Quoted from another thread, felt the subject matter deserved it's own thread:
it's just that your standards were stratospherically high and therefore intensely frustrating.
Actually, in regards to Blue Planet, I think I was just generally angry at the time and Blue Planet (War in Heaven especially) just happened to present itself as a target for some reason. Now that some time has passed, I've looked back and realized that BP is good. Like, absurdly good. Probably one of the most polished and fleshed-out games of the last decade, at least, let alone a mod. I'd even go so far as to compare it's well thought out setting and politics to something like Planescape: Torment or the Elder Scrolls (Morrowind, mostly, before that franchise went straight to hell). Certainly better than any of the bloated messes that companies like Ubisoft and EA put out these days. I still stand by my criticism of the way the Vishnans just sort of show up out of nowhere in AoA (though I retract my statements about the very idea of them being retarded, since WiH and its many tech entries, not to mention the poetry containers in 'Ken', go out of their way to say that this ISN'T a bunch of spiritualist tripe). And I still feel that the character development and some of the dialog in both games could use some work, though going by the YouTube commentaries (which I would like to see continued by the way) and that massive interview, the mods writers feel much the same way and will never be fully satisfied themselves.
But the attention to detail you guys have put into these mods, especially WiH, is simply insane. Everything from painstakingly explaining and justifying what initially appears to be a completely insane and contrived war scenario (and boy did I fall into that logic trap...) to more minor things, like all the new tactics the GTVA has developed, primarily to fight the Shivans: gun heavy bomber strikes, trebuchet sniping and sub-space missiles, you even mention that the corvette hunter-killer teams like Serkr were originally meant for Juggernaut killing. What you've done is taken what was a rather, while fun, humdrum and average sci-fi setting (I think FS is so enduring because of the gameplay itself, and the fact that it's open source has made it the pinnacle of the entire space-sim genre, more than it's story telling or setting) and turned it into something far, far greater.
You're right, I do have high standards, but I've developed that level of expectation because there are so many things out there that can actually meet it, and I'm happy to say that BP is most definitely one of them. I still don't much care for the UEF as a faction, but I like many of its individual members, and that's probably one of the points. My loyalties still ultimately lie with the GTVA (which makes gunning down waves of them more than a little disturbing), I like them, I understand why they're waging this war, and even agree with their extreme measures, like bombing civilian targets and engineering assassinations. War isn't pretty or nice, and a large portion of the UEF just can't grasp that because they've lived a cushy, sheltered life for the past several decades. The GTVA is doing what they're doing because they feel they have to, and to be honest, they're probably correct. Ubuntu would be extremely dangerous were it to catch on outside of Sol. The two Shivan incursions weren't like any other war in human (and probably Vasudan) history, they weren't about defending an abstract object like a nation or an ideal, or even preserving a specific ethnic group. They were about quite literally defending against total extinction. With something like that on the scale, a wish-washy 'wouldn't it be nice if everyone was nice?' philosophy (yes, I know I'm over-simplifying it) is probably about the worst thing that could gain popularity.
Of course the story is building up to the entire situation with the Shivans being different from what most people in the GTVA think it is, but they don't know that, as far as they're concerned a third incursion could happen at any moment. I wouldn't say the UEF is really incorrect either, they simply don't have any experience with the Shivans and don't truly comprehend what kind of a threat they are. Oh, sure, they can read all kinds of historical data taken from the ships that defected, but those are just words and numbers, the people of Sol are disconnected from the events in the galaxy during the last 50 years, the incursions, the NTF rebellion, the complete loss of an entire prosperous star system. Granted some things like the glassing of Vasuda Prime happened while Sol was still open, but the entire Great-War happens over a very short span of time and the significance of that event probably didn't have enough time to truly sink in for the people in Sol, and they certainly didn't have to deal with the aftermath of that event once the fighting stopped. And they have nothing in their experience to compare with barely defeating one alien super-ship, only to discover the enemy has 80 more of them. The UEF is stubbornly defending their way of life because it's theres, and they like it, it's all they've ever known. But in the grand scheme of things, given what is at stake, they're in the wrong, or at least as 'wrong' as this morally vague story and setting will allow.
As a final note, I also think I've figured out the story element/plot twist that was mentioned in the interview as being the one thing nobody had covered in the copious amounts of discussion BP has had on these forums. The clue about it being something that shows up in almost every mission of WiH is what gave it away for me, though it took me a while and I only realized it by connecting it with the one tech room entry that doesn't (apparently) pertain to anything actually covered in one way or other in the two games that have been released so far.
And if I'm correct it is a very cruel plot-twist indeed. You evil bastards.
