Well, Saarbrucken is no more. It took three return trips, but I finally cleared it last night of all white Nazi dots save for three or four hard-to-get ones:
Fatherland Fighter (15G): You completed 53 ambient freeplay in Saarbrucken.
…and let’s now transition into strange thoughts.
Part of me kind of secretly wishes that Sean Devlin, with each meaty explosion and Nazi death-scream, transformed into a much darker, looser form of himself like Wander did in Shadow of the Colossus as he took down moss-covered boss after boss after boss. Or maybe he instead lost color as the world around him blossomed. I understand why this wouldn’t work: Sean is doing a good thing, killing all those Nazis, because, as we’re taught, Nazis are bad, and killing them is good. The difference here between him and Wander is that: the Colossi are not inherently evil. They just exist, spending their days stomping around or hiding in caves, and Wander is the jerkface going around killing them because some bodiless voices tells him to. I just like seeing cause and effect taking place.
I mean, Devlin is basically a one-man army, and he’s taken out a lot of targets. With more to come. That’s gotta weigh heavily on his mind even if revenge is fueling his progress, even if he makes a funny Irish quip now and then, even if he lacks the same amount of remorse for running over a cow or pedestrian in the street.
There’s four more Achievements devoted to ambient freeplay events. They are as follows:
- Wrecking Crew: Complete 333 ambient freeplay in Paris Area 1.
- Unnatural Disaster: Complete 212 ambient freeplay in Paris Area 2.
- Walking WMD: Complete 239 ambient freeplay in Paris Area 3.
- Guerilla Warfare: Complete 425 ambient freeplay in the countryside.
Let’s do some math! To get all four, I need to blow up…1,209 more white dots. Well, maybe not entirely. Throughout the course of the main missions and just running around, I suspect I’ve taken out maybe 1/4th of those dots. But still. Man, that’s gonna take a lot of dynamite and rocket launching. I’m also working towards the Achievement of spending 75,000 contraband so this will help keep me focused too.
Either way, if there ever comes a day where someone is like, “Hey, do you know of a videogame with say 1,000+ missions?” I can answer with extreme confidence.
Grinding Down 