[0rph3u5]

(First I've to admit that I've not had my proper release of nerddom for last couple of weeks, so following ancient greek teaching I've to restore balance to my humours by breaking my golden rule about internet discussions.)

The point which I would like to make is one that has propably cropped up in favourite moments and/or favourite missions threads over the years multiple times but I'm ready to make it again:

There is no mission in FreeSpace canon that can eclipse "The Great Hunt" from the FreeSpace 2 main campaign (unless you take it out of context).

[Spoilers for the FS2 main campaign follow]

If the FS2 main campaign were a classical five act play "The Great Hunt" would surely serve as ending to the first act and its expository build-up. As such it has a quintessential role in the plot and paceing of the whole but it is actually never surpassed by any other single missionfor its impact on the plot and it precise use of what it has got for what it is suposed to do.

Short recap of what happens:
GTCvs Actium and Lysander are assigned to the nebula theatre to reinforce the allied presence there and reduce the Shivan presence so far encountered to debris and flames. A&L make good headway against Shivan cruisers, fighters and bombers only to be 1uped by the Ravana.

So why is this two sentense story-piece so good?
(1)The introduction of the Deimos
While technically the NTCv Belisarius is the first exposure to the Deimos, the Actium and Lysander are the first ones we see in action; and they kick Shivan ass during that introduction. The mission balance is pretty much in favour of GTVA with the Shivan cruisers coming into range one at a time but the player gets a good look at what the GTVA's warships can do in dynamic combat.
When ever the GTCv Deimos comes into a mission later in the campaign, the A&L's performances shapes the expectation that the Deimos will maul every other smaller warship it encounters.

(2) The introduction of the GTVA's hubris
Before the encounters with the Shivans had a level of threat to them; in "A Lion at the Door" the completly unknown shivan craft of the first wave (Maras and Rakshasa) made the encounter unpredictable even for FS1 veterans; in "Mystery of the Trinity" the nebas claustrophobic atmosphere raised the stakes for the dog fights. But now with the A&L on the field the GTVA can show off. Unless the player is very inept both corvettes march through the mission with their heads held high and even letting go with cocky comments on how the superior their ships are compared to the Shivans and other GTVA vessels. This is a good break from the scared pilots of "The Mystery of the Trinity" and sets up a GTVA-wide mindset that commulates in the Collossus' reveal and then crahsing down for the rest of campaign.

(3) The shock and awe of the Ravana
Normally at once 1uping the achievment of the protagonist with a movefrom the antagonist sets itself up to be bad paceing - outside of a chess game.
But this time it serves its purpose really well. Even if the Ravana is destroyed in the next mission without much fanfare, the sudden jump attack that destroys at least one of the corvettes gets its job done to secure the first step of a revelation tbat will grow in later missions: the Shivans still get to have an ace up their sleve.
It does not quite establish the reversal of everything achived so far like Sathanas #2 but the seed is planted for that question that will carry on duringnthe nebula mission: what else is out there?

(4) The ambiguity of title
This is kinda meta... the mission title and the initial set-up suggest that the "hunt" refers to the A&L hunting Shivans, reversing the scary enemyinto something beatable and normal. But it can as easily as that interpreted from the missions conclusion because there is.more than one way to hunt; putting the Ravana in the role of the hunter and putting the Shivan ships A&L triumph over in the role of bait, sets a darker tone - esspecially in regard of Shivan swarm-"we got so many losing some won't hurt" imagery and makes the reverseal of force between protagonist and antagonist even deeper (as the protagonists blindly stumpled into the checkmate move, never seeing that that movehad been set up long before). The line of the Ravana being the hunter cuts even deeper as it emphasizes that there must be some dark cunning or intelligence behind the Shivan's actions, elevating them from the mere drone-to-shoot status.

I cannot remember any other mission in FS Canon that does equally well in setting up for what is to come in the FS2 campaign nor surpass the world-building aspect this one brings to the table. So IMHO "The Great Hunt" is best canon mission out there.

Discuss!

