Tomb Raider EP17: Lifter Pulley System

By Shamus Posted Thursday Jul 25, 2013

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 90 comments


Link (YouTube)

Once again: Note how Sam is sitting out of the way, doing nothing. Like a child. Everyone is straining, helping, and taking risks. When Jonah and Lara try to lift the engine, Sam doesn’t even bother to help. As before, this is realistic – I wouldn’t expect a young college kid like Sam to have much skill that would make her useful in this context – but from a story perspective it completely undercuts her as someone we can care about.

She’s constantly doing the wrong thing. She gets captured repeatedly. She’s not even vital to the mission. She doesn’t say anything smart. She doesn’t make funny jokes. She doesn’t have useful skills. She’s not brave, resourceful, hard working, or observant. Even the typical Indiana Jones sidekick occasionally gets a moment of triumph where they save the day or help Dr. Jones. But Sam is content to relax around the boat while everyone else is getting dirty, working hard, and risking their lives for the good of the group.

After the cutscene there’s a bit where Sam bumbles around and sets off the mounted gun, endangering Jonah and Rayes. (We missed it because we were in the building reading Jonah’s log.) She’s not even a screwup in an admirable way. She’s not the kind of character we can admire because they try hard but always mess up, because she doesn’t try hard and she’s not eager to please. And this scene isn’t even her worst moment. It’s unbelievable to me that this is the character the writers expect us to save. Three times. Sam is a butt.

Obligatory: Lifter pulley system? I hardly know her!

 


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90 thoughts on “Tomb Raider EP17: Lifter Pulley System

  1. Infinitron says:

    So, Shamus, how about Shadowrun Returns?

    1. Humanoid says:

      Downloaded it this morning, pleasantly surprised that there were no load issues on their fulfilment site (rather not use Steam if I don’t have to). But I’m still cooped up at work for the next five hours or so. :( At least it’s Friday…

      Skimmed the anthology book and it looks like it’ll be a good read, it’s a fair bit longer than I thought it might be. Waiting for the physical copy to come along of course.

  2. el_b says:

    they were pushing the boat over the mountain but it got stuck.

    1. MrGuy says:

      No no. They were trying to pull the mountain over there when it got caught on that boat.

  3. Bruno M. Torres says:

    You know, I love my Tomb Raider, but sometimes I feel like it’s a schizophrenic game: There’s the character piece game, that plays almost like a Lost wannabe, and then there’s this frankly misogynistic undercurrent here and there.

    I don’t know anything about the production of the game, but I have this feeling it was originally going to be the misogynistic one, but them they saw the disaster and changed course – but they still scrapped at the iceberg.

    Now, here is a scary thought: Could this game have been another Duke Nukem Forever?

    1. MrGuy says:

      I’ll let you know in 15 years. Hey-o!

  4. ehlijen says:

    I think this is the bit in the story where Lara is supposed to learn that she can do more than anyone else?

    -Reyes doesn’t believe her, but is proven WRONGK!
    -Whitman is a snivelling coward and selfish bastard.
    -Sam is…not even Sam anymore. Notice how Lara doesn’t even say a bye to her before setting off to save Alex? Where is the deep friendship all of a sudden? Nope, she just leaves them all despite knowing they’re happy to trust Darth Obvious against her better judgement. (Later she can actually be heard telling Lara that she’d rather not talk and just stare at the fire alone in silence. Why? Who knows, no one tells the player (though I could think of a few reasons, they’d just need to be discoverable)).
    -Alex tries to be what Lara is but she has to watch him fail.
    -Jonah tries to be Lara’s solid backup, but still can’t protect Reyes or keep whitman from running off with Sam over his shoulder (or meekly following I guess).

    Of course, at this point we’ve already seen that Lara can do more than anyone else. She fought armies on her own and had to save everyone else at least once. Another reminder that the rest of the cast is useless didn’t help us like any of them.

    That all said: Sam’s skillset is making video documentaries and Lara hasn’t given her back the camera, what can she do?
    Even so she managed to escape inferno village on her own faster than Lara, once untied and it’s implied that she’ll try to help fight off the next off camera attack, though we don’t see or hear how she fares at that.

