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General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: sigtau on February 21, 2011, 08:23:37 pm

Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: sigtau on February 21, 2011, 08:23:37 pm
MOD EDIT: The entire interview is archived on the FS wiki here: http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Interview_with_Jason_Scott --The E


 :eek2:

That is all I have to say.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Nuclear1 on February 21, 2011, 08:24:25 pm
So the Shivans were more like...a tool someone created to perform the task of cleansing entire galaxies of biological life and opening new nodes to their homeworld.

And Bosch may very well have been delusional.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Shivan Hunter on February 21, 2011, 08:25:26 pm
Shivans sound more like Reapers than ever and FS3 would be much much more like BP than expected
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: IronBeer on February 21, 2011, 08:26:01 pm
Cool, very cool stuff. As you said, much better than nothing. Big kudos for pulling this off, Battman.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 21, 2011, 08:27:50 pm
This description of the Shivans is very, very satisfying to me. It paints them as rogue von Neumanns - a completely believable hard SF concept.

I admit to some selfish satisfaction at these answers, for obvious reasons.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Nuclear1 on February 21, 2011, 08:29:21 pm
BUT WHO CREATED THE SHIVANS?!

DUH DUH DUHHHHHHHHHHHH
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Hippo on February 21, 2011, 08:41:09 pm
All aboard the bus to Shivantown!
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Jessnec on February 21, 2011, 08:53:16 pm
 :eek:

All aboard the bus to Shivantown!
-Lets go!

 :headz: :headz: :headz: :headz: :headz:

-Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo...
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: BrotherBryon on February 21, 2011, 08:55:21 pm
Makes me think that perhaps what Bosch stumbled upon with his Etak device was the means by which the Shivans' creators used to send instructions to their tools. A signal long dormant that when used would have sparked their curiosity, hence boarding and capturing rather than just destroying Bosch and his ship outright. Also makes me wonder just how much free thought these tools are capable of. Would they even have the means to design and build new classes of ships or are they stuck with tirelessly building the same ships their masters designed for them long ago.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: bigchunk1 on February 21, 2011, 09:00:48 pm
Quote
This interview has got me thinking about going back and playing more of the fan work.  What do you recommend?

Make a 'MustPlay' pack for him and help him install FSO!!!! Least introduce em to mediavps, Silent Threat Reborn, And of course da freakin Blue Planet series!
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Sushi on February 21, 2011, 09:01:12 pm
The Historian is gratified.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: StarSlayer on February 21, 2011, 09:02:06 pm
So basically the Shivans are tasked with building the Galactic Autobahn and the GTVA is getting the short stick of eminent domain so they can put in a subspace bypass? 
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Dark Hunter on February 21, 2011, 09:02:49 pm
Well, well, well.

Most interesting indeed.

So, how does collapsing a star make a jump node? I though nodes required a star's gravity well to exist?
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Mars on February 21, 2011, 09:04:46 pm
So basically the Shivans are tasked with building the Galactic Autobahn and the GTVA is getting the short stick of eminent domain so they can put in a subspace bypass? 

Everyone grab your towel.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: PsychoLandlord on February 21, 2011, 09:08:26 pm
Hey, that also indirectly answered my question.

And I love this concept of the Shivans. I wanted them to remain the big bad, and I'm glad Volition had planned to keep it that way.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on February 21, 2011, 09:08:39 pm
Shivans sound more like Reapers than ever and FS3 would be much much more like BP than expected

Come on. Ever since I've seen that clip where Sovereign speaks to Sheppard, I thought to myself, "Now.. where did I see this before? A claw dark monster ship which is only the "vanguard" of a "legion" of warships who have unparalleled powers... who come to human space and fleece everyone without sufficient explanation why.... hmmm"

To me, both FS and ME are mere derivations of the Cthuluh theme, that is, the particular character in them that works so well is precisely that strange, "unknowable", "innefable", inevitable doom that those sweet pets built by Lovecraft almost a hundred years ago. I don't know, but it is clear to me that there's something to that that draws me (and perhaps many more people) a lot. It's the theme of death, of its inevitability, its silence, its madness, its huge scale of power that will always defeat you. And the drawing is the eternal question, "can we beat it?". Funny thing, innit. Even despite knowing so well there's nothing that can defeat death, nevertheless, the question shows itself to be so much actractive, specially when it is covered in metaphors like the "Shivans" or the "Reapers"
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on February 21, 2011, 09:09:23 pm
Well, well, well.

Most interesting indeed.

So, how does collapsing a star make a jump node? I though nodes required a star's gravity well to exist?

Ahhh you collapse stars and you get black holes. Cappella has enough mass to get you a nice black hole ;)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Nuclear1 on February 21, 2011, 09:10:10 pm
A signal long dormant that when used would have sparked their curiosity, hence boarding and capturing rather than just destroying Bosch and his ship outright.
Alien, you have spoken the Words.  You have spoken them rightly. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEFALqujPPU)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on February 21, 2011, 09:18:51 pm
Funny thing. When I wrote my small stupid essay on a possible campaign, I almost hit the jackpot there. First, there would be no "Vishnans" nor any of that crap. There is no god, only death. Shivans are death, we are alone to defeat it, with no cheats, with no help. Second, there would be a rally to Shivanland. Third, Cappella would have been a black hole, and I had envisioned that either Shivans "liked" black holes, or they used them for wormholes.

What I didn't get was that it was bound to be a joint endeavour by Vasudans and Terrans. I always thought that the GTVA after Cappella was completely frustrated and depressed, without any plans to go further into the galaxy to find anything else, terrified of the star-destroyers. So it would take a rebeld to force things through and make the GTVA fight through unimagined architectures of space.

Imagine. Dyson spheres, closely to red dwarf suns, black structures that let reddish corona pass through, giant balloons of gas sucking up power. Black cities of habors, cables joining thousands of sathanas. In the void center, a black hole. Could be Cappella.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 21, 2011, 09:20:47 pm
I don't think you need to fill up this thread with elaborate descriptions of the same things everybody else has imagined.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Spoon on February 21, 2011, 09:26:39 pm
So much info in this thread
Spoon shall hereby reward many ttuta's cookies for his good work

Though for some reason, I feel a bit of the mystery is lost with these answers
Ah well, pack your bags everyone. It's time to go to shivan town!

A signal long dormant that when used would have sparked their curiosity, hence boarding and capturing rather than just destroying Bosch and his ship outright.
Alien, you have spoken the Words.  You have spoken them rightly. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEFALqujPPU)
*awards nuclear one internet*
Didn't even needed to click the link  :)

Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Droid803 on February 21, 2011, 09:27:31 pm
ttuta +1
:D
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 21, 2011, 09:28:05 pm
There's nothing binding about any of this, mind. You can feel free to do whatever the heck you like.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on February 21, 2011, 09:28:58 pm
I don't think you need to fill up this thread with elaborate descriptions of the same things everybody else has imagined.

Who told you I was doing this because I needed to?
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on February 21, 2011, 09:31:00 pm
Anyways, thanks for the excellent interview, quite entertaining. Now to sleep and dreaming about things that "everybody else has imagined".
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Droid803 on February 21, 2011, 09:36:04 pm
Double post!
Burn the witch!


But yes, much thanks.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Rodo on February 21, 2011, 09:38:56 pm
Nice material :D
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: NGTM-1R on February 21, 2011, 09:49:09 pm
Ahhh you collapse stars and you get black holes. Cappella has enough mass to get you a nice black hole ;)

No it doesn't.  It doesn't even apparently have enough mass to supernova. That's part of the point.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 21, 2011, 10:09:32 pm
Updating the first post with a new tidbit.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: DarthWang on February 21, 2011, 10:47:50 pm
They would probably have Gargants at Shivantown
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Asteroth on February 21, 2011, 11:03:17 pm
Ahhh you collapse stars and you get black holes. Cappella has enough mass to get you a nice black hole ;)

No it doesn't.  It doesn't even apparently have enough mass to supernova. That's part of the point.
Mass is irrelevant in the formation of a black hole, only density is required. It may not have enough mass to turn into a black hole by normal means of it merely drawing to the end of it's life, but the Sathanas juggernauts may have had the technology to force it into a black hole, even if it would not have done so by the end of its life.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: NGTM-1R on February 21, 2011, 11:05:39 pm
Mass is irrelevant in the formation of a black hole, only density is required. It may not have enough mass to turn into a black hole by normal means of it merely drawing to the end of it's life, but the Sathanas juggernauts may have had the technology to force it into a black hole, even if it would not have done so by the end of its life.

As I said, that's the point. It's not merely that Sathanas are big and scary towards other ships; en masse they can beat physics up with a metal bat.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Asteroth on February 21, 2011, 11:06:35 pm
As I said, that's the point. It's not merely that Sathanas are big and scary towards other ships; en masse they can beat physics up with a metal bat.
Ah, I see. I misinterpreted your post.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Scourge of Ages on February 22, 2011, 12:15:28 am
Wow, that is really really cool to hear those things after all this time. As you said, Battuta, the answers clarified some things but at the same time didn't really negatively impact any fan-made stuff.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: T-LoW on February 22, 2011, 02:16:23 am
Awesome awesome awesome!! :eek:

I love you, Bats - and Goob of course :yes:
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Mongoose on February 22, 2011, 03:15:51 am
Wow, this is really really cool stuff. :) A lot of the story-related answers are things that we've surmised/anticipated over the years, but there are a few surprising nuggets in there too.  The fact that Jason saw the Shivans as something like, as Battuta put it, von Neumann machines gone wrong is pretty damn awesome.  The part about any potential sequel involving a trip to Shivantown (hee, sounds like something out of JAD) makes a lot of sense too...if the GTVA ever had any hope of survival over the long run, they'd eventually have to see just how deep the rabbit-hole goes.  It's interesting to learn that :v: had vague plans of getting the Ancients involved somehow, too.

The one answer that does give me a bit of pause is about the Lucifer fleet as a "scouting party" meant to wipe out any intelligent life it encountered.  (Heh, maybe that FS2 box blurb was accurate after all.)  I'm not sure how well that really meshes with what happens in both games.  We know (or at least can safely surmise) that the Lucifer fleet was what wiped the Ancients out thousands of years ago, and that they didn't do much of anything to Terrans or Vasudans until the start of FS1.  We also know that the Shivan forces beyond the Knossos were presumably cut off from our space until the Trinity reactivated the Knossos and entered the nebula.  Knowing those things, I'm not sure how the Lucifer can be seen as paving the way for the Sathanas fleet later on, given that a line of contact between the two didn't exist.  (And if the Lucifer was really meant specifically to wipe out sentient species, why would they wait for so long after Terrans and Vasudans achieved space colonization?)  I've always liked to view the Lucifer fleet as having been cut off from the rest of Shivan space via the Knossos shutting down, then hanging around in some sort of dormant state until GTI meddling woke it up; its actions would have had to be completely separate from those of the Shivan forces in FS2.  I guess you could reconcile the two views by surmising that the Lucifer's original purpose was that of a forward cleanup crew, but said purpose was put on hold after the Knossos closed.  It's something to think about, anyway.

(Also, I'm not too keen on thinking of Bosch winding up as nothing more than a Shivan smoothie.  He was too cool for that. :p)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: QuantumDelta on February 22, 2011, 03:23:13 am
It meshes quite well, and I so freaking called it :P
Damn you tutta for playing it so close to the chest ;D
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Hellzed on February 22, 2011, 04:20:36 am
Some mission ideas :

1)
There is a strike at Freedom shipyards, Polaris. The shipyards have been bought by Akheton SDG and the rumor says they will fire the Terran workers. Vasudophopic speech is all over the civilian information network. The small vasudan tech crew is locked down inside the control center of the main Arcadia installation.
You have to escort an argo with the Polaris military police to the installation, destroying cargos arround the docking point to clear the path. The argo successfully docks, but the MP refuses to open fire at the shipyards workers crowd.
Then, some workers try to get to the Iceni (not complete yet) and sabotage it, you are ordered to disable their shuttle, but it blows up (that was an accident). The situation is still stuck aboard the Arcadia, but the shuttle inccident makes it turn bad : the workers start to depresurize the control center and will stop only if the shipyards are nationalized by the polaris government.
Then Bosch shows up with an Orion destroyer, makes a speech about retstored "social peace" and says he has full authority from the Polaris Government to restore social peace, and that starts with the shipyards nationalization. GTVA command does not respond for a moment, after that you have to return to base.

2)
Who is in charge in the Polaris system isn't clear anymore. Your command officer is wainting for new orders. The GTVA High Representative is unreachable. The Vasudan Trade and Recovery Office needs you to escort a vasudan convoy to a safer place, Sirius system.
During the mission, the convoy is ordered to power down its engines by NTF fighters because some vasudans aboard are accused of economic crimes under new Neo Terran Workers Protection Act. Half of the confoy powers down, the other will only respond to GTVA authority.
You head to the Sirius node as the NTF fighter turn hostile and try to engage the convoy. The other half of the convoy is destroyed, and your command officer advise you to get out of the system, because if you return to base you will face court martial.

But there is a court martial, and even if you are not convicted of killing "GTVA" pilots, but under Neo Terran Sirius Alliance officers pressure inside local GTVA, you resign and start working for a private military company...

x) Some mission about how Arthur Roemig turned into a SOC operative...

