Okay, so I finished this game recently, and I really enjoyed it. Despite its bugs and some instances of oldgame-itis, I enjoyed my time with it and am currently playing through it again. However, something has been bothering me.

How in the hell does Jensen survive that shuttle crash? You get it in the LEO shuttle to travel to Panchaea, and on the way down out of orbit the cinematic clearly shows the shuttle's parachute system failing, and Jensen's "oh shit" look as he sees it. The shuttle slams into the ocean surface, the cutscene ends, and all of a sudden Jensen is on Panchaea all hunky dory and in perfect health. I know he's a transhuman and capable of great feats of strength and survivability, but he should have been flattened like a pancake.

I don't really care, but I am curious to know what happened there. I think I heard the cinematics were made by another studio (like the boss fights), but I don't know if that is true or not. Did Eidos just not have time to fix that continuity error? I can accept that the shuttle had some kind of safety system for just such a crash, but the lack of explanation in the game had me laughing at the absurdity.

Here's the cinematic:

So it's not a spoiler that Jensen survives the shuttle?

Nanomachines.

He's a robot man!

Augments, bro. Augments.

In all seriousness, I also remember thinking this was weird.

If he survived what happened to him at the start he can survive anything. 

Icarus Landing System?

What is oldgame-itis, especially in the context of a 9 month old title?

He never asked to die in a shuttle crash

It's the future..

Well it's 10 or so years into the future but still.. space.

Aliens man... Aliens...

• It's an aerodynamic missle for one, it's entry into the water is going to be as smooth as possible, limiting the sudden deceleration.
• Secondly how high you are doesn't really matter after a point, your terminal velocity is going to be the same for a given object shape, meaning limited.
• Solid foam tech can potentially fill the entire shuttle and protect it from both becoming a metal harmonica while at the same time protecting the person inside.

I was a physics nerd at an earlier point in my life ^.^

There feel better now? :P

he was actually indoctrinated.

@OllyOxenFree said:

Nanomachines.

@Tennmuerti: Sort of, but I still think it is odd. More so the complete lack of explanation. It's the future so I thought "yea okay I guess there's some future-tech safety thing that saves his butt" but it's just funny how the cinematic makes a point of showing you that the parachute fails and then it has no consequences.

@Tennmuerti said:

• It's an aerodynamic missle for one, it's entry into the water is going to be as smooth as possible, limiting the sudden deceleration.
• Secondly how high you are doesn't really matter after a point, your terminal velocity is going to be the same for a given object shape, meaning limited.
• Solid foam tech can potentially fill the entire shuttle and protect it from both becoming a metal harmonica while at the same time protecting the person inside.

I was a physics nerd at an earlier point in my life ^.^

There feel better now? :P

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I have a question regarding your second point. Surely the air draft slowed the missile to a constant velocity, but how do we know that the shuttle was not accelerating, i.e. it wasn't merely a "free fall"?

@valrog:

I guess we don't really. But the propulsion jet we see when it is falling seems much smaller then it was at takeoff, i assume it's only on for trajectory control anyway.

Honestly tho, i really don't think that people who made the cinematic gave this much thought overall. @dennisthemennis: I guess that last sentence also kind of answers your question why it's odd, if it was outsourced there were bound to be inconsistencies, especially when it's not just rote action cinematic, fuck even Hollywood can hardly ever get their physics right during big budget sci-fi popcorn flicks.

If you pause it at 1:06 the timer says 25 000 kph. Don't know if he's going that fast, but you can also see the thrusters firing.

@Tennmuerti: No one seems to care about the laws of physics this days. Oh, don't get me started on Hollywood...

He didn't ask for this...thread.

Video games.

I don't know, video games.