Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: sunnyB on June 27, 2014, 07:54:15 pm
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Is there any hypothesis's as to why there was only ONE Lucifer in freespace 1? I mean the Shivans had 80+ Sathanas's, so why not have 80+ Lucifer's?
And also, why was there no Lucifer in Freespace 2?
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There are several theories, off the top of my head they are summarized as.
Lucifer is a ludicrously resource/cost high technology for application
Lucifer is a discontinued line stranded in the local subspace region
Lucifer was deployed as a scaled response to the local situation which did not anticipate an alliance between the local species
Shivans are no longer able to create more Lucifer destroyers for whatever reason
I think thats it... could be wrong though
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That's not quite it :nervous:
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I've always leaned towards option 3, more specifically it's purpose built to wipe out planets and is only deployed when they want to do specifically that. FS2 did not have them wanting to do that yet.
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FS1: Lucifers and Saths perform different roles; they only ever need one Lucifer (possibly in total, or possibly per x unit of Shivan-patrolled space)
FS2: If they deployed additional super-shielded super-ships, it would result in us blowing up more jump nodes, and they don't want that. Although this explanation is kind of unnecessary if you go with the "different roles" theory.
"What are these roles of which you speak?" Idunno, make something up.
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Lucifer is a ludicrously resource/cost high technology for application
Lucifer is a discontinued line stranded in the local subspace region
Lucifer was deployed as a scaled response to the local situation which did not anticipate an alliance between the local species
Shivans are no longer able to create more Lucifer destroyers for whatever reason
The Shivans in FS1 and FS2 are not actually the same group.
Lucifer is not deployed against civilizations that have demonstrated the capacity to destroy it.
Lucifer is expeditionary, Shivan fleet in FS2 is not.
Lucifer isn't expeditionary, Shivan fleet in FS2 is.
Lucifer fleet is newer or older than Shivan fleet in FS2 and reflects different doctrine or technology base.
Lucifer is considered flawed design after its destruction prevented the Shivans from completing their attempts to destroy Earth. (Something they apparently had a shot at doing, c.f. Hellfire in Silent Threat.)
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They do not need it. The Lucifer is not very suitable for space warfare. Its strongest "weapon" was its shielding technology, which is, as far as we know, useless against beam-weaponary.
And without its shield, the Lucifer has "only" countless ships in its hangar bay, but is nearly defenseless against enemy attacks, because it has too less turrets for a ship of its size.
Maybe it is simply easier to reequip a Demon destroyer with better weaponary than to rebuild the Lucifer class with more turrets :).
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Maybe Lucifers simply aren't a common model and the whole Capella thing escalated to juggs before one could take the field.
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Lucifer is a discontinued line stranded in the local subspace region
I agree with this. Specifically, I say that the Lucifer was a prototype world-killer that was put through its paces on the local civilizations. When the Ancients found the Shivans (and subsequently retreated) via the Knossos network, the Lucifer fleet followed. The fleet did its job by wiping the Ancients, but were stuck in this region of space when the first Knossos was shut down. Since the fleet was made up of mostly military ships, they didn't have too much in the way of R&D. So they didn't know how to or care to reopen the Knossos. And the only beams they had were the primitive beams on the Lucifer.
On the other side, the main Shivan presence scrapped the Lucifer for the Sathanas. They got rid of the shielding system for more (and better) beams, which they put on all their ships. The Sathanas prototype did a better job at killing civilizations than the Lucifer, so they started making them en masse. I think that the Lucifer could have done the same thing the Sathanas did if there 80+ of them, if only less efficiently.
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given the behavior we see I personally believe the sath's destructive power as a side effect of a specialised purpose involving stars of an as of yet undetermined special type whereas the Lucifer is a military vessel.
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FS1's shivans were headed straight to Vasuda Prime and Earth to destroy them. FS2's shivans were headed towards Cappella to supernovae it and create a wormhole. Different purposes, different designs.
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The Lucifer is puzzlebox; if a civilization is able to figure out how to destroy the ship they earned their survival.... at least that was theory I had been working with.
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I like the theory that Shivan ships are organic (but not necessarily carbon-based life). The Lucifer was just a genetic anomaly that never got to take off. And since (with more speculation of course) Shivan capital ships take thousands of years before hitting reproductive stage, it never caught on.
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That's not quite it :nervous:
And for people who didn t get it, click Battuta's sig for a more elaborate answer than the ones above ;)
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The Lucifer is puzzlebox; if a civilization is able to figure out how to destroy the ship they earned their survival.... at least that was theory I had been working with.
I think this is a super cool theory. It's even a bit metatextual.
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You yourself used that theory in BP.
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The Lucifer is puzzlebox; if a civilization is able to figure out how to destroy the ship they earned their survival.... at least that was theory I had been working with.
The best answer here. I like the idea that was mentioned in Blue Planet in the last mission,that the Shivans are endlessly diverse,and that they adapt to their enemies.Lucifer was sent because of the war between Terrans and Vasudans,it's cause to bring them together in a fight for survival. Sorry if i got something wrong haven't played FS2 in a while.
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You yourself used that theory in BP.
It even gets namechecked in canon, I think. Maybe a bit glancingly and I don't instantly recall where.
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And there is a other very important reason.
If in FS1 would have been multiple Luciferclass-destroyers the Terran-Vasuidan Alliance would never be able to beat the Shivan fleet.
They hardly managed to destroyed the singel one.
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And there is a other very important reason.
If in FS1 would have been multiple Luciferclass-destroyers the Terran-Vasuidan Alliance would never be able to beat the Shivan fleet.
They hardly managed to destroyed the singel one.
the question basically is why were there no more in FS2 given that virtually every other shivan ship gets an outing and that the force would appear to be many magnitudes larger
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Lucifer is Highlander (There can be only one)
Lucifer is Dragonheart (I am the last one)
Lucifer is the man now dog
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It also could be that the Lucifer-design is antiquated.
At the and of the ancient war the shivans knew that thei're not the only one who can track ships through subspace.
But the shivan shield design won't work in suspace and in this combiation the atvantages against the sathanas design gets smaller.
While the Sathanas is able to absorb ataccs of indigenous species just through sheer mass the Lucifer is depending on their shields and generators. so there is also a higher vunreability against a massive EMP-Attack.
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And there is a other very important reason.
If in FS1 would have been multiple Luciferclass-destroyers the Terran-Vasuidan Alliance would never be able to beat the Shivan fleet.
They hardly managed to destroyed the singel one.
the question basically is why were there no more in FS2 given that virtually every other shivan ship gets an outing and that the force would appear to be many magnitudes larger
Re-introducing the Lucifer into FS2 would have diminished its value in the first game.
In the same way that introducing dozens of Jedi in the Star Wars prequels diminished what it means to be a jedi.
Not only that but the story of FS2 is very clearly meant to mimick FS1's story.
The player is meant to believe that the Sathanas is the next new boss ship, replacing the lucifer in both function and form. It's a bait and switch. Later on when the second Sathanas is introduced, and dozens more thereafter, the nature, tone and pace of the story changes dramatically and takes the story and the player into new and exciting territory. In such a story the lucifer would add nothing and would in fact be a distraction.
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I agree with you.
And I'm tending to open a discussion about the first three episodes of the starwars saga.
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The Lucifer is puzzlebox; if a civilization is able to figure out how to destroy the ship they earned their survival.... at least that was theory I had been working with.
I think this is a super cool theory. It's even a bit metatextual.
Thank you for the flowers ... but I abandoned that approach because it gives the Shivans a very antropomorphic intentionality (is that even a word in english?) or a tangible grand sceme of things; it takes away much of mystery and the terror
and right now I'm more focused on the idea why the GTA named their unknown enemies "Shivans" and what the re-construction-era society made of the Shivans ("The only reason the GTVA is still in power is that we think of the Shivans as monsters"); sadly I've a few problems with translating these ideas into FS-typical gameplay
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And there is a other very important reason.
If in FS1 would have been multiple Luciferclass-destroyers the Terran-Vasuidan Alliance would never be able to beat the Shivan fleet.
They hardly managed to destroyed the singel one.
the question basically is why were there no more in FS2 given that virtually every other shivan ship gets an outing and that the force would appear to be many magnitudes larger
Re-introducing the Lucifer into FS2 would have diminished its value in the first game.
In the same way that introducing dozens of Jedi in the Star Wars prequels diminished what it means to be a jedi.
Not only that but the story of FS2 is very clearly meant to mimick FS1's story.
The player is meant to believe that the Sathanas is the next new boss ship, replacing the lucifer in both function and form. It's a bait and switch. Later on when the second Sathanas is introduced, and dozens more thereafter, the nature, tone and pace of the story changes dramatically and takes the story and the player into new and exciting territory. In such a story the lucifer would add nothing and would in fact be a distraction.
Hmm. Why wouldn't the Lucifer be able to fulfill the role the SD Ravana does in the FS2 story?
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Hmm. Why wouldn't the Lucifer be able to fulfill the role the SD Ravana does in the FS2 story?
It really all depends on the Lucifer's shields.
If they truly are invulnerable to everything (except in subspace), including beams, EMP's, meson bombs..., then the Lucifer is a much bigger danger than the Ravana. Yes, you could destroy it in subspace, but that would require it to leave the nebula system, as intrasystem jumps are nearly instantaneous. As long as it stays in the nebula, it's safe.
If the shields are only resilient (or not at all) to beams, then you have something slightly more dangerous than the Ravana, but then the player can't really participate in its destruction. You have to destroy it with beamed ships.
If there are no shields, then the Lucifer is not really a danger. Yes, it has 8x the hull strength of the Ravana, but offensively it doesn't really compare. Bombers can just kill the two beams and it's done (that would make Bearbaiting much easier).
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I can think of a few answers, but the one I prefer is that the Lucifer isn't a warship.
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The Lucifer is puzzlebox; if a civilization is able to figure out how to destroy the ship they earned their survival.... at least that was theory I had been working with.
I think this is a super cool theory. It's even a bit metatextual.
Thank you for the flowers ... but I abandoned that approach because it gives the Shivans a very antropomorphic intentionality (is that even a word in english?) or a tangible grand sceme of things; it takes away much of mystery and the terror
Weird. He liked it when you said it, but he didn't like it when Rheyah said it (Shivans are testing us.)
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BTW, there's one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet I believe in this thread, and that's that the Lucifer seemed to be serving some kind of hive mind function as well. It's talked about afterwards how the Shivans seem to have lost their edge so to speak with the destruction of the Lucifer, both in terms of intelligence and putting up a fight. Of course, I'm sure that's just that :v: needed an excuse for how we could go from the brink of annihilation to essentially a large scale mop-up operation to get the Shivans out of the way so the real enemy of the expansion can take the stage.
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The Lucifer is puzzlebox; if a civilization is able to figure out how to destroy the ship they earned their survival.... at least that was theory I had been working with.
I think this is a super cool theory. It's even a bit metatextual.
Thank you for the flowers ... but I abandoned that approach because it gives the Shivans a very antropomorphic intentionality (is that even a word in english?) or a tangible grand sceme of things; it takes away much of mystery and the terror
It doesn't have to at all! I'm not a big fan of the idea that the Shivans are a massive cosmic test, but you can see how BP tackles this and kinda gets at the best of both worlds. BP has the wrinkle of placing a holocide anima aboard the Lucifer (left over from the Ancient cull), which explains the breakdown of Shivan organization after 'Good Luck' without going full Ender's Game.
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It's talked about afterwards how the Shivans seem to have lost their edge so to speak with the destruction of the Lucifer, both in terms of intelligence and putting up a fight.
Nobody talks about it in this thread because the major contribution of Silent Threat to the canon was actually to deny this theory via Hellfire, and the fact that circa Hellfire there was a major fleet action ongoing and the scales were close enough that a small group of Shivan cruisers was considered so likely to tip the balance it was worth deploying GTI and their new bombers against them.
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It's not canonically denied - it's considered a theory with some evidence in support.
Xenobiologists know very little about Shivan society. A leading hypothesis is the hive mind theory, arguing that Shivan society is broken down in specialized functions driven by a collective intelligence. The most convincing evidence supporting this theory is the behavior of Shivan forces following the destruction of the Lucifer, the turning point of the Great War. Other experts caution against attributing insectoid properties to the Shivans, regardless of their appearance and behavior.
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Honestly, I think that the Sathanas fleet is the first time that the Terrans and Vasudans even managed to show up as a blip on the Shivan's radar.
Lucifer fleets basically existing to sterilize planets near subspace activity. Sathanas fleets being more utility ships to re-organize node networks if they were disrupted (i.e. Sol node and Knossos).
The Lucifer basically being like a Leviathan while a Sathanas might be more like a Faustus.
I could see the Terrans and Vasudans starting to have capital ship shielding in a post Sol-reunification era, only to discover that the Lucifer was effectively one of the smallest Shivan "military" ships.
I've always seen the Shivans as basically just reacting to subspace disturbances and swatting anything in the way. Now *why* they feel a need to maintain and reconfigure subspace nodes and weighting taking out or working around FTL capable species is another question.
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I've never liked the "Lucifer is a small Shivan ship" theory. It presupposes that things can't be dangerous if they're not huge (a.k.a. the Inferno school of thought). Huge things are generally more capable of producing devastation focused into a tiny area relative to their size, but I think that in terms of the Shivans that sort of 'eggs in one basket' (whether they have more baskets is meaningless) mentality is really missing something that makes the Shivans the Shivans. It's an anthropomorphization of something that shouldn't really be anthropomorphized.
I'd be much more intrigued by a Shivan response that identifies Terran and Vasudan doctrinal shifts. Namely, that between FS1 and FS2 the capital ship has become orders of magnitude more dangerous to anything else on the field, but their greatest strength lies in holding territory. The Shivans don't need to hold territory by any objectives they've displayed in either FS1 or FS2, so why do they bring along capital ships of their own?
Transport? Terran and Vasudan fighters are capable of traversing nodes. Pilot readiness/comfort? I doubt it. Rearmament? That's probably the biggest argument, but I think it still falls short. Shivan fighters and bombers are ultimately expendable. A Shivan incursion that consisted of thousands upon thousands of fighters and bombers and little else would be a devastating end around to the Terran/Vasudan military paradigm. You can't shock jump a fighter. You can disarm a bomber, but a dozen more line up right behind it. Anti-fighter weaponry would advance by precipitous need in leaps and bounds, or the GTVA would go under in a matter of months.
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The Lucifer is puzzlebox; if a civilization is able to figure out how to destroy the ship they earned their survival.... at least that was theory I had been working with.
I think this is a super cool theory. It's even a bit metatextual.
Thank you for the flowers ... but I abandoned that approach because it gives the Shivans a very antropomorphic intentionality (is that even a word in english?) or a tangible grand sceme of things; it takes away much of mystery and the terror
It doesn't have to at all! I'm not a big fan of the idea that the Shivans are a massive cosmic test, but you can see how BP tackles this and kinda gets at the best of both worlds.
I'd be happy to have this discussion some other time, when all cards regarding BP are on the table. I'm certainly no fan of the "BP cosmology" as it has been revealed so far but I don't have the full picture yet.
Weird. He liked it when you said it, but he didn't like it when Rheyah said it (Shivans are testing us.)
Because I said something very different. In 2011 I posted a crude draft of the idea here (link (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=76095.msg1509884#msg1509884)), maybe that will shed some light on it.
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I've never been a fan of the Shivans being selective in their destruction based on morality. What's more scary, a pious warrior or an active indiscriminate killer? One you have long negotiations with and the other you just shriek and run from.
I'm not sure if it's canon but I heard that the Lucifer was a scouting vessel sent with a scouting fleet. It is a specialist vessel designed to defeat lesser races who don't know how to penetrate shield defenses. I always thought a race "Passing the Lucifer test" was a bad thing for that race because it signaled the shivans to send a proper fleet.
Lucifer = submarine Sathanas = battleship
Then again, what really probably stirred the bee's nest was project ETAC. Actively moving into shivan space with a "Here we are guys" beacon probably isn't good.
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Because I said something very different. In 2011 I posted a crude draft of the idea here (link (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=76095.msg1509884#msg1509884)), maybe that will shed some light on it.
I like that very much.
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What's more scary, a pious warrior or an active indiscriminate killer? One you have long negotiations with and the other you just shriek and run from.
Acutally that depend on your view of "what is the worst thing that can happen to you?"
A truly "indiscriminate killer" has no other interest in you or conflict with you; there is no agenda to furfilled or no need for justification for the act. The worst thing such a person will do to you (or a society) is kill you.
A "pious warrior" has an adgenda which compells him/her to attack not only you personally but everything you are connected to that is objectionable accoriding to his/her agenda. Such a person would not just kill you but also destroy everything you held dear in your live, due to being associated with you; such a person might actively try to erase your existence from the collective memory and with your that eliminate all traces of your ideas, struggles and experiences, which are of potential benefit to others.
If you fears begin and end with your personal physical well-being, the "indiscriminate killer" is certainly the bigger issue. But if you are concerned more that what your life and it's contents can and will mean to others the "pious warrior" is the worse threat.
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I've always seen the Shivans as basically just reacting to subspace disturbances and swatting anything in the way. Now *why* they feel a need to maintain and reconfigure subspace nodes and weighting taking out or working around FTL capable species is another question.
Has anyone thought that Capella going supernova was an accident? That they were trying to do something else, but they messed up and blew the star up? That would explain why some of the Juggernauts going dark right before the explosion. The others were trying to escape (which they could have done pretty easily given that a supernova doesn't disrupt subspace too much). That would mean the Shivans aren't perfect, but I'm OK with that.
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Now there's an idea...
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Yeah, it was something that came up a lot in discussion in years past. In general I think it's dramatically unsatisfying.
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The Lucifer is a real blip in the storyline, it's a design old enough to have fought the Ancients, and the only Shivan capship that is shielded, which may prove a weakness in Subspace, but surely that would be outweighed by the tactical advantage it would give in-system? Also, the Lucifer was a directly aggressive foe, whereas in FS2, the GTVA were treated more as an annoyance that a tactical target to be neutralized.
I've sometimes wondered if the Shivans are almost 'reflections' of those they are fighting, and the Lucifer was a leftover from the wars with the Ancients, so it's a completely different kind of Shivan to the kind that we encounter.
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The Lucifer is a real blip in the storyline, it's a design old enough to have fought the Ancients, and the only Shivan capship that is shielded, which may prove a weakness in Subspace, but surely that would be outweighed by the tactical advantage it would give in-system? Also, the Lucifer was a directly aggressive foe, whereas in FS2, the GTVA were treated more as an annoyance that a tactical target to be neutralized.
I've sometimes wondered if the Shivans are almost 'reflections' of those they are fighting, and the Lucifer was a leftover from the wars with the Ancients, so it's a completely different kind of Shivan to the kind that we encounter.
Totipotent threat response agency prioritized. Reactivate dormant cull component
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I always did like the idea that the Lucifer fleet were cut off from their return to Shivan-held space by the Ancients deactivating the Knossos in Gamma Draconis, and so parked themselves in a random corner of space in some sort of hibernation state, only to be awoken by something (GTI activity perhaps, if you follow the ST:R train of thought) several thousand years later. By that narrative, the Shivans encountered in FS2 would be a completely-separate entity, with their own purpose, which I think matches with what we see in the games.
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As others have said lucifer and the sath's different purposes, lucifer and its fleet looked for homeworlds and wiped them out, the supporting fleet was also very aggressive, taking multiple systems in fs1 before Lucy shows up, now in fs2 the shivan fleet never goes by capella, all the sath head to the capella star and pretty much ignore everything else unless challenged. FS2 the gtva is more aggressive and the shivans just seem to be responding to that. Ie ravana only shows up after hunting the cruisers. Were as in FS1 the shivans are far more aggresive. We also have the fact the shivans in fs1 are more hive minded, destruction of the lucifer proves this. So it is a tough one
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Also the lucifer seems to more suited for extermination /warship than the sath, as the juggernaut seems only suited for blowing up stars for building hyper galactic bypass. Despite its size can you really class the sath as a warship jugger? Not really it only has 4 front beam turrets with are not to tough, take those out and its a sitting duck. Lucifer has its front flux cannons and its side planet glassing weapons. Also there could be more lucifer class roaming out there, galaxy is a big place with the shivans never assume, just because we encountered only one doesnt mean its the only one
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If the Shivans in FS1 were a separate entity from the Shivans in FS2, which would also explain the differences in technology between the two groups of Shivans, then there's room for the potential for a misunderstanding on the part of the FS2 Shivans. From their point of view, the GTVA could well look like a powerful and mysterious aggressor force invading their territory and outperforming their standard fighters and capital ships. When they escalated the situation by bringing in the Ravana, the GTVA matched it and destroyed the Ravana. When the Shivans escalated things further by bringing in the Sathanas, the GTVA again matched it and destroyed the Sathanas. The Shivans didn't know we only had one Colossus, and with them having dozens of Sathanas juggernauts, why would they have any cause to believe we only had one? All they know is any escalation of hostilities has been met, like two poker players raising each other. That their opponent believed they were strong enough to actually attack the Shivans and had met and defeated everything the Shivans had thrown at them. And so the Shivans, intimidated, not wanting to risk another escalation of the conflict similarly being raised by the GTVA, folded. They destroyed the Capella Star, cutting their losses and ending the conflict.
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I've always liked the analogy of the Shivans being like antibodies, flooding and sterilizing 'wounded' parts of Subspace, the Lucifer would be like a targetted white blood cell, it 'evolved' during the war with the Ancients (which seems to be far wider spread and drawn out than the Terran experiences with the Shivans) specifically to deal with that threat. When the Lucifer was reactivated, it continued on the only task it was built for, finding the centers of infection and sterilizing them.
The second reaction of the Shivans is sort of like cauterization, if the antibody designed to fight the problem does not succeed (because it's a different problem, but do the Shivans know that?) a certain level of triage is required.
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Isn't it amazing how many different and compelling ideas for the Shivans we can all come up with? And it all just enhances the mystique further.
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Then again, what really probably stirred the bee's nest was project ETAC. Actively moving into shivan space with a "Here we are guys" beacon probably isn't good.
Perhaps partially, but the Shivans did take Bosch and his inner circle rather than killing them, so I don't know.
You're right that the Shivans are reacting to a GTVA invasion of Shivan space, though; the nebula campaign is an escalation from corvette to destroyer, from destroyer to juggernaut, from juggernaut to juggernaut fleet.
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In Freespace 2 the Shivans were coming through a bottleneck, they had to go from the nebula to the largely empty Gamma Draconis, and from Gamma Draconis to Capella. They had no other known routes into GTVA space. If they'd tried to get a Lucifier from Gamma Draconis to Capella at any point, or from the nebula to Gamma Draconis after the first Knossos was destroyed, and the GTVA had successfully taken it out - something they'd shown they had the capability to do - any remaining Shivans in GTVA space would have been cut off from the rest of their armada, and it would have been a simple mop up job for the Colossus.
The Lucifer's vulnerability in the reactors, the side effects of its destruction in subspace and the imperative it creates to kill it in subspace make it a liability against any enemy that knows how to beat it.
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I always find it amazing that the shivans are really listed in top 10 scifi lists as out of the majority of alien races they are still vastly unknown and have unknown motives and are just awesome. Just wish we could of found out what the bigger problem that the shivans where symptoms of, but then im also glad that we still know basically nothing about the shivans and it make them all the more terrifying
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I always find it amazing that the shivans are really listed in top 10 scifi lists as out of the majority of alien races they are still vastly unknown and have unknown motives and are just awesome. Just wish we could of found out what the bigger problem that the shivans where symptoms of, but then im also glad that we still know basically nothing about the shivans and it make them all the more terrifying
It's a real trade of. While we'll probably never know the truth, what it does do is allow a great deal of narrative license to campaign creators in where to move their stories. And there are so many different and compelling stories to tell... :)
As much as I'd love to know all there is to know about the Shivans, this community would probably be worse off if we did know. There'd be a lot less narrative license, and the Shivans might well not be anything like as compelling.
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I always find it amazing that the shivans are really listed in top 10 scifi lists as out of the majority of alien races they are still vastly unknown and have unknown motives and are just awesome.
citation needed?
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The Shivans are monsters. Unexplained aliens, foreign monsters. The unknown is like darkness, scary and uncertain.
Isn't it amazing how many different and compelling ideas for the Shivans we can all come up with? And it all just enhances the mystique further.
I'm pretty amazed by this thread as well. You all have pretty interesting theories. I like the idea of an isolated Lucifer fleet. It explains a lot of things. I'm looking forward to blue planet's take on shivans too.
I forgot about the shivan's interest in subspace to the exclusion of most everything else. It was present in both games.
I don't think it was ever explained if a Sathanas could destroy a planet or not. My guess was that it could, heck I thought a Ravana or a Demon could, but that's just a guess.
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If the Shivans in FS1 were a separate entity from the Shivans in FS2, which would also explain the differences in technology between the two groups of Shivans, then there's room for the potential for a misunderstanding on the part of the FS2 Shivans. From their point of view, the GTVA could well look like a powerful and mysterious aggressor force invading their territory and outperforming their standard fighters and capital ships. When they escalated the situation by bringing in the Ravana, the GTVA matched it and destroyed the Ravana. When the Shivans escalated things further by bringing in the Sathanas, the GTVA again matched it and destroyed the Sathanas. The Shivans didn't know we only had one Colossus, and with them having dozens of Sathanas juggernauts, why would they have any cause to believe we only had one? All they know is any escalation of hostilities has been met, like two poker players raising each other. That their opponent believed they were strong enough to actually attack the Shivans and had met and defeated everything the Shivans had thrown at them. And so the Shivans, intimidated, not wanting to risk another escalation of the conflict similarly being raised by the GTVA, folded. They destroyed the Capella Star, cutting their losses and ending the conflict.
This was a lot of fun to read. I like it because it assumes regular warfare instead of, perhaps more 'blue planet' like, higher and unknown motives of an all-knowing all-capable race. Although these are not out of the question because of fs1 events and Admiral Petrarch's monologue at the end of fs2. Anyway, them being evil is not a satisfying explanation. Ruthless, yes. Uncompromising, sure. All in all, can't wait for bp to shed some light.
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The BP explanation is almost the opposite of 'higher and unknown motives of an all-knowing and all-capable race,' though. And I don't know what you guys are waiting for when you say you can't wait - BP already dropped a huge amount of info on the Shivans.
One of the driving creative forces there was the belief that most Shivan theories are way too anthropomorphic. There are a lot of ideas here in this thread, many of them great, but they tend to fall in a narrow range of assumptions about cognitive architecture and information handling. There's an invisible box around the way we think about thinking and it's hard to get out.
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I also find it staggeringly ridiculous a narrative of having the Shivans being scared of the GTVA and "folding" the hand, when all the tactical signs point to the simple fact that these species simply have no hand against them. It would also paint them as absolute cowards, I mean come on.
The very point of having the Shivans' objective be towards the Capella star and not against the Terrans / Vasudans is made precisely to avoid the contradiction of having an unbeatable species being "beaten" by the GTVA at the end of the game, or alternatively, have the GTVA being absolutely demolished by them (not good for the gamer morale... a contradiction that Mass Effect failed to solve I'd say).
Thus they were written like the aliens in Rama, or any other Lovecraftian species, wherein we are only saved because we were not in their target. The giant mammoth steps on some of us (ants) but the "ant colony" is saved because the mammoth is just interested in going towards the lake to drink some water. This is the only kind of narrative that is able to "save" the humans while allowing the Shivans all their might, all their terror and all their alien nature.
From a pscyhological point of view, this is the arc of a brash teenager meeting a really tough challenge from Nature, ever becoming greater in peril, but always confident he will be able to achieve success, then a harsh realization that such challenge is waaay over his head, that Nature is waaay more cruel and tough than the brat could even dream of, and then be saved by mere contingency, out of his control. A lesson of adulthood, if there is one.
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I also find it staggeringly ridiculous a narrative of having the Shivans being scared of the GTVA and "folding" the hand, when all the tactical signs point to the simple fact that these species simply have no hand against them. It would also paint them as absolute cowards, I mean come on.
Well it only works at all if the Shivans in FS1 are a separate entity. If not, then the Shivans know too much about the GTVA for it to happen.
It could also be the Shivans are too busy with something else, so just nova the Capella Star to get rid of the thorn in their behind.
I do think there's some merit to my idea though given how the Shivans respond to the GTVA. If you just think about it with the caveat that these Shivans don't know anything about the GTVA, it could make sense. They're cautious, as if they don't know what they're dealing with. And they lose most of their battles. We know a handful of Saths would destroy the whole GTVA, but the Shivans don't. If they knew who we were, you'd think they'd just respond in force immediately and behave in much the same way as FS1.
The Shivans, their behaviour is so different to the FS1 Shivans who were super aggressive. We all know the Shivans could have crushed the GTVA, and they tried to do it once before. So we have to come up with something to account for why they didn't.
I can certainly understand not wanting to believe the Shivans could possibly be scared of us. And I don't think my idea has any more or less merit than anyone else's. But it would make sense if it was true. As would most of the other ideas put forward in this thread. That's what's so good about this thread.
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I also find it staggeringly ridiculous a narrative of having the Shivans being scared of the GTVA and "folding" the hand, when all the tactical signs point to the simple fact that these species simply have no hand against them. It would also paint them as absolute cowards, I mean come on.
The very point of having the Shivans' objective be towards the Capella star and not against the Terrans / Vasudans is made precisely to avoid the contradiction of having an unbeatable species being "beaten" by the GTVA at the end of the game, or alternatively, have the GTVA being absolutely demolished by them (not good for the gamer morale... a contradiction that Mass Effect failed to solve I'd say).
Hm - as you go on to say in the rest of your post I think this is almost a greater defeat: not only does 'nature' turn out to be uncontrollably dangerous, but it doesn't even do us the courtesy of obeying the malevolence we've attributed to it. The GTVA assumes that if the Shivans get through they will just start vaporizing planets, but when the Shivans do get through, they don't even jack us up in the way we understood they would.
We're defeated so completely that even our understanding of defeat gets overthrown.
The idea that the Shivans believe we have a lot of military power so they engineer Capella as a roadblock is one of the oldest ones around - it appeared in that old Shivan Manifesto chestnut. I don't think it's ever really been satisfying. Nor is the TNG Season 8 idea that the Shivans are attracted to damage caused by subspace travel.
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Well, it's difficult to find terminology that isn't based in our own understanding of the world, so the analogies we use have to be limited to that scope, I'm not sure 'attracted' is really the right word, though. For all we know the Shivans are created in some way by that 'damage'.
The problem is, because Freespace is at heart a computer game, it's based partly on whether you consider the fact the Shivans behave like a 'Computer Game' alien as part of the canon or not. In order for the game to function, the Shivans have to appear at a specific rate, always have just enough firepower to push things up to the next level, always have something that is just that bit more than what you threw at them. People who consider that purely as part of the game mechanic would probably consider Shivans in a slightly different light to those who consider it part of their specific behavior.
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There are very well-developed Shivan theories out there right now that account for all the 'gamey' Shivan behavior, explain the irregularities between the FS1 and FS2 Shivan response profile and technological development, break out of the anthropomorphic cognition box, and fit all of that into the clues that V dropped about where they wanted to go with the Shivans.
Well, there's one, at least! And we're very proud of it.
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So... You're basically saying that BP has the most likely story, that takes everything into account and without actually using the wording, you are suggesting that BP's theory is best. Perhaps let Darius or Axem do the BP publicity because it might make me want to hate it less due to arrogance... :doubt:
Don't get me wrong. I have enjoyed what I've played of BP. I just think its awefully pompous to pop into a thread full of people's ideas and imaginings of their favorite space Sim and suggest that your mod is the only one that really got it right. That none of the others really matter. It's that interview thread all over again.
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Well, I'd say that in this particular we can have a reasonable debate or difference, slightly divergent variations following from that seeming "defeat". I am cautious about that particular word for it is such a human one... but still even accepting it, I thnk all readings are only retroactively true, that is, only by assessing what happens next in this world can we classify what happens in FS2. This is the place of prophets or (amazing) politicians, those who are able to create events as narratives. This is what Bosch did in his own style, but there could be other readings far less bloody and far more positive.
We could read the events of FS2 as part of the human species' awakening to the harsh reality of its temporal condition in the universe (just as a person reaching his middle age grasping more and more his own mortality for what it is), we could dissect this as a positive trait or a negative one, I mean, everything eventually dies, it's how we deal with this truth that can be either a defeat or a victory. It could be written like the movie "Melancholia". It could be written both ways. We could read them as just a very harsh lesson, one which mankind could eventually adapt to and overcome some eons later. It could be written in "Childhood's End" style, that is, mankind is over but it births something of value to the rest of the universe. It could be written as "the cutesy species known as mankind and vasudankind, desperate for a solution for the shivan problem, end up creating a monster even greater, worse than anything created before", which would be (I guess), the "Mass Effect idea" but done right.
Everything is open in FS2 and I appreciate it a lot. Despite the harsh words I used against Lorric's rendering of the "shivans fold" idea, I agree that it could eventually work if the writing was extremely solid. It's the kind of idea so ridiculous that it could crash the entire story if done less than perfect.
So... You're basically saying that BP has the most likely story, that takes everything into account and without actually using the wording, you are suggesting that BP's theory is best. Perhaps let Darius or Axem do the BP publicity because it might make me want to hate it less due to arrogance... :doubt:
Don't get me wrong. I have enjoyed what I've played of BP. I just think its awefully pompous to pop into a thread full of people's ideas and imaginings of their favorite space Sim and suggest that your mod is the only one that really got it right. That none of the others really matter. It's that interview thread all over again.
I read it in two ways, both as just corny HEY LOOK AT ME IM AWESOME typical Battuta's style, that is, not to be taken seriously at all, and also as being just truthful. I mean, yes, we have quite a lot of post capella mods, but which ones have really dealt with this question at all? And in all of those, which ones have garnered any slight interesting theoretical development of what the Shivans are, what they should be, what is this all about and so on? The only mod that gave me pause before BP was "Sync", but its commentary was minimal.
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So... You're basically saying that BP has the most likely story, that takes everything into account and without actually using the wording, you are suggesting that BP's theory is best. Perhaps let Darius or Axem do the BP publicity because it might make me want to hate it less due to arrogance... :doubt:
Don't get me wrong. I have enjoyed what I've played of BP. I just think its awefully pompous to pop into a thread full of people's ideas and imaginings of their favorite space Sim and suggest that your mod is the only one that really got it right. That none of the others really matter. It's that interview thread all over again.
No, I'm saying just the opposite (what I always say): it's possible to have good theories that do great creative work with the Shivans without diminishing them or throwing up your hands and saying 'too many inconsistencies.' The fact that it's been done at least once shows it can be done a lot.
I've always been super vocal about the value of creative heterodoxy and multiple strong approaches. That's why BP has always advertised for other campaigns and plugged their good work.
I am admittedly not aware of any other mods that have presented a comprehensive Shivan theory in released content, but that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of amazing approaches waiting to be taken.
My suggestion is not 'only BP gets it right': rather it is 'there are a lot of interesting ways to answer these open questions, so we shouldn't treat them as unanswerable.'
What interview thread are you referring to?
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There are very well-developed Shivan theories out there right now that account for all the 'gamey' Shivan behavior, explain the irregularities between the FS1 and FS2 Shivan response profile and technological development, break out of the anthropomorphic cognition box, and fit all of that into the clues that V dropped about where they wanted to go with the Shivans.
Well, there's one, at least! And we're very proud of it.
TLDR
There is one Shivan theory that is as infallible as Shivan theories can be, and it's the one from my mod. Not only that, but it fits into the arbitrary condition I setup, the anthropomorphic box.
Whether you meant it that way or not.. that's the way it came off to me.
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I'm really sorry it came off that way. I hoped that 'theories' and 'at least one' would make it clear that I thought there were room for lots. I've always been very, very vocal about my support for narrative heterodoxy, and here I was trying to point out that there are more than zero satisfying theories, not exactly one.
I admire your work and your respect means something to me. I am happy to take this to PMs if you'd like.
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For the curious, here is V's loose theory:
We had a sense that the Shivan fleet in FS1 was a scouting party'searching for stars suitable for blowing up and cleansing the space of biological life. The Shivan fleet in FS2 then came in to collapse the stars and open up the new nodes to Shivantown. Now what come through those nodes is anyone's guess'perhaps factories that churned out new ships to continue the cycle. I felt that the Shivans were very, very old and had been at this for millions of years perhaps. Maybe they outlived their original purpose and were living out these endless loops of destruction and creation long after their creators had died off. Or maybe the master race was still alive and aware of what they had unleashed.
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There is one Shivan theory that is as infallible as Shivan theories can be, and it's the one from my mod. Not only that, but it fits into the arbitrary condition I setup, the anthropomorphic box.
Well I am extremely curious to learn it, and I appreciate the fact that BtA doesn't hide from trying to untangle these questions, very courageous in itself, but should you expect anyone else to have known there was this amazing theory being cooked in a hidden kitchen of a few dedicated competent modders?
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No he's saying I said that.
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Christ I'm such an idiot.
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I have zero theories of my own. BtA barely gives the Shivans a passing mention.
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I think the fun with the Shivans is that 'All rational explanations are just as valid'. With clever writing perhaps all explanations and theories could co-exist. Mold the Shivans to your own desires, if you want to have a mod where you can fight Shivans after FS2, I'm sure there's a lot of ways around it without needing to go 'this is the only and ultimate truth, they are X and Y'.
Since the Shivans are fun to build missions around, a target you can destroy without feeling as guilty as killing fellow humans (and vasudans), I hope people won't limit themselves when making, or playing, these mods, to a singular explanation or theory to the point it interferes with their enjoyment of the mods in question.
I love the design on the Lucifer as I've always done, from the low-poly FS1 days to today - It remains such an elusive and intimidating foe, with some proper upgunned turrets on it I think it'll remain an interesting ship to fight, as well. It's also interesting how far theories have come though, it might just as well eclipse V's original ideas, although perhaps in the making of an unknowable enemy, it's best for writers to keep them such a blank slate to even themselves.
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I firmly don't believe that we need to play Lost with the Shivans to keep their mystique and effect.
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The idea that the Shivans believe we have a lot of military power so they engineer Capella as a roadblock is one of the oldest ones around - it appeared in that old Shivan Manifesto chestnut. I don't think it's ever really been satisfying. Nor is the TNG Season 8 idea that the Shivans are attracted to damage caused by subspace travel.
Capella was absolutely a reaction to GTVA military power. It's a subtle trend in the game; when the GTVA beats Shivan cruisers with corvettes, the Shivans send a destroyer; when the GTVA beats the Shivan destroyer with its own destroyers, the Shivans send a juggernaut; when the GTVA beats the juggernaut with its own juggernaut, the Shivans send a fleet of juggernauts. It's all reactionary, all escalation. The horror lies in realizing that it really is turtles all the way down.
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I firmly don't believe that we need to play Lost with the Shivans to keep their mystique and effect.
I've never watched Lost and don't mean to suggest that. What I meant was that modders and writers shouldn't limit themselves to one interpretation if it takes away from gameplay. Sometimes it's just fun to have the Shivans invade again for some excuse if it means having a fun battle. Even if the Shivans are known to go at things differently, one could argue that it's part of a different anima or collective or such.
Just as long as not the same trap occurs that happened with the Reapers in ME3, as you've also brought up earlier.
For the record, I'm extremely curious and look forward to how BP continues to handle the Shivans, I absolutely enjoy the direction that they have been taken in.
I just hope we get to see some more battles against the Shivans in other mods just because I feel they are fun adversaries to fight.
When they unleash hundreds of fighters one doesn't have to take into account their logistics or how much investment it took, their backstories and relations. When taking out destroyers there are no worries about sinking ten thousand personnel most of which are just doing their job, that sort of thing.
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The idea that the Shivans believe we have a lot of military power so they engineer Capella as a roadblock is one of the oldest ones around - it appeared in that old Shivan Manifesto chestnut. I don't think it's ever really been satisfying. Nor is the TNG Season 8 idea that the Shivans are attracted to damage caused by subspace travel.
Capella was absolutely a reaction to GTVA military power. It's a subtle trend in the game; when the GTVA beats Shivan cruisers with corvettes, the Shivans send a destroyer; when the GTVA beats the Shivan destroyer with its own destroyers, the Shivans send a juggernaut; when the GTVA beats the juggernaut with its own juggernaut, the Shivans send a fleet of juggernauts. It's all reactionary, all escalation. The horror lies in realizing that it really is turtles all the way down.
You shouldn't confuse the escalation you feel as a GTVA pilot with an actual tactical escalation on the part of the Shivans. They are both very different things. The idea that Shivans fold the hand after one Sathanas is busted is incongruent with the size of their fleet and the character that Shivans display throughout FS1 and FS2, both carefree and loose about their individual losses. To say this is "absolutely" what happened sounds extremely wrong to me.
One can (and probably should) read the Sivan invasion in FS2 with the sole purpose of blowing Cappella up, all the while the GTVA thinking they are on against humans and vasudans, that they are escalating, etc. I even find it a numerological small nice detail the fact that there are 81 sathanases total, 80 of them actually reaching Cappella. One could imagine the Shivans work in base nine, instead of ten. Even the interview Batts refers to says this explicitly.
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You shouldn't confuse the escalation you feel as a GTVA pilot with an actual tactical escalation on the part of the Shivans. They are both very different things. The idea that Shivans fold the hand after one Sathanas is busted is incongruent with the size of their fleet and the character that Shivans display throughout FS1 and FS2, both carefree and loose about their individual losses. To say this is "absolutely" what happened sounds extremely wrong to me.
One can (and probably should) read the Sivan invasion in FS2 with the sole purpose of blowing Cappella up, all the while the GTVA thinking they are on against humans and vasudans, that they are escalating, etc.
Exactly :yes: :).
... leaving open the question as to WHY they blew up Capella - there's the speculation of Adm. Petrarch, of course, but that shouldn't stop one from thinking of other (non-GTVA-related) reasons... ;7
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The thing about blowing up Capella being the Shivans' sole goal is why would they need the GTVA to come into their house to do it? If they wanted it blown up it would have been blown up long before.
