[CIVVIE]
Strafe! Oh no, wait, that's not the one people
have been bugging me about… hold on… right uh… Stonks! Cruelty Squad was way better
at establishing a CEO mindset. This just sucks. How am I supposed to make a video on this? I mean, it is trash. [CIVVIE] - It's just…
[FORBES' AI] - Cash reserve dangerously low! [CIVVIE]
…not very interesting… Oh, now I remember, it was Stride, which is a VR Parkour adventure- *ow! Argh!*
*whip cracking* [H4MM3R]
Stop blue-balling the audience, Civvie. [CIVVIE]
Fine! God! [AX3]
The algorithm requires engagement. [CIVVIE]
*sigh* Okay… Strife is a 1996 first person shooter
from Rogue Entertainment. Rogue would go on to work
with id Software on other things, Quake and Quake 2 expansions, and then later on American McGee's Alice, and in a strange turn of events,
the company was shut down while they were working on
Counter Strike: Condition Zero for Valve and their producer for that game
left to work for Sony, which was a dumb thing, in retrospect, right? And a group from the defunct company
went on to create Nerve Software, who you might know as the people who assisted
in development on all of these games : As well as the modern ports and
expansions for old id Software games, most notably No Rest for the Living and… the cursed Randy version of Duke3D… *badly re-enacted grunting sounds* [badly re-enacted DUKE NUKEM]
Where is it?! [CIVVIE]
Yeah, let's not talk about that, I don't think it's representative
of Nerve's abilities as a developer. Strife is an incredibly ambitious game, fusing RPG elements into
a Doom engine game in 1996, long before people had done that in a way
where it didn't play like System Shock. And I'm really excited to be able to bring
some back-story to this video, right, because John Romero wrote a bit
about Strife's development in his new book, Doom Guy: Life in First Person. There's not a lot out there about Strife since it's a somewhat-fondly-
remembered Doom engine game that came out the same year as Quake and was the last commercially released
game on the old Doom engine until people starting using
GZDoom to make games, looking at you Selaco, Beyond Sunset, Supplice, Hedon, Hellslinger,
Relentless Frontier… *Super Mario Bros. 3
Sky Land Theme* …Divine Frequency, Brutal Fate,
Project Absentia, Shrine, Age of Hell… *Super Mario Bros. 3
Sky Land Theme* …and Hands of Necromancy. So for about 20 years, Strife was the
last officially released Doom engine game. From John Romero's book, I can gather that Strife was
in development by Cygnus Studios… wait, what the fuck? So the owner of Cygnus Studios, Scott Host, admired the work ethic
of mostly organic time-shifter and fearless Blackwall
traveler John Carmack, who, at the time, always worked, and in the book Romero provides a different
account of the "time tracking" software that had been written
about in Masters of Doom, where in that book it was
used on Romero by Carmack, this book says it was made and
deployed against Cygnus employees to try and to get Strife out faster. The employees approached
Romero threatening to quit because of the merciless crunch, leading to the game
being canceled at Cygnus and having the employees who were
working on it found another company, which would be Rogue, though their original idea
for a name was "Mutiny Software". I think this is an incredibly
interesting back-story to a game that is about overthrowing an
oppressive force that controls human society. Also, it may be the last time anyone
got shitcanned for demanding crunch. Work continued on Strife
with a new programmer and some managerial help
from Sandy Petersen. This didn't mean the game
was going to do particularly well. It was released in May of 1996,
about a month before Quake and about four months after Duke Nukem 3D. Duke3D was a little more
impressive on a technical level with its environmental interaction
and 3D-ish elements. Strife wasn't a huge hit, is what I'm saying, but Rogue pulled through and then, in December of 2014, a fairly unknown company contracted
two gentlemen from the Doom community who had been working
to reverse engineer Strife's code into the source port Chocolate Strife, probably the biggest reason
any of us can play Strife without DOSBox. Those two gentlemen are now full time
employees of that company, Nightdive Studios. Strife: Veteran Edition
was the first Nightdive port. And… maybe it shows a little : there's a weird configuration menu that launches the game
proper when you start it up instead of it being,
you know, in the options, which it is, it just, like… man, I don't know, but this all seems
like pretty important history for a nearly forgotten FPS-RPG hybrid
from almost three decades ago. There are a lot of fancy graphical
improvements in Strife: Veteran Edition. I'm not using any of them. They look like this: I kinda like the shadows but they look… I don't know, something
feels off about them. Now with all that out of the way, and my excitement to get
to reference Romero's book finally, it's time to once more dive into
my least-played Doom engine game. Yeah, I mean, I didn't even
play this one until the 2000s. I didn't even know it existed. So here's- The game looks better than that, I promise. [NARRATOR]
The comet struck our planet
without warning. We lost our paradise
in a single, violent stroke. The impact released a virus which
swept through the land and killed millions. They turned out to be the lucky ones. [CIVVIE]
I've got some questions but I'm gonna be polite and save
them until the end of the PowerPoint. [NARRATOR]
For those who did not die
became mutations of humanity. Some became fanatics who heard
the voice of a malignant god in their heads and called themselves… the Order. Those of us who are deaf
to this voice suffer horribly and are forced to serve
these ruthless psychotics who wield weapons more powerful
than anything we can muster. They destroy our women and children so that we must hide them underground and live like animals
in constant fear for our lives! But there are whispers of discontent. If we organize, can we defeat our masters?
