Starkey said:
The prologue release is near (is it?
) and we really need to fire up this forum with stuff other than progress reports, so here it goes:
Bring it on.
Great topic to talk about, too.
Starkey said:
How much mission branching will Standoff have? I suppose the Prologue won´t have any, but, judging from the main campaign mission sets (B1, B2, C1, C2, etc.), looks like we will have extensive winning and losing paths.
The prologue really has no branching per se. The player's objective remains the same thoughout the entire prologue, and each mission is a step towards that objetive. However, that doesn't mean the game doesn't react to the player's actions - most of the 7 missions have variants in the traditional sense (M3A is easy /M3B is hard, etc.) and each of the variants also has small events that may happen or not based on a variable set in previous missions (you may get the harder mission if you failed the previous mission, but it may be made a tad easier if you kept a friendly ship alive in that previous mission, etc).
For example, if you do poorly, you won't get a whole series of "let's retreat" missions (which is what I would consider as "real" branching). Your next mission will still be "Find the enemy base!", but a number of events will make it a different mission than you would get if you had done well on the previous missions.
The main campaign's a whole different story, though. From beginning to end, you will play thru 4 "series" of missions (think WC2).
Each series is about 3-5 missions long. There's different variants of each of those missions (like in the prologue), and which variant the player gets depends on his performance in the previous missions of that series, or sometimes, in missions from a past series.
Now here's the thing which I like best... The first series is fixed. There's two *totally* different second series, and the same goes for third and fourth series. At the end of each series, depending on your overall performance or on a specific objective, you're sent to the "winning" or to the "losing" series that follows.
Here's a concrete example: the first series deals with the Firekka putting together its crew, gathering supplies, and heading for a rendezvous with the rest of Confed's third fleet. It's made of 5 missions, with two versions of most of them, but in the end, the "overall" objective of the series is to get to the rendezvous:
If you get there in time, the next series will deal with the Firekka supporting the Third fleet in Warsaw, with the major fleet action starting to happen. If you allow the Firekka to get pinned down anywhere along the way, though, the second series will be about the Firekka missing the rendezvous, and receiving new orders to meet the Fleet at Sirius (since it will have already retreated from Warsaw)... then the Firekka will be alone, behind enemy lines, and trying to sneak past everything, which is a very different situation from supporting the big guns in big fleet battles.
Then, if you "win" the second series (either the "good" or the "bad" one... we just patch the story together differently at the start of the third series), you get the "good" third series. If you "lose" the third series, you get the "bad" fourth series, etc. Both of the fourth series are the Battle of Terra, so if you make it that far, you will get the chance to get the same endings, no matter if you came from the "bad" fourth series or from the "good" one. (I think the real fun will be seeing all the different combinations of series, not different endings).
Also, like I said, we patch the story differently depending on which series you came from. So, if you play once, and go thru all the "good" series, then play again and go thru all the "bad" ones, you still won't have seen all the missions. There may be a mission which is only triggered by going from winning series 2 to losing series 3, for example. (These missions usually are there to make sure that every possible combination of series will make sense story-wise).
Starkey said:
Will there be any choices made by the player while not flying (like conversation options in WC3 and 4), that could affect the course of the game?
There won't be any choices while not flying, since there's no cutscenes outside the spaceflight part, but the player will be presented with more-or-less similar choices during missions.
(Think UE when you choose which nav point to go to find the Fralthi, but where the choice doesn't always seem radical and the outcome isn't always so obvious).
This will happen a lot, I can think of at least three ocasions where the player is presented with an in-flight choice in the prologue's 7 missions alone.