[Rodo]

And what about Straight, no chaser?, the mission where the Psamtik is blown to bits by the second Sathanas.
I believe finding the second portal is as devastating as that particular moment you mention, the only difference being that it's quite clear to the player what's on the other side of that portal and it only lacks confirmation.

[General Battuta]

There's not much gameplay in Chaser, and it's also basically a formal sequel to this mission.

[Scotty]

Personally, my favorite is A Lion at the Door.  The combination of the first appearance of the Herc II, first use of Harpoons (and Hornets, I guess), and the GTVA reaction to the Shivan incursion is significant.

When confronted with a heavily armed and intently malicious Shivan cruiser and fighters, the initial response from Command is to crush it with overwhelming force.  Instead of the "wait and see" approach, or the chaotic, disjointed response of FS1, this time the GTVA takes no chances.  A squadron of assault fighters smashes the force on station, and then the greater part of an entire battlegroup's firepower arrives on station for mop up and station keeping.  It's a fundamental difference in attitude, and it speaks to the way the GTVA thinks and learns lessons.  If you're a BP fan, it's also the first appearance of Anita Lopez.  Bonus points for everyone.

[Luis Dias]

I agree with Orph3u5 that this mission is special in both the tone, the expectations management with the bigger context in mind.

I also think that the constant "one-uppance" of shivans in FS2 is the weakest plot mechanism of it for it is repeated a tad too often, and the big source of the more mindless stuff in Inferno and other things like that.

[0rph3u5]

@Straight, No Chaser:
The impact of this one loans much to previous established points of story:
- the Psamtik haven been build-up from mission one as a symbol of the GTVA's military power (but more on that another time); only to be quickly undone by Sathans #2
- the return of a Sathanas aceptable as genuine threat ows much to A Flaming Sword (the shock of Sath #1 still coming), Bearbeiting and High Noon (both emphasing the strain the GTVA's military has endure trying to stop it)
- the "they still got one up their sleve motive"-established in The Great Hunt
So this one kinda lives and falls with it predecesors...

@ A Lion at the Door:
This one is a top contender for the most efficient use of shivan ship classes* no doubt but it fails to establish the Shivans as more as drones-to-shoot at but at that is exactly the point it has to make - the Shivans until The Great Hunt are nothing to be feared and the GTVA can have the upper hand; it is basically teasing easy victory which we never get (but that's the point) - as such it feeds into The Great Hunt's strong points but cannot outdo it

*= that takes some explaining: The Shivans we first encounter as enemies (so forgett about the freighters and the cargo depot) are 100% new and unseen ships (Maras and Rakshasa) instead of the old and known ones. This has less of an impact on newcomers but to veterans of the franchise it is everything: The Shivans are back and they are nothing like before, so you enter expecting problems which you dont really have since the HercII can save the day. The seond waves are unkowns too (Astaroths) and for the time between the destruction od the Behemoth and the arrival of the Carthage things look tense becaise of that. But once the allied fleet comes to rescue, the thrid shivan wave are all familiar, even half of them are FS1-era revenants (Seraphims, Astaroths and a Cain) which then are easily defeated, restoring a connection to end of FS1 when the "ground war" (=everything not involving the Lucifer) was well in hand.

@1uping:
Part of why it is so bad in the tradition is rooted in The Great Hunt but more so in Slaying Ravana; while Ravana certainly got the better presnetation than other capital classes in the series (the Hecate and the Demon come to mind) it does not fly and that is because there is no piece in between The Great Hunt and Slaying Ravana, everything that is supposed to reinforce the threat of the Ravana happens off screen... there is just no build-up to blowing it up, which somehow makes this like Evangelist in FS1 where you blow up a capital ship but there is no sense of victory in the act because there is no reinforcement (on-screen) as to why it matters (the Eva is *just* the Lucifer's sidekick and one with little personality at that; the Ravana is introduced as powerful but it is not given more of an air of terror than it gets through the inital shocking revial)
It gets better with the Sathanas #1 though: Sath #1 entrance is rather forgettable (I'd wiki its first appearance - it is Fog of War). But Sath #1 gets a good build up (from Monster in the Mist to Bearbeiting) with a real seller moment in A Flaming Sword. Sath #2 feeds of that build up but not only of that bbut also on how much effort went into building up the Psamtik and Sath #1, essepcially in High Noon.

