Shane said:
Yes, the Kilrathi were dealt a terrible blow with the destruction of Kilrah and lost a good portion of their fleet, but how many other locations for shipyards did they have?
It’s not only the ship yards. Their homeworld was destroyed. With it the Emperor and his clan, and the center of their religion.
One argument would be the royal family kept a tight control of these shipyards, so their number would be few and after the war Confed, with the help of Melek could monitor these and limit the number of carriers, cruisers, and other craft produced.
Kilrathi do have shipyards, but not to much. And they certainly are not allowed to build ships like carriers, if they can build anything at all.
But who's to say some of the clans weren't divert some of their wealth a resources into shipyards of their own? Particulalry with the war going well, some might be planning ahead for a time when the Kilrathi are not focused on Confed and may try to wrest control of the throne.
They are planing just that.
Second, the Kilrathi had more depth early on than the bugs. Not a lot, but some. This is due, I feel, to the fact that we eneter the war somewhat late in the game.
I completely disagree. IMO, the fact that we see how the bugs got here, and read about their tactics in the ICIS gives them more depth.
Claw Marks does give some description of the Kilrathi Aces in the region, so you get an idea of some individuals,
But those are just few unimportant pilots. And their history’s are very, very thin.
plus there is the histroy of the war laid out in Claw Marks.
Also very thin.
Not to mention there was the converstaions in the bar that helped to add depth to the Kilrathi.
Those conversations were in 90% little talks about nothing. Certainly not a lot about something interesting about the cats.
I think the SM1 and SM2 add-ons added quite a bit to the fleshing out of the Kilrathi (they added the religious aspect, the fact that there are some Kilrathi who oppose the war {granted it turns out Hobbes defection was a sham [another sore point I have], and the wrath of the emperor against those who fail him (I can't recall if they mention it was his son at that point or if it was brought up later. Either way, it was another trait of the Kilrathi.)
First, the religious ceremony was never that well described or explained. Yes, it was a nice part but it could have been much better. Second, seing how we didn’t know the Kilrathi are all oppsessed with honor and stuff, in WC1, so the fact that some of them are against the war and the emperor wasn’t all that surprising.
I haven't played Special Ops yet (I'm working on getting it to work), so perhaps they do more to describe the bugs in it than they did in Prophecy.
We learn a little about their tech, but not much. And it’s Secret Ops.
Special Ops are add-ons to WC2.
I think the bugs are much more two dimensional than the Cats were in WC1. However, I think that lack of depth was a consequence of the story. WC1, as I mentioned, had the advantage of the cats being a known enemy, Confed had been fighting them for years.
But we certainly didn’t find out a lot about the war and Kilrathi from Claw Marks. Meanwhile, ICIS has speculations on the bug origins, and talks about their tactics and little about their tech.
Prophecy is hampered (?) by the fact that you are dealing with aliens who no one has any real world knowledge of. You have some old Kilrathi myth's and a whole lot of speculation. It's somewhat safe to assume their goal is conquest, but everything else is on the table. It seems implied that their may be some time of hive mind at work, and I have always found that dull.
Very true. And the fact that you don’t know anything about them is intimidating at times. And their goal is certainly not only conquest. Do you remember the little cutscene about the bugs disecting the cats and humans? The bugs taking a hell of a lot of prisoners.
Finally, I think CGI allows for more creativity than FMV. I was always surprised the Firekka never showed up in WC2, but after that it made sense. Origin had enough trouble with Kilrathi costumes, the Firekka would have been even more of a hassle.
With the CGI from the earlier WC games it wouldn’t be that much of a problem.
I think with CGI you can get more species and add the diverstity that would add more dimensions to the game.
You can add more species, yes. If we were to see Dekker and his marines fighting the bugs it would have to be CGI. But every example of CGI I saw is totally unrealistic. It’s to colorful, to clean, people move akwardly, a lot of the people look similar, they don’t have any features that would distinguish them (where are Dekkers blood-shot eyes, Tolwyn’s almost god like face}
I noticed Chris Roberts has returned to that with StarLancer. I haven't played it yet, but I'm looking forward to it.
Well, he would have been better to use FMV. There’s not aliens in there, and very few cutscenes.
Particularly with more open ended games like Privateer, I think CGI gives the developer more freedom and allows the player more choices.
Maybe, but not in standard space sims. Both, StarLancer and Freespace don’t have that much to show for themselves. Also, the SFX IMO looks much better in FMV. You just can’t compare the Lucifer explosion at the end of Freespace to the wormhole exploding in the Prophecy ending.
