Can You Save Eugene in Choo Choo Charles? The old GOAT who accompanies us as we start
our grand adventure into the world of Choo Choo Charles unfortunately meets an untimely
end. But what if this wasn’t the case? Can we actually save Eugene? Well, it was this very question that started
one of my most absurd playthroughs of this game, and I made it my mission to keep this
dude alive. I hope you enjoy. So not long after starting the game, Eugene
is talking to us on the phone and then we meet up with him as he rows us out to the
cursed island of Aranearum. Eugene, who is actually the fastest man in
the world, runs up to the shack with us, tells us to grab a key, and then personally shows
us the goods. The goods being our own weaponized train. And Eugene is super excited as we break out
of the train shed and start our hunt for Charles. However, despite his guidance about fighting
against Charles, he unfortunately meets his end as he perishes on the train track. At this point in gameplay I thought I immediately
did something wrong. Like, could I have saved him if I was more
accurate with my head shots? And that thought stayed with me throughout
the game. But on my second playthrough I vowed it would
be different. And I would do anything in my power to ensure
this dude survived. And on this channel I like dissecting and
breaking games, so you can probably guess how this goes. So starting off as we make our way up to this
train station shed, the surrounding area around us is actually closed off. And I bring this up because if I’m going
to survive against Charles and save Eugene I’m going to need resources that are not
available in the starting area, however this area is basically a tutorial. And so there are invisible walls all around
this area that prevent you from actually going past it. So I was trying to figure out how I could
get around this and unfortunately I don’t think it’s possible because I was trying
to die, so basically I jumped to my death and I respawn back by the train station. Now simply playing this section over and getting
enough headshots on Charles as you’re riding away on the train does not work, Eugene will
die and there’s nothing you can do. So my first thought was “I need the flamethrower.” I need to go grab this weapon that is called
the Bugspray. Now to do this we’re gonna sequence break
and we’re going to noclip through this invisible barrier and then run across the countryside
without our train to the burning shack, and by turning on the water here we can extinguish
this shack and get ourselves the weapon, the flamethrower. This weapon is honestly really, really good
because it prevents Charles from actually getting near the train, and if Charles can’t
touch the train then Charles cannot hurt Eugene. However to ensure that Eugene survived, I
actually went ahead and upgraded my train to the max status, or basically near the max
status. I think my speed was the only thing that wasn’t
upgraded, so when I go back inside this train station and Eugene sees this train, it is
totally decked out. It has all of the upgrades and it is a killing
machine for Charles. But uhm, I kind of overlooked something. Because when breaking out of the train shack
and hunting down Charles again with Eugene by my side, well, the train was actually too
fast. At speed 9, Charles could not actually reach
the train, but Charles was also too far from our train. So my flamethrower could not damage him, I
didn’t have any other weapons on me so I just swapped to the machine gun, but it wasn’t
doing enough damage fast enough. My original goal was to forever stall Charles
behind us so that they would eventually die, but something unexpected happened. My train actually looped around the map and
went back into the train station again, however the back door for the train station does not
open until Eugene dies. When Eugene dies, this door opens and we also
gain access to throwing the train in reverse, so the train went through this door but I
didn’t. So it forced me out of the train and Charles
was just tearing through me. So I panicked and I no-clipped through the
wall and I could see Charles just like rubbing up against it, but it was only a matter of
time before Charles was gonna figure out his way in so I fired up the train again and we
left the train station, but Charles was pinned up against the back wall so I truly thought
I lost him. But that’s when I realized that this Charles
is actually a bit different than the one we encounter throughout the rest of the game,
because this Charles will never stop chasing me until Eugene died. And actually this Charles also has rubber
band physics applied to their running speed, so they could always catch up with me despite
the distance. They came barreling over the countryside so
fast that I had no idea where they came from, so I eventually came back to the train station
again but Charles was smarter this time. He went around to the front of the station
and I freaked out when he came inside, so I tried no-clipping through the back wall,
but when I have no-clip active the game does not detect where the player is at so it unloads
the objects right here to save memory because it no longer detects the player nearby. And it was through this mistake, this moment
in panic that Eugene once again died, and I realized this was going to be way more difficult
than I thought. So I mourned the loss of my friend and I started
rethinking my strategy. So I actually went back in time to a previous
save and that lowered my train speed to 4, and this made it so Charles was always right
behind me but within distance so I could burn them with the flamethrower. So the Charles in the main game normally would
run away after about a quarter of his health was gone, but this Charles has different programming. He will continue to take punishment even though
at train speed 4 he can never reach me, so I was surprised that he didn’t run away. But as I got him close to death I understood
why. This Charles was invincible. Depleting his health bar completely did nothing,
and this only added difficulty to my mission because the only way to save Eugene and escape
Charles was to not use my train. Or at least at this moment, that’s what
I was thinking. But then I was thinking, well, what if I use
the Charles safe spot? Because I remembered in my playthrough that
Choo Choo Charles would not run on the bridge on the north side of the island, and that’s
