[BlueFlames]

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.

[NGTM-1R]

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.

[General Battuta]

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

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

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

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

[Spoon]

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."

I found this quite amusing

[General Battuta]

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

[Luis Dias]

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...

[Luis Dias]

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!!

[General Battuta]

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)

[Luis Dias]

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.

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...

[General Battuta]

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

[Scotty]

The true face of Terran Command:

This man.  He most be Steele.

[Kopachris]

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.

[Scotty]

Shivan homeworld only three systems removed from Ancient systems?  I doubt it.

[Jessnec]

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

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

 You can see ShivanTown!

[NGTM-1R]

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.

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.

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.

[DarthWang]

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

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

 You can see ShivanTown!

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

[General Battuta]

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

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

 You can see ShivanTown!

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

there weren't enough gargants in this post

[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. 

[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.

[DarthWang]

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

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

 You can see ShivanTown!

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

there weren't enough gargants in this post

  You're right!