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The thing about blowing up Capella being the Shivans' sole goal is why would they need the GTVA to come into their house to do it? If they wanted it blown up it would have been blown up long before.
Only if they had access to it at a stage when the star is useful, if that happened after the closing of the GD-Nebula portal then they needed us to reactivate it if the lucifer fleet was unable to
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The thing about blowing up Capella being the Shivans' sole goal is why would they need the GTVA to come into their house to do it? If they wanted it blown up it would have been blown up long before.
Only if they had access to it at a stage when the star is useful, if that happened after the closing of the GD-Nebula portal then they needed us to reactivate it if the lucifer fleet was unable to
Why wouldn't the Shivans be able to open their own the knossos?
Just as Luis really dislikes my idea about the Shivans folding, I probably dislike the idea of the Shivans solely wanting to nova Capella and having no interest in us in the same way.
I should probably clarify a little more on my idea for why the Shivans could fold the hand.
If the Juggernaut is their best ship, and they've met a seemingly aggressive and unknown race with the capability of destroying it, an unknown race they have no interest in fighting, a conflict they didn't start, what is best? Send in all Juggernauts and risk the possibility of juggernauts and colossuses destroying each other all over the place in a costly war that they don't want, or worse, an even greater class of enemy ship arriving and destroying the juggernauts, risking the destruction of all the Shivans, or to put a stop to the conflict by destroying the Capella star?
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Why wouldn't the Shivans be able to open their own knossos?
Knossos is Ancient technology, not Shivan.
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Why wouldn't the Shivans be able to open their own knossos?
Knossos is Ancient technology, not Shivan.
You just beat me to correcting it. :)
Sorry for the mistake.
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The thing about blowing up Capella being the Shivans' sole goal is why would they need the GTVA to come into their house to do it? If they wanted it blown up it would have been blown up long before.
Only if they had access to it at a stage when the star is useful, if that happened after the closing of the GD-Nebula portal then they needed us to reactivate it if the lucifer fleet was unable to
Why wouldn't the Shivans be able to open their own knossos?
Just as Luis really dislikes my idea about the Shivans folding, I probably dislike the idea of the Shivans solely wanting to nova Capella and having no interest in us in the same way.
I should probably clarify a little more on my idea for why the Shivans could fold the hand.
If the Juggernaut is their best ship, and they've met a seemingly aggressive and unknown race with the capability of destroying it, an unknown race they have no interest in fighting, a conflict they didn't start, what is best? Send in all Juggernauts and risk the possibility of juggernauts and colossuses destroying each other all over the place in a costly war that they don't want, or worse, an even greater class of enemy ship arriving and destroying the juggernauts, risking the destruction of all the Shivans, or to put a stop to the conflict by destroying the Capella star?
For starters the Knossos is stated in game as being based on ancient technology with no shivan indicators. - corrected
Also just because they fought the ancients dosnt mean they can use their technology
Also most assumptions is the the supernova is a byproduct of the desired effect, what that is though is unknown and thus open to speculation.
Also:
how does destroying capella end the conflict?
why not gamma draconis in that case?
There was something special about Capella's star that met the criteria for a purpose unknown to us, just like the subspace field they were using.
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The thing about blowing up Capella being the Shivans' sole goal is why would they need the GTVA to come into their house to do it? If they wanted it blown up it would have been blown up long before.
Only if they had access to it at a stage when the star is useful, if that happened after the closing of the GD-Nebula portal then they needed us to reactivate it if the lucifer fleet was unable to
Why wouldn't the Shivans be able to open their own knossos? - corrected
- also just because they fought the ancients doesn't mean they can use ancient technology or have any capability to do so
Just as Luis really dislikes my idea about the Shivans folding, I probably dislike the idea of the Shivans solely wanting to nova Capella and having no interest in us in the same way.
I should probably clarify a little more on my idea for why the Shivans could fold the hand.
If the Juggernaut is their best ship, and they've met a seemingly aggressive and unknown race with the capability of destroying it, an unknown race they have no interest in fighting, a conflict they didn't start, what is best? Send in all Juggernauts and risk the possibility of juggernauts and colossuses destroying each other all over the place in a costly war that they don't want, or worse, an even greater class of enemy ship arriving and destroying the juggernauts, risking the destruction of all the Shivans, or to put a stop to the conflict by destroying the Capella star?
For starters the Knossos is stated in game as being based on ancient technology with no shivan indicators.
Also most assumptions is the the supernova is a byproduct of the desired effect, what that is though is unknown and thus open to speculation.
Also:
how does destroying capella end the conflict?
why not gamma draconis in that case?
There was something special about Capella's star that met the criteria for a purpose unknown to us, just like the subspace field they were using.
We know the Shivans know how to use the Knossos portals and have had access to them for thousands of years, and we can just come along and open one up, so I'm sure the Shivans can do it too.
I also wondered why they didn't just nova Gamma Draconis. Did they want to strike a powerful blow against the GTVA to deter the GTVA from further conflict were the three species to meet again?
I can get on board with the idea of the Shivans having a purpose beyond destruction in Capella. I got on board with it in Rheyah's campaign that he's building where it's part of a greater design the Shivans have for us.
It's just hard to get behind the Shivans wanting to destroy Capella all along when they appear to be reacting to us. If they had come out of the portal themselves and we hadn't been the ones to open it up, then that would be a whole different story.
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We know the Shivans know how to use the Knossos portals and have had access to them for thousands of years, and we can just come along and open one up, so I'm sure the Shivans can do it too.
We know the Shivans know how to travel through Knossos portals; that's all we know, and that's not the same thing as knowing how to activate a dormant one.
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We know the Shivans know how to use the Knossos portals and have had access to them for thousands of years, and we can just come along and open one up, so I'm sure the Shivans can do it too.
We know the Shivans know how to travel through Knossos portals; that's all we know, and that's not the same thing as knowing how to activate a dormant one.
Yes it is of course possible they don't know how to do that. But it didn't take us long to do it and the Shivans are much more advanced than we are. And they had a presence inside the nebula around it.
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We know the Shivans know how to use the Knossos portals and have had access to them for thousands of years, and we can just come along and open one up, so I'm sure the Shivans can do it too.
We know the Shivans know how to travel through Knossos portals; that's all we know, and that's not the same thing as knowing how to activate a dormant one.
Yes it is of course possible they don't know how to do that. But it didn't take us long to do it and the Shivans are much more advanced than we are. And they had a presence inside the nebula around it.
Making a lot of assumptions about how Shivan intelligence functions, there.
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We know the Shivans know how to use the Knossos portals and have had access to them for thousands of years, and we can just come along and open one up, so I'm sure the Shivans can do it too.
We know the Shivans know how to travel through Knossos portals; that's all we know, and that's not the same thing as knowing how to activate a dormant one.
Yes it is of course possible they don't know how to do that. But it didn't take us long to do it and the Shivans are much more advanced than we are. And they had a presence inside the nebula around it.
That assumes they can
1) Learn Alien Technology
2) Have any concept of using other people's technology
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We know the Shivans know how to use the Knossos portals and have had access to them for thousands of years, and we can just come along and open one up, so I'm sure the Shivans can do it too.
We know the Shivans know how to travel through Knossos portals; that's all we know, and that's not the same thing as knowing how to activate a dormant one.
Yes it is of course possible they don't know how to do that. But it didn't take us long to do it and the Shivans are much more advanced than we are. And they had a presence inside the nebula around it.
That assumes they can
1) Learn Alien Technology
2) Have any concept of using other people's technology
It seems a reasonable assumption. They can supernova a star and destroy the race which built the portals but they can't open a portal.
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We know the Shivans know how to use the Knossos portals and have had access to them for thousands of years, and we can just come along and open one up, so I'm sure the Shivans can do it too.
We know the Shivans know how to travel through Knossos portals; that's all we know, and that's not the same thing as knowing how to activate a dormant one.
Yes it is of course possible they don't know how to do that. But it didn't take us long to do it and the Shivans are much more advanced than we are. And they had a presence inside the nebula around it.
That assumes they can
1) Learn Alien Technology
2) Have any concept of using other people's technology
It seems a reasonable assumption. They can supernova a star and destroy the race which built the portals but they can't open a portal.
I fail to see the correlation
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We know the Shivans know how to use the Knossos portals and have had access to them for thousands of years, and we can just come along and open one up, so I'm sure the Shivans can do it too.
We know the Shivans know how to travel through Knossos portals; that's all we know, and that's not the same thing as knowing how to activate a dormant one.
Yes it is of course possible they don't know how to do that. But it didn't take us long to do it and the Shivans are much more advanced than we are. And they had a presence inside the nebula around it.
That assumes they can
1) Learn Alien Technology
2) Have any concept of using other people's technology
It seems a reasonable assumption. They can supernova a star and destroy the race which built the portals but they can't open a portal.
I fail to see the correlation
If you want me to prove absolutely that the Shivans would know how to open the portal, I can't do that. But we certainly know they know how to use them.
But do you really think it's more likely that the Shivans don't know how to open the portal than that they do know how to open the portal? I think it's very unlikely that they don't know how to open the portal. Unlikely enough that I have real problems with suspension of disbelief of any theory that goes with the Shivans always wanted to nova Capella for whatever reason but they couldn't because they couldn't use the knossos when we know what they can do, and we know that opening the knossos was no problem for our young race.
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Here is the thing, being able to innovate internally is different to being able to conceive of let alone actually managing to reverse engineer alien technology.
Also we dont know if the shivans even innovated their own technology as there is suggestions that they may be a constructed race, potentially granted the tech that they use by another race for undetermined purposes.
As Battua said, we have to be careful when using Human reference points when dealing with a race which is supposed to be totally alien in operation
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Also we dont know if the shivans even innovated their own technology as there is suggestions that they may be a constructed race, potentially granted the tech that they use by another race for undetermined purposes.
Now that's a salient point. There's something I could really get behind.
EDIT: Your whole post is salient, but that part in particular.
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Well first off, Bosch learned how to turn on the portal from the Ancient's themselves (well, their remains, that is). If we/Bosch just stumbled on the deactivated portal with no clue whatsoever on what it was, there is a good chance that we couldn't activate it either.
Second, Bosch found the information (AFAIK) on planets. Shivans aren't very fond of planets, so I doubt they would look for or find the remains. Especially on one (or more) they thought they glassed.
Lastly, if we take the "Trapped Lucifer Fleet" theory as fact, then most of the Shivans that had access to the actual portal would be military personnel. They would have less of a chance to figure out the portal than whatever scientists/engineers the Shivans would have. That is, even if they wanted to.
Now about the whole "why did the Shivans blow up Capella?" question. If the Shivans knew we were coming, they'd have the Sathanas fleet waiting for us, so that's not it. So they were reacting to us showing up unexpectedly in the nebula.
First, they don't know how powerful we are (if we continue to apply the Trapped Lucifer Fleet scenario). I'm not saying it's a question of "Will these new enemies be able to destroy us?" as much as it is "How many ships do we need to send to destroy them?". Also, the nebula system is at least two (Knossos) jumps away from wherever they come from. It's probably not very easy (or quick) to send 80 Juggernauts anywhere. So only once the Ravana and first Sathanas were destroyed did the Shivans knew they had to send in "everything". And even then it took a while.
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There is one point that no one seems have identified. The Trinity seems to have been the ship that Bosch sent to activate the Knossos in Gamma Draconis, but what about the other two that we've seen. How long have they been active? Was it the Trinity which activated those as well using navigational data left behind by the Ancients to know where in the nebula to find Knossos 2? If it was only the one in Gamma Draconis that shut down after centuries of being active, what kept the other 2 active? Did the Shivans manage to dissect the technology enough to find a way to sustain the others over the millennia? If they did, why did they allow the one in Gamma Draconis to shut down? Certainly the Shivans couldn't have reactivated the other 2 themselves, as they are both on the nearside, and it seems that you can't reactivate one from the far side, otherwise they'd have been able to activate the Gamma Draconis portal themselves.
Only 2 theories seem to make sense to me. The first one supports the idea that the Lucifer fleet is remnants of the original fleet which destroyed the Ancients, and the Ancients managed to cut off their withdrawal afterwards by shutting down the Gamma Draconis portal themselves, before the Lucifer fleet destroyed them. The remnants then wandered around trying to find a way home and after a certain amount of time they went into sleep mode somewhere beyond Ross 128 until FS1. The other 2 Knossos remained active. This further supports the theory that Shivan military units don't know how to use alien tech, otherwise they'd have been able to reactivate the Knossos after wiping out the Ancients. However, if we believe that the Shivans may have some science detachments, then they have been responsible for dissecting the Knossos tech enough to keep the portals active over the millennia. That said, if they can decipher alien tech that much, why couldn't they completely reverse-engineer the Knossos and build one of their own and reactivate the node leading to Gamma Draconis? I can think of only 2 possibilities. The first is that they couldn't find the node's location after it was shut down. The second is that somehow having an inactive Knossos on the other end prevented any Knossos on the nebular side from being able to function... like a dead-bolt or something. Of course, if we assume that Knossos devices can remain active indefinitely, then we can completely bypass arguments that the Shivans can reverse-engineer alien tech.
The second theory which attempts to explain the activation of the other 2 Knossos devices, supposes that the GTI somehow came across them prior to FS1 and it is through these that the Lucifer fleet came. That would mean that there is another node leading out of the nebula to our side, or perhaps another Knossos. BP supposes that one is located in N362, so perhaps this node leads into the nebula as well.
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Maybe they were never deactivated? The Ancients may have shut down the Gamma Draconis - Nebula node, but not had the ability to shut down the Nebula - Binary node or the Binary - ????? node
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The first one supports the idea that the Lucifer fleet is remnants of the original fleet which destroyed the Ancients, and the Ancients managed to cut off their withdrawal afterwards by shutting down the Gamma Draconis portal themselves, before the Lucifer fleet destroyed them. The remnants then wandered around trying to find a way home and after a certain amount of time they went into sleep mode somewhere beyond Ross 128 until FS1. The other 2 Knossos remained active. This further supports the theory that Shivan military units don't know how to use alien tech, otherwise they'd have been able to reactivate the Knossos after wiping out the Ancients. However, if we believe that the Shivans may have some science detachments, then they have been responsible for dissecting the Knossos tech enough to keep the portals active over the millennia.
That is exactly what I (and probably others) call the "Trapped Lucifer Fleet" theory. I believe that they didn't know how to reactivate it because they didn't have the information we had at the end of FS1. Particularly, the Shivans wouldn't go to a planet to find such information, especially one they just destroyed. There is also the possibility that the Shivans didn't mind being separated.
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There is also the possibility that the Shivans didn't mind being separated.
Kinda like a computer subroutine that is never called; just lying there dormant, unknowing, uncaring, unaware, until something triggers it.
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You shouldn't confuse the escalation you feel as a GTVA pilot with an actual tactical escalation on the part of the Shivans. They are both very different things. The idea that Shivans fold the hand after one Sathanas is busted is incongruent with the size of their fleet and the character that Shivans display throughout FS1 and FS2, both carefree and loose about their individual losses. To say this is "absolutely" what happened sounds extremely wrong to me.
One can (and probably should) read the Sivan invasion in FS2 with the sole purpose of blowing Cappella up, all the while the GTVA thinking they are on against humans and vasudans, that they are escalating, etc. I even find it a numerological small nice detail the fact that there are 81 sathanases total, 80 of them actually reaching Cappella. One could imagine the Shivans work in base nine, instead of ten. Even the interview Batts refers to says this explicitly.
It's not the escalation you feel, it's the observable strategic reality of the nebula campaign. The entire story is a cycle of GTVA defeat -> GTVA escalation -> GTVA hubris -> Shivan escalation -> GTVA defeat. The Shivans sending a Sathanas fleet in response to the Colossus is no different than the GTVA sending a Destroyer fleet in response to the Ravana.
The idea that the Shivans in any way fold their hand, or that the Sathanas fleet is somehow incongruent, implies that the Shivans consider it either. They likely don't; on the contrary, experience tells us that even if the GTVA possessed the firepower to combat the Sathanas fleet the Shivans would simply send something bigger and badder, and if the GTVA in this Inferno-esque hypothetical had the firepower to combat that the Shivans would simply do the same again.
I'm not sure why you bring up Shivan numerology. Are you implying that because there are a total of nine-squared juggs they must form a single organization unit and only function en masse? That's like saying a carrier has to commit its entire fighter compliment to a mission or none at all. Nor does it make much sense, given how rapidly the Sathanas fleet starts pouring in, but only after the first has attempted and failed a solo run.
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You shouldn't confuse the escalation you feel as a GTVA pilot with an actual tactical escalation on the part of the Shivans. They are both very different things. The idea that Shivans fold the hand after one Sathanas is busted is incongruent with the size of their fleet and the character that Shivans display throughout FS1 and FS2, both carefree and loose about their individual losses. To say this is "absolutely" what happened sounds extremely wrong to me.
One can (and probably should) read the Sivan invasion in FS2 with the sole purpose of blowing Cappella up, all the while the GTVA thinking they are on against humans and vasudans, that they are escalating, etc. I even find it a numerological small nice detail the fact that there are 81 sathanases total, 80 of them actually reaching Cappella. One could imagine the Shivans work in base nine, instead of ten. Even the interview Batts refers to says this explicitly.
It's not the escalation you feel, it's the observable strategic reality of the nebula campaign. The entire story is a cycle of GTVA defeat -> GTVA escalation -> GTVA hubris -> Shivan escalation -> GTVA defeat. The Shivans sending a Sathanas fleet in response to the Colossus is no different than the GTVA sending a Destroyer fleet in response to the Ravana.
You keep making the mistake I pointed out, that the Shivans actions necessarily imply they are acting reactionaryly against GTVA escalation. This is not so. The Ravana fleet was stationed in the Nebula system, and when it was clear the Knossos portal was open, the Sathanas fleet started moving towards the Capella sun. None of this necessarily implies any escalation nor even "reactionary" strategic planning on the part of Shivans, but one single decision process to engage the Capella star when the door became open.
The idea that the Shivans in any way fold their hand, or that the Sathanas fleet is somehow incongruent, implies that the Shivans consider it either. They likely don't; on the contrary, experience tells us that even if the GTVA possessed the firepower to combat the Sathanas fleet the Shivans would simply send something bigger and badder, and if the GTVA in this Inferno-esque hypothetical had the firepower to combat that the Shivans would simply do the same again.
They totally ignore the GTVA systems and instead engage the Capella star, giving humans and vasudans all the time in the world to shut down the nodes from Capella, something which would even become unecessary given how uninhabitable the system is about to become in no time. This is not the action of a species hellbent in fighting the humans / vasudans, this is not the action of a species trying to stop the GTVA from invading their space. The mere fact they tried to destroy the Knossos portal should be enough indication that these species were no match for the shivans.
I'm not sure why you bring up Shivan numerology. Are you implying that because there are a total of nine-squared juggs they must form a single organization unit and only function en masse? That's like saying a carrier has to commit its entire fighter compliment to a mission or none at all. Nor does it make much sense, given how rapidly the Sathanas fleet starts pouring in, but only after the first has attempted and failed a solo run.
You're the one stating it was a "solo run", when it could just as well be just the first of its kind running the route everyone else was. It was most probably unexpected for them that these species were able to stop this juggernaught, but it's like fighting the ocean with sand castles. Eventually, your castle is doomed. And yes, I am implying it's a funny coincidence that in base nine 81 is "100", nothing more nothing less. Most probably [V] didn't even consider it, but given how thought out their little details reached, you never know...
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It does seem improbable that they couldn't find ANY way to get to/destroy the star without Bosch's opening that one portal. More importantly, it is unsatisfactory to us as player-GTVA that we don't figure at all in their actions. There are also a couple of other simple unsatisfactory explanations, like that they were drawing a huge-ass line in the sand or that they wiped out the system in which we live instead of bothering with destroying planets. But I'd definitely start any discussion with them reacting to our input, which was opening the portal.
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This is something I noted as part of BP, but it's still interesting in general FS2 discussion: the main Sathanas fleet started pouring into the nebula minutes after they took Bosch.
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And yes, I am implying it's a funny coincidence that in base nine 81 is "100", nothing more nothing less. Most probably [V] didn't even consider it, but given how thought out their little details reached, you never know...
I believe the exact quote by Petrarch was "Over 80 Shivan Juggernauts have reached the Capella star." So while it could be 81, its probably more. Just another way of saying there's a lot of them.
This is something I noted as part of BP, but it's still interesting in general FS2 discussion: the main Sathanas fleet started pouring into the nebula minutes after they took Bosch.
While the debriefing of "Straight, no Chaser" does say that there are multiple Juggernauts in the nebula, the dialogue in "Into the Lion's Den" implies that that was not supposed to be the case. Originally, it seems like that you see the second Sathanas destroy the Psamtik, but you don't know there are more until the SOC mission. In that mission, Snipes is surprised to see multiple Juggernauts and vows to "warn the alliance".
This makes sense with the respect to fleet movements. The first Juggernaut was probably the one closest to (or already inside) the nebula. The others had to travel a while to get there. And they couldn't just travel through the portal at the same time, so locating multiple juggernauts right away doesn't make sense.
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Yes, exactly, and bear in mind that particular zod line "multiple Sathanas have been spotted..." is a plot hole given what we see in that SoC mission.
Many theories can be designed. I can admit theories that differentiate the first Sathanas from the second, third, etc., and Phantom Hoover's point about it being minutes between Bosch being taken over and the second Sathanas arriving was also developed in my own little bp fanfic... I also always regarded (well before even knowing there was a "HLP" on the nets) the Sathanas fleet much more like a fleet of giant Excavators (galactic highway constructors?) rather than a military fleet.
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You keep making the mistake I pointed out, that the Shivans actions necessarily imply they are acting reactionaryly against GTVA escalation. This is not so. The Ravana fleet was stationed in the Nebula system, and when it was clear the Knossos portal was open, the Sathanas fleet started moving towards the Capella sun. None of this necessarily implies any escalation nor even "reactionary" strategic planning on the part of Shivans, but one single decision process to engage the Capella star when the door became open.
The Shivans knew the Knossos was open from the very beginning, their first appearance was sending a cruiser through. If the Sathanas fleet started moving towards Capella the moment the door was open, the game would have ended before the Colossus even appeared.
They totally ignore the GTVA systems and instead engage the Capella star, giving humans and vasudans all the time in the world to shut down the nodes from Capella, something which would even become unecessary given how uninhabitable the system is about to become in no time. This is not the action of a species hellbent in fighting the humans / vasudans, this is not the action of a species trying to stop the GTVA from invading their space. The mere fact they tried to destroy the Knossos portal should be enough indication that these species were no match for the shivans.
Collapsing stars is just as valid a tactic as glassing planets. The Lucifer didn't bother chasing down every ineffective warship in the system before reducing Vasuda Prime to dust.
You're the one stating it was a "solo run", when it could just as well be just the first of its kind running the route everyone else was. It was most probably unexpected for them that these species were able to stop this juggernaught, but it's like fighting the ocean with sand castles. Eventually, your castle is doomed. And yes, I am implying it's a funny coincidence that in base nine 81 is "100", nothing more nothing less. Most probably [V] didn't even consider it, but given how thought out their little details reached, you never know...
The Sathanas fleet pours in rapidly and en masse. You see, what, eight, arrive, in the fifteen minutes you spend with the SoC? Sathanas 1 is so far ahead of the pack that the only way it isn't solo is if it's piloted by Shivan Leeroy Jenkins.
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I'm not sure if it's canon but I heard that the Lucifer was a scouting vessel sent with a scouting fleet. It is a specialist vessel designed to defeat lesser races who don't know how to penetrate shield defenses. I always thought a race "Passing the Lucifer test" was a bad thing for that race because it signaled the shivans to send a proper fleet.
The idea that the Lucifer fleet is a scouting fleet is from the blurb on the back of the FS2 Box. Could be canon or just marketing mumbo jumbo. I prefer to think the truth lies somewhere in-between.
The Sathanas fleet pours in rapidly and en masse. You see, what, eight, arrive, in the fifteen minutes you spend with the SoC? Sathanas 1 is so far ahead of the pack that the only way it isn't solo is if it's piloted by Shivan Leeroy Jenkins.
Not necessarily.
If you think of jump nodes as rail lines, and as the SOC Lion's Den area as a sort of rail hub in the centre of many different tracks and lines then one can suppose that at the time of the encounter, Sathanas 1 was in a location nearest GTVA and the other ships needed to be first recalled to that central hub before all proceeding towards capella. Like a net that needs to be draw inwards before being redirected in one single direction.
The difference is you think of the sathanas fleet as being drawn from the same place, or drawn from a linear reserve. A line. Whereas I would probably presume that the Sathanas fleet was spread around in different areas, and through the Comm Nodes was recalled and redirected. They found what they were looking for, so the fleet converged, redeployed and did their thing.
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If you want me to prove absolutely that the Shivans would know how to open the portal, I can't do that. But we certainly know they know how to use them.
But do you really think it's more likely that the Shivans don't know how to open the portal than that they do know how to open the portal? I think it's very unlikely that they don't know how to open the portal. Unlikely enough that I have real problems with suspension of disbelief of any theory that goes with the Shivans always wanted to nova Capella for whatever reason but they couldn't because they couldn't use the knossos when we know what they can do, and we know that opening the knossos was no problem for our young race.
The shivans aren't using a portal. They're using a subspace node. The fact that the node is created or sustained by a portal doesn't functionally differentiate it from a naturally occurring subspace node.
Only 2 theories seem to make sense to me. The first one supports the idea that the Lucifer fleet is remnants of the original fleet which destroyed the Ancients, and the Ancients managed to cut off their withdrawal afterwards by shutting down the Gamma Draconis portal themselves, before the Lucifer fleet destroyed them.
I think that's wrong for one particular reason. There's no reason for the ancients to want to cut off the Lucifer's withdrawl.
My theory would be that the ancients did exactly what the GTVA did. They saw the Shivans coming, and out of desperation turned off the portal in an attempt to make the node untraversable (the GTVA lacking the means to do this, destroyed it). However just in the case of the GTVA, the node had stablizied and the Shivans moved through it regardless of their efforts. Over time however, it became unstable and prevented the return of the Lucifer. Then GTVA turned it on again and stablized the node again.
In FS1 the GTA and PVN share a similar plight to that of the Ancients, I would think that this theme repeats itself to an extent in FS2.
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If they didn't think it could be beaten, and have a loooooooooot of patience, why would they build more than one?
Or why not send two during the great war?
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You keep making the mistake I pointed out, that the Shivans actions necessarily imply they are acting reactionaryly against GTVA escalation. This is not so. The Ravana fleet was stationed in the Nebula system, and when it was clear the Knossos portal was open, the Sathanas fleet started moving towards the Capella sun. None of this necessarily implies any escalation nor even "reactionary" strategic planning on the part of Shivans, but one single decision process to engage the Capella star when the door became open.
The Shivans knew the Knossos was open from the very beginning, their first appearance was sending a cruiser through. If the Sathanas fleet started moving towards Capella the moment the door was open, the game would have ended before the Colossus even appeared.
I disagree. The first small contingent that went through the Knossos was part of the Ravana fleet, reacting to the Trinity appearance, etc. It's quite probable that the Sathanas fleet was signaled to enter the Capella system right at that moment, they just took longer to get there (they come from several systems away as seen in the SoC mission). It seems that the Ravana fleet is similar in scope and in purpose as the Lucifer fleet was in FS1 (and also metatextually), while the Sathanas fleet exists for a very different purpose (like building nodes and so on by blowing up stars).
Collapsing stars is just as valid a tactic as glassing planets. The Lucifer didn't bother chasing down every ineffective warship in the system before reducing Vasuda Prime to dust.
No it's not. We disagree fundamentally here. Not only did they let the vasudans and the humans off the hook by ignoring their attempts to destroy the nodes (and thus miss their opportunity to cleanse them), you don't just destroy a fourth of your "military fleet" by blowing up suns to get to those GTVA targets who were already fleeing from the system. It's also heavily implied by the Petrarch speech that while it was first suspected it was a weapon of such unforeseen proportions, the last speculation is entirely different in nature (and compared with the effort the humans will make in building the node towards Sol).
It's just idiotic tactics. You can easily glass planets with a single Sathanas for each one, and there would be nothing the GTVA could do to stop it. In Their Finest Hour their fleet was already pretty much done with. And while they are alien, writing on top of that "idiotic" is just idiotic.
The Sathanas fleet pours in rapidly and en masse. You see, what, eight, arrive, in the fifteen minutes you spend with the SoC? Sathanas 1 is so far ahead of the pack that the only way it isn't solo is if it's piloted by Shivan Leeroy Jenkins.
It could be. As I said, it might have come as a "surprise" (after properly translated to shivan terms) that the Sathanas was blown up, but just as well they just hammered on. I'm not even convinced the Sathanas fleet should be seen as running a "clockwork" route. Think of it as "ok, let's get these 80+ juggernaughts in place, gather them up and tell them to go there as fast as possible kthnksbye".
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The Shivans knew the Knossos was open from the very beginning, their first appearance was sending a cruiser through. If the Sathanas fleet started moving towards Capella the moment the door was open, the game would have ended before the Colossus even appeared.
Just because they sent a cruiser through doesn't mean the whole Shivan "network" knew about the portal being open immediately.
If they were waiting all this time for the portal to somehow reactivate and they knew about the Capella star being "perfect" for their plans, then the Sathanas fleet would be close by. We know that they weren't close by. Remember, the only ships to make it to Capella didn't make it back (at least until the Sathanas fleet showed up). So the Sathanas fleet didn't show up specifically for the Capella star, nor did it show up to try to destroy us, as it didn't do that. It had to be something else, but who knows what.
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Maybe they were swarming from other spread out systems.
Who knoes. (deliberate typo)
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FWIW, the first Sath appeared just after Bosch reached the Shivans. Maybe the Shivans were just reacting to the GTVA's intrusion into the nebula, until their dialogue with Bosch (or at least reading info on the Capella star from his databanks) convinced them to radically shift their strategy and send the Sath fleet charging into Capella.
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Everyone know ETAK was a facebook friend request from NTF to Shivanz/.
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hey bro, mind if we come over to your place for a party?
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One thing you have forgotten is that the shivans have been know to travel unstable nodes that the GTVA cant. So the shivans could of mostly likely travelled the knossos one without the knossos being active. As it was never stated that node in gamma draconis was collapsed or just unstable. So the shivans could of already been on the way and the timing of their presence and the activation of the knossos could all be coincidence.
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That would be the most amazing coincidence. Perhaps everything is accidental and it just coincidently all meshes out into an apparently coherent plot? Could be I mean. The story could even be about a Boltzmann's brain with that particular pilot memory. It was all chance you see.
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Could be anything. Maybe it was all a religious ritual in which the Shivans sacrifice themselves en masse to their Gods and ascend to a higher plane of existence, after first proving themselves worthy through battle with another race. :D
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My favorite theory was how the shivans built a portal through time and space towards Future Sol so that the future Human species could migrate to the far past in their new shape, as Shivans. And because they wanted to keep their origin story a secret, they kept comms' very strictly and only used advanced bots as fighters. They did everything they could to wipe every other race that could pose a threat to the GTVA and even engaged in their most damned protocol, to wipe Vasuda Prime and almost Earth itself to keep humans and vasudans on their toes, advancing as fast as they could, so that they would eventually build the self-replicating war machinery that would be called later as "the Shivans".
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I'd have just data-dumped all the future tech.
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Humans and Vasudans must feel the DREAD of the universe, so they can become absolutely ruthless.
Tough love. It works man.
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But.........Samuel Beis wifey :/
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she had it coming. come on, being in totally cool terms with her mother in law? what kind of universe was that anyway? A degenerate collapsing one, at best.
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I always liked the idea of the Knossos not just being a node stabiliser, but a node lock. When it's activated it stabilises/opens a node, but when it's properly deactivated it shuts it down and keeps it shut down until it's reactivated or destroyed. If the Knossos was never needed for the node to be there in the first place it would explain why the GTVA's plan of destroying the Knossos to keep the Sathanas out failed.
If the Ancients managed to lock the Gamma Draconis-Nebula node part way through their Shivan incursion they would have cut off the enormous Shivan fleet that wiped them out from the rest of their armada. In the intervening 8,000 years the cut off Shivan fleet ambled around what was formerly Ancient space and its numbers dwindled until there was only one Lucifer class ship remaining and a couple of destroyers. It doesn't explain Capella, but it explains a lot of the differences between the Shivans in both games without requiring them to be developing at the same pace as the GTVA or be testing them somehow.
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One thing you have forgotten is that the shivans have been know to travel unstable nodes that the GTVA cant. So the shivans could of mostly likely travelled the knossos one without the knossos being active. As it was never stated that node in gamma draconis was collapsed or just unstable. So the shivans could of already been on the way and the timing of their presence and the activation of the knossos could all be coincidence.
The Shivans have travelled naturally occuring, unstable nodes in FS1.
The presence of the Knossos implies the node is not naturally occuring, and is in fact artificial. I would suggest that the Ancients may have even generated the node altogether from scratch, perhaps to traverse distances greater than a node normally would provide. Both the Nebula and Lions Den mission imply that the knossos has permitted them to travel a great distance, with increasing other-worldly feel to both of them (and supporting dialogue).
As such I don't think one can assume that the node by default would fall under the type of nodes that the Shivans can transit. The sequence of events in the story specifically suggest that the Shivans arrived because the Knossos became active. The ancients essentially "dug too greedily and too deep" and awakened the shivans. They shut the door but it was too late. NTF re-opened it.
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One big plot hole for me is bosch wants to make contact with the shivans, how does he know the shivans are on the other side, would the shivans really wait for someone to activate the portal if their goal was to get to capella
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One big plot hole for me is bosch wants to make contact with the shivans, how does he know the shivans are on the other side, would the shivans really wait for someone to activate the portal if their goal was to get to capella
I think that makes several assumptions:
1. You're assuming that the Shivans actions at Capella weren't the result of a new initiative. It's entirely possible that new information acquired by the Shivans had them move towards Capella, rather than assuming they had that knowledge all along. You're also assuming that ships in FS2 were present in that location during the time of the ancient war. However the number of new designs and new technology suggests to me, the opposite.
2. Conversely I think it's safe to assume that Bosch learned that the portal is the route that the ancients took in their voyage. And in that voyage, they encountered the shivans. I would think he's not so much certain that shivans are on the other side, but rather that he's hoping they are.
I would think that Lucifer was cut off because the ancients closed the portal. Between the time of the portal being shut down, and the time of FS2, a new shivan fleet moved into the area beyond the knossos. Bosch, hoping that the shivans were still there activated the portal with the intent of making contact. The new shivans, with differing goals from the lucifer fleet, discovered through either scouting or analysis of captured vessels (or contact with Bosch) that Capella was ideal for the Sathanas operation. They then gathered their fleet, routing it through the lion's den and into Capella. Secondary elements engaged the GTVA while the Sathanas successfully enacted their operation.
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I agree, that also seems to me like the least convoluted theory on the shivan activities.
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It could also be as simple as Shivans are autonomous threat detection. When they encounter a new species, they seek to exterminate it/them. If contact is cut off, they do not register any more threats on the radar (so to speak) and cease pursuit. Then Bosch comes along and reignites the Shivan autonomous threat detection service and out come the response ships. The nodes get sealed, and the threat is no longer registered again, and they back off.
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But they don't kill Bosch, they take him and "talk" to him and possibly react and change their agenda after talking to him.
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Anyone seen Virus? The film where the "virus" takes over the soviet science ship after being downloaded from the ISS?
That's what the shivans did to Bosch. :shaking:
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Then Bosch comes along and reignites the Shivan autonomous threat detection service and out come the response ships. The nodes get sealed, and the threat is no longer registered again, and they back off.
Except they didn't "back off", they went their way to absolutely ignore "Terminate" to "Build Capella Highway (or whatevah) nau". Batts explained this very well in his concise thesis about how we not only can't beat them, we can't even understand them.
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All of the Lucifer class are engaged in a desperate war, far far away, against an enemy with very special abilities.
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All of the Lucifer class are engaged in a desperate war, far far away, against an enemy with very special abilities.
These special abilities include being able to make you high through the hull of a 2km+ space lobster/crayfish psi-kick powers, or induce a equivalent state if you're not a human.
(yeah i'm ****posting in this thread lol)
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It's not canonically denied - it's considered a theory with some evidence in support.
Which completely clashes with Hellfire. I'm not clear why you'd consider speculation made two decades after the fact more determinative than reality-on-the-ground for combat at the time. The theory obviously does not fit with the facts we the players have at hand.
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Well citing ST canon isn't the best argument out there as far as writing goes... (I do see your point)
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Eh, what's the actual blue planet theory? I skimmed the wiki entry but what I saw was something akin to "they change to defeat their enemy" which doesn't so much explain differences as it excuses them.
The problem is the Shivans in FS1 and FS2 didn't just use different means, but their goals were different as well. Destroying Capella does nothing to eradicate the species. Whereas the Lucifer made a b-line to each capital world to cut off the head of the enemy.
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Also regarding the hive-mind theory for the Shivans.
If the loss of the lucifer caused an immediate effect on the fleet, that suggests that the ship and its fellows had a continuous connection, yes?
Then how does one explain the presence of the comm nodes? They are after all labelled nodes in the game files, not amplifiers. Wouldn't a hive mind that stretches across subspace preclude the need for a node? A node is where two things intersect. That system in Lions Den was very much a node system, but the communication nodes seem unnecessary if it is in face a hive mind. Because a node suggests linear delivery of information, not an encompassing sphere of influence.
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I never really liked the hive mind theory. It makes them seem less intelligent as they can only function together and a lone fighter or cruiser is "useless" without everyone else. The behavior of the Shivans makes sense when looked at from a military position. The Lucifer was their ace in the hole. It was their super-weapon. It was their command ship. It was their plan to win the war/exterminate us. You take all that away all at once and it makes sense that the Shivans were reeling.
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@Megawolf
While is is an exploitable weakness it far from makes them less intelligent.
in fact I would go so far to say that the Lucifer "just" being a command ship would make be problematic as it would then open up the question of why are they unable to function as a cohesive unit afterwards if they are capable of independent operation, why do they not attempt to regroup, why are they suddenly so "easy" to wipe out? With a hive mind centred on the Lucifer for the local, relatively small group we have a clear cause and effect.
@Akalabeth Angel
The Terrans and Vasudans are capable of intersystem communications and yet they need comm relays, half of "A Failure to Communicate" is that you are guarding one such relay to maintain communication with the periphery. why would shivan's be any different?, perhaps the "signal" degrades over increasing jumps limiting co-ordination to begin with before fading beyond use
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@Akalabeth Angel
The Terrans and Vasudans are capable of intersystem communications and yet they need comm relays, half of "A Failure to Communicate" is that you are guarding one such relay to maintain communication with the periphery. why would shivan's be any different?, perhaps the "signal" degrades over increasing jumps limiting co-ordination to begin with before fading beyond use
Why would they be any different? That's the wrong question because it assumes the two sides are the same.
The question is not why are they different, the question is "If they are different, why are they employing the same means?"
Let's assume two things:
1. The shivans are a hive mind
2. The communication nodes are an extension of that hive mind
When the player destroys the three comm nodes in Lions Den, does the behaviour of the Shivans change in missions thereafter? no.
When the player encounters shivans within a hostile nebula environment with EMP that scrambles communications, do they behave differently? no.
The only "Evidence" for the shivan hive mind is a theory presented in the tech room. Actual gameplay, in both silent threat and FS2 doesn't to me support the theory.
A hive mind to me suggests constant communication to function at peak capability. This means that in any mission where communications are lessened, either by distance, destruction of nodes, EMP interference, etcetera the shivans should be noticeable different. And they would be deemed different by supporting dialogue spoken by command or wingmen in-game.
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The Lucy was a strategic hub. Doesn't mean the others can't follow predefined orders. The great war fleet simply didn't receive updates to the battle plan.
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say the comm nodes are a tool relating to communication/control.
1) you are assuming that the system beyond the nebula is beyond the range of other elements of the network
2a) you are assuming they are active/in use at the time of their destruction rather than being stored there for transit at another time.
2b) assuming they only have a 1 system/jump range you are assuming they are the only ones in the system.
3a) as for the EMP you are assuming they transmit on using electromagnetic energy.
3b) we dont know if EM communications are their prefered communication method, the only time we encounter communication of any type with the shivans is in "Speaking in Tongues" and while that is in EM, we dont know if that is because thats how Bosch opened communications with them and they are able to detect this fact or if it's because that is how they communicate.
3c) there is no mention anywhere in the game lore of shivan communications, as such i suggest that use of non EM communications in a means undetectable by either protagonist species would be a valid explanation of this.
4) What are the rules for this communication method? is it limited to single hop through subspace?
5) A hive mind does not preclude individual decision making, a Terminal Server network for example, the terminals usually have some processing and storage capability. This would allow local shivans to carry out existing instructions even if the connection is momentarily broken by an EMP blast
My post was an assumption, but one based on the fact that the devices have the ship name comm node, and while this is "out of universe" naming them after their function would be a valid line of thinking. and if that assumption is correct then it would imply a purpose relating to being communications related and a node is usually reference to a multiple connection point. the principle purpose of communication is to share thoughts either as ideas, sets of instructions or as control.
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in fact I would go so far to say that the Lucifer "just" being a command ship would make be problematic as it would then open up the question of why are they unable to function as a cohesive unit afterwards if they are capable of independent operation, why do they not attempt to regroup, why are they suddenly so "easy" to wipe out?
The Shivans actions after FS1 is similar to the GTA's actions after ST. Both groups lost confidence in their leadership. Of course, the Shivan leadership was dead. The reason that the GTA lasted so long was that some of the leadership was still around. If all of the GTA leadership was stuck in Sol, the breakdown would have been much sooner.
Also, the Lucifer wasn't "just" a command ship. It was their entire plan. Before the Lucifer was unveiled at Tombaugh, the Shivans seemed very beatable. It was because of the Lucifer that we were in any real danger.
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in fact I would go so far to say that the Lucifer "just" being a command ship would make be problematic as it would then open up the question of why are they unable to function as a cohesive unit afterwards if they are capable of independent operation, why do they not attempt to regroup, why are they suddenly so "easy" to wipe out?
