[MatthTheGeek]

Code: [Select]

$Name: PVI Cheops ;! Object #64
$Class: Vasudan Asteroid Base
$Team: Friendly
$Location: 0.000000, 0.000000, -10000.000000

[Arpit]

Spoiler:

I don't know if you people would believe but this was the only reason why I wouldn't believe that destruction of convoy was done by GTI.

[Goober5000]

Whoops, so there is.  Sorry, for some reason I was looking at a WIP version of the mission rather than the one that was actually released.

Spoiler:

Since the debriefing didn't mention the asteroid base, you can safely assume it wasn't affected by the convoy attack.  Perhaps it was too far away to see the attack clearly, or perhaps asteroid interference prevented any scans or communications.

[Arpit]

Thanks, for the clearup, Installer Dude. 

[InsaneBaron]

I didn't notice the Cheops myself. I did, however, panic when I saw that

Spoiler:

the convoy had 90 minutes till next waypoint. I figured that either the convoy was gonna get trashed, or something unexpected was gonna happen. Turns out both guesses were right.

Was the cheops hidden from Radar like the

Spoiler:

Legion in Last Stand?

Also, for detail!

[Arpit]

I didn't notice the Cheops myself. I did, however, panic when I saw that

Spoiler:

the convoy had 90 minutes till next waypoint. I figured that either the convoy was gonna get trashed, or something unexpected was gonna happen. Turns out both guesses were right.

Was the cheops hidden from Radar like the

Spoiler:

Legion in Last Stand?

Also, for detail!

Nope. You could target it.

[InsaneBaron]

Operation Templar part should be ready Saturday!

[Lorric]

Well, I finally got to reading this. Top class review. Extremely thorough. I particularly liked commenting on the missions one by one, that's something useful for me for these campaigns because the names aren't memorable to me in any of the Freespace games, as in I can't associate the missions to the names. It was amusing that you said you were just going to look at a couple of the missions at the start! 

I'd love to see more of these reviews, and the best part is you're going to make more! 

It taught me a lot about the original ST, which I haven't played, to make me really appreciate what went into ST:R. The order I played this in I believe was FS2, FS1 (port) and then ST:R, before any user-made mods. ST sounds like a real train wreck, maybe I should try and find a let's play of it just to compare. I'd heard it was bad, but I never imagined it would be this bad.

The voice acting for instance, I always assumed that all or most of that was just ripped from  and ST. I guess this is a high compliment to whoever was behind that, fantastic job to all you VAs. Remember what I said about the order I played? FS2, FS, ST:R. I'd been thoroughly exposed to  's voice work, and thought it was more of the same. Never imagined anything different. Special attention to the line about "get me an open channel!" and the work in He Who Rides the Tiger, which is a mission I also found genuinely frightening the first time.

It was also interesting how knowledge of ST could make certain events in ST:R more surprising, since you had expectations and you got surprised.

A minor gripe, I don't think you should have mentioned the lack of beams as a con, especially when the campaign specifically doesn't call for them. For me, beams have no impact on whether I like a campaign.

89%, a nice, high score for a high quality creation. I can't comment properly on what score I would give it, since I haven't played the original ST, which I believe is important, but I thoroughly enjoyed the campaign when I played it. When I was reading through the review it was bringing back memories and tempting me to go back in for another go.

So, again, great work on the review and looking forward to more! 

[InsaneBaron]

Well, I finally got to reading this. Top class review. Extremely thorough. I particularly liked commenting on the missions one by one, that's something useful for me for these campaigns because the names aren't memorable to me in any of the Freespace games, as in I can't associate the missions to the names. It was amusing that you said you were just going to look at a couple of the missions at the start! 

I'd love to see more of these reviews, and the best part is you're going to make more! 

It taught me a lot about the original ST, which I haven't played, to make me really appreciate what went into ST:R. The order I played this in I believe was FS2, FS1 (port) and then ST:R, before any user-made mods. ST sounds like a real train wreck, maybe I should try and find a let's play of it just to compare. I'd heard it was bad, but I never imagined it would be this bad.

The voice acting for instance, I always assumed that all or most of that was just ripped from  and ST. I guess this is a high compliment to whoever was behind that, fantastic job to all you VAs. Remember what I said about the order I played? FS2, FS, ST:R. I'd been thoroughly exposed to  's voice work, and thought it was more of the same. Never imagined anything different. Special attention to the line about "get me an open channel!" and the work in He Who Rides the Tiger, which is a mission I also found genuinely frightening the first time.

It was also interesting how knowledge of ST could make certain events in ST:R more surprising, since you had expectations and you got surprised.

A minor gripe, I don't think you should have mentioned the lack of beams as a con, especially when the campaign specifically doesn't call for them. For me, beams have no impact on whether I like a campaign.

89%, a nice, high score for a high quality creation. I can't comment properly on what score I would give it, since I haven't played the original ST, which I believe is important, but I thoroughly enjoyed the campaign when I played it. When I was reading through the review it was bringing back memories and tempting me to go back in for another go.

So, again, great work on the review and looking forward to more! 

Glad you liked it! If you check my Sig, I did a similar review of Blue Planet: Age of Aquarius. I'm TRYING to finish my Operation Templar review, which I said I would have done two days ago (I got distracted playing War in Heaven )

And yes, the voice acting is 100% new. I was quite impressed.

