[Modern Family] Ch: 46 [Morning Stream: RIDDICK: ASSAULT ON DARK ATHENA] (Patreon)

[Jason's House] [Morning]

Jason put the beer in the fridge, went upstairs, and dropped into the chair in front of his computer. He had several hours before the barbecue, and he wanted to spend as little of that time as possible thinking about what might happen once everyone gathered in the same place.

That resolution lasted roughly ten seconds.

Jason turned on the PC, leaned back, and stared at the ceiling.

There was a very good chance Claire and Phil already knew what was going on between him, Haley, and Alex. Maybe the girls had told them directly. Maybe Claire had figured it out herself. Considering how closely she watched her children whenever she sensed trouble, Jason wouldn't have been surprised if she'd assembled the entire situation from facial expressions and suspiciously timed phone calls.

Either way, avoiding the subject forever wasn't exactly an option.

Then there was Jay.

Jason rubbed a hand across his face as his imagination helpfully supplied an image of the older man sitting across from him with that particular expression people developed after hearing something they really wished they'd misunderstood.

Phil would probably try to keep things civil. Claire would ask questions. A lot of questions. Jay might spend several minutes deciding whether Jason's continued existence benefited society with his shotgun in hand.

Jason straightened in his chair and muttered, "Why am I wasting perfectly good brainpower worrying about whether Jay is gonna shoot me?"

He reached toward the stack of games beside his monitor.

"If today turns out to be my last day on Earth, I might as well get one final stream in."

His eyes moved toward the games stacked beside the monitor.

"I have a low goal right now. Most people will probably drink or do other things that are not related to talking to several strangers while playing a game. Oh, well..."

Streaming suddenly seemed considerably more appealing.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena had been sitting there for a while now, waiting for him to finally get around to it. He remembered playing some of Escape from Butcher Bay in his previous life, though Dark Athena itself was mostly unfamiliar territory. That made it useful for the channel since he could actually react to most of the campaign instead of pretending he'd forgotten things he clearly remembered.

Jason picked up the case and looked at the cover.

"Yeah. Murderous space pirates sound relaxing."

The install didn't take much time.

He loaded the game, opened his streaming software, and ran through the usual checks. Microphone levels, webcam framing, recording folder, capture window, connection stability. Once everything looked right, he changed the stream title to something simple.

THE GRID | RIDDICK: ASSAULT ON DARK ATHENA | FIRST PLAYTHROUGH

He'd learned fairly quickly that titles didn't need to sound like somebody had written them after drinking six energy drinks. People either wanted to watch the game or they didn't.

Jason started the broadcast.

The waiting screen disappeared, his webcam came up in the corner, and the viewer number began climbing as notifications went out.

"Morning, guys," Jason said while the game loaded. "This one's a little earlier than usual. I've got plans later, so I figured I'd get a couple hours in before I have to leave."

A handful of familiar usernames appeared almost immediately.

Fred8900: Morning stream caught me off guard. 

PixelQueen: Missed your morning stream. 

TechMage: Finally doing Dark Athena.

CableGuy87: I've been waiting for this one since you mentioned it.

Jason adjusted the game audio while reading through them. "Yeah, I know I've been saying I'd play it for weeks. But got a little busy with the second channel and some IRL work. Those who don't know, it's a tech channel where I review and tear down new phones as a starter. Anyway, let's focus on this one for now."

NightRaven: First time catching you live. Found the channel through the GmAx Forum.

Jason noticed the message while adjusting the game volume. "Welcome to The Grid. Hope you enjoy the stream."

The opening cinematic started before the chat could pull him into another conversation, and Jason turned his attention fully toward the game.

Riddick's gravelly voice came through the speakers.

"They say hope begins in the dark, but most just flail around in the blackness, searching for their destiny..."

The screen showed Riddick lying motionless on a beach while shallow water rolled around his body. The camera slowly moved toward his face as the narration continued.

"The darkness... For me... Is where I shine."

Riddick opened his eyes.

Jason leaned forward slightly as Riddick sat up and rose to his feet. An enormous industrial complex dominated the landscape ahead, all concrete, pipes, steel structures, and heavy machinery. The title appeared across the screen.

THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: ASSAULT ON DARK ATHENA.

Jason waited until control passed to him before moving.

He spent the first minute checking the controls and looking around instead of immediately following the obvious route. The beach itself didn't offer much, and attempting to walk into the water quickly established that the game had no interest in letting Riddick go swimming.

He found a small map nearby and studied it long enough to get his bearings before following the route toward the industrial structure. A locked door stopped him near the concrete pier, so Jason continued along the outer wall until he noticed an open drainage pipe.