    Slight tweaks to her reaction to things that happen to her could have made her more likeable. If she struggled but failed, spat matthias in the face or just tried talking back to ANYONE, she’d still be an object, but with some properties to her. But at this point, the writers stopped even trying. She even stops swooning over Lara, the one trait she’s had before this.

    Also, I like to think that ship on the pulleys is the S.S. Rosebud and they’re taking it up to where the snow is. (Gotta be an upside to living on winter/storm queen island).

    1. Tim Charters says:

      Sam did talk back to Mathias when he was lecturing to her 3 episodes ago. And when confronted by a few Solarii when escaping from the fortress, she talked back to them, and then shot one in the head.

      It’s perfectly fine to criticize character writing, but I’d prefer if the criticism was about the actual character, not a caricature.

  5. Gruhunchously says:

    “I am the Twitch Master”
    Oh my God! The truth is revealed! Chris is actually Steven Blum in disguise! It all makes sense!

  6. Hydralysk says:

    So who in your mind do you think Sam or Ben from The Walking Dead is a worse character?

    Most of what you said of Sam could also be applied to Ben, except Ben actually does try and help. Usually with disastrous results, but still, he tries.

    1. ehlijen says:

      Ben was definetly more of a character. This question is basically whether you liked ben or not (in which case a blank slate like Sam might be less annoying).

      For me, it’s the latter. Sam could have been better, but no effort was made. That’s sad, but won’t make me like Ben.

      The little girl (clementine?), now she was what the writers should have tried to make Sam be like.

      Both drive the plot, are the occasional damsel in distress, have a strong connection to the protagonist and are ill equipped to handle what the world is throwing at them alone. But where Clementine was the point of the game, Sam got in the way of it.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Well at least sam didnt get anyone killed through stupidity(seriously ben,have you never seen a thing wedged in a door before?).And her getting captured led to lara discovering stuff about himiko.So she definitely was more useful.

      But I liked ben way more.Like ehlijen said,he was definitely more of a character.

      1. ehlijen says:

        Oh, now I actually have to admit that I was thinking of the wrong character. I thought Ben was the geek in the first episode you can save instead of the reporter lady.

        But now I remember better and yeah, I’m changing my vote to Ben. He at least had a sense of duty to the group. All he messed up was because he thought he was helping, and he was willing to sacrifice himself when he thinks it’s better for the group. That’s a redeeming element right there.

        Sam…can’t even figure out how strong her desire to live is, going from ‘please save me!’ to ‘I guess I’ll march to my death’ in between shots.

    3. RedSun says:

      Ben also makes more thematic sense. He’s the only person in the group without any surrogate family(except Clementine, maybe) and he’s consequently shown as the weakest-willed and least useful. In a game like Tomb Raider, that tries very hard to present a strong, sympathetic, empowered female main character, Sam’s presence feels much more bizarre. Plus, don’t forget…Ben is a hero.

      As for Doug, he jury-rigs an alarm system in the second episode, willingly gives up food for the more productive members of the team, and has a laser pointer. Doug>Sam.

  7. Michael says:

    “What’s this boat doing here?”

    Wait, I’ve got it… Mathias is secretly Werner Herzog.

    1. Here’s what happened: The ship ran aground on the island and became stranded on some rocks by the shore. The crew tied the lifter pulley system to the boat to try and get it off the rocks. It all looked good, and they decided to start fresh the next day to raise it and get back to the sea.

      Then someone wandered off into the ruins and pulled a lever, dropping sea level around this area by several hundred meters, leaving the ship hanging over the previously submerged land.

      It makes as much sense as anything else, really.

      1. MrGuy says:

        It was actually global warming’s fault.

  8. Daemian Lucifer says:

    So that jump at 16:15,how many people here tried that exact thing first before figuring out what they are actually supposed to do?I know I have.

    1. Trix2000 says:

      Given how often I used survival instincts to see where to go/what to do, it was pretty obvious when I played. However, watching Josh play, I was actually at a loss for what happened next at that point.

