FADE IN:
EXT. GREY, RAINY CHICAGO
AIDEN PEARCE is STARING MOODILY out the window at the BLEAK CHICAGO SKYLINE, wearing one of his STUPID OVERSIZED TRENCHCOATS.
AIDEN PEARCE
Brood bland brood. I have so much generic anger over the people who have done me wrong. Now I must go and exact more sullen, boring revenge.
DEVELOPER UBISOFT MONTREAL backs slowly out of the ROOM, sprints to the CAR, drives hell for leather to the AIRPORT, and jumps on a PLANE to SUNNY CALIFORNIA, NEVER TO RETURN.
EXT. EXCITING, COLOURFUL SAN FRANCISCO
HIP YOUNG HACKER MARCUS HOLLOWAY is preparing to break into a BLUME SERVER FARM.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
That’s right everybody, the Ubisoft marketing department has officially shelved its Stock Gritty Antihero research, and instead dusted off their focus group studies for Relatable Goofball Everyman! Check out my perpetual non-threatening smile and endless supply of unfunny wisecracks!
As he commences the BREAK-IN, he is observed remotely by SITARA DHAWAN, WRENCH, JOSH SAUCHAK and HORATIO CARLIN, members of the rebel hacker collective DEDSEC.
SITARA DHAWAN
So how’s he doing?
JOSH SAUCHAK
Uhh, he just bashed some guard over the head with what looks like a rock on a string. Then he pressed a button on his phone that made a door open. Now he’s sneaking up some staircases and just rockbashing every guard who looks at him funny.
WRENCH
Maybe we could make this seem more thrilling if we just hyped it up as much as possible? I mean, we do want to indoctrinate everyone into thinking “sneaking around and pressing the hack button” makes you the most badass genius wizard in the world.
JOSH SAUCHAK
Good point.
(clears throat)
Holy shit! My brain is breaking from this astonishing display of virtuosity!
HORATIO CARLIN
No feat of this kind has ever been achieved before! This level of technical bravado has uncoupled my very concept of reality!
(gibbers)
SITARA DHAWAN
Here, let me pipe some incredibly annoying buttstep into his headphones to really get the juices flowing!
Finally, MARCUS succeeds in deleting his ctOS PROFILE and ESCAPES.
SITARA DHAWAN
Well done, you’ve passed your audition and are now a member of DedSec! Come meet our diverse group of computer hacker stereotypes.
WRENCH
I’m the anarchistic, stick-it-to-the-man, WILD AND CRAAAZY one! My kooky shtick involves always wearing an electronic mask with eyes that bloop out a constant string of mostly random punctuation, as though my face was trying to swear in a family-friendly comic strip.
JOSH SAUCHAK
I’m a socially awkward basement dweller vaguely perched somewhere on the autism spectrum.
SITARA DHAWAN
I’m your artsy, expressive hacker concerned with “the message” and “our brand,” who thinks the right YouTube video could end corporate greed forever. I do all of our art design.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Oh, so all this shit on the walls and in the DedSec videos, the cluttered obnoxious postmodern clusterfuck that makes my eyes want to crawl out of their sockets?
SITARA DHAWAN
All me, baby!
HORATIO CARLIN
Meanwhile I’m an ordinary person with technical skill, a problem with authority, a fondness for the idea of myself as a rebel, and a whole lot of free time. I’m actually a halfway realistic portrayal of a hacker, which is presumably why I barely feature in this game.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Also because you’ve basically just described me and there can’t be two of me! Okay, so what are we doing? We do have an overarching goal which is clear and compelling enough to drive the story forward, right? This is a Ubisoft sandbox game, so you can see why I feel the need to ask.
SITARA DHAWAN
Well, despite Aiden Pearce’s efforts to destroy Chicago’s evil city-wide data-stealing network ctOS, the evil software megacorporation Blume is trying again here in San Francisco.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
I don’t suppose it still has all the gaping holes in security which allowed Pearce to turn it against Blume over and over again, and which ultimately made it an embarrassing liability for all involved?
SITARA DHAWAN
It absolutely does! Their evil scheme is basically like if Samsung were cackling in some secret meeting about how their next generation of smartphones was going to be even MORE prone to spontaneous combustion.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Alright, so overarching goal, get rid of ctOS. Good enough, even though Watch_Dogs 3 will probably just start it up again in Vegas or someplace. Now, here’s the real tricky part. Is this goal going to have any tangible connection whatsoever to the missions we do along the way?
