Glad to see lots of discussions on a MOTW thread
Mister_Prophet wrote:I am very happy that we even had a legitimate central antagonist. Unreal packs had villains but Cray was an opportunity to have a fully voiced personality that had a motive that wasn't just trying to kill the player.
This might be the most distinct contribution of
Xidia: The Escape to the world of
Unreal/
UT community packs. I'm glad you brought this about (and damn I'm looking forward to playing
Seven Bullets in the not-too-distant future!), and I agree with salsaSkaarj's view on voice acting as well. You know, IMHO voice acting can totally be legit in an
Unreal mappack, after all one doesn't have to follow the stylistic conventions of the original campaign. At the end of the day, I think it turned out pretty well with both
ONP and
Xidia. On a somewhat related note, I liked the voice acting elements in the mothergame ("You have
Entered a restricted ArE
A", as well as the alien voices),
RTNP (mostly in the intro and outro), retail
UT (OK that doesn't really count in SP!)
Xerania's Fall,
Legacy and...
Nali Chronicles! (the Nali voices worked well in the RPG context!) There's more but I haven't seen everything...
So, about
Beacon:-
The teleportation from the previous map was brutal but cool, I admit I reloaded the save I had from after defeating the Queen to experience the "
AAAAAaaaaaahhhhh!!!" one more time
Spencer, in the way that he is portrayed, isn't without humour although it's mostly serious stuff.
So I didn't expect to appear in this place once more, but yeah it is a fitting setting for the end of the
Xidia story. I move forward, see the bridge get blown up (together with the first live humans I was seeing since Cray's betrayal), get completely
fucked by that Skaarj Trooper with the Flak Cannon... reload and this time do it better! The tunnel to the heart of the outpost holds the first real hard challenge - the Skaarj Hybrids are merciless, and once again I'm reloading - not because I died on my first try but because I was as good as dead anyway, with literally less than 5 HP and no medkit left around! After getting this passage right, I move into the outpost proper and holy shit - I love how the Cyborg is introduced into the action, forcing itself through a locked door and ambushing you with the help of Skaarj you might have not been paying attention to on a first playthrough
After that the danger is mostly in the form of fixed turrets, that is until you meet one of those Skaarj Praetorians which caused me some problems as usual
That was (almost) nothing compared to what comes next, though: the fight with multiple hybrids is one of the toughest moments in the whole of
Xidia Gold, which is saying something and is the reason why I consider
Beacon to be an
extremely hard level (same as the original
Outpost Pheonix)! But man, while I did get seriously pissed, it felt fitting, and I was proud of myself when I made it through! I internally begged for medpacks though, and (as I expected) I got to stack up again one more time - in that side room with Cliffy no less (heh) - before the final showdown with Cray.
And I will say this: yes, the sound quality is far from professional, blabla
but I liked this last exchange between the two protagonists, it works great and I felt really pumped up when Cray said "Let's dance!"
shrrrschrrschrck (and props to Cope for that last line, I forgot the young man behind the mic and felt the menace of Cray in those last words)
The fight itself is hard, yeah, no surprises - but not
very hard either: I probably don't have the right technique but I usually cowed on top of the staircase and tried to pick him off from a distance, until it worked
And the final cinematic is very satisfying (spoilers?
), it's your typical "action hero escape" where you see that it really was
ABOUT TIME you left the base, what with all the Skaarj finally truly swarming the place and even trying to shoot down your ride! Nice visuals of the ascent into the upper layers of the atmosphere as well!
All in all, awesome and the best way to wrap up the
Xidia adventures