      Course, still didn’t think jumping was it. Or maybe you can blame that death on me too. :P

    2. Tizzy says:

      As I recall, I did fine the first time but messed it up on my second playthrough. That figures…

  9. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Ugh,the mines.Thats one of the worst collectibles Ive ever seen.And its even worse for this game because the rest of the collectibles are way better,and some of them are even fun to hunt.But the god damn mines RRRAAAARRRGH!!

    1. Tizzy says:

      Well, some of them required a little bit of work in the positioning to make the shot work, especially along the parts that had big waves. Plus, at least it’s a task that makes a little bit more sense than burning posters or shooting dreamcatchers or whatever the hell these things were.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        The problem is that few mines are completely submerged,so you need a guide to find out where they actually are.But thats just annoying,not infuriating.Infuriating part is that some of those submerged mines CAN MOVE,so even with a guide,you still cant say for sure where they are,and you have to spray the whole ocean with bullets in order to find them.

        1. Decius says:

          The problem is that those mines don’t work like that. Either they would detonate when they hit the ground and washed up, or they have rusted to the point where they won’t detonate unless you replace the explosive.

          They certainly wouldn’t be in a condition where they don’t detonate when they are triggered but do detonate when shot in the location of the access to disarm them.

        2. Disc says:

          There are places where you can spot any one of them with the “Q”-vision, or whatever the hell it was called (Q is the default key on PC for it). Only problem is you have to either keep spamming it while playing through the area or be lucky enough to do it in the right place.

          1. Daemian Lucifer says:

            Only works on the ones that have parts above the water.Completely submerged ones are invisible even then(though your minuscule crosshair turns red if over them).Unless this stupidity was patched out later.

    2. MrGuy says:

      I just really wanted a Hot Fuzz moment to happen with one of the mines.

  10. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Ok,we did already say quite a bit about the brutality of lara dying,but in this episode Josh showed us the brutality of mooks dying.I feel sorry for that guy being constantly set on fire.

  11. Corpital says:

    I watched the flying boat scene twice. And I still don’t believe, what I just saw and can only assume all the deaths on the beach were there to balance out the physics defying nethermagics, that were necessary to allow anything that was done there. Can’t write any more about it, getting too angry, so the story about the flying dwarfs of Golddaub will have to wait. But I’m reminded of something a very old and wise man once said: This is like fractally dumb. Every part of it is as stupid as the whole.

    On a sidenote: Every crab I see killed, reminds me of the video to M4 Part2, the song for the ME1 credits. Love this song.

    And apparently, my internet died while sending the comment. Even the internet hated the flying boat.

    1. anaphysik says:

      Faunts have awesome music in general. All of the M4 EP is great. I also have Feel.Love.Thinking.Of and High Expectations/Low Results. (FLTO is in particular really good.) All three albums have pretty different general feel to them, but each is good in a different way.

      ME3 returned to using a Faunts tune for the credits (Das Malefitz from FLTO), except that they used a shitty mix of it, iirc, which made it sound more like a bad M4-EP-knockoff than it is (the song /is/ a bit of a knockoff of the M4 EP tunes (and thus is an outlier on FLTO), but it’s definitely not as bland-sounding as the ME3 credits made it out to be – although, it was certainly kind of rubbish of Bioware to choose something /so/ similar to the ME1 credits (kind of like how I cringed every time ME3 pulled out Vigil as a shallow emotional draw)).

      Still, ‘merely having a Faunts song at all’ was probably one of ME3’s top moments.

      (Anyway, yeah, Faunts are cool, and more people should check them out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faunts)

      1. Corpital says:

        I…didn’t even know that. Never finished ME3. “Oh wait…I forgot to activate that one computer with some background infos, I’ll just…oh…the door closed. And the last save is an autosave from the very beginning of the attack on TIMs base…oh screw it, I give up.” Anyways, Faunts are great. Still have to pick up Left here alone, though.

        1. anaphysik says:

          Yeah, I wasn’t even aware of Left Here Alone :|. Need to check that out myself at some point.

  12. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Ive just realized what a crappy villain whitman is.He betrays you and no one dies as a result of this.I mean no one of the good guys.Heck,he even helps you get the deciding edge over reyes on whether to stay and fight or just leave.