3)
Starting with the player trying to find the Trinity and retrieve a piece of data for the SOC before anyone (NTF, GTVA or Shivans) finds it. You kill Kappa because it spots your AWACS. You find the Trinity and have to persuade Roemig to send the file but he want's to be saved because he feels betrayed by the SOC, but you don't have support to help him, and the Aquitaine recon is closing on you.
Here, you have a choice : use a computer backdoor to extract the data, and feel like a son of a b**** (possibly repell some shivans during the transfer); talk him into beeing a hero ("If you die now, everything you have done for the SOC would have been useless") and lying to him, telling him you gave intelligence to the Aquitaine in order to retrieve the Trinity.
Then you are ordered to retreat to safe distance and call in bombers to wipe out the Trinity, because if the Vasudans learn about some Terrans inside the GTVI working with the NTF, some Vasudan Admirals could turn hostile to the GTVA (ant that happens during the main FS2 campaign in SOC deepcover operations).
The Alpha and Zetta wings shiw up first, and you are ordered to go on with the a fighter sweep, but Shivans show up just at this moment so you can watch the massacre from a safe place, and go home.

4)
A mission (or 2, or 3) a bout taking back home the 4 mara fighters recon emerging from the second knossos. Hiding with a science cruiser inside a debris field, escorting SOC folks to the last destroyer in the nebula, going to the rendez-vous point and finding a whole bunch of shivans and finally, escaping through the node...

5)
A mission about following a Sathanas trough subspace during the Capella event. Some king of Subspace Ops monitoring unknown subspace distorsion, but when everything goes wrong, the only way to survive would be to follow the Shivans to Shivantown. And perhaps finding Bosch. And a whole lot of nebulas. And ancients.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: SF-Junky on February 22, 2011, 04:33:41 am
Thank you, :v:, for spilling all my good ideas for upcoming StormFront campaigns. :rolleyes: :P

I need to be faster with finishing my stuff...
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Dilmah G on February 22, 2011, 04:39:32 am
This is pretty cool stuff, good work to everyone who was involved. Almost makes me kinda sad that they didn't make FS3 or the expansion pack.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Black Wolf on February 22, 2011, 04:54:04 am
Quote
We had a sense that the Shivan fleet in FS1 was a scouting party—searching for stars suitable for blowing up and cleansing the space of biological life. The Shivan fleet in FS2 then came in to collapse the stars and open up the new nodes to Shivantown. Now what come through those nodes is anyone’s guess—perhaps factories that churned out new ships to continue the cycle. I felt that the Shivans were very, very old and had been at this for millions of years perhaps. Maybe they outlived their original purpose and were living out these endless loops of destruction and creation long after their creators had died off. Or maybe the master race was still alive and aware of what they had unleashed.

That whole paragraph is so cool. :D
Think about the implications - it means that there must be masses of supernovaed stars to Shivantown all over space - it's be like a spiderweb, with tendrils reaching all over the galaxy. Of course, logistically, it means the Shivans should have crushed the GTVA even more efficently than they actually did, which opens up whole new avenues of coolness - like maybe the Shivans were kind of the last remnants of a dead empire, with masses of subspace infrastructure, but no base from which to exploit it, a shell, essentially, a shadow of former glories. Or a tool of such a species, as implied in the interview.


Quote
For FreeSpace 2, we had to work within tight constraints.  We had to use most of the original FS1 assets, no action cutscenes, no new species and nothing massively ambitious.

I wonder if this explains the overall lower quality of the FS2 assets? Not that they were bad persay - stuff like the Deimos and the Hatshepsut had great designs, but the implementation was much sloppier than FS1's lovingly UVMapped  and high res-textured ships. It sounds like FS2 was quite restricted in terms of assets and such - makes sense when you consider they churned both it and Silent Threat out in around a year whilst simultaneously developing two brand new franchises.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Snail on February 22, 2011, 05:21:40 am
:( :(

I'M LITERALLY CRYING AAUUUGH
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: QuantumDelta on February 22, 2011, 05:22:34 am
Why snail cry?
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Snail on February 22, 2011, 05:25:28 am
For the first time in my life, my heart is filled with joy

Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: QuantumDelta on February 22, 2011, 05:28:55 am
Beautiful sir, beautiful.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Jeff Vader on February 22, 2011, 05:31:24 am
Kool ****.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Jeff Vader on February 22, 2011, 05:31:55 am
Double post!
Burn the witch!
Meh, no one seems to care anymore.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on February 22, 2011, 06:07:31 am
Ahhh you collapse stars and you get black holes. Cappella has enough mass to get you a nice black hole ;)

No it doesn't.  It doesn't even apparently have enough mass to supernova. That's part of the point.

I stand corrected. You're absolutely right. I somehow confused the mass of the star with the mass of the final state of a supernova. Capella has 2.7 sol masses, and that is somewhat the minimum mass of such black holes. The stars that create such black holes however have more than 20 solar masses.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 22, 2011, 07:12:07 am
FreeSpace Capella is nothing like real-life Capella anyway, I believe the star in FreeSpace is significantly smaller (and there's only one instead of 4).
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Mikes on February 22, 2011, 07:27:57 am
Imagine. Dyson spheres, closely to red dwarf suns, black structures that let reddish corona pass through, giant balloons of gas sucking up power. Black cities of habors, cables joining thousands of sathanas. In the void center, a black hole. Could be Cappella.

Wouldn't that have been a great ending for FS3? A campaign first dealing with what the Shivans brough to Capella... optimism building... commulating in a huge push to the Shivan home system......  to have the whole taskforce utterly destroyed and the antagonist either killed or barely escaping with a few survivors. The End! Tada! :)

Then in Freespace 4 we could fly through some dangerous trench and hit the vuuulnerable spot....  or use a computer virus and place a bomb after an uplifting speech by the president uh... or something... :coughs:



Seriously... i think ending on a cliffhanger was the best thing that s happened to the Freespace franchise ;)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: TrashMan on February 22, 2011, 08:34:46 am
Interesting. It is almost spot on with my own ideas. :p

However, it would be good to note that [V] had ideas and concepts, not a definite plan. So if FS3 happened, there's no telling if it would have been following that specific concept.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 22, 2011, 08:38:02 am
Like I said in the first post, it pretty much fits everyone's ideas.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Nohiki on February 22, 2011, 09:11:39 am
I find this rather anticlimactic. I was expectingsome complex story about the shivans and instead i get that even they don't know. well, I should have expected that when there's no game there's no story written :D Other than that this is very satisfying, especially that about bosh. I really wanted the alliance to work but i wanted even more to see the bastard dead :)
Good Jobttuta.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 22, 2011, 09:13:11 am
He didn't say Bosch was dead.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: BengalTiger on February 22, 2011, 09:28:59 am
He didn't say Bosch was dead.
But he kind of gave a hint that Bosch is now Carl's b****.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Nohiki on February 22, 2011, 09:46:00 am
He said it didn't end well for him. If he ain't dead, it means he's still sufferig which is even better :lol:
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Snail on February 22, 2011, 09:47:07 am
I dunno, maybe he got turned into some transhumanist cyborg cliche.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Sololop on February 22, 2011, 09:49:41 am
Mind blown.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Stormkeeper on February 22, 2011, 10:44:38 am
Well. I seem to remember someone asking about an interview with [V]. JGZinv, I believe.

To quote Manny the Mammoth, 'Wish granted!'

And I think they were right. The mystery with the Shivans, their motives, Bosch and ETAK, the Knossos; the sheer cliffhanger ending in FreeSpace 2 has propelled the mod community to make their own campaigns and in turn made FS2 live far longer than any other game that I know of.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Mobius on February 22, 2011, 10:55:12 am
First of all, congratulations. We as a whole have been willing to read news like this for years. :D

I find those revelations about the Shivans expectable, but in the good sense. I was thinking, in fact, to add a "Cylon-like" Shivan theory to the FreeSpace Wiki some time ago.

I also find interesting the decision to ask :v: something about character-driven campaigns, but I'm afraid the answer we got is a bit ambiguous. In poor words, they (he) claimed they would feature characters, but that doesn't mean they would have turned FreeSpace 3 into a character-driven campaign. Character-driven, at least in our jargon, indicates a campaign where a talking protagonist interacts with other characters, and the psychological aspects of all characters have a primary role in the campaign.

Thanks to Snipes, who turned average missions into memorable ones, we learned that adding characters can be a powerful storytelling and balancing tool. Pretty much all campaigns feature characters nowadays, as does Inferno which absolutely isn't character driven, but that doesn't mean all those campaigns are character-driven. It's not the presence of characters that defines the genre a campaign belongs to, it's the way those characters are handled that makes the difference. Just my 0.2€.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 22, 2011, 10:59:31 am
Who cares? The point is that he's happy with people taking multiple approaches - that way everyone can find a campaign they like. We wouldn't all want to play the same style over and over again.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: headdie on February 22, 2011, 12:04:56 pm
Firstly i seriously hope the answers have been put on the wiki.

secondly there is a lot of attention on the star's collapse creating the node, how about the saths drain the star of its energy to create the node/supernode and in draining the energy from the star causes the collapse/supernova
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Admiral Nelson on February 22, 2011, 12:26:51 pm
The true face of Terran Command:

(http://www.will.uiuc.edu/fm/images/rcoopr.jpg)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Raiden on February 22, 2011, 12:41:24 pm
This is mental, thanks Battuta. I always did like the notion of the Shivans motives involving their trying to return home. I preferred to think that the Sathanas fleet was the only Shivan presence in our galaxy/observable universe/dimension who were somehow trapped here. Although this never really explained their genocidal tendencies but I just put that down to incomphrensible behaviour from imcomphrensible beings.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Macielos on February 22, 2011, 12:57:16 pm
A very interesting interview. That's good that someone in Volition still remembers about Freespace and its community :D. We didn't find out anything special, all this facts about Bosch and the Shivans were in some way discussed on HLP or other forums about Freespace. But I must say that (paradoxically) that I'm glad there'll be no Freespace 3 in foreseeable future. Firstly because Freespace 3 would probably be a copy of what we've already seen in Inferno, Blue Planet and other mods - reestablishing contact with Earth and another return of the Shivans - and then a counter offensive of the GTVA and attack on the Shivan home systems. And secondly - because Freespace 3 would stroke out a lot of campaigns, a lot of alternative stories of Post-Capella. It's a big advantage of Freespace 2 that there will always be a space for fan-made sequels of the FS2 storyline. And I can't see the point of changing that.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Infamus on February 22, 2011, 01:43:33 pm
So basically the Shivans are tasked with building the Galactic Autobahn and the GTVA is getting the short stick of eminent domain so they can put in a subspace bypass? 

Everyone grab your towel.
I present you with One Free Internet.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: BengalTiger on February 22, 2011, 02:11:39 pm
So basically the Shivans are tasked with building the Galactic Autobahn and the GTVA is getting the short stick of eminent domain so they can put in a subspace bypass? 

Everyone grab your towel.
I present you with One Free Internet.

Why only 1, and not 42?
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: 0rph3u5 on February 22, 2011, 03:30:48 pm
Horray! My campaigns might violate the official :v-old: plot-dimension!

The Old World is not dead however....

----

Anyhow, great job Battuta...
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: ssmit132 on February 22, 2011, 04:29:35 pm
The true face of Terran Command:

(http://www.will.uiuc.edu/fm/images/rcoopr.jpg)
He doesn't actually look that different. Sure he has hair, but still.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Admiral Nelson on February 22, 2011, 06:23:34 pm
Here (http://will.illinois.edu/liveandlocal/program/thursday-august-19-2010/) is a current sample of his voice.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Mongoose on February 22, 2011, 06:34:23 pm
Man, he sounds so smooth and soothing there.  It's kind of hilarious to picture Command's lines in that tone. :D
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Hades on February 22, 2011, 06:46:02 pm
We can't stop here, this is Shivantown!
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Jadehawk on February 22, 2011, 07:06:44 pm
OK,  :v-old: said The Lucifer Fleet was "A" scouting Party. Which to me means one of "THEM" So there could be more than one Scouting party of other Lucifer Fleets out there? Space is a BIG back Yard....So I'm guessing there should be more of these Scouting parties out there.   :nod:

I would vision FS3 to be the GTVA building up and amassing a huge fleet after they reestablished contact with Earth and Earth it's self held a partial secret as Key in defeating the Shivans. A Mini SOC campaign (with old Snipes of course in charge) making the first intrusion into the inner Shivan Space and eventually discovering the Shivan Homeworld.  You know what happens after that  :yes:
 
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 22, 2011, 07:10:30 pm
OK,  :v-old: said The Lucifer Fleet was "A" scouting Party. Which to me means one of "THEM" So there could be more than one Scouting party of other Lucifer Fleets out there? Space is a BIG back Yard....So I'm guessing there should be more of these Scouting parties out there.   :nod:

I would vision FS3 to be the GTVA building up and amassing a huge fleet after they reestablished contact with Earth and Earth it's self held a partial secret as Key in defeating the Shivans. A Mini SOC campaign (with old Snipes of course in charge) making the first intrusion into the inner Shivan Space and eventually discovering the Shivan Homeworld.  You know what happens after that  :yes:

we all die?
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Thaeris on February 22, 2011, 10:24:12 pm
The true face of Terran Command:

(http://www.will.uiuc.edu/fm/images/rcoopr.jpg)

I think someone needs to make a head .ani out of that image...

:p
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: NGTM-1R on February 22, 2011, 10:35:12 pm
OK,  :v-old: said The Lucifer Fleet was "A" scouting Party.

I still don't really buy that. The way he words it is permissive, and of the two missions he assigns one of them is by no stretch of the imagination scout work but implies a fair amount of combat power simply to accomplish it in a timely manner.

I do note that this does seem to kill the idea these were not different groups of Shivans.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: BlueFlames on February 22, 2011, 10:40:42 pm
we all die?

That's where I always saw FreeSpace going.  Beating the Lucifer was a hollow victory, given the loss of Vasuda Prime and the only subspace link to Sol.  The Sathanas fleet pretty well had its way with Capella, despite the best efforts of both the Terrans and Vasudans.  Opening a subspace expressway to the Shivan homeworld seems like recipe for disaster.  Presuming the capability to attack the Shivans in their home seems like the kind of hubris that got the GTVA into a pinch time and again.

