This is a list of explanations for tricks found in the HL2DQ speedrun that casual viewers may not understand. If you have a question about something in the run, this is the place to look.
The tricks are listed by map and order of appearance. Not all maps are listed, as some do not contain any complicated or notable tricks that have not already been covered before it. You might notice I got bored and had a little fun with it, at the expense of humor everywhere, and I'm pretty sure it gets more and more disturbing as you go down. Further proof that I am slowly slipping into speedrun-induced paranoid schizophrenia.
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d1_trainstation_01
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Q.) How does he move so fast?
A.) This is a trick called "bunnyhopping" and is explained under the HL2DQ Tricks text. You will see a lot more of this, so get ready.
For this run, we used a simple macro which presses the button assigned to "jump" repeatedly, for as long as it is held in. This was done to increase focus on less tedious and more complicated tricks in the run, as well as to prevent people from doing silly things like making an in-game script with hundreds of "+jump" commands and binding jump to the mousewheel as well as 12 buttons on a joystick to stomp on. In case you're wondering, yes, the above method has actually been used before the macro was voted as an option.
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Q.) Why did the guard disappear and reappear at the end of the hallway? Did the video skip?
A.) No, what you saw is called "teleporting" and is listed under the HL2DQ Tricks text.
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d1_trainstation_02
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Q.) Um, did I just see him walk THROUGH a guard?
A.) Yes, you did. The guard is pre-programmed to walk to an exact point, and Gordon passed that point before the guard did while ducking. Since the guard's only priority was to walk to the point at the time, he continued walking. Ducking helps Gordon to squeeze through easier for some reason, probably because his center of gravity is smaller and therefore easier to slip through the model of the guard, although that I am not sure about.
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d1_trainstation_04
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Q.) OK, first of all, that guy just flew on a can of paint. That's impossible. Cans don't fly!
A.) How do you know? Have you ever gone outside and tried to fly on a can of paint? It's quite relaxing. Also, this trick is called "flying" and covered in the HL2DQ Tricks text. You will also be seeing much more of this.
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Q.) How is he walking on air? Is he standing on the telephone lines?
A.) No, what he is standing on is commonly called a clipbrush. It is invisible, solid, and designed to block the players movement, to prevent him from getting to icky places that the designers don't want him to go. Suckers.
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d1_trainstation_06
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Q.) Why did he jump so far forwards in the last map, if he was only going to run backwards in this one?
A.) At the end of each map is a trigger which loads the following map. You cannot advance to the next map without passing this trigger, even if the trigger is in an inconvienent place. In this case, the load trigger in the last map was ahead of the board I grabbed in this one.
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Q.) Blah blah, "flying", right we got it. How am I even asking a question?
A.) Actually, I just wanted to note that the flying technique used to descend featured in this map is called "sailing" and is listed under the HL2DQ Tricks text. As much as you might not like it, flying is a technique, a skill, and NOT a glitch on par with "noclip". Sure, it's not traditional, but it is also not easy, and has many complex forms of itself to master.
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Q.) Hey, wait just a minute! He skipped the crowbar... What gives?
A.) We saved quite a bit of time skipping Barney's dialogue, and as you'll see later, we didn't need it anyway. Besides, I have yet to see Gordon put that crowbar to ANY industrial use, and frankly, I don't trust him with it.
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d1_canals_01
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Q.) How did he roll up the wall? Is that like flying?
A.) Sort of. That is called "wallclimbing" and is described in the HL2DQ Tricks text.
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Q.) I noticed he took no damage when he fell on that train. Where can I download teh hax?
A.) If you land on a sloped surface that is curved just right, you are able to slide down it without incurring damage. Sprinting helps. I'm not sure why.
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d1_canals_01a
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Q.) That guy jumped from one underground tube to the next in a single bound! No fair, I can't jump that far.
A.) That is called "circlejumping" and is listed under the HL2DQ text. It also couldn't hurt to hit the gym a little, fatty.
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d1_canals_02
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Q.) Liek, that iz tottaly teh sped hax.
A.) What? If you bunnyhop on slime, such as the kind found on the downward ramp here and in the sewer on the last map, you essentially gain the same speed as a bunnyhop but without leaving the ground, accelerating you FAR faster than normal bunnyhopping.
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d1_canals_03
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Q.) How did you blow open the explosive barrel in the crowded hallway in one shot? It takes at least two, and that's just to light the thing on fire.
A.) If you hold in the secondary fire button, then hold in the primary fire button, and keep them held in, you charge the pistol. To fire the extra rounds, release the secondary fire.
