YOU FLY UNBOUND BENEATH ETERNITY
YOU FLY UNBOUND BENEATH ETERNITY
Cargo: samuel...SAMUELOkay so I finished AoA. One sitting, so it couldn't have been too bad, I guess.
Now I went into this with a bit of foreknowledge. I was already aware that the battlegroup would be rerouted into an alternate reality where the Lucifer had destroyed Earth, and I knew the Vishnans existed. I was also aware of a few other details that led to certain things being more predictable (for example, I knew there was a Sath debeaming mission, which meant I wasn't surprised when the Sathanas showed up).
All that being said:
Art, visuals, music, mission design, and gameplay were all fantastic. Most of the voice acting was good; a bit of it was overdone, but not too badly. Bei's was pretty spectacular.
It wasn't really as hard as I'd expected. Played on Normal, and Forced Entry took a few tries, but it wasn't too hard. A Time for Heroes took a while, but I think that was because I was using Stilettos (I wanted to prove that they would work well against Sath beams, as part of my ongoing vendetta against the GTVA's stupidity in FS2) rather than Helios torps and was too stubborn to switch when it didn't work the first few times.
However, the writing was...well, it wasn't bad. There was some absolutely
great stuff in there. Mostly the Vishnans. <3 I'm such a complete sucker for benevolent eldritch abominations.
But a lot of the other stuff was pretty inconsistent. The first half, prior to the Vishnans showing up in force, was pretty bleh, and I felt the reveal of the alternate reality could have been done better. And the whole time I was like "where's all the theology and information theory stuff", until that started showing up (but it was still pretty sparse, and not integrated all that well). Also, everybody felt a little bit too composed considering the situation they were in.
And then Bei runs off to see the wizard and it just has no buildup at all. Yeah, there was the dream (which was a pretty good mission in its own right btw), and the Vishnans being all spoopy and everything, but I simply hadn't seen enough of Bei's character and history to buy into the moment. It was played as though it was a desperate act, which is true since his father's life was at stake, but it was right after the Shivans had gotten their asses handed to them, so it felt kind of off.
Bei's ascension came completely out of left field for me, and that whole sequence of missions were basically awesome. Again, Vishnans. <3
So they blow up the Lucifer, and the Keeper gets stabbed in the back by the Sathanas, and then...Bei gets his body back? And everybody just sort of ignores how he was an omniscient (?) psychic mind ghost for a while? That...sort of seems like the kind of thing that would have significant effects on one's personality, don't you think?
But Bei seems pretty much unchanged, and we don't even get any musings on how he remembers the experience. I think he's more confident, maybe? Before, he would go from full-scale flag-waving GTVA patriotism to grim uncertainty at the drop of a hat -- I guess you could infer that the patriotism was just him staying confident in front of his squadmates, but it seemed heartfelt to me. After the Vishnan thing, it's mostly just patriotism.
And then there's some more stuff with the Shivans, and then a magic space trial, and then a giant escort mission. Fitting, that such a signficant FS2 mod would conclude with a huge GTVA armada facing off against all the Nahema bombers ever. That just sort of encapsulates FS2, doesn't it? "Go kill bombers. Forever."
Then they meet the UEF and treachery ensues. It did make me realize why the story had been emphasizing Bei's respect for the GTVA so much. I had already known that WiH involved a GTVA-UEF war, and I was sort of wondering how that was going to happen -- the GTVA had seemed pretty reasonable in this campaign, at least compared to the Chaotic Stupid GTVA of FS2 (or the Stupid Evil GTVA of Homesick). But I guess it was just that Admiral Bei was a reasonable person, and the GTVA are still just as bananas as ever. It was an excellent scene, all around.
Anyway yeah. That's my review of Blue Planet: Age of Aquarius. Looked great, played great, sounded great (except for the FREAKING BALOR AAAGH), but the writing was kinda disjointed.
Couple technical quibbles: whenever a friendly cap ship sent a "our hull is below whatever integrity please don't let the Shivans kill us" message, there was this sort of screaming in the background. Sounded like maybe one of the death cries, looped and overlapping? It was actually pretty cool and creepy, but I get the impression it wasn't supposed to be happening.
Also was I supposed to be able to go into external view and look at my spacesuit during the flashback dream thing?
Oh, and the cosmology and explanation for the Shivans and everything felt pretty simplistic, but I'll get into that later.