Even if the GTVA were to forego an attack, though, it seems as though the Shivans have enough assets around Allied space to stamp out the last vestiges of Terran and Vasudan resistance, even without the aforementioned expressway to Shivantown.  That's the premise I was operating on, as I outlined the story arc for Bounded:  The GTVA is boxed in, but they just don't realize it.

To me, the happiest of all possible endings for the FreeSpace franchise would be to have the Shivans go stompy-stompy-smash-smash before the Sol node can be restabilized.  If the Delta Serpentis -> Sol node remains sealed, then humanity continues to exist, in a safe haven, beyond the reach of the Shivans.  If that node is reopened, before the Shivans make their final assault on the GTVA, then there is nowhere for anyone to hide.

Leaving the node sealed rather demands a distant-future becoming-the-enemy story, though....  A few billion years down the road, Terrans undergo a last-ditch effort to utilize the death of Sol to escape their star system's natural end.  Beautiful and terrifying symmetry.

More to the point of the thread, though, excellent job securing the interview Battuta.  A community this size, centered about a game this old, getting the time of day from a developer would be impressive.  That you sat someone down, and he was willing to invest the time to give proper, thought-out answers is quite heartening indeed.  The other side of the coin is that the openness regarding details of the planned FreeSpace 3 arc is rather telling of what they think the chances of FS3 ever being made are.  You don't spoil the major events of a game you are making or expect to make.

Still, my thanks to Battuta for performing the interview, and to Volition both for indulging the community's questions and making the best damn space sims ever.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: NGTM-1R on February 22, 2011, 10:45:01 pm
Unfortunately, Shivans Fall Everyone Dies makes for poor game at best. FS3 would never have gone there.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: SypheDMar on February 22, 2011, 10:55:18 pm
But I must say that (paradoxically) that I'm glad there'll be no Freespace 3 in foreseeable future. Firstly because Freespace 3 would probably be a copy of what we've already seen in Inferno, Blue Planet and other mods - reestablishing contact with Earth and another return of the Shivans - and then a counter offensive of the GTVA and attack on the Shivan home systems. And secondly - because Freespace 3 would stroke out a lot of campaigns, a lot of alternative stories of Post-Capella. It's a big advantage of Freespace 2 that there will always be a space for fan-made sequels of the FS2 storyline. And I can't see the point of changing that.
... Lame.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Goober5000 on February 22, 2011, 11:00:58 pm
POSTING IN EPIC THREAD (and moving it to Interviews)

This is pretty awesome. :)  Thanks Battuta for conducting the interview!

(And I think it's hilarious that Command's actual name is Roger. :lol:)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: BlueFlames on February 22, 2011, 11:18:43 pm
Unfortunately, Shivans Fall Everyone Dies makes for poor game at best. FS3 would never have gone there.

It could have worked, as long as the illusion of hope existed until the last possible minute.  It'd be something more akin to, "Rocks Shivans fall; make a reflex save to evade.  That didn't work so well....  Make a fortitude save to resist the crushing weight of the rocks Shivans.  ...  It's a gruesome death."

Volition did more or less that in FreeSpace 2.  Think of how much back-pedalling they did with regards to their objectives.  "Ravana?  Pfft.  We'll bend that over and do horrible things to it!  The nebula and everything beyond is ours!"  Then that became, "Sathanas?  Mayhap we should consider leaving well enough alone and let the Shivans keep the nebula [and everything beyond]."  Then that became, "A Sathanas fleet?!  Oh, Mister Shivan, you're welcome to have Gamma Draconis!  And Capella too!  If you add a side of Epsilon Pegasai, you can make it a combo meal.  No?  Just the Gamma Draconis and Capella, then?  Right, your total is naught, because you're just going to take it all anyway."

As long as there's some hope of stopping the Shivans, the player has something to work towards, even if the end of the campaign is ultimate destruction.  If that's the direction that FS3 was going to follow, having a protracted period of stalemate (a bit of back-and-forth here and there, but no real breakthroughs for either side) would set the mood of enduring a costly, but winnable war.  Then the Shivans would build their forces in Allied space slowly, rather like they revealed themselves slowly in the nebula theater in FS2, gradually overwhelming the GTVA.  During this phase, it would appear that hitting a sensitive target or a Shivan flagship, combined with consolidating defensive forces could stop the advance or even turn the tide altogether.  Only in the final act would everything go completely to pot, and even then, an effort to escape the conquering Shivans could leave the player a hope of survival, until the final mission.

That's basically the same structure as FreeSpace 2, and I doubt you'll find a lot of people around here willing to call that particular game "poor at best."  The only difference is that the breadth of the front is wider and the scale of the destruction larger.

Not all games have to have a happy ending, and really, the way the FreeSpace series has developed, an ultimate victory over the Shivans would feel completely out-of-place, especially now that we know that the first two games focused on the shivan equivilant of a heavy scouting group and a road works crew, respectively.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: NGTM-1R on February 22, 2011, 11:47:01 pm
It could have worked, as long as the illusion of hope existed until the last possible minute.  It'd be something more akin to, "Rocks Shivans fall; make a reflex save to evade.  That didn't work so well....  Make a fortitude save to resist the crushing weight of the rocks Shivans.  ...  It's a gruesome death."

No, it could not. No company of any repute would release a game that ended with such a "**** you, lol, it was all for nothing" to the player. NWN 2 caught a crapload of heat for doing the Rocks Fall Everyone Dies after you saved the world. FS2 didn't even go that far; you saved the Terran and Vasudan races and you and your wingmates could quite possibly live to tell.

Your analysis of the FS2 plot makes little sense as well. There was no period of stalemate; the GTVA diverted its efforts to finishing off the NTF. The Shivans did not gradually reveal themselves; this is the inherent logistical issues of running a large empire via a system of jump nodes made manifest. Your conclusions are, at best, guilty of the sin of being easily interpreted a half-dozen other ways. Some of them, like analyzing FS2 as ending with everything going to hell and doooooom in the final mission, make absolutely no sense. The GTVA had a plan. It would have worked regardless of the scheduling of the Capella supernova as the Shivans showed no interest in pushing further.

That you cannot tell the difference between the total destruction of everything the player has been fighting for and its survival speaks very poorly of your ability to analyze a story.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 23, 2011, 12:04:45 am
ugh, i feel obliged to dissect this

No, it could not. No company of any repute would release a game that ended with such a "**** you, lol, it was all for nothing" to the player.

maybe, but i'm not sure that means they shouldn't

Quote
NWN 2 caught a crapload of heat for doing the Rocks Fall Everyone Dies after you saved the world. FS2 didn't even go that far; you saved the Terran and Vasudan races and you and your wingmates could quite possibly live to tell.

maybe, or maybe you didn't do anything of note

Quote
Your analysis of the FS2 plot makes little sense as well. There was no period of stalemate; the GTVA diverted its efforts to finishing off the NTF. The Shivans did not gradually reveal themselves; this is the inherent logistical issues of running a large empire via a system of jump nodes made manifest. Your conclusions are, at best, guilty of the sin of being easily interpreted a half-dozen other ways. Some of them, like analyzing FS2 as ending with everything going to hell and doooooom in the final mission, make absolutely no sense. The GTVA had a plan. It would have worked regardless of the scheduling of the Capella supernova as the Shivans showed no interest in pushing further.

i think his analysis and yours are pretty much equally evidenced, and you've argued so long and hard for this point that it's pretty much guaranteed to stumble into motivated cognition. the shivans did press for other nodes, just not with all their forces. the shivans could have been gradually revealing themselves - all those other saths could have been in the nebula all along. the fs2 ending could well be interpreted as hell and doom because the only reason the human race survives is that the shivans don't fly to the nodes and jump through; there's nothing the GTVA could have done to stop them and their plan would have failed utterly

Quote
That you cannot tell the difference between the total destruction of everything the player has been fighting for and its survival speaks very poorly of your ability to analyze a story.

when the difference between that survival and destruction is left up to the decisions of the shivans i'm not sure it's meaningfully different

no ad homs please

Just merging double posts. I don't know why. Like fighting windmills. -- jeffgreenpowervader
hrm, apparently a game company of repute did do an ending like that, cool
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Spoon on February 23, 2011, 06:25:57 am
Quote
Think of how much back-pedalling they did with regards to their objectives.  "Ravana?  Pfft.  We'll bend that over and do horrible things to it!  The nebula and everything beyond is ours!"  Then that became, "Sathanas?  Mayhap we should consider leaving well enough alone and let the Shivans keep the nebula [and everything beyond]."  Then that became, "A Sathanas fleet?!  Oh, Mister Shivan, you're welcome to have Gamma Draconis!  And Capella too!  If you add a side of Epsilon Pegasai, you can make it a combo meal.  No?  Just the Gamma Draconis and Capella, then?  Right, your total is naught, because you're just going to take it all anyway."
:lol:
I found this quite amusing
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 23, 2011, 07:50:18 am
yeah, i think the best case for FS2 as a tale of hubris and overreach (and i've argued both sides) lies in the proclamations made by your command authorities. 'with the colossus, we will [do all this awesome ****].' 'with the destruction of the ravana, we've done the coolest thing since destroying the lucifer, which won the war'. 'with the sathanas down, we've saved humanity' . 'with ETAK in our - oh. er.'

the game is cleverly written, and thus open to multiple interpretations, and any strong argument for one interpretation exclusive of the others just falls flat for me
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on February 23, 2011, 10:00:04 am
all those other saths could have been in the nebula all along

Very improbable. We see in the SOC mission that the sathana fleet is heading towards the nebula, slowly and relentlessly. They could have been in the nebula prior to that and then fell back towards other positions, but that kinda seems pointless and awkward...


About the final **** you to the player in such a mission, well, I felt exactly such a thing when playing the bitter end of FS2. I think we all experienced that. "wtf is now suppose to happen... hey, wait a minute is this thing over? It can't end like this, I mean, it just can't..... can it?  Awwww damn!!"

But I get the point that dying in the end is just too much. I think we would see smashed keyboards and flying mouses throughout the planet due to FS3...
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on February 23, 2011, 10:04:46 am
NWN 2 caught a crapload of heat for doing the Rocks Fall Everyone Dies after you saved the world.

Well at least they saved the world, now imagined that the only thing they did was to find that "salvation" was simply an impossible feat from day one. Now THAT is a **** you with balls!! :D
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 23, 2011, 10:12:47 am
all those other saths could have been in the nebula all along

Very improbable. We see in the SOC mission that the sathana fleet is heading towards the nebula, slowly and relentlessly. They could have been in the nebula prior to that and then fell back towards other positions, but that kinda seems pointless and awkward...

arbitrarily assigning a probability to this is irrelevant; there could have been X saths already in the nebula but very far away, or they could have all come out of the knossos past the binary star system, it doesn't matter, we don't know, it's whatever you need it to be to tell your story

the notion that all the saths come from the binary sath-clowncar knossos is probably most parsimonious, but only an idiot would pretend we have enough evidence to rule out all other possibilities (like a bunch of them already hanging in the nebula; the one that took out the psamtik seems to have maybe arrived after a number of other saths had)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on February 23, 2011, 10:55:05 am
all those other saths could have been in the nebula all along

Very improbable. We see in the SOC mission that the sathana fleet is heading towards the nebula, slowly and relentlessly. They could have been in the nebula prior to that and then fell back towards other positions, but that kinda seems pointless and awkward...

arbitrarily assigning a probability to this is irrelevant; there could have been X saths already in the nebula but very far away, or they could have all come out of the knossos past the binary star system, it doesn't matter, we don't know, it's whatever you need it to be to tell your story

Sure, that seems reasonable.

Quote
the notion that all the saths come from the binary sath-clowncar knossos is probably most parsimonious, but only an idiot would pretend we have enough evidence to rule out all other possibilities (like a bunch of them already hanging in the nebula; the one that took out the psamtik seems to have maybe arrived after a number of other saths had)

I seem to be at a loss to find anyone who pretended to have just that. But I guess everything is possible...
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 23, 2011, 11:03:09 am
Quote
the notion that all the saths come from the binary sath-clowncar knossos is probably most parsimonious, but only an idiot would pretend we have enough evidence to rule out all other possibilities (like a bunch of them already hanging in the nebula; the one that took out the psamtik seems to have maybe arrived after a number of other saths had)

I seem to be at a loss to find anyone who pretended to have just that. But I guess everything is possible...

the question here is whether anyone is justified in asserting that the shivans did not gradually reveal themselves, that they were coming as fast as they possibly could rather than lurking about ****ing with us - in short, that the arrival of the saths was the earliest possible given the (notional, speculative) size of the shivan empire and the (notional, speculative) difficulties of transit across (notional, speculative) long distances

 if there were multiple saths in the nebula the whole time in addition to those coming through the knossos net, then the latter may be true; if not the former may be true; but we have insufficient evidence to draw a strong conclusion, so nobody should be making strong statements

this is not an argument for the contrary; it is an argument for ambiguity
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Scotty on February 23, 2011, 01:54:38 pm
The true face of Terran Command:

(http://www.will.uiuc.edu/fm/images/rcoopr.jpg)

This man.  He most be Steele.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Kopachris on February 23, 2011, 09:40:25 pm
Wow.  Okay, how about the idea that Shivantown, or some other originally Shivan-controlled territory, is just beyond that Knossos in the binary system?  Three systems seems like a reasonable distance from Ancient-controlled territory to Shivan-controlled territory, and the Knossi are all pointing in the right direction.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Scotty on February 23, 2011, 11:06:12 pm
Shivan homeworld only three systems removed from Ancient systems?  I doubt it.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Jessnec on February 23, 2011, 11:26:31 pm
I found this node map some time back, perhaps was for FS3:

http://i.imgur.com/7Ls9Z.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/7Ls9Z.jpg)

 You can see ShivanTown! ;7
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: NGTM-1R on February 23, 2011, 11:57:48 pm
maybe, but i'm not sure that means they shouldn't

They're not doing it for the art, they're doing it to sell games. End of discussion. :P

maybe, or maybe you didn't do anything of note

Again, I have to point out that they're doing this to sell games; and the easiest and best way to draw a player in is to say their actions have weight. Assuming you did not do important things is an inherently weaker position given the nature of the medium. And even less likely given the genre. We are the children of the X-Wing games, of Wing Commander and TIE Fighter. We are used to our actions carrying weight.