because this bridge was the ultimate trap for Charles. So the game keeps him off the bridge so it
can’t be blown up early, and I remember this because I parked my train on this bridge
and Charles could not get me, but in order to accomplish this I was going to have to
switch over the train tracks by hand before Charles started chasing us, so I ran around
the map and did this and then boosted the train to a higher speed again, and Eugene
made it to the bridge with me and here they could be safe. It worked! Charles could not get to Eugene and kill him,
but Choo Choo Charles would not leave me alone, I was trying to start the quest for the explosives
and he was just like fusing with the building trying to get me, and of course the NPC would
not talk to me because they were terrified, because Charles was right there. So I had to creatively think of a way to banish
Charles, and my solution was to utilize the dynamic loading and unloading of environments. So as long as the player cannot be detected,
certain interiors would not load. And so when we go to the northern mine that’s
right near here, well, the mine entrance is a void. The interior of the mine does not load because
the player is not detected, and so we can use this as an edgecase to banish Choo Choo
Charles. And I only thought of this because nearby
that tall bridge, I witnessed Choo Choo Charles jump down from the top to the bottom. And this kind of looked accidental, like the
model slipped off the terrain and it was not supposed to happen. So knowing this could occur, I made Charles
rush at me at the entrance of the mine and he fell WAY down to the great beyond, but
even this banishment, even this total exile only gives you about 15 minutes of time. Because after a certain amount of time Choo
Choo Charles actually made his way back from the void and was back on the map hunting me
down. So at this point I realized in order to save
Eugene I was going to have to do everything in the game on foot before Charles was added
to the map at all. That means before the train ever left that
first train station, I needed to finish all of the story quests on the map to get to the
final fight. So while Eugene waited for me, I ran across
the countryside and planted bombs on the bridges, and I went to each of the 3 mines and grabbed
the eggs. For some reason the game wasn’t auto saving
for me so dying at all meant that I had to redo everything over, I think this is because
of the sequence breaking but also because I was messing with the game itself with modifications
like the no-clip. So now I have all of the things I need and
I started the train up and I got Eugene to a safe spot, or at least I thought. Because I ran into a new issue on the ride
over, so when I was about 80% to that destination, uh.. The train would just shut off and this would
cause us to die. I’m not sure what happens but for some reason
the train just stops moving and at this point Eugene would actually be cloned. So he would be beside me like he always is,
but if I went and looked inside, we’d see that Eugene was stuck inside as well. There was a second copy of him and he was
like frozen running in place, it was very strange. But eventually I anticipated where the train
stopped and I was able to throw it back into motion and we got to the safe spot, and as
you can see here at the safe spot we can take a closer look at this inside Eugene… and
it’s kind of terrifying! His clone is just frozen in place. Now from this point getting to the final fight
would be very, very difficult without cheating of some kind, so for this section I just flew
over the map with no-clip so that Choo Choo Charles would not kill me. But here we are, we’re now at the final
fight of the game and Eugene is technically still alive. Once the cutscene is hit, I was happy to see
that Eugene was still with me on the back of the train… But man, I had no idea how hard this final
fight would be. And Eugene died over and over and over again. Eugene only gets 3 hits from this powered
up version of Charles before he dies, and 90% of the time when you start the final fight,
Charles hits the train before you can move. So you only have 2 hits left. The problem is that Charles teleports randomly
and sometimes he can spawn near the train, ensuring that there is nothing you can do
to prevent him from hitting you. I started off hoping I could play it completely
safe with the flamethrower but that wasn’t going to work. It took too long to damage Charles, and time
was my greatest enemy due to Charles teleporting to randomized locations. So I opted for the flamethrower to rocket
launcher combo, as I did eventually go back for the Boomer. Fun fact, I was actually the one who submitted
the rocker launcher name as Boomer for this game, and Two Star Games actually used the
suggestion. Anyways, slowing down Charles with the Bugspray
flamethrower was necessary, and while he was being burned, using the Boomer would let me
deal massive damage. It’s very important that you try to get
Charles burning before he starts glowing to teleport, that way he burns through the teleport
and he can’t move once he warps. This keeps him from hitting you in certain
situations. But man… This was brutal. It took me over two hours of attempts to even
come close to beating this fight without Eugene dying… Sometimes losing with just a sliver of health
left on Charles. And then something really weird happened. This was not my doing at all, but one time
Charles loaded in with his torso up in the air and his legs down below. I freaked out when it happened, but my only
hunch is that since Charles randomly spawns after the cutscene, that he spawned inside
an existing object. His legs went beside the object and his torso
went up top. But I took this as a sign. This would be the run. And honestly this run was frustrating because
in order to shoot Charles accurately I’d have to hit his spider legs with the boomer. But because of this glitchy Charles setup,
Charles had trouble navigating and this prevented me from taking damage in some situations. But this was it. This was the run. I put Charles down finally. Eugene had survived, and during the final
cutscene you can see him riding alongside me as Choo Choo Charles was blown into the
air. By defying the train gods and twisting the
game, I changed history. Eugene would live on and I felt proud of this
accomplishment. But thanks for coming to my Ted talk about
saving a boomer from a demonic spider train, and I’ll see you all in the next video. Cheers!