Some campaigns have often followed the reveal->blow-up mold (BP:AoA being one of the most serious offenders btw) without giving your threats room to breathe as you would a good red wine

[Luis Dias]

I keep nodding at your analysis.

[NGTM-1R]

*= that takes some explaining: The Shivans we first encounter as enemies (so forgett about the freighters and the cargo depot) are 100% new and unseen ships (Maras and Rakshasa) instead of the old and known ones. This has less of an impact on newcomers but to veterans of the franchise it is everything: The Shivans are back and they are nothing like before, so you enter expecting problems which you dont really have since the HercII can save the day. The seond waves are unkowns too (Astaroths) and for the time between the destruction od the Behemoth and the arrival of the Carthage things look tense becaise of that. But once the allied fleet comes to rescue, the thrid shivan wave are all familiar, even half of them are FS1-era revenants (Seraphims, Astaroths and a Cain) which then are easily defeated, restoring a connection to end of FS1 when the "ground war" (=everything not involving the Lucifer) was well in hand.

I can only accept this analysis as the commentary of someone playing below medium difficulty. Maras can do amazingly bad things to a Herc 2. Astaroths can as well, though their afterburners often betray them. Even the Manticores in the last wave are a serious threat.

A Lion At the Door is a terrible introduction to the Herc 2, which was probably the least-suited fighter in the game to that mission. And it seems very likely that it was intended to be so.

EDIT: In fact, I'd say The Great Hunt is the only mission you fly in the Hercules 2 that is actually suited to the fighter's strengths. I have to wonder how much your opinion of it has been influenced by the fact it's essentially a breath of fresh air in the midst of a series of missions designed for you to struggle through.

After all, most of the points you've made in favor of The Great Hunt could be adapted to work for A Game of TAG, but nobody is going to praise that mission as the best in FreeSpace 2 because it's designed for you to struggle, whereas The Great Hunt is not.

[Luis Dias]

A Game of TAG has shivans catching you in a bad angle, and you still manage to cope, while The Great Hunt has you supposedly in great shape, pwning everything in sight only to be caught in a shock-jump maneuver by the Ravana. Both missions are great in their own, although the former has been reported as a tad too difficult lately. The lone recon coming back absolutely terrorized screaming we should get the whole fleet back contrasts beautifully with the whole "hey dog we're killing them like flies here we're so damn kewl" mental state.

[NGTM-1R]

A Game of TAG has shivans catching you in a bad angle, and you still manage to cope, while The Great Hunt has you supposedly in great shape, pwning everything in sight only to be caught in a shock-jump maneuver by the Ravana. Both missions are great in their own, although the former has been reported as a tad too difficult lately. The lone recon coming back absolutely terrorized screaming we should get the whole fleet back contrasts beautifully with the whole "hey dog we're killing them like flies here we're so damn kewl" mental state.

But you're missing one of the key points Orpheus has been (wrongly) trying to make: It's better the first time it's done.

By that logic, The Great Hunt isn't the first time we've done this. The Great War had an endgame phase which we saw briefly in Silent Threat, via Hellfire and some of the other missions. There's a reason Allied Command hits the portal with a sledgehammer in A Lion At The Door rather than a tailored strike; we're having our panic moment right now.

The Great Hunt is narratively one of the worst missions in the game for two reasons. The first is because it feels the need to try and stack a second panic moment on top of the first. It thus tries to clumsily set up a sensation of winning before doing so or the second will be pointless. Frankly, given the way previous missions involved have played out, it was never necessary to pretend the GTVA has left panic mode regarding the Shivans; even the assignment of a pair of corvettes to the mission suggests they're still trying to overkill their targets. The second is that it's one of the few missions where it's outright possible to destroy the narrative purely in reflex, as more than one person has been able to break the Ravana's LReds before it can fire on the Lysander.

