ZombiU Survivor Stories #11–Joseph White Saved the World [Spoilers Ahead]

Joseph White is a warrior. He did the impossible.

I mentioned in my last post that after Joseph was the one to survive the arena, I decided he was the chosen one. I’m not kidding–I was determined to make it through the rest of the game with him, almost to spite that arena level that claimed so many survivors. I’m sure it took me longer to finish the remaining sections, as I was very deliberate, taking everything as slowly as possible to ensure Joseph did not die because of my carelessness.

After stopping back at the safehouse, we needed to collect the remaining documents for Doctor knight to finish researching his cure for the plague. That involved trekking back through most of the areas we’d been to previously, as the documents were letters from john Dee that were found on various corpses in the different locations. Once we had those, we delivered them to Doctor Knight back at Buckingham palace, and headed to the safehouse to gear up.

Prepper was growing increasingly agitated with us, because in his mind, there was no such thing as a cure, and he saw our working with the Ravens of Dee as a betrayal of the guidance he had been giving us. As the game wore on, he went from helping us, to actually hindering us by locking us out of some of the shortcuts between areas.

Doctor Knight eventually radioed that he had created a vaccine and wanted to meet us. We had to take the long way back to Buckingham Palace, and it was littered with zombies. After battling our way there, we arrived at the palace too late to save Doctor Knight–he had succumbed to the virus and was a full-fledged zombie. After dispatching the good doctor, we were able to download the formula for the vaccine, which we now needed to get get to the Tower of London and on the last helicopter out of the city.

Back at the safehouse, Prepper found out what we were doing, and he basically kicked us out. Grabbing the last of our gear, we headed out into the subway station, which was under siege by zombies once again. We used the M2 turret to thin the herd, but it quickly became apparent that we would be overrun. We made a break for the exit, and almost got caught between two groups of zombies, before escaping above ground.

[Spoiler Warning–End of ZombiU being discussed here!!]

What’s cool about how the final sections play out is that you actually get the credits after leaving the subway station. You seemingly end on a cliffhanger, not knowing whether or not you made it out of the city. Once the credits are over however, you are right back in the game and have a chance to get to the evac chopper. It reminded me a bit of the end of Halo: Reach. There are actually three endings you can get, based on whether or not you make it there with the vaccine.

So did we make it? Well, as soon as the credits were over, we were back outside, and needed to get to the Tower of London. I knew this was the point of no return–to die would mean the end of the game. We made it to the docks and the Ravens hovered in a helicopter and tried to illuminate a path for us. Zombies were all over the place, so it was slow going as we swam over to the entrance of the tower grounds.

One mistake almost ended us as we neared our goal. I tried to lure an armored zombie into a wide open area, and ended up backing Joseph into a pile of burning rubble, almost killing us. After cursing myself and using our last first aid kit, we made our way to the stairs and into the tower. I wasn’t taking chances after the fire incident, so I used what was left of our grenades to clear the interior rooms and then headed outside. We had one more winding staircase to climb to get to the landing zone, but I made sure to lure out the zombies lurking around the corner before making our final ascent. We threw a flare to distract the last few zombies and made it to the landing point, triggering the final cut scene.

Joseph White, a 33-year-old street peddler, was my final survivor. Overall, we were together for almost seven hours, during which time Joseph killed over 200 infected. He escaped a zombie-infested London with a vaccine that could save the world.

And back in London, The Prepper is guiding a new recruit to the safehouse…

NOTE: I’ll be making one more post with some final thoughts on ZombiU.