A first look inside Tabula Rasa's Omega Labs, part 4
When the cut-scene ends, you receive an incoming transmission from the Director: stop the rocket!
The missile's launch sequence has been initiated and there's no way to stop it. We believe Sandorf programmed it to detonate in the upper atmosphere ans spread its payload across the planet. You can't stop the launch, but there should be a manual override panel. if you can get to it, you should be able to alter the missile's trajectory.
McLaughlin pauses to give us a bit of back-story, "Recently we've found out, in our end-game to date, that the AFS has released a virus that anyone with Eloh DNA (all Thrax, all Bane, but also all logos receptives), and they were going to activate that virus as a last resort if they needed to. They would kill half of their own people but they would win the war." The Omega missile's payload is that virus, designed to eliminate the the "Eloh devils" Sandorf feared.
You'll have to fight your way across a large open space to the launch platform — with time running out. In between bursts of gunfire, McLaughlin tells us that the inspiration for this part of the instance came from the final scene of a James Bond movie, mixed with Beneath the Planet of the Apes, where they have the Doomsday Missile. Once you reach the override panel and set things right (or as right as they can be), you get another cutscene of the missile launching, and The Director himself shows up at the nearest teleporter to congratulate you.
Of the cutscene and your meeting with The Director, McLaughlin tells us, "One of the things we're trying to do in the game is have a nice big finale to the instances — not just 'Oh we killed everything, time to go.' But have something that really pays off."
On the development side, Omega Labs has actually been planned on paper since well before the game shipped — but the team didn't start working on it until recently. They estimate most of the work was done in about twelve weeks (the rough version of the instance, anyway), with extra time for polishing and tweaking it to be just right. Says McLaughlin, "I'm really happy with it. It's faster paced than a survival horror game where you're creeping around corners. When a monster sees you in Tabula Rasa, he goes right for you." The instance is on the home strech of completion at this point: the development team expects that Omega Labs will be on the next deployment to the PTS (which should be happening soon), with deployment to the live servers around the end of August.