Now all you modders can start early picking through the mod for things tostealborrow! Then on October 26, you'll have no distractions from playing the campaign, right? :p
Now someone please make a video playthrough of this.😄
Spoiler:And confession; I was chuckling darkly when I read the CB for 'Bringing Down the Gavel', then grinning like a kid throughout... does that make me a bad person? :lol:
Calling FrikgFeek or QuantumDelta, please work your magic!
I’m up to the first (only?) Loki stealth mission, I think about a third of the way through the campaign, give or take. I’ll do a full review when I complete the campaign, but for now, spoiler free initial impressions:
The most impressive thing that I’ve noticed so far is the level of detail in the release – it is remarkable. By far the most impressive, immersive Freespace campaign I have ever played, including things like BP and ST:R. In my mind, this comes from two things. First, the absolute attention to creating a universe for the player to inhabit in mission – the mods chosen, the mission designs, the priorities given to the player, even the visual palette changes – these all feel like a campaign focusses on a world we hadn’t previously seen in FS1 or 2 – the civilian world where most people would be living their lives. It still feels like Freespace, but it puts serious meat on the bones of the universe established in the first two games.
This is also helped in a big way by the newsroom and system viewer. Antares feels big and complicated and real – almost a character in its own right, in a way that, location wise, FS2 only ever managed with the nebula.
The voice acting is generally pretty great (if there are a few jarring mispronunciations here and there, but that’s unavoidable), and the missions are tightly FREDded (I’ve had one where it stalled on me – obviously a ship got destroyed unexpectedly or something, but it went fine on my second run through) and diverse enough to keep me interested, both in terms of challenge level and what you’re doing in the mission.
The story so far has been good – I’m enjoying the evolving smuggling/corruption storyline and the Hammer storyline and wondering if/how they’re going to come together. But I felt elements were a tad... rushed isn’t the right word, maybe undersold? I’m thinking mainly about the detour out of Antares; I got the impression that we were being ordered out of Antares permanently, but then we were back within a mission, apparently against order. It didn’t quite feel like the motivations (or the repercussions) for this were explained much at all. Perhaps later in the campaign?
If I were picking things to gripe about, I’d say that I’m not really loving the battlesnails. I get that they’re supposed to be a fun achievement type thing, but I feel like they’d be better suited to a feature you only get when you’ve beaten the campaign and are playing through again, but I recognise that that’s a personal stylistic choice each campaign creator will make differently.
The one thing that I do have a bit more of an issue with (and don’t get me wrong, I’m still loving the campaign) is the tech room. I really enjoy scrolling through the tech room as a way to get a feel for the worldbuilding, but that doesn’t quite work in BtA. Several of the ships have blank (or near blank, “Blah Blah”) tech descriptions, or descriptions that are obviously anachronistic (the one that jumped out to me was the Endymion, which still has the description I originally wrote for it, which is only appropriate for the very early TV War). Slaves of Chaos and the demo both did such a fantastic job of worldbuilding in other ways, to have it be neglected here was a little disappointing. And, utterly, utterly minor though it is, I also kind of wish the ships were in a logical order, as opposed to new ones being tacked on the end.
To be 100% clear though, the issues I’ve come across have been extremely small, and haven’t prevented me from enjoying what is an extremely polished, high quality Freespace experience. Based on what I’ve seen so far, BtA has earned its place in the rarefied company of the very best examples of what the FS engine and the people behind it can do, along with ST:R, VD, BP and the like. Congrats to Mjn and the rest of the team - I’m really looking forward to the rest of the campaign.
I just finished "Bringing down the Gavel",
. . .
This is, This is the most enjoyable mission in Freespace history. :drevil:
Also I like how the background shows what room you are in, Eg, ship selection is in a hanger, weapon selection has crates with guns in them in background, Ec. . .
The Angel One mission has given me a new appreciation for sentry cannons. I tried being thematic and using all the tools available multiple times and couldn't beat the mission. Eventually, annoyed with the number of bombs that were getting through, I invested all of my points into spamming sentry cannons around the outpost.
Stopped the bombs (and the bombers) very effectively. :)
I haven't even started the first mission yet.
All I did was watch the cutscene and roam around the menu and watch the first briefing.
I'm already blown away.