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Q.) When did Gordon become such an Olympic swimmer? All my guy can do is doggy paddle.
A.) This is called "speedswimming" and is found in the HL2DQ Tricks text.
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Q.) WAT!? HE ZOOMED UP THAT LADDER LIKE...ZOOOM!
A.) Is it just me or are you getting more and more idiotic? This trick is called "ladderjumping" and can be found in the HL2DQ Tricks text.
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d1_canals_05
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Q.) Ooh, I see what you did there. he tossed that barrel next to the airboat for good luck. Like salt, but with a barrel, and no salt.
A.) Actually, we thought we needed the barrel, but it turned out we didn't, and we never fixed the mistake.
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d1_canals_06
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Q.) After that big jump over the dam he lands right through a rock. Airboat noclip anyone?
A.) First of all, there is no such thing as "airboat noclip". Second, the rock isn't solid, as it is beyond the load trigger that you normally aren't expected to pass.
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d1_canals_07
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Q.) How did he open the big doors without going into the building? What did he even shoot at, I couldn't see anything!
A.) This is a trick first discovered by Marshmallow. What he is shooting at is an explosive barrel, which is the trigger that blasts open the doors.
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d1_canals_08
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Q.) The alarm always go off for me on this map, and the giant doors always close. What did he DO?
A.) This is the first example of enterclipping, as described in the HL2DQ Tricks text. There is a trigger at the entrance to the big open area, that if passed sets off the alarms and closes the doors. It is fairly thick, so finding a way to skip it was a bit of ingenuity on my part. I discovered that while in an airboat, the section of the airboat that sets off a trigger is near the middle, but not exactly in the center. There was actually more of the airboat that could be exposed to a trigger without setting it off in the FRONT of the airboat than in the back. If you tried entering the airboat while it was on the other side of the trigger while it was facing forwards, even with the maximum distance away from the airboat that it takes to be able to get inside, there was not enough room to avoid setting off the trigger. When I found how the sections of the airboat that set off triggers were divided, the solution was simple; turn the airboat around! And that's my story. Say, are you still reading this? A golden sticker for you!
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d1_canals_11
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Q.) I just saw him go through a WALL. I'm scared. Hold me
A.) Look, we haven't killed him...yet...so he's not a ghost. This is the second example of "enterclipping" found in the HL2DQ Tricks text. How convienent that it looks like Gordon fit through that tiny hole in the wall, though.
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d1_canals_13
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Q.) Hmm, he flew straight up. I thought flying was repeatedly jumping off of an object?
A.) I told you flying was complicated. "Climbing" is just one of several techniques available with flying, as detailed in the HL2DQ Tricks section.
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d1_eli_02
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Q.) Why did you throw every single item on the board off the map? What are you, obsessive compulsive?
A.) No way. What I was doing was getting rid of anything Dog will get distracted by when I took his toy away. If you take away his toy of the moment, he immediately finds something else on the map to throw around. If he has nothing else to distract himself with, you're able to throw the only toy left on the map to wherever you want, and get Dog to follow. Once the time limit was almost up, I grabbed the toy Dog was playing with and threw it near the dumpster, so when he had to run to the dumpster on the next part he wouldn't have far to go. I'm smart like that. Also, I did it so the voices would stop bugging me.
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d1_town_01a
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Q.) What health does he grab at the beginning of the map? I can't find any there.
A.) If a health kit (or any pickup item for that matter) is close enough to the wall, it's possible to pick it up from the other side.
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d1_town_02
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Q.) How does he climb the wall so fast with a cinderblock? I read in the HL2DQ Tricks text that an object had to be cylindrical to wallclimb with it.
A.) If you were paying attention to the text you would have noticed bandit5k's alternative method for wallclimbing, discovered on this very map.
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d1_town_04
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Q.) How did he fall all the way down that mine shaft without losing health?
A.) He lands on the side of the barrel at the perfect angle, sloping off of the edge and saving his life. This was a very random and difficult trick to do, as hitting the barrel just right is hard enough, let alone hoping that the barrel doesn't bounce or roll away once it hits the ground.
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d2_coast_01
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Q.) WTF! He bounced on a barrel and flew across the freaking map! Last I checked the rubber content of a metal barrel was somewhere between 0 and -1 percent.
A.) This is called "stuckjumping" and is described in the HL2DQ Trick text.
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Q.) OK, now he hit the ground after a 70 foot drop and took no damage at all. What is the ground made of in this game, cotton candy and baby's breath?
A.) The small section of ground he landed on was sloped just right to "absorb" any impact he would have gained otherwise. This was mostly a matter of luck. Ask me a question like this again and I'll break both of your legs.
