Center of Gravity

Looks like you’re almost at the top of the Citadel. This place is really falling apart! You couldn’t have done this much damage by yourself - guess there are still some Hidden around doing the dirty work.

Fight your way past the Harvesters in your path until you come to a forcefield door, which is easily disabled by spiritwalking. Pass through and kill the Hunters in the control room here. There’s a slot machine in the room, but it’s not rigged like the earlier machines were, making it difficult to make much money on it. The more you make before you hit Game Over, though, the more ammo you’ll get when you do finally cash out.

Hit the switch by the window here once; you should see a platform outside the window go up. With that done, jump through the portal, walk down the steps, and stand on the platform that you just raised; it’s flush up against the wall. With that done, spiritwalk across the gap, turn on the portal here, then jump back to the control room and flip the switch there one more time. That will bring your body down to the lower level, outside the window, where you’ll find a portal that leads onward.

Fire Traps

When you drop down to the next room, dash out and destroy the turret, then focus on the Drones in the area. When you’re ready to move on, stand directly underneath the gravity switcher, then hit it. When gravity is flipped, some fire traps will open on what becomes the ground, so you don’t want to fall into them before you have a chance to move around. From the gravity switcher, drop down to the area near the fire traps, then look up to find another switcher. Again, stand right underneath it, then shoot it to reach its little perch. The door nearby appears to be a dead end, but if you want a moment, the doors will close and you’ll move on to another area of the level.

When you reach this large, open area, head right and follow the path there until you reach a broken section of the platform. Kill the Harvesters, then spiritwalk across the path and use the switch to power on the walkway here. You haven’t seen a walkway, you say? Well, backtrack past the door you emerged from and you’ll locate it. Walk over it and find the shuttle pad to take off. Shoot the large blue emitter further up the shaft to disable its gravity beam, then pass through the gates in the ceiling to move on.

Fly Me To The Moon...

The next chamber is dominated by an asteroid that is puzzlingly covered by an energy shield. That’s no moon.... Well, whatever the reason for the energy shield (none that we can discern), you’ll have to bypass it to move on.

Another difficult puzzle...but only if you forget how to spiritwalk.

Land at the landing platform and walk up the pipes to reach the moon. When gravity shifts, drop through the shield with your spiritwalking and flip both of the switches. One will disable the gravity shield, letting your body drop down to the surface of the asteroid, and one will open the large hangar doors elsewhere in the room. There’s another landing pad on the surface of the asteroid that will let you take off and fly through the hangar doors. Just be sure to kill off any Drones in the area and heal up before leaving this room, as their damage can add up quickly if you ignore them.

In the next large area, there are two large asteroids tethered by pipes. You have to land your shuttle on the lower asteroid, then walk up one set of the pipes to the upper asteroid, where you’ll find a switch that turns on a set of exhaust vents in the ceiling. (There are two sets of pipes, so if you can’t seem to get up one of them, look around for the other.) With that done, return to the lower asteroid and return to your ship. Fly off to the ceiling and wait for one of the two exhaust vents to exhale gas, then shut down. When that happens, quickly fly up into the gap and find the central porthole that opens up, which leads to another gate.

The Core

Video Walk-through

Taking the energy core offline will be a serious blow to the Sphere’s plans.

Watch It »

A simple little shooting sequence winds down this level. Although it’s pretty easy to find out what to do, it’s also somewhat easy to take lethal damage from the energy core here. It’s protected by eight or so shields that rotate around it, each of which will attempt to fire on you with small shells, while the core itself will launch slow-moving but huge white energy balls that do a bunch of damage to you. Keep in mind that there are four landing pads in the room, so if you ever get too close to death, you can run over and hover over a landing pad to recover your health.

To win here, you have to shut down all of the shields; to do so, circle-strafe around the energy core and aim your guns at the point where the shields are connected to the core by the bolt of lightning between them. There’s a small pod on the shields that collects the lightning and uses it to levitate the shields; shoot the pods and you’ll be able to destroy the shields and drop them to the floor.

After all of the shields have been disengaged, the core will be exposed, revealing four small rings inside of it. It’ll still be firing white shells at you, so dodge those as best you can while shooting at the rings. After all four of the rings have been destroyed, you’ll have destroyed the energy core and can proceed up into the hole that’s revealed as a result. The level-ending portal is soon found after that.