"There's our entrance."

He crouched Riddick down and entered the pipe.

The light disappeared almost immediately.

A tutorial prompt introduced Eyeshine, and Jason activated it. The darkness changed around Riddick, revealing the tunnel in the strange washed-out vision produced by the ability.

TechMage: Eyeshine still looks great.

"It really does," Jason said, guiding Riddick deeper into the pipe. "I wonder if they're gonna make a new movie and explore the lore further."

The pipe eventually opened into a larger chamber where an injured man named Jemas was waiting near a set of stairs.

Jason stopped moving and listened.

Jemas spoke about his family and whatever had happened to them, sounding confused and badly hurt. The game eventually presented Jason with a response choice.

He read both options before selecting the calmer one.

It didn't save Jemas.

Jason had barely reached the nearby ladder before the man collapsed behind him.

"So that's the kind of morning we're having."

He climbed upward, found a bounty card tucked along the upper section, and continued through the next door. A mercenary immediately confronted Riddick, introducing the hand-to-hand combat system.

Jason spent the first few exchanges blocking rather than attacking, watching the animations and trying to understand the timing. Once he had it, the fight ended quickly.

The next several minutes taught him the rest of the basics through the level itself. He climbed crates, grabbed ledges, moved across elevated sections, and dropped onto another enemy before encountering his first Drone.

That caught his attention.

The thing looked human enough to make its mechanical movements uncomfortable.

Jason waited in cover as it approached the body of the dead guard, then slipped behind it and performed the takedown. The game immediately showed him that the Drone's integrated gun could still be used.

He picked up the body.

For several seconds, Jason experimented with the weapon while moving awkwardly backward with the Drone.

PixelQueen: That's horrifying.

"Yeah. They butchered people and stuffed them with killer tech."

More Drones entered the area, and Jason used the mounted gun against them, firing until the corridor went quiet again. He left the body behind afterward and continued until he discovered an empty NanoMED unit and a cartridge nearby.

He loaded the cartridge into the machine and watched Riddick use it.

"I like this kind of tutorial," Jason said as he moved on. "It's teaching everything while you're already doing something. No giant training room telling me to press forward to move forward."

From there, the pace increased.

Riddick acquired an assault rifle, and the game briefly shifted toward more conventional gunplay. Jason dealt with several mercenaries, using corners for cover and aiming carefully instead of spraying ammunition across the room.

The environment eventually opened into a larger town square.

Jason checked the map, explored the area for anything useful, and then followed a staircase downward into a long corridor.

The lights began shutting off ahead of him.

One after another.

Jason stopped walking.

The corridor became almost completely black and the sequence ended.

The cutscene showed bright light and a spaceship...

Riddick's voice came again, "Light intruding now. Shining. The Aguerran System, full of desperate suckers who couldn't make it anywhere else. Where there's desperation... There's opportunity."

Riddick suddenly woke inside a cryogenic chamber aboard Johns' ship.

Jason blinked once before understanding what the game had done. "So the entire beach section was a tutorial inside his head."

Chat reacted at roughly the same time.

TechMage: Yep.

Fred8900: Welcome to Dark Athena.

Jason smiled slightly and kept watching.

Something was wrong outside the ship. Asteroids struck the hull, forcing Riddick awake while Johns remained unconscious in cryosleep. Jason moved around the small craft until the enormous shape of another vessel appeared beyond the asteroids.

The Dark Athena.

A tow cable locked onto Johns' ship and began dragging it inside.

Jason stopped talking through most of the following sequence.

The drones ejected some gas into Johns' cryopod.

Captain Revas boarded with one of the Drones and found Johns still unconscious. Riddick remained hidden above them while Revas searched the craft. When she passed underneath him, Riddick quietly stole the long hairpin from her hair without being noticed.

Jason's eyebrows rose.

"All right, that's our shiv."

Once Revas and the Drone carried Johns away, control returned.

Jason used the hairpin as a shiv and followed them into the Dark Athena.

The shift in atmosphere was immediate. The ship felt cramped despite its enormous size, with machinery everywhere and long stretches of darkness between harsh industrial lights.

Jason went through decontamination and reached the first cargo section. A keypad triggered security, bringing another Drone into the area to investigate.

Instead of fighting it directly, Jason circled around the crates and waited.

The Drone moved closer.

Jason stayed crouched.

It turned away.

He slipped up behind it and drove the stolen hairpin into the vulnerable point at the back of its neck.

CableGuy87: Okay this game definitely wants patience.

"Which is probably why I'm liking it already." He used the dead Drone's weapon to break through glass blocking the route forward, climbed into the ventilation system, and encountered a frightened little girl named Lynn hiding inside the ship.

