[Rheyah]

I am going to be much less charitable.

1.  If you think you can do better than WIH then ****ing do it and stop whining about it on forums.  It's not that goddamn hard.  FRED is spectacularly powerful compared to virtually every editor I've ever used for a game.  You can do whatever you want there.  Good luck producing the stuff you want to produce.

2.  If the excuse for not doing 1) is you are too busy, bully for you.  We're all busy people.  I'm incredibly busy building an academic career in numerical plasma physics.  I still find time to have fun with FRED and am slowly building MY OWN interpretation of things.

3.  We have had exactly one discussion on these forums and I already think poorly.  From what I can gather, this is not an uncommon opinion.  You would do well to shut up for a while and not run in circles around people who have already torn your arguments apart.

Cheers.

[Fineus]

Holy walls of text, batman.

Look. Guys. This thread has been reported and whilst I don't think there's sufficient evidence (yet) to start dishing out sanctions, I will ask those of you posting in the last page or so to simmer right down.

If any post from here on continues to escalate things between posters I will encourage those affected to report again and we'll take a fresh look - bearing in mind you've just been warned to cool it.

This topic actually persuaded me to log in and moderate and I hate doing that. So watch it

Thanks,

Fineus.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Having an unpopular opinion tends to make one unpopular. Big surprise.

One does not need to create art in order to criticize it. I doubt Siskel and Ebert ever made a movie but as academics of the craft their opinions were widely distributed.  I've studied literature and work in animation, I think I know something about story and when a story works and doesn't work. When it comes down to any movie, game or novel my first and foremost thoughts are to the story and whether it makes sense.


Games as I said are largely a different matter. A popular opinion is that games are an engine to create player experiences and a common backlash today is against so-called corridor shooters which take the player down a sequence of pre-scripted events. There's a world of difference between being a participate to a story and a passenger. Personally I prefer the former philosophy, the one which allows for player freedom, agency and the room to be creative.

[Luis Dias]

It's not about your opinion.

[Akalabeth Angel]

It's not about your opinion.

It isn't? And yet my opinion is being attack and said to be invalid:

So I say again: you don't get WiH.  You were never going to like it because it didn't tell its story the way you wanted it to.

And I get that you didn't like Delenda Est for the reasons you implied, but to unequivocally state it "sucks"? That's just moronic hyperbole. If your only criteria for "good" is "orgasmic indulgence always in-the-zone ****" then I think your criteria is poor, and you'll miss quite a lot in all things, especially anything remotely concerning art.

1.  If you think you can do better than WIH then ****ing do it and stop whining about it on forums.  It's not that goddamn hard.  FRED is spectacularly powerful compared to virtually every editor I've ever used for a game.  You can do whatever you want there.  Good luck producing the stuff you want to produce.

It is very clearly my opinion that is at the heart of this, because here I am expressing it and having three people telling me that what I've expressed is wrong and then using that as a justification for all manner of personal attacks which have nothing to do with this discussion.  Aesear for one wasn't even involved in this discussion until I made my opinion of WiH known. What does one suppose his agenda is? Is it to contribute to the discussion at hand or is it to steadfastly defend a project he's involved in?

Even the notion that I've "lost the argument" is trolling in and of itself, you cannot lose an argument based on supposition. At best it's an exchange of ideas with the "winning" defined as swaying the opposition to your own side, a victory condition which all sides have failed to achieve. Not sure why people are suprised when it turns out that I actually believe the ideas I'm presenting and that I have the attention to detail to point out inconsistencies in people's responses when I see them.


And news flash. I've made a campaign.  I've had people like it and other people tell me they didn't like it. For the latter I didn't argue that they didn't "get it".  I listened, considered their points and thought about how I might make it better in future. But I don't intend to make new campaigns because I'm not going to invest the time into something I cannot sell nor do I want to piggy back off of someone else's IP or ideas.  My next creative endeavour would likely be an original game, but learning programming is of course quite a hurdle to overcome.

[Aesaar]

Having an unpopular opinion tends to make one unpopular. Big surprise.

Presenting one's opinions like an asshat also tends to make one unpopular.  You're not the only person on HLP who isn't particularly fond of WiH.

