, who congratulated him.  But, not one, but two matches were required for arbitrary reasons.  As with the asteroid debacle, the game must have figured I needed more practice, so I ran back to the ring for one more challengee.  But there were no takers.  Apparently the lizards, not having the sweet moves to match Kur’P Ud Wakk, honorably declined.

This is about the time that Joe, playing through his own tutorial in tandem, announced that he just got an achievement for completing the tutorial, thus confirming first that it was indeed a tutorial, and that it was almost over.  Also, the moment he completed it, his character’s isolated spirit form popped into a commonspace corporeal existence, for he could see Kur’P Ud Wakk, though I couldn’t see him.

To expedite the process, I simply asked how the fuck do I complete a second spar, and he advised to talk to the ringmaster again.  It would seem that I hadn’t mashed the “A” button enough times, and for some reason I needed her blessing first in order to wail on strangers who have the audacity of being in my vicinity.

As before, I completed the mad skillz break-dance routine and emerged victorious, if not with a lessened reputation.  One more talk (AKA pressing “A”) with the ringmaster, and the angelic ding of Xbox Live achievement recipiation indicated my own tutorial completion.  I too immediately underwent corporeal transference, and in an instant I could see Hugh Janus–an alien of some sort, 4 feet in stature.  And so, Kur’P Ud Wakk and Hugh Janus–an amusing irony of juxtaposed statures, became instant besties and for the first time contemplated a joint course of action.

–Simon

Wrong.  The parameters of the game were still the masters of my fate, and fate deemed it necessary that I complete the tutorial, which still wasn’t finished.  In hindsight, I know that this was a tutorial, and I suspected it was at the time, but the game never actually made that clear until said tutorial was finished.  So there was a little bit of confusion on the part of Alpha Pwn at the time.

But my irritations were assuaged when Kur’P Ud Wakk finally got the opportunity to command the Bile Hurk personally.  And to mark this momentous occasion, I was tasked with scanning asteroids.  Actually I was told to scan some asteroids, and I, unfamiliar with the peculiarities of piloting starships, lurched forward uncontrollably at full impulse.  My new first officer, anticipating my novice blunder, stopped the Bile Hurk before it collided catastrophically with the asteroids, then berated me for my idiotic flying.

Even without the tutorial’s onscreen guidance, I deduced that in order to start scanning, I should push “A”.  But, no mystery material lay within this batch, which was the game’s clever way of telling me I needed to practice flying a little more, else my first officer fail to save me again, or simply kill me and take command himself.

The problem, is that the navigation commands have a limited set of customization, so after a lengthy experimentation phase, I had to settle on a set of controls that were only slightly more intuitive.  Still, I had some more practice under my belt now, and I felt confident I could navigate a ship through space–something inherently almost devoid of obstructions under normal conditions.  How hard could it be?

I demonstrated this newfound confidence by orienting the Bile Hurk towards the next set of asteroids, and slightly increasing impulse velocity.  But, the impulse drive responds exponentially, and in short order I was once again on a kamikaze run at full impulse.  My first officer again stopped the ship, and again told me to stop trying to crash the ship.  I think he threatened me that time, too.

But, there’s one thing that I could do well, and that’s push “A”.  I scanned those asteroids and found that mystery element.  Crappy flying notwithstanding, I had still managed to advance the tutorial.  There was dialog, and I skipped it with the magical button “A”.  Why?  Because I was losing interest and really didn’t care anymore.  But then, for reasons unknown because I had skipped the dialogue, there was space battle!  And I almost wished that I had paid attention as to why.

No matter.  This ship was going down!  I closed distance, sighted my enemy, and…targeted him by pushing “A”…or was it the right trigger?  Can’t remember.  Apparently my crew was firing the disruptors.  That made sense, seeing as the Bile Hurk looked like a Bird of Prey.  I mean, it has an entire crew, and logic would only follow that they served a purpose beyond providing dialogue which I needed to skip without reading.  Still, I had to perform the maneuvers myself, allocate resource priority, and…that’s it, really.  And I couldn’t figure out the resource thing.  And I sure wish I knew how to launch photon torpedoes.  But, this being the first space battle of the tutorial, the ship was defeated as quickly as the Bile Hurk’s former captain.  Huzzah!

Then, two more ships arrived.  There was some more dialog, but as a Klingon, the only options I was given were to destroy them, taunt them and destroy them, or really give them a good taunting and destroy them.  I defaulted to the first answer, as this only involved me pushing “A”, and for some reason I just didn’t feel it necessary to be a complete asshole to every NPC immediately.  The battle proceeded as before, except this time I figured out that ship orientation mattered because the more powerful forward disruptors could only hit things directly towards the front (so aptly named).  Maneuvering, therefore, was more important than originally perceived.  Also I noticed that shields had sections, so it was important to change orientations as I took fire, while at the same time trying to repeatedly concentrate all my fire on one section of the enemies’ shields.  Truth be told, I was finally having fun.  But still, I couldn’t figure out how to fire photon torpedoes.  And no, it wasn’t “A”.  That was the targeting button.  Or was it the right trigger?  Hrm.

Battle concluded, a large Federation ship warped into the vicinity.  I think at this point another Klingon vessel had arrived too–something story-related that would have had more context had I actually read the dialogue.  But by this point I had become a chronic “A” button masher.

Anyway, this Federation ship wanted something.  I was given variations of the three options as before–increasing levels of taunting.  The Federation ship taunted back, which I found highly uncharacteristic of those Federation goody-goodies.  Then again, this might have been earlier in the timeline, before The Next Generation turned humanity into a band of socially-progressive niceguys, courtesy of 1980s feminism.  But the ship appeared to be a Galaxy-class, which wouldn’t fit the earlier timeline.  This made me really wonder when exactly in the canon this game fit.  Maybe it was an Excelsior-class ship instead?  That would have made more sense.  In any case, battle ensued, the ship was way stronger than the Bile Hurk, but two more Bird of Prey warped in and together we vanquished the large Federation ship for reasons unknown, because as I’ve mentioned before I wasn’t really paying attention to the story.  Oh, and I still didn’t know how to fire photon torpedoes.  There was a cloaking device though, rendered of limited use because game-balance prevents using it while in battle, so after I was required to use it to advance the tutorial, haven’t touched it since.

But, admittedly this is where the game shines.  Space battles.  Now, Kur’P Ud Wakk is a seasoned captain, and he managed it despite driving into two asteroid clouds, and all made possible with the mashing of button “A”.

–Simon