The Shivans actions after FS1 is similar to the GTA's actions after ST. Both groups lost confidence in their leadership. Of course, the Shivan leadership was dead. The reason that the GTA lasted so long was that some of the leadership was still around. If all of the GTA leadership was stuck in Sol, the breakdown would have been much sooner.
Also, the Lucifer wasn't "just" a command ship. It was their entire plan. Before the Lucifer was unveiled at Tombaugh, the Shivans seemed very beatable. It was because of the Lucifer that we were in any real danger.
And up to that point a Cain cruiser did significant damage to the Galatea's fighter wing just trying to capture it. At no point was a victory against the Shivans presented to be anything other than a bloodbath for all parties involved. The Lucifer in simple terms is just a line breaker, while it can glass planets with ease its main direct military application is to break the battle line, something the shivans were already capable of doing but with greater risk of losses.
It took he shivan threat from perhaps a 7- 8 to 11.
Basically, while the Lucy was the focus of the protagonist's attention, by Reaching the Zenith (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Reaching_the_Zenith) its pretty obvious the shivans have us about beat, and by the time we kill the Lucy its a good bet that they know Sol is our home system so again, while they haven't glassed the system the effect will be the same, so again I have to ask why do the shivan's seem to fall to pieces?
As I have mentioned earlier in the thread we are dealing with an alien psych so what you say is possible but it's not an explanation I like, it says to me narratively "The big, relentless, unknowable enemy just gives up just because we took their favorite thing away."
As for leadership.
The Vasudans had time to start an evacuation of Vasuda Prime and given the nature of the individuals involved you can bet the parliament, military leaderships and their favorite aids got out in the first wave, so while there would be *some* disruption to the chain of command it would be very short term.
Not sure how ST relates to the shivan war as that was a civil war which for the most part was conducted away from the awareness of the main fleet/bulk of people's attention with the main body only being involved in the late game. Cant speak for STR as not played it but that is fanon anyway.
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As for it being just "taking their favorite thing away", consider the Japanese in WWII. They viewed their Emperor as divine. Take that away and all of a sudden they are confused etc etc.
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As for it being just "taking their favorite thing away", consider the Japanese in WWII. They viewed their Emperor as divine. Take that away and all of a sudden they are confused etc etc.
As I say, its possible but to me it doesn't sit right
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And up to that point a Cain cruiser did significant damage to the Galatea's fighter wing just trying to capture it. At no point was a victory against the Shivans presented to be anything other than a bloodbath for all parties involved. The Lucifer in simple terms is just a line breaker, while it can glass planets with ease its main direct military application is to break the battle line, something the shivans were already capable of doing but with greater risk of losses.
It took he shivan threat from perhaps a 7- 8 to 11.
Basically, while the Lucy was the focus of the protagonist's attention, by Reaching the Zenith (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Reaching_the_Zenith) its pretty obvious the shivans have us about beat, and by the time we kill the Lucy its a good bet that they know Sol is our home system so again, while they haven't glassed the system the effect will be the same, so again I have to ask why do the shivan's seem to fall to pieces?
As I have mentioned earlier in the thread we are dealing with an alien psych so what you say is possible but it's not an explanation I like, it says to me narratively "The big, relentless, unknowable enemy just gives up just because we took their favorite thing away."
Well, capturing something usually does take more effort than outright destroying it. Specifically, a single fighter (well, piloted by the player) doesn't have too much trouble destroying a Cain. But even so I don't remember losing too many wingmen, but I usually play medium or lower difficulty.
I believe that the Shivans are the "big relentless" enemy because of the Lucifer. Winning the Great War wasn't going to be easy regardless, but the Lucifer made a tough war basically unwinnable, at least conventionally.
It's kinda like the Battle of Midway in WWII. We destroyed 4 of Japan's aircraft carriers pretty unexpectedly. That broke the back of Japan's navy and a big part of their war effort. Now, imagine if the Emperor was on one of those carriers, along with all of the important/high-ranking government and military members. Sure, if an American ship neared a Japanese one, the Japanese one would presumably attack. But large scale coordinated movements would be difficult in the short term until the new command structure was figured out. Which is what we see in ST with Hellfire.
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The Lucy was a strategic hub. Doesn't mean the others can't follow predefined orders. The great war fleet simply didn't receive updates to the battle plan.
Yet Silent threat demonstrated that Shivans were still making strategic decisions, such as transiting between systems.
say the comm nodes are a tool relating to communication/control.
1) you are assuming that the system beyond the nebula is beyond the range of other elements of the network
2a) you are assuming they are active/in use at the time of their destruction rather than being stored there for transit at another time.
2b) assuming they only have a 1 system/jump range you are assuming they are the only ones in the system.
No. I'm assuming:
A - They are important
B - Their destruction has consequence
Fundamentally from a game design perspective, the comm nodes serve two purposes:
1. They reinforce the idea that the player is in shivan-controlled space. Because they have a permanent installation in-system
2. They give the player something to shoot at for 15 minutes.
No inactive device would have moving parts and a volatile power core. Explosion reactor = powered reactor. Powered reactor = active.
3a) as for the EMP you are assuming they transmit on using electromagnetic energy.
3b) we dont know if EM communications are their prefered communication method, the only time we encounter communication of any type with the shivans is in "Speaking in Tongues" and while that is in EM, we dont know if that is because thats how Bosch opened communications with them and they are able to detect this fact or if it's because that is how they communicate.
3c) there is no mention anywhere in the game lore of shivan communications, as such i suggest that use of non EM communications in a means undetectable by either protagonist species would be a valid explanation of this.
Bosch and the ETAK project studied the means to communicate with the Shivans.
Their go-to choice for first contact was EM.
Why would a research program, which studied means to communicate with the shivans choose a method of communication that is not the preferred? Further if there's no documentation of shivan communications from the outset, how would Bosch know to approach it in that fashion? GTA and PVN undoubtedly tried to communicate with the Shivans in the original war. The Shivans ignored them. Either because they couldn't hear them, or because they couldn't care.
EM got their attention because either
A - They could actually pick it up
B - They communicate in EM
Either way, I think SOME evidence has more weight to an argument that absolutely NO evidence.
Theories should be based on the facts at hand, not assumptions that the facts at hand are invalid.
5) A hive mind does not preclude individual decision making, a Terminal Server network for example, the terminals usually have some processing and storage capability. This would allow local shivans to carry out existing instructions even if the connection is momentarily broken by an EMP blastq
One would think that a central authority like the Lucifer would preclude the existence of a hive mind in the first place. It's like saying the Borg are a collective and then introducing the queen in Voyager and First Contact. It's against the notion of what a hive mind is as I understand it.
Regardless it's not a question of whether the shivans cannot make decisions. It's a question of whether their decisions are markedly less capable than previous. The destruction of the comm nodes, the presence of EM interference had no apparent effect on any shivan activity whatsoever.
My post was an assumption, but one based on the fact that the devices have the ship name comm node, and while this is "out of universe" naming them after their function would be a valid line of thinking. and if that assumption is correct then it would imply a purpose relating to being communications related and a node is usually reference to a multiple connection point. the principle purpose of communication is to share thoughts either as ideas, sets of instructions or as control.
Yeah communication devices communicate. We know that.
We also know that the destruction of the Lucifer severed communications between that ship and the rest of the fleet. We know that its destruction coincided with a marked decline in Shivan combat efficiency. The logical assumption is that combat efficiency decline as a result of the Lucifer's destruction but this too is an assumption.
If the Lucifer was a central authority in a collective consciousness, then what is the central authority in the FS2 fleet?
Is it the Sathanas? If the Sathanas is a central authority, then why didn't shivan combat efficiency decline after the destruction of the first?
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say the comm nodes are a tool relating to communication/control.
1) you are assuming that the system beyond the nebula is beyond the range of other elements of the network
2a) you are assuming they are active/in use at the time of their destruction rather than being stored there for transit at another time.
2b) assuming they only have a 1 system/jump range you are assuming they are the only ones in the system.
No. I'm assuming:
A - They are important
B - Their destruction has consequence
Fundamentally from a game design perspective, the comm nodes serve two purposes:
1. They reinforce the idea that the player is in shivan-controlled space. Because they have a permanent installation in-system
2. They give the player something to shoot at for 15 minutes.
No inactive device would have moving parts and a volatile power core. Explosion reactor = powered reactor. Powered reactor = active.
A - Important possibly, In use, not forced
B - Well they cant be used meaning that more will need to be moved up
1-2) I can agree with that
I would also have to agree with the moving parts point, the bit about the reactor is not forced, for example a matter/anti-matter reactor would go bang if you breach the storage containment.
3a) as for the EMP you are assuming they transmit on using electromagnetic energy.
3b) we dont know if EM communications are their prefered communication method, the only time we encounter communication of any type with the shivans is in "Speaking in Tongues" and while that is in EM, we dont know if that is because thats how Bosch opened communications with them and they are able to detect this fact or if it's because that is how they communicate.
3c) there is no mention anywhere in the game lore of shivan communications, as such i suggest that use of non EM communications in a means undetectable by either protagonist species would be a valid explanation of this.
Bosch and the ETAK project studied the means to communicate with the Shivans.
Their go-to choice for first contact was EM.
Why would a research program, which studied means to communicate with the shivans choose a method of communication that is not the preferred? Further if there's no documentation of shivan communications from the outset, how would Bosch know to approach it in that fashion? GTA and PVN undoubtedly tried to communicate with the Shivans in the original war. The Shivans ignored them. Either because they couldn't hear them, or because they couldn't care.
EM got their attention because either
A - They could actually pick it up
B - They communicate in EM
Either way, I think SOME evidence has more weight to an argument that absolutely NO evidence.
Theories should be based on the facts at hand, not assumptions that the facts at hand are invalid.
The Colossus to my understanding probably forced Bosch to accelerate his timetable meaning ETAK was likely incomplete so it's possible that testing on alternative communications combined with the ETAK system was not reliable. - OK thats *really* thin but possible and the best I can manage for now
Detecting EM is a very likely possibility due to it's general use as a detection technology and like when you broadcast vocally on EM I imagine that its wave pattern would be very distinctive, and lets face it putting together an EM transmitter is not difficult.
Having said all that you are right that some evidence is better than none. but then there is nothing in the canon preventing an alternative theory on that one.
5) A hive mind does not preclude individual decision making, a Terminal Server network for example, the terminals usually have some processing and storage capability. This would allow local shivans to carry out existing instructions even if the connection is momentarily broken by an EMP blastq
One would think that a central authority like the Lucifer would preclude the existence of a hive mind in the first place. It's like saying the Borg are a collective and then introducing the queen in Voyager and First Contact. It's against the notion of what a hive mind is as I understand it.
Regardless it's not a question of whether the shivans cannot make decisions. It's a question of whether their decisions are markedly less capable than previous. The destruction of the comm nodes, the presence of EM interference had no apparent effect on any shivan activity whatsoever.
Are we talking
a) TNG Borg style collective conscience with no distinct leader, where functionality below certain thresholds is greatly reduced
b) Voy Borg style controlled Collective
c) SotS Hiver Style where you have the Queen, underpinned by a number of highly functional "Princesses" acting as local focuses of the consciousness
As for the EM Like I discussed before that relies on EM based communications.
My post was an assumption, but one based on the fact that the devices have the ship name comm node, and while this is "out of universe" naming them after their function would be a valid line of thinking. and if that assumption is correct then it would imply a purpose relating to being communications related and a node is usually reference to a multiple connection point. the principle purpose of communication is to share thoughts either as ideas, sets of instructions or as control.
Yeah communication devices communicate. We know that.
We also know that the destruction of the Lucifer severed communications between that ship and the rest of the fleet. We know that its destruction coincided with a marked decline in Shivan combat efficiency. The logical assumption is that combat efficiency decline as a result of the Lucifer's destruction but this too is an assumption.
If the Lucifer was a central authority in a collective consciousness, then what is the central authority in the FS2 fleet?
Is it the Sathanas? If the Sathanas is a central authority, then why didn't shivan combat efficiency decline after the destruction of the first?
If the Comm nodes extend the consciousness/will then said consciousness/will can be anywhere in the network so not forced to be local at all.
The lucifer in the first game was the focal point because the network for whatever reason is nonfunctional in the local node network for example due to node isolation.
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Regarding comm nodes specifically:
1. If the destruction of the Lucifer was indeed the cause of the decreased Shivan combat efficiency, then if they are a hive mind it suggests they still have some central authority figure or hierarchy.
2. Furthermore, since there is no Lucifer present in FS2 and assuming that the nature of the shivans as a species has not changed, one must assume that central authority within the hive mind is vested in the Ravana, the Sathanas or an unseen asset.
3. Given the numbers and apparently spread-out deployment of the Sathanas and if one assumes these ships provide that same central authority, they should provide sufficient co-ordination on a local level. There's one Sathanas or more in every system, so more than enough to co-ordinate their forces.
Therefore, the question then is, why are the comm nodes there?
Well the simple answer is that they exist because they are needed.
They are needed because they either add a new capability or replace/augment an existing one.
The second question one should ask is, is the player character making a difference by destroying them? In a game where the player is a heroic figure and where their actions have consequence to give meaning , it should be safe to assume that destroying the devices has some effect. Further the shivans attempts to stop the player could be viewed as protecting the devices, though this is not a given.
One theory might be that the Sathanas fleet is in stasis. Mothballs as it were. And the communication nodes provide a means for those ships to co-ordinate the active vessels without being in immediate proximity. Once the Sathanas fleet became active, the comm nodes cease to be needed and the player actions in destroying them is wholly irrelevant.
Another theory might be that the comm nodes permit the shivans to communicate over greater distances. Perhaps through the Knossos portals which are artificially created. Since at the time of their destruction the Sathanas fleet is already deployed this would likewise make the players actions irrelevant.
Or perhaps the nodes permit the shivans to communicate with another area that they don't currently have access to. With Shivan forces cut off from the main force or a central figure. But the former is unlikely because if it did permit them to communicate with other shivans far off, why then were they not able to co-ordinate the lucifer fleet.
Yet another theory might be that the nodes provide a means for large shivan fleets to co-ordinate their activities. A lucifer provides obvious authority. 80+ Sathanas if serving the same function, would provide mixed authority assuming they are all created equal.
From the gameplay itself, it's suggested to me at least that destroying the nodes has no noticeable affect whatsoever. But that idea goes against the very concept of what a game like this is about.
So I don't think its true.
Furthermore, On the subject of hive minds in particular:
If all shivans are linked on some level in a hive mind. Then why are human-piloted shivan fighters not immediately identified as not being a part of that mind? GTA and GTVA were able to accomplish subterfuge through use of stolen fighters in both games. Yet the Shivans were only able to identify that through proximity or player aggression. Doesn't a linked consciousness also give the shivans a sense of place? As in, the shivans know where they are so when a fighter is present that is not where they are the fighter is therefore foreign and not shivan? If the Shivans don't know where they are not, then how are their minds link?
Further do the Shivans demonstrate an uncanny ability to retain intelligence? Is it possible to surprise shivans and get away with it. Destroy fighters or assets before they can call for help. Or does the very act of attacking a shivan alert the entirety of the shivan force, at least within a certain proximity?
So personally it sounds like the hive mind idea is a bunch of bollocks from the stealth fighter example alone.
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From the gameplay itself, it's suggested to me at least that destroying the nodes has no noticeable affect whatsoever. But that idea goes against the very concept of what a game like this is about.
So I don't think its true.
On the contrary, the whole narrative shouts at you in capital letters how ****ing irrelevant not only your actions really were to the actual course of the war, the entire GTVA actions were also pretty much unable to deviate anything from its own course. The point of having those nodes at that moment was entirely plot-driven. The idea is to have you be inside an alien fighter, inside alien space. You are in a binary system which gives one of your wingmen "the creeps", and you find strange, alien, weird looking shivan node "things" that have lots of powa inside of them. The fact you don't ever get to know about them later is just to reinforce how out of your league you really are, how unknown, and plotwise, unknowable, the shivans truly are (you as the pilot will never understand what those things were in your lifetime).
The "hive mind theory" is a simplistic phrase that may well fail to capture every single shivan behavior. What is important to retain is how different in their volition they are to us humans. We care about our singular lives. The shivans don't. They don't care one yota. They will send multiple fighters and corvettes to blow fleeing human ships in Capella even though they "know" they will be wiped out in a matter of moments. This is a hint that their actions are not of singular conscious beings. The evidence from FS1 about how their fleet loses efficiency after the Lucifer is wiped out is further proof that there's something along the lines of "hive mind" in motion, which could be taken in multiple ways. We could imagine them to be absolutely hierarchical with one ship commanding everything else. This is clearly not the case, "lose efficicency", not become dead. But they could well share intelligence and "consciousness" (or not). They could be aware of their own ships not being "their own" or not. Just because the shivans are able to see other shivan fighters and not immediately assume they are not theirs is not a shut case against the hive theory. We can postulate that, for instance, this notion is not automatic, they were distracted and just assumed they were looking "at themselves" and dwelled no further into such thoughts, etc.
(For instance, I can perfectly imagine one instance where I look at one finger near me and I think it's mine, only to find out it isn't when I try to move it).
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From the gameplay itself, it's suggested to me at least that destroying the nodes has no noticeable affect whatsoever. But that idea goes against the very concept of what a game like this is about.
So I don't think its true.
On the contrary, the whole narrative shouts at you in capital letters how ****ing irrelevant not only your actions really were to the actual course of the war, the entire GTVA actions were also pretty much unable to deviate anything from its own course. The point of having those nodes at that moment was entirely plot-driven. The idea is to have you be inside an alien fighter, inside alien space. You are in a binary system which gives one of your wingmen "the creeps", and you find strange, alien, weird looking shivan node "things" that have lots of powa inside of them. The fact you don't ever get to know about them later is just to reinforce how out of your league you really are, how unknown, and plotwise, unknowable, the shivans truly are (you as the pilot will never understand what those things were in your lifetime).
I'm not addressing the "actual course of the war".
FS2 is very much a story about small victories in the context of a larger defeat. Saving a ship is having consequence. Destroying the capella node is having consequence. Even destroying the initial Sathanas is a victory because if nothing else, it buys time for the GTVA and also gives it the opportunity to gain greater knowledge of the scope of the Shivan threat. Finding the second knossos, an act only made possible by the destruction of the first ship, enables intelligence to go into shivan space. Something that has never been done before.
If the Sathanas was not neutralized, would the Psamtik still be hunting Bosch?
The "hive mind theory" is a simplistic phrase that may well fail to capture every single shivan behavior. What is important to retain is how different in their volition they are to us humans. We care about our singular lives. The shivans don't. They don't care one yota. They will send multiple fighters and corvettes to blow fleeing human ships in Capella even though they "know" they will be wiped out in a matter of moments.
When the Vasudans rammed their Anubis fighters into GTA ships did they care about their lives? When the Colossus stood its ground against suicidal odds, or the NTF did its best to destroy it, did they demonstrate a concern for their own lives?
There's a difference between not caring about survival, and caring about an ideal so much that survival instinct is over-ridden.
The Shivans demonstrate a singular conviction towards their goals. This doesn't prove they don't care about existence.
This is a hint that their actions are not of singular conscious beings. The evidence from FS1 about how their fleet loses efficiency after the Lucifer is wiped out is further proof that there's something along the lines of "hive mind" in motion, which could be taken in multiple ways.
That depends on the specific effects.
If the lack of potency in the shivans was strategic ineptitude, but they were still potent on a tactical level, that could be just as easily explainable as a loss of command structure.
If the fighters rather aimed worse, manoeuvred worse and perhaps were even less efficient internally that suggest a constant connection to a central mind. But a constant connection and a lack of awareness in the spy missions don't work together in my opinion.
The very concept of a hive mind to my understanding is that it is unstructured.
We could imagine them to be absolutely hierarchical with one ship commanding everything else. This is clearly not the case, "lose efficicency", not become dead. But they could well share intelligence and "consciousness" (or not). They could be aware of their own ships not being "their own" or not. Just because the shivans are able to see other shivan fighters and not immediately assume they are not theirs is not a shut case against the hive theory. We can postulate that, for instance, this notion is not automatic, they were distracted and just assumed they were looking "at themselves" and dwelled no further into such thoughts, etc.
The idea of distraction is a bit silly when you consider the tasks assigned to the fighter craft and the strategic importance of the target being evaluated. When the Lucifer entered in-system, would it not be immediately aware of what assets were at its disposal and would it then not re-deploy them to best effect? And when one fighter failed to comply with the will of the whole, would not that fighter be immediately subjected to more intense evaluation? Particularly by a set of craft whose purpose is to evaluate potential threats to the most important asset in the fleet? Doesn't make a lick of sense. Especially when you consider that in similar circumstances, the GTVA would be more effective in evaluating an enemy threat. If the Colossus jumped into a new system and a fighter wing that wasn't supposed to be there, was there, it would be challenged for ID and mission, etcetera.
I think the more likely answer is that the shivans have a shared purpose either through programming or doctrine enforced over eons of related activity. They're a hive mind in the sense that they have a common goal or purpose, one which overrides all other natural urges, but they're not don't have shared consciousness and they don't lack a central command authority. I think their underlying mission is largely hard-coded, changeable only from a central source and perhaps passed on to them by a local authority like the Lucifer. The lucifer fleet had a specific purpose, the Sathanas had a completely different purpose. Derived of that purpose they lie largely dormant or in holding/roaming states until circumstances evolve to reinitialize their behaviour. But Shivans still get orders passed down a chain of command which they carry out until completed or given new orders.
In FS1 for example, if the shivan fleet's underlying purpose was to assist and guard the Lucifer in its mission to eradicate planetary sentience, then the loss of the Lucifer would not only leave them leaderless but also bereft of their primary goal. Without that they would fall back to secondary objectives of engaging spaceborne targets but without the co-ordination of an all encompassing commander. It would presumably be even worse if they likewise lost all Demon destroyers. The more heads you cut off, the more each body part moves independently.
This would better explain Playing Judas. The Lucifer upon entering in system would not seek out a shared consciousness with what was available, but would rather trust that your Dragon fighter is in-system on a mission given by another shivan asset, which at some point received an order from the Lucifer. Or in other words, the Lucifer assumed it indirectly ordered the fighter to be there. The protecting fighters likewise were given direct orders from the Lucifer to protect it against hostile targets, they only registered the player as a hostile target a certain proximity rather then knowing instinctively that the enemy fighter was not one of them. It also fits with the idea of the shivans as living machines.
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From the gameplay itself, it's suggested to me at least that destroying the nodes has no noticeable affect whatsoever. But that idea goes against the very concept of what a game like this is about.
So I don't think its true.
On the contrary, the whole narrative shouts at you in capital letters how ****ing irrelevant not only your actions really were to the actual course of the war, the entire GTVA actions were also pretty much unable to deviate anything from its own course. The point of having those nodes at that moment was entirely plot-driven. The idea is to have you be inside an alien fighter, inside alien space. You are in a binary system which gives one of your wingmen "the creeps", and you find strange, alien, weird looking shivan node "things" that have lots of powa inside of them. The fact you don't ever get to know about them later is just to reinforce how out of your league you really are, how unknown, and plotwise, unknowable, the shivans truly are (you as the pilot will never understand what those things were in your lifetime).
I'm not addressing the "actual course of the war".
FS2 is very much a story about small victories in the context of a larger defeat. Saving a ship is having consequence. Destroying the capella node is having consequence. Even destroying the initial Sathanas is a victory because if nothing else, it buys time for the GTVA and also gives it the opportunity to gain greater knowledge of the scope of the Shivan threat. Finding the second knossos, an act only made possible by the destruction of the first ship, enables intelligence to go into shivan space. Something that has never been done before.
If the Sathanas was not neutralized, would the Psamtik still be hunting Bosch?
You have not addressed my point. You said that the insignificance of destroying the nodes was against what "a game like this is about", except this game is precisely about a tale of Lovecrafian horror, i.e., the acknowledgement of sheer incapability to understand or destroy a massive being, that the only reason we are left alive is because they weren't even interested. In such a game, the fact these nodes' destruction are probably insignificant is just as well.
When the Vasudans rammed their Anubis fighters into GTA ships did they care about their lives? When the Colossus stood its ground against suicidal odds, or the NTF did its best to destroy it, did they demonstrate a concern for their own lives?
There's a difference between not caring about survival, and caring about an ideal so much that survival instinct is over-ridden.
The Shivans demonstrate a singular conviction towards their goals. This doesn't prove they don't care about existence.
This is obviously and demonstrably wrong. There is not one tactical achievement being done by staying in Capella and mass murdering every Capellan fugitive while the star is being supernovaed. The only threat the shivans face is the Collossus itself that could at any given point jump towards the rear of a Sathanas near the star and take advantage of their weaker beam cannons there. Even still, such a target would probably survive long enough until any other Sathanas could jump-beamrape it. Except for that weak threat, there was nothing the alliance could even hope to do.
The very concept of a hive mind to my understanding is that it is unstructured.
I'm pretty certain this is not the case [V] thought about nor is the case most of the people here thought about it. Hive minds do not preclude hierarchical structures.
The idea of distraction is a bit silly when you consider the tasks assigned to the fighter craft and the strategic importance and alleged importance of the target being evaluated. When the Lucifer entered in-system, would it not be immediately aware of what assets were at its disposal and would it then not re-deploy them to best effect? And when one fighter failed to comply with the will of the whole, would not that fighter be immediately subjected to more intense evaluation? Particularly by a set of craft whose purpose is to evaluate potential threats to the most important asset in the fleet? Doesn't make a lick of sense. Especially when you consider that in similar circumstances, the GTVA would be more effective in evaluating an enemy threat. If the Colossus jumped into a new system and a fighter wing that wasn't supposed to be there, was there, it would be challenged for ID and mission, etcetera.
That reinforces the notion that they do not operate in the usual single unit volition-based entities. Only in such structures these kinds of protocols are enacted to make sure everyone's actually commited and operating within the specified hierarchical chain, which is abstract to us, not entirely natural. If a species is hive-minded, they will not develop such protocols, they are unnecessary. Every shivan ship is their own, they will mostly react to outsiders. Of course this is a big flaw in their "design", one without which the shivans would be unbeatable in FS1. But such is the cliché narrative of FS1: "bad bad weird aliens, they're coming to get us and they are invincible except they have this curious blind spot which we will use to our advantage".
You can always read it as basically shivans being sleepy or just in cruiser mode and really being careless about what their tiny ships were randomly doing where. Only when others reached sufficiently close would they acknowledge the presence of another will that wasn't their own.
I think the more likely answer is that the shivans have a shared purpose either through programming or doctrine enforced over eons of related activity. They're a hive mind in the sense that they have a common goal or purpose, one which overrides all other natural urges, but they're not don't have shared consciousness and they don't lack a central command authority. I think their underlying mission is largely hard-coded, changeable only from a central source and perhaps passed on to them by a local authority like the Lucifer. The lucifer fleet had a specific purpose, the Sathanas had a completely different purpose. Derived of that purpose they lie largely dormant or in holding/roaming states until circumstances evolve to reinitialize their behaviour. But Shivans still get orders passed down a chain of command which they carry out until completed or given new orders.
Such is a possible theory as well, I agree that it fits.
In FS1 for example, if the shivan fleet's underlying purpose was to assist and guard the Lucifer in its mission to eradicate planetary sentience, then the loss of the Lucifer would not only leave them leaderless but also bereft of their primary goal. Without that they would fall back to secondary objectives of engaging spaceborne targets but without the co-ordination of an all encompassing commander. It would presumably be even worse if they likewise lost all Demon destroyers. The more heads you cut off, the more each body part moves independently.
This would better explain Playing Judas. The Lucifer upon entering in system would not seek out a shared consciousness with what was available, but would rather trust that your Dragon fighter is in-system on a mission given by another shivan asset, which at some point received an order from the Lucifer. Or in other words, the Lucifer assumed it indirectly ordered the fighter to be there. The protecting fighters likewise were given direct orders from the Lucifer to protect it against hostile targets, they only registered the player as a hostile target a certain proximity rather then knowing instinctively that the enemy fighter was not one of them. It also fits with the idea of the shivans as living machines.
Yes, I can live with that.
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You have not addressed my point. You said that the insignificance of destroying the nodes was against what "a game like this is about", except this game is precisely about a tale of Lovecrafian horror, i.e., the acknowledgement of sheer incapability to understand or destroy a massive being, that the only reason we are left alive is because they weren't even interested. In such a game, the fact these nodes' destruction are probably insignificant is just as well.
No it isn't. This isn't a game about a hopeless war, or lovecraftian horror, or whatever.
This game is about the player being a cool pilot in an inter-galactic war.
You're talking about the game's theme, tone and backdrop. I'm talking about player agency and their ability to affect things.
Player agency ensures that the Colossus defeats the first Sathanas. It ensures that the Bastion completes its final mission.
One can even argue that the player and the GTVA doesn't lose the war. Their expansion into the nebula certainly fails. But their ultimate goal of long term survival remains intact. How can you lose a battle when you're not fighting for the same thing? Shivans fought to conduct their operation, GTVA fought to survive, both sides accomplished their goals and both sides are ultimately victors. The fact that the Shivans could have defeated the GTVA and exterminated the lot of them doesn't mean its a possible outcome because the Sathanas fleet may be pre-disposed to perform another function.
When the Vasudans rammed their Anubis fighters into GTA ships did they care about their lives? When the Colossus stood its ground against suicidal odds, or the NTF did its best to destroy it, did they demonstrate a concern for their own lives?
There's a difference between not caring about survival, and caring about an ideal so much that survival instinct is over-ridden.
The Shivans demonstrate a singular conviction towards their goals. This doesn't prove they don't care about existence.
This is obviously and demonstrably wrong. There is not one tactical achievement being done by staying in Capella and mass murdering every Capellan fugitive while the star is being supernovaed. The only threat the shivans face is the Collossus itself that could at any given point jump towards the rear of a Sathanas near the star and take advantage of their weaker beam cannons there. Even still, such a target would probably survive long enough until any other Sathanas could jump-beamrape it. Except for that weak threat, there was nothing the alliance could even hope to do.
The tactical achievement is ensuring non-interference in the Sathanas operation.
They ensure this by working to eliminate non-shivan elements in system.
The very concept of a hive mind to my understanding is that it is unstructured.
I'm pretty certain this is not the case [V] thought about nor is the case most of the people here thought about it. Hive minds do not preclude hierarchical structures.
1. Swarm intelligence (SI) is the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial.
2. Collective conscious or collective conscience (French conscience collective) is the set of shared beliefs, ideas and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society
3. A group mind, hive mind, mind coalescence or group ego in science fiction is a single, collective consciousness or intelligence occupying many bodies or entities.
There are many definitions of what a hive mind could represent. The third is probably the form you are referring to, but the third also makes the humans in alien craft missions untenable.
That reinforces the notion that they do not operate in the usual single unit volition-based entities. Only in such structures these kinds of protocols are enacted to make sure everyone's actually commited and operating within the specified hierarchical chain, which is abstract to us, not entirely natural. If a species is hive-minded, they will not develop such protocols, they are unnecessary. Every shivan ship is their own, they will mostly react to outsiders. Of course this is a big flaw in their "design", one without which the shivans would be unbeatable in FS1. But such is the cliché narrative of FS1: "bad bad weird aliens, they're coming to get us and they are invincible except they have this curious blind spot which we will use to our advantage". You can always read it as basically shivans being sleepy or just in cruiser mode and really being careless about what their tiny ships were randomly doing where. Only when others reached sufficiently close would they acknowledge the presence of another will that wasn't their own.
The premise you present is entirely unsupported by the game.
If the Shivans do not have protocols to ensure that everyone is committed towards a goal, then the shivan attacks would be wholly uncoordinated with random numbers of ships jumping in to attempt the overall goal in a haphazard fashion rather than co-ordinated attacks by wings of bombers escorted by fighter craft.
There is nothing random about their behaviour.
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No it isn't. This isn't a game about a hopeless war, or lovecraftian horror, or whatever.
This game is about the player being a cool pilot in an inter-galactic war.
You're talking about the game's theme, tone and backdrop. I'm talking about player agency and their ability to affect things.
Player agency ensures that the Colossus defeats the first Sathanas. It ensures that the Bastion completes its final mission.
I fundamentally disagree with you here. The "cool pilot in an inter-galactic war" is the setup, the expectation, that is eventually turned upside down and the whole notion ultimately defeated. The setup is the entire game going downwards, so yes, you do get victories and objectives done along the way, but they are ever decreasing in ambition, from shattering the NTF and bombing the Ravana, conquering the nebula, to destroy the node before the Sathanas gets here, to cull Capella nodes, until the last mission where you are just trying to get as many people to run away with their asses on fire as you possibly can, and at the very end you aren't even allowed to finish that mission altogether.
One can even argue that the player and the GTVA doesn't lose the war. Their expansion into the nebula certainly fails. But their ultimate goal of long term survival remains intact. How can you lose a battle when you're not fighting for the same thing? Shivans fought to conduct their operation, GTVA fought to survive, both sides accomplished their goals and both sides are ultimately victors. The fact that the Shivans could have defeated the GTVA and exterminated the lot of them doesn't mean its a possible outcome because the Sathanas fleet may be pre-disposed to perform another function.
You call that a victory? The death of everything humans and vasudans thought possible to do in this universe ended in this chapter. They now realise the universe is filled with Supernovae inducing monsters, that they are flies that can be batted at any second. Hubris ends in despair and a fleeting emotion of false temporary security. "Phyrric" doesn't even cut it.
The tactical achievement is ensuring non-interference in the Sathanas operation.
They ensure this by working to eliminate non-shivan elements in system.
Mass murdering everyone that is trying to flee the field of operations is far beyond the scope of "ensuring non-interference". By definition, all those ships were trying to "not" interfere as fast as they could possibly do.
1. Swarm intelligence (SI) is the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial.
2. Collective conscious or collective conscience (French conscience collective) is the set of shared beliefs, ideas and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society
3. A group mind, hive mind, mind coalescence or group ego in science fiction is a single, collective consciousness or intelligence occupying many bodies or entities.
There are many definitions of what a hive mind could represent. The third is probably the form you are referring to, but the third also makes the humans in alien craft missions untenable.
Well it depends on how precisely this hive mind works. Given every single evidence we have, we can definitely have some notion of what this hive mind can't do, and so we can theorize on particular models of hive minds that encapsulate observed behavior. I'm not particularly convinced by your argument, since you preclude certain behaviors from a kind of structure by merely reading a phrase-lengthed summary or definition of it. There are levels of hierarchical thought that can be theorized in a "hive mind structure", you can juggle in other theories and ideas with it, etc.
The premise you present is entirely unsupported by the game.
"Entirely" is surely an overstatement. The hive mind theory is clearly written in the intel bits, making it both volition canon and the conclusion of GTVA Intelligence. We can theorize about the narrator not being honest with us, we can theorize how both volition and GTVA Intelligence were not aware of these so-called "inconsistencies" you are pointing out, but to call it "entirely" is overreaching.
If the Shivans do not have protocols to ensure that everyone is committed towards a goal, then the shivan attacks would be wholly uncoordinated with random numbers of ships jumping in to attempt the overall goal in a haphazard fashion rather than co-ordinated attacks by wings of bombers escorted by fighter craft.
There is nothing random about their behaviour.
I did not say they are uncoordinated. I said that the usual kinds of protocols we are used to in human ships and so on are probably non-existent in the shivan universe. The implication is that it is possible to theorize about a kind of hive mind that isn't permanently checking if every cell of its being is behaving consistently with their visual model of the world around them. Your theory is also possible.
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Just dipping my toe into the water:
What if the destruction of the nodes actually caused the Shivans to blow up Capella? Maybe without the nodes they revert back into some feral status, blowing up the very first star within a populated sector and then crash jump back into "friendly terretory".
Three nodes in a system with what... three Knossos portals?
Maybe the nodes are deploxed at crossroads and are intended to never come under attack.
With the Knossos in GD shut down, the Lucifer acted as hub and without it.
Just my two cents, I'm not that much into it but I enjoy reading this whole discussion.
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Of course, that would turn the whole FS2 narrative into a cruel mad joke almost like JAD.
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No it isn't. This isn't a game about a hopeless war, or lovecraftian horror, or whatever.
This game is about the player being a cool pilot in an inter-galactic war.
I fundamentally disagree with you here. The "cool pilot in an inter-galactic war" is the setup, the expectation, that is eventually turned upside down and the whole notion ultimately defeated. The setup is the entire game going downwards, so yes, you do get victories and objectives done along the way, but they are ever decreasing in ambition, from shattering the NTF and bombing the Ravana, conquering the nebula, to destroy the node before the Sathanas gets here, to cull Capella nodes, until the last mission where you are just trying to get as many people to run away with their asses on fire as you possibly can, and at the very end you aren't even allowed to finish that mission altogether.
By campaign's end the player goes from regular, run of the mill fighter pilot to squadron leader of an ace unit flying top of the line fighter craft and having more and more responsibility. It goes from hubris and arrogance in invading the nebula, to the most basic and arguably most important victory there is: saving people.
But at no time is the role of the player subverted. They are not turned into something they are not. They start as a regular pilot and become one of the war's heroes.
One can even argue that the player and the GTVA doesn't lose the war. Their expansion into the nebula certainly fails. But their ultimate goal of long term survival remains intact. How can you lose a battle when you're not fighting for the same thing? Shivans fought to conduct their operation, GTVA fought to survive, both sides accomplished their goals and both sides are ultimately victors. The fact that the Shivans could have defeated the GTVA and exterminated the lot of them doesn't mean its a possible outcome because the Sathanas fleet may be pre-disposed to perform another function.
You call that a victory? The death of everything humans and vasudans thought possible to do in this universe ended in this chapter. They now realise the universe is filled with Supernovae inducing monsters, that they are flies that can be batted at any second. Hubris ends in despair and a fleeting emotion of false temporary security. "Phyrric" doesn't even cut it.
Some would argue that waking up in the morning is a victory. Particularly when you're in a war with the shivans.
At the end of FS2, the NTF was defeated, most of the GTVA colonies had not come under shivan attack, the threat of invasion from Capella was ended, and they acquired the technology to re-build the node to earth.
That and the magnitude of the shivan threat was realized. You're going from the assumption that humanity and vasudan-kind will stop trying. Seeing 80 Sathanas destroy the star wont cause them to despair and prepare for their inevitable defeat. They'll try harder.
I would argue that the victory is not too dissimilar from FS1's. People say the story is cliche. It's not. There's no ultimate victory in FS1, Vasuda is destroyed and Earth is cut off from the rest of humanity. That victory is equally pyrrhic and in the wake of the conclusion there was more loss of life. FS2's story ends in a similar way, but it ends with realization and hope.
The tactical achievement is ensuring non-interference in the Sathanas operation.
They ensure this by working to eliminate non-shivan elements in system.
Mass murdering everyone that is trying to flee the field of operations is far beyond the scope of "ensuring non-interference". By definition, all those ships were trying to "not" interfere as fast as they could possibly do.
How would the shivans know that? If they're told to engage all elements in-system they would attack both military and civilian targets alike. "Secure the area" generally means no shivan craft left alive and attacking all ships, including civilian ones, would follow the past shivan goal of extermination.
As for hive theory, symptoms of a possible theory don't prove the theory, particularly when there are multiple potential causes and when the theory's source also undercuts its credibility (FS2 if I recall mentions hive theory but also that others disagree). GTVA also has another theory, that the Colossus would defeat the shivans.
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By campaign's end the player goes from regular, run of the mill fighter pilot to squadron leader of an ace unit flying top of the line fighter craft and having more and more responsibility. It goes from hubris and arrogance in invading the nebula, to the most basic and arguably most important victory there is: saving people.
You do go up in your personal career by the same speed the GTVA is toning down its ambitions. Your last sentence is just unreadable. "the most important victory there is... saving people!" wat. It's not even second rate propaganda. And you *do* fail that mission, furthermore the only way to survive it is to boost your engines and leave all those so "important people" behind you (**** you suckeeeeers!). The word victory is ridiculous in this context.
But at no time is the role of the player subverted. They are not turned into something they are not. They start as a regular pilot and become one of the war's heroes.
I agree with this, the war is the one subverted, not the "player" himself, although given how muted he / she is, in order to give the war campaign its narrative predominance, I'd say this is a pretty minor detail. The pilot is almost irrelevant, almost just another observer of a starbusting war with beams and nuclear explosions happening in front of him / her.
Some would argue that waking up in the morning is a victory. Particularly when you're in a war with the shivans.
At the end of FS2, the NTF was defeated, most of the GTVA colonies had not come under shivan attack, the threat of invasion from Capella was ended, and they acquired the technology to re-build the node to earth.
That and the magnitude of the shivan threat was realized. You're going from the assumption that humanity and vasudan-kind will stop trying. Seeing 80 Sathanas destroy the star wont cause them to despair and prepare for their inevitable defeat. They'll try harder.
This is precisely the bogus hubris that was defeated in FS2. This. Precisely this arrogance. The game goes all its way to ensure you get the idea that the arrogance of the GTVA in thinking it could outplay the universe (and the shivans) was so out-of-its-place it's not even funny. 20 years to build one collossal ship that didn't survive 3 minutes into a skirmish against just one big shivan excavator.
I would argue that the victory is not too dissimilar from FS1's. People say the story is cliche. It's not. There's no ultimate victory in FS1, Vasuda is destroyed and Earth is cut off from the rest of humanity. That victory is equally pyrrhic and in the wake of the conclusion there was more loss of life. FS2's story ends in a similar way, but it ends with realization and hope.
FS1 story is clichéd in a different manner, that it is about One Big Bad Ship that is taken out at the Last Minute. There are Big Consequences That Have To Be Paid (like in every cliché, there's always a payment). FS2 slaps you in the face in the sense that The Payments you do along the game against the Shivans have no consequence whatsoever, and were needless anyway. You cut off the link to Capella and sacrifice quite a lot in those ops, but again, the Shivans are just ignoring all of this, they couldn't care less, and then the Big End is not how you defeat an enemy "with great sacrifices", but how you survive because The Enemy wasn't really one, they wanted something different that had little to do with you and just go away by themselves.