*military music swells* Weapons are being stolen,
soldiers are being trained,
*military music swells* a movement is born!
*military music swells* Born of lifelong Strife!
*military music swells* [STARSHIP TROOPERS]
I'm doing my part! [CHILD STARSHIP TROOPER]
I'm doing my part too! *everybody laughs happily* [CIVVIE]
I have some questions that didn't
first occur to me until this playthrough and watching the intro right now. So if you look at this scene where
the planet gets hit with a comet, which I'm gonna gloss over
until I can get Neil deGrasse Tyson to do a guest appearance on this show… Oh my god, kids, we have
Neil deGrasse Tyson in the house ! *cheers and claps* [STARSHIP TROOPER]
I'm doing my part! [CIVVIE]
Jesus Christ, Katie, really? Okay but I'm watching this intro
and I see as the comet hits and these people, they're not
living in modern times, right? They've got American-ass
accents all over the place, with very few outrageous exceptions… [QUINCY, with a ludicrous Irish accent]
Shhhh… Keep it quiet,
unless you want us both killed. [CIVVIE]
So we're looking at some kind
of medieval society that exists after these kinds of accents which leads me to believe that there was some
kind of catastrophic event before the comet, meaning that Strife is
a post-post-apocalyptic story. This screen here tells us that we're
a wandering mercenary searching for the Front, the resistance movement
that is fighting the Order. But then you get rounded up
by some Order acolytes. Now, I'm gonna point out
that I don't hate Strife, I'm just forced to show you one
of the worst parts of the game up-front. Yeah, there's two of these guys here and it takes nine or ten hits
with your knife to kill them. The knife gets upgraded
to do more damage later and is your only option for
stealth kills at the moment. Yeah, the game has a stealth system, in that enemies can't hear
two weapons in the whole game. So it's not really important. Right out of the gate,
you'll have to talk to this guy here : [ROWAN]
In a small world, word travels fast. I hear you just removed
some obstacles from your path. [CIVVIE]
Of course you heard it, I stabbed
three guys to death ten feet from here. [ROWAN]
Are you interested in
some more lucrative projects? [CIVVIE]
Yeah, of course. First time I played this game,
I had no idea what to expect. An RPG-FPS thing? I mean I didn't play
a lot of RPGs, I still don't. I'm an "instant gratification" kind of gamer. So conversing with someone to get a quest was not something I expected out
of a Doom engine game. [ROWAN]
Some uh, friends of mine
need someone silenced. Beldin is being held by
the Order in their sanctuary. [CIVVIE]
Yeah sure, I'll kill a guy, I've been in town for five minutes
and killed three people already. That's the problem with
authoritarian dictatorships like this, the punishment for one murder
is the same as four murders, is the same as looking
at the governor funny. It's just death. You might be wondering
why this guy sounds funny. It's because the voice actor is doing
a Humphrey Bogart impression, and we're living in a time where
young people don't know who that is and AI isn't good enough for Marvel
to put him into the Avengers yet. Humphrey Bogart was an actor
in old Hollywood who was 5 foot 8, looked like this, and pulled this girl when
he was in his mid 40's. In the mid 40's. Follow your dreams, kids,
but also probably don't smoke cigarettes. *lighting a cigarette and taking a drag* Anyway… And he's gonna pay me to kill a guy. He even gives me a weapon to do it even if this electric crossbow is
objectively the shittiest weapon in the game and I think is the worst starting
weapon in any Doom engine game. It's not even hit-scan. This game is so ambitious
with its RPG mechanics that you can actually find
a side quest to do in the village here. If you go into the bar, talk to the bartender… What's the good word, barkeep? "The word is, the sewers hold
more than just rats and robots." [CIVVIE]
Sewers, rats, and robots is actually
the title of my upcoming autobiography. Head upstairs to talk to this guy: [HARRIS]
I'm kinda a talent broker for the rebels. A guy who's as good as you
could make a lot of gold… if you hooked up with the right people. [CIVVIE]
I guess my reputation precedes me. [HARRIS]
The Order's "sanctuary" by the river
is their unofficial torture chamber. Hidden inside there's a golden chalice. You swipe it and reap your reward. [CIVVIE]
All right, good to know, I'm on my way there to do some murder anyway. This post-post-apocalyptic
New Yorker seems trustworthy. I go into the sanctuary,
your typical small, easy first area, where the game teaches you that
its stealth mechanics are, mostly, bullshit, because this little gateway
here is an alarm sensor, and you have to go through it. The game is teaching you how alarms work and they're not as annoying
sounding as they could be. *not-so-annoying alarm* Kill acolytes, find the guy,
kill the guy. Done. Grab the chalice. Done. Let's get the reward. As I walk into the bar, everybody freaks out, turrets start shooting me, what's the deal? [HARRIS]
Hey, I know, kinda looks like a set-up. I would never do that to…
to such a great killing machine. Got the item? Great! Now get ready. Gold and glory just like I promised. Take this key and
the governor will reward you. [CIVVIE]
You have any guns or anything? Everyone seems to be trying to kill me. [HARRIS]
Get lost, kid, you bother me! [CIVVIE]
Now, if you couldn't already tell, Harris has betrayed you, and I think most people who played
this game for the first time fell for it because imagine you're
playing an FPS game in 1996 and it just dumps on you, first thing? Well, funny thing, and a thing I only found out
in this playthrough, if you talk to that guy
you're supposed to kill, he tells you that Harris fucked him over
and that's how he got captured. This game, on the Doom engine, in 1996, expected people to talk to
an NPC they were sent to kill! Nonsense! Madness! I guess I need to talk
to the governor about it. [GOVERNOR]
So you're the fool who stole the chalice? I'm going to have you
arrested as a rebel thief… thereby enhancing
my position with the Order. How does it feel to be an unwitting pawn? [CIVVIE]
It feels bad, man.
