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Okay, i played Transcend, and it scared the snot out of me, but i still dont get it. Is this 'transcendant' in the pegasus, did he supposedly fly to the EDGE of the universe and come back with some sort of special freaky powers? or is it just some nebula ghost?
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This needs to be moved to here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/board,124.0.html).
I never really "got" Transcend anyways.
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It was a side-story to the Sync campaign, according to Ransom.
There's actually been speculation as to whether or not a certain character in Sync could have become the Transcendant we see in Transcend.
The discussion took place here (http://game-warden.com/forum/showthread.php?t=977). I urge to read through it, it is very interesting. (Although make sure you have played entirely through Transcend and Sync before you do!)
My take on the Transcendant is in the spoiler tags below:
The way I understood it, he was somehow "disconnected" from the universe, and, thus, all of reality itself. Outside of reality, his "being" or "essence" or whatever, grew beyond the bounds of what could be contained by the rules of reality, so when he tried to re-enter our universe, it couldn't contain him, and so began to unravel. "Killing" him either destroyed him and saved the universe, or just "disconnected" him again, except he didn't try coming back, knowing what it could cause (the latter I presume is viable since, at the end of the "time rewinding movie", you see the Transcendant briefly, as though he was the one who rewound everything).
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I'm just curious; at the end, in the subspace tunnel? Do you actually 'kill' the Transcendent, or do you actually just kill him until the node collapses? Cuz I honestly freaked and whippped out a flak gun to murder him.
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Hmm.. I have to play those again... I never finished.
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I presume Sync is some where around HLP. I just copy the folder into my FS2 directory?
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No... I'd use the Installer, or else put Sync in its own directory. (Installer, see my siggy.)
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I presume Sync is some where around HLP. I just copy the folder into my FS2 directory?
Yes, same way as you copied the Transcend folder into your FS2 directory!
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I presume Sync is some where around HLP. I just copy the folder into my FS2 directory?
Yes, same way as you copied the Transcend folder into your FS2 directory!
My Transcend came with my FS2. As well as the FS1 port, Derelict, Inferno_R1, Sol_a_History an mediavps. Oh, and cardinal spear.
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http://homepage.ntlworld.com/karajorma/FAQ/installingmods.html
Take a look at that while looking at your Transcend folder. Then make a folder called Sync in the same way.
You actually have an advantage over most people who had to learn the hard way in that the installer gives you a whole bunch of mods that have been installed correctly to show you how it's done. Most of us had to learn from trial and error or just from guides like that one. :)
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Okay, i played Transcend, and it scared the snot out of me, but i still dont get it. Is this 'transcendant' in the pegasus, did he supposedly fly to the EDGE of the universe and come back with some sort of special freaky powers? or is it just some nebula ghost?
Transcend's story is possibly one of the most confusing and open-ended storylines I've ever come across for movies, campaigns, books, et al. That's not a bad thing, as speculation is good, but I don't think anyone's come across one definitive theory yet.
If you listen to the Transcendant's messages and then play Sync, you'll notice some startingly similarities. Not just coincidences like "Yes, sir" or "I'm going in", but really key lines from Sync are present in the messages. For example:
"Me to--luck, but I'd rather take my cha--...ivans" (Transcend--dashes and dots are distortions)
"Me too. Good luck, but I'd rather take my chances with the Shivans." (Sync, one of Phi wing's messages before leaving the Persistence)
"It isn't our time to die!" (one of the Transcendant's final messages)
"No, damn it! It isn't our time to die!" (Alpha 3's line when encountering the Hedetet)
That leads me to believe that they're some sort of Sync-Transcend connection other than just being a side story, as if the Transcendant was one of the Sync characters, or an onlooker in Sync. Compare the Transcendant's Pegasus with the unknown Terran ship in Sync's first mission for real confusion.
