1.10 Splendid Isolation
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Intermission:
The Strangers have now regrouped in a darkened lab somewhere.
Its in Antartica. The Queen of Hearts is fully aware, and loose in pretty much any computer system in the planet. They need to battle her on her own turf, in Cyberspace, and so have been brought here by King Zero to meet a very special friend of his... Queen Victoria.
Victoria maintains her own little cyber-garden disjoint fgrom the global internet, from here they can adjust to the oddities of cyberspace and prepare themselves before stepping into the global battlefield.
Opening cutscene - basically covers these facts. Transition from the cold antartican lab to the English summer afternoon of the Garden. Ends with Peace Frog announcing that he has a plan...
Second intro cutscene.
Peace Frog (to Thermite): OK, I owe this one to you, buddy. Let me explain.
Thermite: This is gonna be good, I can tell...
Peace Frog: I got to thinking about school, when the big kids picked on me I'd act the clown, sometimes be able to get them off my back.
Peace Frog: Distract them. Well thats what we're going to do here. Only what kind of joke would a super-intelligence find funny?
Peace Frog: Ive been compiling a big cross-referenced knot of data here, 27 different languages, both human and computer, cultural references from the past 20 years, little-known science data, secret government files.. you name it.
Peace Frog: She's going to be looking for us and this is the first link she'll find...
Peace Frog (reads aloud): http:\\WWII-Shiesse-Fuhrer\chien ? proboscis-- : 00110100....
..pause...
Thermite: uh huh. thought we were in trouble for a minute there... jeez!
Fly: hmm, no good work, Alan. It might just work, give us some breathing space...
The player is now alerted to pick a team of four, and reminded that their powers may work slightly differently in Cyberspace.
It may be possible at this point to dissallow all normal ones, recruit a bunch of "special" cyber-templates instead. Probably. Use names like [The Fly], [Peace Frog] so theyre all sorted together, player can browse the list and look at their abilities (based more on self image maybe?) before choosing.
The one required character is Queen Victoria, slow-ish, but a real heavy hitter! (should also be able to Summon Albert to do something stupid... :) )
The mission starts in a practice room, probably re-skinned mech base to look all "Tron-like", plus floating Microsoft Windows in the air adorned with real images, and so on..
You can stay in the practice room as long as you like to acclimatise. LOTS of teleporter pads and stuff, with enough in there to make the tutorial room a good guide to using them.
The objective is to defeat the Queen of Hearts. Secondary Objective: Ten "Joke terminals" can be accessed, sites where links to Peace Frog's HyperJoke can be planted. Each one of these will slow the Queen down, or otherwise compromise her ability to fight. She herself will be pretty much indestructible until this is done - 500 HP with easily performed self heal kind of nasty, and able to summon virtual tarts and hunks amongst other stuff to hassle the players.
Anyway, plant the jokes, hold her at bay and keep wearing her down and she can be lead to the Garden ante-chamber and contained there, cut off from the main internet.
Final cutscene is a conversation between her and the Fly in private.
Along the lines of...
So, you're immortal now, pure information. What are you going to do?
Theres no point robbing banks when you can juggle the figures inside just by thinking...
This stupid rivalry between you and Marla is all based on hormonal patterns that no longer apply.
Come and work for us...
The Queen of Hearts now becomes the central H.I.V.E. computer system, just like we saw in Tales of the Navigator!