Aesear for one wasn't even involved in this discussion until I made my opinion of WiH known. What does one suppose his agenda is? Is it to contribute to the discussion at hand or is it to steadfastly defend a project he's involved in?

Actually, what made me respond was the thing I've been primarily arguing with you about.  You know, this:
 

The notion that a tightly-scripted story is self-defeating because it isn't what games are supposed to do is complete bull****.

That you don't like WiH isn't news to me, and you'll notice that in both posts, I only talk about it for one paragraph out of many.  So again, nice try.

[Luis Dias]

Akalabeth, you keep misrepresenting my views. This is what irks me:

I think you are now trying to tell me what I say and think. And this is outright unacceptable. (...) going out of your way to tell me that what I *really* think is not what I say or actually think falls outside of the scope of a civilized discussion.

And you keep doing it. Is it pathological on your part? Regarding your own views, this is what I said, and I kept saying this throughout our entire exchange:

I don't mind you disagreeing with me, I find that challenging and interesting in fact

Yes, I do find your lack of flexibility regarding the existence of other viewpoints a disappointment, and I did try to challenge this, but I think I was always polite in doing so? Anyways I never regarded that inflexibility on your part as anything remotely offensive or whatever, just midly annoying. I kept commending your own particular theory because I do appreciate heterodoxy, because I'm just the kind of perfect consumer for that kind of analysis and so on, and it did *sound* smart, thoughtful. A pity that we instead dragged this **** down to this.

But instead, you kept telling me I'm full of bull****, that I have no idea what I'm talking about, that I gish gallop, that I somehow are not saying what I am saying, but another thing entirely, and finally that the real reason people are pissed at you is because you're some kind of intellectual martyr in HLP always misunderstood by the unforgiving mob.

Please, whatever you do, don't just nitpick some single quote from all the above, mischaracterize it and drag on this muddy shenanigan? If you want to reply to me, address me like a person.


e: I'd very much like to try your campaign, but every download link is broken and from the campaign thread I see there were a lot of issues... but still is it anywhere in the megaternetverse?

[Akalabeth Angel]

Akalabeth, you keep misrepresenting my views. This is what irks me:

No, your view changes. As demonstrated:

the horror of living in the same space as a species that is several orders of magnitude more powerful than you are and you can't understand them, talk to them, deal with them, whatever.

Shivans are something that cannot be talked to you say. When I mention Bosch talking to and dealing with them your reply is:

Before you tell me what I have done and what not, please wait up? I didn't say that the shivans didn't communicate with Bosch and that Bosch didn't understand the message they sent, I said it doesn't mean we understand the Shivans.

So your definition of "talking to", "dealing with" and "understanding" changes to only be "understanding"
And then what?

having, yes, Bosch "talk" to these untalkable species, etc. But the "communication" point is also denied at the end, when we see the butchering of everyone inside the Iceni, just like in every alien horror movie. So much for the "alliance" with the shivans. All these narratives are written like a big "NOPE" to the player. NOPE, this wasn't the last Big Monster it was just one of 80+; NOPE, you can't deal with the shivans they will butcher you after all; NOPE, the whole war wasn't about what you thought it was about.

You misrepresent events by saying that "everyone" was killed, when this was not the case.

And somehow the massacre of the Iceni's crew proves three completely unrelated points? Vader changed the deal on Lando, that doesn't mean that they didn't deal in the first place. Just means they made a deal and then Vader screwed him over. Your mention of a lack of an alliance is an attempt to narrow your definition even further and is a bit silly.

Bosch made a deal to be picked aboard shivan transports.
He was.
End of story.

The death of his crew may have been known to him before the transports even docked. Bosch himself may have agreed to their slaughter for all we know. To him the NTF were just a bunch of sheep, why would some tech in the engine room be any more dear to him? He and his officers were taken alive.

The point is you're presenting a very broad idea of what the shivans are in your "core" belief, and then as evidence is presented to disprove your terms, you're narrowing and reshaping that statement behind the pre-tense that it was that same statement all along when it's changed. Multiple times. You're even changing what "communication" means and what making a "deal" is.

