My turn I guess. Three words:
Good... with merit.
(Snail please shut up. Yes you're hyped with good reason, but it really pissed me the f*** off when you went high yesterday. Sorry. No I'm fine now really. 
)Was this what I was looking for? Don't know. Enough parts of the plot I detest. But I think you (whoever you is) came really close.
Not like I've done anything useful as of late but if really did FRED what's in my head, maybe I might've emphasised the idea that
everyone's evil
too.
Or maybe not... meh, I myself don't even know how I'd FRED it...
With that out of the way...
--------------------------------------- tech stuff
1. This campaign needs voice acting not because it's awesome or any of the hype that some
people have been going round doing - it needs VA because there's SO MANY DAMN LINES that it's IMPOSSIBLE to play without going back to the Events window. Heck, with all that chatter it was obvious that the mission dudes had the voices in their head and FREDded away. And I think one or two sentences had the timing off, haven't seen things in FRED yet but I expect lots of sexp chaos that even I can't work heads or tails around, so I really cannot blame you people for that once-in-a-while slipup. I think it was only one line that had the timing off anyway.
Unfortunately by the end of the campaign I practically forgot who was even who.
(lol wtf grammar? but can't think of a way to drive the point home XD) Apologies if this sounds offensive, but the only thing I caught on at credits point was some possible
ecchi girl's love stuff.
At least now I understand why some people said things related to that in those infrequent forum posts and IRC chats during testing...
2. Major battles lagged
HARD and the long combat distances weren't helping. The worst was texture corruption with the subspace warp everytime something jumped in or departed. Some of the battles were so damn intense that I simply
sat there with a blank stare not shooting or even moving, unless something was shooting at me already. I cheapened out playing Very Easy because I couldn't be bothered to get my arse kicked while trying to get around the plot. Play on something harder and I guarantee things would be dying left and right enough to make me go berserk with the cheat codes rage-killing till the sequences broke.
Even the credits lagged REAL HARD!! I was all "screw the timing of the music, the event needs to finish first."
3. Even with mostly clear-cut instructions some things weren't obvious at first glance, such as the
Striker packs lol I sound so Gundam SEED.
I didn't even know the Reinforcements menu was being used. Probably fits the battle tension though, "here I'm gonna teach you something in 0.9 seconds now hurry and press buttons" etc...
4. Button sequences. This one I won't blame, it's probably just limitations of the engine. I couldn't select some options because my control scheme is different (no multi messaging for one). I didn't realise this until I got to the
superfast fighter training mission
and IIRC there was one decision tree before it... and I don't remember what the hell I chose.
5. Existing assets make me go all
when talking about "fancy big mods" like this one, this is one problem AoA has, but WiH tries to hide. I can see the effort in trying to make everything look
uniform despite severe asset limitations (something which I try to do as well when I drown myself in random table edits despite not producing anything release-worthy). This mod is a good argument for me to continue to, well... "keep an open mind, stay neutral." Since depending on the situation I could really go either way if the whole issue of assets became a debate in itself.
--------------------------------------- story stuff
5. At least this BP has something to keep the player in the mission, even when the mission failed warnings show up... but maybe that something is plain obvious, in that the GTVA just throws more big ships to make the player worse than dead, enough to make the player behind the 4th wall think, "F*** this, I'll restar--- wait, this is ridiculous. There MUST be a reason... play on then."
6. As the protagonist says, "big ugly ships ready to die." My reaction to it was, "Screw you, you didn't see a Sathanas with four imbalanced BFRed wiping everything off the floor and treating every usable munition against it the same as an ant's bite... GAAAAAAHHHHHH" (This point sounds like a random rant in itself
)
7. Neither side is good, neither side is bad, but this is what BP was aiming for, so suck it up > pointlessly whine. Most of the time it was the GTVA that looked like the bad guy, Admiral Steele whatever, one UEF pilot citing "his dogs". Still, the Carthage baiting was equally evil looking at the UEF's side, yet it ALSO teaches people not to f*** with SOC for being able to plan so far ahead, just like World War II.
8. Something I noticed, anything significant to Alpha 1 in FS2 or canon gets to live. Nice. No that's not sarcasm - if somehow the Carthage gets through the entire BPverse not killed then that's probably some tribute to canon. As evil as it is I think it's better that way... I mean come on, who didn't hesitate over the trigger when the Carthage is in front of you, albeit with RED IFF? Not forgetting, when the test squadron from FS2 jumps in they were practically unkillable, and if the player hadn't run back to the Indus earlier or activated cheats, bullying session ensues?
---------------------------------------
9. Finally...
When the tech room entries started talking about universes and so on...
No wait... nevermind. Deja vu.
<--- the "oh well suck it up" look.
You guys did hard work, so you earned it.
Part of me will start whining about it but ultimately I know that's pointless. Safe to say though, even this Part 1 of WiH has killed any desire I have to even mod or FRED anything for a long time to come, probably... umm... "putting the pen to the paper" in layman's terms, for fear of what I have coming nowhere close.
That's it from me then. I'd talk more but this is already overkill to me. Cheers.