I've also personally spilled much sweat and murdered many pixels deconstructing the concept of "Allied hubris" on these forums, so I'm not inclined to be charitable whenever someone tries to use it as the foundation of an argument.

[Luis Dias]

I have a slightly different analysis regarding "panic mode" and "pwning superior mode" here. I obviously agree with you on the notion that the GTVA reaction with the sledgehammer (good word) denounces panic at the sight of a terrible old antagonist. However, while there's panic and anxiety, there's also curiosity and wonder: are the shivans the badasses they were in the GW? Or are the new weapons systems sufficient to equalize if not even surpass them?

These subtleties are at play here, and in The Great Hunt they are finally voiced in an optimistic tone by your wingmates. It's a tad too optimistic, given how Mystery of the Trinity threw a gazillion of Dragons against us just before, and the player knows it. However, the optimistic lines shared here will create a tone that will resonate once the Ravana is finished and the Collossus is presented. Not only we have destroyed the Lucifer-type with incredible ease, we even have a warship that is far more powerful than the Lucifer. This mission is the one where these optimistic lines foreshadow the entire thematic of the first act: Yes, we are anxious and in a panic due to this new weird environment filled with unknown-sized menacing shivans, but clearly we have the upper hand and much much more.


Now I disagree with the idea that this is the "BEST MISSION EVAH" in FS2. But that's just a taste and I won't comment on that, except to say that my own taste has been really constant regarding my favorite mission for obvious reasons, which is Apocalypse.

[General Battuta]

Hubris is a huge subtextual theme in FS2 and there's no question this mission is one of the clearest presentations of that theme. People often have good, in-universe reasons for their hubris (FS2 Command behaves pretty logically given the information available to it), but a story does not live within itself.

[NGTM-1R]

Hubris is a huge subtextual theme in FS2 and there's no question this mission is one of the clearest presentations of that theme. People often have good, in-universe reasons for their hubris (FS2 Command behaves pretty logically given the information available to it), but a story does not live within itself.

Characters, however, do live within their stories; so do their motivations. Hubris is something people want to read back into the story as the Allies doing rather than read out of it. It's fun to say they should have known, but they shouldn't because they had no way of knowing.

Hubris is a theme. Any individual/group displaying it, however, is not. (Unless it's the disarmed Sathanas in High Noon.)

I have a slightly different analysis regarding "panic mode" and "pwning superior mode" here. I obviously agree with you on the notion that the GTVA reaction with the sledgehammer (good word) denounces panic at the sight of a terrible old antagonist. However, while there's panic and anxiety, there's also curiosity and wonder: are the shivans the badasses they were in the GW? Or are the new weapons systems sufficient to equalize if not even surpass them?

One of the big problems I, personally, have with The Great Hunt is that the expressed optimism is at odds with what is actually occurring; "our beams and flak will beat them" when you can pretty clearly see the Shivans throwing beams and flak too. (Have to wait for the Colossus before I had any real sensation of just maybe we have the Shivans outclassed, but it makes the Sathanas far less of a revelation in turn; if we could build the Hades, when we build a juggernaut I'm not surprised they can.) I thought my wingman was an idiot when he said it the first time I played FS2 and I still do; it not only doesn't fit with the in-mission events, but the GTVA's forces are still split because the NTF is still a going concern and will remain so until after the first set of nebula missions end.

It took everything we had to beat the Shivans last time, and the issue was still in doubt as late as Hellfire during Silent Threat. We don't have everything available this time.

[Scotty]

I forget, does that particular line come before or after the Lysander/Actium dynamic duo swats a Shivan cruiser from space like an annoying insect?  I imagine it'd be hard not to feel all high and mighty when the deadliest nightmare of your parents' generation scatters like so many droplets of water across the bow of your mighty interstellar warship.

