Arc #318983: Ignition of the Machine

I'm giving this its own thread since it's not related in any way to my other two arcs, which are sort of themeatically similar.

Anyway, new story arc! It turns out one of the many, many portal corp scientists you've rescued is actually a robotics expert, and he wants your help in testing out his new android! Will you teach it how to be a good AI so it won't go berserk and kill us all? We would really appreciate it.

Keywords: Origin story, Drama (It's very light drama; I just can't rightly call it "Comedy" because it gets more serious towards the end), Challenging.

This arc is significantly more difficult than my other two arcs, both of which were meant to be soloed. This one, you're probably better off in a team since there are a few EBs which you don't get any ally assistance on. The last mission is also very difficult, but not because of the mobs - don't get angry if you end up failing it, the story is intended that it still works with either resolution.

Only about one person has run it besides me so far, so if you give it a go, please give me as detailed feedback as you can - normally I test it alongside people until I'm happy with the result before I publish, but since I was writing this for the Cape's Robotica event I wanted to get it out a bit quicker than my usual standards allow.

Bumping, because nobody's played it yet. Surely someone can give it a go and tell me what they think!

Whoo, first!

PMd you my feedback since it's spoilery.

Thanks! Only took about 2 weeks for someone to decide to run it! I'll give it a once over with the feedback you gave me, anyone else who wants to give it a go feel free!

Ran this earlier tonight - 2nd! - and really enjoyed it, people need to get on the ball and check this arc out. I loved all the movie references even though they either dried up or moved out of my realm of experience after the second or so mission.


Not a spoiler, you see her in the first mission.

The only problems I really had are with the objective placements, which are somewhat hard to control with the current system. M2: Shell was in the 2nd to last group on the map, then it spawned several new hostage objectives that we had to find. M3: first objective's in the back of the multi-floor map, and the next objective is in the front of the multi-floor map. M4: Had one of the harder maps to get around in.

As far as the story goes, I thought it was top notch with good characterization of Shell and Dr. Shelley, even though the plot itself was pretty basic - which isn't a bad thing.

I'm giving this thread a bump since it's been several months since I published the arc and it's still sitting at something like 7 rates (Somehow it's been passed by my two more recent arcs).

So I could still use some feedback on this somewhat old arc of mine!

Made a bunch of edits to the arc in response to PW's review. Mission 2 is still a bit empty, but I added a bunch of optional clues to missions 1 and 3 to flesh out Shell's character a bit more and provide more hints at what exactly she is.