And you've also said:

Canon is what canon was. FS2 is canon so to speak, and to that I hold it dear. It does not mean someone can't continue the story and make them understandable, but that is beyond the scope of FS2. I was talking about that particular story and nothing else.

While at the nearly the same time quoting the author for FS2:

So what? What has this anything to do with unintelligibility? The mere fact the Shivans were able to communicate with Bosch is not indicative we can understand them. In the interview of the writer of FS2 he said clearly that what happened with Bosch was a mystery, and he could have well been "eaten alive" by them. Perhaps they were interested in the fact humans had devised the ETAK tech, and wanted to scan Bosch's personal brain... after dissecting it.

Are the authors words within the scope of FS2? No, they're outside the scope because he's giving an opinion and little else. Your actions of saying you're focusing solely on fs2 and then bringing in outside information to support your own theories (or disprove others) is inconsistent.

So when I say, what you're saying is inconsistent and changes with every post, this is what I mean. And I have full grounds to say it because the evidence is clear and irrefutable. I don't think that your core belief of what the shivans are is fully defined, you're trying to find it through the discussion and when I say things are inconsistent you're getting defensive about it. Simple as that. But your own posts are telling a different story. Maybe you used the wrong words or changed your mind, either way the result is the same.

But instead, you kept telling me I'm full of bull****, that I have no idea what I'm talking about,

Actually I said your post was a load of bull****, not that you were full of bull****.  Specifically:

That's a load of bull****. I don't think you know what you're saying, probably because what you're saying changes with every post.

So please, don't misrepresent what I'm saying.
Load of bull**** addresses your content. The following is an opinion based on observation rather than a judgement.

[Luis Dias]

Fine, if that's the kind of nitpicking you want to bring aboard then why not. I appreciate the quotes there though and see where you come from, and I have to say I agree with you regarding the WINNING the argument thing.

From my point of view, the whole Bosch arc story is a tragedy. It is "Exodus denied" so to speak. Thematically, it fits together with the rest of FreeSpace 2 as another failure to bridge the gap between us and the shivans. I do think there is truth in both claims that we are incapable of communicating the shivans and that this attempt was almost successful. The point is, thematically, it failed. How can I speak of it as a "failure"? I agree with you here that I might be too quick to judge on what happened to Bosch and whatnot, there is a glimmer of "open question", mythical even, to what happened to him. Plotwise, he could have gone and continued his mission to build some arrangement with the shivans or anything else. Thing is, we are blocked from knowing anything like this. The shivans remain a muted species by the end of the game. To us. And narratively, any other end of this arc wouldn't work. This has been built up on and on from the very first chapter, and the conclusion couldn't just be a dead Iceni with the captain at the helm without his head or whatever. It wouldn't work because why then even bother to rendezvous? Just beam them out of the sky.

It also works within the scope of the player. You want to know what happened. You want to chase Bosch. But you can't, because a new Sathanas is just about to beamraep your vasudan destroyer and the whole tone changes. Again, shivans deny you from one more thing. This begins a series of disappointments and the retreat of expectations and ambitions. Bosch touched the gods of the galaxy at the very peak of human ambitions (they had defeated the NTF and were about to just conquer everything shivan related), and right at that very moment, everything recedes and you are ultimately denied of any truth, any power, any conversation.

I see the whole work thematically, and it all boils down to several NOPES. I said this already. Again, these NOPES start to become real game changers by the time Bosch is captured. NOPE, you don't get to know what happens to Bosch. NOPE, shivans won't communicate anything to you or any other human again. NOPE, you don't get to know shivantown. NOPE, you are not as powerful as you thought at all. NOPE, we are not going to steamroll you, it's not even on our radar. NOPE you won't get an explanation for what happened. And this tone arc couldn't be more strident: the game starts with the "New Alliance" ambition "to guard the tomb of space, and to find within its cold expanse the salvation of our race" and it ends after this terrifying sequence of NOPES with the only upside of the hope to get back to Sol, like a wounded humilliated kid limping, trying to find his mommy.