[Lorric]

They didn't take anything from  ? Was ST voiced?

I might check your other review sometime.

Wings of Dawn is my favourite mod, I'd be very interested if you review that 

[InsaneBaron]

They didn't take anything from  ? Was ST voiced?

I might check your other review sometime.

Wings of Dawn is my favourite mod, I'd be very interested if you review that 

Silent Threat was voiced, but as far as I know none of its voices made it to ST:R.
I just put up my Operation Templar review.
I'm not sure if I'll play WoD. A lot of people say it's good, but... some of the jokes that get made about it warn me away. Anyway, I'm in the middle of War in Heaven right now, so I won't be playing much else till I finish it.

[Lorric]

They didn't take anything from  ? Was ST voiced?

I might check your other review sometime.

Wings of Dawn is my favourite mod, I'd be very interested if you review that 

Silent Threat was voiced, but as far as I know none of its voices made it to ST:R.
I just put up my Operation Templar review.
I'm not sure if I'll play WoD. A lot of people say it's good, but... some of the jokes that get made about it warn me away. Anyway, I'm in the middle of War in Heaven right now, so I won't be playing much else till I finish it.

I had a glance at it, another one I'll read properly at some point. You know, I might not have that on my computer, I think I have the single player one that had no work done on it, not a rebalanced one. Something to check into sometime.

WoD, tell me what your issues are with it, and I'll tell you if it's true or not.

[Goober5000]

Yes, ST is voiced, and no, ST:R didn't use any of ST's voice files.  (Neither did we use the FS1 wingman voices.  We created our own wingman and Terran Command persona voice files.)

We had actually considered using the Incoming!!! voice file from ST in ST:R, as our single imported voice file, but the current mod doesn't use it for some reason.  Perhaps I forgot to switch it over, or perhaps I didn't want to retain the different voice... I don't remember.

[Lorric]

Even the Wingmen? Wow.

Seriously, I think some people here, unless they already do, could make some money as VAs. Sure, I don't know anything about that kind of thing, but comparing their voice work to the quality in general in gaming, I honestly believe that.

Maybe you wanted it to be 100% original.

[Grizzly]

Spoiler:

Wait. What? 

The debriefing said that the shivans launched a savage attack. However, YOU ARE RIGHT MATTH, it could have been the GTI. They wanted to defeat the Vasudans. But still I would like to ask what happened to the vasudan asteroid base there. Was that destroyed too ? And, oh, thanks for answering the question.

 

Spoiler:

Some GTI Lokis did actually carry Shivan technology in the last mission (hence command going "Holy ****" when you scan the Hades' fighterbay), it could be that they used those Lokis earlier, so that the weapon signatures were Shivan, thus causing all the confusion.
Also, Loki's are stealth (probably by using enhanced shivan tech as well, just like the shivans were undetectable at their own first encounter). For the station, by picking up unidentifiable radar blips and shivan weapon signatures, it would be none the wiser.

.

[Rhys]

The voice acting is pretty great in this; well above average for most user-made campaigns, with a couple notable exceptions.

The voice acting for the squadron leader on the Krios seemed pretty forced, it seems like the actor was aiming for that super serious senior officer voice, but didn't quite pull it off that well. There were several times where he seemed to really rush his lines and it was rather jarring, but tolerable.

My biggest VA gripe is with the Soyakaze's squadron leader. He didn't sound believable at all. He just sounded like some young guy randomly picked to read some lines with varying degrees of inflection. He also seemed to stumble over his words. A lot. It sounded like it was his first time reading those lines. It was pretty bad, if not the worst voice acting I've heard in an FS campaign. Sorry.

ST:R is still one of my absolute favorite campaigns alongside Derelict, BP, and Vassago's Dirge. The mission design is leagues ahead of even the original FS1 campaign.

[Goober5000]

The voice acting is pretty great in this; well above average for most user-made campaigns, with a couple notable exceptions.

The voice acting for the squadron leader on the Krios seemed pretty forced, it seems like the actor was aiming for that super serious senior officer voice, but didn't quite pull it off that well. There were several times where he seemed to really rush his lines and it was rather jarring, but tolerable.

My biggest VA gripe is with the Soyakaze's squadron leader. He didn't sound believable at all. He just sounded like some young guy randomly picked to read some lines with varying degrees of inflection. He also seemed to stumble over his words. A lot. It sounded like it was his first time reading those lines. It was pretty bad, if not the worst voice acting I've heard in an FS campaign. Sorry.

Thanks for the feedback.  The two squadron leaders came from the amateur voice acting community, so that's why they may not be as polished as some of the other voices.  (Admirals Scott and Glaive, for example, were among the voices done by professional voice actors who worked pro bono for our campaign.)

Two things about the Soyakaze squadron leader.  In the first place, that guy was from the UK -- he was faking an American accent.  In the second place, he recorded about half of his lines, then dropped off the face of the Earth for several weeks.  We were frantically trying to get him to finish his lines before he submitted them at nearly the last minute.  That could be why they sounded rushed, or done on the first take.

ST:R is still one of my absolute favorite campaigns alongside Derelict, BP, and Vassago's Dirge. The mission design is leagues ahead of even the original FS1 campaign.

Sincere thanks (especially as today is Thanksgiving Day in the USA ).  Comments like these make all the hard work worth it.