HORATIO CARLIN
Believe it or not, yes! I mean -- sort of? See, to bring down Blume we’ll need a lot of processing power, which we’ll get by using the devices of people who download the DedSec app --
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
There’s a DedSec app? We’re an underground group of digital guerilla warriors, and we have an app? Like, on the app store and everything?
HORATIO CARLIN
Hey, you should see our range of hoodies and baseball caps. We’ve commodified our own counterculture! Anyway, the more people who download the app, the more processing power we have access to, so we need to do all kinds of crazy shit to gain followers.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Okay, that has got to be the slenderest thread a sandbox game has ever hung its narrative on. To succeed at our goal, we have to -- do random stuff.
WRENCH
Would you prefer a dead niece? Fuck off. The first random thing is sabotaging the release of a new movie. We’re protesting it because it displays computer hackers in a completely unrealistic, action-heavy, technologically impossible way, what an insult!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Sheesh, glass houses much?
EXT. HOOK MOTION PICTURE STUDIOS - SAN FRANCISCO
MARCUS storms the MOVIE STUDIO. He runs over the first few GUARDS in his CAR, then takes out the others by SHOOTING THEM and hacking various parts of the environment to EXPLODE.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Ha! Serves you right for being contracted to work for a studio that produced an action movie which wasn’t very realistic!
SITARA contacts MARCUS through the, ugh, “DEDS3C CHANNEL.”
SITARA DHAWAN
Hoo boy, this isn’t helping us come off as particularly heroic. Maybe in the future we should take a stealthier approach? Just to avoid ousting the Uncharted series as the new poster child for ludonarrative dissonances.
WRENCH
Marcus, try completing your missions remotely through drones! We’ve got a remote-controlled car and a quadcopter, both of which we can manufacture with our impossible sci-fi 3D printer that can print complex electronics as well as Nerf guns with bullets already in them.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
(prints RC car)
Cool! And now to print the quadcopter -- what? I have to pay to do that? I have to pay SIXTY-SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS? For that kind of money I could go into an electronics store and buy forty quadcopters!
WRENCH
Don’t sweat it, just pick up some of the large sacks of money which are lying around on people’s rooftops for some reason.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Alright. Whelp, that was everything worth purchasing in this game.
(cancels bank account, burns wallet)
WRENCH
For your next mission, you’ll be taking on an electronics company called Haum. They’ve been using their devices to spy on their customers and collect their data. What sick privacy-violating assholes, right?
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Sorry, what? I was just hacking a random passerby’s phone to listen in on her phone conversation. Turns out her husband’s cheating on her, the loser!
EXT. HAUM ELECTRONICS - SAN FRANCISCO
MARCUS goes and sits outside HAUM HEADQUARTERS. He sends in his RC CAR to HACK all their HACKS.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Sweet, I was just able to navigate the car around some guards, through some ducts, up some stairs and finally get to my objective and -- wait a minute. Now it’s telling me I have to do this hack in person!
WRENCH
Oh yeah, every so often we throw a mission at you that you can’t complete with your drones, and you have no way of knowing it until you’ve already nine-tenths completed it with your drones. That’s fine, right?
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
(grits teeth)
Oh sure, in the same way that Charlie Brown was totally fine with it every time Lucy pulled the football away.
He does the WHOLE MISSION ALL OVER AGAIN IN PERSON, and grabs evidence against HAUM, which DEDSEC releases.
JOSH SAUCHAK
There we go. I’m sure that will have some kind of consequences for somebody. Honestly, we don’t really care. That isolated mission is finished, so let’s never speak of it again and move on.
SITARA DHAWAN
Next we’re taking on New Dawn, a religious cult with absurd ideas about aliens which has a reputation for brainwashing celebrities --
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Congratulations, it’s the one millionth expy for Scientology in a satirical videogame! What’ve these guys been up to?
SITARA DHAWAN
They’ve been stealing data from their wealthy followers to blackmail them!
(beat)
Oh, and any church member who expresses doubt gets abducted and dragged to a secret reeducation camp, sometimes never to return. But we have to throw the data theft thing in there too, because that’s kind of our whole thing.
EXT. NEW DAWN COMPOUND - SAN FRANCISCO
MARCUS breaks into the secret kidnap-murder camp of FAKE SCIENTOLOGY, where he finds they are currently holding FAKE TOM CRUISE.
