Girls Frontline 2 - Intertwined Assault. That doctor was quite obviously...

I finally managed to get a bit of time and I completed reading the Intertwined Assault event for Girls Frontline 2. I must say, having two fully voiced events running at the same time is kind of harsh. I am the type of player who likes to let the voice acting play out until the end of the line, which causes the time required to go through the event to increase significantly.

I have to start by admitting that I only played the first Girls Frontline for about 15 days when it was released, but it never managed to grab me for various reasons. Lack of voiceover was definitely one of them, but the tedious and long gameplay was also a major factor. This means my impressions come purely as a Girls Frontline 2 player in terms of content, and I do not really know much about the deep lore of this world.

This event is centered around the Commander investigating a Yellow Area after receiving information about vaccines circulating there. This is suspicious because these vaccines are extremely expensive, to the point of being very hard to obtain even in much richer areas. This trail leads them straight to Paradeus, an organization with various links to the big corporations of this world that is always up to no good.

Paradeus is apparently the nemesis and main antagonist from the first game. It seems they are still alive and kicking, despite seemingly being destroyed previously. The enemy is well understood and comically evil, to the point that there is really no silver lining with them.

I have to say that the story here was extremely predictable, to the point where I felt a strong sense of dejavu while reading. A doctor experimenting on their patients while collaborating with Paradeus, all while trying to find a cure for the good of humanity? This doctor getting inevitably betrayed and dying by doing a last act of defiance? I swear I have read a story that is mostly the same in the past in some other medium.

And yeah, I have to say that I didn't really like it much at all. It was decently written, but it lacked anything that would generate any response or emotion from me. It is a checkbox exercise of "been there, done that" which isn't a great show.

However, I did appreciate seeing more of Lenna (who was pretty much the protagonist of this event). I started to like her quite a bit despite not knowing her connection with the Commander in the past. The Commander is also changing a bit after the events so far. He is getting more sold on the idea of getting back to business to eradicate Paradeus once and for all.

It seems like Kalina will definitely appreciate that new attitude. She is probably one of the few characters I actually remember from the first game since she was in various menus, even though her looks are extremely different now. It feels like she could end up joining back up with her Commander at some point.

Now, next up in line is to read the first part of the story for the other event. I will try to do that in the coming days and prepare another post to talk about it.