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Q.) How does he go careening over the hill then?
A.) This is called "collision boosting" and is described in the HL2DQ Tricks text.
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d2_coast_05
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Q.) So Gordon can just pop into the air at random now? Does the HEV suit come with springs on the feet in this game?
A.) The first jump is thanks to an antsy rollermine popping out of the ground at the exact moment Gordon passes over it. The second is simply a collision boost against part of the bridge railing.
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d2_coast_09
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Q.) Gordon passes right through that police barricade, and I'm pretty sure he wasn't obeying traffic laws either.
A.) He duckjumps over it, not through it, and for once I think I agree with you.
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d2_coast_10
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Q.) How did he survive the fall off the cliff? He had 8 health... No uh wait, I mean it was a sloped surface, PLEASE DONT HURT ME!
A.) Actually this time the answer is slightly different. See Gordon's suit power go down as he scrambled along the cliff wall? If you sprint against a sloped surface, you can slow your descent and save yourself the pain of broken legs. Both of them. You heard me.
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d2_coast_11
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Q.) Wait wait, don't tell me. It's a gravity jump, and you can find it in the HL2DQ Tricks text. Great. But how does he go so high?
A.) Well it was just a great gravity jump to begin with, but what you don't see very clearly between segments is that he careens off of the top of the hill to the left for extra height, then uses his horizontal velocity plus the sprint button to slide up the niche in the terrain.
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Q.) And uh, that fall at the end there. Sloped surface...? *cowers*
A.) He survives by landing between two pieces of terrain that are too close together for Gordon to pass through and hit the floor, or something like that. There are some spots that you can fall between if they're tight enough that restrict all movement but ducking until you eventually slide free, but that also manage to remove all fall damage no matter what the height. Luckily the spot was small enough that after one crouch I was no longer stuck.
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d2_prison_01
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Q.) Why is he shooting random rockets and mortars at nothing? Is he easily frightened?
A.) Of course he is, why else would he be running away from all the bad guys? However, if the final video ended up re-cammed in this area, you wouldn't be asking this question. I haven't seen the video yet though. In fact, I haven't even played the game. I just make stuff up and apparently, you read it. In any case, I'll answer this one by saying that he actually DOES hit the gunship, but it is either behind a building or off-camera for those two shots. Satisfied?
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Q.) Gordon never even killed the second gunship, so why did it blast open the wall?
A.) Maybe it just felt like being nice? It only takes 4 hits on the second gunship, after the first is destroyed, to open the wall. Don't ask me why. We don't make the game, we just destroy it.
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d2_prison_02
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Q.) How does he blast through that little nook in the beginning like that? When I duck I move so slow...
A.) It's called "crawljumping" and it is described in the HL2DQ Trick text.
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Q.) Well then how does he slide so fast through the ripped gate? He's not jumping there.
A.) It's called "speedcrawling" and it is described in the HL2DQ Trick text. Aren't you getting sick of hearing this?
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d2_prison_03
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Q.) The gate opens but he never goes upstairs and presses it. Am I missing something?
A.) You're able to "use" items through walls in Half Life 2, including buttons, if you're close enough.
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d2_prison_06
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Q.) Why does Alyx teleport at the beginning of this map if he never "teleports" her?
A.) But he does, only in a different way. He places the ammo box where Alyx lands, so when she later tries to move, there is already an obstruction in the way and she automatically teleports to her destination. What did you think that crate was doing there, keeping her feet warm?
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d2_prison_07
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Q.) Apparently Gordon has the mentality of a three year old, because every time I see him in a speed-run, he's carving something moronic on the walls. Has he lost his mind?
A.) Gordon is mute, and he's always looking for creative ways to express himself. Like beating his name into a wall, for example. The crowbar is his brush and the world is his canvas, and if you don't keep your mouth shut about it you just might find "GORDON WAS HERE LOL" written in skull fractures across your forehead.
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d3_c17_02
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Q.) Nova Prospekt must have scared the wits out of Gordon, he can't even get up the nerve to raise his gun!
A.) It wasn't really Nova Prospekt, Gordon is just a sissy in general. Just look at the guy, he's got big ol' black wireframe glasses that just screams "emo".
Since I'm sure your just about sick of sarcastic answers though, here's the real scoop. Gordon's gun automatically lowers for all of d3_c17_01, as it is a dialogue sequence. Normally, after you leave the laboratory and the door closes behind you, the gun snaps back into "ready" mode. Unfortunately, we left the map too fast for the gun to fix itself. Ah, the trials of speedrunning.
