Aborted HW2 storyline

[phongn]

Source

Peter again.

I haven't had a chance to read the scripts that've just been posted (been hellaciously snowed under with other work here), but judging from the comments they weren't anything like the script I was working on before the lights went out. This was after Plaz left Relic (hey Plaz, if you're reading this, good to see you're alive. Where've you been hiding?); the storyline underwent yet another metamorphosis and turned into something that I, personally, thought kicked all kinds of ass.

In this iteration, S'jet's neural interface with the mothership's warp core had given the Hiigarans an edge in controlling the "Ring Road"--a series of massive jump gates that circumnavigated the galactic core and were essential to interstellar civilization. Basically, whoever controlled the Ring Road controlled the galaxy-- and by the time the story opens, a thousand years after the events of the original Homeworld, the Hiigarans are firmly in charge.

I noticed a few remarks about the potential deadweight of endless animatic cut-scenes. In fact, they were pretty brief. Here's the narration that opens the story:

***

A thousand years since Karan S'jet was first fused to an alien machine. A thousand years since the homecoming, and the founding of a dynasty in her name.

Eight centuries since she fled back into space, to die.

Three hundred years since the Vaygr first sought to wrest the Ring Road from Hiigaran control. Only forty since they were vanquished after centuries of bloodshed.

Four decades since the birth of the Emporer's heir. Almost that long his friendship with the orphaned Vaygr Durkarian, rescued in infancy from the wreckage of the Dust Wars.

Ten years since Durkarian returned to his people as the Hiigaran ambassador. Ten years, now, since two men closer than brothers have seen each other in the flesh.

Ten minutes before it all falls apart…

***

Things go south fast. Durkarian betrays his adopted family and the Vaygr stage a sneak attack during their reunion; the Hiigaran heir gets dumped into an unarmed pod and barely escapes the massacre. This is how the player begins: as a betrayed individual in a one-man spaceship, unarmed, lost, and with the Hiigaran Empire in jeopardy.

At about the halfway mark--just before S'jet and the original hyperspace core are discovered frozen in deep space-- there's a scenario in which a Vaygr fleet stalks the player's fleet through an ancient war zone. At this point, cruising amongst the charred aftermath of the Dust Wars, Durkarian broadcasts a message to his adopted brother:

***

I spared your life once, old friend.

You didn't know any better. Raised on the comforting lies of the victors, you learned early of Hiigara's divine right: to seize a stranglehold on technology you hadn't built, to cement your place in the center of all things. You never noticed the legacy in your own back yard-- the abandoned relocation camps, the scorched worlds, the once-vibrant places no one ever mentions any more.

I never noticed.

But now my people have given me back my sight. At last I know where the nightmares came from; they were not dreams after all. I was barely a child when my family was slaughtered. And though Hiigara took me in when they found me crawling among the bodies, I was just a lucky accident. You killed five billion others that day, with hardly a thought.

Now you talk of the "Dust Wars"-- neutral words, safe words, with no taint of atrocity. But we call them The Genocides, and we have not forgotten.

I spared your life once, old friend. But I cannot do it again.

***

They find S'jet. Wicked things happen. But S'jet, it turns out, left Hiigara for deep space because she could see what was coming. She left because she didn't want to be part of it. And at the very end of the game, when the whole core is in flames, Karan S'jet takes her hyperspace core through the gate at Balcorra and shuts down the Ring Road. This is what she broadcasts from the mothership as the lights go out and ten thousand solar systems fall back into isolation:

***

This is the last will and testament of Karan S'Jet. To my people and my world, I have already given all that I can. There is nothing left but to take some of it back.

I was not wise, to give you so much. Power and bitterness are a dangerous mix; the wounded find it so easy to go to extremes. And yet, we were cast into the pit for four thousand years. Was it so wrong, to swear that no one would do that to us again? So I gave you the means to defend yourselves, the strength to crush your enemies. I gave you the Ring Road.

Now, perhaps, you have come to resemble the Taiidan more than you know, and perhaps that is my fault.

So this is all I bequeath to you now: you will be neither oppressed nor oppressor. Your disputes may be civilised or barbaric, but they will be contained. If you ever again control an empire, it will be through your own efforts, and slowly. Next time, you will have earned it.

I give you back your frailty. I give you back your loneliness. I commend you to your darkness, as I descend into mine.

I love you. I will always love you.

This is Fleet Command, signing off.

***

Anyway, that's what I managed to salvage from my archives. Maybe it gives you a taste. There was a lot of cool player action in there: veils of fire, and ancient machinery firing at each other millions of years after its creators had gone extinct. Comets blown up at the edge of solar systems to provide cover and shrapnel during combat. Ship-to-ship combat amongst ruptured tankers, great shimmering blobs of fuel floating like incendiary mines throughout the battlefield. Leapfrog battles from gate to gate. It was all great, and maybe some of it survived (I still haven't got my copy of HW2 back from my friend), but at the heart of it all was a story and a substantive theme.

And in my own humble opinion, that wouldn't have slowed down the game at all.

Cheers,
P.

[SirNitram]

This is Fleet Command, signing off.