How would the shivans know that? If they're told to engage all elements in-system they would attack both military and civilian targets alike. "Secure the area" generally means no shivan craft left alive and attacking all ships, including civilian ones, would follow the past shivan goal of extermination.
It's very easy to see ships fleeing a system. You watch them subspacing towards a node, then entering a node. And you watch a whole bunch of ships doing the same thing. Why are you stopping them? They are fleeing the system, just let them. The idea that this is hard to understand is ludicrous.
As for hive theory, symptoms of a possible theory don't prove the theory, particularly when there are multiple potential causes and when the theory's source also undercuts its credibility (FS2 if I recall mentions hive theory but also that others disagree). GTVA also has another theory, that the Colossus would defeat the shivans.
I only need a text from Volition hinting this was the case and the possibility of it. There's no "Theory" here because this is fiction, and you might build a fiction on top of this one with your theory and others with other theories. As long as they are "possible", "compatible", then it's all that's required. You're not going to win any Nobel prize here figuring out with precise a priori thought what *exactly* the shivan nature is.
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This is precisely the bogus hubris that was defeated in FS2. This. Precisely this arrogance. The game goes all its way to ensure you get the idea that the arrogance of the GTVA in thinking it could outplay the universe (and the shivans) was so out-of-its-place it's not even funny. 20 years to build one collossal ship that didn't survive 3 minutes into a skirmish against just one big shivan excavator.
There's a big difference between arrogance and not despairing. Just because they aren't freaking out and saying "We're all gonna die!!!!" doesn't mean they are arrogant. Will they build a fleet of Colossi to combat the Sathanas fleet? No. Will they research new technologies and try to find a weak-spot or better way to defeat them? Most likely.
It's very easy to see ships fleeing a system. You watch them subspacing towards a node, then entering a node. And you watch a whole bunch of ships doing the same thing. Why are you stopping them? They are fleeing the system, just let them. The idea that this is hard to understand is ludicrous.
If we were talking about Terrans or Vasudans, that would make sense. But we're talking about the Shivans. They have been known to attack civilians without discrimination or mercy. Now the fact that they are attacking anyone when there is a big operation going on leads me to believe that that big operation has something to do with us and not some "unknowable" mystery of the Shivans.
I only need a text from Volition hinting this was the case and the possibility of it. There's no "Theory" here because this is fiction, and you might build a fiction on top of this one with your theory and others with other theories. As long as they are "possible", "compatible", then it's all that's required. You're not going to win any Nobel prize here figuring out with precise a priori thought what *exactly* the shivan nature is.
I think you misunderstand what he means. Here is the text from the tech room:
Xenobiologists know very little about Shivan society. A leading hypothesis is the hive mind theory, arguing that Shivan society is broken down in specialized functions driven by a collective intelligence. The most convincing evidence supporting this theory is the behavior of Shivan forces following the destruction of the SD Lucifer, the turning point of the Great War. Other experts caution against attributing insectoid properties to the Shivans, regardless of their appearance and behavior.
Just because Volition has a text describing a theory doesn't mean it's the correct one. Of course, you can believe it's the correct one, which is fine. But to say "Volition said it, so it's good enough for me" is taking away from what the text really says.
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There's a big difference between arrogance and not despairing. Just because they aren't freaking out and saying "We're all gonna die!!!!" doesn't mean they are arrogant. Will they build a fleet of Colossi to combat the Sathanas fleet? No. Will they research new technologies and try to find a weak-spot or better way to defeat them? Most likely.
They will do so knowing full well that at most the only shot they have against the shivans is either by being ignored or by playing guerrilla warfare long enough. Considering the shivans have erradicated many species before that probably also engaged in guerrilla warfare, I'd say the chances the GTVA has of long term survival in this universe is 100% dependent on the shivan's plans. For instance, in BP we kinda get the idea that the only reason humanity survives is because there's a political struggle being waged in the higher echelons of the galaxy (shivans and vishnans) and that the shivans' programming involve more than "erradicate everyone".
If we were talking about Terrans or Vasudans, that would make sense. But we're talking about the Shivans. They have been known to attack civilians without discrimination or mercy. Now the fact that they are attacking anyone when there is a big operation going on leads me to believe that that big operation has something to do with us and not some "unknowable" mystery of the Shivans.
Why? Is there any evidence whatsoever that this is the case? Even considering all the hypothesis put on the table, that somehow the encounter with Bosch made the Shivans blow up Capella, I really can't see how this "dismistifies" the shivans at all, since too many questions are still on the table.
I only need a text from Volition hinting this was the case and the possibility of it. There's no "Theory" here because this is fiction, and you might build a fiction on top of this one with your theory and others with other theories. As long as they are "possible", "compatible", then it's all that's required. You're not going to win any Nobel prize here figuring out with precise a priori thought what *exactly* the shivan nature is.
I think you misunderstand what he means. Here is the text from the tech room:
Xenobiologists know very little about Shivan society. A leading hypothesis is the hive mind theory, arguing that Shivan society is broken down in specialized functions driven by a collective intelligence. The most convincing evidence supporting this theory is the behavior of Shivan forces following the destruction of the SD Lucifer, the turning point of the Great War. Other experts caution against attributing insectoid properties to the Shivans, regardless of their appearance and behavior.
Just because Volition has a text describing a theory doesn't mean it's the correct one. Of course, you can believe it's the correct one, which is fine. But to say "Volition said it, so it's good enough for me" is taking away from what the text really says.
I had already made all this commentary before. Again, this is just the typical way writers convey what they mean by what they invented, when there's no omniscient narrator to do the job for them: they get some scientist sciensplainin' what the writers intended in the first place and say "it's just a theory", which is a great way to arrange a ways out if so necessary (have the cake and eat it). And of course you can distrust the narration here, and you can even not give a damn about Volition's plans.
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They will do so knowing full well that at most the only shot they have against the shivans is either by being ignored or by playing guerrilla warfare long enough.
This is almost certainly not true. 80 Sathanas is an impressive but finite force, and any finite number can be reduced to zero. As someone who plays games, you should probably be familiar with that concept. Add to that the nature of previous Shivan contacts shows a definite pattern and it would be possible to sequence-break the manner of Shivan invasions. BP's backstory is an explicit attempt to avoid that concept, but it's not a very satisfying answer.
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I'd be curious to know this sequence-breaker tactic that somehow eluded every single race beforehand... 80 Sathanas brought to a system and one fifth of which were casually left out to be burned by the star. Not one single hint this was the only fleet at their disposal, not one single hint there aren't thousands of these blowing up stars all around the Milky Way. Of course there could have been only 80 I guess. There could have been only one Ravana or one Sathanas too (before).
And if by "games" you mean the trope where impossible odds are beaten, well then I guess that my viewpoint on FS2 precludes any of that Star Wars optimism. Its theme is horror, not unbridled optimism. Is it wrong to build a post-Capella narrative wherein this optimism surfaces and you get to defeat the Shivans Hollywood style? No. It's just very different to the material we have now. But I gotta tell ya that when you said "games" the first thing that came to my mind was Mass Effect so... yeeeeah.
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I'd be curious to know this sequence-breaker tactic that somehow eluded every single race beforehand...
Well, we see that in FS1. I believe that by FS2 we are more advanced than any other race beforehand (other than in subspace tech) simply because we survived the Shivans and used their technology. Kinda like in Mass Effect where the Reapers weren't able to turn off/restrict the mass relay network. It gave the galaxy time to build the crucible. Now I'm not saying that the FS universe has a crucible type thing to defeat the Shivans. What I am saying is that we survived encounters with the Shivans twice and are effectively sealed off from them. That is more than any other species had (that we know of).
80 Sathanas brought to a system and one fifth of which were casually left out to be burned by the star. Not one single hint this was the only fleet at their disposal, not one single hint there aren't thousands of these blowing up stars all around the Milky Way. Of course there could have been only 80 I guess. There could have been only one Ravana or one Sathanas too (before).
I personally believe that the supernova was an accident, so the 1/5 fleet that got wiped was also an accident. However, to say that there could be thousands of fleets out there just because we don't know there aren't seems a bit unreasonable. Sure, there is always the possibility. But given the delay in the fleet getting to known space, it seems like they were spread out. The first Sathanas was sent to clear out the way probably because it was the closest.
If we were talking about Terrans or Vasudans, that would make sense. But we're talking about the Shivans. They have been known to attack civilians without discrimination or mercy. Now the fact that they are attacking anyone when there is a big operation going on leads me to believe that that big operation has something to do with us and not some "unknowable" mystery of the Shivans.
Why? Is there any evidence whatsoever that this is the case? Even considering all the hypothesis put on the table, that somehow the encounter with Bosch made the Shivans blow up Capella, I really can't see how this "dismistifies" the shivans at all, since too many questions are still on the table.
We know that Shivans attacked civilians escaping Vasuda Prime. Of course, they also glassed it, along with the Ancients' planets and nearly Earth too. Given, this is all FS1 Shivans. However, up until the appearance of the Sathanas fleet, the FS2 Shivans behaved exactly the same as the FS1 Shivans. For them to suddenly do a 180 and not care about us (for the most part) doesn't make sense. Of course, you can say "That's the Shivans!" but I don't want to go down that path.
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Well, we see that in FS1. I believe that by FS2 we are more advanced than any other race beforehand (other than in subspace tech) simply because we survived the Shivans and used their technology. Kinda like in Mass Effect where the Reapers weren't able to turn off/restrict the mass relay network. It gave the galaxy time to build the crucible. Now I'm not saying that the FS universe has a crucible type thing to defeat the Shivans. What I am saying is that we survived encounters with the Shivans twice and are effectively sealed off from them. That is more than any other species had (that we know of).
We also know the Ancient species was an almost galaxy spanning civilization, which is somewhat at some orders of magnitude a larger civilization than the GTVA at the time of FS2, but I agree this is somewhat "retconned" by the hubris we see in FS2 in Command by them thinking we have out-gunned the Shivans (that had conquered a galaxy-spanning civilization). No such thought should have been possible if the "Ancients" were still thought at the time to have been such a large civilization.
By the end of FS2 there's no hint we got closer to defeat the Shivans than at the beggining. The only thing we've learned from them is that they are way more menacing than we thought at first.
I personally believe that the supernova was an accident, so the 1/5 fleet that got wiped was also an accident.
Well that's an original theory at least. I think it runs counter to their (relentless, ultimately undefeatable, non-ridiculous) character by portraying them as a blundering species, but I would enjoy watching how this could play out.
However, to say that there could be thousands of fleets out there just because we don't know there aren't seems a bit unreasonable. Sure, there is always the possibility. But given the delay in the fleet getting to known space, it seems like they were spread out. The first Sathanas was sent to clear out the way probably because it was the closest.
To understand the point about "the thousands" I refer to the thematic of the whole FS2, which to me is something about how utterly miscalculated was our grasp of their strenght. "80" is just a placeholder number that is sufficiently big to render our hopes dead and not sufficiently large to become ridiculous, hilarious. A sense of "seriousness" is maintained within the narrative with that kind of number ( a number like 3400 ships would have, paradoxically, turn the shivans into a cosmic joke rather than the horror they are with 80....), but the point of the narrative is precisely how the GTVA is hopelessly outgunned in every respect against a species that ultimately doesn't even want to deal with us anymore, and all the clashes they have with us are secondary, marginal, a nuisance.
We know that Shivans attacked civilians escaping Vasuda Prime. Of course, they also glassed it, along with the Ancients' planets and nearly Earth too. Given, this is all FS1 Shivans. However, up until the appearance of the Sathanas fleet, the FS2 Shivans behaved exactly the same as the FS1 Shivans. For them to suddenly do a 180 and not care about us (for the most part) doesn't make sense. Of course, you can say "That's the Shivans!" but I don't want to go down that path.
It's not that they "don't care about us", it's that they massacre every single ship going out of their theater of operations anyway with assets that are about to be destroyed for doing so.
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By campaign's end the player goes from regular, run of the mill fighter pilot to squadron leader of an ace unit flying top of the line fighter craft and having more and more responsibility. It goes from hubris and arrogance in invading the nebula, to the most basic and arguably most important victory there is: saving people.
You do go up in your personal career by the same speed the GTVA is toning down its ambitions. Your last sentence is just unreadable. "the most important victory there is... saving people!" wat. It's not even second rate propaganda. And you *do* fail that mission, furthermore the only way to survive it is to boost your engines and leave all those so "important people" behind you (**** you suckeeeeers!). The word victory is ridiculous in this context.
Was Dunkirk a victory for the British? They were defeated in France but saved their military. It's not difficult to understand how a partial evacuation could be considered a success.
Some would argue that waking up in the morning is a victory. Particularly when you're in a war with the shivans.
At the end of FS2, the NTF was defeated, most of the GTVA colonies had not come under shivan attack, the threat of invasion from Capella was ended, and they acquired the technology to re-build the node to earth.
That and the magnitude of the shivan threat was realized. You're going from the assumption that humanity and vasudan-kind will stop trying. Seeing 80 Sathanas destroy the star wont cause them to despair and prepare for their inevitable defeat. They'll try harder.
This is precisely the bogus hubris that was defeated in FS2. This. Precisely this arrogance. The game goes all its way to ensure you get the idea that the arrogance of the GTVA in thinking it could outplay the universe (and the shivans) was so out-of-its-place it's not even funny. 20 years to build one collossal ship that didn't survive 3 minutes into a skirmish against just one big shivan excavator.
So what? They're alive. They'll keep moving forward. Keep fighting.
I would argue that the victory is not too dissimilar from FS1's. People say the story is cliche. It's not. There's no ultimate victory in FS1, Vasuda is destroyed and Earth is cut off from the rest of humanity. That victory is equally pyrrhic and in the wake of the conclusion there was more loss of life. FS2's story ends in a similar way, but it ends with realization and hope.
FS1 story is clichéd in a different manner, that it is about One Big Bad Ship that is taken out at the Last Minute. There are Big Consequences That Have To Be Paid (like in every cliché, there's always a payment). FS2 slaps you in the face in the sense that The Payments you do along the game against the Shivans have no consequence whatsoever, and were needless anyway. You cut off the link to Capella and sacrifice quite a lot in those ops, but again, the Shivans are just ignoring all of this, they couldn't care less, and then the Big End is not how you defeat an enemy "with great sacrifices", but how you survive because The Enemy wasn't really one, they wanted something different that had little to do with you and just go away by themselves.
You're spouting theory not fact.
Fact is the shivans were actively attacking the GTVA. Fact is destroying those two nodes, cuts off Capella and the shivan force therein from the rest of the GTVA. The fact the Sathanas were blowing up a star doesn't mean that once they're done they wont turn around and attack the GTVA.
Last I heard we didn't know the Shivan motives. Don't start arguing like you do.
How would the shivans know that? If they're told to engage all elements in-system they would attack both military and civilian targets alike. "Secure the area" generally means no shivan craft left alive and attacking all ships, including civilian ones, would follow the past shivan goal of extermination.
It's very easy to see ships fleeing a system. You watch them subspacing towards a node, then entering a node. And you watch a whole bunch of ships doing the same thing. Why are you stopping them? They are fleeing the system, just let them. The idea that this is hard to understand is ludicrous.
What theory do you actually believe exactly?
Because your arguments aren't coherent. You argue for hive theory and that shivans have concept of life but when they attack fleeing ships you equate it to murder and wonder why they're not letting them go. If they have orders to attack EVERYTHING in system, that would include fleeing ships.
Why are they attacking fleeing ships? Because they're there. And because they're not shivan. I don't see that there's a need for anything else.
Also you're talking about the depth of the shivan aggression, in "mass murdering" civilian ships and then you say that collapsing the node is irrelevant. Even if the Sathanas fleet was ignoring the GTVA, the rest of the fleet wasn't and still posed a threat. Destroying the nodes cuts off that threat.
I only need a text from Volition hinting this was the case and the possibility of it. There's no "Theory" here because this is fiction, and you might build a fiction on top of this one with your theory and others with other theories. As long as they are "possible", "compatible", then it's all that's required. You're not going to win any Nobel prize here figuring out with precise a priori thought what *exactly* the shivan nature is.
Point is, presenting a theory as you and others have done which has inconsistencies and cannot explain certain behaviour is no concrete theory at all. If your theory cannot account for all possibilities, it's weak and should be re-examined. Any other approach, where inconsistencies are waived as inconsequential or not relevant is simply half-assed thinking.
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Was Dunkirk a victory for the British? They were defeated in France but saved their military. It's not difficult to understand how a partial evacuation could be considered a success.
Dunkerque even quoted in FS2 as a mission title, bear in mind that this "partial victory" as quoted in FS2 is still in a rational part of the game. There's a plan to destroy any passageway for the Shivans to enter it, meanwhile we have to evacuate everyone, here's this particular station, lets go. But all of this goes bananas considering what the shivans didn't do which was to press for conquest, much unlike the real Dunkerque, where the Germans just didn't press fast enough because of their own logistic concerns. Here, the shivans just didn't care.
If a bully beats the crap out of you whle trying to do something else, then you flee away as fast as you can and while you do so he just ignores you and keeps doing what he was doing, is this a victory for you? "Yeey, I managed to escape this bully that had no interest in me whatsoever to begin with".~
So what? They're alive. They'll keep moving forward. Keep fighting.
LOL
You're spouting theory not fact.
I'm engaging with the fictional story called FreeSpace 2, yes.
Fact is the shivans were actively attacking the GTVA. Fact is destroying those two nodes, cuts off Capella and the shivan force therein from the rest of the GTVA. The fact the Sathanas were blowing up a star doesn't mean that once they're done they wont turn around and attack the GTVA.
A supernovae cleanses a system and "radiates it" for years. Arguably all that is now Capella is just a highly radioactive nebula absolutely inhospitable even for Shivans. The GTVA's "wall" was redundant.
What theory do you actually believe exactly?
Because your arguments aren't coherent. You argue for hive theory and that shivans have concept of life but when they attack fleeing ships you equate it to murder and wonder why they're not letting them go. If they have orders to attack EVERYTHING in system, that would include fleeing ships.
Why are they attacking fleeing ships? Because they're there. And because they're not shivan. I don't see that there's a need for anything else.
That was not my point. Your sentences above are sufficiently simple and acceptable except that my point was to underline the sheer valuelessness the shivans put into their fleet "troops", ordering them around to destroy irrelevant targets although it's obvious to even an alien point of view these ships will be shredded to pieces in a few minutes time. You don't even see them fleeing away seconds before the blast. They just don't care.
I was trying to make a contrast - imagine the same op made by humans or vasudans. They wouldn't lose a single ship like that. They would try to coordinate every effort to maximize efficiency to the theater of operations and evacuate every single personnel once the star is triggered. The shivans think absolutely different.
Also you're talking about the depth of the shivan aggression, in "mass murdering" civilian ships and then you say that collapsing the node is irrelevant. Even if the Sathanas fleet was ignoring the GTVA, the rest of the fleet wasn't and still posed a threat. Destroying the nodes cuts off that threat.
So are you saying that culling the nodes was actually a Shivan victory? hehe.
Point is, presenting a theory as you and others have done which has inconsistencies and cannot explain certain behaviour is no concrete theory at all. If your theory cannot account for all possibilities, it's weak and should be re-examined. Any other approach, where inconsistencies are waived as inconsequential or not relevant is simply half-assed thinking.
I guess you're right, in that sense where fiction has to be all encompassing and everything must be rational to the smallest detail, much unlike reality where unexpected, irrational, weird inconsistent **** is always happening. Look, ok, you have a theory that you are proud of and I think that's brilliant. I also think that any theory about the shivans do not require to be absolutely consistent in every small detail about it, and further I don't think you have successfully demonstrated these inconsistencies.
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By the end of FS2 there's no hint we got closer to defeat the Shivans than at the beggining. The only thing we've learned from them is that they are way more menacing than we thought at first.
I mean that we learned a lot from the beginning of FS1 to the end of FS2. Sure, we would lose both times, but we are closer to beating them and we aren't dead.
Well that's an original theory at least. I think it runs counter to their (relentless, ultimately undefeatable, non-ridiculous) character by portraying them as a blundering species, but I would enjoy watching how this could play out.
Blundering as in imperfect? Because it seems like you are portraying the Shivans as nearly all-knowing/powerful. If they are, I wouldn't want any FS3 to be made. It's easily plausible that the Shivans somehow messed up on such a complex operation.
Point is, presenting a theory as you and others have done which has inconsistencies and cannot explain certain behaviour is no concrete theory at all. If your theory cannot account for all possibilities, it's weak and should be re-examined. Any other approach, where inconsistencies are waived as inconsequential or not relevant is simply half-assed thinking.
In that case, then every theory on this website needs to be thrown out. If a theory can account for all possibilities, I'd say it ceases to be a theory and becomes fact.
If a bully beats the crap out of you whle trying to do something else, then you flee away as fast as you can and while you do so he just ignores you and keeps doing what he was doing, is this a victory for you? "Yeey, I managed to escape this bully that had no interest in me whatsoever to begin with".~
That doesn't even make sense. If a bully is beating you up, he has some interest in you. He might not care about you, which is probably why he is beating you up. If he gets distracted and you run away, I'd call that a victory for you. Sure, you wont be bragging about it to your friends, but I'm not waiting around for him to finish me.
I'm engaging with the fictional story called FreeSpace 2, yes.
Let's not go down that path, please.
A supernovae cleanses a system and "radiates it" for years. Arguably all that is now Capella is just a highly radioactive nebula absolutely inhospitable even for Shivans. The GTVA's "wall" was redundant.
Surely a ship that can be that close to a star without frying can withstand some radiation from the environment. Even fighters - that can withstand nuclear and anti-matter bomb shock-waves from point blank - should be able to pass through just fine. Sure, I'd wait a few days for everything to settle, but after that, I'm sure the Shivans could figure something out. And while the supernova might disrupt the nodes, there is still a star even after a supernova, so the nodes will restabilize.
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I think many people here are confused on the difference between "Theory" and "Hypothesis".
A Hypothesis is a guess with reasonable assumptions on the subject.
A Theory is a hypothesis that has been examined and CONFIRMED based on the parameters of the original Hypothesis....it becomes virtually a fact in its original parameters.
Just as my post originally said: " Are there any Hypothesis...." because i know for a fact there are no "Theories" about the Shivams because we barely know anytjing about them other than they can kick our @$$.
Other than that, all the hypothesi's are very interesting to read.
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Well, in the scientific sense, a hypothesis is not a "guess", it's a proposed explanation for an observed phenomenon which is falsifiable. Since none of these "hypotheses" are actually falsifiable (there will be no FreeSpace 3 to provide additional givens), we're clearly not actually using the scientific sense of the words and must fall back on the informal usage, in which case "theory" means, basically, "the results of a contemplative and rational type of abstract or generalizing thinking" (to paraphrase Wikipedia's article on the word).
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What do you think the Shivans thought when the GTVA destroyed the Sathanas with the Colossus?
"Hmm, that's interesting...good for them I suppose...send 80 more" something like that is a possible guess. Mild curiosity that one of their most powerful vessels was destroyed and perhaps a speck of grudging respect but not really concerned in the bigger scheme of things.
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K, random theory:
The Borg (similar to Star Trek) tried to assimilate the Shivans and failed. The Shivans became their own collective, a merging of all of their previous selves.
As a species that is a product of an assimilation gone wrong, they have very little ability to reason, be creative, etc... They do, however, have the original collectives memories of assimilated technology. They only know one goal: to destroy those that caused their pain and robbed them off the individuality and freedom that is now but a faint, distorted echo in their collective mind.
To prevent the Borg from gaining the advantage over them, they destroy any sufficiently advanced civilization they come across, to prevent them from giving advantage to their enemy through assimilation.
Whatever virtues such as compassion and empathy they once might have had are swallowed up in fear and hatred of their nemesis.
Capella was some sort of anti Borg transportation method or weapon.
This theory obviously needs work & polish, but the rough idea just popped into my head, so I decided to share in case it inspired anyone. :P
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A supernovae cleanses a system and "radiates it" for years. Arguably all that is now Capella is just a highly radioactive nebula absolutely inhospitable even for Shivans. The GTVA's "wall" was redundant.
Assumes facts not in evidence. The Shivans were able to destroy a star; their understanding and mastery of high-energy physics is demonstrably so great that their being able to move through a supernova remnant cannot be dismissed out of hand.
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A supernovae cleanses a system and "radiates it" for years. Arguably all that is now Capella is just a highly radioactive nebula absolutely inhospitable even for Shivans. The GTVA's "wall" was redundant.
Assumes facts not in evidence. The Shivans were able to destroy a star; their understanding and mastery of high-energy physics is demonstrably so great that their being able to move through a supernova remnant cannot be dismissed out of hand.
I wasn't assuming, I was hypothesizing with the assumption that the humans and vasudans were actually able to outsmart the shivans, an idea that does not necessarily implies the shivans are not that powerful but almost sort of does. Either the shivans are able to do everything, including navigating in the most hazardous space out there, blow up heavens and earths, and if so the idea that we "outran them" is silly, or they aren't that powerful, perhaps even blundering, making mistakes like blowing up suns and what not, and so in that case to cull the node was absolutely redundant.
Don't take me wrong, it was the right decision by the Security Council and so on. You have a monster out there, you shut the door with as many locks as possible, even if you don't believe it will deter the monster. I'm just saying that as a "Victory", it feels the most depressing of them all.
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So are you saying that culling the nodes was actually a Shivan victory? hehe.
I think you're disagreeing for the sake of the disagreeing and don't actually have a viewpoint of your own to present. Evidenced by comments like this and questions regarding your own theories going unanswered.
As such this conversation has run its course for me. Have fun
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No I wasn't, I find your remark that I have no "viewpoint" of my own annoying and almost offensive (and flat out disproven by this thread alone, regardless of what other theories I have presented in the past about FreeSpace 2 right here in this forum, some of them linked right below in my damned signature), and I think it's extremely silly to speak between "fiction" and "theory" or "speculation" when we are speaking about a work of fiction, I mean I understand the differences implied but I do object to the firmness of any stance here regarding these things as if we are speaking about true phenomena existing out there.
In fictions things are a lot less certain and consistent, they are not designed to be taken that rigorously.
But yes, I also think the conversation has indeed run its course.
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Honestly, I believe we have seen just one Lucifer for storyline purposes. It's clearly the real villain of the game, the super-final-boss which we both love and hate, a role that can be played well only by a specific ship.
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In fictions things are a lot less certain and consistent, they are not designed to be taken that rigorously.
That's a bunch of bollocks quite frankly. The consistency of fiction depends upon the talent behind that fiction. The fact that some fiction is slipshod and poorly written does not guarantee that all fiction has those same failings. Some fiction is meticulously crafted, other fiction is banged out for a quick buck or the author(s) is fast and loose with the rules of the world.
In order to waive away inconsistencies in one's theory, a person need first establish a fiction as being inherently inconsistent. But if a fiction is consistent, and only the theory is lacking then the theory is the problem not the fiction to which it is applied.
And a game is constrained by the rules of its programming in the same way that the world is constrained by the physics and laws of nature. Do Shivan AI have different programming which establishes different methods of behaviour? They don't retreat yes, but beyond that are there rules within the code which differentiate them from their terran and vasudan counter parts? This too can be taken as evidence for one theory or another.
Either way, taking care for these things is important because these small details can add believability to a story, particular for someone who wants to tell a story within FS2 itself. Different stories appeal to different people and to different levels of degree. A lot of Star Wars fans for example have a big love of Boba Fett, I always just thought he was some guy who showed himself a decent tracker but little else. Suddenly he's the father of all stormtroopers. His relevance in the prequels is a symptom of people taking the character too seriously. Of placing greater importance on him than was necessary or justifiable.
With FS2 however I don't think that's the case, because people are creating theories to apply to the entire game. It's an overarching idea, not over stating specific details. But rather presenting a theory and comparing to a multitude of case examples and seeing whether it explains the behaviour or fails to.
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Just FYI: there's no difference between shivan, vasudan or terran AI.
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Aside from what they're FREDded to do.
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Actually, Shivans tend to have superior AI grades by a step or two. (Though I doubt this is meant to represent an in-universe distinction so much as a balancing decision to compensate for their poor-quality weapons.)
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With FS2 however I don't think that's the case, because people are creating theories to apply to the entire game. It's an overarching idea, not over stating specific details. But rather presenting a theory and comparing to a multitude of case examples and seeing whether it explains the behaviour or fails to.
And I'm fine with that. What I've been telling you now for days on end is that you have failed to established that particular interpretations of the "shivan nature" are absolutely incongruent with what we see ingame. This certainty you espouse is far beyond the reach or the scope of what we are allowed to see, witness, etc. As I've told you, saying that the shivans are "hive-minded" does not prevent certain behaviors (or force others), but rather have those observations sharpen up any hypothesis of all these different theories. It's not that I have "no opinion on the matter", but rather that I accept a multitude of theories and interpretations as valid, just as long as these respect the core tenets of the Shivan theme around the two games, to wit, the Lovecraftian "unintelligibility" of them, their "deep space" "deep time" nature, the concept of "true alien" (don't design shivans that suddenly start speaking to you good english and as a friend or whatever), the horror of living in the same space as a species that is several orders of magnitude more powerful than you are and you can't understand them, talk to them, deal with them, whatever.
This kind of horror is really old in human history, going back to the Book of Genesis (where such gods are still intelligible, but are already "shock and awe" inducing) or to the book of Job, where the unintelligibility is first laid out almost in perfect "Lovecraftian" sense.
This is the core to which I care. If you are going to porsue a theory on how the Shivans are not hive-minded, but instead "robot oriented" with certain heurisitics in their mind, or whatever other variation, that's absolutely ok with me, just as long as this core is maintained. The only issue I see with all these theories is when people start to design shivans as something that is understood, demystified. There should always remain a "core" of unintelligibility to them, even if you understand something more of them.
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It's not that I have "no opinion on the matter", but rather that I accept a multitude of theories and interpretations as valid, just as long as these respect the core tenets of the Shivan theme around the two games, to wit, the Lovecraftian "unintelligibility" of them, their "deep space" "deep time" nature, the concept of "true alien" (don't design shivans that suddenly start speaking to you good english and as a friend or whatever), the horror of living in the same space as a species that is several orders of magnitude more powerful than you are and you can't understand them, talk to them, deal with them, whatever . . .
This is the core to which I care.
If your core concept of the Shivan is as some unintelligble lovecraftian horror then how do you explain Bosch talking and dealing with them?
Your core concept of what they are doesn't fit the facts. And not the minor facts, but some of the major plot points of the story. The fact that the player doesn't understand the outcome of the Bosch's encounter with the shivans doesn't mean that Bosch himself isn't in some sort of basic dialogue with them. He approached them and they spirited him away, alive.
The shivans are old, they have motives we don't understand but that doesn't mean they cannot be understood. Personally I believe that an author to a story should have some concept of what an antagonistic force is doing, even if their true motives are never revealed in the story.
People say that the Shivans or other aliens are only truely alien if they think in ways that humans do not. Otherwise people would call them "rubber suit" aliens like Romulans and Klingons, human motives with alien faces. But in all cases, the author to these stories is human. How can a human create a idea for an intelligence that cannot be understood by humans?
Either:
A - The author is just making up a bunch of bull**** and calling it "mysterious and other-worldly"
or
B - They're mimicking things in nature which are not truly understood. But if someone models the Shivans after say an ant colony or something in nature which is not truly understood, then they're not really depicting an alien intelligence, they're simply applying human understanding of an unexplained phenomena to an empty creation in an attempt to impart that same instinct or intelligence.
Either way, the author doesn't create something truly alien, because they can't. A human can't create something that cannot be understood by a human. The best they can do is try to attribute unexplained concepts or ideas to a character or force and by doing so try to imply some grand design behind those concepts which would explain all if only we poor humans had the capacity to. But such an antagonist isn't real. It's an illusion. It's like a fake hollywood western town, all facade with no substance. It's shallow or hollow. Its actions are like a shadow cast from a figure which doesn't exist. The problem is that once you realize the shadow has no subject to cast it, then the shadow itself fades and disappears. And the threat and the mystery that you crave vanishes because you see the craft behind the creation, you see the strings behind the puppet, and thus it loses believability and falls apart.
Another analogy might be a box. The mystery is what's in the box, what's the enemy thinking. How does it think, what does it want. You can wrap the box up in different ways and each piece of information is a layer to unravel the mystery but if the author doesn't understand what the enemy is and how it thinks or what its goals are then the box is empty. There is no real mystery because there is no secret. There's just an illusion of mystery, an illusion which is paper thin.
Mystery is not created by non-existent enemies. An enemy which cannot be understood has no substance, no form, because to truly create such an enemy is impossible by a human author.
Mystery is created by the telling of the story.
It's about engaging the player, surprising them at every turn and leaving them satisfied but still guessing at the end.
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There are a lot of things that aren't understood by humans so it's possible to imagine things we don't understand.
And a enemy doesn't need to be understood.
I think of a alien race which is stealing stars, so taking stars away and transporting them elsewhere.
We won't understand them at the moment but when they would take the sun accidentally they would possible tare sol apart.
So for us they would be enemies but we wouldn't understand them.
Additionally it gets harder to understand the movements of a civilisation more advanced than us, the grater the difference between us and them gets (good exemplified on the Kasimov scale).
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If your core concept of the Shivan is as some unintelligble lovecraftian horror then how do you explain Bosch talking and dealing with them?
Your core concept of what they are doesn't fit the facts. And not the minor facts, but some of the major plot points of the story. The fact that the player doesn't understand the outcome of the Bosch's encounter with the shivans doesn't mean that Bosch himself isn't in some sort of basic dialogue with them. He approached them and they spirited him away, alive.
So what? What has this anything to do with unintelligibility? The mere fact the Shivans were able to communicate with Bosch is not indicative we can understand them. In the interview of the writer of FS2 he said clearly that what happened with Bosch was a mystery, and he could have well been "eaten alive" by them. Perhaps they were interested in the fact humans had devised the ETAK tech, and wanted to scan Bosch's personal brain... after dissecting it.
Who knows? Some mods tried to deal with this, and came up with different answers. This bears nothing on what I said, and your statement that my core "doesn't fit the facts" is just your usual kind of righteous dismissal that is frankly getting up my nerves.
The shivans are old, they have motives we don't understand but that doesn't mean they cannot be understood. Personally I believe that an author to a story should have some concept of what an antagonistic force is doing, even if their true motives are never revealed in the story.
This is a different problem, and I think the only issue I see here is one of holding the suspension of disbelief. If the writer has no idea what the shivans are up to, he may well find himself doing inconsistent things and this becomes visible to the player / reader. However, a true Lovecraftian horror is one where not even the writer himself is able to understand the tenets of his antagonist truly well. How to maintain believability in this setting? Well, the trick is to always keep to oneself an upper "order of magnitude" level of strategy on the part of the antagonist that one is willing to share with their readers to guess, so to keep consistency and mystery at the same time.
People say that the Shivans or other aliens are only truely alien if they think in ways that humans do not. Otherwise people would call them "rubber suit" aliens like Romulans and Klingons, human motives with alien faces. But in all cases, the author to these stories is human. How can a human create a idea for an intelligence that cannot be understood by humans?
Either:
A - The author is just making up a bunch of bull**** and calling it "mysterious and other-worldly"
or
B - They're mimicking things in nature which are not truly understood. But if someone models the Shivans after say an ant colony or something in nature which is not truly understood, then they're not really depicting an alien intelligence, they're simply applying human understanding of an unexplained phenomena to an empty creation in an attempt to impart that same instinct or intelligence.
Either way, the author doesn't create something truly alien, because they can't.
And they don't need to. They only need imply it. Truth is, a "truly unintelligibility" thing would be apparent to us as random noise shenanigans. Of course. But that fails as a story about unintelligibility because it is indistinguishable from writers' lazyness or dumbness. So the trick is to have apparently "random" things happen some times, apparent contradictions in character traits in other times, on top of a somewhat predictable silent trait (shivans are muted killers, except that one time where they contacted Bosch; shivans are a military race of extermination except that one time where they apparently just ignored the GTVA and went to blow up a star out of nowhere; etc.), in order to convey the uneasiness of this horror without it becoming ludicrous or ridiculous.
he problem is that once you realize the shadow has no subject to cast it, then the shadow itself fades and disappears. And the threat and the mystery that you crave vanishes because you see the craft behind the creation, you see the strings behind the puppet, and thus it loses believability and falls apart.
Right, we agree. It becomes "Lost".
Another analogy might be a box. The mystery is what's in the box, what's the enemy thinking. How does it think, what does it want. You can wrap the box up in different ways and each piece of information is a layer to unravel the mystery but if the author doesn't understand what the enemy is and how it thinks or what its goals are then the box is empty. There is no real mystery because there is no secret. There's just an illusion of mystery, an illusion which is paper thin.
Well, the work of art is always "greater" than the author himself. Lovecraft was, I believe, successful in writing such stories, so I would say that this kind of implied writing is not only possible, but several people did so brilliantly. There are many tricks to pull it off, and I think some of the tricks used in FS2 were quite good indeed.
Mystery is not created by non-existent enemies. An enemy which cannot be understood has no substance, no form, because to truly create such an enemy is impossible by a human author.
Again, you are being too dogmatic here. The point is the vertigo. You will still have a vertigo even if there's no bottom ground to fall to. The point is not the total unintelligibility of the shivans, but the horror implied by the vertigo of that possibility.
It's about engaging the player, surprising them at every turn and leaving them satisfied but still guessing at the end.
Yes, but that's just too little material.
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And a enemy doesn't need to be understood.
The problem Luis is having is that he thinks having an understanding of how the Shivans work at the meta level by the author means that having an understanding of how the Shivans work must exist at the game level. (So stop theorizing assholes.)
This is, of course, not true.
Or he's somehow decided that our explaining the Shivans here taints the games, which is also not true.
Or he thinks something else is going to be accomplished by his recent postings. Which is probably also not true.
Realistically the act of writing suspense and confusion is about the presentation to the reader, not the knowledge of the author; and it is in many ways easier if you know more than you are telling, because you know what you should not say. In many ways FS2's mystery elements are bassackwards from a standpoint of good writing practices. They work regardless, but that is a testament to the writer rather than to their internal construction.
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And a enemy doesn't need to be understood.
The problem Luis is having is that he thinks having an understanding of how the Shivans work at the meta level by the author means that having an understanding of how the Shivans work must exist at the game level. (So stop theorizing assholes.)
Perfect clearcut example of misreading me. Almost every single thought here is just wrong. First, I stated the exact opposite of your first sentence here, when I stated that these things should not be read "that rigorously". I said that many times. It's obvious that the writer(s) were tentative and experimental in their design of the shivans, always managing their hedges with intelligence texts that only refer to "theories" and other clever tricks, so they can always get "out of jail free cards", so to speak, and if so needed. It was also very clever to have them not speak with us (I do like Mass Effect's conversation with Sovereign, but once that happened, a lot was sacrificed).
I also never said "Stop theorizing assholes". It's always assholery to put words into other's mouths though, I'd like to say (you know, JFYI). I even said the exact opposite when I commended Akalabeth Angel's own theory. Rather, I was challenging his ortodoxical dogmatism in which only his version has any sway in any correct interpretation of FreeSpace 2. My vision on this is quite similar to others I have seen in HLP, which has been summed up as "Heterodoxy" or something to that effect, that is, I enjoy the multitudes of ideas that have been shared throughout the years.
Or he's somehow decided that our explaining the Shivans here taints the games, which is also not true.
Here's an advice. If you want to know what I have "decided", perhaps ask me directly.
Or he thinks something else is going to be accomplished by his recent postings. Which is probably also not true.
I have enough of your ****ty passive aggressive shenanigans.
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So what? What has this anything to do with unintelligibility? The mere fact the Shivans were able to communicate with Bosch is not indicative we can understand them. In the interview of the writer of FS2 he said clearly that what happened with Bosch was a mystery, and he could have well been "eaten alive" by them. Perhaps they were interested in the fact humans had devised the ETAK tech, and wanted to scan Bosch's personal brain... after dissecting it.
Who knows? Some mods tried to deal with this, and came up with different answers. This bears nothing on what I said, and your statement that my core "doesn't fit the facts" is just your usual kind of righteous dismissal that is frankly getting up my nerves.
That's categorically false.
Bosch COMMUNICATED with the shivans. He communicated enough to know that the shivans would be coming to his ship with transports and they would be leaving the Iceni. (If you watch the monologue, he mentions the transports before they actually arrive from subspace). He talked with and dealt with them. Two things which you said could not be done.
Fact is, you've formed an idea of what you want the Shivans to be in your head, and you ignore evidence to the contrary. Well, not even ignore, rather you re-write your definition to exclude evidence.
The shivans are old, they have motives we don't understand but that doesn't mean they cannot be understood. Personally I believe that an author to a story should have some concept of what an antagonistic force is doing, even if their true motives are never revealed in the story.
This is a different problem, and I think the only issue I see here is one of holding the suspension of disbelief. If the writer has no idea what the shivans are up to, he may well find himself doing inconsistent things and this becomes visible to the player / reader. However, a true Lovecraftian horror is one where not even the writer himself is able to understand the tenets of his antagonist truly well. How to maintain believability in this setting? Well, the trick is to always keep to oneself an upper "order of magnitude" level of strategy on the part of the antagonist that one is willing to share with their readers to guess, so to keep consistency and mystery at the same time.
Last I played it, Freespace 2 wasn't a horror game.
And they don't need to. They only need imply it. Truth is, a "truly unintelligibility" thing would be apparent to us as random noise shenanigans. Of course. But that fails as a story about unintelligibility because it is indistinguishable from writers' lazyness or dumbness. So the trick is to have apparently "random" things happen some times, apparent contradictions in character traits in other times, on top of a somewhat predictable silent trait (shivans are muted killers, except that one time where they contacted Bosch; shivans are a military race of extermination except that one time where they apparently just ignored the GTVA and went to blow up a star out of nowhere; etc.), in order to convey the uneasiness of this horror without it becoming ludicrous or ridiculous.
80 Sathanas randomnly converged to destroy Capella?
I'm sorry but in my opinion, what the Shivans are, is more complicated than what you perceive.
In Freespace 1 the shivans were 1 dimensional aliens. In FS2 they evolved to something deeper.
