Juggling Dumpsters

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:35 pm

I'm curious. Jack warns you in the tutorial that you shouldn't go juggling dumpsters or out-running the 8:14 to Pasadena. When confronting the serial killer, he clearly is throwing cars at you. Why, then, is your PC never able to throw a car? Even with strength maxed out? There are a few places where throwing a car would be a lot of fun, and to heck with the Masquerade Violation. During the Gauntlet, the whole of Santa Monica is a combat zone, and there are all of those rusted out hulks just begging to be used as baseballs.

Red_X · Post by **Red_X** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 8:49 pm

haha I agree, they tell ya you have the strength of a monster but ya cant even pick up a volts wagon whats up with that?

pennypincher · Post by **pennypincher** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 10:09 pm

He he he! I dunno, I can give you two answers on that. One answer would be the obvious, correct answer... And the other one would be one that you could tell yourself to help game realism.

Realism) You've only been a vampire for a few nights, so chances are your brain hasn't had time to adapt to it's new found strength... Fights are fast, furious, paniced things at the best of times and brutal, sudden, "over in one blow" things at the worst of times... In the end, the characters prolly never even CONSIDERED throwing people, light posts, chunks of masonite or automobiles. Given a few months of training and adaptation, likley your character would get more used to the powers he/she/it has and would start to improvise... For example, someone with Potence 5 and their strength pushed up around the 7-10 mark would easily and happily whip the cable from the cable car and use it to lash that Werewolf clean in half with a single blow... (Maybe two if you were unlucky)... But really, who thinks to DO something like that??

Also, most of the game takes place in the middle of the city, where donig such a thing is tandamount to stabbing yourself over and over in the eye with a bic biro and declaring to the world "It lets me see into the afterlife!"

Real Reason) The game was already rushed at the end, consider the time and effort it would take to program in cars, lamp posts and grabage cans as weapons that you could equip, but not carry around with you, and that using them is a breech... Plus the massive damage and the explosions would have to be programed in, and minium Str requirments, and it would kinda make the last few scenes a little... Meaningless (IE: Oh NO! I'll have to fight through the streets... Or I could just bend this lamp in half and keep swingging it and walk...)

Anaximander · Post by **Anaximander** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 10:36 pm

In the Santa Monica warehouse, there's a forklift that looks like you can interact with it. I tried to do so once, and it looked like my character tried to pick it up and failed. I've always wondered if it's possible to pick that thing up and throw it at the thugs. Maybe I'll go start a Brujah and use the console to give myself 5 strength and 5 potence to see what I can do.

That's the only vehicle or other very large object I know of that you might be able to pick up and throw in the game.

[quote="pennypincher]For example"]

I agree. Only someone who already knew they were capable of such a feat would think to attempt it.

mr_sir · Post by **mr_sir** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 12:17 am

lol, the idea of being able to do that would be great, but so hard to get the hang of in a fight cos i find it hard enough remembering to use all my disciplines and it gets quite hectic changing disciplines mid-fight sometimes. the fights happen so quickly in this game that it would get really hectic if you started throwing stuff too, plus the enemy vamps would have to be able to do it too. i agree its weird they mentioned it then never put it in but i can understand why they didn't

i find it funny at the start too when jack talks about you outrunning the train cos my malk just got confused at that point - how does a vamp without celerity outrun a train lol.

as for the forklift, they probably planned to include lifting stuff like that but i doubt they actually put it in seeing as they had to rush it in the end. bet they thought of it on paper though.

Celacena · Post by **Celacena** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 7:27 am

squish

they let you drop crates on people...

CaptRory · Post by **CaptRory** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 10:46 am

I was thrilled with as much environment interactivity as they had already put into the game. Just looking at the first part of the game you can move around and shoot the warheads of rockets and gas canisters that in at least one instance will drop a water tower on your enemies.

MalaksBane · Post by **MalaksBane** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 12:22 pm

Crates?
Water tower?