There's also some other references in Transcend. If you're a fan of sci-fi horror, some Transcendant lines should be familiar: "Do you see?" followed by a short, sharp "No!" were the last words of Sam Neil's character in Event Horizon. When you compare Event Horizon's story to Sync's, you see similarities: a ship is sent to the far reaches of space through the use of a powerful subspace drive, and then returns several years later and brings all sorts of nasty with it.
So, basically, my theory is that one of the Sync characters, most likely Beta 2, since he was closest to being the one who wanted to stop the Sync drive before it destroyed all of mankind. When he was killed in the last few missions, he must have transcended beyond his reality, and used his new power to lure Marcell and the Shadow Hunters to him to kill him. Now, you might ask, what good would killing Beta 2 do if he had already been killed? Easy--that purple nebula where all the weird crap happened must've been where the Transcendant was fully able to alter time, and if you killed the Transcendant (i.e. Beta 2) at the right point in time, Beta 2 wouldn't have existed. Therefore, the Persistence wouldn't have had an escort, and therefore the events of Sync would likely have not played out.
You can see the Transcendant trying to alter the events of Sync in the early parts of Sync itself through eliminating certain characters or stopping the events. First, he tries to collapse the node in the first mission to keep Alpha wing from ever making it to the Sync storyline in the first place. Second, he sends out those mysterious waves of Hercs throughout the first few missions of Sync to try to kill off Alpha wing and the freighters before they reach the Persistence. Finally, he attempts to totally stop the Sync events by sending in the Carthage to arrest all of the main characters, and that's when Persistence panics and uses the subspace drive. Beta 2 going mad after the jump may have been the Transcendant (i.e. his future self) possessing him (you don't see the Pegasus at any other point in Sync, plus Beta 2 tries to destroy the Farae in one mission and consistently warns the Persistence crew about the Sync drive).
Now, the final subspace mission in Transcend. There are two possibilities as to exactly what this is. One, it could be, as I theorized earlier, that the Transcendant (Beta 2) was using his powers to go back in time slightly to make it possible for Marcell to kill his past self (before he was an escort for Persistence in Sync), and therefore the chaos theory might lead to Sync having never played out at all. Another theory is that that node that you enter might be the same node that the Transcendant tried to collapse in the first Sync mission. By bringing the Chondral, Generation, et al. into the corridor, he set about the process of finally collapsing the node, and killing the Transcendant may have brought the being some closure or a release from his state (his last words are "Thank you" just before he sends Marcell back to his point where he had started intervening). Killing off the Transcendant, the Shadow Hunters, and all of the main characters other than Marcell and the guy you escort in the first Transcend mission sets everything back to normal.
In the end, you have Beta 2 dead, so Persistence is without an escort, and the node that Alpha wing wanted so badly to escape through in the first Sync mission collapsed, leaving Alpha wing and the Tether either lost or dead. Therefore, the events of Sync never play out. Once Marcell's part in Transcend is over, he's sent back to his own time.
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"Surely you have a dizzying intellect."
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Interesting theories Nuclear, but...
I believe the Persistence, without Beta wing in the picture, would simply have requisitioned another wing of bombers to help. As the Ester would have found another wing of mercs in the event of Alpha not being available.
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Interesting theories Nuclear, but...
I believe the Persistence, without Beta wing in the picture, would simply have requisitioned another wing of bombers to help. As the Ester would have found another wing of mercs in the event of Alpha not being available.
True, but I think chaos theory has more to do with it than anything. There's that idea that if you go back in time and kill a butterfly, there's the chance that there'll be a different President when you come back. Maybe killing Alpha or Beta would've altered the timeline so drastically that Sync or the Transcendant wouldn't have even existed.
Or hey, even supposing the Persistence did try to get new bombers and the Farae did get a new wing of Mercs. The entire storyline depended on how Sarah, Max, and Phi reacted to the Persistence's actions. Max stuck around with the Persistence only long enough to try to get Sarah back. Who's to say another merc group would have been that emotionally connected? If there was a different team going on, maybe the tensions would've been enough to split everyone up and end up getting everybody killed in the Vasudan nebular area. Or if Persistence hadn't gotten another wing of bombers, maybe Phi's commanders would've been less-than-interested in committing to the mission?