FAKE TOM CRUISE
Thank God! Get me out of here!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Look, we don’t have any mechanics for an escort mission. Just rescue yourself and then give us credit, alright?
FAKE TOM CRUISE
(leaving)
Okay then! And to show my gratitude, I’ll appear in one of your annoying videos, spilling the beans about New Dawn’s scuzzy antics.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Sweet, that’ll hurt them bad! Unless -- Sitara, you’re not gonna call the footage into question by distorting Fake Tom’s voice and plastering a bunch of your stupid animations over his face, are you?
SITARA DHAWAN
Man, don’t try to pollute my artistic vision with your “coherence” and “watchability!”
JOSH SAUCHAK
This is all going pretty well, guys! We’re getting a lot of new followers!
(squints)
OH CRAP THEY’RE BOTS SO MANY BOTS SOMEBODY’S ARTIFICIALLY INFLATING OUR NUMBERS WITH BOTS OH FUCK OH FUCK!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Wait, if followers equal processing power for our mission to take down Blume, shouldn’t we have noticed that, like, immediately?
HORATIO CARLIN
It seems these fake user accounts are being created by !NViTE, also known as Fakebook. Marcus, go hack their entire office and find out why they’d do something like this.
INT. !NViTE OFFICE - SAN FRANCISCO
MARCUS breaks into !NViTE and finds SOME GUY CALLED DUSAN NEMEC waiting for him.
DUSAN NEMEC
Hi there! I’m the CTO of Blume, and I’ll be your main villain for this game. And can we just take a moment to appreciate how impressively douchey they’ve made me? My self-satisfied behaviour, my scraggly hipster beard, my unsightly man bun, my lame turtlenecks and wrist bands, and oh yeah, the fact that my name literally starts with “douche.”
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
I feel compelled to point out that, if you succeed that much at making a character seem like your typical Silicon Valley corporate dickwheel, you automatically fail at making him seem the least bit threatening.
DUSAN NEMEC
But I’m so evil! I’m behind !NViTE creating those fake DedSec followers! In fact, almost every mission will end with you foiling some company or criminal or whatever, then finding out I was behind it the whole time! DUN DUN DUNNNN!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
About those fake followers. Why were you trying to make us look good?
DUSAN NEMEC
Because, as I see it, the more capable DedSec appears at exploiting ctOS’s many, many, vast, vast vulnerabilities, the more people will turn to ctOS to safeguard their digital security.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
I don’t find that reasoning especially sound.
DUSAN NEMEC
Apparently neither do I, because now I’ve deleted those fake supporters to humiliate you guys? You know what, forget the reasoning. I think I might just be doing generic evil stuff. For example, I’ve reinstated your ctOS profile and put out an APB on you for hacking, corporate espionage, and breaking and entering.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
What? You bastard! Sending the cops after me for all those crimes that I actually committed!
(beat)
Actually yeah, I can’t really complain too much about that, can I? In fact, thanks for not throwing in the theft, vandalism, assault, vehicular manslaughter, and straight-up murder.
DUSAN NEMEC
You’re welcome. Can I offer you some kombucha before you leave? I just fermented a fresh batch.
(starts doing yoga)
MARCUS flees the COPS and heads back to DEDSEC HQ.
SITARA DHAWAN
Our reputation is in tatters! What the hell are we gonna do?
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
I have an idea. Let’s go to Burning Man!
SITARA DHAWAN
Seriously?
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Ha ha naw, just kidding.
SITARA DHAWAN
Phew, because that would have been the most asinine --
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Let’s go to Swelter Skelter, our made-up version of Burning Man which, like everything else in this franchise, revolves around hackers and hacking!
SITARA DHAWAN
Wow, you came up with something more asinine before I could even finish my sentence. Well played.
EXT. SWELTER SKELTER
The SCOOBY GANG go out to the DESERT and enter FAKE BURNING MAN, retreating to the WILDERNESS to engage in a NEAR-PAGANISTIC OUTPOURING OF PRIMAL CREATIVE ENERGY. Following logically from that, they compete in a COMPUTER HACKING CHALLENGE.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
In our defense, we’re doing that tile-rotating Pipe Dream thing again, so anybody who knows anything would happily admit that no, we’re not doing anything that even remotely resembles hacking.
They win the CHALLENGE, at which point the EVENT ORGANISER reveals himself. It turns out to be RAYMOND KENNEY, who has thankfully stopped calling himself T-BONE.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
If it isn’t the illustrious Raymond Kenney! How you doing, man?
