Yeesh, this campaign was creepy. But that was a good thing, considering the plot. Very well done.
Except the first time I heard the breathing, I was afraid some face was going to jump out like they do with those stupid Flash movies.
I must say, that penultimate mission was an outstanding piece of work. Unique concept, clever implementation, great use of the new sexps, and really, really fun. (Freaking hard though. I was lucky enough to beat it on the second try, but I was down to 6% hull.)
What happens if you fail to destroy all the Pegasi in time? I looked in the mission file but there didn't seem to be any mission failure condition. Seems to me if you fail to kill the Transcendant before the node collapses, you lose (and possibly merge with the Transcendant yourself). It would have been cool to see this as an alternate ending.
I have only one gripe with the campaign, but it's a major one:
Transcend shares the same malady that affects Homesick and Sync: Repetitive Mission Syndrome. There were too many missions during the campaign that were either "dash to the subspace node and avoid the fighters chasing you, but watch out for the ship blockading the node", or "arrive in a new system followed promptly by one or more warships, then wait for your subspace drives to recharge which curiously takes exactly the length of time required to destroy all the fighters". The end of the campaign suffered heavily from this, as it seemed like there were about 12 of them strung in a row. You could have easily removed half (or more) of these missions and not harmed the story at all.
Would you consider posting transcripts of the distorted sound clips?