On April 5, 2002, Reckless Angel stopped by the HBO Forum to announce he'd managed to acquire three weapons on the Pillar of Autumn level:
[...] skip the [Keyes on bridge] sequence..
and run away from the captain..
if you were as lucky as I.. you'll see that you in fact, don't have your gun with you after
you've ran out... and the small little grunts wont be there waiting for you either.
pick up the AR.. and use it to get a Plasma rifle.
then go back to the captain... say hi.. or slap him.. or whatever..
then go back out again.. for some reason, you'll now get the pistol.
voila.. you'll now have a Plasma Rifle, an Assault Rifle and the Pistol.
The forum crowd was pretty skeptical, but polite... until first Razorback, then Tarrsk confirmed. Frogblast filmed it (the film is linked below), and some additional experimentation pinned down the requisite action:
When the >>Get off the Pillar of Autumn was still onscreen as I hit the corner of the
doorway, I knew I had it,...and I did. Everytime before that, it disappeared just a split
second before.
And that's the key. When you come out of the cutscene with Keyes, from the time you can move, you'll have a directive onscreen - '>>Get off the Pillar of Autumn'. That stays onscreen for roughly 5 seconds (from the time you can move after the cutscene). You have to round the corner of the bridge (pass the doorway out) BEFORE that directive fades from the screen in order to avoid triggering the checkpoint. If you succeed, your pistol won't load... so the game engine won't realize you have it. You can go pick up two other weapons... and then head back to the bridge. Somewhere between the doorway onto the bridge and Captain Keyes, you'll trigger a checkpoint - from here, head back out; you should have access to your pistol. (It won't show up automatically, but you can cycle through your weapons to get to it.)
This trick is significant because it shows that the two-weapon limit is not hardcoded into the game - if you can trick it into giving you more guns, you'll be able to simply cycle through them all. Hmm...
Click the frame above to see the movie. Or, option-click (right-click on a PC) on this link to download it directly to your hard drive.
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360x240 | 3.2 mb | 37 seconds | QuickTime 5 format
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