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RELEASE: The Battle of Neptune

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Azrael15:

--- Quote from: Dilmah G on April 20, 2023, 04:59:58 pm ---Thanks dude, those are lovely words for any content creator to wake up to.

--- End quote ---

Only just got around to playing this -- it's incredible, five out of five. Stellar voice acting and top-notch writing. The bonus mission captured the harrowing effect of the Capella Exodus in a way that I honestly hadn't ever expected to make a FS2 vet like me feel. Eagerly awaiting that short story anthology! Was the music credited anywhere? I really liked the (what I think were) Battlestar Galactica OST remixes (hesdead and leavenomanbehind.)

Edit: Leaving up this monument to just-woken-up brain. They're Black Hawk Down. I only watched that movie a few weeks ago!

Dilmah G:
Hey mate, glad you enjoyed it! The soundtrack is indeed from Blackhawk Down - man that movie has aged well! I’m pivoting back to that short story anthology now so I’d like to drop an update in the next 3 months.

Azrael15:

--- Quote from: Dilmah G on April 30, 2023, 07:53:25 pm ---Hey mate, glad you enjoyed it! The soundtrack is indeed from Blackhawk Down - man that movie has aged well! I’m pivoting back to that short story anthology now so I’d like to drop an update in the next 3 months.

--- End quote ---

Awesome. If it's anything like this, I'm sure I'll enjoy reading it. I figured I'd expand my comments. Blue Planet gave me a hunger for jargon in my sci-fi, and I really appreciated how well Battle of Neptune handled it while still being comprehensible and dramatic. The mission was tough, but I'm rusty, and the poor Harpy got holed more than a few times. That said, I think the first mission really balanced that feeling of eking out a tough victory, only for the UEF to roll in and force the GTVA to withdraw without feeling unearned on either side.

I was really surprised by the second mission, as I had no idea there was more than one. That said, I think I liked it more than the titular battle. I'd never expected to see a mission that captured the desperation and panic of the Capellan Exodus and that, combined with some of the dialogue in the first mission, really helped see the GTVA perspective on the war in Sol. Sure, Laporte speculates that the trauma of the Shivan assault basically twisted the Terrans into what they were by the time of WiH, but -- as someone who is more Buntu than Tev -- it always felt a little like, well, Buntu moralizing. It was a really effective mission, and I think I'd put it somewhere in my Freespace 2 top ten, and made me wonder about a FS2 reimagined campaign with that kind of tone and storytelling.

The writing, as mentioned, was great. The voice acting was fairly astounding. A lot of those lines had a lot of emotional weight that would've been easy to turn into too-earnest parody, but I think the various talent nailed them with the right delivery. I really liked a lot of the small touches, like the UEF pilot who goes 'WHAT THE **** ARE THOSE BEAMS' and stuff like that. Really just reiterating what I said, but I thought this was a real achievement. I work with veterans and so I really appreciated the grit and realism. Good stuff.

Dilmah G:
Thank you very much for your kind words. The fact the second mission seems to have become more of a favourite than the first has really spurred me into writing/FREDing missions with a bit of a darker tone that aren't BoEs. I think the voice acting definitely brought it to life and I hope our community VAs skim by here from time to time and get to read what an impact it made. I was still in the regular Army when I wrote Command Responsibility and based a lot of the dialogue off several events that unfolded in front of me. While I was one of the lucky ones and never had my life threatened in a warzone, I did see a lot of people get pushed past their breaking points, and my experience was that it's not what people said that stuck with me - and lots of it was easy to turn into a too-earnest-parody - but it was how they said it. The fact that the VAs were able to capture the essence of what that was like is a real credit to them.

Thank you again, and I hope I have something new to share with the community in the next few months.

jg18:
As one of the VAs (I voiced Delta 1 in the second mission), just wanted to say thanks for everyone's kind words on the mission and the mod. As Dilmah G can attest, everyone who worked on this put a lot into it.

I, too, am looking forward to seeing what Dilmah comes up with next. Although I no longer see well enough to play FreeSpace/FSO mods (long story), I'll totally watch an entire playthrough video of anything he makes :nod: in addition to doing more VA work, of course. ;)

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