That scene changed the tone again.

Lynn spoke about the monsters aboard the Athena and feared being turned into one of them, just as her father had been. She warned Riddick about guards before disappearing through the vents.

Jason didn't comment immediately.

He kept moving.

The next hour became considerably slower because Jason started treating every new room like a problem that needed solving before he entered it. He watched Drone patrols from the darkness, learned where the lights fell, checked alternate paths, and only moved once he understood where each enemy would be looking.

Sometimes the patience paid off beautifully.

Other times, a Drone turned around half a second earlier than Jason expected and forced him into an ugly fight.

He eventually overheard Captain Revas discussing Johns with Spinner, learning that Johns himself carried a bounty because he'd taken Riddick from Butcher Bay.

Soon afterward, Jason stole a pair of curved Ulaks from one of the guards.

The moment Riddick equipped them, Jason tested several attacks.

"Oh yeah. These feel much better."

Fred8900: You're definitely going to stab everyone now.

Jason continued forward without taking the bait, though the next few encounters gave Fred enough evidence to support the prediction.

The Cargo Bay became the first section where Jason genuinely had to concentrate. Numerous Drones patrolled around crates, cylinders, walkways, and loading equipment, while stretches of darkness created safe routes between them.

He spent a long time there.

Rather than trying to eliminate everything immediately, Jason worked across the room piece by piece. He followed one patrol, crossed behind another, waited beneath platforms, and occasionally killed some of them and dragged bodies deeper into the shadows so another Drone wouldn't find them.

The chat became quieter as well.

People were watching now rather than constantly trying to get his attention, which Jason preferred during sections like this.

Nearly two hours had passed by the time he finally worked his way through the Cargo Bay and entered the Cell Decks.

The ship opened up considerably from there.

Jason dealt with mercenaries instead of only Drones, reached the control systems, and eventually unlocked Cell Block 12B. Several prisoners were inside, including Johns, although most remained unconscious.

The ones who were awake finally gave Jason more information about the Athena.

He spoke with Max Dacher, then Ellen Silverman, learning that Silverman could build a vent tool if Riddick found the right parts. That led him toward Jaylor, a former crew member who knew where a screwdriver could be found.

Naturally, Jaylor wanted something in return.

He wanted Riddick to kill Margo and bring back his gold tooth as proof.

Jason stared at the objective for a moment.

"This ship has a very strange economy."

PixelQueen: Tooth-based transactions.

Night99: Someone still believes in the tooth fairy.

NExxr: I think someone got some weird fetish.

"Hey, who are we to judge other people's fetishes?" Jason said with a chuckle, then returned to the game without adding anything.

He unlocked the route into Berthing and continued.

By that point, nearly three hours had disappeared.

The next section brought more mercenaries, tighter interiors, and considerably more melee combat. Jason had grown comfortable enough with the Ulaks that he stopped hesitating whenever somebody rushed him.

Then Iron Lord appeared.

The massive fighter immediately made Jason reconsider that confidence.

His first careless exchange cost him a brutal amount of health, forcing him backward while he figured out the larger man's attack rhythm.

Jason stopped trying to rush.

He blocked, created distance, recovered whenever he had room, then stepped back in for another exchange.

The fight took longer than he'd expected, although Iron Lord eventually went down.

Jason checked the clock afterward.

Three hours and twenty-seven minutes had passed since he'd started the broadcast.

He stared at the time for a second before looking back at the game.

"Yeah, I need to stop."

Several protest messages appeared in chat, although Jason had already reached a good place to leave the session. He found the next checkpoint, made sure the game had saved correctly, and paused.

"We've been going for three and a half hours, and I genuinely didn't notice. I'm going to leave it here and pick it back up tonight because if I keep going, this is turning into an all-day stream."

He glanced over the chat while stretching his shoulders.

A few people asked whether he planned to finish the campaign on stream.

"Yeah, definitely. I'm having a good time with it. The stealth is easily the strongest part so far, and I like that the levels give you enough room to watch people before committing to anything. Combat's simple, but it works, and the whole ship has a really nasty atmosphere."

Jason saved once more out of habit.

"Anyway, that's enough Riddick for this morning. I'll continue from here tonight."

He thanked everyone for watching, gave the camera a small wave, and ended the broadcast.

The viewer count vanished.

The room fell quiet again as Jason removed his headset and leaned back in the chair.

Three and a half hours had disappeared far faster than he'd expected, and he got 20 new subscribers plus 459 viewers even at an odd hour.

Well, at least he'd succeeded in keeping his mind occupied.

"Phew," Jason rubbed his face before standing up. "Time to get ready."