I'm not happy about it. If you steal that chalice, you need
to start the game over again or deal with endless acolytes
teleporting in to kill you in one of the major hub areas of the game. So let's start again, talk to Bogie, kill the guy, grab his ring,
and bring it back. [ROWAN]
The traitor you killed was about
to reveal the location of the Front. You saved lives. How would you like to earn more gold,
and a future free from tyranny? [CIVVIE]
Gold, you say? [ROWAN]
…and a future free from tyranny? [CIVVIE]
Yeah, I guess. Is it tyranny against other people
or does that include me? I guess it will eventually include me,
so yeah, let's not do it. [ROWAN]
I have a business relationship
with the Front's leader, Macil. I know he needs an incisive fellow
like yourself, and he pays well. Take this recovered com unit and
you'll be led to, shall we say, opportunities. [BLACKBIRD]
Listen, if this com unit is working,
that means that you're still 100% human. I've been ordered to bring you in. We're talking trust here. Betray me and pay. [CIVVIE]
How about I pay you
and you get a pop filter? [BLACKBIRD]
Oh, and by the way,
you can call me BlackBird. [CIVVIE]
BlackBird leads me into the Front's
secret base so I can talk to Macil, this intense looking gentleman : [MACIL]
Welcome to the last flicker of hope. Only we have the free will
to oppose the Order. We have the sharpest scientific minds,
and many able bodies, but… we lack that one real, uh…
"problem solver"… who will give us the edge we need. Help us. [CIVVIE]
Oh yeah, I get it, you need a guy who can do almost
everything by himself to free humanity. I'm a chosen one, man, I'm good with that. Hold on, wait a second, I distinctly remember being able
to turn down Macil's offer, and it's really funny, look : [MACIL]
You might want to reconsider, seeing that you're surrounded
by heavily armored angry rebels. [CIVVIE]
No, that's okay. [MACIL]
Then die in shame and dishonor! [CIVVIE]
Why would Nightdive remove this? And they took out being able
to refuse the first quest and getting punished for it too! If you keep the beginner's trap from Harris,
why would you take this out? It's way funnier! [MACIL]
Our last raid was a disaster and
most of our troops were captured. I need you to free these prisoners. Take this money and visit Irale
who supplies our weapons. Then, this key will get you
in to see the governor. He's a corrupt puppet of the Order
but he loves to make deals. [CIVVIE]
Oh yeah, I know all about the governor. [MACIL]
Fight for the Front and freedom. Move out. [CIVVIE]
Off I go to start putting together
the revolution against the Order. *action music*
*Industry by Morey Goldstein* [GOVERNOR]
What the hell do you want? [CIVVIE]
"A prison pass, let's deal." He wants me to go into town somewhere
and cut off someone's power supply and then he'll give me a prison pass. [BLACKBIRD]
We need to speak to someone
who knows the old town and where this coupling is. Command says find MacGuffin. He's in what is politely
called "The Bum Hole". [CIVVIE]
MacGuffin? In the bum hole? Fuck you, game. [MACGUFFIN]
You seek wisdom, my son? The Order has seen to it that
we only ask one question, "why?" [CIVVIE]
You know what,
I'm just gonna find it myself. [BLACKBIRD]
Ah, you idiot! You've shut off the power
to the jamming circuits we use to conceal our base from the Order! [CIVVIE]
Ugh, fine… [BLACKBIRD]
Good move! The governor is a lousy liar. That's our power coupling
now let's get that pass. [CIVVIE]
This is where the real fun begins. [DOOR GUARD]
No one gets through here without
authorization from the warden or the governor. Okay, but talk only to the warden. [BLACKBIRD]
What a grouch! I hope we get to kill him later… [CIVVIE]
We do get to kill him later
but… could you not say… [BLACKBIRD]
…I hope we get to kill him later… [CIVVIE]
…so seductively? Breaking into the prison
because I don't have people skills. [WARDEN]
I don't care if Mourel gave you a pass. This is my prison. My key is the only way in or out, and I'm not taking any chances. [CIVVIE]
This dude couldn't be any more Nazi-coded
if he was goose-stepping out of a panzer. We should just kill him. So now the alarm is going off, not that it matters, since this prison is
also guarded by robots, who will attack you
regardless of whether or not you've stayed incognito the whole time. You may notice I have an assault rifle now which isn't quite as straightforward
as the kind you'd get in Doom. You need to fire it in short bursts or else the accuracy,
at least for the moment, is trash. The spider robots also happen to be
one of the two enemies in this game that I instinctively fear and hate. They like to crawl on ceilings and drop down
before hitting you with rapid melee attacks and sometimes will get you stuck because enemies that drop down from
the ceiling are really weird additions to a game that runs on an engine that
doesn't actually do the concept of "height". To free the prisoners,
I need to talk to the judge. [JUDGE]
Kill me and you'll never set anyone free. [CIVVIE]
The cells are opened
with a hand print scanner. All right, trying to kill spider robots
while freeing the prisoners and there is, luckily,
a teleporter directly back which is very convenient and
also seems like a terrible risk. I won't complain because
I don't have to walk through the whole world again to get back to Macil. [MACIL]
The prisoners have been
welcomed back, thanks to you. Here's some gold, go visit the medic and
the weapons trainer and then, I have higher goals for you. [CIVVIE]
Ah yes, the medic
and the weapons trainer, two people I didn't ever visit
when I first played this game who are absolutely
necessary to your survival. These guys are the most