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d3_c17_03
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Q.) So he gets to the big metal barrier and then, well, I don't get the relationship between big explosions and jumping higher. Any help?
A.) It's called "impact boosting" and you can find it in the... Actually, I'll let you figure this one out for yourself.
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d3_c17_06b
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Q.) When he is flying on that little piece of wood, where exactly does he go? I've looked for a window there but haven't found one.
A.) That's because it's hidden. Don't ask me why, but until you go through it the window looks dark and static, like every other "window" on the building.
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d3_c17_09
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Q.) HEY! What's Alyx doing at the beginning of this level? She's not supposed to be there!
A.) Did you ever stop to think that maybe the problem isn't with the level, but with your face? Alyx just doesn't like you. We also suspect that Alyx joins your party in this level because we left her still a part of our party two maps before this one, and she never had the chance to leave.
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d3_c17_10a
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Q.) What exactly is that giant black pistol you picked up out of that bloody mess?
A.) That bloody mess was Alyx, not looking her best. Sadly, the gunship murdered her before she ever made it up the stairs. Don't feel bad, she was just a tease anyway, but look at the sweet gun she drops! It's pretty much just a rapid fire pistol, but it looks nice. Finders keepers.
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d3_c17_10b
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Q.) At the end of the map, Gordon launches himself to the top of the stairwell with an energy orb? How?
A.) This is called "orbjumping" and can be read about in the HL2DQ Tricks text.
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d3_c17_13
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Q.) So now Gordon can fall straight out of the sky on to a paved road and STILL take no damage? Maybe the CEMENT broke his fall.
A.) Well technically, Gordon was never actually falling for most of the object's descent. See "freefalling" in the HL2DQ Trick text to understand why.
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Q.) HEEEY, you skipped the strider battle! Don't you kill ANYTHING in this run?!
A.) Not when we can avoid it, unless they die a funny, gurgly death. There are two triggers of interest at the end of the level. One that spawns Dog and Barney, and another that spawns the combine. To make Dog open the barrier, all the combine need to be dead. However, the trigger that spawns the combine never actually spawn the combine UNLESS the correct striders are destroyed. I found how to get around this quite by accident, but this is how it works. The combine are able to be killed early, but in the event that you refuse to do anything, they have a set amount of time to live before Dog takes care of them himself. If you hit the combine trigger and wait around this amount of time (approximately 9-10 seconds), THEN hit the trigger that spawns Dog, the combine timer has already ended and Dog assumes them to be dead. He will then open the barrier, effectively skipping the strider battle.
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d3_citadel_01
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Q.) What's going on at the end there? I can't make out what's happening.
A.) That's because there is a trigger you have to pass at the end which calls the "fadeout" command; very annoying. The whole point of this procedure lies in the trick itself. You might notice that I end up OUTSIDE of the container on the next map. I found that if you enter the loading trigger on this map while carrying an object with the gravity gun, it forces you outside of the container, opening up the possibility of flying through the level and saving a lot of time. The only trouble was finding a method of touching the loading trigger, which is over your head and beyond the blinding fadeout trigger, while holding something with the gravity gun. I finally managed to prop the wood against the wall under the trigger, jump on to and off of the wood, then as I began my ascent (on a small jump, the trigger isn't that far above your head), I grabbed the object with the gravity gun before I hit the trigger. Problem solved.
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d3_citadel_02
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Q.) How did you avoid falling to your death?
A.) We found that if you ducked while the object was underneath you and being held with the gravity gun, you will slide backwards along the wood. If this was done just as the wood was close to touching the ground, you were able to use the wood as a safetly slope much like the other damage-less landings.
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d3_citadel_03
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Q.) How did you manage to keep your weapons?
A.) Since you are supposed to be in the center of the room at this point if you were dumped off by the container, the programmers didn't count on someone being right at the boundary where guns can be taken back into inventory. If you stand close enough to the forcefield as your guns are floating in the air, you're able to take all of them back again. Usually the device still manages to suck them out of your hands and make them useless, but sometimes, most likely a direct result of firing your weapon at the right time, the device fails to take them from you and you get all your weapons back.
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d3_citadel_05
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Q.) Why did you go in the container all the way across the room? Why not the first container? Was it dirty?
A.) It's pretty self-evident I jump into the far container because it's closer to my final destination than the beginning container.
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Q.) Why are you facing the wrong way the entire ride?
A.) It's a demo recording bug.
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d3_breen_01
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Q.) Holy crap, how did Breen die so fast?!
A.) Listen, Breen was old. Let it go.
P.S. If you hit the core three times with an energy orb, Breen dies.