5. The Universal Brotherhood (Shadowrun Returns)

(Originally posted July 13, 2023)

A collection of simple thoughts on last levels, final dungeons, and endgame zones.
Spoilers for Shadowrun Returns: Dead Man's Switch.
Table of Contents

Context: The Universal Brotherhood welfare organization is actually a front for evil cult (gasp!) trying to infect people with insect spirits and take over the world. After swiping a magical pesticide from a mega-corp, your character must break into the Universal Brotherhood and do some pest control.

I've been eating too well. Time for a shitty one!

In Shadowrun Returns, you have a pretty reasonable amount of freedom over how you build your character, including electing to not use firearms at all or perhaps focusing on Decking skills. The final mission sees this and laughs at you.

As mentioned, the final mission's gimmick is that you're up against evil spirit bugs. When you kill their physical form, the spirit mode appears and nails you with a free attack that does piddly damage but lowers your next turn's action points (at this point in the game, you have 3 per turn). You need to use the Special FLIT Shotgun to kill their spirit forms. Nothing else will damage them.

Now, granted, the Special FLIT Shotgun is unaffected by your stats. That's good in that it means you can use it even if you're a mage or a physical adept and bad in that your gun stats won't increase your accuracy. Three (out of four) party members are capable of using the Special FLIT Shotgun. The Special FLIT Shotgun deals a flat 15 damage (if you hit) and you can fire the Special FLIT Shotgun twice before you have to spend an action point to reload.

Bug spirits have 40 hit points, and if you don't kill them in a single turn, their physical form revives. The game will send two or three of them at you at once, and the final boss summons them as adds indefinitely. This is not necessarily difficult, but it is a colossal pain in the ass.

Noted Shadowrun legacy character Harlequin joins you for this mission as a merely decent Physical Adept despite being supposedly one of the most powerful mages in existence as the second wielder of the Special FLIT Shotgun. If you want the third Special FLIT Shotgun (and yeah you fucking do), you need to bring a generic masked NPC along. This isn't a huge deal because Dead Man's Switch doesn't really have a loveable crew like Dragonfall or Hong Kong, but it's all just kind of underwhelming and impersonal.

All that said, Harlequin's speech during the epilogue is a lovely encapsulation of Shadowrun:

Harlequin: It's a series of conspiracies, conflicting agendas and petty jealousies, all building upon, feeding upon, and excreting into an unending web of drek that people wade through every day and call it Life. If there was one Dark Lord controlling everything and we could drive a magic sword through his heart to free the world, that would be grand. Such clarity! Such focus! Alas.

Player: So what's the lesson in all of this? That I did all of it for nothing?

Harlequin: Just the opposite, schmuck. The lesson is this - the game is rigged. The cards are stacked. The dice are loaded. It's the same as it always was. Every cycle. People in power exert power. Little people cower in their homes, think what they're told to think, and buy whatever product will help them forget how horrible their lives are for another day. And that's why we don't play their fragging game. We don't swallow their drek sandwich and politely ask for another. It's why we run the shadows. That's where real life is, kiddo. Reality's living in the places no one wants you to see.