important members of the Front. The medic gives you stamina upgrades which will add 10% to your max health and, though the game
doesn't fucking tell you this, it also increases your knife damage. I can't find that part anywhere, even in the manual, but this is an upgrade you can get many
times during the game from this guy. Same with the weapons trainer, who will give you a 10% accuracy
boost each time you train with him. It makes a difference. Look at my assault rifle
at the beginning of the game and look at my assault rifle
at the end of the game : Macil is sending me off
to destroy a power generator that controls the shields for the Order, but first I have to talk
to Worner in the warehouse who gives me an ID card
from an employee who died. This, for some reason, works. [WORNER]
It's just dumb enough to work. [BENOIT BLANC]
NO! It's just dumb! [CIVVIE]
I have to visit the reactor area
first through the secret entrance if I want to find this technician who engages
in some polite conversation before… I take his gold key so I can raid
the armory in the warehouse which gives me a ton of ammo
for my mini-missile launcher, which is like a missile launcher but much
less satisfying and horribly inaccurate. This is when I decide
to turn the crosshair on, a new addition from the remaster unless you count the item you pick up
that fills your screen with this garbage, which I do not. The stealth thing was fine
in the warehouse, but I have to alert enemies here, whether they be unfriendly
robots that shoot me anyway or guards who hear the alarm that
I have to set off if I want to progress. The people in the reactor itself
aren't alerted so that's nice. [SAMMIS]
Work, sleep and get tortured, what a life. [CIVVIE]
You said it, brother! I have to put on this
hazardous environment suit to be around the power crystal
before blowing it up. This thing only lasts like a minute and you know it's run out because the screen
flashes green in this really annoying way before you start to take damage. But it's fine, we're okay, crystal is blown up, what's next? [BLACKBIRD]
The Order thinks that
it's secure in its castle… Wrong! If you open the gate,
they'd be easy pickings. [CIVVIE]
I like the sound of that, I sure hope we're not about
to wander into the thing that people have been telling me
to play this game for because of memes! [BLACKBIRD]
…and for that we have
to go down into the sewers. *heavy sigh* *zombie groan* [BLACKBIRD]
Hold your nose, we're going down. [CIVVIE]
Look, I've played Strife, and I already
know this is the worst fucking section, so here's what we're gonna do: because you have to wear
these protective suits in the sewer because the water is
so toxic that it will kill you, every time we see the screen
flashing green from that, we'll add one to the count, sound good? *zombie groan* [BLACKBIRD]
We're looking for Weran,
who calls himself the Rat King. I'm sure it's descriptive
as well as colorful. [CIVVIE]
Cool. I already hate him. This is a pretty bad sewer. It's not Anoat City bad
or Redneck Rampage bad but it's almost trying to make up
for that with the constant toxicity. *zombie groan* Yeah, it gives you
plenty of environment suits, but you still have
to put them on manually and it's not like you have a timer
to know when they're running low. It's an extra annoyance that
really doesn't need to exist but here we are. I grab a grenade launcher here too, but more on that later, because the cramped shit walls
are the worst place to attempt to use it. Yes, this is a shitty maze of
corridors that's difficult to navigate. And you won't even know
what you're looking for until- FUCK! And you won't even know
what you're looking for until- Oh, come on, I'm not even
in the sewage right now! And you won't even know
what you're looking for until you find yourself
in the Rat King's den. [WERAN]
Ah, a surfacer in need of a favor. Down here you do a favor to get a favor and I need the town entrance
that is our path to food opened. The Order has it sealed and guarded. [CIVVIE]
Okay, fine. You might be wondering
why this guy sounds funny. It's because the voice actor
is doing a Peter Lorre impression, and we're living in a time where
young people don't know who that is and AI isn't good enough for Marvel
to put him into the Avengers yet. I'm pretty sure he's that fucking hack
who produced Big Bang Theory, so fuck him. So I go through the sewer
again to find another exit… *zombie groan* …and I go up the elevator and- Oh fucking god damn it! Kill one guy, grab his uniform,
and return to the Rat King. [WERAN, excited]
Have you brought me what I want?! [CIVVIE]
What are you gonna use that uniform for? [WERAN]
Good! Here's something extra. My fellows tore this off a fallen crusader. It's the parts that make up a flamethrower. Now Irale can make one for you. You can have such fun. [CIVVIE]
Oh, that does sound fun. [WERAN]
You have to enter
another part of the sewers! [CIVVIE]
I have to go back to the surface,
drain a reclamation tank and jump in there : *zombie groan* And then… [BLACKBIRD]
Don't ask me where we are, I'm lost too. [CIVVIE]
It's like they knew! *zombie groan* [BLACKBIRD]
Command, he's done it! The gates are open! Send in the shock troops
and tell Macil we're coming in! [CIVVIE]
Yeah! We're coming in! Oh, hold on… *zombie groan* I notice you don't put a teleporter here
to return me to base, do you? No, I have to navigate
all the fucking sewers again. All right, fine, let's go to Irale smelling like toxic shit and get a flamethrower
that'll probably light me up as soon as I try to use it
from all the methane gas and start prepping for
the assault on the castle. Wait, already? *March by Morey Goldstein* Honest to god, the first time
I played this game, I thought I'd already gotten to the end. It seemed long enough because I'd spent
