Let's Play Shadowrun (Genesis) Part 4: KILLING IS MY BUSINESS... AND BUSINESS IS GOOD
Okay, so now were in the famed Seattle of the future. Let's have a look around, shall we?
See this guy? When you download files from the matrix, sell them to him. You'll make mad money. More mad money than that Jim Cramer guy could shake a stick at!
Hey, it's that lady from the holopix that our brother had in his stash. Let's inquire further of her.
His best friends name was... Stark?
Seems like I should know this sort of information about my brother already, but I'll let it slide.
Again, these random events happen all the time. It's quite cool, really. I mean look - the space needle!
And gangs going pro? You HIGHLY doubt it...
Well lookie what we found here, another one of them fabled Shadowrunners. He even offers us a free contact for magic. This guy is a mage though. Unlike us shamans who are one with nature, he just uses the earth and magic for his own need (or at least, that's the best I can make of it). So, I guess we could say he is a magic poser, of the type that would shop at Hot Magic Topic or the likes.
I pretty much just keep running into every bar or club that will let me in to see what runner is selling his or her services there. And always ask them for information and contacts; ALWAYS.
Also, I can't tell if he's holding onto a cyberdeck, or one of those electronic music boxes from the 80s (and if you don't know what I'm talking about, go watch Revenge of the Nerds right now).
Sometimes there's a good ending to your random event, sometimes there is not. Walking away or telling people to slot off is usually a safe bet until you are strong enough to tangle with some of the stronger enemies these random events can throw at you.
I'm not sure I'm getting the proper feel for the idea behind futuristic fashions... But I feel the same way watching Back to the Future 2 as well.
What's better than finding other Shadowrunners? Finding other Mr. Johnsons. Every one has certain types of runs and price ranges and karma he gives you for each mission, though there seems to be a bit of overlap.
Also, we're running into the "seems familiar" territory with facial avatars now... So get used to that.
Excellent. More contacts for us!
Another runner, only this one is the first one since Ricky that is actually in our price range. Which unfortunately means for him to be of any major use to us, we would have to level him up, as he is probably fairly weak at this point.
Though, that is the cool thing about this game -- your runners gain karma that you can spend building their stats up, and you can even buy them cyberware and screw around with their inventory and gear.
A one Mr. Mortimer Reed. You know, for Mr. Johnson supposedly being a "mysterious" name, these guys sure like to throw what seems to be their actual names about. What happened to just being called "Mr. Johnson", eh? Was that too complicated?
Drekheads.
Seriously though, this guys has some good early level runs, as does Mr. Julius Strouther that we already ran across. Except you can only be on one shadowrun at a time, so try to wrap up runs as quickly as you can so you can move on to bigger and better things.
I think another one of Plinkett's patented "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR FACE!?" moments is called for here. This thing may actually look worse than his ex-wife.
To be fair, most people in this game would qualify for X-Files or Buffy style monster of the week characters.
This guy is just mad you interrupted him from playing the 2057 expansion of World of the Throne of the Frozen Undead Zombie Blizzard Cash Cow Machine of Warcraft.
What would be really nice was if we had somebody with skills like a Pretender around that was for hire (after all, my cause is noble, right?). A sort of jack of all trades. I actually sort of wonder if there's a Jarod hiding around in the shadows here...
[Editor's Note: There's not, actually. I just have been watching too much late 90s television lately.]
I don't think I like this guy... err... duo, either. Seems like a bunch of filching squealers to me, bub.
But seriously, Mr. Jarl and Vigore are a "pair" of Mr. Johnsons. They like to send you on runs for good nuyen and okay karma... But there's something 'fishy' about them... Some sort of nogoodniks. Their runs are TOO lucrative.
Oh, and that red eye is creepy as all hell.
Time to delve into the world of The Matrix a little bit right now. Long before the Keanu Reeves movie and it's red pill vs. blue pill fantasy land, there was this version of the matrix, where you have different types of nodes (I/O ports, SM nodes, CPUs, SPUs, DSs, and various other access points) and corresponding colors and number values to tell you how valuable the information behind them is. For example, the color scheme goes BLUE, GREEN, ORANGE, RED. And then you can give it a number anywhere from like 3 to 7. So a Green 3 is easy pickings, whereas an Orange 6 is very hard, but a Red 4 or a Red 7 would probably have some black ice and beat your ass seven ways from Sunday. But a Red datastore will always deliver the most profitable data if just rooting around on your own in a system. Heck, you may even find one of those "plot relevant" files there... But more on that later.
Then take your awesome files you've found, and sell them to this guy. Damned technomancers. Seriously though, this is the good money. I made around 200,000 nuyen in like 4 hours. No cheating or frameskipping or anything, either. Completely legit.
Of course, since then, I've collected and spent another 300,000 or so... You need a lot of money in this game if you want to have a boss cyberdeck and wreck everybody's shit and get the "secret message" (which, I guarantee, I will do).