[Titan]

My understanding is that they made stuff up as they went along, and not even they know the answers to the fanbase's questions. 

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.

[General Battuta]

My understanding is that they made stuff up as they went along, and not even they know the answers to the fanbase's questions. 

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.

[Luis Dias]

My understanding is that they made stuff up as they went along, and not even they know the answers to the fanbase's questions. 

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"

[General Battuta]

My understanding is that they made stuff up as they went along, and not even they know the answers to the fanbase's questions. 

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.

[Kopachris]

I found this node map some time back, perhaps was for FS3:

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

 You can see ShivanTown!

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.

[Luis Dias]

My understanding is that they made stuff up as they went along, and not even they know the answers to the fanbase's questions. 

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.

[General Battuta]

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.

[Luis Dias]

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 .

[Droid803]

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

[mjn.mixael]

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

 

[Androgeos Exeunt]

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.

[jr2]

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.

[Luis Dias]

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.

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.

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.

[General Battuta]

Take this pointless debate over semantics somewhere else.

[Luis Dias]

Ahh whatever.

[jr2]

Split out the arguments and sticky the rest?

[General Battuta]

hrm should i sticky this

[NGTM-1R]

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.

[Mr. Vega]

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.

[BlackDove]

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.