an hour dicking around in the sewers. [MACIL]
You've exceeded all our expectations. Because of your daring,
our troops are on the move. I want you two to join
the assault with a specific target. Take out… the Programmer. [CIVVIE]
Weird how they're asking me
to take out an oppressive programmer. I don't suppose he's in the Cygnus building. Yeah, okay, I haven't really
had an exposition dump yet and I'm about 2 hours into this game. Hit me. [MACIL]
The genetic mutations caused by the virus
not only warp the psyches of the Order, but cause their bodies to decay. Without procreation, the Order found
that bio-mechanical enhancements were the only way to maintain
their strength in numbers…. But we believe that their collective
consciousness is controlled by one source. The Programmer! Creator of the AI
which controls the acolytes. Destroy the Programmer and we may
cripple the Order's troops with a single blow. [CIVVIE]
He says something about the Programmer
being able to vaporize targets in one hit but that's not something
we're gonna worry about. You'll see why. Until then, it's time to break out
the big guns. We'll need them. Specifically for the crusaders. They're big mechs with missiles
and a flamethrower, but I have the grenade launcher,
which is an unwieldy beast of a weapon that fires two grenades at
a weird angle in rapid succession. It's almost as dangerous
to you as it is to enemies. I've also got a flamethrower,
which is also dangerous to you when attempting to kill things
at relatively short range with it. But this battle is something special. I've never seen anything like this
in the Doom engine up to this point. You've got friendly NPCs milling around, and the fact that
the game has just given you two new incredibly
dangerous weapons to play with and you're facing some new enemies
AND you're searching for the Programmer, leading you to several people
who are not the Programmer. [FAKE PROGRAMMER 1]
Oh no, I'm not the real
programmer, he's hiding. Continue past the guard
training area, very tough. If you survive, you might be
able to talk to him. Or kill him. [CIVVIE]
This guard training area
is a completely optional level. You don't need to go here,
but the game rewards you for it. Lots of traps,
including instant death pits that are just techno-shit, I think. Turrets on high ceilings that
are incredibly difficult to hit with this game's already
wonky vertical aiming, which is less wonky
than the DOS version but… oh, kids, the rewards are sweet. A ton of supplies,
and even more importantly, you get a stamina and
accuracy upgrade from it! I appreciate Rogue not wasting my time… in this level! Next fake programmer
is in the audience chamber, heavily guarded. [FAKE PROGRAMMER 2]
You killed all the guards. Don't hurt me. I told him this was a dumb idea. The real Programmer is in the keep. Here, take this key. [CIVVIE]
That was easy. I wanna show off what that stamina upgrade
does besides the health boost, so… The real Programmer, who
looks nothing like these dorks, is hidden away in the Keep and
serves as the first boss of this game. I should make a Carmack joke here but this Programmer
is nothing like Carmack because I do not fear or respect him. He looks pretty intimidating with
his big pyramid and his lightning, but I have one crucial tool in my arsenal
that will take care of him pretty easily, which is these incendiary grenades. Allow me to demonstrate: [MACIL]
Good, you're conscious again. When you grabbed that
item the Programmer dropped, you let loose some terrible secrets. [CIVVIE]
Oh, listen, the thing about
my Uncle Frank was true, the goldilocksing thing
was only half-true, and the thing with
the emus is 100% bullshit, do not believe a word of it. [MACIL]
Fragments assembled
from the Programmer's files tell us that the Order is
worshiping an intelligent weapon. [CIVVIE]
You mean like a smartgun? [MACIL]
They call it the Sigil. [CIVVIE]
Uh huh, that makes sense, this game
being called "Quest for the Sigil" and all. [MACIL]
The piece you touched
and recovered is one of five. It wields power drawn from
the user's own life force. While you live, you control its power. You can wield it, but at a cost. It will drain you dry. [CIVVIE]
Which is why I very, very
rarely use it in regular gameplay, especially on this skill, because
I don't need to lose more health. [MACIL]
We have reached
the limits of my knowledge. Seek out the Oracle and ask it for help. [BLACKBIRD]
The Oracle is a supposedly
sympathetic high priest who operates outside of the Order. [CIVVIE]
Okay, before I head off to do that, I'm gonna go raid the old rebel HQ, they've set up in the castle we just
took which is a wonderful touch, but not as wonderful as the supplies
that are hidden in the old Front base. Where to next? Oh god… [BRICK]
All right boys, fight like
badasses, or die like bitches! [CIVVIE]
That thing about the
AI controlling the acolytes being crippled after
killing the Programmer? Bullshit. They're still around, though their presence is somewhat
reduced compared to the robots. And because this game
fancies itself an open world title, to a limited extent because
of the time and technology, I take a secret shortcut
to the Oracle's chamber. Hey, that's a cool-looking
floating cosmic horror you've got in your
skylight there, what's up? *funk music* [ORACLE]
What is the wisdom you seek, simple one? [CIVVIE]
Simple? Don't be an asshole. [ORACLE]
I feel one fragment resonate within you. The second lies at the heart of
the crimson and obsidian tower. There you must combat the Bishop. [CIVVIE]
The Bishop? What, you mean he's like
a member of the clergy? The Catholic church survived- [THE BISHOP]
Okay, Devious. Don't move. [DEVIOUS] - The Bishop!