RAYMOND KENNEY
Still a mentally unstable hobo!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Great! Listen, it just occurred to me that our collective of hacker stereotypes is still missing the “paranoid anti-government whackjob” type. You in?
RAYMOND KENNEY
Sure, maybe my eccentricities will come off as less ridiculous when they’re not constantly being contrasted with Broody McTrenchcoat back in Chicago. Now let's drop some acid, because we can't have a Ubisoft game without tripping balls somewhere along the line!
When everyone is COMING DOWN HARD, RAY runs over to MARCUS.
RAYMOND KENNEY
You gotta help me! I slept with a biker’s girlfriend and now we have to have a gunfight with his whole gang!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Whoa, dude. Pacifist run over here.
RAYMOND KENNEY
Oh shit, sorry. Well, I guess we can --
INT. HACKERSPACE - SAN FRANCISCO
RAYMOND KENNEY
-- cut straight back to San Francisco, leaving that biker fight as a painfully obvious cut sequence.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Umm, that seems like a bit of a slap in the face to the people out there who did want a bit of action. What the hell, at least we can assume for our own peace of mind that that situation got resolved peacefully.
RADIO ANNOUNCER
This just in! A biker shootout in the desert! Many killed! So, so many dead people!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Goddamnit. Fine then, let’s make with the random missions.
RAYMOND KENNEY
Yeeeehaw! Your next target is Nudle.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Fake Google, I’m assuming?
RAYMOND KENNEY
Precisely. Get this, they’ve been gathering data on their users and selling it to Blume!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
So they steal data and Dusan is behind it? Isn’t that just the barebones template for almost every mission?
HORATIO CARLIN
I guess this mission accidentally skipped the stage where we rub on the superficial embellishments. Anyway, my day job is at Nudle, so I can help you pose as a Nudle bus driver. This will give you access to the Nudle offices, except for the restricted areas.
(beat)
Which is the same access granted to any pedestrian who wanders in off the street, so yeah.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
If you already work there, why don’t you just hack their servers yourself?
HORATIO CARLIN
We’ve been over this, haven’t we? We’re essentially the same character, but you’re the one who gets to go out and do everything.
INT. NUDLE CAMPUS - SAN FRANCISCO
MARCUS successfully hacks the NUDLE SERVERS. While he does that, HORATIO is discovered as a DEDSEC MEMBER by one of his SUPERIORS.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Whuh-oh! I guess it’s insanely lucky this is happening at the exact time that I’m already fiddling around inside Nudle’s system.
(hackity hack hack)
HORATIO’S SUPERIOR
So now that I’ve revealed you as a cyberterrorist, allow me to act vaguely snide, thus calling down an inevitable reprisal upon myself!
HORATIO’S SUPERIOR’S SUPERIOR
Stop right there, Horatio’s superior! We’ve just now gone over both your and Horatio’s keystroke logs, and it seems that you’re the spy! Also it turns out he’s been doing all of your work and you’ve been doing all of his. What the hell is wrong with you two? Take him away, men!
HORATIO’S SUPERIOR
Wait! Come on, Horatio’s obviously the real criminal! For the love of Christ, his name and face don’t even show up in the ctOS profiler!
(dragged away)
Please! I’m just an honest employee who found out one of his underlings was a saboteur and spy! I actually seriously haven’t done anything wroooong!
(life ruined)
MARCUS and HORATIO get out of there.
HORATIO CARLIN
Thanks for saving me back there. It really means a lot, having a brother watching out for me, keeping me from a fate such as --
HORATIO is suddenly KIDNAPPED and MURDERED.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Whoa, what? What the fuck just happened? Is Dusan going after us for real now? That FUCKER!
WRENCH
No, actually it turns out Horatio was killed by the Tezcas.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
The -- who?
WRENCH
Some street gang who haven’t ever factored into the story before, and never will again after we get our revenge. In fact, this whole mission is so disconnected from everything that this script has put it out of order and you would never have noticed if we didn’t mention that.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Wow, way to make an important character death completely gratuitous and meaningless. We might as well have had an alligator eat him.
WRENCH
Look on the bright side. Screw ludonarrative dissonance, we can totally feel justified using lethal force for once! The mission’s called Eye for an Eye and everything! In fact, it was called that before we even knew something had happened to Horatio, so we really should have seen that coming.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
AW YEAH! I mean, there wouldn’t even be a pacifist option for this mission, would there?
