CHAPTER 01 . TRIAL RUN
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Konoko's "trial run" as a TCTF officer takes place in a building labeled "Syndicate Warehouse" on the splashscreen. The date, according to her diary entries for subsequent events of the same day, is Monday, Nov. 22.
Summary
We see Konoko waiting outside an unnamed warehouse. Her superior, Commander Griffin, and one Dr. Kerr argue about whether Konoko is ready for the challenge. Griffin commands her to find Chung, a TCTF agent who infiltrated the warehouse to find ties to the Syndicate. If she can find Chung or the evidence she needs, Griffin can shut the warehouse down or she can shut it down herself. Konoko confirms her readiness, and Shinatama reports a normal spike in adrenaline.
Konoko ventures into the warehouse and finds the TCTF's mole, Chung, lying dead out in the open. Beside him is a pad with notes documenting a tie between the small-time warehouse and Musashi Manufacturing. Meanwhile, Syndicate troops are moving some contraband into an armored truck to get it out of the warehouse. Konoko stops them by commandeering a crane/forklift and flipping the truck on its side. She then demands that Griffin let her immediately follow up on the lead Chung's pad gave her. Shinatama warns that Konoko is de-stabilizing as they argue, so Griffin allows her to go to the Musashi Manufacturing Plant.
Added Value
- This is the first of two chapters in the game where you can fail other than by getting yourself killed – in this case, by letting the timer reach zero. (The second chapter which you can fail without dying is CHAPTER 12 . SINS OF THE FATHER, if Kerr dies.) The success of the mission depends not only on your survival: if the evidence leaves the warehouse, there's apparently no future. That's not too logical, since Chung's datapad allows for the hunt to move on to Musashi Manufacturing, whether the truck is intercepted or not. Perhaps Konoko's failure disappoints Griffin and she doesn't get any more missions.
- Although Griffin merely has suspicions about the warehouse being involved with the bad guys, clearly it has already been overrun by the Syndicate by the time Konoko arrives, as Chung is lying right out in the open and Strikers are running all over the place. The terse conversation between Konoko and Griffin when Chung's body is reported gives us a glimpse of how cold Griffin can be. Griffin is not just some desk jockey who politicked his way to his current position; he's a former Elite soldier, and as such, has probably been hardened to steel by his life experiences.
- The pad Chung dropped is right there for anyone to see, and it implicates the warehouse in its dealings with Musashi. That seems rather clumsy of the Syndicate, but we will soon find out that the lead on Musashi is nothing more than a decoy. So we can assume that the Syndicate probably left the pad there on purpose. Perhaps they even wrote "Chung's message" themselves. Nevertheless, the personal style in which it is written (asking whoever finds it to save the warehouse manager, etc.) sounds like something Chung might actually have written.
- But wait a minute: Musashi really is in league with the bad guys; they're not innocent by any means. This actually makes them the best kind of decoy – if they were totally clean, they wouldn't throw the TCTF off for very long. So did Muro throw them to the wolves just to buy himself a little time? Apparently so. Either they did something to displease him or he simply had no need for their services anymore.