[H4MM3R] - No Python! [CIVVIE]
KATIE, YOU BITCH! *MMMenu by Lee Jackson* [BLACKBIRD]
Crimson and obsidian?
Why can't he say red and black? [CIVVIE]
If you're playing Veteran Edition, go ahead
and pick up this blue talisman here. It'll be more important later. [BLACKBIRD]
The Bishop is the Order's military leader. He plots their tactics, runs their spies,
and is charged with controlling us. We off him and we score twice. [BUTTHEAD]
This is it, Beavis.
We're finally gonna score. [CIVVIE]
No, that's not what she means,
we're not gonna score, we're gonna go kill the Bishop. First, we have to talk to the keymaster
to get us into the fortress. [KEYMASTER]
A lot of people would say
this is a thankless and insignificant job. But it's not, in fact… Okay, but remember, I'm the keymaster. [CIVVIE]
Yeah, okay… His key, and fighting a lot of robots,
gets me into the fortress, where I contact an informant
who will tell me how to get into the security complex
to disable the force field and gives me a tip on where
to find a powerful weapon. We're off to do the force field thing first because I don't really need
the Mauler at the moment, you know, I'm doing okay with
the incredibly situational weapons I have. It's inside the security complex
and the administration building where things start to get mazey, as opposed to the sewers
which are naturally mazey and I curse the person who designed them. I'm regretting not getting
the Mauler first a little bit because this is where we start to run
into my least favorite enemy in this game, templars. See, the Mauler is like the game's shotgun, but it's energy based, hurts like hell, and these heavily armored
assholes carry them. Thankfully, they can't use
the mauler's secondary fire. And neither can I until
I actually go and get it so now that I've destroyed the computer, it's time to go into the completely
optional warehouse level, run around like a madman
hitting switches for a while and killing an army of Order goons, and grab the Mauler. This can be a pain in the ass but to Strife's credit, when it makes you
do something difficult in an optional level, it rewards you pretty handsomely for it. In this case, with the Mauler. I understand why Strife's level design is getting more intricate
and maze-like as it goes on, it was the style at the time, and it's not as bad as HeXen usually with
the number of switches I have to press. Most of the time I have a good
idea of what the switches do. Onto the Bishop, in I guess a Vatican-sponsored death mech. We use the same
strategy as the programmer. Except, now there's some
spectral green and red blob here! There's nothing about this
in Tobin's Spirit Guide. These things can only
be killed with the Sigil, meaning the strategy is not dying. I mean, like, not dying because the
Sigil drains your health when you use it. It only takes 4 hit points
from you now, but later? Oh, it's way worse later. [BLACKBIRD]
Did you see that weird specter
that came out of the Bishop's body? Where have I seen that before? [CIVVIE]
Well, that's easy, the creepy and obviously evil Oracle
had one floating above their chambers! So, back through the borderlands we go! [ORACLE]
Your next challenge
will test your spirit. The third piece is held by your own leader. He is the same as that
which he sends you to kill. [CIVVIE]
If you weren't already blown away by what Strife was doing
with the Doom engine in 1996, get ready, because this is
a giant turning point in the game. Right here decides whether you get
the good ending or the bad ending. If you go and kill Macil,
you miss out on a ton of the game, but also : [BLACKBIRD]
Yes, the evil was gone, but our future was uncertain
and clouded with doubt. It would take generations
to purge the virus from our people… if we survived that long. Whatever the evil wanted, it drained
from us the one thing we needed: it left us without hope. [CIVVIE]
And we can't have that! [ORACLE]
Whatever choice you make, your kind
shall perish under the will of the one god. [CIVVIE]
That's definitely something
a person I can trust would say. Whelp! I really don't care for
the life-draining Sigil attacks. And on my way back from this adventure,
I have the strangest feeling. Like I'm really walking
around an open world : visiting shops to re-stock,
killing time before my next objective, the most primitive form
of that thing I sometimes feel in one of the good
Fallout games or in Cyberpunk, and I admire the hell out of Strife
for being able to accomplish that. [MACIL]
There seems no end to the horror we face. We have found out that
the Order is not killing our people. It is transforming them,
into bio-mechanical soldiers. [CIVVIE]
Wait… did we not know that? I just assumed they were
getting Stroggified this whole time. You know, getting Combine'd? Assimilated? Into the Order commons I go,
where I have to behave myself so that the overwhelming Order
presence doesn't easily kill me. Strife's ability to introduce a new town, no matter how Doom-engine primitive
it is and kinda limited in scale, is really cool. This town has its own shops
and vendors and NPCs, like Timothy, who wants me to find
a blue chalice in the manufacturing sector as if quests for chalices
have gone well for me so far. There's also Richter… [RICHTER]
Thank Deus you got here. To enter the factory you need a key. [CIVVIE]
No shit. [RICHTER]
We stole it but our agent is
missing in the web of catacombs under the Order's stronghold. [CIVVIE]
Catacombs, huh? Are they full of water? [BLACKBIRD]
Mines, catacombs, sewers!
