Give the sniper to Colby

This map is mainly outdoors. There’s a long road down the middle that’s the main feature. On one side is basically a forest with a few buildings and hills, and on the other side is all industrial warehouses and construction sites.

You load in, immediately crouching and listening. You’re on the forest side. You check your magazine then your fire mode on your AK, then pull your shotgun and check the chamber. You’ve always done this since that one time you dutifully kitted yourself out and brought everything, but forgot to actually load a magazine into your rifle. You ran into a guy and fired one shot because there’d been a round in the chamber, but no magazine. You survived that experience, but it’s lingered in your gamer memory.

“I’m in. Where are you?” Colby asks.

“Concrete fences. I think we’re just above the dorms,” you say, trying to remember this map. You don’t have the hours on this game that you need to be good at it, but you have a basic understanding of where things on this map are.

You hear crunching in the bushes.

“Is that you?” you ask, raising your AK.

“It’s me.” Colby appears, as a Bear PMC with no equipment except for a face covering. No, she brought a handgun. A Glock. That is not going to be useful.

“Here,” you say, dumping your backpack on the ground and moving to a nearby tree. You lean out and cover the hillside while she equips herself with the stuff you brought.

“What is this gun?” she asks, and you can picture her making a face.

“Jude Law shot people with it in a movie,” you tell her.

“Oh, it’s got the big bullets. But no silencer.”

“Don’t use it unless we get into trouble,” you warn. You’re edgy and nervous. Your usual gamer confidence is not in play here; you aren’t good at this game like you are in other games. And this game is just… ugh. What does Colby see in it? Maybe she just likes to suffer.

She appears beside you, now wearing armor, a rig, helmet, and a headset. She pulls the M4 that you brought for her and removes the sight from it, replacing it with one that she must have brought for herself.

“Where are we going?” you ask, turning right to look along the wall. When you were a newer player, you would often spawn up on this side of the map and use the wall to navigate. It wouldn’t surprise you to see some low-level PMC player come scurrying along, hustling to get to dorms.

“There’s a big construction area around skeleton,” Colby says.

“What’s skeleton?”

“It’s like the concrete building with no building. Construction stuff.”

“Is it toward the good basement exit or toward Big Red?” you ask, trying to picture the map.

“In the middle, almost.”

“So we could get there by just cutting across the road?”

“Yeah, but we should stay away from dorms,” Colby says.

She moves out, and you follow. Creeping around two minutes after spawning is pointless, but running will get you killed. This game lets you adjust your walking speed with your mouse wheel, which you admit, is extremely cool. Briskly, you move down through the trees. The dorms appear to your right: two buildings with tight corridors. AI opponents spawn in there, and there are quest items and good loot. This is a hotspot. You don’t want to be here.

Keeping your distance, you make your way around. Seconds later, shots pop off in the direction of the dorms, muffled. Someone is fighting scavs inside the far building. You want no part of it.

You reach the road without difficulty. You should’ve brought a sight with some magnification, but it’s too late to change it now. With your red dot up, you scan the road from the bushes, then move out to a low concrete barrier and take cover. So far so good.

Colby positions herself nearby, just far enough away that one grenade won’t get you both. She’s gotten better at this since the handful of times that you two played it together.

“I don’t know why there are always people in there,” she mutters.

“Maybe they have the same quest you do.”

“I don’t know. Look, maybe we should wait.”

That’s a thought. This is a forty-minute raid. The more time that passes, the more PMCs are dead or have already gotten out. Scav players will spawn, but they are not as much of a threat. You’ll have an easier time in a hotspot if let some of the action pass you by.

On the other hand, waiting means less time to get out. It’s not enough for Colby to accomplish her objective; she has to exit the map safely to complete the quest.

Wait?

Or proceed?