Between the various actions leading up to the successful recovery of ETAK, the successful deployment of the Bastion, and the player commanding forces that inflicted severe losses on the NTF in Delta Serpentis, the odds that the player did not meaningfully impact the nature of events are low at best.

i think his analysis and yours are pretty much equally evidenced,

That was the point. I even said it was the point. Pay attention, dammit. :P

when the difference between that survival and destruction is left up to the decisions of the shivans i'm not sure it's meaningfully different

On the contrary, it is plenty relevant, otherwise you need to go take back everything you've ever said about FS1 being Independence Day because that turned on the Shivan's decisions to wander about with the Lucifer as well.

More importantly, it must turn on the Shivan's decisions. If they were intelligently employing their forces to destroy the GTVA, they literally could not fail. It was their war to lose far more than it was ever the GTVA's to win. But they did not do so; seemed disinterested in even trying. If the Shivans don't even have the destruction of the GTVA as a war aim, then that's very significant.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: DarthWang on February 24, 2011, 12:12:11 am
I found this node map some time back, perhaps was for FS3:

http://i.imgur.com/7Ls9Z.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/7Ls9Z.jpg)

 You can see ShivanTown! ;7


That's obviously a fanmade map since it includes fanmade systems like Tania Australius
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 24, 2011, 12:13:46 am
I found this node map some time back, perhaps was for FS3:

http://i.imgur.com/7Ls9Z.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/7Ls9Z.jpg)

 You can see ShivanTown! ;7


That's obviously a fanmade map since it includes fanmade systems like Tania Australius

there weren't enough gargants in this post
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Titan on February 24, 2011, 10:49:02 am
My understanding is that they made stuff up as they went along, and not even they know the answers to the fanbase's questions.  :p
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 24, 2011, 10:50:45 am
My understanding is that they made stuff up as they went along, and not even they know the answers to the fanbase's questions.  :p

Well, look, you were wrong. Isn't that nice.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: DarthWang on February 24, 2011, 12:53:17 pm
I found this node map some time back, perhaps was for FS3:

http://i.imgur.com/7Ls9Z.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/7Ls9Z.jpg)

 You can see ShivanTown! ;7


That's obviously a fanmade map since it includes fanmade systems like Tania Australius

there weren't enough gargants in this post

 :eek2: You're right!
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Titan on February 24, 2011, 03:53:57 pm
My understanding is that they made stuff up as they went along, and not even they know the answers to the fanbase's questions.  :p

Well, look, you were wrong. Isn't that nice.

No... I meant that's the vibe I got from this. Or at any rate, he doesn't fully know.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 24, 2011, 06:20:37 pm
My understanding is that they made stuff up as they went along, and not even they know the answers to the fanbase's questions.  :p

Well, look, you were wrong. Isn't that nice.

No... I meant that's the vibe I got from this. Or at any rate, he doesn't fully know.

What he told us was a hell of a lot more concrete than the answers most creative firms have for their big questions - Lost and BSG, for instance.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on February 24, 2011, 06:56:49 pm
My understanding is that they made stuff up as they went along, and not even they know the answers to the fanbase's questions.  :p

Well, look, you were wrong. Isn't that nice.

No... I meant that's the vibe I got from this. Or at any rate, he doesn't fully know.

What he told us was a hell of a lot more concrete than the answers most creative firms have for their big questions - Lost and BSG, for instance.

Translation: "It's better than zero"
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 24, 2011, 07:13:12 pm
My understanding is that they made stuff up as they went along, and not even they know the answers to the fanbase's questions.  :p

Well, look, you were wrong. Isn't that nice.

No... I meant that's the vibe I got from this. Or at any rate, he doesn't fully know.

What he told us was a hell of a lot more concrete than the answers most creative firms have for their big questions - Lost and BSG, for instance.

Translation: "It's better than zero"

Botched translation. Correction - these are genuinely solid, revealing answers that speak to the quality of Volition's storytelling and generally live up to years of expectation.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Kopachris on February 24, 2011, 07:44:15 pm
I found this node map some time back, perhaps was for FS3:

http://i.imgur.com/7Ls9Z.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/7Ls9Z.jpg)

 You can see ShivanTown! ;7
Nah.  As I understand it, the Sath fleets blow up stars to make jump nodes to Shivantown.  Therefore, Capella and the Guari Nebula (as it's called in the pic) should each contain a node linking to the same place, which would be Shivantown.  But they don't.  Still a nice map, though.  I think I'll hold on to it, thanks.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on February 24, 2011, 08:36:28 pm
My understanding is that they made stuff up as they went along, and not even they know the answers to the fanbase's questions.  :p

Well, look, you were wrong. Isn't that nice.

No... I meant that's the vibe I got from this. Or at any rate, he doesn't fully know.

What he told us was a hell of a lot more concrete than the answers most creative firms have for their big questions - Lost and BSG, for instance.

Translation: "It's better than zero"

Botched translation. Correction - these are genuinely solid, revealing answers that speak to the quality of Volition's storytelling and generally live up to years of expectation.

"Looowering Expectaations...."

Kidding aside, this is pretty much what he said:

So, he was honest when telling us that Bosch was a kind of a mix between a Macguffin and a cautionary politics tale.

Then he told us that he has no "proof" that the shivans used collapsing stars to create new jump nodes, but it would have been neat. Translation: this supernova thing could have gone many ways, as long as they were useful.

Then he told us something concrete: terrans and vasudans are supposed to go towards shivantown. Beyond that, a lot of maybes. He's guessing as much as we are, except that he had the real power to act upon his guessings by writing the real thing. All in all, "potential" is the key word he tried to convey. Well do'h. Just look at the amazingly diverse mods in here. Everyone had his own version of what could have come about after Capella. Most just hadn't a studio's resources to pull it off, but still it's an interesting landscape of variants.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 24, 2011, 08:39:41 pm
I don't think you get how the creative process works if you think that was mostly not concrete. Those are ridiculously specific answers to questions most of us thought had not even the vaguest direction yet.

But I agree with your last couple sentences, except that **** about 'guessing as much as we are', he's clearly had this stuff in mind since FS2 was finished which is more than any of us can say. He didn't make this up on the spot.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on February 24, 2011, 08:49:50 pm
Well I disagree about that. I think that ending with a supernova was just a fancy ending with a bang, and stating that we didn't know anything about shivans' intentions was both intelligent (not overreaching and preaching, but fair) and clever, for they didn't have to justify anything then, now did they?

The node thing was, I think, rather obvious. The specificity all remains within the word "ShivanTown". The mere fact that he mentioned it by that name suggests that they did have a clear intention at the time to further a story about shivan worlds. In this respect I fully concede, and that's why I didn't say it *was* zero ;).
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Droid803 on February 24, 2011, 11:37:39 pm
The guy answering the questions is the lead writer.
If he "guesses" things, that means that if FS3 was made, that's the direction he'd take it in, barring any changes to the plot for gameplay purposes or whatnot. If he has the power to act upon his "guesses" by writing the real thing, they're not ****ing guesses. You don't "guess" at where you want to take your story, because if you're the author, you are the god of your story's universe - you dictate everything, your guesses are truth.

There is no full story outline with every single major event, every mission laid out for a game that was never made, a story never written. There are vague ideas. He gave us all of that. That's more than we could ask for, you shouldn't expect any more.

Yes, just from FS2 there is ambiguity, and that is a good thing, but this information doesn't bind you to anything - you can still write your stupid story about the Shivans blowing up Capella to harvest gasses from a nebula and forming a Terran-Shivan alliance with Bosch and fighting a Shivan Civil war - these statements don't change the validity of even that ridiculous story. All this does is provide insight to what FS3 may have been, had it been made...yay for self jab
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: mjn.mixael on February 24, 2011, 11:41:28 pm
The guy answering the questions is the lead writer.
If he "guesses" things, that means that if FS3 was made, that's the direction he'd take it in, barring any changes to the plot for gameplay purposes or whatnot. If he has the power to act upon his "guesses" by writing the real thing, they're not ****ing guesses. You don't "guess" at where you want to take your story, because if you're the author, you are the god of your story's universe - you dictate everything, your guesses are truth.

There is no full story outline with every single major event, every mission laid out for a game that was never made, a story never written. There are vague ideas. He gave us all of that. That's more than we could ask for, you shouldn't expect any more.

Yes, just from FS2 there is ambiguity, and that is a good thing, but this information doesn't bind you to anything - you can still write your stupid story about the Shivans blowing up Capella to harvest gasses from a nebula and forming a Terran-Shivan alliance with Bosch and fighting a Shivan Civil war - these statements don't change the validity of even that ridiculous story. All this does is provide insight to what FS3 may have been, had it been made...yay for self jab

 :yes: :yes:
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on February 25, 2011, 07:28:44 am
When I was reading the replies in the first post, I kept wondering, "Hmm, why didn't I think of that?"

I'm not very imaginative, but when I start to think along this line upon reading the words of a storyteller, I know that one is good in one's craft.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: jr2 on February 25, 2011, 08:11:15 am
I dunno, maybe he got turned into some transhumanist cyborg cliche.

My brother (goes by m here) was doing a campaign where that happened years ago.  He got a few missions in.  Was kinda interesting, but got abandoned.  Good ol' GTSA, Galactic Terran-Shivan Alliance.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on February 25, 2011, 09:45:58 am
The guy answering the questions is the lead writer.
If he "guesses" things, that means that if FS3 was made, that's the direction he'd take it in, barring any changes to the plot for gameplay purposes or whatnot. If he has the power to act upon his "guesses" by writing the real thing, they're not ****ing guesses. You don't "guess" at where you want to take your story, because if you're the author, you are the god of your story's universe - you dictate everything, your guesses are truth.

Of course it is a guess. He's guessing what he would have done in an alternative dimension where he would have been dispached to write FS3. God knows what the technical limitations (or lack thereof) he would have had to cope, what kind of new gaming experience he would have had to promote (the techical achievement of rendering nebulas in FS2, for example, was the major driver of the plot...), and what kind of plot limitations he would have found.

Those who think that being creative is being a "God" don't know what they are talking about. Creativity is all about reaching your limits, and for that you have first to establish them. Creativity is not ex nihilo.

Quote
There is no full story outline with every single major event, every mission laid out for a game that was never made, a story never written. There are vague ideas. He gave us all of that. That's more than we could ask for, you shouldn't expect any more.

Please tell me what I should or shouldn't expect.

Quote
Yes, just from FS2 there is ambiguity, and that is a good thing, but this information doesn't bind you to anything - you can still write your stupid story about the Shivans blowing up Capella to harvest gasses from a nebula and forming a Terran-Shivan alliance with Bosch and fighting a Shivan Civil war - these statements don't change the validity of even that ridiculous story. All this does is provide insight to what FS3 may have been, had it been made...yay for self jab

Where are you going, man? Chill out. My ridiculous ideas have nothing to do with "guessing" where FS3 might have gone, only a variant, among hundreds. I would have never limited myself, if I had the time that is, to what some writers thought it was best to go for. The world of imagination should not be bound by such little pettiness.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 25, 2011, 09:48:14 am
Take this pointless debate over semantics somewhere else.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on February 25, 2011, 09:49:10 am
Ahh whatever.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: jr2 on February 25, 2011, 12:05:29 pm
Split out the arguments and sticky the rest?
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 25, 2011, 12:20:23 pm
hrm should i sticky this
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: NGTM-1R on February 25, 2011, 04:28:01 pm
The guy answering the questions is the lead writer.
If he "guesses" things, that means that if FS3 was made, that's the direction he'd take it in, barring any changes to the plot for gameplay purposes or whatnot. If he has the power to act upon his "guesses" by writing the real thing, they're not ****ing guesses. You don't "guess" at where you want to take your story, because if you're the author, you are the god of your story's universe - you dictate everything, your guesses are truth.

Inherent problem: he is the lead writer. That means he's not the only writer, or the project director, or the production house, or... You get the idea. There's still plenty of other people who have a say in things. If we were talking fanfiction, you would be speaking truth, but the moment we stray into professional territory an increasing number of people have the power to **** with your storyline.

So these are very solid, but I wouldn't call them absolute.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Mr. Vega on February 25, 2011, 09:47:39 pm
I've always supported the theory that the motives of the Shivans have to do with the construction, maintenance, and expansion of the subspace jump node network, and that they see technologically advanced races originating from real space as a threat to subspace due to their (ab)use of it in travel or in warfare.

I'm not the biggest fan of the Shivantown idea. They are much more imposing villains as nomads, especially within realspace. That said, if the previously mentioned theory is correct, then any attempt to inflict genuine harm upon the Shivans might be disastrous to subspace.

More wild speculation: Would the Knossos portal and its node stabilization ability therefore be an attempt by the Ancients to pacify or mollify the Shivans? Or possibly even to take on and ursurp the Shivans' function as caretakers of the node network?

Ok, sorry, this thread was supposed to be about interpreting the interview, not throwing in my own stuff. I'll stop now.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: BlackDove on February 26, 2011, 04:55:32 am
Glad he cleared up some of the things definitively to you guys.

Some of us, of course, knew all of this beforehand (and actually know a bit more).

Good job Bat.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Stormkeeper on February 26, 2011, 05:13:35 am
Topic split. A bit badly, I will admit. You may carry on with thy discussions.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 26, 2011, 11:22:53 am
Glad he cleared up some of the things definitively to you guys.