EDIT: I can likewise imagine that sort of euphoric jubilation happening in real life fairly easily.  For example, do you think that anyone aboard the Bismarck wasn't filled with a sense of spectacular pride at the sheer might of their fighting warship when the HMS Hood went up in a fiery plume under their guns?  Despite the ship's eventual (and inevitable) doom, that sort of event is powerful.

[NGTM-1R]

Two corvettes vs. a couple of cruisers that were dumb enough to come at them one at a time isn't really anything to get excited about.

Basically it's the Scharnhorst twins vs. HMS Rawalpindi. That's not much to get excited about.

[General Battuta]

It's the first proactive offensive operation we actually see the GTVA launch against the Shivans, though - it's a transition from 'contain and counter' through 'step through and secure' and into 'okay, let's go kill them'.

[Megawolf492]

Up until The Great Hunt, the Shivans were dispatched pretty easily. The player might find the missions difficult because of the new/different ship classes, but overall it was easy to drive them back in "A Lion at the Door" and the fiasco in "Mystery of the Trinity" was more due to the nebula than anything else. So I can excuse a few fighter pilots for being overconfident. Up to this point the Shivans weren't the doomsday bringers they learned about growing up.

Now command is a different story.  They shouldn't expect that the Shivans would be roll overs. That's why they built the Colossus. However, it does seem like the reason for deploying the two corvettes was to lure the Ravana out of hiding more than just to kick Shivan butt, even at the expense of a corvette. And it also seems like "Slaying Ravana" was immediately after the end of "The Great Hunt", so that's why there were no missions in between. However, I would have liked to see more urgency in that mission, as the Ravana could just jump out at any time (it's basically a replay of "Evangelist").

[Scotty]

Two corvettes vs. a couple of cruisers that were dumb enough to come at them one at a time isn't really anything to get excited about.

Basically it's the Scharnhorst twins vs. HMS Rawalpindi. That's not much to get excited about.

Objectively, you're correct.  Subjectively, it's a Terran pilot who grew up hearing horror stories about how nigh unkillable Shivan ships massacred his/her parents' wingmen and crewmates who is now on the other end of the beat stick.  There's a huge psychological difference there.

[Luis Dias]

NG is right, I hadn't thought about the Hades, but then again I played that little campaign a lot of time after I had played FS2, so it didn't impact me at all on that front. I also think that the wingmates' opinions should be read as Scotty says, "combat high", and as GB hints out, we not only were able to stop the second shivan incursion right at the beggining (something neither the terrans nor the vasudans were able to last time), we were pressing forward to their territory.

I still think that those wingmates' opinions are too optimistic, the naive voices of rookies in combat high thinking they are all awesome and ****, but nevertheless they carelessly convey the inner thoughts that the high command is secretly beggining to think. And the high command does know about what they have in stock against the NTF and the Shivans. They are confidently pressing the shivans knowing or at least thinking they can always retreat if they miscalculate and just turn off the Gate.

We discussed at lenght the hubris of the GTVA in these forums, but I also think that many interpretations are a tad too harsh on them. An omniscient reading of the story would indicate that the relevant shivan actions would not be deterred by any GTVA action, and without foreknowledge on them, it was indeed possible that the Shivans were fragile, weaker, it was indeed possible that there was a new "cosmic ocean" awaiting the vasudan  / human species if only they dared Outside rather than coward backwards.

Only Bosch was in the Real know here.

And it also seems like "Slaying Ravana" was immediately after the end of "The Great Hunt", so that's why there were no missions in between.

yeah that's what happens when you have a mission right after another, there are no missions in between them yo.

[Megawolf492]

And it also seems like "Slaying Ravana" was immediately after the end of "The Great Hunt", so that's why there were no missions in between.

yeah that's what happens when you have a mission right after another, there are no missions in between them yo.

............

I mean there wasn't time for a mission in between. It's easier to see in FS1 with the briefing dates, but many missions have time that passes in between while others are the same day or even back to back. Some people are essentially asking "Why don't we chase the Ravana around for a few missions before blowing it up?" Well, command knew where the Ravana was and so they attacked immediately.