Perfect Dark: Encyclopedia II - Perfect Dark - Storyline and missions

Perfect Dark - Storyline and missions

Mission sequence

• Mission 1:

1. dataDyne Central - Defection
2. dataDyne Research - Investigation
3. dataDyne Central - Extraction

• Mission 2:

1. Carrington Villa - Hostage One

• Mission 3:

1. Chicago - Stealth
2. G5 Building - Reconnaissance

• Mission 4:

1. Area 51 - Infiltration
2. Area 51 - Rescue
3. Area 51 - Escape

• Mission 5:

1. Air Base - Espionage
2. Air Force One - Anti-Terrorism
3. Crash Site - Confrontation

• Mission 6:

1. Pelagic II - Exploration
2. Deep Sea - Nullify Threat

• Mission 7:

1. Carrington Institute - Defense

• Mission 8:

1. Attack Ship - Covert Assault

• Mission 9:

1. Skedar Ruins - Battle Shrine

In the year 2023, Joanna Dark, a young, new secret agent of the Carrington Institute, is sent to infiltrate the laboratories of the multinational corporation dataDyne, a rival of the Institute, to rescue a scientist calling himself Dr. Carroll. Dr. Carroll had raised objections to the "morally dubious" activities of dataDyne and its CEO Cassandra de Vries, and the company were planning to "mentally restructure" him so that he would view the work as ethical. Dr. Carroll contacted the Institute to ask them to get him out. Joanna gains access to the extensive laboratory complex hidden below the dataDyne skyscraper and finally finds Dr. Carroll. It turns out he is not a human being but an artificial intelligence construct. Two days after the operation is completed, Daniel Carrington (the founder of the Carrington Institute) and the AI are at Carrington's private villa discussing what the AI knows, when the villa is attacked by dataDyne forces. Carrington is taken hostage in the basement and the construct is returned to dataDyne's hands.

After rescuing Daniel, Joanna has to travel to Chicago where she records a secret meeting between Cassandra de Vries, Trent Easton — director of the National Security Agency — and a tall Scandinavian man nicknamed Mr. Blonde. They are plotting to replace the President of the United States with a clone. Joanna also retrieves a personality backup of Dr. Carroll, made before his memory was wiped, though the construct itself is in a more secure location. Though naturally worried by the news about the conspiracy, Carrington assigns her to infiltrate Area 51, where several advisors for the Institute are being held (they had been shot down and captured). These advisors are members of the Maian race (the Maians being the "grey" aliens typically referenced in abduction stories). This revelation shocks Joanna. She meets a Maian who calls himself Elvis, whose duty is Protector One of the Maian Ambassador to Earth. Jonathan, another Carrington agent working undercover as an Area 51 guard, begins to help Joanna and Elvis to escape the installation.

At this point in the game, players are confronted with a life-or-death decision. A Maian spacecraft in a hidden hangar is only a single-seater, and it can barely fit Elvis and one additional human. Either Joanna or Jonathan must stay behind and attempt to use a nearby hoverbike to escape, but this would mean a very dangerous route through the corridors of the installation. If the player leaves on the Maian craft, Jonathan will be unsuccessful in his escape. Alternatively, the player could choose the route of the hoverbike, securing Jonathan's life, but at greater difficulty.

After Area 51 is resolved one or way another, Joanna learns that dataDyne has made an agreement with the Skedar, a belligerent alien race of warriors and the sworn enemies of the Maians. The Skedar will give dataDyne enough of their technology to make dataDyne the leading weapons corporation on the planet. In exchange, dataDyne had to build a sapient AI with advanced code breaking and language abilities (this became Dr. Carroll) — the Skedar intend to access an ancient sentient bio-ship hidden underneath the Pacific Ocean, which has a powerful weapon. Because of the depth of the ship, dataDyne has decided it will require the Pelagic II, an advanced deep-sea research vessel with a submarine dock. Because the Pelagic II is under the control of the United States Navy, the President's approval will be required in order to gain a lease on the vessel. With the help of Easton, they intend to kidnap or assassinate him and then replace him with the aforementioned clone.

Joanna now has to protect the President from Trent Easton's forces as well as various Skedar agents in human guise — more specifically, blonde Scandinavian males. She is tasked with infiltrating an Alaskan airbase, used as a staging point for Air Force One, and then the plane itself, where the President is waiting before being flown to an important meeting in Oslo, Norway. Disguised as a stewardess, she approaches the President and presents to him a recording of the Chicago meeting. Just a moment later, a Skedar spacecraft links with the plane, and a firefight ensues. Joanna escorts the President to an escape pod, then uses an explosive to destroy the link with the spacecraft. The link is only weakened, however, and when the weapons on his ship fail, Elvis is forced to use his ship to ram the link, resulting in the crash landing of all vessels involved.

