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Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: Scotty on March 06, 2010, 05:59:57 pm

Title: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Scotty on March 06, 2010, 05:59:57 pm
Quote from: Scotty on March 06, 2010, 05:47:43 pm
What were the SAC 3s in the random cargo depot for in the first mission flying a Vishnan fighter?

Reposted from the Discussion thread.  What were they for, why were they there, and what's the significance of any of the above?
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: General Battuta on March 06, 2010, 06:09:19 pm
Mission is 'The Great Preservers' if you want to investigate.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Dilmah G on March 06, 2010, 07:57:31 pm
Hmm, never noticed this.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Thaeris on March 06, 2010, 09:10:05 pm
I always blew those containers up after all the Shivans were dispatched...
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Scotty on March 06, 2010, 09:14:06 pm
If you scan them, the cargos have very interesting names.

Spoiler:
"You look for the one from many"
"We dance in the garden of life"
"You look to the walls and works"
"We look for the one above all"
"He waits in the cooling ruin"
"For a daughter made out of war"
"Why are you so cold?"
"Brothers!  Brothers!  Paramatma!"
"We are your only hope."

They sound vaguely lyrical.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Droid803 on March 06, 2010, 11:44:07 pm
Is that from some poem?
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Dilmah G on March 06, 2010, 11:50:19 pm
*Reads them*
Ah.

All will be revealed in time, my brothers.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Darius on March 06, 2010, 11:59:10 pm
Spoiler:
Our sisters are coming...
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: High Max on March 07, 2010, 12:04:36 am
;-)
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Droid803 on March 07, 2010, 12:54:40 am
I fail to even understand how that relates to anything but the mysticism stuff that, frankly, I find to be the weakest points of BP, and the FS verse in general. (I really don't like the crap about the cosmic destroyers and stuff already and the triumvirate thing is so contrived just LOL-worthy).

A very...bad...easter egg if it fails to arouse any form of understanding or humour.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Dilmah G on March 07, 2010, 12:59:23 am
BP ain't for everyone man. :)

But if some of you are interested, your curiosity will be rewarded.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: High Max on March 07, 2010, 01:07:33 am
;-)
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: General Battuta on March 07, 2010, 01:36:14 am
Quote from: Droid803 on March 07, 2010, 12:54:40 am
I fail to even understand

Quite apparent.

Quote
how that relates to anything but the mysticism stuff that, frankly, I find to be the weakest points of BP, and the FS verse in general. (I really don't like the crap about the cosmic destroyers and stuff already and the triumvirate thing is so contrived just LOL-worthy).

There is no mysticism in BP; only mysteries not yet explained.

Nice to hear a major religion written off as lol-worthy, too.

Quote
A very...bad...easter egg if it fails to arouse any form of understanding or humour.

The fact that you don't understand doesn't mean others won't.

You're just going to have to trust that the story will be developed in an interesting way. Even as it stands, though, it's hard to take much of BP: AoA as genuinely mystical; there's nothing in there which defies physical law or requires godlike power. What you've got is some Sufficiently Advanced Aliens.

How they express themselves is, in all probability, determined by the beliefs and memetic array of the individual they are speaking to. 'Vishnu' and 'Brahma' are natural complements to Sam's existing concept of 'Shivans'.

Anyway, to wrap it up: Droid803 is wrong. Those of you who are looking for a deeper meaning are right.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Snail on March 07, 2010, 06:37:59 am
Droid, if you don't like the whole mysticism thing then WiH should appeal to you much more than AoA. Granted it does have a bit of mysticism, but the storyline is more focused on the war than a mystical journey. Don't write of WiH because you didn't like AoA; it's really a very different experience.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: General Battuta on March 07, 2010, 10:25:02 am
I'm pretty sure Droid does like AoA, just doesn't like the 'mystical' elements of it.

And for the Nth time, go read the Vasudan take on 'mysticism' to understand why there is not necessarily any mysticism in BP.  :rolleyes:
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Droid803 on March 07, 2010, 12:47:54 pm
I'm not writing off the religion, but how the gods in them are apparently massive spaceships that talk to each other which is LOL-worthy.