Another analogy might be a box. The mystery is what's in the box, what's the enemy thinking. How does it think, what does it want. You can wrap the box up in different ways and each piece of information is a layer to unravel the mystery but if the author doesn't understand what the enemy is and how it thinks or what its goals are then the box is empty. There is no real mystery because there is no secret. There's just an illusion of mystery, an illusion which is paper thin.
Well, the work of art is always "greater" than the author himself. Lovecraft was, I believe, successful in writing such stories, so I would say that this kind of implied writing is not only possible, but several people did so brilliantly. There are many tricks to pull it off, and I think some of the tricks used in FS2 were quite good indeed.
None of this precludes the fact that Lovecraft knows what the ancient ones or whatever he writes about are.
This whole discussion is the question of whether the Shivans can be understood or if they cannot be. And are they understood by the writer of the story. Reading a good story isn't the same as writing one.
There are a lot of things that aren't understood by humans so it's possible to imagine things we don't understand.
Yes but that imagining is still based on our understanding of how things work. Even if in the imagining we knowingly disregard things that are already known.
In the ancient past, people saw birds flying so they imagined that they too could fly, hence the story of Icarus or pegasus.
And a enemy doesn't need to be understood.
In the context of a story no, but in terms of writing or creating a story I would say yes they do need to be understood.
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That's categorically false.
Bosch COMMUNICATED with the shivans. He communicated enough to know that the shivans would be coming to his ship with transports and they would be leaving the Iceni. (If you watch the monologue, he mentions the transports before they actually arrive from subspace). He talked with and dealt with them. Two things which you said could not be done.
Fact is, you've formed an idea of what you want the Shivans to be in your head, and you ignore evidence to the contrary. Well, not even ignore, rather you re-write your definition to exclude evidence.
Before you tell me what I have done and what not, please wait up? I didn't say that the shivans didn't communicate with Bosch and that Bosch didn't understand the message they sent, I said it doesn't mean we understand the Shivans.
Last I played it, Freespace 2 wasn't a horror game.
I always confuse "Horror" with "Terror" and so on. I think it is such a game, but it's a subtle game at that, I agree. Mods like Sync and Trasncend kinda take this aspect of the game into a much more obvious "in-your-face" experience.
80 Sathanas randomnly converged to destroy Capella?
I'm sorry but in my opinion, what the Shivans are, is more complicated than what you perceive.
I think I was clear in what I said. By "random" I don't mean "simple" or "complicated" or "I didn't get it". By random I meant surprising and twisting. It came out of nowhere. Everyone was expecting the shivans to try to eliminate the GTVA as the correct narrative and so on, and then they surprised the "reader" by doing something that didn't have barely any setup for it. And then the game ends. It's like a slap in your face. You think the game is a normal game wherein you get to beat the "final boss" - who has a clear mission outlined at the middle of the game - in the last level like in FS1 but you just... don't. I refer to Battuta's thesis on this:
In the remainder of the story, everything goes off the traditional space opera rails. We were utterly wrong: supremacy isn't decided by a duel of invincible superships. The Sathanas is just one of many, more than we can comprehend. They have more Sathanases than we have corvettes. The GTVA argument for godhood-by-force is rebuked.
And the Shivans take Bosch. That doesn't make any sense! The Shivans never gave a **** about the Hammer of Light - why are they listening to Bosch? It's because he is the single, solitary voice in the story who recognizes that the Shivans cannot be defeated in competition, that we will never match and defeat them. He thinks we must make an alliance with them - like a cultist coming to accomodation with an Elder God, MrL_Jakiri would probably suggest.
But even Bosch seems unable to fully understand the Shivans. He looks forward to his crew boarding the Shivan transports and sailing to a bright future - but when we board the Iceni, we find a charnel house, most of the crew dead, Bosch and his lieutenants gone. Was there a misunderstanding? Or did Bosch fundamentally mistake the nature of the Shivans? Here the Bosch storyline concludes, with a firm declaration: the Shivans are intelligent, and they are not simply, purely hostile. They heard Bosch. But getting their attention is not the same as speaking to them. We learn that the Shivans are beyond our comprehension or communication, just as much as they are beyond our strength.
Bosch, too, is rebuked.
With the Bosch storyline concluded, and the GTVA effort to reclaim godhood in jeopardy, the remainder of the story concerns itself with the GTVA's new understanding. We go into the lion's den and glimpse more Knossos portals, more juggernaughts.
Wow, we think: we never had a chance. Our hubris led us to believe we were ready for anything, but we were terribly wrong. We must abandon our war for divinity and focus on survival.
In the end, we come up with a desperate plan to abandon Capella, hiding from the Shivans by burning jump nodes behind us. It's no accident that we plan to do to ourselves what the Lucifer's detonation did to Earth. Having spent 32 years planning to meet and defeat the Shivans, we must now discard all that effort, and realize that what we thought was a tragedy - isolation - may be the best possible outcome.
There's one last thematic twist, and it comes from the Shivans. With 80+ juggernaughts, they could wipe us out. But they don't. Instead, they destroy the Capella star. Why? What do they gain by this? We have no idea. We can only begin to guess.
By annihilating Capella when they might have annihilated all of humanity (and the Vasudans as well), the Shivans demonstrate their absolute, alien power. Not only can we not defeat them, we cannot understand them. Perhaps we survive for one reason only (thematically, at least): we have abandoned our claim to godhood.
None of this precludes the fact that Lovecraft knows what the ancient ones or whatever he writes about are.
This whole discussion is the question of whether the Shivans can be understood or if they cannot be. And are they understood by the writer of the story. Reading a good story isn't the same as writing one.
Well... isn't this always an open question? The Lovecraftian answer is that it's a resounding "NO", and it so appears to be the same answer given by FS2. Now, if someone makes a mod that "explains it all" for us, then that's fine. If someone writes some fan fiction that furthers the gap between the shivans and humans, makes the vertigo feel even more vomiting inducing, that's also fine.
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I have a pet theory regarding the Shivans. I've often thought of presenting it in campaign form, but I doubt I'll ever get around to that, so this thread looks like a good place to describe it.
The Shivans evolved in a rapidly-changing environment that encouraged copying stronger life forms (if you can't beam 'em, join 'em), assimilating weaker ones which were malleable enough (by directing their evolution), and destroying weaker ones which were disruptive or less malleable. These became their core motivations, even after they had eliminated all competition and moved on to other environments, where the strategy was no longer optimal.
The Ancients were not malleable, and they were destroying more malleable species which could otherwise have been assimilated. In contrast, by working together and pooling resources, Terrans and Vasudans demonstrated their ability to merge technologies and adapt. Accordingly, the Shivans began a subtle, very long-term project to direct Terran and Vasudan progress, partly by confronting them with increasingly powerful threats.
For example, the Lucifer gave the GTVA beam technology; in the Second Shivan Incursion, when the GTVA was stronger, the Shivans deployed many more beam-equipped warships. By the end of FS2, the GTVA is using or learning to use Shivan technology (shields, beams, Kayser weaponry) and tactics (adaptation, subspace maneuvers, acceptance of casualties). They are ever-so-slightly closer to being assimilated. "He who fights with monsters..."
The GTVA is one of many societies which are being groomed for assimilation. The Shivans are managing a vast "educational system" for various life forms, some more Shivan than others. The Shivan forces in any given classroom are uniquely suited to their students, and are somewhat different from the "true" Shivans at the center: the ones who pull the strings and maintain the records. After billions of years of adaptation and assimilation, the Shivans have become a great average - sort of an ideal to which all life forms gravitate, willingly or otherwise.
Admiral Bosch surprised the Shivans. His communication with them demonstrated an understanding far beyond what was expected, given the GTVA's primitiveness. He was such an anomaly, in fact, that the local Shivan forces didn't know how to respond, so they sent Bosch on a high-priority flight to their administrators. The destruction of Capella created a temporary connection to the main Shivan systems. It was merely a time-saver, the rough equivalent of taking a shortcut through dense vegetation. The Shivans could have gone a longer (and less spectacular) way around, but they couldn't be bothered.
My theory probably bears many similarities to ones that have already been put forward.
EDIT: Heh. "If you can't beam 'em" was completely unintentional.
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That's categorically false.
Bosch COMMUNICATED with the shivans. He communicated enough to know that the shivans would be coming to his ship with transports and they would be leaving the Iceni. (If you watch the monologue, he mentions the transports before they actually arrive from subspace). He talked with and dealt with them. Two things which you said could not be done.
Fact is, you've formed an idea of what you want the Shivans to be in your head, and you ignore evidence to the contrary. Well, not even ignore, rather you re-write your definition to exclude evidence.
Before you tell me what I have done and what not, please wait up? I didn't say that the shivans didn't communicate with Bosch and that Bosch didn't understand the message they sent, I said it doesn't mean we understand the Shivans.
You said, and I quote, that your idea of the Shivans is:
"the horror of living in the same space as a species that is several orders of magnitude more powerful than you are and you can't understand them, talk to them, deal with them, whatever." (emphasis mine)
That is your "core" idea. So I'm sorry, but you did say we couldn't talk to them. And couldn't deal with them.
But Bosch did TALK to them. He did DEAL with them. He may have even UNDERSTOOD them in time.
And in fact, you did not originally say "it doesn't mean we understand the Shivans." you said that the shivans cannot be understood.
There's a very definitive difference between failing to understand something, and being incapable of understanding.
The absence of understanding Shivan motivation, history or true nature in either game does not preclude the possibility of understanding them in future. Nor does it preclude Bosch from successfully integrating himself into the Shivan force and gaining understanding, mutual respect, personal power, influence, etcetera. An author's musings on a story they've not been tasked to write does not canon make.
Thus the fact that Shivans are not understood is not their nature, it is simply the circumstance. But circumstances change.
Lovecraft monsters from my outsider understanding cannot be understood because to do so invites insanity. If that assessment is true, then there's a very obvious difference between your HP Lovecraft ideal and the Shivans because the former has a literary mechanism to prevent talking, dealing with and understanding the enemy whereas the latter, Freespace 1+2, do not. From a very basic understanding, GTVA and its predecessors have already displayed the ability to understand Shivans by their use of shivan technology. They've reverse-engineered technology, used their own fightercraft against them and made them superior, decoded the ability to communicate with them, deciphered too the secrets of the ancients knowledge and technology (the knossos). Everything within the game points to an ability to understand them at the base level, physiological differences have thus-far prevented a deeper understanding but that may too have changed with the invention of ETAK.
What the GTVA has shown is not an inability to understand and adapt, but rather an inability or unwillingness to consider the possible scope of the shivan threat, particularly given the age of the species as demonstrated through the ancient texts.
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It's possible that we would understand their movements but also not.
(Do we understand how a colony of bees works?)
And it also works the other way around
To the technical stuff: The Shivans are using that advanced technologies, that we won't able to understand how this technologies work.
e.g.: In the early 19th century people had the possibility to build a primitive Gauss-cannon if they would have had a blueprint of it.
Electricity was known an d could be generated but electromagnetism wasn't.
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To the technical stuff: The Shivans are using that advanced technologies, that we won't able to understand how this technologies work.
e.g.: In the early 19th century people had the possibility to build a primitive Gauss-cannon if they would have had a blueprint of it.
Electricity was known an d could be generated but electromagnetism wasn't.
Yes but in Silent Threat, the expansion to Freespace 1, the GTI built the Hades which was essentially a Lucifer-scale ship with Lucifer beam weapons (albeit ones which are not fired from what I remember).
In freespace 2, GTVA weaponry far outclasses anything the Shivans fielded in Freespace 1 aside from Lucifer's shielding system, a mechanism which may or may have been defeated by the advent of beam weaponry.
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Yes but the beamcanons :beamz: aren't as effective and strong as the shivan equivalents.
And in comparison to the technology they used in Capella this is nearly primitive.
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Yes but the beamcanons :beamz: aren't as effective and strong as the shivan equivalents.
And in comparison to the technology they used in Capella this is nearly primitive.
Well I think the Hades has the same weapons that the Lucifer was armed with, in terms of beam cannons anyway.
For Freespace 2, the BFRed and BRed are both far superior. However the SRed (the most common) is outmatched by a number of GTVA weaponry. The Shivan AAA beam is inferior as well.
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If your core concept of the Shivan is as some unintelligble lovecraftian horror then how do you explain Bosch talking and dealing with them?
Into the lands of civilisation came Nyarlathotep, swarthy, slender, and sinister, always buying strange instruments of glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger. He spoke much of the sciences—of electricity and psychology—and gave exhibitions of power which sent his spectators away speechless, yet which swelled his fame to exceeding magnitude. Men advised one another to see Nyarlathotep, and shuddered. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; for the small hours were rent with the screams of nightmare.
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Well I think the Hades has the same weapons that the Lucifer was armed with, in terms of beam cannons anyway.
For Freespace 2, the BFRed and BRed are both far superior. However the SRed (the most common) is outmatched by a number of GTVA weaponry. The Shivan AAA beam is inferior as well.
That's not quite right. The Sred is only outcasted out by the SVas the other beams are equivalent or superior to it's Vasudan or Terran equivalent.
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In terms of technology I don't really subscribe to the whole Shivan cruisers/destroyers being weak and ****ty in The Great War thing. I just assume they were weak and ****ty because of game balance. Since we now have the ability to prioritize and build entire warships around specialized and non-specialized weaponry complete with AI which makes use of this differentiation, it makes sense that Shivan capital ships were pretty capable even in the Great War.
From my perspective, any FS1 campaign I did with Shivans in it would feature the same differentiated weapon set as features in my modern FS2 mods. Meaning capable primary weapon systems, capital ship artillery and powerful anti-fighter weaponry. Just the same way as it makes no sense for FS2's several week period to completely overlap with a sudden development of fifty different technologies, the Prometheus R to have no role in the game, the S to only be produced immediately following nebula missions and for entire lines of fighters only to come online during the period of the second incursion.
Sometimes it's better to stick to canon from a story perspective rather than strictly to what we know. Events become interesting rather than details.
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Just the same way as it makes no sense for FS2's several week period to completely overlap with a sudden development of fifty different technologies, the Prometheus R to have no role in the game, the S to only be produced immediately following nebula missions and for entire lines of fighters only to come online during the period of the second incursion.
It was my understanding that access to new weapons and ships in FS2 was a result of being granted authorization to use them, rather than them being developed brand-new like in FS1, with a couple of exceptions (like the Erinyes, but was that still obviously "in the works" before the campaign started in order for SOC to have access to it as early as they did).
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...the S to only be produced immediately following nebula missions and for entire lines of fighters only to come online during the period of the second incursion.
The Prometheus S started production after the first nebula missions because it needed the materiel from the nebula. Once they had the materiel, it was a simple matter of firing up the production line. And don't forget that we join the storyline 18 months into a war. That is plenty of time to create/finish fighters/bombers.
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If you pay attention to the FS2 briefing texts they actually say things along the lines of "You are now authorized to use _____". Very few of the technologies you gain access to are truly new - only the Erinyes (and Ares?) fit that category AFAIK. Everything else has been in standard circulation, just that different squadrons are authorized to use different craft.
The Prometheus S is supposed yo be the original FS1 Prometheus (despite changes in how it performs, that is what is stated), so it's not exactly a new development. The design and production facilities presumably existed ever since FS1 - they simply lacked the materiel to produce them, thus the Prom R was introduced. Once the require mats became available again and Prom S production resumed, there was no further reason to use the Prom R.
The out-of-game explanation for the Prom R is that it's a weaker "enemy" weapon, much like how VLLs and Shivan primaries are weaker than the player's weapons The Prom R was greated to make it so that the NTF don't feel better-armed than the Shivans. There is no reason for a player to be using it, aside from the marginally higher single-hit hull damage...which is pointless.
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It's questionable whether the Erinyes is truly new--it always struck me as a black project that had probably been in use by SOC for quite some time before its "introduction."
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Well I think the Hades has the same weapons that the Lucifer was armed with, in terms of beam cannons anyway.
For Freespace 2, the BFRed and BRed are both far superior. However the SRed (the most common) is outmatched by a number of GTVA weaponry. The Shivan AAA beam is inferior as well.
That's not quite right. The Sred is only outcasted out by the SVas the other beams are equivalent or superior to it's Vasudan or Terran equivalent.
Uh, pretty sure the BVas, VSlash, TerSlash, SVas all outclass the SRed. It's not about equivalents its about sheer firepower.
The BRed outclass the TerSlash and VSLash sure, but does the SRed? Can a Moloch take down a sobek or a deimos?
The BRed is certainly a killer weapon. But it's rare. Only on destroyers or the Lilith. In Freespace 2 we encounter a grand total of one Lilith Cruiser.
The SAAAf has less damage per pulse than friendly AAAf.
In terms of technology I don't really subscribe to the whole Shivan cruisers/destroyers being weak and ****ty in The Great War thing. I just assume they were weak and ****ty because of game balance. Since we now have the ability to prioritize and build entire warships around specialized and non-specialized weaponry complete with AI which makes use of this differentiation, it makes sense that Shivan capital ships were pretty capable even in the Great War.
What's more important that game statistics?
I don't think story and fluff trump raw game data.
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So many wrong weapon names.
It's LRed and SAAA.
There are no friendly shivans for SAAAf to ever be necessary :P (AAAf is used on friendly Terran/Vasudan ships, AAAh is used on hostile Terran/Vasudan ships due to their difficulty-based miss factor. Friendly anti-fighter beams are less accurate on high difficulty, while hostile beams are more accurate, which is the reason for the split. Nobody ever notices though, and to my knowledge next to no custom campaigns make use of this though. Heh.)
And I think he's rating the beam equivalents of the SRed, which would be the SGreen and SVas. Can't really compare slash beams since the Shivans don't have an equivalent. According to old wiki comments, some people do rate the SRed above the TerSlash due to its higher reliability instead of the higher-damage-but-erratic nature of slash beams.
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Yeah, the big problem is that Shivans don't have a true corvette-grade beam, which , in my opinion, is one of the main reasons the Moloch is hilariously outclassed by Alliance corvettes. I'd be careful about classifying the SVas as a cruiser weapon though, as it canonically is only mounted on Vasudan destroyers.
Also: some people have argued in the past that the SAAA is a bit more dangerous than the AAAf/h due to its higher refire rate.
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Yeah, the big problem is that Shivans don't have a true corvette-grade beam, which , in my opinion, is one of the main reasons the Moloch is hilariously outclassed by Alliance corvettes. I'd be careful about classifying the SVas as a cruiser weapon though, as it canonically is only mounted on Vasudan destroyers.
Canonically the tech description for the Mentu states it has anti-ship beam cannons installed.
Though considering I just said the game stats should trump fluff, then take that for what you will. I've changed some of the turrets on the mentu in my own campaigns to SVas but in Freespace 2 I don't believe it ever appears with the weapon.
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You said, and I quote, that your idea of the Shivans is:
"the horror of living in the same space as a species that is several orders of magnitude more powerful than you are and you can't understand them, talk to them, deal with them, whatever." (emphasis mine)
That is your "core" idea. So I'm sorry, but you did say we couldn't talk to them. And couldn't deal with them.
But Bosch did TALK to them. He did DEAL with them. He may have even UNDERSTOOD them in time.
This is beyond silly. I also said that the thematic incorporated one-off surprises, like having the Shivans suddenly supernovae a sun in a completely outside scope of what we were fed to that point; have another Sathanas when we had hoped it was the last big juggernought coming our way (I still remember thinking we would be headed to "Shivantown" from that point on); having, yes, Bosch "talk" to these untalkable species, etc. But the "communication" point is also denied at the end, when we see the butchering of everyone inside the Iceni, just like in every alien horror movie. So much for the "alliance" with the shivans. All these narratives are written like a big "NOPE" to the player. NOPE, this wasn't the last Big Monster it was just one of 80+; NOPE, you can't deal with the shivans they will butcher you after all; NOPE, the whole war wasn't about what you thought it was about.
And in fact, you did not originally say "it doesn't mean we understand the Shivans." you said that the shivans cannot be understood.
There's a very definitive difference between failing to understand something, and being incapable of understanding.
I stand by that. The point is the vertigo. Of course, without the tension that perhaps we can finally understand them, there would be less dramatic interest. At the end though, you get the slap.
The absence of understanding Shivan motivation, history or true nature in either game does not preclude the possibility of understanding them in future. Nor does it preclude Bosch from successfully integrating himself into the Shivan force and gaining understanding, mutual respect, personal power, influence, etcetera. An author's musings on a story they've not been tasked to write does not canon make.
Thus the fact that Shivans are not understood is not their nature, it is simply the circumstance. But circumstances change.
Canon is what canon was. FS2 is canon so to speak, and to that I hold it dear. It does not mean someone can't continue the story and make them understandable, but that is beyond the scope of FS2. I was talking about that particular story and nothing else.
Lovecraft monsters from my outsider understanding cannot be understood because to do so invites insanity. If that assessment is true, then there's a very obvious difference between your HP Lovecraft ideal and the Shivans because the former has a literary mechanism to prevent talking, dealing with and understanding the enemy whereas the latter, Freespace 1+2, do not.
There's always a tension lurking. The idea is the battle between your own curiosity and the final cut of the Real that says a big NO to your questions. It's a metaphor for the human condition, really. We battle death on and on and on, science, medicine, all the amazing things we have achieved. And yet, the Last Big Question is monstruously unbeatable, despite all our hubris and achievements. FS2 is a metaphor for all this. GTVA thinks they have achived Godhood, immortality, or at least it's fighting it in equal terms, and with good faith, spirit, world war 2 hero figther style, we will win this ****. Yes, they get to know a lot of new things, new techs, from this nemesis.
What matters is the punch at the final arc. The whole big "You had no idea what you were dealing with, The Stars Are Not For Man" thing. This sort of punch can only be delivered as a big disappointment, and disappointments can only occur with a big build up of hope and accomplishments.
What the GTVA has shown is not an inability to understand and adapt, but rather an inability or unwillingness to consider the possible scope of the shivan threat, particularly given the age of the species as demonstrated through the ancient texts.
I think, and this is another subject entirely, this is a bit overstated. The fact they let Bosch do his own thing proves GTVA command wasn't entirely confident on their approach and decided to let this man serve as a spy to the shivanverse to see what would come off of it.
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This is beyond silly. I also said that the thematic incorporated one-off surprises, like having the Shivans suddenly supernovae a sun in a completely outside scope of what we were fed to that point; have another Sathanas when we had hoped it was the last big juggernought coming our way (I still remember thinking we would be headed to "Shivantown" from that point on); having, yes, Bosch "talk" to these untalkable species, etc. But the "communication" point is also denied at the end, when we see the butchering of everyone inside the Iceni, just like in every alien horror movie. So much for the "alliance" with the shivans. All these narratives are written like a big "NOPE" to the player. NOPE, this wasn't the last Big Monster it was just one of 80+; NOPE, you can't deal with the shivans they will butcher you after all; NOPE, the whole war wasn't about what you thought it was about.
"Everyone" inside the Iceni? Everyone except Bosch and his officers which the Shivans took. Everyone except the comms officer that they left alive on the ship.
Bosch is the sort of man who doesn't give two ****s about the NTF as long as his long term goal is assured. But if he could achieve his goals of establishing a dialogue he'd chalk it up to a necessary sacrifice.
They took the important people and killed the rest. All this proves is that the Shivans are ruthless and they don't waste time on people who wont contribute. It doesn't "deny" communication in any respect whatsoever.
If communication was denied, Bosch would have been killed. Everyone would have been killed. But NOT everyone was killed. Hence communication would continue.
And what did you expect? Did you expect the Shivans to come with a document for Bosch to sign? So much for the alliance? It's day ****ing one. Things don't happen overnight but the fact Bosch is taken alive suggests things will continue. If that continuation is bosch being tortured for information, or actual dialogue with some central authority is left in doubt. What is known is that the Shivans care enough about Bosch and his core people to spirit him away to their territory.
For all we know Bosch will pull a Kerrigan and become a shivan king which, understanding, communication and achieving not only an alliance but full local power. Or maybe his influence will spread a ripple of dissention among the shivans the same way that an outside culture disrupted the Zentraedi military in Macross/Robotech.
And in fact, you did not originally say "it doesn't mean we understand the Shivans." you said that the shivans cannot be understood.
There's a very definitive difference between failing to understand something, and being incapable of understanding.
I stand by that. The point is the vertigo. Of course, without the tension that perhaps we can finally understand them, there would be less dramatic interest. At the end though, you get the slap.
I disagree entirely.
The end of Freespace 2 proves one very important thing:
There's more to Shivans than killing. as evidenced by,
1. The fact that they took Bosch and his lieutenants alive
2. The actions of the Sathanas Fleet
The only slap in the face was with regards to the GTVA having things under control militarily.
Canon is what canon was. FS2 is canon so to speak, and to that I hold it dear. It does not mean someone can't continue the story and make them understandable, but that is beyond the scope of FS2. I was talking about that particular story and nothing else.
"nothing else" is a bit inaccurate since you've quoted an author's thoughts on both FS2 and the fate of bosch to support your theories.
More importantly, you take circumstance that the Shivans are not understood to be proof of its finality. And by doing so, you expand the scope past FS2 just like everyone else.
The shivans motives are not understood in either game, therefore they cannot be understood is NOT a provable theory, and its not a theory which can exist without making assumptions about FS3 and the future of the game. On top of that you choose to deride people who present alternative theories: "You're not going to win any Nobel prize here figuring out with precise a priori thought what *exactly* the shivan nature is.".
Your whole argument regarding the shivans is focused well beyond the scope of FS2 because it takes FS2's outcome of uncertainty as the final word on what will happen. Rather than examining evidence to date to form a theory or where the story might go and how the shivans might develop, you take the lack of conclusive evidence to their nature to be proof of their indefinable nature and dismiss contradictory actions as random noise to add to that nature. The lack of evidence, isn't evidence.
For example, the lack of an alliance between Bosch with the Shivans at a laughably early stage of contact isn't proof there'll never be one. WE DON'T KNOW.
Also don't confuse narrative structure with character traits. The story defines the character's experience, it doesn't define who the Shivans are.
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What's more important that game statistics?
I don't think story and fluff trump raw game data.
...almost everything?
You know I can make an Orion virtually invulnerable by changing a handful of armour statistics. Game balance numbers are just that - balance numbers. They really aren't that important in the grand scheme of things. In fact, the design of the best mainstream campaign on this board (War in Heaven) predicates on just that concept.
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"Everyone" inside the Iceni? Everyone except Bosch and his officers which the Shivans took. Everyone except the comms officer that they left alive on the ship.
Bosch is the sort of man who doesn't give two ****s about the NTF as long as his long term goal is assured. But if he could achieve his goals of establishing a dialogue he'd chalk it up to a necessary sacrifice.
They took the important people and killed the rest. All this proves is that the Shivans are ruthless and they don't waste time on people who wont contribute. It doesn't "deny" communication in any respect whatsoever.
If communication was denied, Bosch would have been killed. Everyone would have been killed. But NOT everyone was killed. Hence communication would continue.
Sure, and this is cool, it even gives everything an aura of mystery and doubt, increases the mythos, adds questions and ups the ante. Many times I even indulged myself into writing some weird fan fiction on what has had happened to Bosch (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=83112.0). Again, I addressed this as an exception and how exceptions increased the thematic itself already twice times. How many more times do I need to restate it until you acknowledge it? I'm not even asking you to agree with me.
And what did you expect? Did you expect the Shivans to come with a document for Bosch to sign? So much for the alliance? It's day ****ing one. Things don't happen overnight but the fact Bosch is taken alive suggests things will continue. If that continuation is bosch being tortured for information, or actual dialogue with some central authority is left in doubt. What is known is that the Shivans care enough about Bosch and his core people to spirit him away to their territory.
It's proper alien horror territory, with all the walls in the Iceni painted blood red, etc. Peace talks start with a massacre and kidnapping of human officials. It falls fantastically well into the usual clichés, and I agree, the fact Bosch goes with the Shivans is a well-placed open question and it gives it a Sebastian* aura.
I disagree entirely.
The end of Freespace 2 proves one very important thing:
There's more to Shivans than killing. as evidenced by,
1. The fact that they took Bosch and his lieutenants alive
2. The actions of the Sathanas Fleet
The only slap in the face was with regards to the GTVA having things under control militarily.
"There is more to Shivans than killing" is not a refutation on their unintelligibility factor. If they were only "about killing" they would be far more intelligible. Now we even don't understand what they were trying to do, nor are we given a satisfactory answer. All that remains are mysteries. Which is cool.
"nothing else" is a bit inaccurate since you've quoted an author's thoughts on both FS2 and the fate of bosch to support your theories.
As seen in FS2, as understood by it. Lots of things you can write from that moment on. I know.
More importantly, you take circumstance that the Shivans are not understood to be proof of its finality. And by doing so, you expand the scope past FS2 just like everyone else.
The shivans motives are not understood in either game, therefore they cannot be understood is a provable theory, and its not a theory which can exist without making assumptions about FS3 and the future of the game. On top of that you choose to deride people who present alternative theories: "You're not going to win any Nobel prize here figuring out with precise a priori thought what *exactly* the shivan nature is.".
You missed the point. I am strictly characterizing the games so far. For instance, Blue Planet goes out on its way to "explain" what shivans are way more than both FreeSpace games had done so far. FreeSpace 3 does not exist, nor will it ever exist, so to even bring that up is a strawman.
You're whole argument regarding the shivans is focused well beyond the scope of FS2 because it takes FS2's outcome of uncertainty as the final word on what will happen.
I think you are now trying to tell me what I say and think. And this is outright unacceptable. I don't mind you disagreeing with me, I find that challenging and interesting in fact, but going out of your way to tell me that what I *really* think is not what I say or actually think falls outside of the scope of a civilized discussion. Having said this, I will clarify for the nth time that my evaluation comes from both games so far. If someone writes something that goes far beyond what has been done so far, great! Have at it! If it deviates too much from it, I will probably dislike it, and that's how far I can go with it. If it fails to even deliver any new perspective on it, it's probably fine but boring.
Is this clear now? Do you understand what I am saying?
Rather than examining evidence to date to form a theory or where the story might go and how the shivans might develop, you take the lack of conclusive evidence to their nature to be proof of their indefinable nature. The lack of evidence, isn't evidence.
It's my prerrogative to understand them in this vein. For me, the shivans play the part of an unforgiven, cruel, dark, unintelligible and inevitable force that work like a stop sign to any human aspirations on the galaxy. This is my take on FS2. All these narratives can be "proven wrong" in any sequels, fan fictions, etc., etc., exactly like this narrative was a denial of the lesson taken in FreeSpace 1. But that doesn't mean the narrative of FS1 wasn't clear. Nor the FS2's.
If you want to develop crazy** theories on how the shivans are this sort of empirically and scientifically predictable species if only we model them in the exact correct manner, and to do so you find you have to be really rigorous in your terminologies and so on, well that's great. That kind of "Hard Sci Fi" methodology of developing concepts is old-fashionedly great, and good things can come out of it. If you are thinking in building your own vision for your own world building, I can perfectly understand and applaud.
If however, you only want to force me into accepting your ortodoxy, well then, by all means continue trying. I'm not interested in it.
Also don't confuse narrative structure with character traits. The story defines the character's experience, it doesn't define who the Shivans are.
The Shivans are more mythological than "real", and what matters to me isn't what the shivans "truly are", but what is our human reality against them.
*a portuguese (true) mythos about a young king who got lost in battle and never came back, leaving the throne to spain for lack of heirs, always awaited by portuguese as if he were to come in a "myst" as a saviour from spanish rule.
** crazy in the good sense!
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What's more important that game statistics?
I don't think story and fluff trump raw game data.
...almost everything?
You know I can make an Orion virtually invulnerable by changing a handful of armour statistics. Game balance numbers are just that - balance numbers. They really aren't that important in the grand scheme of things. In fact, the design of the best mainstream campaign on this board (War in Heaven) predicates on just that concept.
War in Heaven is a load of melodramatic tripe in my opinion.
Numbers are everything because they define what a thing is within the context of a game.
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What's more important that game statistics?
I don't think story and fluff trump raw game data.
...almost everything?
You know I can make an Orion virtually invulnerable by changing a handful of armour statistics. Game balance numbers are just that - balance numbers. They really aren't that important in the grand scheme of things. In fact, the design of the best mainstream campaign on this board (War in Heaven) predicates on just that concept.
War in Heaven is a load of melodramatic tripe in my opinion.
Numbers are everything because they define what a thing is within the context of a game.
It is also one of the best designed campaigns, FRED wise, that I have ever seen.
It's also the approach I am taking. I don't care about numbers. 200 damage is both 15 kt from canon and about 500 Mt. All that matters is how they are used in game and what they are used for.
Numbers are nothing as far as I'm concerned. Without context they mean nothing.
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Not a good a approach to analyzing canon FS/FS2.
There's often nothing to be discussed if not looking at table stats.
By the "how they are used in game and what they are used for measure" - what can you say about the capabilities of the SC Lilith, for instance, which appears once in all of FS2 deployed against GTVA corvettes and cruisers which have their beams locked because of a FREDding ****up, with no mention of it in the mission text, and is promptly disposed of with little difficulty by ALPHA ONE spamming maxims and trebuchets?
Absolutely nothing.
You might as well drop the discussion right there, because there'd be nothing to talk about if you're not willing to discuss tabled values and speculation based on that.
Look at the table stats and ctrl-click one down in FRED against an Orion and you realize what it's truly capable of.
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Indeed Droid.
Rheyah's opinion is quite interesting to me because on one hand he seems to put little stock in the numbers, but on the other, it is his balance changes in the campaign which he is making which first drew my interest to it. And he didn't just say "the game will play better if I do this" but he gives reasons as to why the changes have taken place, taking into account the canon of Freespace 2 and explaining what has changed. So I'm not sure where he's coming from.
Someone else can do similar with the Shivans in a campaign if they want, but to discuss the canon of Freespace and Freespace 2, the stats of the ships and weapons are a powerful tool.
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You're whole argument regarding the shivans is focused well beyond the scope of FS2 because it takes FS2's outcome of uncertainty as the final word on what will happen.
I think you are now trying to tell me what I say and think. And this is outright unacceptable. I don't mind you disagreeing with me, I find that challenging and interesting in fact, but going out of your way to tell me that what I *really* think is not what I say or actually think falls outside of the scope of a civilized discussion. Having said this, I will clarify for the nth time that my evaluation comes from both games so far. If someone writes something that goes far beyond what has been done so far, great! Have at it! If it deviates too much from it, I will probably dislike it, and that's how far I can go with it. If it fails to even deliver any new perspective on it, it's probably fine but boring.
That's a load of bull****. I don't think you know what you're saying, probably because what you're saying changes with every post.
Saying conclusively that Bosch failed for example, is not evaluating the game "so far". At all. Referencing an author to support your argument is not "so far" either.
Because the answer to most questions regarding Freespace 2 is "We don't know". Saying the shivans cannot be communicated with, and bringing in an INCONCLUSIVE event to support that theory is going beyond the scope of FS2.
War in Heaven is a load of melodramatic tripe in my opinion.
Numbers are everything because they define what a thing is within the context of a game.
It is also one of the best designed campaigns, FRED wise, that I have ever seen.
It's also the approach I am taking. I don't care about numbers. 200 damage is both 15 kt from canon and about 500 Mt. All that matters is how they are used in game and what they are used for.
Numbers are nothing as far as I'm concerned. Without context they mean nothing.
Computer games are BUILT on numbers. To say "numbers are nothing" in reference to a game, computer or otherwise, is a bit silly.
And numbers in Freespace 2 DO have context.
They have the context of being comparable to OTHER NUMBERS. And together, these comparisons of numbers and their interaction create the experience that the player indulges in.
Many would argue that games aren't about telling a story. They're about creating emergent experiences. Creating a scenario or mission wherein the player has the opportunity to have fun, to have their own personal and UNIQUE experience which emerges from the game play. Creating a complex, scripted missions is ultimately self-defeating because it robs the player of creating their own emergent experiences, they're just playing through YOUR story as game designer. But if the player doesn't have the opportunity to have their own stories within the game, then what is the campaign except a slightly interactive movie in the same vein as the new "corridor shooter" Call of Duty games. Conversely look at something like Minecraft, which is hugely popular probably in large part because the player can do what they want, they can create their OWN stories. And sorry game designer but the stories they make are ultimately more personal and fulfilling than anything you can come up with because they're THEIR stories.
In Freespace 2 and other campaigns, the most rewarding missions were the ones where you had a bit of freedom to approach a problem in a way of your choosing. Picking your fighter, taking your loadout, and tackling the various mission objectives. Even the final mission, with its bitter-sweet ending, the player has a tremendous amount of latitude to succeed or fail in a way they see fit. Something memorable might be as small as a player saving one more transport which was reduced to only a few % of health.
I don't need to look at FS2 for this though, one can look at Blue Planet and a mission like Forced Entry, a mission with a set sequence of events and enemies but one that can be approached in a multitude of ways. The player can pick their fighter, their loadout, issue commands to various wings all in completely different ways than every other player. Their experience is unique. Compare this instead to War in Heaven and a mission like Delende Este or whatever the final mission of chapter 1 is called, and what effect or agency does the player have? Zero. They're playing through a pre-written story, and frankly the story for that mission sucks. They're not accomplish anything in that mission beyond surviving it to see the epilogue. Don't care how complex the FRED design is when the story jumps the shark so hard that I forget nearly every mission that came before it. That is my lasting impression of War in Heaven, but in the case of Blue Planet and Forced Entry, it's the highlight mission in a series of highlights.
If the ultimate goal of FREDing a mission or for that matter, MAKING A GAME, is to enable the player to have fun then I know which mission succeeded and which failed. And I know which missions from which campaigns I'd emulate and which I would steer well clear of.
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Many would argue that games aren't about telling a story. They're about creating emergent experiences. Creating a scenario or mission wherein the player has the opportunity to have fun, to have their own personal and UNIQUE experience which emerges from the game play. Creating a complex, scripted missions is ultimately self-defeating because it robs the player of creating their own emergent experiences, they're just playing through YOUR story as game designer. But if the player doesn't have the opportunity to have their own stories within the game, then what is the campaign except a slightly interactive movie in the same vein as the new "corridor shooter" Call of Duty games. Conversely look at something like Minecraft, which is hugely popular probably in large part because the player can do what they want, they can create their OWN stories. And sorry game designer but the stories they make are ultimately more personal and fulfilling than anything you can come up with because they're THEIR stories.
In Freespace 2 and other campaigns, the most rewarding missions were the ones where you had a bit of freedom to approach a problem in a way of your choosing. Picking your fighter, taking your loadout, and tackling the various mission objectives. Even the final mission, with its bitter-sweet ending, the player has a tremendous amount of latitude to succeed or fail in a way they see fit. Something memorable might be as small as a player saving one more transport which was reduced to only a few % of health.
I don't need to look at FS2 for this though, one can look at Blue Planet and a mission like Forced Entry, a mission with a set sequence of events and enemies but one that can be approached in a multitude of ways. The player can pick their fighter, their loadout, issue commands to various wings all in completely different ways than every other player. Their experience is unique. Compare this instead to War in Heaven and a mission like Delende Este or whatever the final mission of chapter 1 is called, and what effect or agency does the player have? Zero. They're playing through a pre-written story, and frankly the story for that mission sucks. They're not accomplish anything in that mission beyond surviving it to see the epilogue. Don't care how complex the FRED design is when the story jumps the shark so hard that I forget nearly every mission that came before it. That is my lasting impression of War in Heaven, but in the case of Blue Planet and Forced Entry, it's the highlight mission in a series of highlights.
If the ultimate goal of FREDing a mission or for that matter, MAKING A GAME, is to enable the player to have fun then I know which mission succeeded and which failed. And I know which missions from which campaigns I'd emulate and which I would steer well clear of.
Video games can most certainly be primarily about telling the player a story. My favorite games are all overwhelmingly story-oriented. Sandbox games like Minecraft or Garry's Mod have their place, but they'd never even come close to my personal "best games" list. I rather enjoy playing through a pre-written story, for the same reason I might enjoy reading a book. Might not be your cup of tea, and sometimes even I'm in the mood for something sandboxy, but to say that a tightly scripted story is self-defeating because "that's not what games are supposed to be" is complete grade-A bull****.
And the last mission of FS2 is a phenomenally poor example of player agency. No matter how well you do, almost everyone dies. In the end, the only thing you control in that mission is whether you personally survive. Apocalypse is one of the FS2 missions with the least player agency, probably matched only by Their Finest Hour.
Hell, one of FS2's stronger story elements is how powerless the player really is in the grand scheme of things. It's not a story about agency, it's a story about lack of it. No matter what you do, the Sathanas enters Delta Serpentis. No matter what you do, the Psamtik dies and Bosch gets away. No matter what you do, the Colossus gets destroyed. No matter what you do, you never find out what the hell the Shivans were after. It's the opposite of a player-crafted story. It's a story that will carry on the same way no matter what you do, and what little you do manage to accomplish doesn't really affect the big picture at all.
In addition, just because you don't get War in Heaven (which you clearly don't, going by both this post and that facepalm-inducing series of posts you made in the WiH discussion thread) doesn't mean it fails as a game or a storytelling experience. It just means that you, personally, don't like it. I, on the other hand, find WiH to be far, far more engaging than AoA both in terms of mission design and in terms of story.
So no, I completely reject your notion that the more freedom the player has, the more fulfilling the story. I haven't had a sandbox game experience that was anywhere near as fulfilling as Planescape Torment or even WiH, both of which have been described as interactive novels.
Honestly, this entire post is just you passing off your own personal preferences as objective fact.
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In addition, just because you don't get War in Heaven (which you clearly don't, going by both this post and that facepalm-inducing series of posts you made in the WiH discussion thread) doesn't mean it fails as a game or a storytelling experience. It just means that you, personally, don't like it. I, on the other hand, find WiH to be far, far more engaging than AoA both in terms of mission design and in terms of story.
Planescape torment? You mean an open-world RPG where your dialogue CHOICES have definitive consequence? Where every player will choose a different combination of choices to accomplish the game in the way they see fit? Thank you for illustrating exactly what I'm saying. The story you experienced in the game, the conversations you had an the outcomes of those quests were unique to you. You determined your journey. I used Minecraft as an example but games with over-arching stories but player freedom within a mission have emergent gameplay as well, with a player approaching something like Deus Ex or Thief in different ways but playing the same story and ultimately playing it in a way they want to.