Now lost somewhere on Victoria Island, Joanna regains consciousness near the plane's crash site to find the area crawling with Easton's henchmen as well as more Skedar agents. She finds the President's escape pod, and activates the pods distress beacon. Joanna then kills the clone of the President and destroys the Skedar ship, which was broadcasting a powerful jamming signal. She then saves the President and brings him back to Elvis, who had crashed in another location. They then hold out until help arrives. Elsewhere, Mr. Blonde tells Trent that he no longer has any further need for him, in light of his failure. He then reveals his real Skedar form and kills Trent.

In a desperate move, dataDyne and the Skedar simply take the Pelagic II by force before the President can return and order the ship fortified. Joanna and Elvis take charge of the ship, but not before the Skedar and dataDyne forces gain access to the massive bio-ship on the ocean floor. Joanna and Elvis recall the submarine and travel down to the bio-ship. After battles with dataDyne, the Skedar, and the ship's own internal defences, Dr. Carroll is found. It is being used to break the codes so that the Skedar can gain control of the ships powerful "megaweapon", the weak nuclear force decoupler similar to the Dr. Device in the Ender's Game series, which can destroy the fundamental weak nuclear forces that keep molecules bound. The Skedar intend to test fire it on Earth first, once they leave the planet, leaving it as an expanding dust cloud. Joanna replaces the emotional matrix; the restored Dr. Carroll personality, instead of handing over access to the Skedar, initiates the ship's self-destruct sequence, knowing it must sacrifice itself in the process. It gives Joanna and Elvis enough time to escape.

A few days afterwards, Joanna and Daniel Carrington are about to leave for a formal first contact meeting with the President and the Maians at the White House. Carrington reveals that the institute was actually founded with the secret purpose to accelerate friendly contact between the two races. As they are leaving, the Skedar and dataDyne forces attack and take hostages. Joanna (and if the player chose to let him live, Jonathan) combat the attackers, freeing as many hostages as possible and destroying sensitive information before it can fall into enemy hands. She disarms a bomb, but is then knocked out and captured.

When Joanna awakes, she finds herself in a holding cell on board a Skedar battleship. Cassandra de Vries is also in the cell, and explains that the Skedar used her, and she wants revenge. Cassandra, being an older woman with no combat training, knows she cannot possibly personally gain her revenge on the Skedar. Instead, she sacrifices her life as a distraction which allows Joanna to escape — and allows Cassandra to get her vengeance after death. Joanna lowers the battleship's shields, and rendezvous with a Maian boarding party, including Elvis. They take control of the ship, and Elvis discovers the ship is headed to the most holy planet in the Skedar religion, the planet of the Battle Shrine. The location of the planet had never been found by the Maians. They had been fighting the Skedar for centuries, and had achieved a ceasefire, but still had to remain on guard due to frequent Skedar terrorist activities. Destroying the shrine and terminating the high priest would crush the morale of the Skedar and bring about true peace.

Elvis alerts the Maian fleet, and Joanna descends upon the temple, where she must mark parts of an old shielding system, so that Elvis can bombard them to ensure the fleet can cause maximum damage. She then eliminates the high priest of the Skedar. The Maian bombardment begins, and she barely escapes with her life; Elvis calls a halt to the bombardment just long enough to find Joanna. She is stuck under a piece of rubble, struggling to get free. Elvis is about to pull her out when she asks for his gun. She then uses it to convince the last dying but determined Skedar warrior to let go of her foot. The two escape, and the Skedar morale is crushed.

Perfect Dark - Bonus missions

Mission sequence

• Mr. Blonde's Revenge

• Maian SOS

• WAR!

• The Duel

Like GoldenEye, Perfect Dark contains bonus missions that can be unlocked by completing all of the other levels on certain difficulty modes. Unlike its predecessor, however, these missions are interwoven into the main storyline.

• Mr. Blonde's Revenge is set between the Deep Sea and Carrington Institute missions and places players in the role of Mr. Blonde. Following the destruction of the Cetan bioship and the megaweapon, the Skedar desire revenge against dataDyne and Cassandra de Vries for their incompetence. A Skedar in a holographic Mr. Blonde disguise is sent in to dataDyne headquarters to plant a bomb and then capture de Vries so she can face "righteous Skedar justice". After leaving with de Vries via a Skedar shuttle, the bomb destroys the skyscraper, the underground research labs, and any evidence that the Skedar had double-crossed the corporation.