This is not a story about a species that is about to recover and "try again!" against the "cold expanse" after Capella. This is why I characterize the shivans the way I do, regardless of your interpretation of Bosch's arc. (I have no problems with your version too)

Metanarratively, this could just as well be designed in a kind of "Empire Strikes Back" manner and the end of FS2 just a damn good cliffhanger, with Bosch's arc to be finished later. The point of bringing that quote from the writer was to somehow ground good skepticism on this angle of attack, not to bring anything "outside" as a cheat, etc.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Fine, if that's the kind of nitpicking you want to bring aboard then why not.

It's not nitpicking. It's a symptom of defining a species as undefinable.
Since a person can't precisely define what a unknowable thing is, they instead describe it, and in describing it they attribute characteristics which may or may not hold up under scrutiny.

But the main problem with the way you describe the shivans is that the core argument depends upon a lack of evidence. But a lack of evidence is inherently unreliable. Saying that "shivans haven't responded to us" is more specific and stronger than "shivans cannot be talked to" because the latter is an assumption, whereas the former is observable fact.

It also works within the scope of the player. You want to know what happened. You want to chase Bosch. But you can't, because a new Sathanas is just about to beamraep your vasudan destroyer and the whole tone changes. Again, shivans deny you from one more thing. This begins a series of disappointments and the retreat of expectations and ambitions. Bosch touched the gods of the galaxy at the very peak of human ambitions (they had defeated the NTF and were about to just conquer everything shivan related), and right at that very moment, everything recedes and you are ultimately denied of any truth, any power, any conversation.

I see the whole work thematically, and it all boils down to several NOPES. I said this already. Again, these NOPES start to become real game changers by the time Bosch is captured. NOPE, you don't get to know what happens to Bosch. NOPE, shivans won't communicate anything to you or any other human again. NOPE, you don't get to know shivantown. NOPE, you are not as powerful as you thought at all. NOPE, we are not going to steamroll you, it's not even on our radar. NOPE you won't get an explanation for what happened. And this tone arc couldn't be more strident: the game starts with the "New Alliance" ambition "to guard the tomb of space, and to find within its cold expanse the salvation of our race" and it ends after this terrifying sequence of NOPES with the only upside of the hope to get back to Sol, like a wounded humilliated kid limping, trying to find his mommy.

I don't agree. The final act of Freespace 2 was not a denial, it was a revelation.
We learn more about the shivans in the final few missions than everything that came before.

It's a lack of power sure, the story goes from conventional war to twilight zone and from being in control to on the brink of extinction but still more is learned of the shivans in those last few missions that the rest of the entire game put together. We learn that they can be communicated with. That they have other motives. what their territory holds. That there are additional Knossos. 

The opportunity to seize Bosch and ETAK is denied but that theme is prevalent throughout the entire game. The first mission is Bosch getting away.

The question of the alliance or continued communication was not one that the game was asking, it was never the focus of what the player was doing, it was solely bosch's ambition and narratively speaking Bosch was little more than a catalyst and a story hook for future games. "Shivantown" was never on the table either because a way out of the nebula was never really found until the second Sathanas was revealed.

From my point of view, the whole Bosch arc story is a tragedy. It is "Exodus denied" so to speak.

If Exodus is a journey through the desert and a return to the promised land, the homeland, then I would think the analogy would be attributed to the GTVA and their return to sol.

[NGTM-1R]

Perfect clearcut example of misreading me. Almost every single thought here is just wrong. First, I stated the exact opposite of your first sentence here, when I stated that these things should not be read "that rigorously". I said that many times. It's obvious that the writer(s) were tentative and experimental in their design of the shivans, always managing their hedges with intelligence texts that only refer to "theories" and other clever tricks, so they can always get "out of jail free cards", so to speak, and if so needed. It was also very clever to have them not speak with us (I do like Mass Effect's conversation with Sovereign, but once that happened, a lot was sacrificed).

This is a fascinating discussion, because you say things completely opposite from your apparent intent. You harp on the mystery of the Shivans as their core characteristic, but you don't mean it? I don't think you can convince other observers of this argument that's true. Or perhaps you're projecting on this misreading thing. (Or christ, you're doing it for the reasons you ascribe to the writers of FS2.)

