Nemesis Mission Rewrite: A Frickin' Essay

This is a bit of a long boy, and probably a bit more involved a suggestion than is typical for this forum, so strap in.

So, y'all know the one mission in the Nemesis arc, right? You find the Russian Captain's Logbook, which leads you to the Cherenkov in Lemuria. You defeat Heklon, free the sub, and then do to the desert to stop your nemesis from freeing Lethka Zakerra, the Ghost Veil.

Cool concept, aggressively mid execution.

There are a ton of issues I have with this mission pairing.

First of all: the two halves have literally nothing to do with each other.

What is your nemesis doing on the Cherenkov? Hell if I know. Heklon says something about searching for an artifact that's been lost, your nem says to keep searching, and then Heklon just says... it doesn't matter, we have the location anyway? And then your nemesis cackles gleefully about detonating the submarine's nuclear warheads, destroying Lemuria and creating a tidal wave to level India, for... reasons? (Side note, Heklon mentions being promised the throne of Lemuria in exchange for your head. How he plans to collect on that promise when Lemuria has been destroyed by a nuclear blast is beyond me).

Absolutely none of this has anything to do with the second bit in the cave. Okay, sure, the "location" Heklon mentions is meant to be that of Ghost Veil's tomb, but what the hell does that have to do with this apparently inconsequential artifact? Or the nuclear explosion? Frickin nothing, that's what!

My second big issue is that this is a Nemesis mission... and you don't get to fight your nemesis. They show up in holograph form to talk to Heklon, and then make an appearance in the cave as they're freeing Ghost Veil, but they piss off at the end of her obnoxiously long cutscene, leaving you to fight her. Thinking about it, I don't even think your nemesis is aware you're involved in this at all--they never address you once.

Ghost Veil is cool, but I don't play through the Nemesis arc to fight her, I wanna fight my evil child, please.

So how do we fix this?

My suggestion, in a nutshell: divorce the two halves. Make the first half into its own encounter, and then repurpose the second half as an alternate final mission.

First, the Cherenkov situation. Okay, so your nemesis is doing something on the Cherenkov and needs to be stopped. Simple enough: change up the dialogue and motivations a bit. Your nemesis is looking to harvest nuclear material to fashion into a bomb, with which they plan to destroy and reshape the West Coast (yes, I'm making this a silly tribute to the first Superman movie. The details are malleable, this is just to fill in for now). and so has raided the Cherenkov with the help of Heklon and his Lemurians. In exchange for his help, Heklon has been promised his own kingdom in the waters that will flood the land as a result of the bomb's aftermath.

You fight Heklon and the minions, free the submarine's captain and crew, and stop your nemesis from collecting its warheads. Your nemesis then pops up via hologram to express annoyance at your interference, but also to gloat that they don't need the warheads anyway: they've harvested more than enough radioactive material from the Atomic Wasteland that is the Southwest Desert to level everything west of the San Andreas Fault!

This leads into a whole new second half, where you travel to the Radiated Gold Mine as usual, but instead of the Ghost Veil thing, you're there to stop your nemesis from detonating their super nuke. You fight off a few waves of enemies, free a captured hero (Drifter no longer seems like the most thematic choice, but there's tons of side-heroes to choose from), and with their help, you fight off your nemesis and stop the bomb's countdown, ending that mission.

So then what of Ghost Veil?

Well, something I think the Nemesis system needs desperately is alternate endings. Deathray Demolition is fun, but if you're like me and you make a lot of nemeses, it's gonna get stale after a while. Rescue the Rocket Hawks, blow up the death ray, lava monster, nemesis clones, yada yada, I can do it with my eyes closed now.

Ghost Veil, though, has a lot of potential to be a viable alternate final mission, I think. The world-ending stakes are similar, after all.