• Maian SOS is set at roughly the same time as the Chicago missions, during the radio silence between Carrington and Joanna, and casts players as Elvis. Waking up in an autopsy lab in Area 51, following the shooting down of the Maian ambassador's craft, the player must fight their way to the radio room to contact the Carrington Institute and request rescue. Along the way, they must destroy the body of the ambassador, so that it cannot be experimented on, and they must also destroy the remains of the ambassador's craft. After sending the signal, Elvis is knocked out by a guard with a tranquiliser.

• WAR! is set after the end of the main game. Players play the part of an unnamed Maian soldier. Following the bombardment of the Skedar Battle Shrine by the Maian fleet, Maian troops are sent in to mop up. Depending on the difficulty level, up to three clones of the Skedar King must be killed. Players must also deal with endlessly spawning Skedar warriors, but there are also other Maian troops that respawn at the start point of the map.

• The Duel is set before Joanna's first mission. As the last part of her training, she must defeat (depending on difficulty) up to three holographic opponents; firstly, a simulation of a dataDyne guard, followed by a simulation of Jonathan Dark and finally a simulation of Trent Easton. (A notable bug in this level is that Jonathan cannot hit the player with hitscan weapons. The targeting reticule turns blue when placed over him, indicating that, as with the rest of the single-player game, he is set as a friendly NPC. In single-player, normal enemies cannot hit each other with hitscan weapons, nor can friendly NPCs hit the player with such weapons; therefore the only way Jonathan Dark can kill the player in this level is by pistol whipping them.)

Perfect Dark - Organizations

• Carrington Institute: ostensibly a research and development organization, whose new technology includes conventional weapons. Secretly, it is also a spy organization working towards its own ends. Even more secretly, the 'new' technology it is releasing into the public domain is often based on Maian technology, with the intent of accelerating friendly first contact between the Human and Maian races.
• dataDyne: The world's leading weapons corporation.

Perfect Dark - Extraterrestrial races

• The Maians: "Grey" aliens. They are much shorter than humans, extremely intelligent, live for hundreds of years and are benevolent towards mankind. They have been monitoring humankind for several hundred years, and consider them to have great potential.
• The Skedar: An aggressive race that worships war. In their true form they are small, snake-like creatures, but they move around in bio-mechanical armatures. Their agents on earth use holographic devices and voice modulators to give them human appearance and voices. They have been at war with the Maians since the 17th Century.

Perfect Dark - Characters

• Joanna Dark: The Carrington Institute's newest agent. Her codename Perfect Dark comes from her perfect training record.
• Daniel Carrington: Patriarchal founder and head of the Carrington Institute. He secretly made contact with a Maian ship in 1985, and arranged to filter Maian technology into the public domain through his extensive R&D holdings.
• Jonathan Dark: Experienced undercover operative for the Institute. When first encountered, he is working undercover as a security guard at Area 51. Whether or not he is Joanna's brother, or if 'Dark' is merely part of a codename is never explained in the game. (The only other "Jonathan" in the Perfect Dark franchise is Jonathan Stienberg, mentioned in in Perfect Dark Zero as Carrington's Head of Security).
• Cassandra de Vries: The CEO of the dataDyne corporation. She desires power above all else, and is willing to do extremely 'unethical' things to get what she wants.
• Trent Easton: Head of the NSA. Frequently conspires with Cassandra. Like her, he has a strong desire for power, but not as strong as hers.
• Mr. Blonde: A tall, enigmatic man of apparent Scandinavian descent with a deep, commanding voice. He is actually a disguised Skedar warrior.
• The Carroll Sapient (Dr. Carroll): An artificial intelligence contained within a hovering, laptop-sized construct. It was designed by dataDyne for language and code-breaking, and has an intelligent, 'educated' male voice. It realised the probable end results of dataDyne's schemes, and expressed concern. dataDyne planned to remove its personality, but before this could be done, it contacted the Carrington Institute under the pseudonym Dr. Carroll, setting in motion the events of the game. It eventually sacrificed itself to ensure the destruction of the Cetan megaweapon. It is more then likely that the Carroll Sapient was designed from the remains of Dr. Caroll from Perfect Dark Zero, in which the player can overhear instructions to, "Put his brain on ice," after the man is killed.
• Alphaes Mangarae ("Elvis"): One of the bodyguards of the Maian ambassador to Earth. He is the only survivor when his charge's ship is shot down over Nevada, and the debris and bodies taken to Area 51. After he is rescued by Joanna, he joins her on some of her missions to provide assistance. Being something of a Terra-phile, he adopts the name Elvis.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Storyline and missions", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki