Wow

Thunderbolt said:
One question though - What happens to the Verdun if you save it on Episode 3 because there is no mention of it (as far as I'm aware) in Ep 4.
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It's around, we just don't show it any more. I don't remember offhand what happened to it in the book, but presumably its fate is more or less the same here.
 
Sharpshooter said:
Now I've got to replay Episodes 2, 3, and 4 without rescuing Sparrow. I'm curious as to what happens before and after Skinning Cats if you don't help Sparrow.
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AFAIK, there rescue/abandon Sparrow plot split ceases at the end of Episode 3 (hence the cutscene titled "Making Peace"). Unless Quarto or someone else wants to correct me...
 
Wedge009 said:
AFAIK, there rescue/abandon Sparrow plot split ceases at the end of Episode 3 (hence the cutscene titled "Making Peace"). Unless Quarto or someone else wants to correct me...
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It hasn't entirely ceased to exist - some of the Sparrow-related cutscenes still differ depending on the path chosen. But the Burying The Past scene is indeed the same for both paths - it just made sense that way, from the point of view of the story, and because of what Bradshaw is like.
 
Funny, I didn't notice any difference in cutscenes... uh, unless the differences occur after the "William! Haven't seen much of you lately. Outside of the cockpit, at least." line. I thought they'd just be recycled since videos would take up a lot of storage.
 
Tigerhawk said:
You guys are SoAndSo's, though...having heavy fighters hang around the Firekka's launch bay so we could be blasted almost outright from Bradshaw's "revenge run"...that's wrong. Tactically sound from the Kilrathi standpoint...but wrong!
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It worked, though... the idea behind that was to make this mission memorable, instead of just another scramble. :p

Thunderbolt said:
Even more funny is Reismann's response if you lose the Reims after Bradshaw's suicide run. I have to say the guy who records the lines is the perfect voice actor for a senior officer.
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Hehe, yeah, that guy is quite something.

Wedge009 said:
Funny, I didn't notice any difference in cutscenes... uh, unless the differences occur after the "William! Haven't seen much of you lately. Outside of the cockpit, at least." line. I thought they'd just be recycled since videos would take up a lot of storage.
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Well, there's two different versions of that scene, with a few different lines... it's just that the first line is recycled for both versions. Needless to say, in Ep 5 there will still be cutscenes that are different depending on the Sparrow choice.
 
Urgh. Replay value is a good thing, but I really thought it ended at Episode 3. Oh well. :)

Andi does a great job as always, but I did notice at times he sounded quite different from his work for Episode 3. Not as deep and gruff sounding (it's hard describing voices!), almost to the point where I could hear the man behind the character of Reismann poking through. But overall still a fantastic job - I agree, reprimand for failing to save the Reims is very well done. Hope you stay in contact for Episode 5, Andi!
 
Quarto said:
The reason I chose Dönitz wasn't just to have a famous German naval officer, though, but specifically because here was a great naval officer who was sentenced not for war crimes, but merely for being on the wrong side, and for following to the hilt the very ideals of a modern military officer - complete apoliticality, loyalty, and a willingness to uphold his oath of allegiance no matter what.

I don't actually think that a military officer should be apolitical. I think military officers are, if anything, obliged to an even greater extent than the rest of the nation to stand up and object to the wrongs perpetrated by the government. But theirs is a unique position, because they are bound by their oath, and their objections cannot cross that line - had Dönitz betrayed Hitler, he would have been betraying his country as a whole. There will always be something intrinsically immoral about submarine warfare, so Dönitz deserves condemnation... but he also deserves our respect for his total commitment to the service of his nation. I wouldn't want to see a civilian monument commemorating someone like Dönitz (...or someone like Nimitz, for that matter, even though he fought for the more-or-less-good guys), but he most definitely is the man to name a warship after.

(incidentally, note that the exact opposite applies to Canaris - I think he was a noble man for opposing Hitler and attempting, however ineffectually, to overthrow him; for that, he certainly deserves to be honoured in some way - but to name a warship after a traitor? Never!)
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Still trying to understand you, or your motives, but frankly I can´t. I don´t want to discuss Dönitz so called "apolitical" motives. There are plenty of books and papers around that do a severe and critical look at this topic (e.g. he got the golden NSDAP party badge). And for your statement "betraying Hitler means betraying his country" and calling Canaris a traitor, sorry I can´t grasp this. All personnel serving in german Army/Navy/Airforce took an oath to the Führer and not to the country. So your conclusion is utterly wrong.

Every military officer who did not consider bringing an end to Hitlers reign are just hiding behind the "chain of command" and betrayed their own people. And since today it is expected from a modern officer to question doubtful commands some lessons had been learned.

In my eyes, Canaris or Rommel or Stauffenberg are the names to choose.

But since our opinions are different we should stop here and enjoy Standoff.

regards,
Alex
 
Alexco said:
Still trying to understand you, or your motives, but frankly I can´t. I don´t want to discuss Dönitz so called "apolitical" motives. There are plenty of books and papers around that do a severe and critical look at this topic (e.g. he got the golden NSDAP party badge). And for your statement "betraying Hitler means betraying his country" and calling Canaris a traitor, sorry I can´t grasp this. All personnel serving in german Army/Navy/Airforce took an oath to the Führer and not to the country. So your conclusion is utterly wrong.
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First up, this argument doesn't make sense when it comes to any officer who started his career before 1934 - both Dönitz and Canaris had sworn allegiance not only to Hitler, but also to Germany (and before that, to the Emperor). Second, people in 1934 did not have this hindsight we have today - they swore their allegiance to the legal, democratically-elected leader of their country, not to the man responsible for millions of deaths in WWII, and therefore they were absolutely not free to throw away this oath on moral grounds. As for Dönitz's golden NSDAP party badge, he received it as a gift - and it speaks volumes about the man that even at that point, he didn't consider joining the NSDAP, though so many other officers in the armed forces had.

