Part 5: The City
So you get to the city founded by uber-scientists from the turn of the century, they think there's a war on the surface and they're suspicious of you and don't want you to leave, blah blah blah. After the quick plot-point break, you're back to solving riddles.
Check out the communication center for one of the few minorities in the game; a Latino in charge!
Yay for diversity! Although, you have to admit this is diversity for diversity's sake. It's improbable that a group of racist white man-scientists from the turn of the century would have "allowed" his ancestor to come. I'm glad he's here though; he's one of my favorite characters.
This guy in the power room gives you the first task inside the city: do his job for him. Just read through these conversation snippets:
"That's just what I was afraid of. There's a severe power shortage in the city, and if I don't find a solution today the city will be defenseless. This couldn't have happened at a worse time!"
"Yes, but...oh! The transmission coordinates have been changed! That's why I'm not receiving anything anymore!"
"Yes, but I can't remeber where I put the sheet with the computational formula... And the calculation's liable to take too long!"
What a lazy idiot. And what happened to the town being descendents of the smartest people of their time? This guy makes rocks look intellectual. I guess they didn't bring down any OB-GYN doctors and he got brain damage during delivery; his haircut certainly looks retarded. And we supposedly have a laptop, can't it do the calculations? It can do basically everything else.
So guess where the sheet is? Only 2 screens away. That's right. This guy is so lazy, he can't go down the single service elevator to find the sheet. When you examine the sheet, it says this: "if only Einstein were here". We're only in a town full of super-scientists, but we really need Einstein, great.
After we finish fixing the power problem, we can recharge our laptop and use the city's transportation grid. The map is annoying because anytime you want to go somewhere, you are halted with this:
Yes, I really want to go there, I clicked on it! If I didn't want to go there, I can always hop back on the rail system and go where I really wanted to be. It's so annoying. But let's try the university.
Well there are only 2 doors at the university and they both won't open. The first just says, "closed". What it really means is that people are having a gossipy discussion about you behind locked doors. How about, "it's locked and I can hear hushed voices"? Not only "closed". "Closed" alone is so frustrating, grrrr!
The second door though, gives me no info at all. Not even a courtesy "closed". I just kept clicking thinking I was missing the hotspot or something. Let's go somewhere else, I guess. Onto the pet shop.
So go into the pet shop owner's place and callously steal the stuff from behind his desk: prescription tablets and a prescription code book. The beginning of your very own prescription drug racquet. Also, you press a secret button to reveal a secret door. Guess who's there?
"Ariane! I was waiting for you." In the backdoor of a pet shop owner's place? Weirdo. He wants you to get drugs (Hangra of Syl: a revelation powder) for him from the pharmacist, what a cracked-out user.
Translation of "revelation powder": hallucinogen. Fill out the card and scam him his junk from the pharmacist. She leaves for the university leaving the annoying un-closed door open for you to sneak in. So that's how you get in there. Huh.
{In case you are interested, here's the other things the pharmacy deals: afige, berthamol, biocardamon, calomel, chloroform, ether, grenadille, morphine, ozaline, palindrinite, panouvre, quinine, sene, and verlane.
Some are made up (or too obscure for the internet) but I recognized calomel (mercury), chloroform (serious anesthesia), ether (anesthesia) and morphine (addictive anesthesia) as being incredibly nasty. There's also the grenadille which is harmless passion flower (does the passion fruit grow down here?) and quinine (malaria treatment).}
Now since you've robbed the pet owner of his side business selling prescription cards, go get him some eggs to support his store front. He quasi-insinuates you should steal from Adam's house. So off to steal from Adam we go. Luckily, the game tells us "I'm ready to leave now," once we;ve robbed that creep blind. Thank goodness, or else we wouldn't know to leave.
By the way, we bribed the guard into letting us out of the city by fixing his camera. What a pushover (and another minority, although by the looks of it he's the descendant of a racist white guy's man-servants).
Because being a photojournalist means we know everything about century-old cameras, and because the description your laptop gives you is useless to knowing how to actually fixing the camera, naturally you can do it with ease.
See, you even know how to file this iron into the shape of the part you need. (Rollover!)
Now that you've helped enough people, go fix the ballonist's balloon for him and you can escape. This guy is another classic example of Adventurers-should-do-my-job-for-me Syndrome. Get him helium, fix his leak, give him an aerial map (shouldn't he have one?) probably even fly the darn thing for him.
Man, look how that guy gestures. I should make that sweeping motion more in conversations. Ariane is stiff as a board, as always.