The Secret Adventures: You must be this tall to die (Savage Coast #3)

(You can follow my playthrough of The Secret World on Bio Break’s projects page!)

Jack’s Back (action mission)

• I’ll be really glad to be done with Wolf’s missions, if just to be able to avoid the kindergarten from now on.  Those creepy kid voices and the music just gets to me, especially since there’s no explanation about it.  Maybe Wolf is waiting for me to leave before he turns to go inside and takes care of whatever monster is lurking in those dark classrooms.
• Wolf mentions that Jack O’Lantern is lurking around these here parts, and while Wolf ain’t going to go after him (he’s got a pipe to smoke, after all), I’m welcome to the task.
• Let me tell you that when this says that it’s an action mission, you better believe it.  This is almost non-stop combat from start to end as you follow Jack around the map, fighting through ghostlights, revenants, and those chainsaw/shotgun-wielding sackboys as well as the occasional Jack boss battle.  It’s a little tedious (I hate the ghostlights as they keep backing out of melee range and then splitting into two) but quite doable.
• I almost, almost kill Jack at the end, but he does indeed escape for a second time.  Curses!  Geary tells me that he used to be a farmlad that a guy named Archie Henderson experimented upon (accidentally or intentionally).

Winter’s Legacy (side mission)

• A collection of newspaper clippings in the League’s treehouse talk of the nearby amusement park and how several of its employees have gone missing.  One of the kids scribbled, “Are they still there?” which is of course true — they’re just not what they used to be.  Time to head to the park and put down some zombies!
• So let’s finally talk about the amusement park.  As I’ve mentioned before, it’s absolutely baffling that there’s a full-blown park on an islane of this size so far out of the way, but that’s actually factored into the story.  Something wanted the park to be built on top of it.  Something needed it.  And it’s a bad, bad place.
• Out of all of the locales in TSW, the amusement park has a unique visual effect when you enter it: The screen goes (mostly) black and white, grainy and wavy.  I’m not quite sure what it’s supposed to represent.  Going back in time, maybe?
• The out-of-tune carnival music and the ominous purple rifts — on loan from RIFT, I swear — are not good signs, either.  The mission is straight-forward, at least: Kill four ex-employees-turned-zombie-cultists, and then assassinate their leader (a revenant in disguise).

Theme Park Tycoon (action mission)

• “Why in God’s name did he build this park?”  Good question.  Really good question.  Let’s start investigating that.
• In the parking lot of the park is a car with a dead driver and an upscale, somewhat arrogant man standing nearby.  This is Nicholas Winter, the son of former park creator/owner Nathaniel, who has returned to Solomon Island (at the worst time ever, I might add) to investigate the park itself.
• Nicholas begins with a heap of exposition, saying that the park suffered many fatal and gruesome accidents both during its construction and after its opening.  Finally it got to be too much and was shut down from 1980 on, which means that it’s been abandoned for three decades.  Yet the rides whisper and Nicholas can’t understand why his father became obsessed with the place.
• It’s not the biggest amusement park in the world, but I could see spending an afternoon there.  It has bumper cars, a spinny ride, a rollercoaster, a lagoon with boats, and a ferris wheel.  That’s pretty impressive for the actual footprint.
• The first challenge is to go to the Octotron and survive several zombie waves while the ride goes berserk.  You can actually use the out-of-control spin to your advantage by positioning the zombies to be hit by the cars, although this works on you too.
• After a small assault on a statue, it’s off to — I swear this is a real quest objective — ride the roller coaster.  Yup, in this quest you actually do get to go on a full rollercoaster ride, and boy is it a doozy.
• I think that by putting you into a locked-down first-person perspective for the ride, it does an effective job making you feel vulnerable.  This isn’t helped by the various ghosts swarming around you, the ravens that make the ride shake, the branches that threaten to knock the car off, and the first appearance of the Bogeyman: “Don’t fear the dark.  Fear me.”
• There’s a super-effective jump scare right at the end of the ride that gets me every time, too.
• From there it’s an assault on a mud golem in Lover’s Lake, followed by a trip to the ferris wheel.  The Bogeyman knocks me all over the place while invisible here, finally appearing to show how truly disturbing his model is.  As far as I know, he’s a unique-looking character in the game, and thank goodness.  His weird body proportions and long tongue haunt my dreams.
• The finale of this adventure is a fight with an angry clown in the middle of the bumper cars.  The cars come to life to rock music during this part, although I think it was mostly for show.
• In the mission wrap-up, Geary said that Nathaniel wanted to be Illuminati but was rejected, and that some parks are fronts for occult happenings.  That makes me very glad to be here.

A Carnival of Souls (action mission)

• Our investigation into the theme park continues, as we find Winter pouring over his father’s will, bitterly angry and confused as to the man’s obsession with the place.  Winter mentions that the ferris wheel saved him from the fog… and that it was quite odd that it was still operating.
• Taking a ride on the ferris wheel doesn’t give me a bird eye’s view of the park — which I was expecting — but instead transports me to a slightly more frightening version of the park.  Another dimension?  I guess.  At least it’s easier to see in this version.
• There are three statues around the park that have to be destroyed to help “the children,” after which I chase the Bogeyman around to the next one.  It’s not long before me and Mr. B have a showdown in front of what looks like a small split chapel.
• This fight was originally one that kicked my butt, back in my Templar days.  It was a breeze this time, probably thanks to a better build and a lot of training with avoiding bad telegraphs.  Killing the Bogeyman nets me his monocle, which will come in handy with the next mission.
• I always felt that the Bogeyman is underutilized in this game.  Almost as soon as he’s introduced, you’re killing him without getting to know much about him at all.  For a character with a unique model, I would have expected more.

Gravity (investigation mission)

• “There’s a gravity here,” Nicholas declares, going on to confess that the hold that the park had on his father has gotten to him, too.  And that while he’s gotten an offer to sell it, now he feels as though there’s something vital at stake and that he doesn’t dare do it.
• Using the Bogeyman’s (Nathaniel Winter?) monocle, I see secret writing in the last will and testament.  It speaks of the sailors (Phoenecians) trying to get the place and how the park is perfect for some sort of plan.
• As an investigation mission, this is slightly more tricky than normal.  It consists of trying to find the various pages of Winter’s blueprints scattered all over the park, which can be done by crafting the monocle with various bits of colored glass to be able to see what looks like circuitry on both the plans and on the ground.
• The “circuits” run through most of the rides, culminating in a small shack in the middle of the park.  I activate the blueprints via colored chalk and… stuff blows up.  Truth be told, the ending is very anticlimactic and vague.  I guess Winter was trying to use the park to channel occult energy into him, which probably backfired and turned him into the Bogeyman.  So why did I turn it all on again?  And what happens to his son now?  These questions are never answered.

Stranger Than Fiction (side mission)

• Right outside of the amusement park is a severed hand and a Sam Krieg novel, which mentions a group of kids getting picked off by a beast in the park.  How much and why Krieg knows and writes about the secret world and passes it off as fiction is intriguing to me.  We’ll get to ask him soon enough.
• The “beast” is a wedigo (winnebago) that doesn’t put up much of a fight.  Kinda feel sorry for the guy.
• This mission is a breadcrumb task to get me to go over to Krieg at the lighthouse.  Fine, fine, you’re next on my list, man.