Sounds like I've missed something, guess I need a replay. As if I would mind that

Anaximander · Post by **Anaximander** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 12:39 pm

There's a small courtyard in the warehouse with a water tower in it. Shoot a gas can at the base of the tower and it will collapse, killing anything that happens to be under it.

You can also hit a switch on the metal catwalk inside the warehouse to drop a large metal container, crushing the mortals below. It's hard to do this without being spotted, however. If they see you, chance are they'll start moving around to get a clear shot at you, and you won't be able to hit them with the crate.

yrthwyndandfyre · Post by **yrthwyndandfyre** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 11:16 am

[QUOTE=Anaximander]There's a small courtyard in the warehouse with a water tower in it. Shoot a gas can at the base of the tower and it will collapse, killing anything that happens to be under it.

You can also hit a switch on the metal catwalk inside the warehouse to drop a large metal container, crushing the mortals below. It's hard to do this without being spotted, however. If they see you, chance are they'll start moving around to get a clear shot at you, and you won't be able to hit them with the crate.[/QUOTE]
That's fine, but some of us are on primitive versions of the game, and don't know about about 'gas cans'.

CaptRory · Post by **CaptRory** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 2:36 pm

In the Santa Monica Warehouse that the sabbat are using. Its darn hard to hit the gas canister with the weapons you have at that point, but if you nail it the water tower comes crashing down. The gas canisters are bright red so they're not too hard to spot. Also in the same warehouse on the lowest shelf of a rack near the office where you plant the Astrolight are some warheads for missiles. The box can be picked up and moved and detonated with a gunshot. Its in the same room as the forklift.

CaptRory · Post by **CaptRory** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 1:22 am

I wish we could go through and add that kind of interactive content to the rest of the game. It looks to me like they really fleshed out the Sabbat Warehouse but weren't given the time to add those kinds of touches to the rest of the project.

pennypincher · Post by **pennypincher** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 4:23 pm

I suspect things like dropping export containers and falling water towers are the halmark of the clans with Obfuscate... As it can often be a little much to ask your average Malkavian to charge head first into a pack of gun wielding goons... At least, I enjoyed these little added extras when I had Obfuscate. It's quite satisfying to lay waste your your enemies without getting your hands dirty.

CaptRory · Post by **CaptRory** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 11:01 pm

True enough, but its still fun to play around with that sort of thing even if you're not sneaky.

Confuzzled · Post by **Confuzzled** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 3:30 am

Well you certainly don't need to be especially sneaky to drop the crate on people. It's only been on my past couple of run throughs that I've discovered the easy way to do it (which may be new to some of you)... Evidently SPOILERS, but read on if you wish.

If you head hard left in the area with the train carriages you come to an additional part of the warehouse with a train inside it. One soon-to-be-corpse is located within in. Kill him, then climb the ladder to take you into the rafters. You come out on the walkway, invisible, if crouched, to almost all below. You can get to the control box unimpeded. This does cause all the doors out the warehouse to lock though, so make sure you have cleared your escape route first.

CaptRory · Post by **CaptRory** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 12:18 pm

If I recall, there's also a watch or ring or somesuch up there too.

silver_frost · Post by **silver_frost** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 11:19 pm

Mostly I think that either the programmers had no time to mess around with the source engine else they think that the game is taxing enough on our computers as it is. Each area already takes so long to load man, can you imagine what it would be like if so many objects can be used? Its a pity though, it would be nice if you could pick up things and fling them around dealing damage like the gravity gun from Half-life 2...

Theoris · Post by **Theoris** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 7:33 pm

console

just an interesting point i thought i might bring up. if you go into the console and do the whole vstats get/buy strenght, for example, you can type 8 after the command (vstats get strenght 8) and your character becomes really powerful, or any high number for that matter. i beat a boss with my bare hands. as for the juggling dumpsters part....well no luck. but hey, whats the fun in being rediculously strong if you cant toss cars on a whim? i suppose the game is fun enough already.