Post 2681 Timeline - or general consensus?

Minuteman

Minuteman

1st Lieutenant
So, I've been a lurker here for sometime, and have been a "wingnut" since I was a kid. But never really gave Prophecy its due (mainly because I couldn't afford it as a kid when it came out - lol). But am recently getting into it via gog (awesome).

I've read some of the manuals (including the "plot treatment" that came with GOG's WCP and Star*Soldier) and recognize that there really isn't any canon material in existence that really covers the finer points of the Nephilim conflict. Is there any info I'm missing? Or any sort of general consensus that sheds any light on a 2681-2700 timeline?

I realize that there is a VN day...so it appears that there was victory against the Nephilim (and perhaps any race that followed them - as hinted?). I realize the state of the galaxy in 2700 seems pretty fractured...I was just wondering if anyone had any info or even reliable fanon regarding the "missing" window?

Thanks all in advance for your replies.
 
Nope, the "missing" window was done intentionally. No need to fill in a story that might yet be told. So you aren't missing anything in a dark corner.

WCP sometimes get a short stick. However, whenever I've gone back and replayed it, I've enjoyed it a lot. The immense feel of the battles is great, which only gets bigger in SO!

LOAF will be able to give a much fuller answer since he had a large hand in the S*S timeline.

And, welcome! It's always good to see a friendly ship!
 
Excellent. Thanks for the response. It confirms my thoughts. A shame really. I'd love to know what happened during that window (as I'm sure a lot of us would). Especially because I'm a bit skeptical that we'll ever see a game that visits that time period specifically. Until I hear otherwise, I suppose I'll just use my imagination :)
 
There were several aborted projects that would've covered the events of the period - Privateer Online and Privateer 3 come to mind. There may have been one more but it's not coming to me.

The design docs for those projects are available for download here at CIC; I used the timelines from those documents to help formulate WCRPG's timeline when I was writing the Core Rules. Kept the events but moved the dates around a bit.
 
Hey capi, that's awesome. I didn't know about the WCRPG...apparently I don't lurk here often enough, haha. That timeline is pretty cool. Certainly some interesting thoughts and I'm going to enjoy perusing it a bit more when I have some time. Thanks for sharing it.
 
Yep, the CIC has a ton of great information found all over. Sometimes it requires a little digging to find.

Besides the Chatzone, there's a bunch of us that regularly hang out in #wingnut on the CIC's IRC server.
 
One interesting note: when I did the Star*Soldier timeline for Electronic Arts, the producer specifically asked me NOT to fill in the period after Wing Commander Secret Ops so that it could be used for some future story. Which is why you get ‘part one’ of the timeline in the magazine, with the promise that the rest is coming next month! (I was happy to do this, especially because I hated the idea of contradicting the cool unused Privateer Online timeline… so instead of having to shift things around, I just avoided mentioning most everything after ’81, while still including the couple of human interest stories that were assigned that year from Hal’s timeline!)


I did make a point of including a fair number ‘hints’ about stories that might happen during the war, and of course we talked about the war’s impact on the galaxy (setting the stage for Wing Arena.) Off the top of my head, I remember the VN Day reference (so people would know the war did end, somehow,) hints about the Midway carriers traveling to Nephilim space (a nod to the aborted Strike Team/Shadow Ops/etc. pitch) and implicitly blowing up Perry Naval Base (by mentioning that Halsey was the only one that survived the war.) I’m sure there were some more bits and bobs in there… (and then we mention there are still Nephilim out there, too, with the ship ID poster.)


In terms of canonical, post-2681 content you are pretty much limited to:


- Star*Soldier, the aforementioned Wing Commander Arena manual and an artifact of the Confederation circa 2701.

- Privateer 2, which takes place in 2790 in an ‘isolated’ region of space unconnected to the Confederation… OR IS IT? (It is, slightly.)

- The ‘flash forward’ from Pilgrim Truth in which we (as spoiler-free as possible) get a look at a future conflict and learn about Blair’s fate.

- Interestingly, the entire Wing Commander I & II Ultimate Strategy Guide, which is technically an in-universe artifact from about fifty years after the original game. The framing story is the most important part, with Lt. Col. LaFong talking about advising on the Wing Commander holo-sim games… but there are some tiny bits and bobs referencing current culture throughout that are either fun or frustrating depending on how you view this sort of thing.


I think next step we should put together a list of all the publically available ‘behind the screens’ material for cancelled games… it’s not canon, but when writing official stuff I’ve always treated it as a resource that should only be contradicted in extreme cases. So maybe an unofficial non-canon dev canon would be good to have. I’ll kick it off! :)
 
Loaf - thanks for the reply (and thanks for all the work you put into the community/Star*Soldier).

I never actually read Pilgrim Truth. Have a copy downloaded, but need to still read it! I have never actually read the Ultimate Strategy guides either...I'll need to look for those as well. Sounds interesting.

And I agree! I think having a list of the "behind the screens" material for the cancelled games would be AWESOME.
 
The Pilgrim trilogy is...different, IMHO. Not bad, just different, and certainly worth a read-through. The other two novels are available in electronic format from Pix's Origin Adventures if you're interested and have never read them either (just Google it and it'll come right up).

I should mention - the impetus behind building a more concise timeline in the post-2680 period for WCRPG was to better link the end of Prophecy with Privateer 2 (both of which are in there) - I didn't like the notion of having a hundred year gap between events. And then things got shuffled around to make it all fit together - both P3 and Privateer Online had certain sequences of events that were inconsistent with what was in Star*Soldier. Might've been one or two I threw in there myself just cuz. I'd have to go back through those design docs to say which ones.
 
Dundradal said:
WCP sometimes get a short stick. However, whenever I've gone back and replayed it, I've enjoyed it a lot. The immense feel of the battles is great, which only gets bigger in SO!
Click to expand...

I agree. I think a lot of people forget it was meant to be the first in an ongoing story that we unfortunately never got to see concluded. In that context I think it needs to be given a little leeway. My disappointment is less in the game itself and more in the fact that we never really got to see it continue.
 
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