Every military officer who did not consider bringing an end to Hitlers reign are just hiding behind the "chain of command" and betrayed their own people. And since today it is expected from a modern officer to question doubtful commands some lessons had been learned.
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Not true in the least - you can be quite certain that any military officer in America who attempted to overthrow the government because he did not approve of the Iraq war would end badly, and the entire society (even most of the people who actively oppose the Bush administration) would wholeheartedly approve. It's one thing to disobey an illegal order (which Dönitz couldn't do, because... well, he had never been given an illegal order), and another thing entirely to decide that the illegal order frees you from your allegiance to the legal government.

In my eyes, Canaris or Rommel or Stauffenberg are the names to choose.
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Absolutely not! You can never, ever name a military vessel, military academy, or anything military at all, after someone who violated their oath and betrayed the government they had sworn to serve. We can praise these people for their willingness to throw away their personal honour for a greater cause... but these people are not the example you want other officers to aspire to. Remember, legally speaking, there is no difference whatsoever between a Canaris plotting to overthrow Hitler, and your average third world country general overthrowing a civilian government. Furthermore, in both cases, the officers in question are convinced that they are acting for the greater good. Thus, by praising Canaris, you are creating a military culture where it is considered good and noble to stage a coup merely because of an officer's personal convictions (because that's all Canaris had when he started plotting, way back before the war). The question then becomes, how do you dissuade your officers from choosing who they follow? If they're not to be bound by their oath, or by their honour... then what? Money? Ideology?

(another interesting question - if you condemn Dönitz for not acting against the Nazi government... does that mean we should also condemn every single American officer up to 1981, since that was the year when a forcible sterilisation was last performed under one of America's eugenics programmes? It's a slippery slope you walk on, because we'd be hard-pressed not to find a government anywhere in the world that doesn't deserve to be overthrown...)

Also, you shouldn't list Rommel together with Canaris and Stauffenberg. Rommel never broke his oath - he had on a few occasions refused to obey illegal orders, but he always remained loyal to the government (no evidence had ever been found linking him to the July 20th plot... and his wife has always said he was loyal. Given how the war had ended, it certainly wouldn't have made any sense for her to lie about him staying loyal to Hitler to the end...). Except for his suicide, Rommel was indeed a model officer (...but from the army, not the navy - hence why I ultimately went with Dönitz instead, because I did actually consider Rommel at one point).

Ok, having gotten all that off my chest, I think I'm about ready to get back to talking about Standoff :p.
 
Quarto said:
You can never, ever name a military vessel, military academy, or anything military at all, after someone who violated their oath and betrayed the government they had sworn to serve.
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So no TCS Christopher Blair, then? Or TCS Eisen for that matter? :)
 
Every military officer who did not consider bringing an end to Hitlers reign are just hiding behind the "chain of command" and betrayed their own people. And since today it is expected from a modern officer to question doubtful commands some lessons had been learned.

I have to disagree with this at least moderately strongly.

If you look at it in a deeper context, there's quite the difference between the conduct of certain officers in Hitler's war machine. Rommel and Dönitz operated in military fashion under military orders. There is nothing illegal about this, no matter what government you serve. However, the officers, NCOs and soldiers who manned the concentration camps and those who ordered/carried out the orders of many executions WERE illegal in every way, shape and form. It doesn't matter that the rest of the world perceives your entire country as evil...hell, much of the world considers the U.S. today as evil...but loyalty militarily to your country versus loyalty to the ideal of the slaughter of millions of innocents? Those are, beyond a doubt, Apples and Oranges.
 
Bandit LOAF said:
Now explain the TCS McClellan. :)
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Hmm, all I know about McClellan is that he was a Civil War general (and I don't even remember what game had the TCS McClellan?) - was there anything particularly controversial about him? :)

Wedge009 said:
So no TCS Christopher Blair, then? Or TCS Eisen for that matter? :)
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Correct, I would not name a ship after Blair... and certainly, if it were up to me, there'd be no TCS Eisen, either - their defection was plain and simple treason. I think it's actually pretty safe to assume that the only reason there even is a TCS Eisen is because it's a Jason Bernard memorial - and from an in-universe perspective, I can only guess that it was a political gesture. I would think that it's something that could happen in the 2670s, but wouldn't happen, say, in the 2730s, once people had time to get over the short-term political fallout from the Black Lance crisis.

(similarly, I could imagine, immediately after WWII the Germans would have been more inclined to name a ship after Canaris than after Dönitz or Rommel, not because it was a good idea, but because it would have been a political gesture showing their repentance and all that...)
 
I can see where Quarto is coming from. Yes you 'cannot' use the excuse of following orders to violate human rights but look at the histroy of wars in the 20th century such as Vietnam. If it was an officers responsibility to commit treason for an unjust war then the entire US army, navy, airforce and marine corps would have to disband during that war imo. Look at the way the war was conducted with the indiscriminate shelling and bombing of villages and the spraying of carcinogenic dioxin over the entire environment.

Yet no American civilan bureaucrat or senior army officers have been prosecuted for war crimes out of Vietnam for legitimizing the use of military practices that result in ordinary soldiers directly or indirectly killing civilians as part of their job. on a side note is that possibly why the United States refuses to be part of an International War Crimes Tribunal because civilians such as Henry Kissenger would be open to prosecution?

So if this is turning into a debate on the morals of war then everyone would agree that killing or harming civilians is wrong. But what about if you can't distinguish one from the other. In situations like Vietnam and now Iraq it gets very difficult to hold the high moral ground and prevent violations of human rights.
 
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