Okay, I usually don't do this, but this campaign warrants an extreeeeemely lengthy review, which I hope won't be breezed over completely.
First the good; the writing. Usually, (and by usually I mean 90% of the time) sequels fail to meet their predecessors expectations. WiH on the other hand not only matched but exceeded AoA in every way (And yes, believe it or not I did have my gripes with AoA). I kind of wish you had time to expand more on Noemi's childhood, and her supposed mental instability, and I definitely would like to have seen returning AoA characters - in particular the Sanctuary survivors. When I saw no returning characters, or any real mention of their exploits outside of
the nebula mission
, I was very put off and expected there to be too much new content to properly flesh out, and that it would not feel like a true sequel.
In this I was right and wrong. War in Heaven did not actually feel like a proper BP sequel, but the writing was so insurmountably better that it blew my mind. The overall plot and mission design was rock solid, and more realistic than anything I've played since The Procyon Insurgency, and the characters were what did it for me. Noemi was alright, though as stated earlier I would've liked to have seen her expanded on more, but Wargods and the writing for Simms in particular was astounding, and would very much like to know who did the majority of the writing for her, as she was bone chillingly reminiscent of a very, very close friend of mine. I'll be very upset if she's killed off
, but given the last 'mission' it's unlikely that she survives.
The Indus and Two Fleet felt like home, I can't think of a better way to word it. This especially sunk in during the push through the Hood/Serkr blockade at the martian gate, and the aftermath of that mission (Which was also easily my favorite in the campaign).
You wanted to protect your comrades, you wanted to come home alive, and most importantly you just wanted it all to come to an end. I'm also can't say I didn't shed a tear or two when the Yangtze and company made their final stand, or when the Indus drifted into the sun.
All these factors came together to form
the greatest emotional experience in a freespace campaign seen to date - my only fear is that the freespace engine provides far too much limitation to present such a rich and well fleshed out universe.
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Annnnd then there's the bad...
My biggest gripe here is the UEF ships, as well as the starboxes. They taxed the piss out of my poor old vista burdened rig I'm running at the moment due to inefficient texturing and LoDs (Or lackthereof? I didn't get a good enough look through the 5 or so FPS I got whilst staring at even a single Karuna). Any mission with even *one* of those things absolutely killed me, as did the Uriel and Lao Tze. I actually had to cheat on the Hood/Serkr blockade mission and the last mission because I couldn't kill anything in time to save anything. The Lunar city mission also made my comp writhe in agony as well.
Please fix it. It's bad enough having to play an ugly game, but an ugly and inefficient one just makes me want to rip out things spines. I don't like having to rip out the spines of brilliant writers.
And last but certainly not least, I could give VA a spin in the future when you're ready to begin that aspect of the campaign. I'd probably be best for Captain Sorensen, or something like that methinks.