Love at first date. [CIVVIE]
Yeah. *zombie groan* [imitating a posh accent]
The catacombs are a fuuuucking sewer! [normal]
And that comes with everything
from the previous sewer level except the toxic water. It's less confusingly
designed than the last sewer, but still confusingly designed, and don't tell me it's not because… [BLACKBIRD]
I think we're… oh crap,
I have no idea where we are. [CIVVIE]
Yeah. And I think it has a higher rat population. I can't kill the rats, I've tried. The catacombs lead to the ruined temple, thankfully, because if the pacing
was like the last sewer bit, we'd still be swapping environment suits. [BLACKBIRD]
This must be the ruins that
Richter's agents were searching f- Watch out, crusaders! [CIVVIE]
Where? Oh, there… You'll be really happy
to have the Mauler here. The secondary fire
murders stuff real good and the number of mechs dropping
energy ammo will keep it fed for a while. I still have to drag the Sigil out
because there's a specter here too. [BLACKBIRD]
My friend, whatever it is we're fighting,
it's more than just the Order. Off to the mines. [CIVVIE]
Yeah, of course, I've just got one thing to do. In a secret there's a broken
pillar you have to use that'll lower a wall to give you
the Green Talisman. Oh, did you forget about those talismans? Because Civvie didn't. He sometimes wishes he didn't
play Nightdive's version because he has to get the talismans. The goddamn… The mines are a necessary trip because I have
to get an ore that I can shoot to detonate. The problem is that I have to shoot
the explosive ore in the commons, which means I have to alert
every goddamn enemy in the commons while doing it
to get into the factory, please leave a comment on how
it's possible to stealth my way into the factory because I have no idea how to do that. I tried detonating it with a poison arrow,
my other stealth weapon, that was a no-go, I tried doing it wearing shadow armor, also did not work, so I'm stuck with a locked-down,
fully alerted town that's gonna be on my ass
for the rest of the game. Now, if I was playing a non-
remastered version of the game, this would be less of a problem. You'll see why in a bit. This is basically the home stretch
in terms of Strife's narrative, we've made the major story choices already and we're dealing with the consequences. Which is gonna be more confusing sooner than the Order commons
are gonna be a problem. [BLACKBIRD]
Just when I think I've seen it all! They go in human and come out… I don't even wanna think about it! The Oracle was right, Macil's gone nuts! He just knowingly sent
200 men to their deaths! I want vengeance for the dead
AND for the living dead! [CIVVIE]
Yeah, Macil's a bad guy no matter what and the "good" path that I'm on
only delays having to face him. It turns out that if you don't have
a big skylight to reveal a spectral monster, you can stay incognito the whole game. I run back through the Order commons
using some shadow armor and head back to the castle
to confront Macil, who recruited me and allowed me
to get three pieces of the Sigil, a very dumb Tchernobog-like plan to let me become more
powerful before killing me. He doesn't even try to hide it anymore. [MACIL]
I am the one god… I need his spirit to be free so that
I can leave my body and join him in flight. [CIVVIE]
I can help you with the "leave your body" part. Fucker had a Sigil piece this whole time and I had to wade through two sewer levels? [BLACKBIRD]
Richter reports that the factory
we destroyed leads to a lab and they're getting a Sigil
power signature from within. Back to the factory and
our next step to freedom! [CIVVIE]
So uh… am I in charge of the Front now? Strife's endgame is pretty difficult
if you're not as familiar with the game. I'm on Elite skill, which
I've never done before. I think I've completed Strife
maybe three times before, and I've only gotten the good ending once. The mech presence in these
factory levels is pretty extreme and it brings out the really tough enemies. Like the inquisitors, which
aren't technically boss monsters, they're just as hard to deal with as bosses. No, actually, they're worse, and I've been able to scrap one
with a single powered-up Mauler blast. It's okay, I only have to face
two of them within five minutes. With the exception
of the conversion chapel, these are all twisty metal mazes full
of enemies that will sap all of your resources. I was resorting to killing acolytes
with the electric bow. The electric bow! At one point, I take a secret passage out
of the factory into the catacombs… *zombie groan* …to scrounge for health and ammo because I don't have enough gold
to buy a damn thing at a shop, and even if I did, I'd have to find a way through
the Order commons gauntlet to get back to one since all the shops closed the moment
I blew up the force field to get into the factory. This factory section is divided
into five different maps : Receiving, Manufacturing, Forge,
Proving Grounds, and The Lab. Proving grounds is probably the hardest one,
but the lab is real fucking close. I'm pretty sure there are still spiders crawling
around proving grounds that I didn't bother with. The switch hunting in that level
had me running around like a lunatic through a series of teleporters trying
to find out what switch opened which door. The lab is mostly difficult because I have
to keep my health up to kill the Loremaster, who gives me the final piece of the Sigil. I'm guessing he's the nerd
who runs TV Tropes. Like a hundred acolytes
spawn in one side of the map, the one with health, naturally, and two inquisitors. This section of Strife is the hardest bit