BLOWN AWAY this is totally rad awesome! I dunno what else to say, this is super neat! Thanks a ton, BtA team! :D
Mission layout is awesome, you guys have a real grip on 6DOF.
Oh, really? I saw it just inSpoiler:How the West was lost near Midwinter stationand it didn't unlock anything I'd noticed. So there is somewhere else another one?
What he likely means is that we actively tried to avoid the usual space-sim "gotcha" where all the ships and objects, more or less, exist on a single plane on the Y axis.
In our missions, Slasher and I actively tried to make sure our characters would be aware they could go up, they could down, the could attack from any direction. (Camp Angle kinda defies this, but whatareyagonnado?)
The bonus mission files are hidden. :)
The bonus mission files are hidden. :) They are there, though.
You should also be able to access the System Viewer and the Newsroom from either briefing screen, iirc.
Well, they wouldn't be very hidden if you could just open up the .VP and look at them, would they?The bonus mission files are hidden. :) They are there, though.
But not in the mission folder in the VP... so, there are spawing out of the scripts or they are so well hidden, that even the VP knows nothing about them. :)
Well, they wouldn't be very hidden if you could just open up the .VP and look at them, would they?The bonus mission files are hidden. :) They are there, though.
But not in the mission folder in the VP... so, there are spawing out of the scripts or they are so well hidden, that even the VP knows nothing about them. :)
Well, they wouldn't be very hidden if you could just open up the .VP and look at them, would they?The bonus mission files are hidden. :) They are there, though.
But not in the mission folder in the VP... so, there are spawing out of the scripts or they are so well hidden, that even the VP knows nothing about them. :)
Dog is that Admiral Darkblade talking? I love Darkblade's voice!
I really like the idea of picking up with characters who've 'survived' the post-ST purge of GTI. There's intrinsic conflict and distrust there.
I (of course) went straight for the newsroom, and the writing's - solidly okay. I don't say that as a putdown like 'mediocre': it gets all the ideas across clearly, including pretty tough nuanced material like the internal politics of Antares and ambiguous attitudes towards the GTA. The line-by-line style is rough, ranging from ok to clearly in need of fix (a dehydrated child slicking back his hair with the contents of an oasis? and a few simple typos) but none of it's voice acted so it's super easy to tweak. Writing is, as you'd figure, the area I'm hardest on - much like a modeler would nitpick at smoothing or whatever - but I do think it's worth polishing, because writing is one of the checkpoints that makes a work seem really polished and professional. The opening cutscene, for example, is gorgeous, but a quick rescript and re-act of the monologue would do wonders to support those gorgeous visuals with solid dialog: it's a little mushy and word-salad as is. WHATEVER though, I still enjoyed it all and it had the necessary narrative effect.
God the system map is dope. What a good touch, it's inspirational and awesome.
Is that Dorothy Conway as squadron leader?
The in-mission writing is quite good so far - but there are a couple plain ol' grammatical errors (what kind of issues is the local government facing?) that jar me out of a good conversation: I know that re-acting is hell, but this campaign's production values are so high it's a minor not-a-big-deal bummer to have script jank. Really cool job making the Arcadia feel like a huge floating city with that cutscene. The Antares flight control officer VA is dope.
I really like the chill music and day-to-day objectives in the opening of this mission. Almost makes me wish nothing would happen! Oh but it did and IT'S FUN NEVER MIND. It'd be cool to have a little rotation on the player ship when disabled - tumbling round and round. I can't stress how much the excellent flight control woman VA boosts this already cool engagement.
Is that Admiral Bei from BP talking smooth about cargo containers!?
The second mission was great, fun mix of dogfightin and regular stuff, I had a blast. Man, FreeSpace is cool. So is the military intercept leading into mission 3 - really scales up the menace.
Loving the campaign so far. Over the past week or two there was (another) kerfuffle over how nobody's playing FreeSpace, and as usual the lay theory that good campaigns intimidate people was thrown out. Playing BtA really reinforces how utterly hogwash that must be. I can't imagine starting off on FSO with this campaign and not wanting to play more, do more, explore how FRED works. It's good and makes me want to work on FSO more.
I though that it would be perfect cover to fly into the fighterbay!
Are you taking about at the very end? Have you played the main campaign yet?
They are hotkeyed, on F10.
That's the DUH option I should have thought of years ago.