Again, this is just a huge theory, and I'm not even sure if Ransom even knows the answer anymore. But yeah, that's a good point.
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... Therefore i must quickly finish my homework and then hang a 'DnD' sign outside my room door, settle down with a me, FRED and FS2 for the weekend.
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Well to tell you the truth, I played Transcend first and I kinda understood the storyline. I just finished Sync and I don't even know what the hell just happened. :confused:
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Freaky. I was reading the thread, and the ad at the top of the page was advertising 'Sync e-mail' o_O
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Good ol' Google AdSenseTM FTW :lol:
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Well to tell you the truth, I played Transcend first and I kinda understood the storyline. I just finished Sync and I don't even know what the hell just happened. :confused:
I think I can help you on one major point...
The red nebula at the end is Capella post-supernova. The Shivans use Sync to go through the collapsed node, thus dooming the GTVA.
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Why is there is a freighter called "Nothing" in the final subspace sequence?
Why is that freighter there??
"Nothing
TC-TRI 3
Cargo: nothing
100%"
The first time I was on this level, once I began to face off against the Transcendant One, and he kept coming back, I had some sort of gut feeling that if I blew this freighter up, that was the way to defeat him. Because I figured, he is Everything and he is also Nothing (just like he is a Triumph and a Failure)... but the freighter's invulnerable.
So why is it here?
Please give me your theories on this one... even if they are crazy ones
I just beat the game... at the end my eyes were watering --- not from emotion, but because I refused to blink during the end AVI sequence... didn't want to miss anything!
- Euth
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I'll sometimes put a ship called "nothing" into a mission if I need it to be destroyed or depart when it probably shouldn't, eg. if Ineed a shp to fire at anpther ship and miss, I'll sneak in "Nothing" behind it and have the ship target that instead. That way, when you look at the event log it says "nothing was destroyed by SD Lucifer" or whatever.
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Well to tell you the truth, I played Transcend first and I kinda understood the storyline. I just finished Sync and I don't even know what the hell just happened. :confused:
I think I can help you on one major point...
The red nebula at the end is Capella post-supernova. The Shivans use Sync to go through the collapsed node, thus dooming the GTVA.
Well that was depressing :(
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problem with your theory nuclear, kind of,
Except the capella nebula would have taken centuries to cool down enough that your ship wouldn't melt the second you came out of subspace
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Yes, Game Master, but:
Who ****ing cares? :P
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very good point
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Whats the difference between the current nebula in Capella and the nebula in Gamma Draconis? Sure the explosion melted away anything in the system, but since thats receeded, wouldn't it be safe to enter it? (Aside from EMP scrambling)
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The nebula beyond Gamma Draconis happened to have nova'd up 8,000 years ago.
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there by giving it the aformentioned centuries to cool
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Don't you mean millennia?
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there by giving it the aformentioned centuries to cool
Or it could have been that funky Ikeya nebula that it's in the first Sync mission. Who knows? The node did collapse when the corvettes tried to go through, so it could have been that one.
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Regardless i found Transcend to be very original and a definate thriller mod, almost reminiscent of aliens. (In space, no-one can hear you scream! :shaking:)
Well done Transcend team! :yes:
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AFAIK, there was no "team", and was all Ransom Archein (I'm sure I spelled that wrong...).
But yes, I agree, Ransom, excellent. Looking forward to future releases!
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AFAIK, there was no "team", and was all Ransom Archein (I'm sure I spelled that wrong...).
But yes, I agree, Ransom, excellent. Looking forward to future releases!
ONE GUY!?! :eek2:
Wow. now THAT is impressive.
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Yea, Transcend/Sync done by a single person. Awesome use of sexp, imo.