Some of us, of course, knew all of this beforehand (and actually know a bit more).

Good job Bat.

well don't be a tease
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Snail on February 26, 2011, 11:26:03 am
(and actually know a bit more).
where are the puppies
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Spoon on February 26, 2011, 12:32:11 pm
Glad he cleared up some of the things definitively to you guys.

Some of us, of course, knew all of this beforehand (and actually know a bit more).
So can you tell us when Blackwater operations will be released?
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Nuclear1 on February 26, 2011, 06:22:04 pm
I found this node map some time back, perhaps was for FS3:

http://i.imgur.com/7Ls9Z.jpg (http://i.imgur.com/7Ls9Z.jpg)

 You can see ShivanTown! ;7


That looks like the BWO nodemap...
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Stormkeeper on February 26, 2011, 11:55:01 pm
Funny. Was sure I had split it.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 27, 2011, 12:05:00 am
I unsplit it.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Mr. Vega on February 27, 2011, 11:15:45 am
That map actually belongs to the Behind Enemy Lines campaign.

Which had its last update, what, eleven years ago?
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: JCDNWarrior on February 27, 2011, 11:25:36 am
That map actually belongs to the Behind Enemy Lines campaign.

Which had its last update, what, eleven years ago?

A modified community version of this map would be great though.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 27, 2011, 11:35:00 am
That is a community version, you're free to do whatever you like to it.
Stop splitting this, Christ.

Just merging double posts. I don't know why. Like fighting windmills. -- jeffgreenpowervader
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: NGTM-1R on February 27, 2011, 02:49:43 pm
Stop splitting this, Christ.

I doubt that's his name.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Mongoose on February 27, 2011, 06:09:24 pm
Seriously, I've had the New Post button jump to the same exact spot like three times now. :p
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on February 28, 2011, 08:09:53 pm
hrm should i sticky this

I know it's already stickied, but I think the answer should have been in-your-face obvious...
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on February 28, 2011, 08:12:04 pm
That was back in General FS where it actually got discussed. Maybe I'll move it back there.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Nuclear1 on March 01, 2011, 02:06:17 am
Yeah, I always thought moving it here was a bad idea.  The Interviews board doesn't get much attention, unfortunately.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: SypheDMar on March 01, 2011, 07:22:11 am
It should, though. Just because it's not on the top of the board anymore doesn't make it a bad read. Too bad it doesn't work that way. But rather than the thread being down here that's being the fault, maybe the case is that it's been discusses to its fullest rather than lack of attention. I feel that even if it was back up at General FS board, it'd be the same thing said, but instead of the members who posted saying something, it'd be members who just joined.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on March 01, 2011, 09:43:24 am
guess we'll find out
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Riptide572 on March 01, 2011, 10:36:35 pm
Well, well, well.

Most interesting indeed.

So, how does collapsing a star make a jump node? I though nodes required a star's gravity well to exist?

Or a body of sufficent mass. :-)
I think the remnants of a supernova (ie. a black hole or neutron star) should suffice.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Fenrir on March 02, 2011, 12:52:36 am
Welp. This was neat and unexpected.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Aramil on March 06, 2011, 02:04:16 pm
Well, well, well.

Most interesting indeed.

So, how does collapsing a star make a jump node? I though nodes required a star's gravity well to exist?

Or a body of sufficent mass. :-)
I think the remnants of a supernova (ie. a black hole or neutron star) should suffice.

It's all about mass and energy and while a star has a lot of both a black hole or neutron star would focus this into a very small area of space, increasing it's direct influence on other planes i.e. hyperspace itself.

The upshot would be with the correct knowledge (which you would assume they have) you could predict (and possibly engineer) the forming of stable jump nodes, and also the destruction of others. Therefore opening up & closing off areas of space to the jump node system.

It could be why some Shivan ships stayed at the stars destruction to act as some sort of focus or transmitter through space to some other destination.

Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Marcov on March 07, 2011, 11:13:01 am
Hmmm...

They're not as mysterious as I thought. These seemingly were merely the "raw" ingredients and not the final plans for FS3 or the final answer to the Shivans' existence, so can they be considered canon facts?

...so the Shivans are simply super-Ancients. Amusing...

...but apparently less interesting.  :blah:

Still, what happens to Bosch remains unanswered. :sigh:

Mind if I ask who had been interviewed?
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on March 07, 2011, 11:24:07 am
Hmmm...

They're not as mysterious as I thought. These seemingly were merely the "raw" ingredients and not the final plans for FS3 or the final answer to the Shivans' existence, so can they be considered canon facts?

...so the Shivans are simply super-Ancients. Amusing...

...but apparently less interesting.  :blah:

Still, what happens to Bosch remains unanswered. :sigh:

Mind if I ask who had been interviewed?

Jason Scott, lead writer on FS2.

And I don't think you're reading it right, or that you understand what the intent here is at all.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: BlackDove on March 07, 2011, 12:06:16 pm
Glad he cleared up some of the things definitively to you guys.

Some of us, of course, knew all of this beforehand (and actually know a bit more).

Good job Bat.

well don't be a tease

Some of us who were around while the developers actually played the game (having played squadwars and matches with them) picked up masses of stuff from them. Though many of the things they told us were in confidence, but even as such, hypothetical anyway (general directions, they didn't have much of the stuff bolted down either).

Throughout the years discussing different ideas with the community, you sort of find out that people in general aren't interested in what makes sense, just that their own interpretation and deduction be correct, ie "No, it's the way I envision it to be". And as I would never be able to directly state "it's like this, this and this", anything I say just passes off as my own opinion, and I never expose the weight of what I know behind them. I've carried many people's secrets throughout these past 13 years, and have no intention of ever breaking the seal on any of them. Neither am I interested in shopping my opinions as being correct either. They're still just opinions, although perhaps with a little more information behind them than most have access to.

But I'm glad he let the cat out of the bag on some of it (though he's pretty smart, he didn't really tell you much of anything vital - not that it matters anyway, because if they ever got to the point where they'd create an FS3, it would be entirely different than what was envisioned all those years ago [think franchise reboot, new staff members, wholly new ideas from the new members, etc.]), so that you guys can get some general direction. It means more when you can show it comes from the horses mouth.

Again, kudos on the job.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: DarthWang on March 07, 2011, 03:29:27 pm
If the ideas are never going to be used, what's the harm in telling us them?
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Ace on March 07, 2011, 04:30:57 pm
What's said here fits pretty close with what a lot of us have been thinking for years:

The Shivans create/destroy nodes using Sathanas fleets.

"Shivan town" being some sort of Dyson grid around stars.

An interesting take might be the Shivans destroying life out of a 'conservation protocol' for the heat death of the universe. Destroying stars to reconfigure the subspace network to an optimum. (destroying stars like Capella draws in energy from subspace to stave off entropy or somesuch)

Wiping out sentients that reach the capacity to threaten the grand design (subspace technology and ability to destroy nodes).

Some technologies like the Knossos or use of meson bombs would garner their wrath more than others.

Things such as splitting main sequence stars into smaller dwarfs would be an additional 'threat' if the Shivans had stripped down their entire culture towards attempting to survive heat death.

Effectively they wipe out species who have subspace technology, reconfigure the nodes with some novas, and then spread "Shivantown" by turning the stars into slow burning red dwarves and making dyson grids.

They've been at it for millions, if not billions, of years and perhaps the trick the GTVA learns is that this is the "Shivan master plan" and how to keep themselves and other species alive is to do strikes once and a while, blow up some grids and stars, and keep the Shivans off-kilter. You can never truly defeat them, but you can actively contain them with constantly having to rebuild "Shivantown."

Perhaps ETAK plays a role in learning that the Shivans don't have a hive mind or a real society, they're just enacting these ancient practices (religious nuts?). ETAK perhaps being used to disrupt Shivan organization with the deep strikes, and they can't adapt since they no longer innovate/have a real culture.

The main thing being that the GTVA has amassed the cumulative knowledge of all of the Ancients who came before, learned how to cooperate, and becomes the first species to break the cycle.

In my mind I've always thought of the Sathanas as being like a Faustus. So perhaps seeing the true extent of the Shivan fleet and how to win is through subtlety and trickery becomes the goal. (as opposed to FS2 where they tried to win on even terms)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: aldo_14 on March 07, 2011, 04:43:06 pm
Cool.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on March 07, 2011, 04:48:40 pm
Cool.

Keep rockin' the RPS comments threads
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: GruntMinion on March 07, 2011, 10:25:08 pm
Well, it's good to hear from a  :v: member. Really does put some more information on Shivans and what they are up to rather than them being mass murdurers for no apparent reason. Heh, guess we'll have to wait and see what will happen.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Polpolion on March 07, 2011, 11:02:42 pm
Curious: How many of you are actually taking the FS3ish type stuff as canon material? IMHO it's all really interesting to see what was planned, but to be honest using this stuff as more than a "so that's what would've happened in FS3" seems silly.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Gortef on March 08, 2011, 02:33:02 am
You know. It's nice and all, but imagine how cool job it must be a Shivan Nodebuilder/destroyer. All the Shivan kids want to be one.

- "Hey kid, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
- "I want to be a Nodebuilder!"
- "How so?"
- "Because I get to blow up planets and stars!"
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Mars on March 08, 2011, 03:47:25 am
You know. It's nice and all, but imagine how cool job it must be a Shivan Nodebuilder/destroyer. All the Shivan kids want to be one.

- "Hey kid, what do you want to be when you grow up?"
- "I want to be a Nodebuilder!"
- "How so?"
- "Because I get to blow up planets and stars!"

Great except that you also blow up yourself
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: ssmit132 on March 08, 2011, 04:35:51 am
Just a pesky occupational hazard.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: NGTM-1R on March 08, 2011, 04:41:23 am
Great except that you also blow up yourself

Only some of the time.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Marcov on March 09, 2011, 10:45:11 am
Hmm...hope he really intends to develop the plot for FS3...
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on March 09, 2011, 11:02:30 am
Hmm...hope he really intends to develop the plot for FS3...

No, he doesn't, I have no idea where you got that idea, and your posts are terrible.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Marcov on March 09, 2011, 08:23:09 pm
Volition plans to make an FS3. Or perhaps he doesn't have anything to do with it?

Quote
your posts are terrible.

Well I think I got wronged for the first part, but my previous post was nothing more of an opinion to the subject. Perhaps you find my not-so-optimistic reply pretty irritating for you, especially for the fact that most members replying in this thread thanked you for doing it, yet I, so far, did not. If you like, I'll do it for you.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on March 09, 2011, 08:30:22 pm
I don't really give a ****, I just think you're contributing nothing because you don't understand what's going on.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Marcov on March 09, 2011, 08:43:33 pm
I didn't intend to contribute in any way in my previous post, just merely state an opinion on the topic.

So if Shivanity is really all that bad, just how are the Terrans and Vasudans supposed to attack and probably destroy Shivantown?
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: NGTM-1R on March 09, 2011, 10:53:58 pm
I don't believe that's on the table.

I think at best we can convince the Shivans we're too much trouble to wipe out.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on March 09, 2011, 11:04:37 pm
We need to become rats in the walls, man!
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on March 10, 2011, 08:58:39 am
I don't believe that's on the table.

I think at best we can convince the Shivans we're too much trouble to wipe out.

You're being pessimistic.

Think different.

Think big.

Think Gargant...
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on March 10, 2011, 09:10:46 am
 :blah:
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Sushi on March 10, 2011, 09:31:57 am
Think butlers! :p


Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: DarthWang on March 10, 2011, 03:50:33 pm
I don't believe that's on the table.

I think at best we can convince the Shivans we're too much trouble to wipe out.

You're being pessimistic.

Think different.

Think big.

Think Gargant...

Yes, the GTVA needs to capture a Gargant and ram it into the Shivan home base!
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Hades on March 10, 2011, 04:15:44 pm
Yes, the GTVA needs to capture a Gargant and ram it into the Shivan home base!
Okay you can go make SGWPIII
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on March 10, 2011, 04:19:59 pm
I don't believe that's on the table.

I think at best we can convince the Shivans we're too much trouble to wipe out.

You're being pessimistic.

Think different.

Think big.

Think Gargant...

Yes, the GTVA needs to capture a Gargant and ram it into the Shivan home base!

Now here's a plan! Now GTVA only has to find a Gargant that doesn't show too much signs of the usual and, quite frankly, getting old, irritability towards terruvans. Let's discuss more about this issue, I think it's a very important point that I'm sure every Fredder in here is begging to make an input. To the Gargant I mean.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: ssmit132 on March 10, 2011, 05:50:59 pm
:blah:
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Marcov on March 11, 2011, 12:07:17 am
If the Terrans were able toe Terranify a Sathanas (which doesn't look Terran, it just looks gray and robolike), than Terran-Zodifying a Gargant and ramming it into Shivantown would remove the awkwardness produced by the one-sided Terran-esque Colossus design.


Say, maybe some team could actually make a campaign based on Volition's plans? (or is there already one)?
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: NGTM-1R on March 11, 2011, 12:37:19 am
Think different.

Think big.

Think Gargant...

I am thinking different. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person you'll find on the forums arguing for a military-based solution that doesn't result in somebody's race dying. :P
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Mongoose on March 11, 2011, 03:59:08 am
Honestly, I don't think any sort of military solution would have brought an end to the Shivan threat.  I honestly feel like Blue Planet probably comes closest to the mark with the concept of trying to figure out just what the Shivans' beef with the GTVA is, and then finding a way to eliminate said beef.   Now obviously BP represents a very different style of storytelling than retail FS, but I think you could pull it off in that more traditional style too.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: NGTM-1R on March 11, 2011, 04:04:55 am
The problem is that assumes you can eliminate said beef, and I'm not sure, especially after the answered offered here suggesting Bosch is probably dead or suffering a fate worse than, and the Shivans might be rogue VN's, that this is possible.

