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From The Start Which Missions Do I Need 2 Fail To Get The Losing Paths

Cos Ive Accomplished Evry Mission N Want 2 Explore
 
There are several loosing tracks. The first independent one is in EP1 (Prologue) if you choose to join the pirates.
 
I always wondered about that and was a little dissatisfied about it.

Given that there is a general amnesty on pilots and crew as soon as the war restarts (and presumably their fighters too - though I wouldn't wish a Tarsus upon anyone if the Kats appeared), why not script a 'defend the base' scenario where if you drive off the Lionheart you return to the fleet later to take command? Alternate circumstances that could be that the Firekka would have a primarily pirate / mercenary crew to command. Then Bradshaw's story would stream in with the start of episode two.

You'd have to re-hash a Sparrow story too, but that wouldn't be too hard.
 
There's a few reasons. Firstly, from a production standpoint, we just didn't want to deal with it, what with the first episode taking at least a year longer than we had originally planned. I do regret a bit that we didn't do a defend-the-base mission like we originally planned - but you have to bear in mind, that mission would still have been the end of the line for Bradshaw. He would not have returned to Confed afterwards.

And that's the second thing - even had Bradshaw been given an amnesty, he would not be in command of the Firekka's wing. That would have been out of the question, if only for morale reasons (it's really not too encouraging for those who stuck with Confed, didn't go around shooting at their wingmen... and end up getting passed over for a command position in favour of a traitor). So, that would have had a very dramatic effect on the rest of the game, and we couldn't accept that.

A third consideration is that Bradshaw simply wouldn't have gotten out of this alive. Sparrow and the rest of the Guadalcanal pilots could get out of prison - but he wouldn't have. It's one thing when you're dealing with a small mutiny that you know a lot of your officers sympathise with to some degree - but it's another thing entirely once those mutineers start encouraging others to take up arms. Then you have to set an example - so Bradshaw would have had to die in order to get a point across to the rest of the Confed fleet. The same thing would naturally happen to the Guadalcanal pilots, though according to the losing ending, they escaped leaving Bradshaw behind, so I guess they might have survived as pirates.

Of course, all this assumes Bradshaw's capture - but had he not been captured (which was indeed supposed to be a possibility - that mission we cut out wasn't meant to be an unwinnable fight-until-you-die scenario), he still wouldn't have returned to Confed. Not only would he not have had time to even contact Confed before the battle (things happened pretty quickly, once the Kilrathi blew up the chiefs of staff), but even if he had, I'm not too sure if they would have granted him amnesty. Again, there's a difference between amnesty to a bunch of captured, contrite mutineers, and amnesty to a bunch of pirates (because what do you think Bradshaw would have done, had he gotten away? Started up a jazz band? :p ). And finally, even if he had been granted amnesty, we come back to the fact that there's no way he would have been put in charge of the Firekka's wing.
 
Sir,

These are all good and perfectly legitimate reasons to have it ending this way, and that's OK, it's just a shame there wasn't the option to have at least flown that last mission, come what may.

My other thought was to have that mission scripted, then cut to a 'Happily ever after' sequence of some sort where Bradshaw lived out his life as a Retro or something. You could have also linked to this ending using the 'pursue Sparrow' mission - have her Sabre retrofitted by the Pirates with a primitive jump drive from a Talon, then those two flying off into the sunset together. Same ending.

And traitors have won in the past - as the Vichy government called De Gaulle's Free French. One man's traitor is another's enlightened...!
 
Sir,

These are all good and perfectly legitimate reasons to have it ending this way, and that's OK, it's just a shame there wasn't the option to have at least flown that last mission, come what may.

My other thought was to have that mission scripted, then cut to a 'Happily ever after' sequence of some sort where Bradshaw lived out his life as a Retro or something. You could have also linked to this ending using the 'pursue Sparrow' mission - have her Sabre retrofitted by the Pirates with a primitive jump drive from a Talon, then those two flying off into the sunset together. Same ending.

And traitors have won in the past - as the Vichy government called De Gaulle's Free French. One man's traitor is another's enlightened...!

I agree, but well, we saw the reasons...

Any way, after this whole thing, could there be a possibility to make a patch with that scene as sort of a bonus?? I liked Kavok's idea :D :D
 
No, if we do any patches, they'll be limited to fixing bugs. We want to finish this project, not find excuses to keep messing around with it :p.
 
It's still not going to happen, though. The only patches we'll be releasing (if any at all) are bugfixes - we are not going to get into the "let's see how we can improve the game" mode, because there'd be no end to it. A mission here, a mission there...

Besides, adding a single mission is not as simple as it sounds. Writing a mission is a relatively short task - when I can concentrate completely on it, I can do a mission from start to finish in about five hours. But then you need to get the voiceovers, which means contacting the voice actors, waiting for them to record their lines (which, even in the case of just one or two lines, can mean several days or even weeks of waiting - you'd be surprised how much you have to sometimes bug people to do a five-minute task they themselves had volunteered for). Similarly, a new ending would require new music (even if it might be just another re-arrangement of WC2 music).
 
Yeah, please, dear god, we're not extending this project in any way. :p What we're doing is finishing it as intended. This has been going on for what, 6 years now for me, and maybe 4 or 5 years for the rest of the team?

Of course, it's something we all chose to work on, and which we take satisfaction in doing, but 6 years is enough time to make you wonder if your hobby is turning into a job. :p
 
6 years? damn thats quite a long time. I didn't know that it has been so long for you. SO I gues now I understand why you want to finish your great project.
 
Hehe, even if the project hadn't already been going on for six years, it would still be more than understandable that we want to finish it - working on a project like this is fun, but the single biggest joy is always the moment of release. It's only then that you really feel that you've achieved something.

(which is to say, had Standoff not been divided into episodes, we probably would have given up a long time ago)
 
well I really can understand your point dude. I am working with some friends on our own wing commander inspired space fighting game and that really sucks sometimes... :) but on the other hand, doing all the work and stuff is a lot of fun, too. all those crace developers conferences...oh yeah : :)
 
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