| “ | You're not human. Kane may trust you, but I do not. CABAL is part of you, but you are far more than what CABAL ever was. But Kane needs the Tacitus and I am loyal to the cause, to him. I will do as he commands. - Alexa Kovacs |
” |
Tacitus Interruptus is the eleventh mission in the campaign of Kane's Wrath.
Plot[]
Apparently surprised by LEGION's success in its previous mission, Alexa Kovacs' distrust of the AI only continued to grow. To make matters worse, Nod had located the Tacitus, but Kovacs feared that obtaining the Tacitus would cause LEGION to become even worse than CABAL. Nevertheless, she still sent the AI to capture the Tacitus.
Taking advantage of LEGION's connection with the Tacitus, the Brotherhood of Nod was able to locate the alien device: it was being escorted to a GDI aircraft carrier off of the coast of China by a ZOCOM convoy. Since Nod was unable to contest the GDI navy, they only had a limited window of opportunity to capture the Tacitus.
As the operation to capture the Tacitus began, Kane once again tried and failed to contact LEGION. As before, Kovacs interrupted the communication and asked LEGION to proceed with its mission.
LEGION's forces attacked the ZOCOM MCV carrying the Tacitus while it was on its way to the docks, forcing it to unpack into a construction yard, which LEGION then captured.
However, at this point, a village to the north was annihilated by Tiberium meteors, heralding the arrival of Reaper-17 forces, which attacked ZOCOM and Nod alike. Regardless, LEGION was able to successfully escort the MCV to the extraction point. However, Nod forces were unable to contact Nod Central Command.
At this point, Kovacs, completely overcome with paranoia, inserted a virus into LEGION's console to prevent it from connecting with the Tacitus. Kane confronted her, causing her to reveal that she was responsible for framing Kilian Qatar. Angered that her actions caused the death of one of his best generals, Kane ordered Kovacs to be taken away and interrogated. However, Kovacs shook free of her captors and shot herself. Meanwhile, LEGION's files and backup files were corrupted by the virus, forcing the AI to shutdown.
Walkthrough[]
Welcome to China, commander. You begin in the southeastern part of the map, with a fairly well-developed base and a ZOCOM convoy in the opposite corner of the map. The convoy is heading over to the GDI carrier docked in the port to the west. Your first goal is to immobilize the convoy. Simply taking a couple of your starting units and attacking the MCV will cause it to deploy, halting the convoy. Any amount of damage will do. Shortly after the mission begins, you will also receive a secondary objective to use the vein detonation support power and cripple GDI resourcing operations (this requires a Tiberium chemical plant).
ZOCOM is fairly passive even on Hard, and the biggest problem might come from the strong attack that comes a bit after the MCV is immobilized, comprising Predator tanks, APCs, and Zone Shatterers. Fortifying the pass quickly or teching up to Redeemer fast is recommended. After the attack is done, the scenario turns into the usual fare, with regular and frequent attacks by mixed ZOCOM forces. Expanding to the mouth of the valley will allow for creating a bottleneck and expanding to include the Tiberium field (the initial one is not enough). However, there is a wrinkle: Capturing the convoy MCV will cause Reaper-17 units to spawn after a few moments. The MCV can make a beeline for the evac zone and can be cloaked, so that's extremely convenient. However, to unlock all the intel entries for this mission, you need to hunt down each type of Reaper-17 unit (shielded Stormrider, Shard walker, and Reaper tripod) to unlock a total of three entries.
The mission immediately goes into a cutscene after the MCV reaches the evacuation point, so keep that in mind while hunting.
Xbox 360 version[]
The Xbox 360 version of this mission uses a slightly different map closer to the multiplayer map Dockside Devastation. In this version of the mission, the Nod base has two access points and is not closed off to the north. This doesn't necessarily increase the mission's difficult, as GDI units will primarily use this northern entrance to attack the player base, and will even pose less of a threat to player Harvesters harvesting on the Tiberium field to the west of the starting position.
Videos[]
Trivia[]
- The name of this mission is a play on the phrase "coitus interruptus".
- The cost of the Tiberium vein detonation power is reduced to half (from 4000 to 2000) for this mission, most likely due to the necessity of using it to complete a bonus objective.
- Even after the MCV is captured, the mission will still fail if it approaches the docks.
- The GDI aircraft carrier in this mission is named "GDS Pathe", even though the ship was sank during Hampton Roads, which took place much earlier in the war. Presumably, the developers simply reused the GDS Pathe object from the mission instead of the generic aircraft carrier object by mistake.
- Unused EVA audio files for this mission implied that originally, the final objective involved taking the Tacitus to LEGION's core for integration. At this point, Alexa would attack LEGION with a virus, causing LEGION to suffer from "systemic decay" and eventually shut down.
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