    1. Tizzy says:

      agreed. People think Sam is a bad character, but what about *that* guy…

      1. ehlijen says:

        Whitman isn’t as broken because as a bad guy we’re not supposed to like him.

        Not liking him because he’s a mean poopoohead and not liking him because he’s annoyingly badly written are a lot closer together than liking Sam because we empahsise with her plight and not caring about Sam because she’s a wooden plank. The huge gaping void distracts us from the crack in the other wall that we actually do have.

  13. Alexander The 1st says:

    So…at the end of this clip:

    Did anyone else feel like Jonah having saved that composite bow for Lara feel really out of place?

    Like, it’s implied that he had been saving it, but from what point?

    Just at the beach?

    I mean, we see him take a shotgun, but Lara earlier took Roth’s pistol – why did Jonah think Lara needed a bow? After already having used it before as well?

    It honestly felt, to me, like “Look. 2012-2013 is the year of the bow. Remember how the crew saw The Hunger Games and Brave earlier this year? Well I just decided to metagame our life – you need a bow, and your current bow is not cutting it. You needed an upgraded bow, and so I figured that this was going to work.”

    1. ehlijen says:

      Apparently Lara was meant to be decent with a bow before she got to the island? She mumbles something about Roth teaching her when she hunts the deer.
      So if Jonah found a bow on the way down to the beach, he might assume Lara (ie the one who use a bow to get him and the others out of the cage of absurdity) would be the best suited to using it?

      But yes, it’s a thinly disguised ‘here’s the key to the next level’.

      1. anaphysik says:

        Except that he ought to have given it to Lara as soon as they met up again. Waiting until after she’s gotten the [random plot item of whatever] makes that scene look ESPECIALLY dumb.

        “Hey, Lara, I’ve been saving this for you ever since I found it.”
        “Oh really? For how long?”
        “Ah, about 5 minutes.”

      2. False Prophet says:

        Some commenters on various places online claim Lara belongs or belonged to some group called the Sisters of Artemis. This is apparently a real women’s self-defense organization in Sweden, but I don’t see any indication they teach archery. Best guesses?

        1) The real-life Sisters do teach archery, I’m just not persistent enough (or Swedishly challenged) to find that out.
        2) The real-life Sisters don’t teach archery, but the Tomb Raider developers assumed they did because they named themselves after Artemis the goddess of hunting.
        3) The real-life Sisters don’t teach archery and the devs know that, but think it would be cool if they did.
        4) The Sisters of Artemis referenced in Tomb Raider have little in common with the real-world group other than the name. It’s either a coincidence or an intentional difference.
        5) Lara knows archery from somewhere else (Roth, most likely) and the Sisters angle is just fans blowing random bits of game lore out of proportion.

        1. Atarlost says:

          I’m guessing 5. Archery is a pretty big sport in a lot of places including England.

    2. MrGuy says:

      But…but…he tells you.

      “Maybe you can use that new bow to get over to where Alex is.” It’s a special “getting to Alex” bow.

  14. DGM says:

    Hey Shaums,

    This is off-topic but it might be of interest to you. Progress toward preventative pet allergy medication is being made: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23436589

    Feel like adopting a kitten or two?

    1. DGM says:

      Sorry, that should have been Shamus, not Shaums. How the @#$% did I miss that?

      1. MrGuy says:

        Only his friends call him Shaums. Or sometimes Shay-dog. Or S-Yo.

  15. Tizzy says:

    For the record on Sam: in the comic book prequel to the game, when the crew is introduced, Sam is introduced as hanging around the boat working on her tan while Lara is working (at the time, Sam is not even supposed to be part of the expedition). Nuff said…

    1. ehlijen says:

      Really? Oh dear. If she was meant to be a spoiled brat and even that failed to show through her featureless wood facade…

      I apologise for ever defending her :(

  16. Eleion says:

    (Psst, Josh… you spelled “areola” wrong. ;)

    The internet tells me “Aerola” is a company from Ukraine that makes hang gliders and yachts… so I guess if you wanted a heated “Aerola” model yacht…? Could be nice I suppose.

    1. Lupus_Amens says:

      I was wondering about that, Being dyslectic made it fucking weird to read.