There was nothing clever about not having them speak to us. As the hostile faction, there was no reason for them to do so; and it was the norm that the hostiles don't talk to you in games of this type. Of all the flight sims and space sims I've played, the only sequence that ever developed a talking enemy was Ace Combat, and that was usually not to its favor. There was no stroke of genius here, only the proper obeisance to convention. The lack of focus on their side or an occasional flip of perspective was not revolutionary, but evolutionary. If, indeed, it can be considered such at all; this is an alien invasion story, dehumanizing the enemy is almost required.

Indeed, the whole idea that the Shivans are mysterious is kind of problematic when realize that, at the nuts and bolts level, we actually learn more about them than we do the mainstream Vasudans. The Vasudans are never treated as mysterious, but because of the focus of the game we actually know less about how they behave and fight than we do the Shivans. We are told very tiny bits about their culture which would in no way prepare us for interacting with a Vasudan. These are vastly outweighed by the evidence presented us about Shivan tactics, strategy, and technologies via the mechanism of the game's missions.

The Shivans are merely treated as mysterious. Even the Terrans aren't particularly expounded on via the game, despite the fact we are one. One of their own defining characteristics is Command's bizarre behavior towards Bosch, which is itself mysterious; and in turn, is actually part of developing the Shivans. It's arguably what gives them any mystery at all before the late-game swerve about the supernova.

Shivans-as-mystery rather falls apart when examined that closely. They draw it from mysteries among the Terrans for the most part, and in the end are the most developed race in the game.

[cahdoge]

Shivans-as-mystery rather falls apart when examined that closely.

I think it wouldn't fall apart because we are currently unable to connect the knowledge we have about shivans.

We know: how they can look like. Their size indicates that they are cyborgs, robots ore are living in zero gravity for a long time.
                 that their technologies is far superior to the Terrans and Vasudans ones, and that it has a high diversity.
                 what they have done, and how they behaved while their incursions.

But we don't know: how they are organized.
                                why they wanted to eradicate the Terrans.
                                why they just took Bosh and a few officers and not the whole ship.

I'm sure this is incomplete so please add missing stuff

[Luis Dias]

It's a symptom of defining a species as undefinable.
Since a person can't precisely define what a unknowable thing is, they instead describe it, and in describing it they attribute characteristics which may or may not hold up under scrutiny.

But the main problem with the way you describe the shivans is that the core argument depends upon a lack of evidence. But a lack of evidence is inherently unreliable. Saying that "shivans haven't responded to us" is more specific and stronger than "shivans cannot be talked to" because the latter is an assumption, whereas the former is observable fact.

This is a very fair commentary, but I think this is not a refutation per se, but only outlining the challenges of representing said "un-knowable" thing, which you cannot do without knowing at least a bit of it, thus entering in contradiction. I think this contradiction is indeed inevitable, but it can be tamed and at the same time you can somewhat "have your cake and eat it", because the raw emotion you are tryiing to convey is vertigo. Now, this has lots to do with the relationship between science and nescience, and the best way to feel how much we don't know about a thing is precisely to have a bit of taste of knowing it a bit. Just enough so your mind at least understands how much it doesn't actually know.

This is a common human experience and the "unknowable" is just the extreme monster that rests at the outside of nescience, lurking as a threat to our "godhood" scientific indulgence and so on. The shivans are not at the very extreme (infinite?) side of this, but they are just enough on that distance that we can sense and feel the vertigo.

I don't agree. The final act of Freespace 2 was not a denial, it was a revelation.
We learn more about the shivans in the final few missions than everything that came before.

It's a lack of power sure, the story goes from conventional war to twilight zone and from being in control to on the brink of extinction but still more is learned of the shivans in those last few missions that the rest of the entire game put together. We learn that they can be communicated with. That they have other motives. what their territory holds. That there are additional Knossos.

I think it's possible to read this the way I said: without having this glimpse, it wouldn't resonate any vertigo in our guts.

The opportunity to seize Bosch and ETAK is denied but that theme is prevalent throughout the entire game. The first mission is Bosch getting away.

Well ok, that's true, but the anomaly is that we don't get to get him at the end. Usually these kinds of arcs are always closed with the chasing being successful.