WRENCH
If you want, you can just go knock out the murderers with your taser or your yo-yo, then still gloat about how “we’ll never have to worry about them again.”
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Ha! That’s cute. Nope nope nope, murder time.
EXT. TEZCAS HIDEOUT - SAN FRANCISCO
MARCUS goes to retaliate against the TEZCA LEADERS who killed HORATIO.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Alright assholes, as soon as I figure out an approach, I’m gonna tear you a new --
A nearby SPARROW FARTS, at which point the TEZCAS and some RIVAL GANG all FREAK OUT and start SHOOTING EACH OTHER, and REINFORCEMENTS ARE CALLED, and CIVILIANS call the COPS, and soon there’s a HUGE CLUSTERFUCK of GUNFIRE and EXPLOSIONS. Somewhere in all that, the relevant BAD GUYS get DEAD.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Uhh -- that’ll learn ya!
(leaves)
INT. HACKERSPACE - SAN FRANCISCO
Suddenly there are ANIMATED CATS everywhere.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
What the hell? Guys, I’ve been hacked! There’s cartoon cats pooping all over the screen!
JOSH SAUCHAK
What screen? Your phone screen?
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Well no, the -- THE screen, you know? The computer or television screen on which this game is currently being displayed.
JOSH SAUCHAK
You mean the screen which, in our reality, doesn’t exist?
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Yeah. That one.
(beat)
Look, please just figure this out before I start thinking too hard about how the interface for this game works and I completely lose touch with reality, okay?
Then all the LESS CONCEPTUAL SCREENS in the HEADQUARTERS start blaring the unsightly face of a woman named LENORA “LENNI” KASTNER.
LENORA KASTNER
Bwah ha haaa! I’m the leader of DedSec’s evil counterpart, Prime_Eight! I’ve hacked all YOUR hacks, how do YOU like it? Oh, and the usual thing about Dusan being secretly behind it all and so on.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Fuck! We should’ve known that, with all these hacker stereotypes flying around, we’d eventually run into a smug doughy jerk.
WRENCH
Let’s retaliate! Prime_Eight does digital thefts on behalf of that biker gang. Let’s go sabotage that operation and make the bikers really pissed off with Lenni!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
So to be clear, the goal is to get her murdered?
MARCUS goes and SABOTAGES LENNI’S OPERATIONS.
LENORA KASTNER
OH FUCK YOU! You may have hurt me, but I still have my backdoor into your system, and I’m gonna release all your personal information to the world and END your little collective!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Okay, when?
LENORA KASTNER
Pardon?
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
If you’re going to destroy DedSec by releasing our info, when are you going to do that? Why aren’t you doing it right now, what are you waiting for?
LENORA KASTNER
I’m waiting to be thwarted, duh!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Oh, I see. Well, we’ve found your command center, I’ll head over there and thwart you right now.
INT. PRIME_EIGHT BUNKER - SAN FRANCISCO
MARCUS sneaks into LENNI’S BUNKER and HACKS all her STUFF.
LENORA KASTNER
Fine then, since I’ve got you trapped down there, I might as well take the opportunity to blow you up with my bunker bombs! Aahaah hah haaa!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Or, instead of destroying your own hideout and equipment, you could just let those guards I snuck past know to come down and shoot me.
LENORA KASTNER
Uhh, I’m pretty sure the game just assumed you blew them all in half with a shotgun.
MARCUS hurriedly defuses the BOMBS before the TIMER RUNS OUT.
LENORA KASTNER
Damnit! I knew I should’ve picked bombs that can be immediately detonated without the mandatory countdown, but nooo, I had to go for the DRAMATIC bombs. Consider me defeated forever then.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Neat, that mission wasn’t just another “guys are stealing data for Blume, hack them” one! We were actually being targeted ourselves and were put on the defensive, so maybe these missions aren’t all the same after --
JOSH SAUCHAK
Oh shit guys, we’re being targeted by the FBI! It’s a new mission and we’re going on the defensive!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Figures.
RAYMOND KENNEY
Fucking FBI! You realise why they’re gathering intel on us, right? They see us as competition! They don’t want anybody hacking everyone’s data except themselves!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Aren’t we also hacking everybody’s data and saying that only we should be allowed to do that?
RAYMOND KENNEY
But it’s all kosher when we do it! When we hack people’s data, it’s to stop criminals and protect people!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
I do believe the FBI also dabbles a bit in stopping crime.