Also, I'm pretty sure there's a sequence built-in if you don't get their IFF and they warp out, you can track them in subspace and still capture the IFF.
I enjoyed the stealth missions a lot, but did have to redo them a few times to get everything right. The line of sight system makes things tricky (but is more realistic than the purely distance-based detection in older campaigns) since the fighters often turn abruptly to face a new waypoint. It would be nice if there was a HUD indicator like a cone in front of the ships.
Thanks, BW! I know which mission you're talking about. It can be a tough on, for sure.What though? What mission are you referring to?
Thanks, BW! I know which mission you're talking about. It can be a tough on, for sure.What though? What mission are you referring to?
it's the one with the abandoned Endymion between the two stars.
...except I "failed" because I jumped after being given the go-ahead to RTB :-| I assume I need to head back to the Intrepid's fighter bay, instead.
...except I "failed" because I jumped after being given the go-ahead to RTB :-| I assume I need to head back to the Intrepid's fighter bay, instead.
Well that's a bug. That was originally intended behavior but it's a dick move so we changed it to just disable the player's jump drive at the end of the missions where fighterbay departure is required. Apparently I missed one. :(
What's happening with it? I honestly didn't check it because nothing really changed.
EDIT: I see the (obvious) problem. I'll fix it as soon as I can.
It might be a dumb question, but how do you deploy the beacon in mission 4 "Playing Pirate"? I get 3Km away from the transports but I don't know what to do next. I am playing on 3.7.4.
(Did you play the prequel 2-mission campaign as well?)
what are you waiting for?
Antwerp is a prologue and not a story it its own right; as such it resembles Mephistople, although that was less dependant on Slaves of Chaos to stand as Antwerp to whatever comes next. As such an substantial evaluation of Antwerp must wait IMO until there is something for it to lead into.
So uh, did anyone try the included Operation: Templar? :nervous:No! I completely forgot! I must rectify that.
PLAY ANTWERP GOSH DARNIT. :D
I just played Antwerp and the new Operation Templar. Like Slaves of Chaos, this is amazing work, I love the CB animations and the overall level of polish, really a step beyond any other FS campaign. The new cutscenes are great and the music fits the missions perfectly. Definitely looking forward to more of this.
I do get poor performance in the second mission of Antwerp (FSO 19 and latest MVPs, with a 4790K/1080ti). I don't recall any issues in Slaves of Chaos, but this mission runs at 25-30fps and crashed the game a few times. I wonder if there is a memory leak or something, or there is just too much happening in the mission.
The crashes seemed to be random. I have the memory dump files, but it's probably more of an issue with FSO than the campaign. The game tends to become unstable if there are too many ships/objects in a mission.
In Templar, I especially liked how the "Brothers rejoice" bit in the fourth mission was made into an actual threat. I just barely made it out of the blast radius in time. I did encounter a bug in the third mission (maybe also in the original version) where if only one of your transports gets destroyed, the mission doesn't fail or let you know, and eventually got into a stalemate with the Tanis where I couldn't damage it past 10% and no bombers were left.
The crashes seemed to be random. I have the memory dump files, but it's probably more of an issue with FSO than the campaign. The game tends to become unstable if there are too many ships/objects in a mission.
In Templar, I especially liked how the "Brothers rejoice" bit in the fourth mission was made into an actual threat. I just barely made it out of the blast radius in time. I did encounter a bug in the third mission (maybe also in the original version) where if only one of your transports gets destroyed, the mission doesn't fail or let you know, and eventually got into a stalemate with the Tanis where I couldn't damage it past 10% and no bombers were left.
Ugh, Original Templar had SO many stalemates. . Figures one would slip past. . Just to help narrow it down, do you know what transport it was?
I think Zeta 2 got destroyed and Zeta 1 jumped out. The bombers may also need a default order to attack the Tanis, or else they end up dying and you cannot destroy it without them. When I played it again, both transports jumped and I gave the bombers that order manually, and everything seemed fine.That's very VERY strange, The bombers do already have "Attack the Tanis" as one of their default orders. :/ Not only that but a second wing of bombers (delta) jumps in to help once the Transports are gone, and Delta is 5 waves of Ursa's with Harbingers with arrival delays of 8 - 12 seconds. . Either Delta is not arriving or they are somehow getting killed super fast. . .