The question of the alliance or continued communication was not one that the game was asking, it was never the focus of what the player was doing, it was solely bosch's ambition and narratively speaking Bosch was little more than a catalyst and a story hook for future games. "Shivantown" was never on the table either because a way out of the nebula was never really found until the second Sathanas was revealed.

I disagree here. Bosch is central to FS2's core themes and the idea of having him try to contact the shivans is central to the story. And I honestly believed we were going to get to shivantown the moment the first sathanas was destroyed, having had cleansed the nebula of a lot of gas miners and so on. I didn't call it "shivantown" at the time, nor did I even imagine it was several systems far away. It could be harbored right in that system for all I knew! My expectation of the story arc would be for us to find some incredible base somewhere and our job would be to bomb it to smithereens or whatever (my expectations were not that high, finales aren't usually great in games).

If Exodus is a journey through the desert and a return to the promised land, the homeland, then I would think the analogy would be attributed to the GTVA and their return to sol.

I have to say this is the first time I have seen this idea and I find it interesting. The more when you think Bosch created Neo-Terra and his "promised land" was precisely based on this nostalgia, etc. I disagree with it, though. Plotwise, it doesn't work. Bosch has the knowledge of the Knossos portal from the get go and his objective is never to use said technology to go back to Sol (being stopped by shivan interference or whatever plot variation one could have come up with). Their purpose is to meet the shivans and reach the "promised land" far beyond the nebula. The alliance's ambition is too to "find salvation" in the cold expanse of space, the "tombs" of the lost homeworlds are the past, space is the future. Bosch's "promised land" comes with an alliance with God, just like Moses with Jehovah.

But I don't dislike it.

[Luis Dias]

This is a fascinating discussion, because you say things completely opposite from your apparent intent. You harp on the mystery of the Shivans as their core characteristic, but you don't mean it? I don't think you can convince other observers of this argument that's true. Or perhaps you're projecting on this misreading thing. (Or christ, you're doing it for the reasons you ascribe to the writers of FS2.)

I admit I could be confused about the subject. I don't think I am though. At least too much.

There was nothing clever about not having them speak to us. As the hostile faction, there was no reason for them to do so; and it was the norm that the hostiles don't talk to you in games of this type. Of all the flight sims and space sims I've played, the only sequence that ever developed a talking enemy was Ace Combat, and that was usually not to its favor. There was no stroke of genius here, only the proper obeisance to convention. The lack of focus on their side or an occasional flip of perspective was not revolutionary, but evolutionary. If, indeed, it can be considered such at all; this is an alien invasion story, dehumanizing the enemy is almost required.

Really? Well, I don't even mean "in-game" sense out there when you are in your cockpit and so on, but never even plotwise. There may be other games like this (usually zombie games), but every space shooter or sci fi game where an enemy faction is as sophisticated as the shivans are that I have played, I never got the sense there was no politics involved. All Tie Fighters, X Wing Alliances, Wing Commanders, and so on always had speaking antagonists. I wonder what kinds of "space sims" you played.

The muted nature of the shivans is special and intended. Foreshadowed by the very communication crisis that sparked the terran-vasudan war, between two very similar species that couldn't understand each other at first.

Indeed, the whole idea that the Shivans are mysterious is kind of problematic when realize that, at the nuts and bolts level, we actually learn more about them than we do the mainstream Vasudans. The Vasudans are never treated as mysterious, but because of the focus of the game we actually know less about how they behave and fight than we do the Shivans. We are told very tiny bits about their culture which would in no way prepare us for interacting with a Vasudan. These are vastly outweighed by the evidence presented us about Shivan tactics, strategy, and technologies via the mechanism of the game's missions.

This is interesting, but it is biased towards gameplay and so on, which is also predictable since playing a "really alien species" was more interesting as an experience. Plotwise what you just said makes no sense whatsoever. We know vasudan hierarchical structure. We know their story. We know their home planet. We talk to them every day. We embark on their ships and are welcomed as crew members. We commercialize with them. To say we know "less" of Vasudans because gameplay-wise we fight the shivans quite a lot more is a non-sequitur.

The Shivans are merely treated as mysterious. Even the Terrans aren't particularly expounded on via the game, despite the fact we are one. One of their own defining characteristics is Command's bizarre behavior towards Bosch, which is itself mysterious; and in turn, is actually part of developing the Shivans. It's arguably what gives them any mystery at all before the late-game swerve about the supernova.