RAYMOND KENNEY
How do you not get this? The FBI is stealing data left, right, and centre because they’ve decided they know best how to use information and who’s a criminal and who’s not, whereas we steal data because we DO know best how to use information, and who’s a criminal and who’s not! We’ve clearly decided that we do!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Right, a very clear distinction. All right, let’s hack the FBI.
WRENCH
Ooh, can I come help?
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Another DedSec member doing field work? Are you sure any of you desk jockeys can handle a big boy operation like this?
WRENCH
Hey, I rock at hacking FBIs, just watch!
(instantly captured)
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Colour me unsurprised. Oh well, I guess I’d better go do the NEW mission to heroically rescue Wrench from the FBI!
(dramatic pose, music sting)
SITARA DHAWAN
Actually, they let him go.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Wha?
SITARA DHAWAN
Yeah, Dusan dropped by, being behind everything like usual, and told them to let Wrench just walk out of there scot-free.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
So now our big main villain is actively undoing damage inflicted on us by other people? Man, the guy just can’t get enough of being unthreatening. I guess then I’d better go do the NEW new mission to heroically rescue, ahh, Wrench’s confiscated mask!
(dramatic pose, music sting)
MARCUS goes and retrieves WRENCH’S MASK.
WRENCH
Thanks, man. I’ve got ten more of these in a box somewhere, but this one was slightly more special.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Don’t sweat it. While I’m in the neighbourhood, I might as well hack the FBI and steal all their most damning intel.
EXT. BEACH - SAN FRANCISCO
Later, MARCUS meets RAYMOND on the BEACH to watch a ROCKET LAUNCH.
RAYMOND KENNEY
New mission time! See that rocket? Blume’s been sending up satellites to establish an international communications network! We need to hack one of those satellites.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Okay, I know my phone is basically magical, but I’m pretty sure even it doesn’t have that kind of range.
RAYMOND KENNEY
We’ll hack a satellite before it goes to space, nimrod.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Oh, that makes much more sense!
MARCUS sneaks into a ROCKET LAB.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Alright, I just have to put Ray’s special chip into this motherboard and then get it over to the --
GUARD
We have an intruder! Everybody, immediately open fire, as is standard operating procedure when we see unauthorised personnel hanging around this lab! Let’s hope it’s not someone who wandered off from the tour like last time.
(starts shooting)
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
AAAAAAAAA!
(grabs motherboard, sprints for rocket)
AAAAAAAAA!
(puts motherboard in rocket while being shot at)
AAAAAAAAA!
(runs outside, speeds off on motorcycle)
AAAaaand there we go, another victory for the super-smooth master criminal.
GUARD
Say, since that guy was just switching out parts of that really expensive and important rocket in full view of everybody, maybe we should check it out before we send it to space? Ah, screw it.
The SATELLITE is sent into SPACE.
JOSH SAUCHAK
Now we can hack all the other satellites and get access to their various server farms around the globe!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Using satellites to hack other satellites? Hey, a scenario in which that “you need line of sight to hack” rule makes some kind of fucking sense!
They gain access to ALL OF BLUME’S DATA.
RAYMOND KENNEY
Fuck, look at all this! It’d take years to sift through it all. We’ll have to pick specific organisations we want to scrutinise and focus on data belonging to them.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Oh hell, did we go to all the trouble of hacking a global satellite network simply to justify another bunch of “expy organisation is stealing data, let’s hack their servers” missions?
RAYMOND KENNEY
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Incidentally, some crew of Asian gangsters is stealing data. Let’s hack their servers.
MARCUS hacks the GANGSTERS, then comes back for the NEXT ONE.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
So what thinly-veiled stand-in are we going after next? Twutter? Shminstagram? Blamazon? fBay?
SITARA DHAWAN
Actually, we’ve somehow run out of ideas and are just doing !NViTE again. Now they’re trying to rig a congressional election.
EXT. !NViTE OFFICES - SAN FRANCISCO
MARCUS goes and HACKS !NViTE ALL OVER AGAIN.
SITARA DHAWAN
Holy shit, it turns out that the person behind !NViTE’s rigging of the election is --
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Let me take a wild guess. Dusan? Come on people, by now this should never be a surprise, but it especially shouldn’t be a surprise when investigating companies that we already knew were under Blume’s thumb!