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Not just that, awesome imagination and creation. I was under the impression that being such a large campaign it was done by a few people.
Man that must've taken ages to do
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Not just that, awesome imagination and creation. I was under the impression that being such a large campaign it was done by a few people.
Man that must've taken ages to do
Not really. If you look at Sync or Transcend's missions, not many of them are particularly complicated. You just sort of ignore that for the fact that the story is so gripping.
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Not just that, awesome imagination and creation. I was under the impression that being such a large campaign it was done by a few people.
Man that must've taken ages to do
Not really. If you look at Sync or Transcend's missions, not many of them are particularly complicated. You just sort of ignore that for the fact that the story is so gripping.
They seem quite complicated to me. Something i can't understand is how the hell he made the HUD disappear and the pegasus move around like that, and do that whole 'rewind' thing at the end. Thats beyond me. :jaw:
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Not just that, awesome imagination and creation. I was under the impression that being such a large campaign it was done by a few people.
Man that must've taken ages to do
Not really. If you look at Sync or Transcend's missions, not many of them are particularly complicated. You just sort of ignore that for the fact that the story is so gripping.
They seem quite complicated to me. Something i can't understand is how the hell he made the HUD disappear and the pegasus move around like that, and do that whole 'rewind' thing at the end. Thats beyond me. :jaw:
The rewind is simply a screen-capture of the entire campaign played through, and then reversed. It's not rendered in-game.
As for the HUD disappearing and the shifting around... that's creative use of SEXPs =)
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There is a hud-disable SEXP, pretty simple to use, and the Pegasi were following waypoints, I believe. Very precisely placed waypoints.
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Still pretty damn impressive that he used such basic SEXP's to that effect to create a campaign that seemed quite complicated at first impressions. I take my hat off to you sir!! :P
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I believed he used create ship SEXP and disappear ship SEXP to give the illusion of 'warping' Pegasi.
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Regarding Sync, I always thought it was incredibly obvious. I don't know where any of you are getting Capella Supernova from.
Admittedly, you have to have paid attention to things in the Freespace 2 story.
Sync is set BEFORE Freespace 2. You time travel to when the Shivans show up in Freespace 2. The Carthage (I think I'm getting the ship right) is one of the ships that stops the Rakshasa when it attacks the Vigilant in Gamma Draconis at the start of Freespace 2. The Carthage vanishes thanks to the Sync drive and is not there, so the Shivans destroy the Vigilant and attack en masse.
Basically, you change the future and doom humanity.
I mean, they even spelled this out with some of the stuff about
ID codes that have been inactive for years
I loved Transcend and Sync though. I can't wait for anything else Ransom creates.
But, yeah, I don't know where you got the idea about the Capella Supernova from.
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There is one thing about Transcend I am trying to figure out:
Sunder Marcel is constantly referring to something he forgot. The first time he remarks about this in the briefing, the GTC Raven appears again, which in the very previous mission had been destroyed by my hand.
What was it that Sunder forgot? What is the information that is the gaping hole in his mind?
And why is a GTF Myrmidon in the logo?
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I think its the very first mission you fly, escorting the freighters through the asteroid field.
Idk the myrmidon though.
[/quote]
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There is one thing about Transcend I am trying to figure out:
Sunder Marcel is constantly referring to something he forgot. The first time he remarks about this in the briefing, the GTC Raven appears again, which in the very previous mission had been destroyed by my hand.
What was it that Sunder forgot? What is the information that is the gaping hole in his mind?
And why is a GTF Myrmidon in the logo?
from the way this campaign goes after that, i'd say his sanity
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There is one thing about Transcend I am trying to figure out:
Sunder Marcel is constantly referring to something he forgot. The first time he remarks about this in the briefing, the GTC Raven appears again, which in the very previous mission had been destroyed by my hand.
What was it that Sunder forgot? What is the information that is the gaping hole in his mind?
And why is a GTF Myrmidon in the logo?