And btw an author blaming his audience for not "getting his story" is the height of arrogance (whether you wrote the story or were just a part of the team, the position is the same). Battutu to his credit at least questioned me in an effort to understand what threw me off instead of your dismissive and condescending reaction. I wasn't confused at the end of the campaign because I didn't get it, I was pissed because my suspension of disbelief went out the window. And it went out the window because the campaign didn't set up the groundwork to make the ending believable. The campaign didn't come to a surprising but logical conclusion, rather it introduced a twist which hadn't been properly introduced.
And what threw me off is that despite the quality of the campaign the ending seemed like it was written by a 13 year old. With the most contrived series of misfortunes to befall the player one after another like a congo line of bad cliches. It's as though the author doesn't know how to write tragedy, and doesn't know how to set up a tragically damaged character so they throw every bad thing they can think of no matter if its consistent with anything that came before it or not and at the centre of this the player is just a spectator, and ultimately accomplishes absolutely nothing.
And I "get" what you're trying to do, you're trying to take the character to their lowest point. I just don't agree with the execution because it's not believable. There's nothing in the fiction that would foreshadow most of the events in that ending. Things fail to work, for no reason. Things gravitate towards other bodies, for no reason. The timing of some things is to the point of comedic. etcetera.
And its a shame because as I say the rest of the campaign was good quality, but after playing through it all I remember the opening cutscene, vague recollection of a VIP escort mission, the last mission and nothing else. Reminds me of Edge of Tommorow, a decent summer sci fi flick which to me dropped from 7.5/10 to about 2/10 in the last few minutes for much the same reason, a contrived ending.
So no, I completely reject your notion that the more freedom the player has, the more fulfilling the story. I haven't had a sandbox game experience that was anywhere near as fulfilling as Planescape Torment or even WiH, both of which have been described as interactive novels.
Choose your own adventure is in an interactive novel.
WiH is a Freespace 2 campaign with a lot of text.
By the way my notion is not about freedom = a more fulfilling story.
My notion is player freedom equating to a more fulfilling EXPERIENCE.
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In addition, just because you don't get War in Heaven (which you clearly don't, going by both this post and that facepalm-inducing series of posts you made in the WiH discussion thread) doesn't mean it fails as a game or a storytelling experience. It just means that you, personally, don't like it. I, on the other hand, find WiH to be far, far more engaging than AoA both in terms of mission design and in terms of story.
Planescape torment? You mean an open-world RPG where your dialogue CHOICES have definitive consequence? Where every player will choose a different combination of choices to accomplish the game in the way they see fit? Thank you for illustrating exactly what I'm saying. The story you experienced in the game, the conversations you had an the outcomes of those quests were unique to you. You determined your journey. I used Minecraft as an example but games with over-arching stories but player freedom within a mission have emergent gameplay as well, with a player approaching something like Deus Ex or Thief in different ways but playing the same story and ultimately playing it in a way they want to.
And btw an author blaming his audience for not "getting his story" is the height of arrogance (whether you wrote the story or were just a part of the team, the position is the same). Battutu to his credit at least questioned me in an effort to understand what threw me off instead of your dismissive and condescending reaction. I wasn't confused at the end of the campaign because I didn't get it, I was pissed because my suspension of disbelief went out the window. And it went out the window because the campaign didn't set up the groundwork to make the ending believable. The campaign didn't come to a surprising but logical conclusion, rather it introduced a twist which hadn't been properly introduced.
And what threw me off is that despite the quality of the campaign the ending seemed like it was written by a 13 year old. With the most contrived series of misfortunes to befall the player one after another like a congo line of bad cliches. It's as though the author doesn't know how to write tragedy, and doesn't know how to set up a tragically damaged character so they throw every bad thing they can think of no matter if its consistent with anything that came before it or not and at the centre of this the player is just a spectator, and ultimately accomplishes absolutely nothing.
And I "get" what you're trying to do, you're trying to take the character to their lowest point. I just don't agree with the execution because it's not believable. There's nothing in the fiction that would foreshadow most of the events in that ending. Things fail to work, for no reason. Things gravitate towards other bodies, for no reason. The timing of some things is to the point of comedic. etcetera.
And its a shame because as I say the rest of the campaign was good quality, but after playing through it all I remember the opening cutscene, vague recollection of a VIP escort mission, the last mission and nothing else. Reminds me of Edge of Tommorow, a decent summer sci fi flick which to me dropped from 7.5/10 to about 2/10 in the last few minutes for much the same reason, a contrived ending.
So no, I completely reject your notion that the more freedom the player has, the more fulfilling the story. I haven't had a sandbox game experience that was anywhere near as fulfilling as Planescape Torment or even WiH, both of which have been described as interactive novels.
Choose your own adventure is in an interactive novel.
WiH is a Freespace 2 campaign with a lot of text.
By the way my notion is not about freedom = a more fulfilling story.
My notion is player freedom equating to a more fulfilling EXPERIENCE.
None of the currently released content for BP was released while I was on the team (having joined in Feb 2013), so don't say "you" or "your". I'm not responsible for any part of what BP currently is, but nice try.
So I say again: you don't get WiH. You were never going to like it because it didn't tell its story the way you wanted it to. And that's ok, but it doesn't make it bad. Battuta did an admirable job explaining to you why your complaints about the ending had no real basis, but gave up because, big surprise, there's no point in talking to a brick wall. You did the same thing then that you've done in this thread: stuck to your position despite overwhelming arguments against it, all the while sounding contrarian and self-righteous. Here, Luis tore your arguments apart and you either haven't noticed or don't want to. Ever wonder why most of the discussions you're involved in on HLP just run in circles?
And you're still missing my point. You don't seem to get that there are plenty of games with fixed storylines that are very good despite allowing the player no real control over the outcome. Freespace 2 is one. You brought up CoD as a negative example, but I'd say that Call of Duty 4's SP campaign made it one of the best shooters ever made.
See, for some people, a more fulfilling story can amount to a more fulfilling experience. Torment wasn't a good game because choices impacted the story, it was a good game because it was brilliantly written. Gameplay was most certainly not its strength. There are two kinds of player freedom: freedom within the story, and freedom within gameplay. Torment had some of the former, but not so much of the latter. Homeworld had the latter, but none of the former. Now, given your complaints about tightly-scripted stories, I'm going to guess that Homeworld was bad to you, because it offers you zero control over the story. Freespace 2 must be bad for the same reason, if you're consistent. Or are you going to admit that a game can be good in spite of player decisions having minimal effect on the narrative? I reiterate: The notion that a tightly-scripted story is self-defeating because it isn't what games are supposed to do is complete bull****.
All games offer a varying amount of player freedom. That's what makes them games. That they might not offer you the amount or kind of freedom you might prefer doesn't make them bad, it just means they aren't for you.
I actually tend to measure free-roaming non-linear games by a different metric than linear games precisely because I know that while they might be a great deal of fun and I'll play them for a long time, they won't be anywhere near as fulfilling to me. I like a good story. The freedom I get within that story is a secondary concern.
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You're whole argument regarding the shivans is focused well beyond the scope of FS2 because it takes FS2's outcome of uncertainty as the final word on what will happen.
I think you are now trying to tell me what I say and think. And this is outright unacceptable. I don't mind you disagreeing with me, I find that challenging and interesting in fact, but going out of your way to tell me that what I *really* think is not what I say or actually think falls outside of the scope of a civilized discussion. Having said this, I will clarify for the nth time that my evaluation comes from both games so far. If someone writes something that goes far beyond what has been done so far, great! Have at it! If it deviates too much from it, I will probably dislike it, and that's how far I can go with it. If it fails to even deliver any new perspective on it, it's probably fine but boring.
That's a load of bull****. I don't think you know what you're saying, probably because what you're saying changes with every post.
Saying conclusively that Bosch failed for example, is not evaluating the game "so far". At all. Referencing an author to support your argument is not "so far" either.
Because the answer to most questions regarding Freespace 2 is "We don't know". Saying the shivans cannot be communicated with, and bringing in an INCONCLUSIVE event to support that theory is going beyond the scope of FS2.
This is my last communication with you on this point, and I'm beggining to feel it's my last, period. I'm tired of running around in circles repeating myself only to have you tell me I am a liar, someone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, gish galloping or whatever, etc., etc.
My point has been consistent throughout. "Shivans are unintelligible" is the message within FS2. I stand by this. It's not an absolutist, unambiguous message at it, and I delved much deeper into this paradox in my own thesis, wherein I claim that it is patently obvious FreeSpace 2 is using the exact framework of the Exodus chapter of the Bible, putting Bosch in the place of Moses (making quite the commentary on the whole Moses figure himself that wouldn't be unfair at all, but I digress) as the figure who is going to do the undoable and actually communicate with the Real God of the Universe and go to "the promised land" to forge an "alliance" (after the God of the Universe making it patently clear to the egyptian pharaoh (Khonsu II) who's the "real god" after a competition of sorcery and magic - technology). Why has this template used? To convey the precise message that as humans we relate to the shivans as the hebrews related to the god of the bible, with terror, awe, adulation, panic.
Nevertheless, Bosch fails to bring this "Alliance" to the GTVA. The seas close down and a rift is created between us and "the gods of the galaxy" and Bosch. We don't get to know the Shivans. They remain unintelligible and uncommunicatable. This truth is not absolute, it is not stagnant. Bosch could come back as a mythical figure (it will undoubtedly be held as such by many mystics inside human space at least) and bring about the "good news" so to speak. A lot more could be written about this, but again, I am really clear on what I think about this subject, and if you are going to simplify what I have said to a single-noted simpletonic thing and declare that I am full of bull**** I'll just have to make my mind about the kind of person you are projecting in this forum and ignore you henceforth. I do not suffer certain things gladly.
They're playing through a pre-written story, and frankly the story for that mission sucks. They're not accomplish anything in that mission beyond surviving it to see the epilogue. Don't care how complex the FRED design is when the story jumps the shark so hard that I forget nearly every mission that came before it. That is my lasting impression of War in Heaven, but in the case of Blue Planet and Forced Entry, it's the highlight mission in a series of highlights.
If the ultimate goal of FREDing a mission or for that matter, MAKING A GAME, is to enable the player to have fun then I know which mission succeeded and which failed. And I know which missions from which campaigns I'd emulate and which I would steer well clear of.
FUN is a very loose concept though, and if its meaning is mere indulgence, I think you are correct and that's all fine. I do have my indulgences every day and I enjoy them. FORCED ENTRY is a very indulgent-ridden story chapter about how you're a goddamned hero and able to secure every ship into the node despite all the franctic action and ability you have to pull off to get **** done. It's an amazing piece of work, I'm so with you on that. And I get that you didn't like Delenda Est for the reasons you implied, but to unequivocally state it "sucks"? That's just moronic hyperbole. If your only criteria for "good" is "orgasmic indulgence always in-the-zone ****" then I think your criteria is poor, and you'll miss quite a lot in all things, especially anything remotely concerning art.
One final note. Your behavior has been like this ever since I recall any discussion with you with about anything really, and I gotta tell you, from what I've seen so far, people kinda don't like the way you come across with your points. I kinda abhor censorship in all forms but one, which is what I refer to as "self-emergent" censorship, and is simply defined by people simply stopping to give a **** about your ideas and comments, because the only thing that seems to come from them is just righteous rude contrarianism for its own sake and that's just not about being rude, it's much much worse than that: it's ****ing boring. Probably the worse sin in existence.
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I am going to be much less charitable.
1. If you think you can do better than WIH then ****ing do it and stop whining about it on forums. It's not that goddamn hard. FRED is spectacularly powerful compared to virtually every editor I've ever used for a game. You can do whatever you want there. Good luck producing the stuff you want to produce.
2. If the excuse for not doing 1) is you are too busy, bully for you. We're all busy people. I'm incredibly busy building an academic career in numerical plasma physics. I still find time to have fun with FRED and am slowly building MY OWN interpretation of things.
3. We have had exactly one discussion on these forums and I already think poorly. From what I can gather, this is not an uncommon opinion. You would do well to shut up for a while and not run in circles around people who have already torn your arguments apart.
Cheers.
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Holy walls of text, batman.
Look. Guys. This thread has been reported and whilst I don't think there's sufficient evidence (yet) to start dishing out sanctions, I will ask those of you posting in the last page or so to simmer right down.
If any post from here on continues to escalate things between posters I will encourage those affected to report again and we'll take a fresh look - bearing in mind you've just been warned to cool it.
This topic actually persuaded me to log in and moderate and I hate doing that. So watch it :P
Thanks,
Fineus.
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Having an unpopular opinion tends to make one unpopular. Big surprise.
One does not need to create art in order to criticize it. I doubt Siskel and Ebert ever made a movie but as academics of the craft their opinions were widely distributed. I've studied literature and work in animation, I think I know something about story and when a story works and doesn't work. When it comes down to any movie, game or novel my first and foremost thoughts are to the story and whether it makes sense.
Games as I said are largely a different matter. A popular opinion is that games are an engine to create player experiences and a common backlash today is against so-called corridor shooters which take the player down a sequence of pre-scripted events. There's a world of difference between being a participate to a story and a passenger. Personally I prefer the former philosophy, the one which allows for player freedom, agency and the room to be creative.
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It's not about your opinion.
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It's not about your opinion.
It isn't? And yet my opinion is being attack and said to be invalid:
So I say again: you don't get WiH. You were never going to like it because it didn't tell its story the way you wanted it to.
And I get that you didn't like Delenda Est for the reasons you implied, but to unequivocally state it "sucks"? That's just moronic hyperbole. If your only criteria for "good" is "orgasmic indulgence always in-the-zone ****" then I think your criteria is poor, and you'll miss quite a lot in all things, especially anything remotely concerning art.
1. If you think you can do better than WIH then ****ing do it and stop whining about it on forums. It's not that goddamn hard. FRED is spectacularly powerful compared to virtually every editor I've ever used for a game. You can do whatever you want there. Good luck producing the stuff you want to produce.
It is very clearly my opinion that is at the heart of this, because here I am expressing it and having three people telling me that what I've expressed is wrong and then using that as a justification for all manner of personal attacks which have nothing to do with this discussion. Aesear for one wasn't even involved in this discussion until I made my opinion of WiH known. What does one suppose his agenda is? Is it to contribute to the discussion at hand or is it to steadfastly defend a project he's involved in?
Even the notion that I've "lost the argument" is trolling in and of itself, you cannot lose an argument based on supposition. At best it's an exchange of ideas with the "winning" defined as swaying the opposition to your own side, a victory condition which all sides have failed to achieve. Not sure why people are suprised when it turns out that I actually believe the ideas I'm presenting and that I have the attention to detail to point out inconsistencies in people's responses when I see them.
And news flash. I've made a campaign. I've had people like it and other people tell me they didn't like it. For the latter I didn't argue that they didn't "get it". I listened, considered their points and thought about how I might make it better in future. But I don't intend to make new campaigns because I'm not going to invest the time into something I cannot sell nor do I want to piggy back off of someone else's IP or ideas. My next creative endeavour would likely be an original game, but learning programming is of course quite a hurdle to overcome.
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Having an unpopular opinion tends to make one unpopular. Big surprise.
Presenting one's opinions like an asshat also tends to make one unpopular. You're not the only person on HLP who isn't particularly fond of WiH.
Aesear for one wasn't even involved in this discussion until I made my opinion of WiH known. What does one suppose his agenda is? Is it to contribute to the discussion at hand or is it to steadfastly defend a project he's involved in?
Actually, what made me respond was the thing I've been primarily arguing with you about. You know, this:
The notion that a tightly-scripted story is self-defeating because it isn't what games are supposed to do is complete bull****.
That you don't like WiH isn't news to me, and you'll notice that in both posts, I only talk about it for one paragraph out of many. So again, nice try.
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Akalabeth, you keep misrepresenting my views. This is what irks me:
I think you are now trying to tell me what I say and think. And this is outright unacceptable. (...) going out of your way to tell me that what I *really* think is not what I say or actually think falls outside of the scope of a civilized discussion.
And you keep doing it. Is it pathological on your part? Regarding your own views, this is what I said, and I kept saying this throughout our entire exchange:
I don't mind you disagreeing with me, I find that challenging and interesting in fact
Yes, I do find your lack of flexibility regarding the existence of other viewpoints a disappointment, and I did try to challenge this, but I think I was always polite in doing so? Anyways I never regarded that inflexibility on your part as anything remotely offensive or whatever, just midly annoying. I kept commending your own particular theory because I do appreciate heterodoxy, because I'm just the kind of perfect consumer for that kind of analysis and so on, and it did *sound* smart, thoughtful. A pity that we instead dragged this **** down to this.
But instead, you kept telling me I'm full of bull****, that I have no idea what I'm talking about, that I gish gallop, that I somehow are not saying what I am saying, but another thing entirely, and finally that the real reason people are pissed at you is because you're some kind of intellectual martyr in HLP always misunderstood by the unforgiving mob.
Please, whatever you do, don't just nitpick some single quote from all the above, mischaracterize it and drag on this muddy shenanigan? If you want to reply to me, address me like a person.
e: I'd very much like to try your campaign, but every download link is broken and from the campaign thread I see there were a lot of issues... but still is it anywhere in the megaternetverse?
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Akalabeth, you keep misrepresenting my views. This is what irks me:
No, your view changes. As demonstrated:
the horror of living in the same space as a species that is several orders of magnitude more powerful than you are and you can't understand them, talk to them, deal with them, whatever.
Shivans are something that cannot be talked to you say. When I mention Bosch talking to and dealing with them your reply is:
Before you tell me what I have done and what not, please wait up? I didn't say that the shivans didn't communicate with Bosch and that Bosch didn't understand the message they sent, I said it doesn't mean we understand the Shivans.
So your definition of "talking to", "dealing with" and "understanding" changes to only be "understanding"
And then what?
having, yes, Bosch "talk" to these untalkable species, etc. But the "communication" point is also denied at the end, when we see the butchering of everyone inside the Iceni, just like in every alien horror movie. So much for the "alliance" with the shivans. All these narratives are written like a big "NOPE" to the player. NOPE, this wasn't the last Big Monster it was just one of 80+; NOPE, you can't deal with the shivans they will butcher you after all; NOPE, the whole war wasn't about what you thought it was about.
You misrepresent events by saying that "everyone" was killed, when this was not the case.
And somehow the massacre of the Iceni's crew proves three completely unrelated points? Vader changed the deal on Lando, that doesn't mean that they didn't deal in the first place. Just means they made a deal and then Vader screwed him over. Your mention of a lack of an alliance is an attempt to narrow your definition even further and is a bit silly.
Bosch made a deal to be picked aboard shivan transports.
He was.
End of story.
The death of his crew may have been known to him before the transports even docked. Bosch himself may have agreed to their slaughter for all we know. To him the NTF were just a bunch of sheep, why would some tech in the engine room be any more dear to him? He and his officers were taken alive.
The point is you're presenting a very broad idea of what the shivans are in your "core" belief, and then as evidence is presented to disprove your terms, you're narrowing and reshaping that statement behind the pre-tense that it was that same statement all along when it's changed. Multiple times. You're even changing what "communication" means and what making a "deal" is.
And you've also said:
Canon is what canon was. FS2 is canon so to speak, and to that I hold it dear. It does not mean someone can't continue the story and make them understandable, but that is beyond the scope of FS2. I was talking about that particular story and nothing else.
While at the nearly the same time quoting the author for FS2:
So what? What has this anything to do with unintelligibility? The mere fact the Shivans were able to communicate with Bosch is not indicative we can understand them. In the interview of the writer of FS2 he said clearly that what happened with Bosch was a mystery, and he could have well been "eaten alive" by them. Perhaps they were interested in the fact humans had devised the ETAK tech, and wanted to scan Bosch's personal brain... after dissecting it.
Are the authors words within the scope of FS2? No, they're outside the scope because he's giving an opinion and little else. Your actions of saying you're focusing solely on fs2 and then bringing in outside information to support your own theories (or disprove others) is inconsistent.
So when I say, what you're saying is inconsistent and changes with every post, this is what I mean. And I have full grounds to say it because the evidence is clear and irrefutable. I don't think that your core belief of what the shivans are is fully defined, you're trying to find it through the discussion and when I say things are inconsistent you're getting defensive about it. Simple as that. But your own posts are telling a different story. Maybe you used the wrong words or changed your mind, either way the result is the same.
But instead, you kept telling me I'm full of bull****, that I have no idea what I'm talking about,
Actually I said your post was a load of bull****, not that you were full of bull****. Specifically:
That's a load of bull****. I don't think you know what you're saying, probably because what you're saying changes with every post.
So please, don't misrepresent what I'm saying.
Load of bull**** addresses your content. The following is an opinion based on observation rather than a judgement.
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Fine, if that's the kind of nitpicking you want to bring aboard then why not. I appreciate the quotes there though and see where you come from, and I have to say I agree with you regarding the WINNING the argument thing.
From my point of view, the whole Bosch arc story is a tragedy. It is "Exodus denied" so to speak. Thematically, it fits together with the rest of FreeSpace 2 as another failure to bridge the gap between us and the shivans. I do think there is truth in both claims that we are incapable of communicating the shivans and that this attempt was almost successful. The point is, thematically, it failed. How can I speak of it as a "failure"? I agree with you here that I might be too quick to judge on what happened to Bosch and whatnot, there is a glimmer of "open question", mythical even, to what happened to him. Plotwise, he could have gone and continued his mission to build some arrangement with the shivans or anything else. Thing is, we are blocked from knowing anything like this. The shivans remain a muted species by the end of the game. To us. And narratively, any other end of this arc wouldn't work. This has been built up on and on from the very first chapter, and the conclusion couldn't just be a dead Iceni with the captain at the helm without his head or whatever. It wouldn't work because why then even bother to rendezvous? Just beam them out of the sky.
It also works within the scope of the player. You want to know what happened. You want to chase Bosch. But you can't, because a new Sathanas is just about to beamraep your vasudan destroyer and the whole tone changes. Again, shivans deny you from one more thing. This begins a series of disappointments and the retreat of expectations and ambitions. Bosch touched the gods of the galaxy at the very peak of human ambitions (they had defeated the NTF and were about to just conquer everything shivan related), and right at that very moment, everything recedes and you are ultimately denied of any truth, any power, any conversation.
I see the whole work thematically, and it all boils down to several NOPES. I said this already. Again, these NOPES start to become real game changers by the time Bosch is captured. NOPE, you don't get to know what happens to Bosch. NOPE, shivans won't communicate anything to you or any other human again. NOPE, you don't get to know shivantown. NOPE, you are not as powerful as you thought at all. NOPE, we are not going to steamroll you, it's not even on our radar. NOPE you won't get an explanation for what happened. And this tone arc couldn't be more strident: the game starts with the "New Alliance" ambition "to guard the tomb of space, and to find within its cold expanse the salvation of our race" and it ends after this terrifying sequence of NOPES with the only upside of the hope to get back to Sol, like a wounded humilliated kid limping, trying to find his mommy.
This is not a story about a species that is about to recover and "try again!" against the "cold expanse" after Capella. This is why I characterize the shivans the way I do, regardless of your interpretation of Bosch's arc. (I have no problems with your version too)
Metanarratively, this could just as well be designed in a kind of "Empire Strikes Back" manner and the end of FS2 just a damn good cliffhanger, with Bosch's arc to be finished later. The point of bringing that quote from the writer was to somehow ground good skepticism on this angle of attack, not to bring anything "outside" as a cheat, etc.
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Fine, if that's the kind of nitpicking you want to bring aboard then why not.
It's not nitpicking. It's a symptom of defining a species as undefinable.
Since a person can't precisely define what a unknowable thing is, they instead describe it, and in describing it they attribute characteristics which may or may not hold up under scrutiny.
But the main problem with the way you describe the shivans is that the core argument depends upon a lack of evidence. But a lack of evidence is inherently unreliable. Saying that "shivans haven't responded to us" is more specific and stronger than "shivans cannot be talked to" because the latter is an assumption, whereas the former is observable fact.
It also works within the scope of the player. You want to know what happened. You want to chase Bosch. But you can't, because a new Sathanas is just about to beamraep your vasudan destroyer and the whole tone changes. Again, shivans deny you from one more thing. This begins a series of disappointments and the retreat of expectations and ambitions. Bosch touched the gods of the galaxy at the very peak of human ambitions (they had defeated the NTF and were about to just conquer everything shivan related), and right at that very moment, everything recedes and you are ultimately denied of any truth, any power, any conversation.
I see the whole work thematically, and it all boils down to several NOPES. I said this already. Again, these NOPES start to become real game changers by the time Bosch is captured. NOPE, you don't get to know what happens to Bosch. NOPE, shivans won't communicate anything to you or any other human again. NOPE, you don't get to know shivantown. NOPE, you are not as powerful as you thought at all. NOPE, we are not going to steamroll you, it's not even on our radar. NOPE you won't get an explanation for what happened. And this tone arc couldn't be more strident: the game starts with the "New Alliance" ambition "to guard the tomb of space, and to find within its cold expanse the salvation of our race" and it ends after this terrifying sequence of NOPES with the only upside of the hope to get back to Sol, like a wounded humilliated kid limping, trying to find his mommy.
I don't agree. The final act of Freespace 2 was not a denial, it was a revelation.
We learn more about the shivans in the final few missions than everything that came before.
It's a lack of power sure, the story goes from conventional war to twilight zone and from being in control to on the brink of extinction but still more is learned of the shivans in those last few missions that the rest of the entire game put together. We learn that they can be communicated with. That they have other motives. what their territory holds. That there are additional Knossos.
The opportunity to seize Bosch and ETAK is denied but that theme is prevalent throughout the entire game. The first mission is Bosch getting away.
The question of the alliance or continued communication was not one that the game was asking, it was never the focus of what the player was doing, it was solely bosch's ambition and narratively speaking Bosch was little more than a catalyst and a story hook for future games. "Shivantown" was never on the table either because a way out of the nebula was never really found until the second Sathanas was revealed.
From my point of view, the whole Bosch arc story is a tragedy. It is "Exodus denied" so to speak.
If Exodus is a journey through the desert and a return to the promised land, the homeland, then I would think the analogy would be attributed to the GTVA and their return to sol.
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Perfect clearcut example of misreading me. Almost every single thought here is just wrong. First, I stated the exact opposite of your first sentence here, when I stated that these things should not be read "that rigorously". I said that many times. It's obvious that the writer(s) were tentative and experimental in their design of the shivans, always managing their hedges with intelligence texts that only refer to "theories" and other clever tricks, so they can always get "out of jail free cards", so to speak, and if so needed. It was also very clever to have them not speak with us (I do like Mass Effect's conversation with Sovereign, but once that happened, a lot was sacrificed).
This is a fascinating discussion, because you say things completely opposite from your apparent intent. You harp on the mystery of the Shivans as their core characteristic, but you don't mean it? I don't think you can convince other observers of this argument that's true. Or perhaps you're projecting on this misreading thing. (Or christ, you're doing it for the reasons you ascribe to the writers of FS2.)
There was nothing clever about not having them speak to us. As the hostile faction, there was no reason for them to do so; and it was the norm that the hostiles don't talk to you in games of this type. Of all the flight sims and space sims I've played, the only sequence that ever developed a talking enemy was Ace Combat, and that was usually not to its favor. There was no stroke of genius here, only the proper obeisance to convention. The lack of focus on their side or an occasional flip of perspective was not revolutionary, but evolutionary. If, indeed, it can be considered such at all; this is an alien invasion story, dehumanizing the enemy is almost required.
Indeed, the whole idea that the Shivans are mysterious is kind of problematic when realize that, at the nuts and bolts level, we actually learn more about them than we do the mainstream Vasudans. The Vasudans are never treated as mysterious, but because of the focus of the game we actually know less about how they behave and fight than we do the Shivans. We are told very tiny bits about their culture which would in no way prepare us for interacting with a Vasudan. These are vastly outweighed by the evidence presented us about Shivan tactics, strategy, and technologies via the mechanism of the game's missions.
The Shivans are merely treated as mysterious. Even the Terrans aren't particularly expounded on via the game, despite the fact we are one. One of their own defining characteristics is Command's bizarre behavior towards Bosch, which is itself mysterious; and in turn, is actually part of developing the Shivans. It's arguably what gives them any mystery at all before the late-game swerve about the supernova.
Shivans-as-mystery rather falls apart when examined that closely. They draw it from mysteries among the Terrans for the most part, and in the end are the most developed race in the game.
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Shivans-as-mystery rather falls apart when examined that closely.
I think it wouldn't fall apart because we are currently unable to connect the knowledge we have about shivans.
We know: how they can look like. Their size indicates that they are cyborgs, robots ore are living in zero gravity for a long time.
that their technologies is far superior to the Terrans and Vasudans ones, and that it has a high diversity.
what they have done, and how they behaved while their incursions.
But we don't know: how they are organized.
why they wanted to eradicate the Terrans.
why they just took Bosh and a few officers and not the whole ship.
I'm sure this is incomplete so please add missing stuff
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It's a symptom of defining a species as undefinable.
Since a person can't precisely define what a unknowable thing is, they instead describe it, and in describing it they attribute characteristics which may or may not hold up under scrutiny.
But the main problem with the way you describe the shivans is that the core argument depends upon a lack of evidence. But a lack of evidence is inherently unreliable. Saying that "shivans haven't responded to us" is more specific and stronger than "shivans cannot be talked to" because the latter is an assumption, whereas the former is observable fact.
This is a very fair commentary, but I think this is not a refutation per se, but only outlining the challenges of representing said "un-knowable" thing, which you cannot do without knowing at least a bit of it, thus entering in contradiction. I think this contradiction is indeed inevitable, but it can be tamed and at the same time you can somewhat "have your cake and eat it", because the raw emotion you are tryiing to convey is vertigo. Now, this has lots to do with the relationship between science and nescience, and the best way to feel how much we don't know about a thing is precisely to have a bit of taste of knowing it a bit. Just enough so your mind at least understands how much it doesn't actually know.
This is a common human experience and the "unknowable" is just the extreme monster that rests at the outside of nescience, lurking as a threat to our "godhood" scientific indulgence and so on. The shivans are not at the very extreme (infinite?) side of this, but they are just enough on that distance that we can sense and feel the vertigo.
I don't agree. The final act of Freespace 2 was not a denial, it was a revelation.
We learn more about the shivans in the final few missions than everything that came before.
It's a lack of power sure, the story goes from conventional war to twilight zone and from being in control to on the brink of extinction but still more is learned of the shivans in those last few missions that the rest of the entire game put together. We learn that they can be communicated with. That they have other motives. what their territory holds. That there are additional Knossos.
I think it's possible to read this the way I said: without having this glimpse, it wouldn't resonate any vertigo in our guts.
The opportunity to seize Bosch and ETAK is denied but that theme is prevalent throughout the entire game. The first mission is Bosch getting away.
Well ok, that's true, but the anomaly is that we don't get to get him at the end. Usually these kinds of arcs are always closed with the chasing being successful.
The question of the alliance or continued communication was not one that the game was asking, it was never the focus of what the player was doing, it was solely bosch's ambition and narratively speaking Bosch was little more than a catalyst and a story hook for future games. "Shivantown" was never on the table either because a way out of the nebula was never really found until the second Sathanas was revealed.
I disagree here. Bosch is central to FS2's core themes and the idea of having him try to contact the shivans is central to the story. And I honestly believed we were going to get to shivantown the moment the first sathanas was destroyed, having had cleansed the nebula of a lot of gas miners and so on. I didn't call it "shivantown" at the time, nor did I even imagine it was several systems far away. It could be harbored right in that system for all I knew! My expectation of the story arc would be for us to find some incredible base somewhere and our job would be to bomb it to smithereens or whatever (my expectations were not that high, finales aren't usually great in games).
If Exodus is a journey through the desert and a return to the promised land, the homeland, then I would think the analogy would be attributed to the GTVA and their return to sol.
I have to say this is the first time I have seen this idea and I find it interesting. The more when you think Bosch created Neo-Terra and his "promised land" was precisely based on this nostalgia, etc. I disagree with it, though. Plotwise, it doesn't work. Bosch has the knowledge of the Knossos portal from the get go and his objective is never to use said technology to go back to Sol (being stopped by shivan interference or whatever plot variation one could have come up with). Their purpose is to meet the shivans and reach the "promised land" far beyond the nebula. The alliance's ambition is too to "find salvation" in the cold expanse of space, the "tombs" of the lost homeworlds are the past, space is the future. Bosch's "promised land" comes with an alliance with God, just like Moses with Jehovah.
But I don't dislike it.
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This is a fascinating discussion, because you say things completely opposite from your apparent intent. You harp on the mystery of the Shivans as their core characteristic, but you don't mean it? I don't think you can convince other observers of this argument that's true. Or perhaps you're projecting on this misreading thing. (Or christ, you're doing it for the reasons you ascribe to the writers of FS2.)
I admit I could be confused about the subject. I don't think I am though. At least too much.
There was nothing clever about not having them speak to us. As the hostile faction, there was no reason for them to do so; and it was the norm that the hostiles don't talk to you in games of this type. Of all the flight sims and space sims I've played, the only sequence that ever developed a talking enemy was Ace Combat, and that was usually not to its favor. There was no stroke of genius here, only the proper obeisance to convention. The lack of focus on their side or an occasional flip of perspective was not revolutionary, but evolutionary. If, indeed, it can be considered such at all; this is an alien invasion story, dehumanizing the enemy is almost required.
Really? Well, I don't even mean "in-game" sense out there when you are in your cockpit and so on, but never even plotwise. There may be other games like this (usually zombie games), but every space shooter or sci fi game where an enemy faction is as sophisticated as the shivans are that I have played, I never got the sense there was no politics involved. All Tie Fighters, X Wing Alliances, Wing Commanders, and so on always had speaking antagonists. I wonder what kinds of "space sims" you played.
The muted nature of the shivans is special and intended. Foreshadowed by the very communication crisis that sparked the terran-vasudan war, between two very similar species that couldn't understand each other at first.
Indeed, the whole idea that the Shivans are mysterious is kind of problematic when realize that, at the nuts and bolts level, we actually learn more about them than we do the mainstream Vasudans. The Vasudans are never treated as mysterious, but because of the focus of the game we actually know less about how they behave and fight than we do the Shivans. We are told very tiny bits about their culture which would in no way prepare us for interacting with a Vasudan. These are vastly outweighed by the evidence presented us about Shivan tactics, strategy, and technologies via the mechanism of the game's missions.
This is interesting, but it is biased towards gameplay and so on, which is also predictable since playing a "really alien species" was more interesting as an experience. Plotwise what you just said makes no sense whatsoever. We know vasudan hierarchical structure. We know their story. We know their home planet. We talk to them every day. We embark on their ships and are welcomed as crew members. We commercialize with them. To say we know "less" of Vasudans because gameplay-wise we fight the shivans quite a lot more is a non-sequitur.
The Shivans are merely treated as mysterious. Even the Terrans aren't particularly expounded on via the game, despite the fact we are one. One of their own defining characteristics is Command's bizarre behavior towards Bosch, which is itself mysterious; and in turn, is actually part of developing the Shivans. It's arguably what gives them any mystery at all before the late-game swerve about the supernova.
So the fact they don't speak at all, fail completely to state their intentions is nowhere near mysterious to you? When I see Command do what they did regarding Bosch, I say "human political intrigue at its best". I immediately recognize it. It is mysterious in the sense that we don't know who made the call (could it even have been the vasudans?).
Shivans-as-mystery rather falls apart when examined that closely. They draw it from mysteries among the Terrans for the most part, and in the end are the most developed race in the game.
Oh my. It's like we played entirely different games. I honestly don't know what to say here. I guess all the questions that could pop regarding the shivans' nature, their true power, their true scale, their homeworld, their language, their culture, their purposes, their politics, everything really, is just of no interest to you, thus of no mystery.
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If Exodus is a journey through the desert and a return to the promised land, the homeland, then I would think the analogy would be attributed to the GTVA and their return to sol.
I have to say this is the first time I have seen this idea and I find it interesting. The more when you think Bosch created Neo-Terra and his "promised land" was precisely based on this nostalgia, etc. I disagree with it, though. Plotwise, it doesn't work. Bosch has the knowledge of the Knossos portal from the get go and his objective is never to use said technology to go back to Sol (being stopped by shivan interference or whatever plot variation one could have come up with). Their purpose is to meet the shivans and reach the "promised land" far beyond the nebula. The alliance's ambition is too to "find salvation" in the cold expanse of space, the "tombs" of the lost homeworlds are the past, space is the future. Bosch's "promised land" comes with an alliance with God, just like Moses with Jehovah.
But I don't dislike it.
But Bosch is ultimately consorting with demons. He's making a deal with the devil. Not god.
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He's making a deal with the devil. Not god.
Are the Shivans the devil? Being somewhat homicidally inclined is one of the traits of the old Testament god, as I recall.
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But Bosch is ultimately consorting with demons. He's making a deal with the devil. Not god.
The_E is absolutely right, let us remember that the Genesis whole chapter is filled with beautiful things Jehovah is doing like murdering first borns, terrorizing everyone with rivers painted with blood, locusts destroying every culture in sight, firestorms, diseases, etc. I'm pretty sure the egyptians weren't exactly clamoring this Jehovah guy as a peaceful loving god, who by the way kills every egyptian soldier trying to cross the river and demands of Moses that he kill the half of his hebrew population adoring a golden statue / wrong god.
I hinted at this previously by saying that the commentary FreeSpace 2 subtly makes of Moses is quite fittingly atrocious and butcherous.
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He's making a deal with the devil. Not god.
Are the Shivans the devil? Being somewhat homicidally inclined is one of the traits of the old Testament god, as I recall.
Uh, can you name any shivan ship classes or instances?
Lucifer means devil
Shaitan means devil
Iblis means devil
Sathanas means devil
Moloch is a demon
Lilith is a demon
Ravana is an evil spirit
Cain is a murderer
Demon is a . . demon
Sammael, the ship that was present when Bosch was picked up is the angel of death and is both good&evil.
Petrarch describes the shivan encounter thusly, "From our odyssey into Hell, we've returned with a gift; "
When has God, as in Yahweh, Hosanna, Allah, whatever ever factored into their depiction?
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Uh, can you name any shivan ship classes or instances?
Lucifer means devil
Shaitan means devil
Iblis means devil
Sathanas means devil
Moloch is a demon
Lilith is a demon
Ravana is an evil spirit
Cain is a murderer
Demon is a . . demon
As so named by... the humans fighting them.
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Uh, can you name any shivan ship classes or instances?
Lucifer means devil
Shaitan means devil
Iblis means devil
Sathanas means devil
Moloch is a demon
Lilith is a demon
Ravana is an evil spirit
Cain is a murderer
Demon is a . . demon
As so named by... the humans fighting them.
Yeah, exactly.
Humans depict them as devils and demons.
Bosch is going to make a deal with them.
Therefore bosch is dealing with the devil.
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What the last few replies have been getting at, is that from an Egyptian standpoint, Jehovah might as well be the name of a demon.
It's a name. They are semantics at their basest. It all depends on your perspective and which side you happen to be on whether a god is a demon or a demon a god.
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It's a matter of perspective in the sense that Bosch views himself as Moses or Odysseus but the player and the game view him in a very different light.
He's a mass murderer and a racist, consorting with demons, and fancies himself a saviour for mankind.
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When has God, as in Yahweh, Hosanna, Allah, whatever ever factored into their depiction?
It did, at the very least as the way Bosch imagined himself and as a general commentary on the myth of Moses...
It's a matter of perspective in the sense that Bosch views himself as Moses or Odysseus but the player and the game view him in a very different light.
He's a mass murderer and a racist, consorting with demons, and fancies himself a saviour for mankind.
Spoken like a true Egyptian on the time of Moses :D. I don't think the "game" sees him in only "that" fashion. I think it sees him in both fashions, and both are true, such great commentary on what we regard as myths... which is all kinds of great stuff to be found in a simple game.
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It did, at the very least as the way Bosch imagined himself and as a general commentary on the myth of Moses...
Eh, Bosch brings up all sorts of analogies not just moses.
As does the game. His ship is after all named Iceni.
It's a matter of perspective in the sense that Bosch views himself as Moses or Odysseus but the player and the game view him in a very different light.
He's a mass murderer and a racist, consorting with demons, and fancies himself a saviour for mankind.
Spoken like a true Egyptian on the time of Moses :D. I don't think the "game" sees him in only "that" fashion. I think it sees him in both fashions, and both are true, such great commentary on what we regard as myths... which is all kinds of great stuff to be found in a simple game.
The game makes him pitiable, that's about it.
I was wrong on one count however, as reading the monologues, the final monologue suggests that his crew is going to be leaving. So having his crew killed and only him taken was not something he expected.
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It did, at the very least as the way Bosch imagined himself and as a general commentary on the myth of Moses...
Eh, Bosch brings up all sorts of analogies not just moses.
As does the game. His ship is after all named Iceni.
I covered all that up... Boadicea, Iceni, Hieronymus Bosch... heck even the Aquitaine winks at us with its name and its historical reference. We know good works of art are like this, they basically chew a lot of stuff and come out with incredible texture in it and somehow it all fits in a very simple, strong idea.
The game makes him pitiable, that's about it.
Yes, he's painted as a tragic figure. With an open question mark.
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I was wrong on one count however, as reading the monologues, the final monologue suggests that his crew is going to be leaving. So having his crew killed and only him taken was not something he expected.
We do not know the extent of Bosch's communications with the shivans. Maybe they did deal and agreed on a RV point and some conditions, preliminary talkings for an alliance and so forth, maybe he was just transmitting some shivan codes and waiting for them to come to him. Maybe his ETAK device wasn't working properly. Who knows what level of communications he was having?
I can get behind Luis interpretation, since this communication could have been similar to my interactions with my dog. For example, he used to bring me his leash, to show me that he wanted to get out for a walk. I could understand his message, it was me who build the link between the two experiences in his mind. Most of the times, he got what he wanted. Sometimes however, I would put him on the leash and then bathed him. It was a traumatic experience for him. He never understood why I did that, because personal hygiene is beyond his comprehension. We may be not more that dog intellects to the shivans. Who knows what blowing up stars is all about?