SITARA DHAWAN
Anyhow, now that we’ve found the code that they’ve been using to try and influence people to vote for Congressman Thruss, we can change it to instead influence them to NOT vote for him, hah!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Doesn’t that mean that now we’re the ones rigging a congressional election?
SITARA DHAWAN
Dude, can you stop pointing out that we keep doing the very things we profess to be indicting? I mean, you only became a hacker because ctOS unjustly flagged you as a criminal, but then there’s that hacking trick where you can upload false information to frame innocent people!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Pot, kettle, I get it.
SITARA DHAWAN
Now let’s stop thinking about it and just watch this footage of Dusan and Thruss talking about our hacks.
DUSAN NEMEC
(on video)
So DedSec screwed up our !NViTE scheme, but we have a backup. We’re gonna install code onto the voting machines that’ll make you win. And when I say “we’re” gonna install that code, I mean “you.” Take this USB stick and personally upload the files onto each individual voting machine.
CONGRESSMAN THRUSS
(on video)
What? I’m a career politician in his sixties. Do I look like the kind of guy you want handling your black ops shit? Don’t you have guys for this?
DUSAN NEMEC
(on video)
Nah, I figure having one of the candidates physically tamper with the voting machines is the course of action best calculated to avoid suspicion.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Oh nice, we just got footage of Dusan interfering in an election. We can absolutely take him down with this.
SITARA DHAWAN
Actually, we’re gonna just blow up the tainted voting machines.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
ALL the voting machines?
SITARA DHAWAN
Relax, it turns out there’s only sixteen of them for the whole congressional district. That election was clearly going to be a logistical nightmare.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
I mean, shouldn’t we keep at least one voting machine in play so we can prove it was tampered with? Our whole thing has been unmasking corruption. Why are we being needlessly opaque this time?
MARCUS goes to where the VOTING MACHINES are being guarded. He sneaks around, carefully sets up an array of EXPLOSIVES, and retreats to a SAFE DISTANCE. When he sets off the first BOMB, “FORTUNATE SON” starts to swell on the SOUNDTRACK. Then, five seconds later when he sets off the last BOMB and WINS, it awkwardly FADES OUT.
WRENCH
Hear that? That was the soundtrack quietly judging you for playing this game like a boring stealth-loving pussy.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
So have we done enough clunky standalone missions yet? Can we please finish Blume and be done?
WRENCH
There’s one more thing you gotta do first. The robotics company Tidis --
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Is stealing data yada yada yada hack their servers blah blah blah.
WRENCH
Nope. Spidertank.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
What?
WRENCH
It turns out they’re building spidertanks to terrorise the populace. Go take control of their spidertank and destroy the spidertank lab with your spidertank.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Well, that is different.
WRENCH
(shrugs)
Somebody at Ubisoft clearly couldn’t get enough of that spidertank hallucination nonsense from the first game. So, spidertank.
INT. TIDIS ROBOTICS - SAN FRANCISCO
MARCUS goes and takes over a SPIDERTANK, which can JUMP and SHOOT and CLIMB ON WALLS.
ROSS SCOTT
SPIDERBOT!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Giving the player a really cool toy which they’re only allowed to use for three minutes in the entire game? Somebody’s been studying up on their Call of Duty franchise!
GUARDS
Stop the spidertank, men! Gather around the various clusters of Doom-style explosive canisters and shoot at the spidertank!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Argh, goddamn pacifist run. This could have been a real cathartic --
GUARDS
NO YOU IDIOTS DON’T SHOOT THE BARRELS!
(explosions, death)
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Ha ha ha! Okay, that was still pretty satisfying. Thanks guys.
MARCUS returns to the HACKERSPACE.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
NOW can we just take down Blume finally?
RAYMOND KENNEY
Okay okay, keep your pants on. So it turns out Blume has gotten you on the most wanted list. We’ve got to stop these bastards once and for all!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Yes, this is what I’ve been working for all along! Now I can go and --
SITARA DHAWAN
Actually, since you’re so wanted, you should just hang.
WRENCH
We’ll handle the first half of the climactic mission for you!
JOSH SAUCHAK
Yes, let’s become playable characters for the first time in the game! Right in the final ever mission!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Fucking seriously?
EXT. SOME BLUME FACILITY - SAN FRANCISCO
It is WRENCH’S TURN to do a THING.