Here's how it goes down:

Instead of Electrovoltaic Polyturbine Residue (a phrase I hope to never have to type again), the mission is kicked off when a minion drops a news article. The article mentions an anthropology professor at the local university, and how she recently discovered an ancient amulet that's said to hold the secret of the location of something called The Ghost Veil, whatever that is.

Just as with the EvPtR, you're led to a location in Mill City, the interior map of which is the university in question.

When you arrive, your nemesis is discussing the amulet and Ghost Veil with a side-villain lackey (this is all meant to more or less mirror Deathray Demolition; this would be a magical villain counterpart to Hard Target). It seems the professor has hidden the amulet somewhere, and your nemesis wants it found! They order their lackey to get the professor, who's currently tied up in the final room of the map (her office, most likely), to spill the location of the amulet.

You fight your way through the building, saving students who are being menaced by minions, until you reach the office. Unfortunately, you're too late; the lackey has discovered the amulet, and some minions are escaping with it. This leaves you to defeat the lackey and rescue not-Lara, who says she knows what (or rather, who) and where the Ghost Veil is, tells you how disastrous it will be if your nemesis manages to free her, and says she'll meet you at her tomb to help stop your nemesis once and for all.

You're led to a location in Monster Island (because let's be real, New Mexico is a silly place to hide an ancient evil), and once inside, you meet up with not-Lara and proceed further into the tomb.

The map would have to be extended to match the intensity of Deathray Demolition, but the elements can be in a different order. The rest is just sort of a loose example as to how it could fit together.

First you have to fight through some minions, standard fodder. Your nemesis appears, swearing that you'll not stop them from freeing Ghost Veil, and you get to fight them for the first time. As you drop their health to zero, they retreat into the next room, leaving you to follow.

You head into the next room, and your nemesis is using the amulet to control Azec the Guardian, forcing him to allow them to pass. They turn to taunt you before heading further into the tomb, leaving you to fight Azec. Not-Lara helps as best she can, but she's not much of a fighter. Luckily, part way through the fight, Drifter shows up (because he's cool and everyone loves him~) and helps defeat Azec.

The three of you head into the next chamber, where your Nemesis is just finishing freeing Ghost Veil. The cutscene plays, it's revealed that there's no way your nem can control her, and now your nem is seriously regretting their life decisions and runs into an adjacent chamber.

Now you get to fight Ghost Veil. The process of fighting and re-entombing her would probably be fairly similar; you and Drifter keep her busy while not-Lara sets dynamite to blow at four supporting pillars in the corners of the chamber. You periodically have to go help keep zombies off of her, then quickly return to Ghost Veil. This fight would be more akin to Viperia's, I think, where the object is less to defeat her and more to just keep her attention off not-Lara, buying her time to set the TNT. Every time she sets a charge, Ghost Veil takes notice and goes after her, and you have to get her attention back on you. If you manage to drop Veil to zero HP, you get a brief reprieve to collect yourself and fight off whatever zombies are hassling not-Lara, but not nearly as long as you get in the current fight.

Once all the dynamite is set, you get her down to zero one more time, then run into the next chamber, so not-Lara can blow the pillars. Veil is entombed again, the world is safe, hooray!

But you're not done yet.

Your nemesis reappears, briefly grateful for you saving their bacon from Ghost Veil... but not so grateful that they're not going to kill you for disrupting their plans.

So now you get to fight your nemesis. You defeat them once, and then perhaps the amulet that led them to the location of the tomb gives them an extra boost of power, giving you a second phase where they grow in size and strength (to replace the triplicate villains in Deathray Demolition). After this fight, you get swarmed by minions for a second, then fight them one final time, at last ending the arc and leading into the League of Destruction cutscene.

This way, there's a lot more adhesion between missions--no weird pairing of nuclear submarine and ancient evil scourge of humanity--you get to actually fight the villain you made to fight, AND we get another way to finish off the arc that isn't the same old Deathray mission. Again, this is all really involved and probably well beyond what's reasonable to expect, but I had to at least get the ideas out of my head.