I've read the Vasudan prose articles and yeah, I like that explanation a lot better.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: General Battuta on March 07, 2010, 12:51:01 pm
No, the gods are not massive spaceships which talk to each other. There are no gods. Whatever communication you saw during Universal Truth was the conversation as shown to Bei by the Vishnans. You have no idea how it actually took place.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Droid803 on March 07, 2010, 12:57:33 pm
I should have put "gods" in quotations. I know that it was the conversation as shown to Bei. Doesn't make it less...awkward, mostly because I probably don't see the FS verse in the same way Bei does, etc...
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: General Battuta on March 07, 2010, 01:01:29 pm
Whatever happened in Universal Truth was only one angle on whatever is going on in the BPVerse. Don't assume that the Shivans or Vishnans are easily personalized as single entities except when they want to be.

For all you know that was the Easy Reader version presented by the Vishnans for Bei's easy consumption.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: SpardaSon21 on March 07, 2010, 01:10:09 pm
GB, we know exactly dick about the Shivans and Vishnans, leaving us to speculate with what we do have.  If we are reaching bad conclusions, it is because we have incomplete data.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: General Battuta on March 07, 2010, 01:11:47 pm
Quote from: SpardaSon21 on March 07, 2010, 01:10:09 pm
GB, we know exactly dick about the Shivans and Vishnans, leaving us to speculate with what we do have.  If we are reaching bad conclusions, it is because we have incomplete data.

Y'know, you keep saying that, but I reached all these conclusions with the same data you guys have.

Who the heck is 'we' anyway? I was under the impression I was having a conversation with Droid here.

Let's get back on topic.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Droid803 on March 07, 2010, 01:17:55 pm
Quote from: General Battuta on March 07, 2010, 01:01:29 pm
Whatever happened in Universal Truth was only one angle on whatever is going on in the BPVerse. Don't assume that the Shivans or Vishnans are easily personalized as single entities except when they want to be.

For all you know that was the Easy Reader version presented by the Vishnans for Bei's easy consumption.

Yeah, that's what I was agreeing with.

-

So then, is the significance of the "cargo" related to the version of the story the Vishnans are trying to portray to Bei? Or is it the Shivans trying to communicate to him?

There! I'm speculating! Happy? :P
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: NGTM-1R on March 07, 2010, 01:38:56 pm
Quote from: General Battuta on March 07, 2010, 01:01:29 pm
For all you know that was the Easy Reader version presented by the Vishnans for Bei's easy consumption.

For all those of us not on the team know, it also wasn't. What's your point?
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: General Battuta on March 07, 2010, 01:41:55 pm
Exactly. The point is that assuming one or the other is pretty silly in this stage in the game.

And, again, I didn't need any information from being on the team to reach these conclusions - since I wasn't on the team at that point.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 07, 2010, 03:33:52 pm
I'm getting in to this quite late in the topic I know, but was the cargo depot in the first or second version of blue planet?
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Scotty on March 07, 2010, 03:45:35 pm
I think it's in both.  I know for sure it's in the Director's Cut.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: NGTM-1R on March 07, 2010, 06:25:23 pm
Quote from: General Battuta on March 07, 2010, 01:41:55 pm
Exactly. The point is that assuming one or the other is pretty silly in this stage in the game.

This is the exact opposite of the canonicity premise usually assumed in FreeSpace. All other things being equal, the game's not lying to you unless it says so.

But you seem awfully surprised people reacted as if the game's not lying to them. It's the only conclusion anyone can actually support at the moment.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Angelus on March 07, 2010, 06:25:50 pm
I have the odd feeling that we get to see things from the Shivan perspective, maybe not in WIH, but in BP3.
It seems the Shivans aren't that "bad", they only view things differently.

This reminds me of the Shadow war in B5, the Shadows seemed "evil" while the Vorlons appeared as "good", but they share the same goal ---> teach the younger races and help them grow.
They only approach it differently, the Vorlons force the younger races to follow the path of "light and order", while the Shadows force war and Chaos. Like two sides of coin.

Also GB mentioned several times things in the forum ( not only here in the BP board ) and in the IRC chat about Shivans which may or may not be related to the cargo.


So it's either important and we get an answer, or it means nothing at all and the BP team is laughing at the fact that people are discussiong this. :P
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: General Battuta on March 07, 2010, 06:34:57 pm
Quote from: NGTM-1R on March 07, 2010, 06:25:23 pm
Quote from: General Battuta on March 07, 2010, 01:41:55 pm
Exactly. The point is that assuming one or the other is pretty silly in this stage in the game.

This is the exact opposite of the canonicity premise usually assumed in FreeSpace. All other things being equal, the game's not lying to you unless it says so.

But you seem awfully surprised people reacted as if the game's not lying to them. It's the only conclusion anyone can actually support at the moment.

Excuse me? This doesn't make any sense to me.