  17. Dreadjaws says:

    Completely unrelated to the subject at hand: I just noticed in your Twitter feed, Shamus, that only just now you realized about Final Fantasy VII’s DRM. The funny thing is, I don’t know how things are in the Steam version, but when Sqeenix released this game on its website months ago, it came with FOUR different kinds of DRM:

    – Online activation
    – Activation limits (with no revoke tool)
    – SecuROM and
    – Always Online

    Because, clearly, the people who were clamoring for this game to be available for purchase again just want to pirate it. Sometimes the relentless stupidity of these companies baffles me in a way that no other force in nature can.

    I heard at least one of those was removed for the Steam version, but since I didn’t purchase it I have no way of knowing for sure.

    Edit: I just realized my brain doesn’t know how to spell “Twitter”.

    1. Syal says:

      I bought it without hearing any of that. I had to make an account at Square to register it, but I unplugged my internet and it runs offline. Not sure if I’d be informed of the others.

      (Fort Condor quests were bugging out though.)

      1. Dreadjaws says:

        Sorry for the late answer (flu), but yeah, they patched that out after a huge problem right after launch that didn’t allow anyone to play the game (SimCity and Diablo III style).

        I suppose I have to give them credit for that, though. They didn’t try to insist that offline mode couldn’t exist. Of course, unlike Blizzard and EA, there was no way they could have gotten away with that, since it’s a re-release from a game with no multiplayer/online options.

    2. The Rocketeer says:

      Are you sure about this? My discs don’t have any of that, maybe something’s wrong with your PlayStation?

  18. Re: The new bow being really heavy, I’ve heard that compound bows are actually much, much lighter than their wooden counterparts.

    …5 minutes later…
    Well, it turns out that
    a)Bows really aren’t that heavy compared to, say, a sword (duh). A modern bow is probably going to be made out of carbon fibre or fibreglass, which weighs less than wood. So in the game, this particular bow will probably weigh slightly less than her older bow.
    b)Compound bows are easier to draw. Compound bows have mechanisms (Usually a lifter pulley system, actually) which make the weight force required to pull back an arrow is reduced significantly. So even if the bow was heavier, it would be lighter to use.

    Also, when I googled “Bow”, the first result was from the minecraft wiki.

    1. Dave B. says:

      What is also very useful, is that the lifter pulleys (cams, actually) on most compound bows are elliptical. Because of this, the greatest draw weight force required to draw the bow is before you’ve pulled it all the way back. When the bow is at full draw, it has a “let-off” of some percentage of the max weight, so it’s easier for you to keep it at full draw for a long time while you aim. When using a stout recurve or longbow, you have to aim and release much faster, before your arm tires.

      EDIT: I looked at mine, and it has a let-off of 65%, and a draw weight of 55 pounds. So, when I’ve pulled it all the way back, it is only pulling back with about 20 pounds of force. (Unless I misinterpreted the markings, and it’s actually 35 pounds.)

    2. McNutcase says:

      If it doesn’t also allow her to hold a draw for longer, I will be disappointed. One of the very clever things done with compound bows, which I don’t fully understand, is to set it up such that the effort required to hold it at full draw is MUCH less than the effort needed to get it there in the first place. While you do have the n-pound draw to get past on the way to full draw, somehow by the time it’s AT full draw it takes much less than n pounds to hold it. Some kind of over-centre camming, I guess, like a Shubb capo…

      1. anaphysik says:

        Bow Magic.

      2. Decius says:

        Note that the initial velocity of a cam bow of a given maximum draw weight is higher than that of a simple bow of the same maximum draw weight. That’s because a cam bow will have the highest draw at the beginning of the draw, instead of at the end. That means that the force profile after the release is reversed; the string puts progressively more force on the arrow as the arrow accelerates, rather than less.

    3. newdarkcloud says:

      I was about to comment by saying that no matter how heavy Shamus thinks the bow is, it couldn’t mean anything compared to the assault rifle and shotgun she’s carrying in hammerspace right now.

      I own a compound bow. Although it’s not as fancy as the one Jonas gives Lara, it’s extremely light and easy to both carry and draw.

  19. Ofermod says:

    I’ve got to say, I’m really impressed by Josh’s ability to identify battleships like that. It’s a talent I really want to work on myself.

