[Click here to start from the first progress log]

This is Mission 4: The Invincible Allura Becomes Incredibly Popular After Walking Into A Room Trap While Miscellaneous Character Motivations Become Vague And Confusing For No Obvious Reason. Also, Hertzog Acts Cartoonishly Evil.

Apparently there have been “side stories” for every mission, but I haven’t been doing them because I approach games by focusing on the main story stuff and only binge on the side content afterwards. It turns out that these side missions disappear if you don’t do them when available between normal missions, though, and they appear to be completely meaningless despite the “see the story from another angle” promise the menu description makes. Basically, this lady comes in and accuses Allura of stealing the heart of the guy who was standing next to Graines when Allura first went on the run, because nothing is sexier than panic ensuing from a sudden death in the family. Ooh la la. Then we kill her because she’s clearly a deranged stalker.

(The game itself has voice acting. It’s just the side stories that have none.)

Ada tells Allura and Rachel about Finnegan, who turns out to be the leader of a Death Squad that reports directly to the royal family. One would think Allura would know about this or that said death squad would feel conflicted about killing a member of the royal family (Catalina is only queen by way of marriage, whereas Allura is royalty by blood), but apparently a lot of people are on board with Catalina as queen. The game started with Graines talking to the king and telling him what bad shape the kingdom was in, so I guess Allura’s family kind of brought this all on themselves. Even putting aside the killing, I think we might be the bad guys here.

Anyway, Ada wanders off and leaves us to face the royal assassins on our own. I’m not even mad. All the more slaughter for me, and she’d only get in my way.

I looked up a guide to see where the environmental traps are, but only skimmed it for fear of unintentionally ruining the overall experience. One of the things that I remembered reading was that an early room trap required hitting something to activate it, though, so I put the pendulum in all kinds of places. Pillars were knocked down on top of enemies, which was fun, but didn’t do anything spectacular. Then I dropped a chandelier on another guy. Good times, but still not what I was looking for. After that I got desperate and hit something on the side of the staircase (a candlestick, I think), but nothing happened immediately. That’s when I gave up looped around to lure attackers into my normal staircase trap, but the second I touched the bloody area on the floor, Allura was caught by the room trap herself.

You’ve really got to admire the moxie of someone who self-tests their death traps.

It didn’t even take out half of her health. Her last name might legitimately be Zor El.

I run to the glowing thing near the room deathtrap and it heals what little damage Allura Zor El sustained. Having these two devices mere feet apart probably isn’t a good idea from a safety standpoint. I mean, imagine a little prince or princess getting a scraped knee and accidentally setting off the giant clock death trap while running to the healing light thing. This is what you get when safety inspectors are fully aware of the death squad in your employ. It’s just wildly irresponsible parenting.

The worst feeling in Deception games is when you activate a push wall too late and it completely misses the enemy. If someone were to ever produce a mass murder blooper reel, this is the kind of thing that would make the cut.

All the dudes are eventually killed, and then a cutscene plays where it turns out that Ada and Finnegan know each other. They both act like she accomplished whatever she came to the mansion for, but that would mean that Finnegan tasked her to stand around mysteriously and then leave. I suppose he’s not a very effective leader. Either that, or she did something off-camera that wasn’t shown. Considering he just wasted his death squad for no obvious reason when he had someone on the inside who could feed him information crucial to his squad’s success, the former seems more likely. Or maybe he wanted them to die for some reason?

Whatever the case, Finnegan leaves and Ada sticks around, explaining that she suspects that her job isn’t over yet. Maybe her real job is to be suspicious of Rachel.

Speaking of Rachel, she got knocked down by the death squad on their way in. Sadly, they suck at killing every bit as much as Finnegan sucks at leading, so she’s secretly awake and listening in on their conversation. As soon as Finnegan leaves, Ada resumes her job by demanding answers out of Rachel, apparently being the only character with a shred of common sense in this game.

Out of nowhere, the apprentice of that wizard tease from earlier shows up out of nowhere and starts getting all serious about how the devil is a bad dude. This country needs Jesus if something like that needs to be overtly stated.

We cut back to Hertzog, who is still hanging out with Catalina. They both seem frustrated, and we find out that Ada is Finnegan’s sister. He’s then ordered to kill her for some reason, which he accepts without a shred of hesitation. Which means he’ll probably not actually do so and eventually sacrifice himself for her. Hopefully not, though, because I’d love to smash his head in with a giant rock.

Also, Catalina whispers something to Hertzog about Graines and he gets all diabolical about it. I don’t think our buddy Graines is going to last much longer.

Wizard-tease’s apprentice tells me that I need to stop killing people with my devil traps. Since Trapt would have almost zero gameplay without that and we’re only in the fourth mission, I don’t imagine that’s going to happen anytime soon. She’s surprisingly non-pushy about the whole thing, though, which is kind of weird considering the stakes for her are literally life or death and the fate of the world.

I think Mayte might smoke a certain mystical herb, if you catch my drift.

Ada decides to go to the palace and invites me to come with her.

Mayte wants to take me to Graines instead. Apparently he left the palace and went to an old castle with his men. I can’t help but notice that there are a whooooole lot of empty mansions and castles littered about in this game. Maybe we could, you know, sell them and use the money to do something about the state of the kingdom? I mean, Allura’s been in the mansion for a few hours and already killed 10-20 people trying to burgle or murder her. We have a serious crime problem.

Rachel pulls out her lip-quivering manipulative side and begs Allura to stay in the mansion with her. This would be the dumbest possible choice. This is the choice Allura is going to make, and I know that because Allura is also kind of dumb.

Normally, having a main character significantly dumber than I am feels irritatingly patronizing, but I’m able to overlook it here given the fact that she’s secretly Kryptonian and has a penchant for killing random meatheads with chandeliers.

Not enough games exist where you can murder people with chandeliers.

[Click here to go to Trapt log #3]

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