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Really? Well, I don't even mean "in-game" sense out there when you are in your cockpit and so on, but never even plotwise. There may be other games like this (usually zombie games), but every space shooter or sci fi game where an enemy faction is as sophisticated as the shivans are that I have played, I never got the sense there was no politics involved. All Tie Fighters, X Wing Alliances, Wing Commanders, and so on always had speaking antagonists. I wonder what kinds of "space sims" you played.
TIE Fighter didn't have speaking Rebels at least until the mission disks, and if you're going to be arguing that then I counter that we had speaking Shivans during Silent Threat. Just not to us. The Kilrathi taunting you isn't speaking to you in any meaningful sense, nowhere near the significance of, to use your example, Sovereign's conversation with Shepard on Virmire. They can mouth our insults; that doesn't even imply they're an intelligent species in the end, just that someone taught them to like a bunch of parrots. We don't see a developed Kilrathi character until the second game.
You don't seem to remember these games as clearly as you think. Or, for that matter, FreeSpace as clearly as you think; Silent Threat rather destroys the notion of the Shivans as uncommunicative. They not only communicated but participated in a massive joint project with the GTI which replicated some of their most powerful technologies.
This is interesting, but it is biased towards gameplay and so on, which is also predictable since playing a "really alien species" was more interesting as an experience. Plotwise what you just said makes no sense whatsoever. We know vasudan hierarchical structure. We know their story. We know their home planet. We talk to them every day. We embark on their ships and are welcomed as crew members. We commercialize with them. To say we know "less" of Vasudans because gameplay-wise we fight the shivans quite a lot more is a non-sequitur.
What do we know actually know about Vasudan culture?
They like Egyptian names. They favored a more rapid-firing version of the basic GTVA weapon because it suited their doctrine better. They used to have a Parliament. Now they have an Emperor.
You're not actually evaluating what you're told; you are accept it uncritically, and not realizing in so doing that your brain is filling in the blanks in the actual narrative and knowledge. Our characters may have the knowledge you describe. But we the players do not. We know nothing about the Vasudans that would actually prepare us to encounter one.
So the fact they don't speak at all, fail completely to state their intentions is nowhere near mysterious to you?
They are, bluntly, the enemy. It is not in their interests to communicate if they believe they can win without doing so, as by doing so they could give us information we might be able to use against them. Augustus' Legions faced their enemies in silence to intimidate them; this too is an old human trick.
The Humans and Vasudans talked to each other because they had no intention of engaging in a war when they met. Did the Ancients try to communicate with the Shivans? They never mention it, and given their general warmongering and stated penchant for genocide it seems unlikely they would have bothered.
So in the end, the lack of communication need not be mysterious. It can be, but it does not have to be.
When I see Command do what they did regarding Bosch, I say "human political intrigue at its best". I immediately recognize it. It is mysterious in the sense that we don't know who made the call (could it even have been the vasudans?).
But in reality the ETAK experience is simply a way to get you invested in the concept of a Shivan mystery. They know that without making the Shivans behave in a mysterious way, which in this case would mean presenting them as less than paragons of lethal efficiency, they need to do something that will make them mysterious. They are unprepared to sacrifice menace for mystery, so they use the familiar as a bridge to the obscure.
The only outright incomprehensible act of the Shivans during the game is, not coincidentally, tied to ETAK.
I guess all the questions that could pop regarding the shivans' nature, their true power, their true scale, their homeworld, their language, their culture, their purposes, their politics, everything really, is just of no interest to you, thus of no mystery.
I could make a similar argument about the GTVA. How is it governed beyond vague generalities? Where are my orders actually originating? How many people live in it? What about the Vasudans? Can you describe the typical Vasudan day to me? How would a Vasudan define family? Do they even have a concept of family? Can you describe their internal politics, or indeed the internal politics of the Terrans?
You are surrounded by mysteries you refuse to acknowledge. The Shivans are the least mysterious of them, simply because we see so much.
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We do not know the extent of Bosch's communications with the shivans. Maybe they did deal and agreed on a RV point and some conditions, preliminary talkings for an alliance and so forth, maybe he was just transmitting some shivan codes and waiting for them to come to him. Maybe his ETAK device wasn't working properly. Who knows what level of communications he was having?
Now, this is untrue. Though he describes the communication as crude, he is quite firm on several points regarding what he was told and what he said. It is obvious from what Bosch says that he managed to hold something resembling a conversation. The fact the Shivans were able to identify him and a number of other members of his crew by sight and take them away argues it was fairly extensive.
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It did, at the very least as the way Bosch imagined himself and as a general commentary on the myth of Moses...
Eh, Bosch brings up all sorts of analogies not just moses.
As does the game. His ship is after all named Iceni.
I covered all that up... Boadicea, Iceni, Hieronymus Bosch... heck even the Aquitaine winks at us with its name and its historical reference. We know good works of art are like this, they basically chew a lot of stuff and come out with incredible texture in it and somehow it all fits in a very simple, strong idea.
Which is . . . .
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TIE Fighter didn't have speaking Rebels at least until the mission disks, and if you're going to be arguing that then I counter that we had speaking Shivans during Silent Threat. Just not to us. The Kilrathi taunting you isn't speaking to you in any meaningful sense, nowhere near the significance of, to use your example, Sovereign's conversation with Shepard on Virmire. They can mouth our insults; that doesn't even imply they're an intelligent species in the end, just that someone taught them to like a bunch of parrots. We don't see a developed Kilrathi character until the second game.
****, I hate doing this, but you so make me do it! I have to borrow someone else's analysis of something dear Rumsfeld once said that got everyone laughing, to make a point about this. Remember when he said that silly philosophical fearmongering stuff about there being known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns? Well he forgot the fourth one, the unknown knowns, i.e., our prejudices, our baggage that we come with into anything we do, like play a FreeSpace 2 game, or a Tie Figther game, etc.
You are analysing this as if the game design doesn't pressupose this baggage already exists in everyone's minds. But I argue it does. When Volition designs the Humans in FreeSpace they are free to not be thorough in their characterization, because it doesn't matter that much. We already are "team humans" by default, we know what they mean when they say "humans" and therefore all that baggage is already in place when we start the game.
The same can be said about Tie Fighter. No one played that game before watching the trilogy. No one thinks the rebels are muted space freaks that you won't communicate with. Regarding the Kilrathi, well, there were four Wing Commanders, and if by the second one we get them well developed as a talkative species and so on, remember that we are analysing here the plot of the *second* FreeSpace too. I never played the first Wing Commander, so I defer to your experience there.
You don't seem to remember these games as clearly as you think. Or, for that matter, FreeSpace as clearly as you think; Silent Threat rather destroys the notion of the Shivans as uncommunicative. They not only communicated but participated in a massive joint project with the GTI which replicated some of their most powerful technologies.
I don't regard Silent Threat too highly though, but you're right I don't have present in my memory the plot details of ST. I had the memory that it wasn't a free communication that was happening, but rather pure manipulation on the terran part over some lone tiny random shivan forces. The whole plot fits nicely into the "hive mind theory" Peter Watts style, wherein the less forces of Shivans are out there, the less smart and weaker, manipulatable they become.
What do we know actually know about Vasudan culture?
They like Egyptian names. They favored a more rapid-firing version of the basic GTVA weapon because it suited their doctrine better. They used to have a Parliament. Now they have an Emperor.
You're not actually evaluating what you're told; you are accept it uncritically, and not realizing in so doing that your brain is filling in the blanks in the actual narrative and knowledge. Our characters may have the knowledge you describe. But we the players do not. We know nothing about the Vasudans that would actually prepare us to encounter one.
The point of the game isn't to fight Vasudans, except for one or two missions where they went a bit rogue (and you do learn something about their hierarchical (lack?) of structure where some units can just decide to **** a human secret op just like that). And I agree that in that sense, the game is far more interested in alluring you towards the shivans. But the game pressuposes that you already know everything you "need" or are "interested" to know about both humans and vasudans.
They are, bluntly, the enemy. It is not in their interests to communicate if they believe they can win without doing so, as by doing so they could give us information we might be able to use against them. Augustus' Legions faced their enemies in silence to intimidate them; this too is an old human trick.
You pressupose it was meant as intimidation, that it was according to their interests. It's a possibility but there's no evidence of this. Unlike "old humans", the question of whether they even communicate is wide open until Bosch becomes slightly successful.
So in the end, the lack of communication need not be mysterious. It can be, but it does not have to be.
It is but one element that adds to it.
When I see Command do what they did regarding Bosch, I say "human political intrigue at its best". I immediately recognize it. It is mysterious in the sense that we don't know who made the call (could it even have been the vasudans?).
But in reality the ETAK experience is simply a way to get you invested in the concept of a Shivan mystery. They know that without making the Shivans behave in a mysterious way, which in this case would mean presenting them as less than paragons of lethal efficiency, they need to do something that will make them mysterious. They are unprepared to sacrifice menace for mystery, so they use the familiar as a bridge to the obscure.
Those are two different events. One, the intrigue within Command, two, the Shivans ambiguously but also seemingly responding to Bosch's attempts. They are tied, of course, the plot is very laser focused, sharp, but I wasn't talking about the shivan part there. Now, of course the ETAK is the very core of FreeSpace 2's thematic concern: Is it possible to contact and really start "some" kind of relationship (other than pew pew) with these Monsters?
As a player, the game is superficially telling us that this doesn't really concern us, that shivans are bad zombie ships we should kill, that we should try to capture Bosch (even though we have Command against us on that point) and his technology; but then as a viewer, there's a slight dissonance with the fact that we do get involved with Bosch's quest, that almost all the cutscenes are about his struggle, not ours.
Both angles are windows to how "we" (human mortals) relate to the shivans.
The only outright incomprehensible act of the Shivans during the game is, not coincidentally, tied to ETAK.
What are you referring to exactly? The capture of Bosch and the butchering of the rest of the crew? I don't see it more incomprehensible than the supernovae that comes as much as a surprise here.
I could make a similar argument about the GTVA. How is it governed beyond vague generalities? Where are my orders actually originating? How many people live in it? What about the Vasudans? Can you describe the typical Vasudan day to me? How would a Vasudan define family? Do they even have a concept of family? Can you describe their internal politics, or indeed the internal politics of the Terrans?
You are surrounded by mysteries you refuse to acknowledge. The Shivans are the least mysterious of them, simply because we see so much.
Jesus, these are quaint things. "What bowls of cereals does Petrarch eat every day? Huh? Can you POSSIBLY answer this question? Didn't think so!" Well of course we do not, but it's not as if we aren't given a good codex on their culture, politics and so on to the expected level that we can given the scope and scale of the writing material we have. This isn't Mass Effect, where you can convince some Vasudan girl your manliness is bigger than their male counterparts, and get to learn their relationship with intrusive sand while you go storming some Shivan headquarters. And yeah, we don't get to "know humans" because we already have a ****ton of years of baggage with that kind of stuff. Where orders come from? From Command, and we know "Command" is a quick reference to all the chain of command outlined for us during the game, including the Admiral we serve on board.
It doesn't have a booze session, all the wingmen are random personas and there's no human connection at all other than with Snipes and a few others. This is both part of the minimalist character of the game and a great source of criticism in the wider spheres of internet reviews. I do think that while this minimalism does explain a lot concerning how we don't get as much info on terrans or vasudans as you'd prefer, it does not explain the shivans.
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It did, at the very least as the way Bosch imagined himself and as a general commentary on the myth of Moses...
Eh, Bosch brings up all sorts of analogies not just moses.
As does the game. His ship is after all named Iceni.
I covered all that up... Boadicea, Iceni, Hieronymus Bosch... heck even the Aquitaine winks at us with its name and its historical reference. We know good works of art are like this, they basically chew a lot of stuff and come out with incredible texture in it and somehow it all fits in a very simple, strong idea.
Which is . . . .
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=84821.0
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It did, at the very least as the way Bosch imagined himself and as a general commentary on the myth of Moses...
Eh, Bosch brings up all sorts of analogies not just moses.
As does the game. His ship is after all named Iceni.
I covered all that up... Boadicea, Iceni, Hieronymus Bosch... heck even the Aquitaine winks at us with its name and its historical reference. We know good works of art are like this, they basically chew a lot of stuff and come out with incredible texture in it and somehow it all fits in a very simple, strong idea.
Which is . . . .
http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=84821.0
Right, now boil down what you said there into a single sentence.
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Great challenge that one, I think it's downright possible but I am afraid synthesis is not my strenght. I'll think about it.
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Point is if you feel it's a "simple strong idea", should be able to do just that.
Same way an essay has a thesis and a concluding statement.
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I do feel it but I am terrible at expressing it.
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You don't seem to remember these games as clearly as you think. Or, for that matter, FreeSpace as clearly as you think; Silent Threat rather destroys the notion of the Shivans as uncommunicative. They not only communicated but participated in a massive joint project with the GTI which replicated some of their most powerful technologies.
You don't seem to remember Silent Threat as clearly as you think; can you point to any evidence of GTI actually talking with (as opposed to just studying or managing to use the technology of) the Shivans?
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You don't seem to remember Silent Threat as clearly as you think; can you point to any evidence of GTI actually talking with (as opposed to just studying or managing to use the technology of) the Shivans?
Shivans were actually being held at Joutenheim station according to the command and mission briefings, GTI was stated to be using them in their efforts to reverse-engineer Shivan technology. And most tellingly it is very likely that a group of Shivan pilots actually flew in the Hades' defense; the ship launches a flight of Seraphim bombers that perform to their maximum spec, which given the difficulties with the captured SF Dragon only months before is exceedingly unlikely unless they had Shivan pilots. (And all but impossible unless you accept they had Shivan help in figuring out how to refit the ships.)
You are analysing this as if the game design doesn't pressupose this baggage already exists in everyone's minds. But I argue it does. When Volition designs the Humans in FreeSpace they are free to not be thorough in their characterization, because it doesn't matter that much. We already are "team humans" by default, we know what they mean when they say "humans" and therefore all that baggage is already in place when we start the game.
Sure it is. But humans is a really damn broad characterization when you get down to it. Insufferable arrogant pricks sure of their own sainthood along the lines of early ST:TNG? Sinners like Game of Thrones? Does the General Assembly have actual power or the Security Council holds the only meaningful ability? Who has military oversight? There's a huge amount we're not told which is directly relevant and not filled in by the usual general gap-filling. You're simply not looking at it.
None of which, of course, applies to the Vasudans either.
The same can be said about Tie Fighter. No one played that game before watching the trilogy. No one thinks the rebels are muted space freaks that you won't communicate with.
The problem with this concept is that you don't actually deal with any of the rebels from the movies. You do in fact see the Emperor and Vader, of course. But you see plenty of things that don't match up with the movie portrayals as well, like attacks on civilians, exchanges of hostages, the Empire acting as a peacekeeping force, and the Rebel Alliance taking an anarchistic stand against an attempt to establish the basic implements of law and order; all of these are a part of your first couple of campaigns in TIE Fighter.
It was immediately obvious that what you knew was only partially relevant, if it was relevant at all. So it is here; you're arguing we can apply our general knowledge of humanity to an interstellar society with FTL drive and communications, to which I respond that many good authors have spilled much ink exploring the obvious fact this would result in vast societal differences. And did we mention they've integrated a whole other species?
You pressupose it was meant as intimidation, that it was according to their interests. It's a possibility but there's no evidence of this. Unlike "old humans", the question of whether they even communicate is wide open until Bosch becomes slightly successful.
I don't need to presuppose. It's a mathematical certainty that if they intend to fight us and they are in a position of great strength (which is self-evident in both games), then not communicating with us is beneficial because it involves no risk.
Tactics and strategy isn't human-specific; it is mathematically quantifiable, though not always precise, and any species advanced enough to build spacecraft will understand its precepts. Other reasons offered are not presupposed; they are speculation without any real interest in it. The bottom line is that the Shivans never had a reason to communicate with us when they could obviously brush us aside. The one time that fundamental dynamic changed, in Good Luck, they would have had very little time to react. (And we would have had very little reason to listen.)
Those are two different events. One, the intrigue within Command, two, the Shivans ambiguously but also seemingly responding to Bosch's attempts. They are tied, of course, the plot is very laser focused, sharp, but I wasn't talking about the shivan part there. Now, of course the ETAK is the very core of FreeSpace 2's thematic concern: Is it possible to contact and really start "some" kind of relationship (other than pew pew) with these Monsters?
That's not FreeSpace 2's thematic concern at all. Consider: the climax of the game comes after the ETAK plots wrap up. You can define it variously; Straight, No Chaser, Their Finest Hour, Clash of the Titans II, or Apocalypse, but it's clearly later. Similarly, the majority of the other missions in the game that are extremely memorable, like A Lion At The Door or The Sixth Wonder, are completely unrelated to ETAK.
Just to compound the problem, never forget that the SOC Loops are optional. Much of the build-up for the whole ETAK concept is done in missions a player is not required to see. It is a side-story. Quite literally, much of the time.
What are you referring to exactly? The capture of Bosch and the butchering of the rest of the crew? I don't see it more incomprehensible than the supernovae that comes as much as a surprise here.
There is a laundry list of reasons why the Shivans might want to cause a supernova, ranging from the ingame speculation to wanting to make a statement to the GTVA about not poking them like the nebular campaign did. Bosch's abduction/departure is a predictable consequence of his communication. What isn't rationally explainable from what we know is why the Shivans felt the need to kill much of the Iceni's crew in the process of taking the dozen-odd people they did.
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You don't seem to remember these games as clearly as you think. Or, for that matter, FreeSpace as clearly as you think; Silent Threat rather destroys the notion of the Shivans as uncommunicative. They not only communicated but participated in a massive joint project with the GTI which replicated some of their most powerful technologies.
You don't seem to remember Silent Threat as clearly as you think; can you point to any evidence of GTI actually talking with (as opposed to just studying or managing to use the technology of) the Shivans?
yer while the game lore hints at research into shivan communication, its not until FS2 where it is looked into with any seriousness. FS1 is about the tech disparity and the race to close that gap enough to fight back
edit.
I Remember no shivans in the final battle of ST
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Point is if you feel it's a "simple strong idea", should be able to do just that.
Same way an essay has a thesis and a concluding statement.
Simple strong ideas are not necessarily expressible in a single sentence, if you interpret "simple" as basic, fundamental, common, or intuitive. (For example: existence, truth, love, numbers, consciousness, brute facts, and especially nothingness.)
That said, the final sentence of Luis' thesis is pretty good:
The vertigo symbolized by the constant biblical references parallels the player's experience of the Shivan unreal godlike nature, and the Mosaic thematic creates the perfect setting to brutalize the player's expectations of a simple "epic" story into a more authentic and honest moment of awe and frustration at the game's ending.
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And most tellingly it is very likely that a group of Shivan pilots actually flew in the Hades' defense; the ship launches a flight of Seraphim bombers
Uh, what? When did this happen? I find no reference to Seraphim in either the FSPort or ST:R version of the final mission, or the Wiki page (http://hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Secrets_Revealed) for either (http://hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Last_Stand).
EDIT: To make super-extra sure that FSPort didn't engage is any historical revisionism, I pulled out the GOG.com installer for FS1+ST and extracted md-12.FSM, and still no nonsensical Seraphims.
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Sure it is. But humans is a really damn broad characterization when you get down to it. Insufferable arrogant pricks sure of their own sainthood along the lines of early ST:TNG? Sinners like Game of Thrones? Does the General Assembly have actual power or the Security Council holds the only meaningful ability? Who has military oversight? There's a huge amount we're not told which is directly relevant and not filled in by the usual general gap-filling. You're simply not looking at it.
You are putting too many expectations of detail into a game that consistently decided to go at it minimalistically. Yes, how are the rainbows in Capella VI, what is the regional architecture of Polaris IV, what kind of virtual games are most enjoyed in Delta Serpentis? There is no end to the detailing of any lore if one so wishes. Your demands are just way far above my own here. Notice how the whole game doesn't even have a protagonist. This decision is consistent throughout: the idea to have as little characterization of the "good guys" part so that you can easily "fill in the banks" with your own "unknown knowns" (your preferences, baggages, prejudices, etc.) and not even think about them. The focus should be on the plot, not on world building. And the plot is about the relationship we as a mortal young species have with an (apparently) immortal, very old, very large, muted species.
We all know what humans are with our baggage, and quite frankly the difference between TNG insufferability and GoT psychopathy is not that great when compared with creatures like the shivans. To worsen your point, we do get some kind of characterization, from both the speeches we get, their tone, their ambition, their looseness or tightness, their humanity or not. And from all of this the feeling I got was one of "this is just like modern 21st century army human beings around me". To me this is more than enough.
None of which, of course, applies to the Vasudans either.
They do speak with me, they interact with me, I get to see the belly of their destroyer, I somewhat know how they function and they are mostly like humans in the grand scheme of things.
The problem with this concept is that you don't actually deal with any of the rebels from the movies. You do in fact see the Emperor and Vader, of course. But you see plenty of things that don't match up with the movie portrayals as well, like attacks on civilians, exchanges of hostages, the Empire acting as a peacekeeping force, and the Rebel Alliance taking an anarchistic stand against an attempt to establish the basic implements of law and order; all of these are a part of your first couple of campaigns in TIE Fighter.
It was immediately obvious that what you knew was only partially relevant, if it was relevant at all. So it is here; you're arguing we can apply our general knowledge of humanity to an interstellar society with FTL drive and communications, to which I respond that many good authors have spilled much ink exploring the obvious fact this would result in vast societal differences. And did we mention they've integrated a whole other species?
I think what you said is very interesting but missing the point entirely. I really appreciate it, I didn't remember the plot all that well (been a long time), but consider what you said and contrast it against what I meant here. It's clear from what you presented regarding Tie Fighter that they did play with what we thought we knew from the trilogy, and played us against it. It's very clever. However, my point stands because you didn't address it at all. While I might not know "these kinds of rebels" that well, I somewhat know they will have intrinsic human archetypical incentives to their actions, they will speak, they are individuals, they suffer, they have things to win and things to lose, they die and are aware of that, they are capable of love, they have families, they are troublesome, I could go on and on and on about it.
Not one of those things do I know about the shivans.
I don't need to presuppose. It's a mathematical certainty that if they intend to fight us and they are in a position of great strength (which is self-evident in both games), then not communicating with us is beneficial because it involves no risk.
Yes it can be construed as such, but it still is a non-sequitur that this is the definite explanation why they don't. There could be multiple other explanations. Also, it is possible it's not the most beneficial tactic. Miscommunication and misinformation on a larger level could even be deadlier and way more effective.
That's not FreeSpace 2's thematic concern at all. Consider: the climax of the game comes after the ETAK plots wrap up. You can define it variously; Straight, No Chaser, Their Finest Hour, Clash of the Titans II, or Apocalypse, but it's clearly later. Similarly, the majority of the other missions in the game that are extremely memorable, like A Lion At The Door or The Sixth Wonder, are completely unrelated to ETAK.
You're right.
There is a laundry list of reasons why the Shivans might want to cause a supernova, ranging from the ingame speculation to wanting to make a statement to the GTVA about not poking them like the nebular campaign did. Bosch's abduction/departure is a predictable consequence of his communication. What isn't rationally explainable from what we know is why the Shivans felt the need to kill much of the Iceni's crew in the process of taking the dozen-odd people they did.
I don't see how any speculation on why they should kill everyone but the dozen-odd ones is weirder than the supernova one. Possibly, because they just wanted to keep it simple and have absolute disregard for human lives. Possibly it was the most efficient manner to bring Bosch aboard and not be burdened by hundreds of irrelevant carbon bags of water. Possibly, they are just brutes. Seriously, I can see how these speculations are less intellectual, but I don't see them "harder" at all. Quite the opposite. My big mystery here is why they took Bosch, to what end. It follows consistently, it is speculatable. Not any less than the supernova.
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EDIT: To make super-extra sure that FSPort didn't engage is any historical revisionism, I pulled out the GOG.com installer for FS1+ST and extracted md-12.FSM, and still no nonsensical Seraphims.
I'd look at my CD version of Silent Threat but I'm not sure where it is. I've had to bring this up before in discussion. Try checking by wings in the mission and seeing what they're composed of; unlike the infinitely respawning Lokis you get one wave of Shivans, and if you decide to let the Orff die and don't bother with anything that launches and just rubber-band your trigger, you could easily not see them.
Regardless of their presence, though, the command briefings still make your statement troublesome at best, particularly the statement that GTI has action to Shivan weaponry. (Especially Shivan Super Lasers, the only actual examples of which are currently on the other side of a closed node.)
Yes it can be construed as such, but it still is a non-sequitur that this is the definite explanation why they don't. There could be multiple other explanations. Also, it is possible it's not the most beneficial tactic. Miscommunication and misinformation on a larger level could even be deadlier and way more effective.
But contains elements of risk; if nothing else, after being misdirected several times, people will realize what is not going to be attacked. There is also possibility that nobody will fall for it or that the deception will accidentally expose the reality.
Risk is to be minimized where possible. In both cases the Shivans had the forces available at the start of the war to have crushed the GTV/PVE/GTVA. If given the option to use a sledgehammer, or to construct elaborate plans to achieve the same ends, using the sledgehammer is safer and less subject to random chance or enemy action.
Any cultural or other explanation is ultimately an excuse for the fact that Shivans very obviously did not care to speak to us to understand us, and did not have to talk to us to efficiently kill us, so they never had a reason to try.
I don't see how any speculation on why they should kill everyone but the dozen-odd ones is weirder than the supernova one. Possibly, because they just wanted to keep it simple and have absolute disregard for human lives. Possibly it was the most efficient manner to bring Bosch aboard and not be burdened by hundreds of irrelevant carbon bags of water. Possibly, they are just brutes. Seriously, I can see how these speculations are less intellectual, but I don't see them "harder" at all. Quite the opposite. My big mystery here is why they took Bosch, to what end. It follows consistently, it is speculatable. Not any less than the supernova.
Because it's actually possible to speculate about one and then use inferences from previous events to support that speculation. In other words, they can be given weight and examined for their adherence to the overall FreeSpace story.
It is not possible in the case of the other, because the Shivans are already doing something they have never done before. It is impossible to apply inductive logic to the situation because we have no previous experience on which to build. Anything goes here; if all claims are equally valid, this usually is a sign that none have much validity to begin with.
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EDIT: To make super-extra sure that FSPort didn't engage is any historical revisionism, I pulled out the GOG.com installer for FS1+ST and extracted md-12.FSM, and still no nonsensical Seraphims.
I'd look at my CD version of Silent Threat but I'm not sure where it is. I've had to bring this up before in discussion. Try checking by wings in the mission and seeing what they're composed of; unlike the infinitely respawning Lokis you get one wave of Shivans, and if you decide to let the Orff die and don't bother with anything that launches and just rubber-band your trigger, you could easily not see them.
I went through the mission files themselves; there is no reference to a wing of Seraphims in any mission with the Hades in any version of Silent Threat that I (or anyone else, for that matter) could find or remember. You're the only person who seems to remember these Seraphims.
Even accepting the patently false claim that they exist however, it's laughable to compare the performance of a wing of bombers that GTI has had access to for an unknown amount of time to an already-damaged Dragon that was deployed immediately after its capture, making the rest of your argument as nonsensical as its premise is false.
Regardless of their presence, though, the command briefings still make your statement troublesome at best, particularly the statement that GTI has action to Shivan weaponry. (Especially Shivan Super Lasers, the only actual examples of which are currently on the other side of a closed node.)
Having access to Shivan weaponry is an interesting fact. It offers no proof of communication or cooperation between GTI and the Shivans. You could put it forth as an interesting piece of corroborating evidence to support the plausibility of the theory that there may have been communication between GTI and the Shivans. What you cannot do is assert that such communication and/or cooperation took place, which... is what you did.
I'm not sure what "troublesome statement" of mine you're referring to; the only statement I made was that there are no Seraphims in the final mission of Silent Threat (which literally anybody can verify with a minimum of effort... as several people on IRC did, and you apparently did not). The only "troublesome statement" I'm seeing is still this one:
Silent Threat rather destroys the notion of the Shivans as uncommunicative. They not only communicated but participated in a massive joint project with the GTI which replicated some of their most powerful technologies.
This is a rather bold assertion; one you have failed to back up with any solid evidence.
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http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=84821.0
Simple strong ideas are not necessarily expressible in a single sentence, if you interpret "simple" as basic, fundamental, common, or intuitive. (For example: existence, truth, love, numbers, consciousness, brute facts, and especially nothingness.)
That said, the final sentence of Luis' thesis is pretty good:
The vertigo symbolized by the constant biblical references parallels the player's experience of the Shivan unreal godlike nature, and the Mosaic thematic creates the perfect setting to brutalize the player's expectations of a simple "epic" story into a more authentic and honest moment of awe and frustration at the game's ending.
I read the theory and its interesting, but not sure I buy it. There are parallels to ancient stories certainly but the number of stories it draws upon calls into doubt the idea of direct parallels. If one compares Bosch and NTF to both the Hebrews and the rebelling britons, then while there are certainly parallels there are a great many things which have to be ignored for the comparison to hold. The circumstances of the Hebrew exodus, its conclusion and the 40-year journey in-between have a lot of variation from the Freespace 2 story. The number of differences outweigh the number of similarities and it doesn't hold up under anything but a superficial and selective reading.
Personally I would say simply that:
The references to ancient texts and stories are a literary device to impart additional subtext and sentiment to characters and actions while also imbuing the story with an ancient and timeless quality.
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Akalabeth: great response. I can't argue with that.
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But contains elements of risk; if nothing else, after being misdirected several times, people will realize what is not going to be attacked. There is also possibility that nobody will fall for it or that the deception will accidentally expose the reality.
Risk is zero with efficient misinformation. At best, your opponent's intel is incredibly confused, at worst your opponent learns to ignore you properly.
Any cultural or other explanation is ultimately an excuse for the fact that Shivans very obviously did not care to speak to us to understand us, and did not have to talk to us to efficiently kill us, so they never had a reason to try.
Again, it could be. I never said this is implausible. But the problem is that all this line of evidence is equally consistent with any theory or speculation that characterizes the Shivans as, say, autistic introvert beings who dislike any communication whatsoever (the real reason of the Great War is that the Shivans couldn't stand all the radio chatter! And so much so they banged a ****ing star to just get out of these noisy neighbours! ok ok I'm so sorry), or that they are just bad communicators, or they just talk to entities in quantum-etak-speak and just didn't noticed all the radio chatter until Bosch.
"Negative evidences" are ****ty like that.
Because it's actually possible to speculate about one and then use inferences from previous events to support that speculation. In other words, they can be given weight and examined for their adherence to the overall FreeSpace story.
It is not possible in the case of the other, because the Shivans are already doing something they have never done before. It is impossible to apply inductive logic to the situation because we have no previous experience on which to build. Anything goes here; if all claims are equally valid, this usually is a sign that none have much validity to begin with.
Ok, so tell me where have the shivans blown up a solar system before Apocalypse? And weren't you the one advocating just now how the shivans had communicated with humans before? We also have that phenomenal FS1 hallway cutscene that pretty much teaches us what to expect from shivan body language, so again I don't see here any qualitative meaningful difference, but I can agree to disagree here.
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I read the theory and its interesting, but not sure I buy it.
After writing that wall of text, I learned that before it was called "Descent: Freespace 2", it was to not have "Descent" in it altogether and instead have quite the different subtitle.
And yes, that subtitle was apparently going to be "Exodus".
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Nitpicking here, but I don't think that FreeSpace 2 was ever planned to be called "Descent: FreeSpace 2". Of course, that's unrelated to the planned "Exodus" subtitle.
I think this contradiction is indeed inevitable, but it can be tamed and at the same time you can somewhat "have your cake and eat it", because the raw emotion you are tryiing to convey is vertigo
That's honestly the first time I've heard "vertigo" being referred to as an emotion... do you mean feeling mentally disorientated (in a way that feels similar to actual phyiscal veritgo) or something?
Silent Threat rather destroys the notion of the Shivans as uncommunicative. They not only communicated but participated in a massive joint project with the GTI which replicated some of their most powerful technologies.
This is a rather bold assertion; one you have failed to back up with any solid evidence.
I myself was confused with that statement, too. I don't recall hearing anything in the original Silent Threat that suggested that the Shivans were actively collaborating with the GTI. Granted, it's been a long time since I've played Silent Threat all the way through.
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I read the theory and its interesting, but not sure I buy it.
After writing that wall of text, I learned that before it was called "Descent: Freespace 2", it was to not have "Descent" in it altogether and instead have quite the different subtitle.
And yes, that subtitle was apparently going to be "Exodus".
Yes but what does that impart? Bosch likens himself to both Moses and the rebelling britons, but how does his journey actually compare to the story of the exodus? He doesn't bring his people with him and instead allows them to be slaughtered like so much cattle. He doesn't flee his Egypt, he attacks and burns it and kills its people without the help of his God. He doesn't go up the mountain and bring his people a message. He reaches his promised land (contact with the shivans) whereas Moses never crossed the jordan. Even the event where he is taken is likened to Babel, a story wholly unrelated to moses where people challenged God and were cast out and scattered for it.
Factually speaking,
1-the only exodus of a people in Freespace 2 is the exodus of refugees from the Capella system.
2-The only event that mirrors the events of the Red Sea is not the explosion of the supernova, but the closure of the capella nodes by the GTVA. It was the GTVA that cut off the enemy from pursuing them. Many people died in the attempt but in the end it was they who played gods and decided the fate of their own people.
3-And the only people to reach a promised land was again, the GTVA, because they now have the means to return to Earth. The paradise of their ancestors.
4-AND in addition it's the GTVA that has been wandering the desert for nearly 40 years. Petrarch describes them as nomads. One can liken the Vasudans to the Egyptians but the Vasudans are nomads too.
Fact is, Moses was a peaceful man. Bosch is a monster. He's a killer. He's a man who justifies genocide/xenocide by placing more importance on his own race. A man who "loves" humanity but lets humans get slaughtered by the droves including those who follow him. That's why we as the player pity him, he's not someone who has soared so high he's someone who has stooped so low. He made a deal with the devil and got more than he bargained for. If he's a prophet, he's a false one.
The only real way he can be likened to Moses is in helping the GTVA get to the promised land when he led them to the Knossos. But such an event could have theoretically been accomplished without all the bloodshed and he did this act indirectly, without purpose. He activated the Knossos to find the shivans, not bridge a path to Earth.
So your theory about Bosch being Moses may have SOME weight to it, even though he's not Moses for the reasons he believes, but a lot of the theory in my opinion doesn't fit the facts.
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By the way, why do people associate Aken Bosch with some painter guy?
Aken, is the Ferryman of the dead apparently in egyptian mythology. He's the guy who takes people into the underworld. In a similar way to Charon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aken_the_ferryman
Also Aken was described as being ram headed, and with that in mind has anyone ever looked at the Iceni?
(http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/images/Ntficeni-old.jpg)
It looks, surprise surprise, like a Ram with its head down. The ship even has the ****ing goatee! (even though this beautiful animal below does not)
(http://toddhatten.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/media_preview-php.jpg)
It even has 2 BGreens where the horns eyes would be.
And what about Bosch?
Bosch means Bush. ( http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Bosch )
It is said to "The name may also be Ashkenasic and an illusion to the biblical story of the burning bush, from which God is supposed to spoken to Moses. "
There you go.
Ferry man of the dead who takes people into hell with his ram headed ship.
And burning bush, which leads to the exodus from capella and return to the promised land.
Not some random painter who once painted an apocalyptic painting like thousands of painters before him.
Revelations people. These here are free. Enjoy.
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Also Aken was described as being ram headed, and with that in mind has anyone ever looked at the Iceni?
(http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/images/Ntficeni-old.jpg)
Please excuse me while I clean my mind off the walls.
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And if you really want some more revelations.
Aken is the Ferryman of the dead. Aken Bosch, as that individual with his goat-headed ship takes the dead, that is the NTF, into hell and the underworld.
Shivans are demon. They reside in hell.
Aken Bosch's monologues at the start of the game as well are not one of an oppressed people, they're one of a DEAD people.
"we live in the mausoleum of history."
"We inherit the legacy of ghosts who haunt these ruins."
"to guard the tomb of space, and to find within its cold expanse the salvation of our race
He's dead.
The NTF is dead.
They're all casualties of history, of past prejudices, they have nothing to live for and for many perspectives Bosch's crusade is one of seeking armageddon. He unleashes hell and nearly gets everyone killed.
The NTF civil war is one where the chosen people: the GTVA, is separated from the chaff and the dead, the NTF. Aken Bosch as ferry man leads his people into the underworld, into hell, to consort with demons and ultimately to die. Because as he's said all along he's already dead.
Is he hurtling himself into the void? Or into the abyss? Into the cold expanse of space? Or the cold embrace of death?
But Aken Bosch as Bosch is a symbol for the chosen people, he's a call to act, the burning bush. And act the GTVA does. It faces hell itself and in the end cuts off the enemy and saves itself with a triumphant return to their homes. Ending their near 40 year exile in the desert.
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Aken Bosch's monologues at the start of the game as well are not one of an oppressed people, they're one of a DEAD people.
"we live in the mausoleum of history."
"We inherit the legacy of ghosts who haunt these ruins."
"to guard the tomb of space, and to find within its cold expanse the salvation of our race"
You say "Aken Bosch", and then you quote the nameless narrator from the introductory cutscene...
Metaphors along those lines aren't actually used by Bosch, who instead directly references the Odyssey and Exodus.
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Aken Bosch's monologues at the start of the game as well are not one of an oppressed people, they're one of a DEAD people.
"we live in the mausoleum of history."
"We inherit the legacy of ghosts who haunt these ruins."
"to guard the tomb of space, and to find within its cold expanse the salvation of our race"
You say "Aken Bosch", and then you quote the nameless narrator from the introductory cutscene...
Metaphors along those lines aren't actually used by Bosch, who instead directly references the Odyssey and Exodus.
Hmmn, that's not entirely true.
"? Did the Ancients stumble upon the monoliths and the tombs of their predecessors in this distant corner of space, dismissing the warnings carved on the walls of the sepulchre? And when the Destroyers came at last, what did the Ancients think as they sifted the cremation of dust and bones, staring into the mute remains for a key, some solution to their plight. What if there had been countless races, stretching back into infinity? And like the 9 cities of Troy, each civilization had been built on the rubble of one that came before, each annihilated by the Shivans. "
You're right that it's not the same voice but I believe that it was intended to bosch. That may be entirely fan speculation though.
Bosch also wonders at one point if they are going into the "valley of kings", which is of course the place where all the dead pharoahs are buried.
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We know Bosch refers to Hieronymous because his name of birth was Jheronimus Van Aken. I will deal with your points later but to just give you a quick feedback, I think your idea about the promised Land being earth and so on is indeed interesting, but I also think your portrayal of Moses as this Christ like peaceful figure is extraordinarily out of sync with his actual story. Let us remind ourselves that this man allies with a god that brings 10 plagues to Egypt for no other reason than to prove his might, he hardens the Pharaoh's heart and then condemns his people for it. This is a man that slaughters half of his own Hebrew tribe for daring to appease another god than Yahweh, ISIS style? I know people generally uncritically like this figure, but I also think freespace's interpretation of him is appropriate and legitimate.
E: I gotta say though, your idea regarding Aken the ram headed is both hilarious and very very smart. Could even be true! Made my day!
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There are at least 2 options of interpretation.
1. these words come from a Terran pilot born shortly before or after the great war.
He grew up between the ruins and devastation's the shivans have caused and finding new hope in the GTVA.
or
2. it's a kind of open letter from Bosch to his NTF followers decalring its main target.
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The introductory cutscene is absolutely not shortly after the great war, and it is absolutely not Bosch, as we know from the very first sentence:
"Thirty-two years have passed since the Great War. The Shivans vanished half a lifetime ago, and now we live in the mausoleum of history. We inherit the legacy of ghosts who haunt these ruins. The elders call us the lost generation."
(Emphasis mine.)
"Did the Ancients stumble upon the monoliths and the tombs of their predecessors in this distant corner of space, dismissing the warnings carved on the walls of the sepulchre? And when the Destroyers came at last, what did the Ancients think as they sifted the cremation of dust and bones, staring into the mute remains for a key, some solution to their plight. What if there had been countless races, stretching back into infinity? And like the 9 cities of Troy, each civilization had been built on the rubble of one that came before, each annihilated by the Shivans."
Okay, well, he's referring to the Ancients and their theoretical predecessors, who are literally dead, but fair point anyway.
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The introductory cutscene is absolutely not shortly after the great war, and it is absolutely not Bosch, as we know from the very first sentence:
"Thirty-two years have passed since the Great War. The Shivans vanished half a lifetime ago, and now we live in the mausoleum of history. We inherit the legacy of ghosts who haunt these ruins. The elders call us the lost generation."
(Emphasis mine.)
Explain to me how it is "absolutely not Bosch"? The voice is different yes.
But people here are attributing "salvation of our race" to Bosch. So if not's Bosch, then who is it? "Now we forge a new alliance" who is that? Petrarch? The black guy? Some random guy we never hear from again?
We know Bosch refers to Hieronymous because his name of birth was Jheronimus Van Aken.
That might explain his colourful monologues, but it seems secondary to the other associations.
I will deal with your points later but to just give you a quick feedback, I think your idea about the promised Land being earth and so on is indeed interesting, but I also think your portrayal of Moses as this Christ like peaceful figure is extraordinarily out of sync with his actual story. Let us remind ourselves that this man allies with a god that brings 10 plagues to Egypt for no other reason than to prove his might, he hardens the Pharaoh's heart and then condemns his people for it. This is a man that slaughters half of his own Hebrew tribe for daring to appease another god than Yahweh, ISIS style? I know people generally uncritically like this figure, but I also think freespace's interpretation of him is appropriate and legitimate.
What story exactly? Whose version of events?
The common story, in the bible is a a series of events where Moses says "let my people go" then Pharoah says "no, screw you, I'll give them more work instead" basically.