So the fact they don't speak at all, fail completely to state their intentions is nowhere near mysterious to you? When I see Command do what they did regarding Bosch, I say "human political intrigue at its best". I immediately recognize it. It is mysterious in the sense that we don't know who made the call (could it even have been the vasudans?).

Shivans-as-mystery rather falls apart when examined that closely. They draw it from mysteries among the Terrans for the most part, and in the end are the most developed race in the game.

Oh my. It's like we played entirely different games. I honestly don't know what to say here. I guess all the questions that could pop regarding the shivans' nature, their true power, their true scale, their homeworld, their language, their culture, their purposes, their politics, everything really, is just of no interest to you, thus of no mystery.

[Akalabeth Angel]

If Exodus is a journey through the desert and a return to the promised land, the homeland, then I would think the analogy would be attributed to the GTVA and their return to sol.

I have to say this is the first time I have seen this idea and I find it interesting. The more when you think Bosch created Neo-Terra and his "promised land" was precisely based on this nostalgia, etc. I disagree with it, though. Plotwise, it doesn't work. Bosch has the knowledge of the Knossos portal from the get go and his objective is never to use said technology to go back to Sol (being stopped by shivan interference or whatever plot variation one could have come up with). Their purpose is to meet the shivans and reach the "promised land" far beyond the nebula. The alliance's ambition is too to "find salvation" in the cold expanse of space, the "tombs" of the lost homeworlds are the past, space is the future. Bosch's "promised land" comes with an alliance with God, just like Moses with Jehovah.

But I don't dislike it.

But Bosch is ultimately consorting with demons. He's making a deal with the devil. Not god.

[The E]

He's making a deal with the devil. Not god.

Are the Shivans the devil? Being somewhat homicidally inclined is one of the traits of the old Testament god, as I recall.

[Luis Dias]

But Bosch is ultimately consorting with demons. He's making a deal with the devil. Not god.

The_E is absolutely right, let us remember that the Genesis whole chapter is filled with beautiful things Jehovah is doing like murdering first borns, terrorizing everyone with rivers painted with blood, locusts destroying every culture in sight, firestorms, diseases, etc. I'm pretty sure the egyptians weren't exactly clamoring this Jehovah guy as a peaceful loving god, who by the way kills every egyptian soldier trying to cross the river and demands of Moses that he kill the half of his hebrew population adoring a golden statue / wrong god.

I hinted at this previously by saying that the commentary FreeSpace 2 subtly makes of Moses is quite fittingly atrocious and butcherous.

[Akalabeth Angel]

He's making a deal with the devil. Not god.

Are the Shivans the devil? Being somewhat homicidally inclined is one of the traits of the old Testament god, as I recall.

Uh, can you name any shivan ship classes or instances?

Lucifer means devil
Shaitan means devil
Iblis means devil
Sathanas means devil

Moloch is a demon
Lilith is a demon
Ravana is an evil spirit
Cain is a murderer
Demon is a . . demon

Sammael, the ship that was present when Bosch was picked up is the angel of death and is both good&evil.

Petrarch describes the shivan encounter thusly, "From our odyssey into Hell, we've returned with a gift; "

When has God, as in Yahweh, Hosanna, Allah, whatever ever factored into their depiction?

[AdmiralRalwood]

Uh, can you name any shivan ship classes or instances?

Lucifer means devil
Shaitan means devil
Iblis means devil
Sathanas means devil

Moloch is a demon
Lilith is a demon
Ravana is an evil spirit
Cain is a murderer
Demon is a . . demon

As so named by... the humans fighting them.

[Akalabeth Angel]

Uh, can you name any shivan ship classes or instances?

Lucifer means devil
Shaitan means devil
Iblis means devil
Sathanas means devil

Moloch is a demon
Lilith is a demon
Ravana is an evil spirit
Cain is a murderer
Demon is a . . demon

As so named by... the humans fighting them.

Yeah, exactly.
Humans depict them as devils and demons.
Bosch is going to make a deal with them.
Therefore bosch is dealing with the devil.