If they just go berserk at the possibility of sentient life, then there's really no way to end it except to hope that they can be destroyed or convinced the task is not possible. Or die.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Black Wolf on March 11, 2011, 04:13:43 am
I could accept some sort of "perpetual war" scenario, where the GTVA gets some kind of effective Sath killing tech (maybe a sniper beam or something that can quickly eliminate those turrets), and just holds their own against Shivan attacks every thirty odd years.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Kie99 on March 11, 2011, 05:43:29 am
I could accept some sort of "perpetual war" scenario, where the GTVA gets some kind of effective Sath killing tech (maybe a sniper beam or something that can quickly eliminate those turrets), and just holds their own against Shivan attacks every thirty odd years.

I've always thought that in the short-medium term the GTVA would concentrate on destroying nodes - placing large ships filled with Meson bombs in every major inhabited system and deploying them to the source of any future incursion.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on March 11, 2011, 06:45:38 am
Well, nothing lasts forever. So, in a wider perspective, either (1) the terrudans will kill each other, (2) shivans will kill terrudans, (3) terrudans evolve beyond shivans and tame shivans, (4) terrudans kill shivantown, (5) all the three species go extinct by themselves or in the midst of a war between them, (6) a fourth species comes and wipes all the other three out, (7) some environmental disaster ends the conflict, (8) the universe ends in a nanosecond without notice.

In each of the 8 alternatives, there's a whole range of stories waiting to be told (and the last one with a douglas adamsian tone).
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Marcov on March 11, 2011, 08:28:56 am
Quote
(1) the terrudans will kill each other

Possible, but certainly won't Volition refuse to anger the Zod fans?

Quote
(2) shivans will kill terrudans

In which case, the player's race is doomed. Not possible, though not impossible.

Quote
, (3) terrudans evolve beyond shivans and tame shivans

:wtf: The only way I imagine Terrudanity doing this might be via an Ancient-based "fling a light into the future" weapon or something of the sort, something mystical that can kiss the ass of even the most menacing species in the galaxy (recall Halo's extermination of the Flood using the Halo Array). That said, Sushistorian will most likely be gratified :yes:

Quote
(4) terrudans kill shivantown

Like I said, this will probably come out with some sort of Ancient-based superweapon or some kind of mystical Divine Intervention by whatever elderly race.

Quote
(5) all the three species go extinct by themselves or in the midst of a war between them

:wtf: like the first one.

Quote
(6) a fourth species comes and wipes all the other three out

Hmm...Nightmares, anyone? This can be possible, but again, the player's own race be wiped out??

Quote
(7) some environmental disaster ends the conflict

Certainly no if by mere chance, and by surprise. It will be :wtf: for the Freespace community.

Quote
(8) the universe ends in a nanosecond without notice.

Let us all create a mega-supernova SEXP in FRED!!!

Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on March 11, 2011, 08:32:24 am
I don't think Volition would have been dumb enough to pull the whole 'ancient benevolent race' thing.

And Marcov I hope you understand that there is no FreeSpace 3 in the works.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on March 11, 2011, 12:18:15 pm
idk, in mass effect, the "ancient benevolent race" worked rather well.

Now that I think of it, the roles of ancients in both games is rather similar.

(And so are the red beams coming out of sovereign's arms...)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: TrashMan on March 11, 2011, 02:32:43 pm
I don't think Volition would have been dumb enough to pull the whole 'ancient benevolent race' thing.

Deus Ex Machina..

God comes down and removes Shivans from existance.
Then the Rapture begins...
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on March 11, 2011, 02:48:52 pm
I don't think Volition would have been dumb enough to pull the whole 'ancient benevolent race' thing.

Deus Ex Machina..

God comes down and removes Shivans from existance.
Then the Rapture begins...

... And then all GTVA space is freed from the genocidals and the lunatics, in one single blow!

Gentleman, we have a winner.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Hades on March 11, 2011, 03:14:37 pm
Gentleman, we have a winner.
Trashman isn't Charlie Sheen...
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: DarthWang on March 11, 2011, 05:07:09 pm
I could accept some sort of "perpetual war" scenario, where the GTVA gets some kind of effective Sath killing tech (maybe a sniper beam or something that can quickly eliminate those turrets), and just holds their own against Shivan attacks every thirty odd years.

Until they bring out the Gargants that is!
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Marcov on March 12, 2011, 12:07:24 am
It's quite unlikely they will kill all 80 Sathani plus the even larger Shivantown armada with around 3,000 ships don't you think?

Quote
And Marcov I hope you understand that there is no FreeSpace 3 in the works.

Care to shed some light on your seemingly uninformed and outdated co-member??   :yes:
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Flipside on March 15, 2011, 11:39:09 am
This troll whack-a-mole that followed the above comments can be seen here :

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=75092.0
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on March 15, 2011, 09:47:34 pm
Well, it ended up being yet another debate session, but at least Battuta's "Get out." had a tone of finality in it, for once. :p

I just had a thought, though. If the Shivans blow up Capella to create new jump nodes to "Shivantown", where will these nodes be? If they are in Capella, how would the Alliance get to them, seeing as they have already severed all jump nodes connecting Capella to systems in Allied space?
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on March 15, 2011, 09:55:23 pm
Well, it ended up being yet another debate session, but at least Battuta's "Get out." had a tone of finality in it, for once. :p

I just had a thought, though. If the Shivans blow up Capella to create new jump nodes to "Shivantown", where will these nodes be? If they are in Capella, how would the Alliance get to them, seeing as they have already severed all jump nodes connecting Capella to systems in Allied space?

Derelict tried to answer a part of that question ;).
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on March 15, 2011, 10:32:43 pm
Spoiler:
What, sending the Nyarlathotep through a subspace corridor and getting the Alliance to drag it into Allied space?
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on March 15, 2011, 10:37:20 pm
Spoiler:
What, sending the Nyarlathotep through a subspace corridor and getting the Alliance to drag it into Allied space?

that's not what happened in derelict  :blah:
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Black Wolf on March 15, 2011, 10:39:39 pm
I just had a thought, though. If the Shivans blow up Capella to create new jump nodes to "Shivantown", where will these nodes be? If they are in Capella, how would the Alliance get to them, seeing as they have already severed all jump nodes connecting Capella to systems in Allied space?

They might be in one of Capellas immediately adjacent systems... :nervous:
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Polpolion on March 15, 2011, 11:12:10 pm
Spoiler:
Shivans = mankind from the future

that's right, shivan town =

Spoiler:
earth

it's all because subspace is actually secretely

Spoiler:
a form of time travel so the shivans could asplode cappella and go forward in time to tell the humans that evolved into shivans to go back in time to cut off the link to earth so those humans could evolve into shivans so they could asplode cappella

DUN DUN
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: IronBeer on March 16, 2011, 12:47:40 am
Spoiler:
Shivans = mankind from the future

that's right, shivan town =

Spoiler:
earth

it's all because subspace is actually secretely

Spoiler:
a form of time travel so the shivans could asplode cappella and go forward in time to tell the humans that evolved into shivans to go back in time to cut off the link to earth so those humans could evolve into shivans so they could asplode cappella

DUN DUN

.....my head hurts.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Wobble73 on March 16, 2011, 07:52:14 am
Someone start the improbability drive!!!  :nervous:
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Mars on March 16, 2011, 09:23:03 am
Spoiler:
Shivans = mankind from the future

that's right, shivan town =

Spoiler:
earth

it's all because subspace is actually secretely

Spoiler:
a form of time travel so the shivans could asplode cappella and go forward in time to tell the humans that evolved into shivans to go back in time to cut off the link to earth so those humans could evolve into shivans so they could asplode cappella

DUN DUN
Bi-Winning!
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Colonol Dekker on March 16, 2011, 09:25:16 am
I hope it happens.

From Axem :)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Sushi on March 16, 2011, 10:48:29 am
Spoiler:
Shivans = mankind from the future

that's right, shivan town =

Spoiler:
earth

it's all because subspace is actually secretely

Spoiler:
a form of time travel so the shivans could asplode cappella and go forward in time to tell the humans that evolved into shivans to go back in time to cut off the link to earth so those humans could evolve into shivans so they could asplode cappella

DUN DUN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on March 16, 2011, 12:33:44 pm
thesizzler, that's the most flamboyant, crazy, insane gibberish that I ever wished someday would be put into an actual game!

Kinda reminds me of an old french animation movie, where a big giant "monster" is ecologically killing planet earth, and a benign "creature" is trying to stop it. In the middle of the movie, one learns that the giant monster is the future version of the benign creature. (It was all a metaphorical tale about capitalism... it was too obvious even for a ten year old). I don't remember its name.


Edit: found it, it was one of the classics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandahar_(film)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: listener on March 17, 2011, 01:11:57 am
Spoiler:
Shivans = mankind from the future

that's right, shivan town =

Spoiler:
earth

it's all because subspace is actually secretely

Spoiler:
a form of time travel so the shivans could asplode cappella and go forward in time to tell the humans that evolved into shivans to go back in time to cut off the link to earth so those humans could evolve into shivans so they could asplode cappella

DUN DUN

All us zombies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E2%80%94All_You_Zombies%E2%80%94
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: JR2000Z on March 19, 2011, 03:04:04 am
I feel pretty content with FS2's ending. Aside from the NTF storyline, which without any resolution, was just filler which he basically admitted.


Having FS3 all about going on the offensive personally would have been anti-climatic.  I remember back in the VBB days, a kid talked about how his father was being interviewed by  :v:  -- mentioned somthing along the lines of the Shivians were at war with another race...that would have been a good plot point.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on March 19, 2011, 03:50:28 am
He calls it filler? I thought the NTF part was good filler.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Snail on March 19, 2011, 04:39:37 am
He calls it filler? I thought the NTF part was good filler.
Filler can be good. :P
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Antares on March 21, 2011, 04:47:15 am
bwahahahahaha
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: headdie on March 21, 2011, 05:07:38 am
I feel pretty content with FS2's ending. Aside from the NTF storyline, which without any resolution, was just filler which he basically admitted.

Answer me this then, how did the shivans get into gamma draconis?
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on March 21, 2011, 07:55:48 am
The NTF caught their attention, and then they decided to explore the space beyond the Knossos.

That doesn't really make the NTF rebellion filler, in hindsight, so now it's better than good filler. :D
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: headdie on March 21, 2011, 08:02:22 am
thats the point i was making lol there are key events in the story line which are reliant on the NTF, heck without them sending the trinity the Knossos would have remained dormant for probably centuries to come and so never reopening the node to the nebula
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on March 21, 2011, 08:46:08 am
In fact, the Second Shivan Incursion happened because the NTF turned on the Knossos at Gamma Dracs and sent the Trinity in to look around, didn't it? If the NTF didn't turn on the Knossos, the Shivans might have left the Terrans and Vasudans alone.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on March 21, 2011, 09:58:34 am
In fact, the Second Shivan Incursion happened because the NTF turned on the Knossos at Gamma Dracs and sent the Trinity in to look around, didn't it? If the NTF didn't turn on the Knossos, the Shivans might have left the Terrans and Vasudans alone.

Yeah, but what the writer meant is that the NTF part was a McGuffin. We start a game with the "biggest" threat out there, which is the NTF rebellion. Most of the game, GTVA is worried about the NTF, not the shivans. So much so that the shivans are treated as a weak marginal problem that they have to deal with. Only when the biggest destroyers come does the GTVA realise (and the player) that these marginal problems aren't marginal at all, and that the NTF "issue" was the marginal one.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Ulala on March 22, 2011, 08:27:39 pm
I know it's already been said a hundred times, but many thanks to everyone that made this possible. Mad props to General Battuta (and Goober!), I really appreciate what you have done here. It's almost surreal getting to pick the brain of Jason Scott so many years later. I feel somehow even more fulfilled by all the joy Freespace has brought me, from learning to FRED at 13 all the way to running through the game with the latest SCP/FSU works every now and again to this very day. Cheers, guys! :)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Sololop on March 22, 2011, 09:42:44 pm
Kinda off topic, but where did the Shivans come from originally in FS1? They just "Showed up." I never understood where they came from.

On topic, yeah, it was not the smartest to consider the Shivans not a critical be-all and end-all threat to their very existence right off the bat.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Fearless Leader on March 23, 2011, 12:54:47 am
#$%^! That was good, we need more interview!
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Androgeos Exeunt on March 23, 2011, 01:01:51 am
Kinda off topic, but where did the Shivans come from originally in FS1? They just "Showed up." I never understood where they came from.

They came out of nowhere and started killing everybody.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Fearless Leader on March 23, 2011, 01:06:21 am
Kinda off topic, but where did the Shivans come from originally in FS1? They just "Showed up." I never understood where they came from.

They came out of nowhere and started killing everybody.

They had these death black ships and the flew like something, and their weapons were too much
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Bobboau on March 23, 2011, 01:18:13 am
Kinda off topic, but where did the Shivans come from originally in FS1? They just "Showed up." I never understood where they came from.

They came out of nowhere and started killing everybody.

They had these death black ships and the flew like something, and their weapons were too much

they wasted everybody
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Fearless Leader on March 23, 2011, 01:23:47 am
Kinda off topic, but where did the Shivans come from originally in FS1? They just "Showed up." I never understood where they came from.

They came out of nowhere and started killing everybody.

They had these death black ships and the flew like something, and their weapons were too much

they wasted everybody

Send fighters
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: IronBeer on March 23, 2011, 01:40:08 am
Kinda off topic, but where did the Shivans come from originally in FS1? They just "Showed up." I never understood where they came from.

They came out of nowhere and started killing everybody.