Or when the plagues come upon the land, Pharaoh says "okay, get rid of the plague and I'll let them go" and when the plague is taken away Pharaoh says "oh wait, I changed my mind. You can't go" and so on and so forth until he's forced to let them go and even after he lets them go, he still changes his mind and chases them with his army. He breaks his promises over and over and punishes the hebrews for it. Is that the original version? I don't know but it's the version that we know.
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Exodus-Chapter-5/
E: I gotta say though, your idea regarding Aken the ram headed is both hilarious and very very smart. Could even be true! Made my day!
Thanks.
Moses at the time of his death was also supposed to meet Azrael, the angel of death. Sammael, one of the cruisers during that mission is also the angel of death.
Azmedaj, the other cruiser not sure. Medhaj might be an indian name and az might be some article of speech.
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The introductory cutscene is absolutely not shortly after the great war, and it is absolutely not Bosch, as we know from the very first sentence:
"Thirty-two years have passed since the Great War. The Shivans vanished half a lifetime ago, and now we live in the mausoleum of history. We inherit the legacy of ghosts who haunt these ruins. The elders call us the lost generation."
(Emphasis mine.)
Explain to me how it is "absolutely not Bosch"? The voice is different yes.
Yes, the voice is different, and the speaker is speaking from thirty-two years after the Great War. Pop quiz: when does FreeSpace 2's main campaign take place?
But people here are attributing "salvation of our race" to Bosch.
The only person I can find reference to attributing that line to Bosch is you.
Some random guy we never hear from again?
Since we never hear that voice again, yes.
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The introductory cutscene is absolutely not shortly after the great war, and it is absolutely not Bosch, as we know from the very first sentence:
"Thirty-two years have passed since the Great War. The Shivans vanished half a lifetime ago, and now we live in the mausoleum of history. We inherit the legacy of ghosts who haunt these ruins. The elders call us the lost generation."
(Emphasis mine.)
Explain to me how it is "absolutely not Bosch"? The voice is different yes.
Yes, the voice is different, and the speaker is speaking from thirty-two years after the Great War. Pop quiz: when does FreeSpace 2's main campaign take place?
32 years or more.
The dialogue is talking about forging a new alliance.
The GTVA was formed 10 years after the great war from what I understand. So the new alliance is the not the GTVA.
But people here are attributing "salvation of our race" to Bosch.
The only person I can find reference to attributing that line to Bosch is you.
Luis attributes the actions of Bosch to fulfilling the text of the speech.
If he's not fulfilling his own words, then whose words are they?
Some random guy we never hear from again?
Since we never hear that voice again, yes.
I recall seeing trivia that it was supposed to be Bosch at one point. But can't find the reference.
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I'm on a tablet, just want to say that I never did such thing. The "GTVA" is speaking in the prologue about how we forged a new alliance since FS1, and how they see "the salvation of our race" being out there in the cold expanse of space. This plays against the endgame where Petrarch states that in fact the future of our race is inwards, back to our home planet. It describes the arc of the alliance from cautious expansionism, hubristic optimism, pushback, despair, disappointment.
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The introductory cutscene is absolutely not shortly after the great war, and it is absolutely not Bosch, as we know from the very first sentence:
"Thirty-two years have passed since the Great War. The Shivans vanished half a lifetime ago, and now we live in the mausoleum of history. We inherit the legacy of ghosts who haunt these ruins. The elders call us the lost generation."
(Emphasis mine.)
Explain to me how it is "absolutely not Bosch"? The voice is different yes.
Yes, the voice is different, and the speaker is speaking from thirty-two years after the Great War. Pop quiz: when does FreeSpace 2's main campaign take place?
32 years or more.
Where is this "or more" coming from?
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I'm on a tablet, just want to say that I never did such thing. The "GTVA" is speaking in the prologue about how we forged a new alliance since FS1, and how they see "the salvation of our race" being out there in the cold expanse of space. This plays against the endgame where Petrarch states that in fact the future of our race is inwards, back to our home planet. It describes the arc of the alliance from cautious expansionism, hubristic optimism, pushback, despair, disappointment.
Petrarch never says anything of the sort. You're drawing allusions where none exist.
The introductory cutscene is absolutely not shortly after the great war, and it is absolutely not Bosch, as we know from the very first sentence:
"Thirty-two years have passed since the Great War. The Shivans vanished half a lifetime ago, and now we live in the mausoleum of history. We inherit the legacy of ghosts who haunt these ruins. The elders call us the lost generation."
(Emphasis mine.)
Explain to me how it is "absolutely not Bosch"? The voice is different yes.
Yes, the voice is different, and the speaker is speaking from thirty-two years after the Great War. Pop quiz: when does FreeSpace 2's main campaign take place?
32 years or more.
Where is this "or more" coming from?
From the assumption that the start of the game doesn't necessarily coincide with the speech of the introduction.
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He says it at the final cut scene. Also, i don't quite get your issue with the years between wars.
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He says it at the final cut scene. Also, i don't quite get your issue with the years between wars.
says what?
Draw a comparison between text from both the introduction and petrarch's speech. You're implying there's a connection in the writing. Demonstrate it.
I don't have an issue with the years between wars. That was simply an answer to a pointless question by the other guy.
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Ok, so I finally managed to get my hands at an actual computer and dear me I have some minute or two to spare! So let's bring on some unresolved questions or challenges.
Explain to me how it is "absolutely not Bosch"? The voice is different yes.
But people here are attributing "salvation of our race" to Bosch. So if not's Bosch, then who is it? "Now we forge a new alliance" who is that? Petrarch? The black guy? Some random guy we never hear from again?
The intro scene was voiced by (IIRC) one of the Baldwin's brothers. That's a very vague memory so don't quote me on that. Now, who is this guy who is narrating? Don't think of it as a "one person character", think of it as an "identity". He says it very distinctively: " The elders call us the lost generation." This is the generation that was born after the Great War speaking. They know of "stories" of amazing cities and "myths everlasting". "They hurled themselves into the void of space with no fear". They, the pre-Great War generation.
Now, they know better. They are frightened by what can possibly be out there. But they are not defeated. Both races lost their homeworlds, and so the only thing they can do is "forge a new alliance to guard the tomb of space, and to find within its cold expanse the salvation of our race".
The Alliance, which is immediately referenced just after this cutscene once you hit play campaign, is the GTVA which is explained thoroughfully.
Now Bosch is a man comes from the "pre-Great War" generation, he looks at this "lost generation" and does two things. He fills them with the new dream called Neo-Terra. This is very very smart writing already. It's a jab at "neo-conservativism", i.e. the idea that to try to bring back the values and dreams of the past, the idea to bring back the myths of old is "neo", is revolutionary by itself. We may debate this particular elsewhere, but the reference is absolutely apt. It's the fascist / nazi move of fishing the dreams of a generation that feels lost and diminished in comparison to their elders, to say "we can come back to that amazing world you hear stories about" and that this is absolutely possible even if we are in a completely different world now. Needless to say, it wasn't possible in the 40s, and thus the war became inevitable.
It was inevitable because there was a barrier to all of this. A Problem with a big P that was halting our progress. The nazis called it the "Jewish Problem" and the NTF called it the Vasudan Problem. Bosch was absolutely cynical about all of this, of course he never bought his own "Big Lie" about what was stopping them from reaching their mythological place, but history taught him well how this process works. Analogies with what happened in the balkans can even work much better here for obvious reasons.
The Moses relevance works from this moment on, to understand Bosch's own motives and also to mythologize the shivans themselves.
That might explain his colourful monologues, but it seems secondary to the other associations.
Yeah, I guess. I enjoyed your take, but I believe the right reference is indeed the painter, who had an unusual and influential knack at the surreal representation of hellish visions, human stupidity and so on and so forth.
I will deal with your points later but to just give you a quick feedback, I think your idea about the promised Land being earth and so on is indeed interesting, but I also think your portrayal of Moses as this Christ like peaceful figure is extraordinarily out of sync with his actual story. Let us remind ourselves that this man allies with a god that brings 10 plagues to Egypt for no other reason than to prove his might, he hardens the Pharaoh's heart and then condemns his people for it. This is a man that slaughters half of his own Hebrew tribe for daring to appease another god than Yahweh, ISIS style? I know people generally uncritically like this figure, but I also think freespace's interpretation of him is appropriate and legitimate.
What story exactly? Whose version of events?
The common story, in the bible is a a series of events where Moses says "let my people go" then Pharoah says "no, screw you, I'll give them more work instead" basically.
Or when the plagues come upon the land, Pharaoh says "okay, get rid of the plague and I'll let them go" and when the plague is taken away Pharaoh says "oh wait, I changed my mind. You can't go" and so on and so forth until he's forced to let them go and even after he lets them go, he still changes his mind and chases them with his army. He breaks his promises over and over and punishes the hebrews for it. Is that the original version? I don't know but it's the version that we know.
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Exodus-Chapter-5/
And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Exodus-7-3/
And the LORD said unto Moses, Pharaoh's heart is hardened, he refuseth to let the people go.
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Exodus-7-14/
And the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments: and Pharaoh's heart was hardened, neither did he hearken unto them; as the LORD had said.
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Exodus-7-22/
But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said to Moses.
http://biblehub.com/exodus/9-12.htm
Yahweh made it so that the Pharaoh wouldn't listen to Moses. I say it again, the same god that hardened the Pharaoh's heart so he wouldn't let the Hebrews leave Egypt is the same god that brought down 10 plagues to punish Egypt's people for this very refusal. Moses was an accomplice of this charade that cost the egyptians much disfortune and, all their firstborns.
I'm sorry if this comes off as anti-christian or whatever, it doesn't come from that place at all. I can go on on how Moses heads a despicable campaign to commit genocide against the Midianites (http://"http://rarebible.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/genocide-slavery-and-rape-of-the-midianites/"), but I don't need to go on forever at this.
Look, the point is, even if we take for granted that Moses was just zis great guy you know, what I am saying is that it is entirely legitimate to look at this from a very different point of view and paint such a character like a genocidal maniac. It's not against character, especially considering the context. And this is what sets this story to a mosaic thematic: the presence of an almighty godlike character that is as terrifying as the "LORD JEHOVAH" with which an "Alliance" can point to a true salvation (contrast with the "false" salvation voiced by the lost generation guy at the first cutscene regarding their alliance with the vasudans).
I'm on a tablet, just want to say that I never did such thing. The "GTVA" is speaking in the prologue about how we forged a new alliance since FS1, and how they see "the salvation of our race" being out there in the cold expanse of space. This plays against the endgame where Petrarch states that in fact the future of our race is inwards, back to our home planet. It describes the arc of the alliance from cautious expansionism, hubristic optimism, pushback, despair, disappointment.
Petrarch never says anything of the sort. You're drawing allusions where none exist.
Petrarch statement is only about how the future of our race is inwards. Literally, to the "Blue Planet" (hence the mod's name). What is doing the describing of the arc is the game, not Petrarch. Here's Petrarch's quote:
From our odyssey into Hell, we have returned with a gift. The Ancient technology to build a portal between Delta Serpentis and Sol. To restore the link to our blue planet. To return home after all these years.
From going to "the cold expanse" to find salvation at the start, we reach the end with "return home". The arc is complete.
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That might explain his colourful monologues, but it seems secondary to the other associations.
Yeah, I guess. I enjoyed your take, but I believe the right reference is indeed the painter, who had an unusual and influential knack at the surreal representation of hellish visions, human stupidity and so on and so forth.
And yet the Iceni is still obviously a goat.
Don't think this painter guy has much merit at all.
Particularly since "Bosch" as I said can be a reference to the burning bush of moses which fits better into your argument.
And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Exodus-7-3/
And the LORD said unto Moses, Pharaoh's heart is hardened, he refuseth to let the people go.
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Exodus-7-14/
And the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments: and Pharaoh's heart was hardened, neither did he hearken unto them; as the LORD had said.
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Exodus-7-22/
But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said to Moses.
http://biblehub.com/exodus/9-12.htm
Yahweh made it so that the Pharaoh wouldn't listen to Moses. I say it again, the same god that hardened the Pharaoh's heart so he wouldn't let the Hebrews leave Egypt is the same god that brought down 10 plagues to punish Egypt's people for this very refusal. Moses was an accomplice of this charade that cost the egyptians much disfortune and, all their firstborns.
That's one interpretatio but not necessarily the correct one.
Some verses say that Pharoah himself hardened his heart, particularly the one I cited.
If God is omniscient then he would know Pharaoh's response in advance, thus it was not an act of God hardening his heart but rather God knowing Pharaoh's nature.
Petrarch statement is only about how the future of our race is inwards. Literally, to the "Blue Planet" (hence the mod's name). What is doing the describing of the arc is the game, not Petrarch. Here's Petrarch's quote:
From our odyssey into Hell, we have returned with a gift. The Ancient technology to build a portal between Delta Serpentis and Sol. To restore the link to our blue planet. To return home after all these years.
From going to "the cold expanse" to find salvation at the start, we reach the end with "return home". The arc is complete.
The two speeches have a few things in common, that one- both reference a "blue planet". And two, both end the speeches describing a union. Whether you view the "new alliance" in the opening dialogue as either the GTVA or the alliance with the Shivans doesn't matter, point is in the first they "forge a new alliance" and in the second speech they "restore a link". Both are an act which bridges two people together.
The wording does not suggest a moving "inwards". They're a "lost generation" and they're returning "home". No longer lost. That does not mean their future is at Earth. Simply that they are no longer lost. Their "destiny" is still in the stars.
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And yet the Iceni is still obviously a goat.
Don't think this painter guy has much merit at all.
Particularly since "Bosch" as I said can be a reference to the burning bush of moses which fits better into your argument.
Yes, I have to admit you're on to something here, very fascinating. The first time you mentioned it I didn't go to too much trouble with it because it seemed a loose connection of just similar sounds, but now that you insist on it, I checked it and lo and behold:
Last name: Bosch
Recorded in many forms including Bish, Bush, Bushe, and Bysshe (English), Busch, Buscher, Bosche, Bosch, Boschmann and Zumbusch (German), Van den Bos, Van den Bosch, Van Bosse, Tenbosch and Bosman (Dutch and Flemish), Bosma, Bosk and Bosker (Friesian), Busck and Busk (Danish and Norwegian), this is a surname which is ultimately of ancient Scandanavian origins. It derives from the pre 7th century Norse-Viking word "buski", which has the literal meaning of bush...
...The name may also be Ashkenasic and an illusion to the biblical story of the burning bush, from which God is supposed to spoken to Moses.
http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Bosch#ixzz39Sl7KmCD
I am somewhat curious though if the connection with the painter didn't cross the writer's mind. Pretty sure it did.
That's one interpretatio but not necessarily the correct one.
Some verses say that Pharoah himself hardened his heart, particularly the one I cited.
If God is omniscient then he would know Pharaoh's response in advance, thus it was not an act of God hardening his heart but rather God knowing Pharaoh's nature.
Well I wasn't quoting interpretations, I quoted several verses stating exactly what I said. Now you may go pretending they don't matter and that's fine by me. What I wanted was precisely your admition that this is a possible interpretation of it, and that's all I need to make my case. Works of art are not the Final Word on questions about Life, the Universe and Everything, they are just interpretations, questions, perspectives of it. And they needen't be "the correct one", that would be missing the point entirely.
I'm perfectly aware of the other interpretations, like for instance the usual "emancipatory" one as evidence by its usage by one of the american's hero, Martin Luther King in his most remembered speech.
The way I regard this particular interpretation of FS2 as a mosaic story is precisely as being told by his opponents, that is, by the egyptians themselves. No matter how great this figure might "correctly" be regarded as, it's unavoidable that most probably all the Egyptians saw both him and his "God" that he brought up as monsters of biblical (hehe) proportions. The sheer brutality, the sheer scale of magic that the local egyptian magicians were hopeless to match (analogue to the war), the impossible parting of the waves (analogue to the supernova, even that last clip looks like a massive wave), all of this must have been such a sight "no pharaoh could ever imagine".
It's the same cut in the Real. It's like you have this massive proud empire and suddenly this God comes out, being summoned by a grieved part of your people, this Terror comes out and shatters not only materially but its own identity. After this blowback, what pride is left in Egypt, can you ask? Well, I say, FS2 is a small attempt at trying to answer that question.
The two speeches have a few things in common, that one- both reference a "blue planet". And two, both end the speeches describing a union. Whether you view the "new alliance" in the opening dialogue as either the GTVA or the alliance with the Shivans doesn't matter, point is in the first they "forge a new alliance" and in the second speech they "restore a link". Both are an act which bridges two people together.
The wording does not suggest a moving "inwards". They're a "lost generation" and they're returning "home". No longer lost. That does not mean their future is at Earth. Simply that they are no longer lost. Their "destiny" is still in the stars.
I have to agree to disagree here. To me the arc is all too obvious. I didn't say it was a negative thing, to come back home. Just that the "moving" direction has gone 180. If at first, the direction was the cold expanse of space, it is now all too apparent that the cosmos is just too cruel and dangerous a place, it's a lovecraftian horror house filled with demons and death, and that all we have now ahead of us is to being able to come back at home.
Yes, I agree, it's like the ultimate defeat of the NTF. No, there's no "neo-terra", we are actually able to actually come back to the real Terra. I also have to insist that this is definitely NOT Bosch. Bosch was around the first Great War (his speeches allude to it) and so he was not part of this "lost generation". Notice this however. The initial cutscene is spoken by a young man speaking about going outward. The last cutscene has an old man speaking about returning home. I don't know, this just screams to me as an arc.
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That's one interpretatio but not necessarily the correct one.
Some verses say that Pharoah himself hardened his heart, particularly the one I cited.
If God is omniscient then he would know Pharaoh's response in advance, thus it was not an act of God hardening his heart but rather God knowing Pharaoh's nature.
Well I wasn't quoting interpretations, I quoted several verses stating exactly what I said. Now you may go pretending they don't matter and that's fine by me. What I wanted was precisely your admition that this is a possible interpretation of it, and that's all I need to make my case. Works of art are not the Final Word on questions about Life, the Universe and Everything, they are just interpretations, questions, perspectives of it. And they needen't be "the correct one", that would be missing the point entirely.
Yes, you quoted several but you didn't quote all did you?
"But when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his heart, and hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had said."
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Exodus-8-15/
The two speeches have a few things in common, that one- both reference a "blue planet". And two, both end the speeches describing a union. Whether you view the "new alliance" in the opening dialogue as either the GTVA or the alliance with the Shivans doesn't matter, point is in the first they "forge a new alliance" and in the second speech they "restore a link". Both are an act which bridges two people together.
The wording does not suggest a moving "inwards". They're a "lost generation" and they're returning "home". No longer lost. That does not mean their future is at Earth. Simply that they are no longer lost. Their "destiny" is still in the stars.
I have to agree to disagree here. To me the arc is all too obvious. I didn't say it was a negative thing, to come back home. Just that the "moving" direction has gone 180. If at first, the direction was the cold expanse of space, it is now all too apparent that the cosmos is just too cruel and dangerous a place, it's a lovecraftian horror house filled with demons and death, and that all we have now ahead of us is to being able to come back at home.
So the shivans are demons and death now, not God?
Your argument with Moses is that he is communing with God, now they're demons?
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Yes, you quoted several but you didn't quote all did you?
You're insisting where you shouldn't. I don't need to quote the entire bible if I have several quotations that absolutely prove my point. It matters little if other quotes testify to *other* issues, like the fact that the pharaoh's own volition was also responsible. Whatever. I just need to point all those quotes that assert without ambiguity whatsoever that yahweh himself toyed with the Pharaoh's own volition to harden his heart to prove that he did so, this is beyond any interpretational lawyerish handwaving here. No Chewbacca defense will ever wash away this point. It's easy to say that the Pharaoh was not entirely beyond guilt himself, but so what? If Yahweh could toy around with his heart, couldn't he had soften is heart instead?
These questions are not easy to answer, nor is it my role here to do them, what I am *really* saying here is that these interpretations are absolutely possible to have, they are entirely legitimate, and it's (one of) the job of works of art to precisely place these mythological stories under new lights and points of view, irrespectively if they are "the correct one" or whatever.
IOW, if your statement is that these interpretations are "heretic" or something, well, you won't see me shed any tears over that factoid.
So the shivans are demons and death now, not God?
Your argument with Moses is that he is communing with God, now they're demons?
Sometimes it's very hard to discuss anything to you, because I feel I have to explain everything in the world like to a 6 year old despite the fact that I know too well that you are a really smart guy and should be capable of understanding what I said, but it's almost like you don't give a damn, or you just take for granted that everything someone's telling you must be absolutely naive or superficial or shallow. Or, alternatively, you never really have thought about any of this anywhere near to the level that you are actually capable of.
sigh. Ok, let's do this.
I have said this over and over, the story is told from the point of view of the GTVA, which according to my theory, it's analogous with the Egyptians' point of view. Now, drop all preconceptions you might have on how Yahweh is this "Loving God" that came as flesh to forgive our sins and what not in the New Testament, try to think as an Egyptian in those times. You see your Pharaoh and you love the guy. You kinda understand where Moses is coming from, he wants to drop out of this "Alliance" with the Egyptians and carve his own path for his own people, but then you see astonishing things, like a competition between the magicians of your beloved Pharaoh and this unknown Yahweh that this Moses brought up, and while it starts fine with sticks and serpents and what not, it suddenly goes absolutely bat**** insane material with plagues, diseases, disasters, rivers covered in blood, all kind of misery thrown out to you, and then out of the blue your first born son is killed.
No matter how "guilty" we could rationalize common egyptians for the decisions their pharaoh made (not them, it wasn't a democracy, but heh), how can we rationalize the brute killing of their firstborns? Were they guilty of what? Now let's focus on what these people might be experiencing with this struggle against this new found god. Is this a "loving god"? No. This looks a lot more like a demon god, their worst nightmare come to life. It's entirely possible and permittable to interpret this experience as a trauma. We do recognize this in the Pharaoh's own posture that despite his haredened heart, he ends up caving to the horrors his people is experiencing. He backtracks. He then goes out and chases the Hebrews. He is then ultimately defeated, all his army is washed away by the magic of this new god. Consider all of this. What kind of "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" would such a people experience if this story was literally true? What kind of horrors would the world be filled with if this god that apparently came out of nowhere, just stole part of the backbone of our economy (the hebrew slaves), and absolutely obliterated our armies, our identity, our pride, our firstborns, commited huge killings and devastated our land?
Do you get it now?
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Yes, you quoted several but you didn't quote all did you?
You're insisting where you shouldn't. I don't need to quote the entire bible if I have several quotations that absolutely prove my point.
Or put another way "Why should I quote the entire bible when I can pick and choose quotations which support while I'm saying while deliberately ignoring or dismissing those that do not". Right?
When you quote a source based to support your argument, you better be in a position to both acknowledge and address contradictory information as well as supporting. It's the cornerstone of building a convincing argument. When you quote some things, and dismiss others, that tells me you're not looking at the work as a whole but rather simply picking and choosing things in a deceptive way akin to spin-doctoring.
"But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said to Moses.
"But when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his heart, and hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had said."
What you fail to understand, is that your black and white interpretation of the first passage is undermined, not disproved, by the existence of the second. You quoted a passage saying that the lord said he would harden pharaoh's heart. And yet, in the second passage, the pharaoh hardened his own heart, just as the lord had said. So what did the lord say exactly? That he would harden his heart? Or that pharaoh would harden his own heart?
He cannot have said both.
So if we have one passage where the Lord says he is going to harden his heart, then we have multiple passages, each of which saying either the lord did it or that pharaoh did it, then which interpretation is correct?
Fact is, I could say "I'm going to piss this guy off" and then say a bunch of bull**** and make a guy mad, that doesn't give me supernatural powers it simply suggests that I know what will set him off, or set anyone off. So God hardening his heart could fit into this same type of idea.
In any case, there are two types of conflicting passages, and one prediction by the lord. The only logical conclusion then is that pharaoh himself harden his heart in all circumstances.
IOW, if your statement is that these interpretations are "heretic" or something, well, you won't see me shed any tears over that factoid
I don't give a **** about religious beliefs. We're discussing source material.
I have said this over and over, the story is told from the point of view of the GTVA, which according to my theory, it's analogous with the Egyptians' point of view. Now, drop all preconceptions you might have on how Yahweh is this "Loving God" that came as flesh to forgive our sins and what not in the New Testament, try to think as an Egyptian in those times. You see your Pharaoh and you love the guy. You kinda understand where Moses is coming from, he wants to drop out of this "Alliance" with the Egyptians and carve his own path for his own people, but then you see astonishing things, like a competition between the magicians of your beloved Pharaoh and this unknown Yahweh that this Moses brought up, and while it starts fine with sticks and serpents and what not, it suddenly goes absolutely bat**** insane material with plagues, diseases, disasters, rivers covered in blood, all kind of misery thrown out to you, and then out of the blue your first born son is killed.
. . .
Do you get it now?
Nope.
Because personally I still believe that the comparison between say the GTVA and the Egyptians is largely assumed rather than proven and further that ample evidence contradicts this hypothesis. You liken the supernova to the red sea incident for example, yet in Capella the group most identifiable with the israelites is the GTVA. But a core part of your hypothesis is that Bosch is moses and the NTF are the israelites.
People relate Khonsu II to the Egyptian pharaoh for example, but Khonsu the Egyptian god of the moon is also identified with a union called Mut-Amun, which is believed to be the origin of the Alpha-Omega paradigm which represents Jesus. Khonsu is also the replacement of another moon God, Iah, or sometimes Yah, who some suggest is the origin of Yahweh. So the "egyptian ruler" that moses is battling against in your version is loosely associated Jesus, essentially an evolutionary step above Yahweh or the shivans.
Khonsu is also known for the myth of Bekeht which has the god going to another land, driving a demon out of a princess and convincing it to go home ( http://www.egyptianmyths.net/mythbekhten.htm ). Though it should be noted that some stories claim Ramsees was the pharaoh of Egypt during the Exodus, and this story mentions Ramsees building a temple to Khonsu.
Another less relevant but curious footnote is that Khonsu is often recognized with Ptolemy IV, and Ptolemy is a king who apparently built what is considered the largest man-powered ships in history ( the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessarakonteres ) which could be likened to the colossus.
THOUGH, also it's interesting to me at least that the mission in which Bosch is taken is called Return to Babel. Babel is apparently equated to Babylon, an empire which was no great friend of the Israelites and also, interestingly Babel itself was said to be constructed by Nimrod. And Nimrod is the king who killed the first-born sons in egypt in an attempt to kill moses. You know, in the mission Return to Babel why does it not instead draw allusions to Mount Sinai? If Bosch is moses and is forging a lasting covenant with Yahweh/the shivans then why does the mission mention Babel?
Is it a allusion to the outcome? Or is it revealing something of the true nature of Bosch.
If Bosch is indeed nimrod, trying to reach the gods/heaven and the shivans struck him down or rejected him, then the killing of the GTVA's first born sons in the war would make more sense in painting the GTVA as the israelities not again the NTF. Hell, the missions even liken the Iceni to chariots do they not? At the time that comparison is no doubt to Boudacia, but maybe it's a comparison to egyptian chariots as well.
You've also said that the GTVA limped home defeated like a child to its mother.
However, the final monologue is delivered by Petrarch, and another famous Petrarch ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrarch ) is often credited for starting the renaissance. The Lost Generation could certainly be equated to a dark age, and returning home a renaissance.
Petrarch is also one of the first humanists apparently, and is rumoured to have climbed a mountain before coming to the realization that what's important is actually inside the individual. This would fit into Freespace 2 if one likened the Shivans not to an enemy, but to nature. In the antagonistic struggle of man vs self, man vs man and man vs nature the shivans would be nature.
As nature they would be a force which destroyed the ancients, which makes sense if one considers the portal is called Knossos and the Knossos was the seat of Minoan power, a civilization destroyed by natural events. One could also equate the Capellan supernova to an act of nature, similar perhaps to the red sea but driven by nature itself not by a jealous god. Or perhaps compare it to mount vesuvius or another natural calamity.
Shivans as nature would also explain their otherworldly, undentifiable background and seemingly relentless and powerful force of will. etcetera
Point is, whether these points have merit is debatable however the intent is more to demonstrate the fact that, many things need to be considered when trying to form a comprehensive theme or picture of how freespace 2's story is written. Perhaps truly the story is a jumble of different and contradictory ideas with references to mythology but no underlying and comprehensive idea that spans all subject matter.
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When you quote a source based to support your argument, you better be in a position to both acknowledge and address contradictory information as well as supporting. It's the cornerstone of building a convincing argument. When you quote some things, and dismiss others, that tells me you're not looking at the work as a whole but rather simply picking and choosing things in a deceptive way akin to spin-doctoring.
Sure, I agree. However I think you are absolutely wrong in this case. This is a lot more like having a case wherein you have someone stating "I manipulated him to do it and then he happened to do it just like I told you he would". Every single quote you made supports this reading, and again, I think you miss this important point, I don't require this reading to be the absolutely true reading of it. I don't believe in any such nonsense anyway.
"But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart and he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said to Moses.
"But when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his heart, and hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had said."
What you fail to understand, is that your black and white interpretation of the first passage is undermined, not disproved, by the existence of the second. You quoted a passage saying that the lord said he would harden pharaoh's heart. And yet, in the second passage, the pharaoh hardened his own heart, just as the lord had said. So what did the lord say exactly? That he would harden his heart? Or that pharaoh would harden his own heart?
"The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart" is unreadable in a version where it was the Pharaoh doing it. Pharaoh's hardening his own heart because god made him so is readable if you deem Yahweh as a god capable of manipulating other people's volition. I think my reading is at least defensible, if not inescapable.
Fact is, I could say "I'm going to piss this guy off" and then say a bunch of bull**** and make a guy mad, that doesn't give me supernatural powers it simply suggests that I know what will set him off, or set anyone off. So God hardening his heart could fit into this same type of idea.
This is correct but nevertheless ultimately irrelevant. It doesn't matter if god's interaction is natural or supernatural for the only thing in court here is the morality of the interaction. He could have softened his heart in order to get things through without all the plagues befalling on Egypt. He decided he wanted it rough. He got it rough, bloody, nightmarish. We can all debate if this is "ultimately" good or bad, but this conclusion is inescapable. The god defense "They made me do it, they are such terrible creatures, I had to make them suffer and die you see" is just pure theological nonsense.
In any case, there are two types of conflicting passages, and one prediction by the lord. The only logical conclusion then is that pharaoh himself harden his heart in all circumstances.
Funny, I reach the exact opposite conclusion!
Nope.
Because personally I still believe that the comparison between say the GTVA and the Egyptians is largely assumed rather than proven and further that ample evidence contradicts this hypothesis. You liken the supernova to the red sea incident for example, yet in Capella the group most identifiable with the israelites is the GTVA. But a core part of your hypothesis is that Bosch is moses and the NTF are the israelites.
People relate Khonsu II to the Egyptian pharaoh for example, but Khonsu the Egyptian god of the moon is also identified with a union called Mut-Amun, which is believed to be the origin of the Alpha-Omega paradigm which represents Jesus. Khonsu is also the replacement of another moon God, Iah, or sometimes Yah, who some suggest is the origin of Yahweh. So the "egyptian ruler" that moses is battling against in your version is loosely associated Jesus, essentially an evolutionary step above Yahweh or the shivans.
Above? If he's the origin, he cannot be an "evolutionary step above", did I miss something here? All this is interesting but it could be equally read as Khonsu representing the previous version of salvation, wherein the mortal Pharaoh is a god himself and through him we can reach salvation. Bosch rejectts this sort of prophecy and goes to "Yahweh"ish Shivans to find true salvation.
Khonsu is also known for the myth of Bekeht which has the god going to another land, driving a demon out of a princess and convincing it to go home ( http://www.egyptianmyths.net/mythbekhten.htm ). Though it should be noted that some stories claim Ramsees was the pharaoh of Egypt during the Exodus, and this story mentions Ramsees building a temple to Khonsu.
Another less relevant but curious footnote is that Khonsu is often recognized with Ptolemy IV, and Ptolemy is a king who apparently built what is considered the largest man-powered ships in history ( the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessarakonteres ) which could be likened to the colossus.
All this is fascinating, but I think you are running towards diminishing returns territory. Still, I love this kind of stuff.
THOUGH, also it's interesting to me at least that the mission in which Bosch is taken is called Return to Babel. Babel is apparently equated to Babylon, an empire which was no great friend of the Israelites and also, interestingly Babel itself was said to be constructed by Nimrod. And Nimrod is the king who killed the first-born sons in egypt in an attempt to kill moses. You know, in the mission Return to Babel why does it not instead draw allusions to Mount Sinai? If Bosch is moses and is forging a lasting covenant with Yahweh/the shivans then why does the mission mention Babel?
Is it a allusion to the outcome? Or is it revealing something of the true nature of Bosch.
Both? I think the ambiguity is on purpose, however I don't think the writers managed to get as inspired to make such an ambiguous reference to both interpretations of Babel. My reading is that it simply refers to the failed outcome of the process. Return to Babel as in return to the previous status quo wherein godly ambitions are shattered through absolute miscommunication and separation between species / races / etc. But I do like your convoluted workaround and you manage to paint Bosch as an anti-israelite going "back" to his homeland after all, etc. I think the simplest explanation wins here, though.
You've also said that the GTVA limped home defeated like a child to its mother.
However, the final monologue is delivered by Petrarch, and another famous Petrarch ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrarch ) is often credited for starting the renaissance. The Lost Generation could certainly be equated to a dark age, and returning home a renaissance.
Petrarch is also one of the first humanists apparently, and is rumoured to have climbed a mountain before coming to the realization that what's important is actually inside the individual.
Yes, this is not the first time I read this. I think it's truly important, and directs the story to a "coming of age" sort of story in which a young man thinks the answers to his problems are "out there", and at the end he finds they are "within himself". It's absolutely spot on and it should be incorporated in any reading of the game. It also confirms what I previously said about this being an arc ever since the first cutscene, but gives it depth and further meaning.
This would fit into Freespace 2 if one likened the Shivans not to an enemy, but to nature. In the antagonistic struggle of man vs self, man vs man and man vs nature the shivans would be nature.
As nature they would be a force which destroyed the ancients, which makes sense if one considers the portal is called Knossos and the Knossos was the seat of Minoan power, a civilization destroyed by natural events. One could also equate the Capellan supernova to an act of nature, similar perhaps to the red sea but driven by nature itself not by a jealous god. Or perhaps compare it to mount vesuvius or another natural calamity.
Shivans as nature would also explain their otherworldly, undentifiable background and seemingly relentless and powerful force of will. etcetera
Oh, absolutely, we are here at the exact same page. Perfectly. I read all these things in the most atheistic manner possible here, using religious imagery and symbolism to portray the natural cruelty of the universe. I think this was read by everyone intuitively and it's how modders tend to portray the shivans as somewhat part of the universe itself, as a "force" of the universe, etc. The "Yahweh" symbolism here is one wherein the Universe gets reified into one single giant referent that operates not the universe itself, but within it and within history itself, a theological difference that many christians believe demarcates their own god from every other one.
Point is, whether these points have merit is debatable however the intent is more to demonstrate the fact that, many things need to be considered when trying to form a comprehensive theme or picture of how freespace 2's story is written. Perhaps truly the story is a jumble of different and contradictory ideas with references to mythology but no underlying and comprehensive idea that spans all subject matter.
I do think it tells a very potent story, all the imagery and thematics are deeply weaved between themselves and there's clearly a sharp, witty, intelligent voice that is behind it. Random references would be astonishingly boring and not able to resonate in anything whatsoever. If anything all these discussions prove there's something here that goes well beyond throwing names and references to a canvas like a modern artist.
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Because personally I still believe that the comparison between say the GTVA and the Egyptians is largely assumed rather than proven and further that ample evidence contradicts this hypothesis. You liken the supernova to the red sea incident for example, yet in Capella the group most identifiable with the israelites is the GTVA. But a core part of your hypothesis is that Bosch is moses and the NTF are the israelites.
People relate Khonsu II to the Egyptian pharaoh for example, but Khonsu the Egyptian god of the moon is also identified with a union called Mut-Amun, which is believed to be the origin of the Alpha-Omega paradigm which represents Jesus. Khonsu is also the replacement of another moon God, Iah, or sometimes Yah, who some suggest is the origin of Yahweh. So the "egyptian ruler" that moses is battling against in your version is loosely associated Jesus, essentially an evolutionary step above Yahweh or the shivans.
Above? If he's the origin, he cannot be an "evolutionary step above", did I miss something here? All this is interesting but it could be equally read as Khonsu representing the previous version of salvation, wherein the mortal Pharaoh is a god himself and through him we can reach salvation. Bosch rejectts this sort of prophecy and goes to "Yahweh"ish Shivans to find true salvation.
Iah is an egyptian moon god, sometimes "yah" and some people have suggested that Yahweh is derived from this god.
Khonsu supplanted Iah, became more popular after him, and is associated with "alpha and the omega", a term which is applied to Jesus who is himself an evolution of Yahweh.
The point I'm trying to make is that you need to examine all angles for a theory.
Your theory, as far as I can figure it, is that "GTVA/Vasudans = Egyptians", but if you're going to analysis Bosch's role in this and try to support it by looking at historical references to the name, then you should also be examining the Egyptian themed faction and discovering the origin of THEIR names. Why Khonsu? You cite the relevance of Aquitaine as the origin of the second Crusade, what about Psamtik? What is he famous for? What about Khafre?
What are the thematic similarities and differences between Capella and the Red Sea?
THOUGH, also it's interesting to me at least that the mission in which Bosch is taken is called Return to Babel. Babel is apparently equated to Babylon, an empire which was no great friend of the Israelites and also, interestingly Babel itself was said to be constructed by Nimrod. And Nimrod is the king who killed the first-born sons in egypt in an attempt to kill moses. You know, in the mission Return to Babel why does it not instead draw allusions to Mount Sinai? If Bosch is moses and is forging a lasting covenant with Yahweh/the shivans then why does the mission mention Babel?
Is it a allusion to the outcome? Or is it revealing something of the true nature of Bosch.
Both? I think the ambiguity is on purpose, however I don't think the writers managed to get as inspired to make such an ambiguous reference to both interpretations of Babel. My reading is that it simply refers to the failed outcome of the process. Return to Babel as in return to the previous status quo wherein godly ambitions are shattered through absolute miscommunication and separation between species / races / etc. But I do like your convoluted workaround and you manage to paint Bosch as an anti-israelite going "back" to his homeland after all, etc. I think the simplest explanation wins here, though.
Your explanation is equally convoluted, because it requires the Shivans to be both Gods and mortals. Also Babel left the people scattered, it didn't end with God and the people coming together.
The simplest explanation is actually that the title refers to a failure to communicate and nothing else.
This would fit into Freespace 2 if one likened the Shivans not to an enemy, but to nature. In the antagonistic struggle of man vs self, man vs man and man vs nature the shivans would be nature.
As nature they would be a force which destroyed the ancients, which makes sense if one considers the portal is called Knossos and the Knossos was the seat of Minoan power, a civilization destroyed by natural events. One could also equate the Capellan supernova to an act of nature, similar perhaps to the red sea but driven by nature itself not by a jealous god. Or perhaps compare it to mount vesuvius or another natural calamity.
Shivans as nature would also explain their otherworldly, undentifiable background and seemingly relentless and powerful force of will. etcetera
Oh, absolutely, we are here at the exact same page. Perfectly. I read all these things in the most atheistic manner possible here, using religious imagery and symbolism to portray the natural cruelty of the universe. I think this was read by everyone intuitively and it's how modders tend to portray the shivans as somewhat part of the universe itself, as a "force" of the universe, etc. The "Yahweh" symbolism here is one wherein the Universe gets reified into one single giant referent that operates not the universe itself, but within it and within history itself, a theological difference that many christians believe demarcates their own god from every other one.
The thing is there's no "Yahweh symbolism" at all from what I can tell.
Your idea of Shivans as yahweh is based not on what the Shivans have done or not done but what you believe Bosch to be. At best you try to draw comparisons between the Red Sea and Capella even though the circumstances and participants of the two situations are completely incongruous. Bosch trying to ally himself with the Shivans doesn't make them Yahweh, it just makes Bosch a fool. Moses didn't initiative the covenant. He didn't start the plagues. He was approached by Yahweh and did his bidding.
Bosch's actions are more akin to that of a pilgrim than a leader of an exodus.
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Truth can also be as the Vorlons say, a three-edged sword. Their side, your side, and the truth.
Bosch, the Shivans and the GTVA can be multiple things to different people depending upon the point of view.
Bosch likens the GTVA to the romans and himself to Boadecia.
The story draws comparisons between Bosch and possibly moses. Which would make the GTVA not the romans but the egyptians, but
It also draws comparisons between the GTVA and the Israelites.
It can be much more complicated than a simple reading, and the roles of individuals & factions can shift over time.
Bosch may be associated with moses during most of the campaign but in the end he might be better associated with Aken or Nimrod. There's a strong case that the Iceni is a reference to Aken. He can believe himself to be a certain thing, the story can show him mainly as something, and then at the end it can reveal him for what he truly is.
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I can perfectly acommodate your commentary, I think it's really appropriate and fitting to what we see. My point was never to guarantee a one to one reading of a biblical chapter, but when we go to the trouble of seeing it with those eyes, the whole story opens itself up as a literary criticism exercise in itself, against which we can bombard with skepticism and counter-evidence. And of course, because the game doesn't obey the analogy one to one, but instead went to the trouble of criticizing its own analogy by introducing more and more intersective references, the result is a much richer and textured story, an original mythos, on par with (or in a way, even perhaps greater than) things like Space Odyssey and so on.
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Anyone think of the possibility of the shivans in FS1 may have been at war with another species after the Ancients and before the GTA & PVE and just happen to lose the majority of their fleet despite coming out victorious?
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My guess is that it's not as likely since the shivans seem to blithely attack Terran space. "It doesn't matter what other systems have these beings, we get to blow up this star!"
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It's a matter of perspective in the sense that Bosch views himself as Moses
And rightly so. However, the promised land to which Bosch leads his people is neither the nebula beyond Gamma Draconis nor an alliance with the Shivans; it is Earth, itself.
In the end, whether he intended to or not, Bosch leads mankind back to its ancient homeland of Earth. By activating the Knossos portal, Bosch sets events in motion which provide the Terran people with the means to return to Sol.