Spoiler:
Because the Transcend is Phi 2 from Sync. In Sync, a freighter and two fighters from Phi wing jumped out after the shivans attacked Capella. You and your group find the freighter and one myrmidon but you didn't find Phi 2. Subspace killed the freighter crew and the one Phi fighter but Phi 2 jumped out last, after the freighter and other fighter from Phi wing did. By jumping out last, subspace didn't kill Phi 2 but instead changing him into the Transcend. I always knew the Transcend was Phi 2 because of that Logo.
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While that is an interesting theory, CKid, it has never been confirmed. Personally, I believe the same thing, but I guess we just have to wait for future Sync-derived campaigns...
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I can't help myself, but I was always under the impression that the Transcendant was a by-product of the sync drive. I can very much imagine that the sync drive pulled any random survivor of the Sync campaign out of the boundaries of the universe, thus creating the Transcendant, either by becoming one with sync due to being "outside", or just by being "outside".
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Having played Transcend BEFORE Sync (since for some reason I never knew they were related...) I have this to say...
Beta's behavior is either controlled or at least influenced by the Transcendant. The way he(?) acts is as someone who has seen or knows the future and wants to stop it.
The Shivans seem to know about Sync, or at the very least how it works... My guess is that they scanned it while pursuing the Terran convoy through the Nebula and were able to process the data fast enough to make use of it thanks to their more advanced technology.
The Farae... I'm not sure on. Her mysterious silence after the recovery my the Qetesh could be related to the Qetesh's origins, whatever those may be. It's entirely possible the crew was dead when they found it and whatever energy/being/machinery was running the Qetesh "assimilated" the Farae to function the same way.
Phi wing is entirely open to conjecture as to what happened to them after Sync. It is entirely possible that Phi 2 is the Transcendant, though why would he(?) warn Beta 2 and not the rest of the group? Maybe it was a mental block or some sort of "I can't show them it's me... they wouldn't understand..."
The time-expansion of the long-distance Subspace travel seems to work both ways. Probably due to some instability in Sync itself. It's possible the Vasudans encountered in the "empty" system were knowledgable of what happened AFTER Sync, but not what occured in Transcend, thanks to the "reset button" at the end. It seems that they were definitely more technologically advanced than the Vasudans of the FS2/Sync start time period, but how they developed is unkown. It's possible that they also sent Sync back in time when they activated it, but not quite as far back as they wanted, or to the right place, due to the instability of the drive when they activated it.
All in though, playing them both makes me go :wtf:, but individually they are definitely :jaw:
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/me kind of wishes Ransom Archein would just tell us what the **** happened so our heads could stop spinning
At the same time, though, I kinda like my head spinning and wondering what the connection is. That's the major appeal of Sync/Transcend: no one knows what is going on and you are given very little data to work with.
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I played transcend before sync, and havent gotten that far at all in sync. the problem is:
early on, you appear and see nothing but a a black screen, your HUD, and a flashing green line across the middle. if you press the third person (*) button, you can see phi come in, talk fo a little while, then the persistence jumps in, then a mentu, and the persitence destroys the mentu. what are you actually meant to do? i've tried jumping out but nothing happens.
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Well, first:
:welcomeblue: Hyperhedron!
Now then, what you're seeing is a manifestation of the dreaded Red Alert bug. What you describe is exactly what I saw the first time I encountered it. There are at least a couple options:
1. Clone your Pilot (or make a new one) and restart the campaign.
2. Extract the missions from the .vp file and edit them so that they are no longer 'Red Alert' missions.
OT: The idea of Phi 2 being the transcendent has always fit. For 'facts' we do have: The Sync drive 'disconnects' the people involved from the normal flow of the universe, as described by, well, just about everyone. As someone else mentioned before, Sunder Marcel says the same about the Corvette captain as we can assume the transcendent has been influencing him as he goes more and more insane. So as those in close proximity are only 'somewhat disconnected' those further away but still in its influence are further torn from the universe. as Sypher said, Phi 2 was the closest ship that had left the area before showing up in Shivan land and had the best chance of survival while the others were (assuming) torn from the universe much more completely. This idea also fits with the Transcendent trying to recreate the last bit of reality he would have had a grasp on as by the end we see all the classes of ships from Sync grouped together (sans the Fenris I think?)
