No Remorse Removed item? Alarm Card

[The Silencer]

While browsing through my No Remorse strategy guide I suddenly noticed something I've never really noticed before.

This hasn't made it into the game as far as I know which is a shame. Because when you think about it, it's weird that just anyone can deactivate the alarm. It doesn't make any sense that I (The Silencer) walk around, trip alarms, kill people and then casually turn off the alarm. Those alarm cards make sense. Also it would penalize you for tripping many alarms if not ALL guards carry them (or if you keep vaporizing them). If not all guards carry them you have to wait for more to teleport in until a guard has one.

 

[JC Denton]

It looks like developers wanted to keep things simple and more straightforward. Forcing you to use "alarm cards" would potentially disrupt the game flow as you would be forced to "hunt" guards in order to turn of the alarm system and proceed forward. There's also a potential of making some parts of the game/levels almost (if not entirely) impossible to beat on higher difficulty levels.

Can you imagine playing on "Loose Cannon" difficulty, when ammo is scarce and the damage the Silencer takes from enemies is really serious, trying to find the frickin' alarm card by shooting and shooting and shooting until a guard drops it. Even worse, as I said, you can't use heavy and energy weapons as you would destroy the card along with the guard. On high difficulty levels blazing away in one firefight can get you killed in the next one...

If all guards would carry the "alarm card" it would defeat the purpose of the whole thing as it would add just one more (redundant) step in the "press-this-button-to-turn-of-the-alarms" step.

Just my 2c.

 

[The Silencer]

The effect is simple. Especially on higher levels you would try to avoid tripping alarms. I do that on some playthroughs because I like playing that way but I also think that's the way a Silencer usually operates (he's called a Silencer and not a Loudener for a reason I think). A Silencer can be a one man army that blazes through battlefields and cuts his opponents down with impunity, but the level of training of a Silencer indicates he's also a master of stealth and the game does not show that. You can do it, but there's no real incentive to do so. I could skip half of the keycard and keypads if I want and simply blow open the door.

Yes, it makes the game simpler and more straightforward, no argument there, but I really would have loved this option to actually force people to be a bit more stealthy and less brute force. In an ideal game this would be an option that could check or uncheck when you start your game.