TIE Fighter didn't have speaking Rebels at least until the mission disks, and if you're going to be arguing that then I counter that we had speaking Shivans during Silent Threat. Just not to us. The Kilrathi taunting you isn't speaking to you in any meaningful sense, nowhere near the significance of, to use your example, Sovereign's conversation with Shepard on Virmire. They can mouth our insults; that doesn't even imply they're an intelligent species in the end, just that someone taught them to like a bunch of parrots. We don't see a developed Kilrathi character until the second game.
****, I hate doing this, but you so make me do it! I have to borrow someone else's analysis of something dear Rumsfeld once said that got everyone laughing, to make a point about this. Remember when he said that silly philosophical fearmongering stuff about there being
known knowns,
known unknowns and
unknown unknowns? Well he forgot the fourth one, the
unknown knowns, i.e., our prejudices, our baggage that we come with into anything we do, like play a FreeSpace 2 game, or a Tie Figther game, etc.
You are analysing this
as if the game design doesn't pressupose this baggage already exists in everyone's minds. But I argue it does. When Volition designs the Humans in FreeSpace they are free to not be thorough in their characterization,
because it doesn't matter that much. We already are "team humans" by default, we know what they mean when they say "humans" and therefore all that baggage is already in place when we start the game.
The same can be said about Tie Fighter. No one played that game
before watching the trilogy.
No one thinks the rebels are muted space freaks that you won't communicate with. Regarding the Kilrathi, well, there were four Wing Commanders, and if by the second one we get them well developed as a talkative species and so on, remember that we are analysing here the plot of the *second* FreeSpace too. I never played the first Wing Commander, so I defer to your experience there.
You don't seem to remember these games as clearly as you think. Or, for that matter, FreeSpace as clearly as you think; Silent Threat rather destroys the notion of the Shivans as uncommunicative. They not only communicated but participated in a massive joint project with the GTI which replicated some of their most powerful technologies.
I don't regard Silent Threat too highly though, but you're right I don't have present in my memory the plot details of ST. I had the memory that it wasn't a free communication that was happening, but rather pure
manipulation on the terran part over some lone tiny random shivan forces. The whole plot fits nicely into the "hive mind theory" Peter Watts style, wherein the less forces of Shivans are out there, the less smart and weaker, manipulatable they become.
What do we know actually know about Vasudan culture?
They like Egyptian names. They favored a more rapid-firing version of the basic GTVA weapon because it suited their doctrine better. They used to have a Parliament. Now they have an Emperor.
You're not actually evaluating what you're told; you are accept it uncritically, and not realizing in so doing that your brain is filling in the blanks in the actual narrative and knowledge. Our characters may have the knowledge you describe. But we the players do not. We know nothing about the Vasudans that would actually prepare us to encounter one.
The point of the game isn't to fight Vasudans, except for one or two missions where they went a bit rogue (and you do learn something about their hierarchical (lack?) of structure where some units can just decide to **** a human secret op just like that). And I agree that in that sense, the game is far more interested in alluring you towards the shivans. But the game
pressuposes that you already know everything you "need" or are "interested" to know about both humans and vasudans.
They are, bluntly, the enemy. It is not in their interests to communicate if they believe they can win without doing so, as by doing so they could give us information we might be able to use against them. Augustus' Legions faced their enemies in silence to intimidate them; this too is an old human trick.
You
pressupose it was meant as intimidation, that it was according to their interests. It's a possibility but there's no evidence of this. Unlike "old humans", the question of whether they even communicate is wide open until Bosch becomes slightly successful.
So in the end, the lack of communication need not be mysterious. It can be, but it does not have to be.
It is but one element that adds to it.
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?).
But in reality the ETAK experience is simply a way to get you invested in the concept of a Shivan mystery. They know that without making the Shivans behave in a mysterious way, which in this case would mean presenting them as less than paragons of lethal efficiency, they need to do something that will make them mysterious. They are unprepared to sacrifice menace for mystery, so they use the familiar as a bridge to the obscure.
Those are two different events. One, the intrigue within Command, two, the Shivans ambiguously but also seemingly responding to Bosch's attempts. They are tied, of course, the plot is very laser focused, sharp, but I wasn't talking about the shivan part there. Now, of course the ETAK is the very
core of FreeSpace 2's thematic concern: Is it
possible to contact and really start "some" kind of relationship (other than pew pew) with these Monsters?
As a player, the game is superficially telling us that this doesn't really concern us, that shivans are bad zombie ships we should kill, that we should try to capture Bosch (even though we have Command against us on that point) and his technology; but then as a viewer, there's a slight dissonance with the fact that we
do get involved with Bosch's quest, that almost all the cutscenes are about
his struggle, not ours.
Both angles are windows to how "we" (human mortals) relate to the shivans.
The only outright incomprehensible act of the Shivans during the game is, not coincidentally, tied to ETAK.
What are you referring to exactly? The capture of Bosch and the butchering of the rest of the crew? I don't see it more incomprehensible than the supernovae that comes as much as a surprise here.
I could make a similar argument about the GTVA. How is it governed beyond vague generalities? Where are my orders actually originating? How many people live in it? What about the Vasudans? Can you describe the typical Vasudan day to me? How would a Vasudan define family? Do they even have a concept of family? Can you describe their internal politics, or indeed the internal politics of the Terrans?
You are surrounded by mysteries you refuse to acknowledge. The Shivans are the least mysterious of them, simply because we see so much.
Jesus, these are quaint things. "What bowls of cereals does Petrarch eat
every day? Huh? Can you POSSIBLY answer this question? Didn't think so!" Well of course we do not, but it's not as if we aren't given a good codex on their culture, politics and so on
to the expected level that we can given the scope and scale of the writing material we have. This isn't Mass Effect, where you can convince some Vasudan girl your manliness is bigger than their male counterparts, and get to learn their relationship with intrusive sand while you go storming some Shivan headquarters. And yeah, we don't get to "know humans" because we already have a ****ton of years of baggage with that kind of stuff. Where orders come from? From Command, and we know "Command" is a quick reference to all the chain of command outlined for us during the game, including the Admiral we serve on board.
It doesn't have a booze session, all the wingmen are random personas and there's no human connection at all other than with Snipes and a few others. This is both part of the minimalist character of the game and a great source of criticism in the wider spheres of internet reviews. I do think that while this minimalism does explain a lot concerning how we don't get as much info on terrans or vasudans as you'd prefer, it does not explain the shivans.