Now, Transcend is also not intended as a sequel to Sync as Ransom had said, just a related side story. Phi 2 was not the main character in Sync but a supporting character and therefore could be an easy target for a spin-off. The logo... wow, here's my outlandish take... The Pegasus is positioned in a way that the 'hole' appears to be an eye peering at you. What are eyes, in a poetic metaphysical sense, kids? Windows to the soul! So, the 'soul' of the transcendent (the 'eye' of which we're looking into) is a pilot of a myrmidon who we really must have encountered before to be a viable spin-off campaign, which leaves Phi 2. Oy Vey. Conjecturitis!
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In reading through this, which is quite interesting, I thought of this:
We all know that the lines spoken by the Transcendant are from multiple characters. IIRC, all of those characters were in close proximity to the Sync drive. So what if the Transcendant isn't just one person; what if it's multiple people? That would, in part, explain the quotes from different sources. Second, we don't actually know what else the Sync drive can/could do... We know that it affects the fabric of subspace, and possibly reality, and that that would involve substantial energy manipulations. Who knows what it could do to the human consciousness? On the wilder side, the Sync drive could have done something that resulted in the "consciousnesses" or "essences" of each of those people being jammed together with the drive, creating God knows what...Possibly the Transcendant...
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I've been playing through Transcend, and I must say, it's a surreal experience. Never thought a spacesim could be quite that scary and unsettling.
Now, I'm in (assuming) the last mission, in a subspace corridor, and when I kill the fighter my wingmates tell me to kill, the game crashes. :(
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THE PROBLEM CAN BE SOLVED THIS WAY:
DAMAGE THE SHIPS SO THEY HAVE LIKE 3, 2, HP LEFT. THEN HIDE BEHIND A CRUISER OR SOMETHING AND LET THEM RAM INTO IT. THEY ARE DESTROYED AND YOU CAN CONTINUE.
I guess that's one way to do it.
Edit: There are other threads about the same problem. Search them and see if you can get anything from them.
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Hm, Im gonna have to replay the last mission to see if it was fixed, but for this "rewind" thing at the end all I got was a black screen and some music.
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Install the FFDShow (http://free-codecs.com/download/FFDShow.htm) codec.
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Where have I seen that funky blue-and-black, wedge-shaped fighter before? I could swear there's a FS campaign in which you get to fly it, but I have no idea which one. Anyone?
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The Pegasus stealth bombers that you tested a dogfight against? In the main FS2 campaign? Need I say more?
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The Pegasus stealth bombers that you tested a dogfight against? In the main FS2 campaign? Need I say more?
Bombers? The only way a Pegasus could carry bombs would be to have them attached externally. And even then it could only carry roughly one bomb. And as for you, Objekt, if I remember correctly, you got to fly it only in Endgame, but then again you got to fight them in Proving Grounds, like Asuko said.
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You get to fly against them in a testing missino right as the Shivans first appear in the FS2 main campaign. EDIT: And again, in a Spec Ops mission to scan the Sathanas' systems, after it first appears.
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ERm...that's a Ptah.
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You get to fly against them in a testing missino right as the Shivans first appear in the FS2 main campaign.
:wtf: A what? The Shivans had been around for quite some time, concidering that you encounter them in the fourth mission in the campaign.
And again, in a Spec Ops mission to scan the Sathanas' systems, after it first appears.
That'd be the Ptah, like Trash said. And it was during the officer exchange thingie. The SCO twits didn't go scanning the Sath.
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Ah, my bad. I generalized. Thanks anyway for clearing that up.