A first look inside Tabula Rasa's Omega Labs, part 3

Has Sandorf gone mad? When you meet him — a monster of a man... if he can still be called one... nearly twice as tall as a player, with eyes glowing brilliant red — he claims not.

They sent you to kill me? Did they tell you I was insane? Nonsense! My followers and I are on a quest to better ourselves. We are evolving towards a state of perfection. These so-called logos receptives are the abomination, don't you see? Logos is the original sin. You must die, all of you. My Omega device will ensure that you do. Welcome to the hour of your death.

This is not the first time we've heard mention of the Omega device. Throughout the zone we've run across cryptic messages exclaiming, "Omega will rise!" However, there's hardly time to think about it at this point, as after that brief, self-important speech, Sandorf and the four Thrax machina in the room focus their attention on turning you and your teammates into fish-food. Sandorf is not a pushover, but McLaughlin tells us killing him will be worth it. "When this goes into the live game he'll be dropping some really nice item sets. That's a new thing we've added to the game where if you have the whole item set you get special bonuses." Sandorf will drop a random set item every time you kill him.

Now that Sandorf is out of the way, we can enter the door behind him to see what all of this "Omega" nonsense is about. Once you step through the door, you're pulled into a short cut-scene that pulls you into the room and gives you a first look at what the Omega device is: a massive rocket. McLaughlin tells us, "We're trying to do cut-scenes more and more because they're very cool and they lend a lot. In the overland maps they're hard to do because there are so many players and so much going on, but in the instances we can do a much more directed experience."