of any of the main Doom engine games. This comes down to this
game's health management. The game will automatically
use health items when you're low so you can run out really
quickly without even knowing. I don't remember if this is a DOS
Strife feature or a Veteran Edition feature, but I can't find the option to turn it off. Oh no, nevermind, here it is, buried
with the fucking function keys! And then, as I'm about to go
into the final stretch of this game, I remember : what about that blue chalice? *Steel by Morey Goldstein* The blue chalice is not, in fact, a trap. Well, not in the traditional sense where the Order will spawn
in forever if you grab it. No, that blue chalice didn't even exist
in the original release of the game. It was added as
a quest item in Veteran Edition. It's located in the manu-
facturing part of the factory but before I get it, I'm still in dire
need of health packs and ammo and I don't have the gold to buy them. And you're thinking I should run around
and grab some that I didn't pick up before from other levels since
this is a totally open world, and you're right! I even discover that there's
a secret exit inside the catacombs that leads to the Bishop's
fortress area from earlier that I use to completely
bypass the Order commons, which is fantastic! I run around everywhere I can, which is like,
all of the levels in the game, pretty much, I even go looking in
the sewers for supplies. *zombie groan* I have some unfinished business in town. I wanted to check out what was
inside the governor's basement earlier. Not very much. So I go upstairs to check out
what's inside the governor. I run to a shop and buy
the only armor I can afford and prepare to take on this
game's greatest challenge yet. With the chalice, I have to return
to Timothy in the Order commons, which will be my last trip
to that goddamn place. I'm persona non-grata in the
commons still, so I have to sneak in… Timothy gives me some information
that will help me get past Master Smithy, who is also a secret
agent inside of the Order who lets you into the super secret
new level, Factory: Production. Now, this level is supposed
to be harder than the rest, but after the struggles I had with low resources
throughout the rest of the factory sections, this seems like a cakewalk up
until close to the end. Even though it's got a high concentration
of templars, who are the worst, and three inquisitors! That's fine, we're good,
we're jamming, we're kicking ass. The prize hidden at the end
of this level is the Red Talisman to go with my green and blue talismans and that grants super strength, meaning your punch knife
is now extra powerful. How powerful? Well, the game spawns
in a bunch of templars, which you can now one-hit with your punch. It's permanent berserk! Would be awesome earlier
in the game but hey, I have it now, not that you'll see much
of it since we're only one short journey away
from the very end of the game. *Steel by Morey Goldstein* Past the lab is the alien ship, your typical penultimate level
gauntlet of high-tier enemies that I basically sprint through to
preserve my little health and resources, because I'm kind of an idiot sometimes. See, I walk into the final boss room hoping and praying that
I have enough health to survive because the strategy isn't really
about movement or weapon swapping. The final boss is an even bigger,
nastier spectral blob, called "The One God", and it can only be defeated with the Sigil, which, by this point,
drains 20 HP every time I fire it. That's the main challenge in this fight : you need enough health to use the
Sigil enough times to kill the One God. And if you don't… [NARRATOR]
The sentient virus hit us like
a tidal wave, driving us all mad. We heard the siren song
of death and we danced. This evil drained us of all human life and scornful of procreation,
recycled our families. Then one day, the evil left. There was simply nothing for it to feed on. We were… extinct. [CIVVIE]
Yeah, that's the worst ending you can get, which happens when
you die during the final fight. I was curious exactly how many
blasts from the Sigil I needed so I ended up turning on
god mode and doing some testing. It turns out I needed at least 10, meaning I needed to have over 200 points
of health available in order to beat the boss and I had walked in with none, like an idiot. Because if you go two rooms back to this area
with the big bridge towards the boss arena, there's a secret with a bunch
of medium health pickups, but, more importantly,
there's a surgical kit, which will restore you to full health. Full health, after all of the stamina
upgrades I've gotten, is 200 HP. *upbeat military parade music* [REBEL SOLDIER]
Attention, all troops of the Front! He's done it! It's over! BlackBird's soldier has killed the evil.
The Order is no more! BlackBird, do you read me? [BLACKBIRD]
I knew you would win, my gallant hero! All fighting has stopped. Your victory will allow us to create a vaccine
to purge the virus from our bodies. You have saved our planet and set us free. Now, I'd like to thank you personally. Oh, and by they way, the name's Shauna. Oh my god! We did it!
We're gonna score! Defeating the One God means that we get
to score with a hot chick with huge knockers! We're gonna- [BEAVIS]
Do it! We're finally gonna score! [CIVVIE]
Yes! Oh my god, yes! We saved the world from an alien threat and the good ending is
that we get some strange from this chick who loves it
when we murder people! This is awesome! This is everything I could have
asked for from a game ending… when I was fourteen! *end credits* [BEAVIS]
Hehehehe…. I scored! Hehehehe…
