Sorry for being late in posting my thoughts here. I have shared these with some others and will paste them here.
I want to start of by saying again thank you to the team for helping to get this campaign to its next phase of completion. It was very enjoyable. The music was great, and the weapons were great (I especially enjoyed the new more versatile Cyclops and the new Prometheus cannon...I wish there would have been more missions with that new Prom as the original Nostos release didn't really have a good all around gun like that). New ships were fun too (I like missions where you fly bombers so a relatively minor issue is I wish there would have been a mission or two where you got to fly a super heavy bomber and use the newest equivalent of the Harbinger/Helios...I remember in old Inferno posts there was supposed to be a new bomb called Executioner or Armageddon).
Gameplay wise I think it was excellent and these issues I brought up were only minor. Bottom line: when part three comes out I will certainly play it and am looking forward to that.
I also like the new version mission of the mission where you defend the Vasudan carrier. In the original, that mission was super difficult, but in this it was challenging but fair.
I had a couple issues with the story however.
1-The beginning of the war:
The beginning of the war in the updated Inferno (this recent release), felt kind of weird. When the EA came through now, they didn't immediately attack, but they didn't behave diplomatically either. They started shouting "Unification! Unification!" and not engaging in any real dialogue beyond that from what was said. Now certainly the GTVA would be open to integrating Sol into the GTVA and I agree with some of the pilots who said its not inherently wrong for Sol/EA to want unification, but when someone shouts at you instead of being more diplomatic, that makes one defensive. Plus, you see EA craft engaging with criminal elements in the first couple missions and game dialogue says EA officials often would ignore GTVA diplomatic requests for conversation...all this should have raised more red flags IMO in the GTVA and not been so caught off guard.
If the EA wanted to force a military conflict they should have either been more engaging and friendly at first to catch the GTVA off guard...or they should have just did an outright surprise attack like they did in Inferno Classic as soon as the Sol Gate opened.
2-Vasudan intervention:
In Classic, the Vasudans intervened in the EA war after the Shivans attacked because they felt it would be better to have a united front to face the Shivans. That made sense. In this new Inferno, the Vasudans were brought into the war because the EA decided to attack them all of a sudden. I think that could have been explained a little better.
2-The end of the war (for now):
To be honest I wasn't crazy about the way the war ended. You have a couple of confrontations with the Nemesis, but none of them really go anywhere. Whereas Inferno Classic's "Nemesis" mission remains iconic even today. I'm not saying the GTVA should have outright conquered Sol (or even done as well as they did in Inferno Classic though I wouldn't complain if they did), but I think they should have done better than they did in this new update (though I get the team probably wanted to make the EA seem like more of a credible threat...I thought it did that with that chapter 1 missions). If the GTVA Terrans were able to push the EA back to the Sol Gate, then when the Vasudans joined in, the GTVA should have done better in Sol than they did.
It felt like the EA was constantly able to pull rabbits out of their hats once the campaign got into Sol. If what the campaign implies is true and the GTVA is forced out of Sol...that's just basically status quo ante bellum. One would think the GTVA would try for something better than that since the EA launched a surprise attack and basically supported terrorist/criminal elements destabilizing the GTVA prior to invasion. Also, one would think they would want to permanently weaken the EA since they were trying to bring in Shivans with their Ross 128 subspace experiments.
Now on the other hand, if the GTVA-EA war isn't over and will be continued in chapter three I apologize.
Here's what I would do: Have one or two more missions where the GTVA kicks Admiral Ramsey out and puts someone more competent in. They could lure a number of EA destroyers in for a climactic battle (heck, even use damaged GTSD Bastion as bait). Briefings would bill this as one final attempt to end the war on favorable GTVA terms and prevent a retreat from Sol. In short, the GTVA wouldn't end up in as strong a position as Inferno Classic (ending in Earth orbit), but would still have a relatively good position in Sol.
I look forward to part 3.
