As if being detached wasn't already freaky enough, now he's got himself a new ride!

(8:15) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Heroic. This shows my freaky new discovery: how to get a Banshee with a turret attached! C'mon, you know you wanna see it.

Released February 15th 2015, gameplay recorded January 31st - February 13th 2015.

00:02 (Banshee with turret!) I decided to get right to the point with this opening section. Three short clips showing you a Banshee hovering around with a turret; something you don't see every day. The first two are from my second pick-up, shown later in the movie, while the third is from several days later when pick-ups had become routine.

00:21 (The discovery) While recording for my turret ramming epic BCM126, the turret landed on the far bridge and I decided to crowd him a bit. The reason was, while making the earlier BCM124 I'd noticed significant vibration when I gently pushed it into the corner of a door frame, and I made a note to have another go at that as it seemed interesting. So, I started crowding and suddenly I realized the turret was attached to the Banshee. I was like "Whoa!", and my immediate thoughts were to avoid any sudden movements with the Banshee, in case the turret might come loose. At this point I wasn't sure how it was attached, but later I figured that it bumped inside; there's just enough room there. I kept the left joystick back for quite a while, but when I finally moved it forwards (having noticed that I was otherwise about to back into something) the turret flew off and settled on the door arch. I subsequently knocked him down and made another pick-up attempt, but this time he fell through the floor. This was all on January 31st.

02:00 (Setting up for experimenting) After that, I continued recording for BCM126 but resolved to do some experimenting if the turret landed on a bridge again. In due course it did (after I missed a second ram), so I got busy. First thing I needed to do was set things up for conveniently making pick-up attempts. After getting a checkpoint for safety, I moved the turret into the door frame corner. The movie just shows a bit of nudging near the end of that, but in reality it was a rather messy and clumsy affair punctuated by a further few checkpoints (including the underpass checkpoint) until I was finally content with the arrangement (things do tend to be a bit messy when you're doing them for the first time). Thereafter I got a delayed tunnel checkpoint nearby, having left the Banshee pointing his way.

02:47 (Second pick-up, lost via freefall) I began trying to achieve pick-up, repeatedly pushing him around to get him against a wall or corner, and reverting when he was lost (going through the wall or deck) or when he ended up inaccessible or too far away to bother with. As illustrated by the clips, he's rather twitchy, hard to pin down. It was quite a while before I finally got him, against the wall on the other side of the door. At least an hour I think. I started hovering cautiously backwards and noticed the constant vibration feedback. I actually had no memory of vibration from the first pick-up, but I now suspect that I merely neglected to notice it on account of how stunned I was. Vibration always occurs, I believe; a consequence of his being in a tight area. After a while I decided to see if I could freefall with him, but he fell out.

03:57 (Third pick-up, bridge landing) My third pick-up took a lot less time, which was nice. several minutes perhaps. Maybe I just got lucky, but maybe I'd also got better with my technique. On the spur of the moment I decided to try and land on the other bridge. I suspected he'd fall out, but I got a surprise when he popped up to a roof seat! I got a delayed checkpoint to allow investigation. The big question was, could I take off with him? Answer: no. Sadly it's a very fragile arrangement, as my clips illustrate. The final clip shows that you can still potentially deactivate him via melee, while he's aboard. Incidentally, if you're wondering why the turret wasn't initially targeting me after the checkpoint, he'd lost awareness of me when I went off to get it. Firing alerts him however.

06:04 (Quick-revert method) When I returned to the pick-up business after completing BCM126, I tried out a quick-revert method, in which I'd make a single pick-up attempt then simply revert if it failed, rather than trying to reposition him somewhere for another try (a potentially fiddly business). It appeared to be much more efficient, and my average pick-up time became about 4 minutes. Pick-ups were now routine! I was using that arrangement for quite a while (over 40 pick-ups), but then modified it for greater efficiency, using another delayed tunnel checkpoint. With a shorter distance to the Banshee I was able to make 15 good tries per minute, and my average pick-up time became about 2 minutes. So pick-ups were now even more routine! Obviously this was all a big help for letting me try out stuff with a carried turret.

06:40 (Can't fly him forwards) Alas, you can't fly him forwards or freefall, else he'll be left behind. You also have to be careful not to rotate too quickly.

06:48 (Descent) Here I've strung a few descent clips together. In particular there's one showing vertical descent. He always spins like that when you're going straight down.

07:04 (Landing, and Marines) After reaching the Shade platform (which no longer had the Shade on it), I dismount and the turret once again takes up a roof seat after a bit of jiggling around. I bring the surviving three Marines over for a look, and they're suitably impressed. But while standing around gawping they also start getting killed off. With only one left, I grab a dropped needler and get the turret dislodged in quite spectacular fashion. I think what happened there is, the blast jolted the Banshee, and it was the Banshee's movement which caused his exit. The turret itself doesn't get affected by blasts, which is a darned shame.

08:03 (High hover) That bit of action didn't really have an ideal conclusion on which to end the movie. I attacked it some more with various weapons and eventually deactivated it, but it was kind of boring compared to the way the needler got it out of the Banshee. I was thinking to simply end while needling after the plasma grenade, but really I wanted to get the focus back on an airborne turreted Banshee again. So I've added this clip featuring a bit of high hovering, and done a transition from just after the grenade blast - so we sort of get blasted into this final shot. Much better I think. Actually this is the first time I've used a ripple transition isn't it? I remember considering it a few times in the past, but going with the less distracting circle-open and circle-close styles instead. In this case I thought the ripple effect went nicely with the explosion.

Closing remarks It was fun putting this movie together, but also challenging because there was so much that could've been shown. As a kind of follow-up to BCM126 I didn't want to go significantly past that movie's run time, but fortunately that turned out to be enough to give decent coverage, including full footage of the discovery plus some fun with Marines near the end. Perhaps later I'll do a movie going into further aspects of this weirdness. I certainly plan to have some fun taking the turret to new places, now that I don't have to push it there. I'm sure there's a movie in that.

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