They had these death black ships and the flew like something, and their weapons were too much

they wasted everybody

Send fighters
I know they're following me! Send everything you have now!
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Mongoose on March 23, 2011, 01:59:45 am
Man, you people missed the "Who came out of nowhere, pilot?!" :p

(Also, let's try not to spam-a-lam this particular thread.)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: MatthTheGeek on March 23, 2011, 02:00:29 am
Jeeze dude, there's noone in scope. Chill out, it'll be A1-supar.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Nuclear1 on March 23, 2011, 02:44:40 am
Jeeze dude, there's noone in scope. Chill out, it'll be A1-supar.

no you noob it won't you weren't there
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Mars on March 23, 2011, 02:54:00 am
They had these death black ships and shiz, they ****ed up everybody
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: T-LoW on March 23, 2011, 03:49:13 am
OMG allright we'll send some recovery-bro over to get your weepy arse safely to us you sissy
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: The E on March 25, 2011, 07:21:15 am
Okay, I think that's enough. Closing topic due to increasing trollishness and offtopicality.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on March 25, 2011, 10:36:33 am
aaaaaahahahaha wow

this website
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: The E on March 25, 2011, 10:43:16 am
What. This is partially your fault, you know.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: AlphaOne on March 31, 2011, 06:02:11 am
Hello there people. Sorry for the massive offline ! Aniway i was just wondering where is the link to the interview. mI cant seem to find it !
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Zacam on March 31, 2011, 06:04:14 am
It's over in the Interview Board (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=74745.0)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Snail on March 31, 2011, 10:55:21 am
Might be helpful to include a link to the original post in the first post of this thread.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Grizzly on March 31, 2011, 11:27:32 am
We could also just delete this thread alltogether...
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Polpolion on April 02, 2011, 11:17:58 am
Curious: How many of you are actually taking the FS3ish type stuff as canon material? IMHO it's all really interesting to see what was planned, but to be honest using this stuff as more than a "so that's what would've happened in FS3" seems silly.
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on April 02, 2011, 11:22:48 am
It's a silly question, a false duality, meaningless to ask and answer.

This information conveys FreeSpace 2's lead writer's recollections of plans for FreeSpace 3. That's what it is. No more, no less.
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Polpolion on April 02, 2011, 12:32:28 pm
Not really. Can't remember where I saw it but I remember someone talking about how their campaign is technically confirmed, judging by the contents of the interview. I forget the exact words, but I found it disconcerting nonetheless. Still, it's not like Jason Scott's going back and saying things like "by the way terran command is gay," so it's no big deal; I was just wondering if anyone was giving special credence to campaigns that manage to not conflict.
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Mars on April 02, 2011, 02:18:46 pm
I remember Battuta saying that Inferno AND BP fit under criteria; shall we please let sleeping dogs lie?
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on April 02, 2011, 02:25:51 pm
Not really. Can't remember where I saw it but I remember someone talking about how their campaign is technically confirmed, judging by the contents of the interview. I forget the exact words, but I found it disconcerting nonetheless. Still, it's not like Jason Scott's going back and saying things like "by the way terran command is gay," so it's no big deal; I was just wondering if anyone was giving special credence to campaigns that manage to not conflict.

No, Jesus, people keep thinking this and I have no idea why.

People whine and *****ed in the leadup to the interview that some campaigns would be ruled out because they wouldn't mesh with the information revealed. So I posted a leadin indicating that it didn't contradict any campaign I was aware of. People then freaked out because people are by nature whimperingly territorial. People take their ten-year-old space opera so seriously that they're looking for an excuse to defecate a steaming mess of drama at the slightest prod, thus any event of significance is inevitably an opening for moaning and crying.

Anyone who feels like some campaigns are now better than others is a ****ing mongoloid.
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Polpolion on April 02, 2011, 03:05:45 pm
No, Jesus, people keep thinking this and I have no idea why.

People whine and *****ed in the leadup to the interview that some campaigns would be ruled out because they wouldn't mesh with the information revealed. So I posted a leadin indicating that it didn't contradict any campaign I was aware of. People then freaked out because people are by nature whimperingly territorial. People take their ten-year-old space opera so seriously that they're looking for an excuse to defecate a steaming mess of drama at the slightest prod, thus any event of significance is inevitably an opening for moaning and crying.

Anyone who feels like some campaigns are now better than others is a ****ing mongoloid.

Goodness gracious, there is no need for such hostility. But the very reason that you felt you needed to mention there were no contradictions, as opposed to the interview's contents not being canon, implies that should any campaign be made that does contradict the interview that they would be contradicting official material. And, as your rather untoward post notes, this is not true.
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on April 02, 2011, 03:12:25 pm
Like I said, anyone who reads that implication in there should know better and is thinking at a level where I question the value of a dialogue with them.

This doesn't necessarily apply to you since you didn't freak out about it.

EDIT: look what I'm saying is if after ten years of discussion and repeatedly coming to the conclusion that whether or not an FS3 is ever made, work (x) will still have merit and be creative, anyone who suddenly reverses and starts freaking out about the lead writer's reminiscences about the story for a game which was never made somehow devaluing their work is ten years a fool.

This information conveys FreeSpace 2's lead writer's recollections of plans for FreeSpace 3. That's what it is. No more, no less.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Nuclear1 on April 02, 2011, 08:08:30 pm
This interview doesn't mean anything towards validating or invalidating any campaign out there.

I'll say this, "Volition credibility" might not have been the words I would have used, since it does seem to imply some sort of :v: stamp of approval for certain campaigns.  But when it comes down to it, not even Jason Scott knew what Volition wanted to do with Freespace 3.  In a lot of ways, we're as much in the dark as they are when it comes to the origin of the Shivans, Bosch's intentions, or the return to Sol.  What the team had was nothing but conjecture, the result of some brainstorming that the writers and design team did shortly after FS2 was released and at a time when there was still some hope that FS3 would have been made.

What we got from Jason was a vague recollection of what V wanted to do with the franchise if they had gotten the ability to make the sequel.  I'm sure if we picked the brains of everyone on the development team (at least the writers) there would have been people there who would have proposed theories to the Shivans similar to the cornucopia of theories we've proposed over the years.  This is one man's recollection of what the team thought of several years ago, and I doubt it was the only theory on the table during the discussion for FS3.

Everyone in this community is doing what the Freespace team at V would kill to do; develop the story, improve on the hard work they did, and see their baby become the best it could be.  V obviously has great faith in us to do them proud, otherwise they never would have released the source code or given us FRED.  Just the fact that we have so many theories and so many ideas for the game is a validation of V's work to make a game that stood the test of time.  The community wouldn't be what it is today if we didn't allow for dozens of sometimes conflicting ideas about the story. 

No one should be turned off by this interview, and no one should be discouraged from promoting their own ideas.  Enough people working over a number of years on a similar platform are bound to come up with similar ideas;  from what Jason remembers of the FS3 brainstorming, one of those ideas just happened to have some of its elements developed in Blue Planet and other mods by happenchance. 

tl;dr:  There's still nothing official from V about Freespace 3's story.  All we have is a recollection of some brainstorming and conjecture.  The only thing V has given its stamp of approval to is the community at large for being so fanatically loyal to a video game that, in terms of franchise life, should have died out years ago.  Our conjectures and our theories have kept Freespace alive for much longer than it should have lived, and that's all that matters.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Busan on April 05, 2011, 05:52:12 am
So basically the Shivans are tasked with building the Galactic Autobahn and the GTVA is getting the short stick of eminent domain so they can put in a subspace bypass? 

Everyone grab your towel.

Got the towel and E-thumb! lets go arthur!
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Akalabeth Angel on April 08, 2011, 06:03:07 pm
This interview doesn't mean anything towards validating or invalidating any campaign out there.

I'll say this, "Volition credibility" might not have been the words I would have used, since it does seem to imply some sort of :v: stamp of approval for certain campaigns.

I agree completely because the preface suggests that some campaigns have become more valid, as have some ways of telling the story. Not more valid than other campaigns, just more valid or "legitimate" in general. Which is bollocks because these are all just fan works nothing more nothing less.

For example there's often been the debate that campaigns with a heavy emphasis on characters are not quite in the spirit of Freespace because it's unlike the game. The person interview implies that if the game were developed today it might have a greater emphasis on character development and so now suddenly one guy's opinion makes these character-heavy campaigns more valid. And no, the post doesn't explicitly say that. What it says is that it's a good answer for both types of campaigns because the guy likes it both ways, but that statement presumes that campaigns with little character emphasis ever needed validation in the first place. Which they never have, because it's just like freespace. In fact neither needed any sort of validation, not realistically. But I suppose in the fan community.

What it all boils to is that fans are going to make campaigns for a game they like, and people who play it will either like it or they won't and in both cases it's just their opinion nothing more because nothing we do here is "legitimate" in the sense of Freespace canon, it's just all fan-brew. Some very good fan brew, but none the less.

Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Knight Templar on April 10, 2011, 02:57:22 pm
First off, good job on the interview. Thought about doing exactly this myself a couple months ago on a whim, but never got around to it.

Glad he cleared up some of the things definitively to you guys.

Some of us, of course, knew all of this beforehand (and actually know a bit more).

Good job Bat.

well don't be a tease
...

Throughout the years discussing different ideas with the community, you sort of find out that people in general aren't interested in what makes sense, just that their own interpretation and deduction be correct, ie "No, it's the way I envision it to be". And as I would never be able to directly state "it's like this, this and this", anything I say just passes off as my own opinion, and I never expose the weight of what I know behind them. I've carried many people's secrets throughout these past 13 years, and have no intention of ever breaking the seal on any of them. Neither am I interested in shopping my opinions as being correct either. They're still just opinions, although perhaps with a little more information behind them than most have access to.

...

Again, kudos on the job.

Best post in the thread.

The take-away point from this interview, and from the "cliffhanger" of FS2 and the modding tools delivered to the community, has been creativity. It's not about getting the "right" answer to the FS2 riddle in your campaign. The perhaps unintentional "gift" of the FS franchise to its fans has been that of creativity fueled by wonder. Aside from a less mediocre profit on the game, and greater franchise deals for the series, I can't think of a better legacy Volition could have earned delivering the product they did.

Try thinking about it that way, even putting it in the context of other aspects of your lives next time you log off the forums and go to the kitchen for something to eat, take a shower, or drive to work. I guarantee you'll benefit more from it than you will from telling some newbie on the forum his new project idea sucks because it doesn't line up with what Pletcher or Scott or Kulas had in mind.
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on April 10, 2011, 02:59:07 pm
That's what we've been saying for ten years, though. I would honestly be surprised to find anyone who doesn't think that.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Tracer on April 30, 2011, 06:13:47 pm
Terran command is totally gay.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Raiden on April 30, 2011, 07:55:15 pm
First off, good job on the interview. Thought about doing exactly this myself a couple months ago on a whim, but never got around to it.

Glad he cleared up some of the things definitively to you guys.

Some of us, of course, knew all of this beforehand (and actually know a bit more).

Good job Bat.

well don't be a tease
...

Throughout the years discussing different ideas with the community, you sort of find out that people in general aren't interested in what makes sense, just that their own interpretation and deduction be correct, ie "No, it's the way I envision it to be". And as I would never be able to directly state "it's like this, this and this", anything I say just passes off as my own opinion, and I never expose the weight of what I know behind them. I've carried many people's secrets throughout these past 13 years, and have no intention of ever breaking the seal on any of them. Neither am I interested in shopping my opinions as being correct either. They're still just opinions, although perhaps with a little more information behind them than most have access to.

...

Again, kudos on the job.

Best post in the thread.

The take-away point from this interview, and from the "cliffhanger" of FS2 and the modding tools delivered to the community, has been creativity. It's not about getting the "right" answer to the FS2 riddle in your campaign. The perhaps unintentional "gift" of the FS franchise to its fans has been that of creativity fueled by wonder. Aside from a less mediocre profit on the game, and greater franchise deals for the series, I can't think of a better legacy Volition could have earned delivering the product they did.

Try thinking about it that way, even putting it in the context of other aspects of your lives next time you log off the forums and go to the kitchen for something to eat, take a shower, or drive to work. I guarantee you'll benefit more from it than you will from telling some newbie on the forum his new project idea sucks because it doesn't line up with what Pletcher or Scott or Kulas had in mind.

Best post in the thread? It read more to me like, "I know something you don't know, lalalalalala"
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Leuthesius on May 02, 2011, 11:24:55 am
whereis the interview...

edit
k found it
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Snail on May 02, 2011, 11:28:06 am
Here's a Wiki version. (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Interview_with_Jason_Scott) Dunno where the OP is. It's been moved around all over the forum.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Leuthesius on May 02, 2011, 11:33:49 am
I came. (Metaphor)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Snail on May 02, 2011, 11:36:22 am
Glad to know, but it is my solemn duty to inform you that HLP provides no compensation for soiled pants.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Leuthesius on May 02, 2011, 12:04:11 pm
It's alright. I went to go shower afterwards.

I hope they DO go for FS3 "Shivantown" and admit mods like BluePlanet into the game's canon.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on May 02, 2011, 12:09:12 pm
I hope they DO go for FS3 "Shivantown" and admit mods like BluePlanet into the game's canon.

What are you talking about, there is no FS3 in the works, and BP doesn't need anyone's permission to exist.

Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Leuthesius on May 02, 2011, 12:10:37 pm
You completely misunderstand what I'm saying.

I HOPE that there is eventually an official FS3.

And maybe VOLITION will acclaim Blue Planet as OFFICIAL storyline canon in the FS universe.