WRENCH
I’m here to do some objective or other that’ll make it easier for you to hack Blume. And look, it’s a mission tailored to my wild anarchist persona! Look at all these enemies in my way, and all these hackable explosives in the environment, and oh, I’m carrying a motherfucking GRENADE LAUNCHER --
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Buddy. Pacifist run. Non-evil protagonists. Remember?
WRENCH
Oh. Right, fuck. I guess I’ll just sneak past all the potential mayhem and press the contextual button when it pops up.
(sighs)
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Don’t worry, we’re throwing you a bone and altering the usual “hack servers” prompt into “destroy servers.”
WRENCH
Woot! A small enclosed space is a great place to be firing a grenade launcher!
(goes berserk)
SITARA DHAWAN
Meanwhile, to make use of my character’s strengths, we’ve got a creative and clever mission in which I place certain graffiti in certain places to coordinate DedSec members into --
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Nah, to be honest we didn’t bother coming up with anything that fits your character in any way, so you’re just doing a quick Pipe Dream hack.
SITARA DHAWAN
Oh. That sucks.
JOSH SAUCHAK
What about me? Is my mission --
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
That about does it! I’m off to take down Dusan!
JOSH SAUCHAK
Wait a minute, I didn’t get my turn --
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
BLUME, HERE I COME!
INT. BLUME OFFICES - SAN FRANCISCO
MARCUS infiltrates BLUME, FUCKING FINALLY.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
So this is it. The final climactic mission of the game. We’ve been getting steadily more out there lately. It’s been nothing but spidertanks and giant drones and skyscraper ziplines for a while now, so I can’t wait to see what I have to do to bring down the main villain!
RAYMOND KENNEY
Okay, are you ready for this? You’re going to have to unlock the server room, sneak down there, and hack the servers!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
And?
RAYMOND KENNEY
And nothing. That’s it. That’s how you beat the game.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
You’ve got to be shitting me! That’s the basic formula for almost every mission that we’ve done so far! I’ve done taxi-driving side missions that required more effort than this bullshit!
RAYMOND KENNEY
Well, does it help if a whole horde of elite enemies converge on you the second you hack the servers?
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Let me answer that by demonstrating an upgrade I got which allows me to press one button and fill every enemy’s headset with ear-piercing static.
He presses the BUTTON and just strolls out while all the BAD GUYS are doubled over in AGONY.
RAYMOND KENNEY
Ah. Hm.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
That was anticlimactic as hell. Can we at least rub it in Dusan's face? Can we? Can we, please?
RAYMOND KENNEY
He's not upstairs or anything. He's all the way across town for some reason.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Come ooon! His entire character design screams "I have it coming!"
RAYMOND KENNEY
Fine, I suppose that might be more satisfying.
They both head to the BUILDING where DUSAN is.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Hey! Just dropping in to say that the authorities are aware of all the heinous shit you've pulled! You and your scraggly beard are off to the big house!
DUSAN NEMEC
Okay fine, you got me, whoop-dee-doo, but can you PLEASE stop focusing on my appearance? You're being very hypocritical as usual.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Hypocritical? Moi?
DUSAN NEMEC
Yes! I accept that I'm a walking manifestation of the whole Silicon Valley dudebro culture, but your whole DedSec outfit is sooo design-by-committee "radical!" The entry-level pop culture references, the outrageous aesthetic, the comedic anarchy, it all reeks of trying too hard to be cool. I swear you guys are a hair away from shouting about hacking the planet.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
True, but if we take that point further and assume that this game reduces everything to its most common stereotype, you are really not going to enjoy prison.
DUSAN NEMEC
Fuck.
(arrested)
RAYMOND KENNEY
Okay, that's it. We won!
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
But did we, really? As far as I can tell, we didn’t bring down Blume, we just brought down Dusan. Blume is gonna pin the blame for everything on him and then keep doing this shit in other cities.
RAYMOND KENNEY
Yeah, this whole thing turned out to be a pointless exercise, didn’t it? Funny, this doesn't count as the middle entry in a trilogy but it's still got all the hallmarks of a story desperately trying to keep a status quo. Oh well, we did get one good thing out of this mess at least.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
What’s that?
RAYMOND KENNEY
The hilarious irony of seeing game publishers having to pretend that hackers are their favourite thing in the world.
MARCUS HOLLOWAY
Heh, true that!
(pirates game, hacks Uplay)
THE END
Comments
Did anyone else find Marcus'
Did anyone else find Marcus' forehead wrinkles annoying? I had to wear a hat for the whole game as I found them distracting..
Great script!
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