Yeah... needless to say, that couldn't happen for us, because we'd have had to provide an alternate room for the Tarawa, alternate characters to give you briefings and such, and, well, a lot of alternate cutscenes in general. Damn, it would be great to make a game where that kind of thing is actually possible.
It would...and we probably could have done it...we would have just cost all of us our sanity and would have made Standoff a contender for Project of the Last Half Century Since we wouldn't finish until at least 2050!
I dunno if it would have required all that much extra stuff. I mean, Wake-class CVEs are identikit converted transports, right? The Tarawa ought to look at very least extremely similar to the Firekka. So you'd have needed (for a bare-bones approach), what: -Voiceover for Commodore Bondarevsky on mission briefings. -The Firekka menu screens fiddled with a bit to make them into the Tarawa -The TCN emblem in various places being replaced with the Landreich one. -Model and voice for Tarawa's chief tech...is that Sparks? Fleet Action is not tremendously clear on this point. -A completely different ending cutscene, because Reismann is dead. You also can't use Bondarevsky in it because he's off appearing in Fleet Action at that point. -Maybe a cutscene involving Doomsday, which would need a model. -Different email messages referencing the fact that you got the Firekka blown up That'd have only delayed Episode five by what, a year? For the sake of three missions? Yeah, totally worth it. Ahem.
In fact you could even get around this one by having Reismann rescued by the Tarawa somehow. But you would HAVE to change the Lunch Cola vending machine to something else. some sort of lemonade perhaps? it would be just SO wrong to have 2 identical machines on two ships...
Oh, you'd be surprised how easy it is to get away with stuff like this. The player looks at the new recroom, and thinks "uh, it's the same place, even the Lynch machine is still there". But then he clicks on one of the characters, activates a cutscene, and he hears: "Wow, you guys have the Lynch coke machine exactly the same place we did. Freaky..." ...And suddenly, it's all right. It's like the end of the first Terminator movie, where Sarah Connor is thinking about the absurdities of time travel - it doesn't make the plot any less absurd, but because an on-screen character accepts that it is absurd, the audience goes, "oh, all right, they don't get it too, so there must be an answer."
Alright, I've looked around, and havent found this question yet, so I'm gonna assume everyone else already knows the answer: in the opening cutscene for episode 5, it mentions the results the last time the Kilrathi tried to attack Earth. When did this happen? Was it from the WC movie? Cuz anything with Freddie Prince in it doesn't count. For anything
Well, gee, you're just going to have to make it count, won't you? Seriously - we've tried to make use of the movie to add an extra layer to Standoff, and in the process, to better integrate the movie with the rest of the universe. One such case is Paladin's ship at the start of Episode Two - it's the same kind of ship he had in the movie. The other obvious case is the Episode Five intro. Now, you can pretend that the images you see in this intro don't exist, or you can pretend that even though they're there, the movie still doesn't count, whatever - your choice. As far as I'm concerned, acknowledging the story of the movie at this point doesn't spoil anything, quite the opposite - it adds another layer to the image of the Kilrathi as a predator race that's always trying to go for the jugular. First there was Action Stations, then the movie, and then Fleet Action - in each case, a sudden attack aimed at Earth. Undoubtedly, had the Sivar weapon been able to get away from the Goddard system, it would soon have taken part in another similar attempt.
Actually I think the team did a fantastic job putting a scene from the movie in the game, and re-orchestrating the movie music to fit into the standoff score.
On Heating Up (winning path, mission 3, I think), I got the ace, but then I've got 4 angry Drakhai-piloted Vatari coming after me. I tried staying close to the capships in hope I could get some Vatari in the crossfire. I also call for backup a lot. I can survive the Vatari, but by the time they're off my back, the Grumwald is usually on its way down, and there are too many bombers left for me to stop em all before they get the Saratoga. If I leave the Vatari after killing the ace they always find me and pick me apart pretty quick-like. Any insightful tactics for this one?
