Not really WM, there are no assumptions that the Shivans kicked the Ancients' asses and the civilizations prior to the Ancients.
As much the fact is that the player wasn't told "That's how it happened", you have to be pretty retarded not to have gotten the hint and accepted it.
I'm going to play the quote game only once here, because aldo is doing it and I don't want to seem as if I don't have basis for assuming the most logical course. I hate the quote game however, which is why I'll do it only this time.
Bosch was used to perpetuate the story to the player. The cutscenes were a way (the only way) to let the player know what and why things are going on. The idea with using the news casters was cut if you'll remember, and really for a good reason.
Bosch was used to perpetuate ideas. That's different from feeding the storyline to the player - it provides hints, etc, but no decent developer would plan a game whereby the storyline was entirely seperate to the actions of the player. So the storyline must be revealed as much through brief, debrief, game etc as the one medium of the cutscene. Bosch is definately a key to the storyline, but not necessarily the only one.
No. Bosch was used to perpetuate the enhanced storyline from his point of view. You're mistaking it for them being "ideas", because the writer made him speak in vague terms. This is a mistake on your part, because the alternative is for the story to be an endless sense of bull**** that is far from coherent. That isn't the case. The Brief/Debrief/Command brief are a way to perpetuate the story directly to the player - while Bosch isn't directly talking to the player. The form is different but the spirit is the same. It is story - not guesswork. If it was guesswork, nobody would play the damn thing.
Also you'd have to be pretty ignorant not to face the fact that a situation involving the Shivans in a supernova'd system and their Sathanas capabilities is a coincidence.
The whole point of that system beyond GD is to show that the Shivans have had Star Destroying Capabilities for a LOOOOOONG LOOOOONG time and that we're pathetic in comparison to what they can accomplish.
Ignorant? Why? Normal supernovas do occur, y'know, and we don't know if the Capella nova was even intended to be a nova. Again, it is not explicit, thus it is a guess. It is never hinted that the nebula is anything other than naturally occuring, even at the end monologue. Even if it is - and it may be - we have no basis for claiming a definitive conclusion; for one thing, we don't have a motive or reason for the Shivans destroying the neb sys.
Normal Supernova's do occur, but a normal supernova doesn't fit into the storyline of FS2, especially if we consider the ending where it is revealed
what the shivans DO around here. If that didn't happen, I'd agree with you, but considering the punchline of the game was
star destroyers, I'm going to go ahead and
assume that from a player's point of view, I got
the point. The references are easy to tie, and I did it above. Considering the logical conclusions that we reach through this "may or may not be", we can safely say that not only it
may be, but that it
is.
From your FAQ and the game
The nebula is the remnant of a supernova thousands, if not billions, of light-years from Earth; and I wonder now if our ancestors witnessed the death of this star erupting over an Egyptian landscape, blazing with the brilliance of four hundred million suns. Even in their divinity, no pharaoh could have imagined this.
Could have imagined what? A star crumbling? The only way the last sentence makes sense is if a Pharaoh couldn't imagine Shivans raping a system.
You think the pharoahs of Ancient Egypt could have imagined a lightning struck gaseous nebula in the depths of space? Hell, the Pharoahs never even knew the world was round, let alone the cosmos. If anything, he's contrasting what the Pharoahs may have seen - a tiny-but-bright flash - compared to what he and the player was seeing in the cutscene (the 'veil of clouds' mentioned in the previous line); how man cannot perceive everything, perhaps an allegory for the discovery Bosch made (and that has driven him into the nebula).
You're being a bit too literal for your own good. Of course the pharoahs of ancient Egypt couldn't imagine gaseus nebula's and stuff like that, but what he meant was that they couldn't imagine what was going on - as in,
cosmic destroyers being out there waiting for you to make your predictable moves and punishing you for your choices in a way which irradicates systems on a massive scale. There is such a thing as "reading between the lines". He was maknig the reference to a pharoah, because pharoah's were the top of the food chain as far as power goes in Ancient Egypt. He could have easily said "A peasant in Ancient Egypt", but the reason he referenced a pharoah is because,
even him with all his power, he wouldn't be able to comprehend the power of the ShivansYou people do get those allusions, right? I'm not the only one who was able to read
why things were written the way they were, right? If I'm not the only one, please endow me with your interpertations or possible interpertations of his texts. So far I haven't seen anyone take a stab at it in a logical and comprehensive way, even though we've been discussing this for years.
Yeah, because it's not spelled out for you, you can call it conjecture, and yes, it is a problem regarding the Wikipedia, and we'll never be able to put it in as cannon.
But let's not pretend as if we don't know where the logical conclusions lead us to.