Nothing in what I've said suggests that the game is lying. Everything I've said results from the kind of basic questions you get taught to ask in high school history class: 'who's the narrator', 'who is the reader', 'what are their motives', so on.

When I first played the campaign it was immediately and trivially obvious to me that the Vishnans were Sufficiently Advanced Aliens - as, in fact, the game makes pretty clear. It was also made quite clear that the Vishnans pulled everything they needed from Sam's brain, including their own name, and that they barely saw the universe the way we did until that point.

When Universal Truth rolls around and the Vishnans and Shivans seem to communicate with each other at great length, and then the Preserver turns to the player and says 'oh hi, go do this thing, we'll see you around', it was pretty transparent to me that the vision which had just occurred was passed to Sam by the Vishnans...just like all his previous visions.

(I doubt anybody really believes the Vishnans and Shivans speak English to each other.  There was clearly some translation involved there.)

I'm not clear as to what in any of that implies 'lying'.

What I'm 'awfully surprised by' is that people seem to think there's some kind of mystical god power at work here when no such thing was ever invoked or involved.

Honestly, we're going to need a threadsplit here.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: NGTM-1R on March 07, 2010, 07:04:16 pm
A conclusion not actually manifest. You see sufficently advanced aliens because that's what your sci-fi experience has conditioned you to see. I see sufficently advanced aliens trying to pull a Go'auld, because that's what I see from anybody who pulls a "no really you can't understand us here do this".

Most folks see a lot of obscurantist babble between forces beyond human comprehension that give you orders and go "gods" because that's how most folks define gods. They assume the game's not lying to them, and they're not actually wrong.  If you define criteria for godhood I'm pretty sure we can present evidence it got met.

So why, again, are you surprised by people attaching mystical or godlike properties to entities that would meet most people's definition of mystical and godlike? Is it just projecting or what?
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: General Battuta on March 07, 2010, 07:23:12 pm
Good post, would read again.

Maybe I was giving them a bit more credit than you do. BP does nothing which necessitates the invocation of mysticism or magical thinking, and taking those as the first explanations for the unknowns just strikes me as silly.

Ironically the canonical reaction to the Shivans on the part of many was to consider them gods, so I suppose it's not surprising it happens in real life too.

However, got to take exception with this:

Quote
They assume the game's not lying to them.

The game never lies. It never makes any claim that mysticism, gods, or magical forces are involved.

Now, I can see where people get hung up: the game presents telepathic contact, 'psychic' entities that exist outside of linear time, and bandies about words like 'destiny'. Those are pretty often matched up with mysticism.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Fury on March 07, 2010, 11:15:02 pm
Quote from: Angelus on March 07, 2010, 06:25:50 pm
So it's either important and we get an answer, or it means nothing at all and the BP team is laughing at the fact that people are discussiong this. :P
I know I am. But that doesn't apply to Battuta who always takes these subjects seriously. :p
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: High Max on March 08, 2010, 12:00:05 am
;-)
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Dilmah G on March 08, 2010, 03:29:17 am
Dude, the Shivans never were Supernatural.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: High Max on March 08, 2010, 03:59:11 am
;-)
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: -Norbert- on March 08, 2010, 04:13:30 am
Quote
This reminds me of the Shadow war in B5, the Shadows seemed "evil" while the Vorlons appeared as "good", but they share the same goal ---> teach the younger races and help them grow.
They only approach it differently, the Vorlons force the younger races to follow the path of "light and order", while the Shadows force war and Chaos. Like two sides of coin.
The thing about reality is that there are very few, if any, people who think themselfs evil. Even the worst kind of lowlifes think their deeds are justifyed. To quote the creator of Babylon 5 in one of the audio commentaries: "The monster never sees a monster in the mirror".
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: NGTM-1R on March 08, 2010, 12:18:59 pm
Quote from: Dilmah G on March 08, 2010, 03:29:17 am
Dude, the Shivans never were Supernatural.

The Ancients would disagree.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Snail on March 08, 2010, 12:43:30 pm
The Ancients aren't the word of god. Their theories are simply theories, nothing else.
Title: Re: Random Cargo Depot
Post by: Dilmah G on March 09, 2010, 04:17:10 am
Quote from: NGTM-1R on March 08, 2010, 12:18:59 pm
Quote from: Dilmah G on March 08, 2010, 03:29:17 am
Dude, the Shivans never were Supernatural.

The Ancients would disagree.
I wouldn't take much of what a race founded on megalomania and whatever the hell else seriously.