Jesus H. Christ, I heard the voice and got the same chill up my spine as I did in the last mission of HW1. 'Karan. You've taken one step too close to me.' *Flatline noise..*

[White Haven]

...Now I feel fucking violated, looking back at what HW2's story actually was. *sighs*

[Xon]

I weep for what HW2 could have been

[weemadando]

That sounds like a fucking beautiful storyline.

[Ypoknons]

I wonder how clan politics works under the Empire. Has one clan gained dominance, or is there balance of power?

[phongn]

One of the better parts was that you didn't even know that you were fighting for the bad guys until halfway through the storyline

[White Haven]

Even that's a maybe. Being descended from people who committed atrocities in the course of a two and a half century war doesn't make people evil. If so, all of Japan would be just...fucked, and that wasn't a tenth the length of the Vaygr war described in the story. I love shades of grey.

[phongn]

Even that's a maybe. Being descended from people who committed atrocities in the course of a two and a half century war doesn't make people evil. If so, all of Japan would be just...fucked, and that wasn't a tenth the length of the Vaygr war described in the story. I love shades of grey.

Earlier in that thread he noted that most of the characters in the game would attempt to try and do what they thought was the least evil.

[White Haven]

HW2 wasn't a BAD game...but now it feels like X-COM Apocalypse: stuffed full of unrealized potential.

[Stark]

That kicks the shit out of the piece of ass HW2 actually got saddled with. I probably would have played to the end without all the massive lameness.

[White Haven]

Eh, HW2 wasn't horrible. Wasn't good, story-wise, but it was playable. Then again, you hate everything.

[Stark]

LOL I've heard that. The sliding-scale campaign, with the Vaygr and their dozen BCs in one fleet, probably did more to put me off the last third of the game than the story. But the story was both uninspiring and included the hyperspace core lameness. The story drawn in broad strokes in the OP doesn't read like something off the back of a MacDonalds kids meal box, the way 'Find the Other Hyperspace Cores before Gargamil destroys Smurf Village' does.

[White Haven]

*laughs* You know, the only way the sliding scale bites you in the ass is if you artificially stave off the end of a mission to build a massive fleet. That 'dozens of BCs' thing? Yeah. Doesn't happen if you actually finish the mission when it's done, with your combat losses as they are.

[Stark]

I never did that, I just took very low losses. :p I got owned at the start, and was barely getting by mission to mission so I started again, with knowledge of spawns and sequences, and it was much much easier. However, I showed up in one of the post-Sajuuk missions with a BC, and a fairly well stocked fleet (no CRV, I hate them) and they had ten BC. Two right where I started, and I thought 'tough but not impossible' but more just kept flying into radar range.

I hate cheating computers. If I'd had the possibility of having ten BC, it wouldn't have been a problem, but your artificially limited to 2. Fuck em, I say. The Sajuuk wasn't worth the half a dozen missions I spent getting it, and the little drone-y dudes I stole lasted a lot longer against the Vaygr BCs. BAH!

In any case, not leaving till you eat all the RU actually seems like a sensible idea, if long and boring. Way to punish the players for planning for the future!

[Yogi]

I actually have all my builders set to automatically replace any ships I lose (essencially, queue up a few dozen of each ship I'm using for each builder). That way, you always end the mission with close to your max.

I still think the sliding scale fleet is cheating though. Just have the computer discover the wonders of "focus fire" and "kill the Battleship instead of Torpedo Frigate #67" and that would make things hellish enough.

[phongn]

That proposed storyline would actually work for HW3.

[Vanas]

Reminds me of The Dust Wars docs. If I had some spare webspace, I'd put them up in here for you to enjoy.
Can anyone lend a hamd here?

[Yogi]

That proposed storyline would actually work for HW3.

I think that was the point of introducing the Eye of Arran at the last second. I thought it was rather random and out of the blue, but now it makes sense.

[White Haven]

Yeah, looks like they were trying to go OMG RING ROAD.

[Crossroads Inc.]

In truth, this would make a great HW3 setup. Mainly as said, it would tie into the Eye of Arran that really seemed tacked onto the end.

Part of what makes this story compeling is that part of it would have to be from a first person perspective. Considering the normal HW game interface this would be a radical departure.

HW2 was grosslt flawed, but a proper sequale handeling Karen leaving into parts unknown and the Hiigarins becomming first an Empire, then a Corrupt Empire in need of a take down, leads to compeling angle.

Really, nothing makes for a better story then not knowing who is the bad guy.

One thing, you'll have to put Bentusi in it... Yeah Yeah, I know what happend in HW2... I don't care, you can't have a HW game without the Bentusi.

[White Haven]

Simple enough. Some Bentusi made it out in Cataclysm. Nothing stopping them from returning, potentially in force after building up an infrastructure.

[weemadando]

I fucking hated HW2s story. It felt like a cheap bargain bin "RPG" - the magical hyperspace cores have been lost! As the local village/farm idiot, you need to go get them all.

[Vanas]

I fucking hated HW2s story. It felt like a cheap bargain bin "RPG" - the magical hyperspace cores have been lost! As the local village/farm idiot, you need to go get them all.

Bonus points to those who realise that the Kushan didn't even have a magic core the first time.

On the other hand, Sajuuk IS rather nifty.

[White Haven]

Yeah, I seem to recall them constructing a scaled-up version of the Khar-Toba's hyperdrive, no mention of using a salvaged part.