    I know I’ve got my copy of Jane’s Fighting Ships somewhere around here…

    1. Humanoid says:

      Useful for old-fashioned “Identify this boat” copy protection perhaps. I’m thinking the manual for Silent Service 2.

    2. Josh says:

      Actually on reflection this is probably a Fuso-class, as it has two turrets between the forward and aft towers. This was actually me confusing the configuration with the name since I had it in my mind that the Kongos were the ones with such a silly turret configuration.

      Oh Japan. Your First World War designs just had to be a little bit sillier than everyone else’s.

      1. KremlinLaptop says:

        Judging by the conning tower? Fuso-class after the 1930s refit. Not only did the Japanese make their ships a little bit sillier they also built them a tiny bit more terrifying than everyone else (Seriously the conning tower reminds me of the design of ships in EVE).

        http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Japanese_battleships_Yamashiro%2C_Fuso_and_Haruna.jpg

        The Silent Hunter series of games taught me to identify ships. And then crash dive away while attempting to hide under my periscope and sobbing.

        “I dun wanna torpedo the Yamato. It’ll see me!”

        1. Desiree Arceneaux says:

          It’s actually Fuso _halfway through_ her 1930s refit — she’s got the post-refit turrets, but the pre-refit superstructure. Which indicates that the game designers actually thought up a scary level of backstory detail, Fuso was pulled from refit to serve as the flagship for the expedition to the island.

  20. anaphysik says:

    “She's not even a screwup in an admirable way. She's not the kind of character we can admire because they try hard but always mess up”

    a.k.a.: Sam << JAR-JAR BINKS

    —-

    Anyway, Mumbles' suggestion of them moving the boat from one side of the island to other is fittingly dumb-yet-spectacularly-dumb, in a way that could sorta work. However, to be fully plausible, the mook in charge of the project needs be named Fitzcarraldo.

    1. Atarlost says:

      She has less annoying vocal affectations than Jar-Jar, though. That does kind of drag Jar-Jar down.

  21. Pat says:

    Mumbles claims that there is no such thing as a good James Bond movie. I disagree, a lot, (Casino Royale, Skyfall, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service…) but I also think that part of being a Bond fan is acknowledging that most of the movies aren’t good. The bad ones are entertaining because they’re bad. That’s their charm, the fun comes from mocking them. Watch Diamonds Are Forever or Moonraker with a couple friends and you’ll see what I mean.

    So, Rutskarn needs to see more Bond movies.

    1. Ofermod says:

      Personally, my favourite Bond movie is “You Only Live Twice.” *Because* it’s completely ridiculous. To me, that’s the purest essence of what Bond is, and what it should be. Not drama, or something to be taken seriously. Bond is wacky gadgets, one liners, and diabolical masterminds with piranha pits and plots to start World War III.

      1. Pat says:

        You Only Live Twice is, in my mind, tied with Goldfinger for the most archetypal Bond movie, in that it’s got all the things that Bond is known for: Cat-petting villain, huge underground lair, doomsday plot, ridiculous gadgets, Bond sleeping with every woman he encounters, all that fun stuff. You’ll find something from it in just about any parody of Bond. Movies like that can be good in their own way, but it’s a completely different way than the way movies like Skyfall are good.

      2. Trix2000 says:

        You forgot the gigantic explosions. And the women.

        Personally my favorite is Live and Let Die. But then I still need to watch a couple of them.

    2. Humanoid says:

      I’ve watched probably about a half-dozen instalments at most, and found them so unremarkable that I can’t tell any from the other (unless you count the David Niven Casino Royale, which was suitably awful).

      That said, I saw a clip of a old Bond softcore parody “You Only Live Until You Die” on io9, which seemed, ahem, interesting.

      1. Pat says:

        I’m curious, which ones did you see? If you can remember the titles.

        1. Humanoid says:

          Even perusing Wikipedia’s list of titles and plot summaries, the only ones which really ring a bell (and even then only faintly) are Moonraker, Licence to Kill, and Tomorrow Never Dies. I think I can also count Never Say Never Again.