I did not say anything you just said I said.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: The E on May 02, 2011, 12:14:56 pm
As far as we are concerned, BP is what it is. It is our version of the FS universe, not :v:'s, and it's not intended to be any more than that.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on May 02, 2011, 12:15:23 pm
And you missed the entire thread's point. There will be no FS3, ever. It's a dead game. Get over it.
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on May 02, 2011, 12:42:36 pm
Stop being snippy at Leuthesius. He has every right to say what he's saying and to expect a civilized discussion out of it.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: DarthWang on May 02, 2011, 02:02:24 pm
I hope someone will make a mod based on the FS3 ideas
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Hades on May 02, 2011, 02:04:14 pm
I hope someone will make a mod based on the FS3 ideas
Do you want the Gargant included too? :P
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on May 02, 2011, 02:33:10 pm
Yeah, you're right, sorry Leuthesius.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Leuthesius on May 02, 2011, 02:59:41 pm
Thanks General, and it's ok Luis.

Only reason I say what I said is that on the freespace wiki page, it claims that blue planet and other mods are "not canon". I'm saying a simple statement from Volition could make it the case. As far as I'm concerned it might as well be (given the amount of work that's gone into it), but officiality is always a happy thing.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: The E on May 02, 2011, 03:08:13 pm
No. Speaking for the entire BP team, we are not interested in being declared "official", or canon. BP is OUR vision of FS, you can take it or leave it. We do not seek :v:'s approval, we are quite happy with the current situation where our version of FS is just as valid as ED's, Inferno's, or any other of the post-FS2 mods.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on May 02, 2011, 03:21:01 pm
Thanks General, and it's ok Luis.

Only reason I say what I said is that on the freespace wiki page, it claims that blue planet and other mods are "not canon". I'm saying a simple statement from Volition could make it the case. As far as I'm concerned it might as well be (given the amount of work that's gone into it), but officiality is always a happy thing.

Think of BP as being canon to BP. It stands as its own saga. I don't think we'd want to be declared :v: canon, and thus shackled with the expectations that carries; we're happy being Blue Planet canon, and telling our own story.
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Spoon on May 02, 2011, 04:32:44 pm
Spoiler:
(BP canon is better than  :v: canon)
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Dragon on May 02, 2011, 04:37:02 pm
True.
We're lucky that Darius didn't decided to write a novel instead of making a campaign, since then, we'd have to pay for it and in Poland (and other non-english speaking countries), it'd be difficult to get untranslated.  :)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Snail on May 02, 2011, 04:38:44 pm
There's a Polish version of AoA that will be available in Poland soon.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: The E on May 02, 2011, 04:40:15 pm
There's a Polish version of AoA that will be available in Poland soon.

But it probably won't be polished.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Snail on May 02, 2011, 04:41:23 pm
Yeah, unfortunately the Finnish version won't be finished anytime soon either.
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: PsychoLandlord on May 02, 2011, 04:45:28 pm
Ow the puns.
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Dragon on May 02, 2011, 04:48:33 pm
There's a Polish version of AoA that will be available in Poland soon.

But it probably won't be polished.
Considering the quality of Polish FS2 translation (Godspeed as "Good Speed"? In such a moment? Completely deadpan? Seriously.), there's a chance that "unpolished" wouldn't do it justice. :)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: The E on May 02, 2011, 04:52:02 pm
whooooosh
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Spoon on May 02, 2011, 05:16:24 pm
There's a Polish version of AoA that will be available in Poland soon.

But it probably won't be polished.
Dohohoho  :lol: :p
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Nuclear1 on May 02, 2011, 08:16:50 pm
There's a Polish version of AoA that will be available in Poland soon.

But it probably won't be polished.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yl3UMO-TkE&feature=related
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Darius on May 02, 2011, 08:41:59 pm
But it would! Don't you see? It's Polish!
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: NGTM-1R on May 02, 2011, 08:59:12 pm
I want WoD to become FS3, simply to watch the heads explode.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: headdie on May 03, 2011, 02:48:33 am
I want WoD to become FS3, simply to watch the heads explode.
+1
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: DarthWang on May 03, 2011, 02:00:11 pm
I hope someone will make a mod based on the FS3 ideas
Do you want the Gargant included too? :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8u7px_GzWQ
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Leuthesius on May 03, 2011, 02:52:55 pm
WoD?
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on May 03, 2011, 02:53:39 pm
Wings of Dawn, fun anime mod set in another universe that you should play.
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Scotty on May 03, 2011, 02:54:01 pm
Wings of Dawn.  Totally worth playing even though I haven't yet.
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: SpardaSon21 on May 03, 2011, 04:01:23 pm
Quote from: General Battuta
JESUS HARLENMEYER CHRIST JUST DO IT
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Leuthesius on May 03, 2011, 06:40:30 pm
I had WoD downloaded, but all I get is blackness where the main screen is supposed to be. Says I'm missing a file but it makes no sense for them to package their mod without their main screen.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on May 03, 2011, 06:50:36 pm
I had WoD downloaded, but all I get is blackness where the main screen is supposed to be. Says I'm missing a file but it makes no sense for them to package their mod without their main screen.

It has to do with the way your install is set up, probably - if the issue's not fixed by downloading a new mv_assets, post a log.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: AndrewofDoom on May 03, 2011, 07:05:27 pm
I want WoD to become FS3, simply to watch the heads explode.
+1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3ALwKeSEYs
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Mobius on January 05, 2014, 04:54:33 pm
:bump:

I wanted to re read this thread, the interview and the thread split. Memorable, at least.

The whole Shivantown attack thing is so weird that I'm impressed the original plans for FS3 included a TV attack so deep in Shivan territory. Up until the second Sathanas showed up, the extent of Shivan forces seemed one the Terrans and Vasudans could handle regardless of the Colossus' presence in their fleet; however, finding out that the enemy is capable of deploying 80 of those uber ships changes everything. A deep attack in Shivan territory, unless it's carried out by a small task force (a la The Lord of the Rings), would make no sense at all - a turtle strategy, a system-to-system battle with wide use of Meson bombs to secure TV space would be much, much more believable.

Some of us who were around while the developers actually played the game (having played squadwars and matches with them) picked up masses of stuff from them. Though many of the things they told us were in confidence, but even as such, hypothetical anyway (general directions, they didn't have much of the stuff bolted down either).

Throughout the years discussing different ideas with the community, you sort of find out that people in general aren't interested in what makes sense, just that their own interpretation and deduction be correct, ie "No, it's the way I envision it to be". And as I would never be able to directly state "it's like this, this and this", anything I say just passes off as my own opinion, and I never expose the weight of what I know behind them. I've carried many people's secrets throughout these past 13 years, and have no intention of ever breaking the seal on any of them. Neither am I interested in shopping my opinions as being correct either. They're still just opinions, although perhaps with a little more information behind them than most have access to.

But I'm glad he let the cat out of the bag on some of it (though he's pretty smart, he didn't really tell you much of anything vital - not that it matters anyway, because if they ever got to the point where they'd create an FS3, it would be entirely different than what was envisioned all those years ago [think franchise reboot, new staff members, wholly new ideas from the new members, etc.]), so that you guys can get some general direction. It means more when you can show it comes from the horses mouth.

I can't believe this post was barely noticed. Basically there's a forum member saying he knows more regarding the original :v: plans for FS3 than pretty much anyone else here on HLP, and nobody tries to obtain said information? :wtf: BlackDove, I kindly ask you to tell us more about it, FS3 is so unlikely to happen it'd be completely harmless to reveal what you know.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: The E on January 05, 2014, 05:05:13 pm
Which part of "priviledged information, shared in confidence" did you not see?
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on January 05, 2014, 05:19:43 pm
Yeah, BlackDove's always said that he made promises not to divulge this stuff. I'm surprised you thought that post was a surprise!
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: MatthTheGeek on January 06, 2014, 02:33:46 am
And it's not like if many people around here still have any interest in a FS3 that will and should never happen.

We have our own universes here. Our own continuities. Our own dreams. We don't need to be restrained by the ideas of past developers to make great things.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on January 06, 2014, 04:58:49 am
I also wonder if there isn't some sort of mythification of the "original intent" about Shivans, as if that original intent had in it hidden the "true source of the mistery" surrounding this story. IOW, people get so wowed by the implications of the original stories that we will sometimes confuse the true authors of the story for some kind of oracles that will unravel the great truths about the Shivans and so on.

All this when history can prove you otherwise quite remarkably. It were (more or less) the ones who wrote the amazing Reapers in Mass Effect 1 that brought us the starkid in ME3. The Wachowski gave us the Matrix, but they also gave us Revolutions. Sometimes writers will reach insights that are truly awesome and they get a glimpse of a possibility, of a scenario that is astounding and dazzling. It does not mean that they will be able to work it out from that point onwards, at least as great as they did before.

In that sense, I'm kinda relieved that V didn't make FS3. It's like they opened this window of possibilities and interpretations and by not offering closure they actually powered an entire community into inventing their own possibilities and interpretations.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 06, 2014, 05:54:14 am
It were (more or less) the ones who wrote the amazing Reapers in Mass Effect 1 that brought us the starkid in ME3.

It absolutely were not, ME3 had a completely different writing team to ME1. Casey Hudson was never actually a writer on either.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on January 06, 2014, 06:09:17 am
Why bring facts to take down a good argument? Come on! :D, anyways the lead writer of ME1 had a terrible alternative idea for the ending, so my point stands anyway.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 06, 2014, 07:20:36 am
Wait, that stupid dark energy supernova idea was Karpyshyn's? Damn, he seemed competent.
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on January 06, 2014, 09:24:30 am
Yeah, it was Karpyshyn, and going by his novels he's a dire, dire writer. I give credit for most of the good stuff in ME1 to Chris L'etoile and Patrick Weekes.

And I also agree about the deification of the original authorial intent. I think we've got more interesting Shivan answers than V by this point, and the whole Shivantown storyline seems to me like it misses the point of FS2.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 06, 2014, 09:28:28 am
Karpyshyn seemed competent because I'd confused him with L'etoile.
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Dragon on January 06, 2014, 09:11:15 pm
And I also agree about the deification of the original authorial intent. I think we've got more interesting Shivan answers than V by this point, and the whole Shivantown storyline seems to me like it misses the point of FS2.
Well, it seems to prove my suspicion that we gave :v: and FS2 way too much credit. :) I'm not really sure if they themselves seen even half of those meanings and such the community found in FS2 over all these years...
Still, even if the :v: writers didn't intend this stuff, there's a lot of great stories built on it. Compared to what Darius created for BP, the "original" FS3 concept seems rather shallow (but then, anything does, BP is perhaps the most deeply written "FS3" campaign out there). I have a feeling that if FS3 got made when it could be, it'd be more like Inferno, perhaps with a bit less oversized ships.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on January 06, 2014, 09:20:38 pm
No, that's giving it way too less credit. Inferno is fun but come on.
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on January 06, 2014, 10:54:03 pm
And I also agree about the deification of the original authorial intent. I think we've got more interesting Shivan answers than V by this point, and the whole Shivantown storyline seems to me like it misses the point of FS2.
Well, it seems to prove my suspicion that we gave :v: and FS2 way too much credit. :)

I disagree. They're better writers than most of the community. We've just had a lot of time for iteration.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Luis Dias on January 06, 2014, 11:33:49 pm
than most

I am constantly in awe regarding your humility! :D
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: General Battuta on January 06, 2014, 11:37:00 pm
Hey I like Ransom and Blaise a lot  ;)
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: MatthTheGeek on January 07, 2014, 04:10:16 am
I think FS2 proves :v: writers were excellent writers that could turn your average space opera plot into something that inspired modders and campaign makers for more than a dozen years.

They just didn't seem to have worked a lot on the FS3 script aside from vague directions. And remember: even what seems to be a weird, bad or boring script at first can turn into something awesome with the proper execution.

See: BP1. I mean, sent into an alternate universe and saved by mind-reading superentities? What is this, the plot of a bad Star Trek episode?
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: X3N0-Life-Form on January 07, 2014, 06:13:24 am
And remember: even what seems to be a weird, bad or boring script at first can turn into something awesome with the proper execution.

See: BP1. I mean, sent into an alternate universe and saved by mind-reading superentities? What is this, the plot of a bad Star Trek episode?
Quoted for Truth.
Over the years, we've seen interesting concept poorly executed, classic concepts well executed, interesting concepts well executed, all sorts of balance between focus on gameplay and focus on story. We've got people with all sorts of background, history, hobbies, skills and whatnot having their take on either: the TVW era, the Great War, the Reconstruction, the NTF conflict, the Second Incursion and the post Capella era, heck even the Ancient's era has been visited once.

As far as Freespace goes, HLP is some sort of bazaar of wonders, producing all sorts of stuff, keeping its momentum. I am genuinely impressed at the number of stories I've enjoyed over the years. Most of the people who wrote and FREDded those stories were amateurs with relatively little experience with both writing and modding at the time.

Not sure if I'm making much sense here, I just wanted to QFT matth, but felt bad for contributing so little to the thread.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Torchwood on January 08, 2014, 08:14:22 am
Well, if you really enough people to contribute, something good is bound to pop up. Remember that France's national anthem was composed by a common soldier. As for stories, those are always fairly 'hit or miss' - What someone thinks is an amazing twist could very well be total garbage in the eyes of another. Certain insights and experience can help, but even a talented writer can sometimes produce a story that turns out unpopular, and those with only basic skills manage to hit a certain resonance with the audience occasionally.
Title: Re: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Spider on February 10, 2014, 11:36:59 pm
Hi.  I have been out of the loop for a long time.  I got curious and decided to check this place out and see this thread title.  Now, what the hell happen?  Is there an interview or something?  Video, audio, or transcript is fine, I just want to read it for myself.


Meh, I found it:http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Interview_with_Jason_Scott
Title: Re: AT LAST, THE TRUTH: Volition's Answers to the Shivans, Bosch, and Capella
Post by: Mobius on February 11, 2014, 06:32:35 am
Can anyone with mod powers please edit the first post of this thread and add all necessary links? Just like Spider, it took quite some time for me to find the original interview when I stumbled across this thread a few weeks ago and wanted to read the interview again.