That room with the scary huge jump is gonna be so much easier with my Banshee…

(6:33) Level 10 ('The Maw') on Easy. With a snatched Banshee you can fly to the hangar instead of driving there. In this movie using clips from multiple plays, I also show some novel things you can do for fun along the way or when there. Happily, starting the journey promptly after the snatch can prevent Cortana from nagging you about getting back into the hog. That's what I did, in all this playing from the checkpoint obtained at the start of BCM161.

Released October 29th 2015, gameplay recorded October 26th-29th 2015.

00:02 (Missing thirsty Grunt) So, onwards into the ship! In this first clip I show a novelty concerning the hidden thirsty Grunt. If he's absent due to overloading, his voice nevertheless gets triggered.

01:04 (Blocking mischief) In the previous clip you saw two running Grunts. In my plays I sometimes got two Grunts there, and sometimes a Grunt and an Elite. In this example I've Grunts with fuel rod cannons. I park the Banshee to block them and they end up comically running into it, one behind the other. When I then advance it to the next bottleneck, the grunty idiots never even reach it because they're already running into the wall! A plasma grenade puts them out of their misery. They both look at it, which results in an odd head angle for the tagged guy.

01:51 (Fuel rod joker) In this example from the same location, I get a weaponless Grunt clanking along with an imaginary fuel rod cannon. A 'fuel rod joker' as I call them (check out BCM158). This one manages to avoid running into the wall but he doesn't escape my plasma grenade or rocket.

02:18 (Weaponless Elite) In this third and last example of early running covies, I have a weaponless Elite and a fuel rod Grunt, whom I allowed to reach this advanced location, not far from the jump room. In the subsequent action the Elite - who can't even melee - gets killed by the Grunt. Nice!

02:48 (Jump room) The jump room is good fun for flying around in and exploring, and there are lots of places to land. In this long clip I land on one of the beams and jump down a few times. Seems like I've grounded myself permanently, but when I rocket the Banshee it settles where I can reboard. Woo-hoo! I hadn't expected that. When I aimed at the leg, I was merely hoping that it would give the Banshee some spin. You might like to try similar retrieval tricks.

04:27 (Elites in the hangar) Just a short way on from the jump room, I reach the hangar. The Longsword is present as expected, but it can be absent in situations where overloading is more severe. Only two Elites here though. When I fly down to the first to see if I can make him dive, he takes me by surprise with a plasma grenade at close range. I quickly bail, deliberately taking care to leave the Banshee where it is. Failing to jump clear, he's amusingly killed by his own grenade, which is what I had in mind. As for the Shade gunner, I send him off the edge with a blast and he's killed by the fall.

05:09 (Longsword examination) The Longsword is non-physical, which lets you take a close look around inside. Lots of screens to check out, including some to the sides, and also lower down in the ship. You can even read various text. Here I'm aboard the Banshee, but another way to get views (albeit less convenient) is to stand on the Banshee.

05:42 (Out beyond) Here I briefly fly out beyond the hangar to take a look. Down below, an invisible floor slopes down quite steeply from the lowest part of the ship, but I decided not to include footage showing that, as it would've pushed the length up towards 7 minutes, and also I liked ending where the music faded out. Maybe I'll fool around outside in another movie sometime.

06:05 (Cutscene triggered in flight) As seen here, you can trigger the escape cutscene in flight. The game removes the Banshee (and actually it removes the Longsword too - subsequently restored for the cutscene). For brevity I've edited out some of the cutscene, as you probably noticed. I didn't need the whole thing; I just wanted a brief ending after showing the unusual triggering.

Closing remarks This movie was a bit of a conundrum to put together because there were so many bits of fun I could show and it wasn't clear how much I'd be able to fit in without making things too long. However, I knew I'd have to use multiple plays, and it was natural to show the bits of fun according to how deep through the level they were. I made a start by putting some initial clips together to try and get most of the structure sorted. Like, first a clip leading up to the missing thirsty Grunt, then a clip where I bother two running Grunts, and so on. When I had something which looked viable (not too long in duration), I worked on getting better clips for each of the parts. For example I did a bunch of plays for the part with two running fuel rod Grunts, and picked the most amusing one. Actually that clip was a fairly obvious winner, the way they were line astern not once but twice!

In regard to most of these bits of fun, there was potential for a whole separate movie, so maybe I'll come back to them at some point. I certainly plan to come back to the Shade gunner, who has good potential for amusement.

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