          1. Pat says:

            Moonraker is so bad it’s funny, and Tomorrow Never Dies is just bad. License to Kill I liked, though.

            And Never Say Never Again doesn’t count.

  22. False Prophet says:

    At 1:49, is Mumbles making a Fitzcarraldo reference?

    /Werner Herzog props

    1. Mumbles says:

      I was actually! Good catch I’m impressed.

    2. Humanoid says:

      I knew Mumbles was a music tragic, but certainly wouldn’t have picked opera. :D

  23. Weimer says:

    There would have been a nice little excuse to include Nazi zombies in this section.. Just replace that battleship with Bismarck and claim that in this (àĀ¼bermench Larry Craft) universe it went to pacific to aid the Japanese and mysteriously “disappeared” somewhere in this area.

    ..What? Makes sense to me!

    1. ehlijen says:

      Psst, don’t give away the sequel where she has to fight zombie nazies led by the ghost of Klaus Stoertebecker, the infamous pirate!

  24. KremlinLaptop says:

    I own two compound bows for hunting and both of them look like they weight a lot … but they don’t. One of them is a cheap Chinese knock-off (my so ‘starter’ bow to figure out if I would ever even consider going hunting with something that didn’t go boom) and then I have a Quest Primal Bow (8100-RTAP) which look friggin’ huge and silly … and it only weighs around four pounds.

    The thing with compound bows is that they are freakishly light despite not looking like it. It’s because past a certain price range they’re all made from 6061 aluminum and so forth.

    My complaint? As much as I love the compound bow (So light to pull and hold!) I wouldn’t want one in this sort of jumping around survival situation. They’re just too darn complex, pulleys, cams, and all. Too many fragile bits to break.

  25. Trix2000 says:

    The funny thing is that as soon as I saw Josh do that leap upward at 14:33, my first thought was ‘he’s gonna fall’. Of course, Josh had to surprise me by somehow doing it on the second jump, rather than the first.

    You’re welcome for the death Josh!

  26. BeamSplashX says:

    Dear outsider,

    You killed my brothers! Now it’s time to kill my brothers to stop you from killing my brothers!

    WORST Regards,
    Turret Mook

    P.S. BROOOOOOOTHERRRRRRRRS.

    1. BeamSplashX says:

      Also, Chris’ comment about not letting Josh play when he’s angry made me think, “Don’t make Josh angry. You won’t like watching Josh stream gameplay when he’s angry.”

    2. Ofermod says:

      So… it’s what would happen if Liquid Snake wound up being turned into a Reaper?

      And now I can’t stop thinking a Reaper going on about DOMINANT GENES rather than INFERIOR ORGANICS.

  27. Tim Charters says:

    Um, at 9:35, Sam asks if she can do anything to help and gets told by Reyes to just stay out of the way. So her being useless here isn’t entirely her fault.

    Also, two episodes ago she grabbed a gun and shot a few Solarii in the face, and this wasn’t commented on at all. Even though that would seem to be kind of contrary to the longstanding “Sam is a stupid jelly-spine” criticism.

    1. Shamus says:

      Again, this was a decision made by the writers: Don’t let Sam help. I did miss the part where Sam is told she can’t help, but it doesn’t change the fact that she doesn’t pitch in. It only changes the reasons why. Does this moment make her seem useful, smart, or endearing? Not really.

      I mean, the player isn’t thinking, “I MUST SAVE SAM, because she might not be totally useless. I mean, she seems to be, but maybe she could have helped fix the boat if Rayes hadn’t chased her off.” That’s not the kind of driving passion needed to push the player forward.

    2. Benjamin Hilton says:

      I know this is months old but I still feel the need to point out that Sam in fact did not shoot anybody. If you watch the cut scene everyone else is firing while Sam stands in the middle of the group and waves here arms at the helicopter.

      1. INH5 says:

        I know the original comment is nearly 2 years old at this point, but around 9:15 in episode 15, Sam does shoot and kill a guy, even if it’s a bit hard to see given how Josh jerks the camera a bit after it happens.

  28. MrGuy says:

    I’m more than a bird! I’m more than a crane! I’m a BIRDCRANE!

    1. Pat says:

      I understood that reference.

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