Where your conclusions lead you, you mean. The logic of them is no more definitive than that used in the Shivan Manifesto, which is the whole point. Any evidence we can put to a conclusion will always be only 2 thirds of the whole picture, and the lesser two thirds at that - and that is exactly what forms conjecture.
No, I mean where the logic leads me. I didn't misstype that. The Shivan Manifest has a few open points, but the other points it makes are right down retarded as far as logic goes, so that makes them non-logical. Naturally that the whole discussion is pure conjecture - we don't even need to state that given the fact that
the writer didn't finish and feed the story, but as I said again, we are all entitled to make accurate, logical and most probable guesses, and that's what I did.
Also, the "We can't be certain about the nine cities of Troy" - Really? Somehow I found it to be one of the core points of the entire story and the game.
I didn't, and I'd bet I've done as much conjecture, analysis, etc as you have. After all, FS - 1 and 2 - is full of mythological and historical references, many of which are of the Roman era IIRC. IMO it could just as well be Bosch using the 9 cities as an analogy for a cosmological cycle of destruction-rise of species-destruction that he wishes to break by communicating with the systems; the question is surely in what sense the 9 cities of Troy is being evoked; as a glimpse of what Bosch fears the human race will endure in the future without his intervention, as a glimpse into the past of the galaxy and age of the Shivans, etc. I get the sense there's a 'but' at the end of that monologue, though, when he's speaking about what the Ancients thought the Shivans were/are/wanted.
There's no but at the end of that monologue. He finishes his thought and his sentences coherently. His general "thought" with that cutscene is that history keeps repeating itself and that he needs to find some other way in order to save our species. That's IT. Reading more into it leaves you with your theory that comes after your "IMO" which isn't supported by anything, and is acquired by putting "but"'s at the end of his monologues, which aren't there.
If you took enough time to look at the thing from the outside as much as you're trying to look at it from the writers point of view, you'd see more meanings to the story, and rather from using induction to form opinions, you'd use deduction, which is the way to go about matters that haven't been fed and explained to the fullest.
However you're right - I make a mistake myself by assuming that the most logical way is the commonly accepted way. Of course you're right, most interpertations out there that differ from mine are quite literally...
beneath the point.
To quote what the game is really all about in broad terms as outlined by the developers:
Descent: FreeSpace: The Great War is an epic story of human survival against an unstoppable alien foe. It spans 3 sapient races, over 40 different types of space craft, and countless lives. Told from the perspective of a Terran squad leader, FreeSpace is more than a war journal, it is a futuristic look at the risks and sacrifices people must be willing to make for the sake of our species.
The species, their history and their future are the core point of the game, and that was just FreeSpace 1. FreeSpace 2 goes on a _lot_ further into the whole thing if you'll compare. I doubt the story narrator would be putting lies into Bosch's mouth - he who tells the story.
But none of that pertains to the Shivan motivation or role - that's something FS2 was exploring (more than FS1), but even then the role Shivans will have is left open as something to be answered in FS3. Bosch is an important McGubbin, but we can't say that what he believed he was doing was actually 'right' (either in the consequences or in what he expected) because we don't know the after-effect. Probably at best we can guess at what Bosch thought the Shivans wanted.
Exactly, the Shivans motivations and role you won't see me discuss in public, after all even I can't be that certain of them since that part of the story was left open the most, and not even Bosch or command were able to patch that. This is the part that I make my own and create a campaign that manages to explain that in my way to the best of my abilities.
However, I do not see the point in questioning every little nitpick Bosch said or did because
some/main parts of the story were left open to interpertation. Many of them were pretty clear as far as subtext goes.
But this thread - or the last page or so at least - strikes me as a good example why not to put this type of conjecture into the wiki. IMO we should have the techroom entries, and make briefing/cutscene text available, and let people come up with their own theories.
Alas, not because of MY "assumptions" or "guesses" as you attempt to make it clear, but because the fact is that everyone only has assumptions and guesses, and we can't put any of it in the wikipedia, even if some of us (and by "some of us" I mean - I -) am most likely right.
In the end as a summation - we can all play the "yeeeeeeeah but that's not how they said and I don't accept your opinions because they left that part open and I had some other ideas here" - that's true, but it doesn't invalidate the fact that some of us have more logical solutions to the story of FreeSpace, and some of us less.
However that's it for my contributions to this thread (at least it contributed as much as to prove that we can't put any of this **** into the Wikipedia), and I will not be playing the quote game again should you reply. Too time consuming for me, has nothing to do with me not wanting to discuss this with you aldo, since you're pretty smart, but I just can't do it for technical reasons. Sorry if you reply and I don't give you the "back" from "back and forth".
