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Storyline QuestionsWhat else can you tell me about the Shivans? Why did they do x/y/z?Can I have transcripts of the FS1 cutscenes? Can I have transcripts of the FS2 cutscenes? What else can you tell me about the Shivans? Why did they do x/y/z?Very little is known about the Shivans. Probably [V] had planned to reveal more in FS3, but since it was never made we are stuck trying to deduce Shivan motives from what we know from the games and from a few cryptic comments by people who work in [V]. One thing we do know from [V] is that the Shivans are what we see in Hall Fight (a cutscene in FS1). They aren't wearing power suits like the aliens in Independence Day. We're not seeing a soldier race that works for the Shivans. What we are seeing is the real thing. Another comment from [V] states that we should view the Shivans as "a symptom of a much bigger problem". Many people have taken this to mean that there is another species that the Shivans are at war with. Of course, if you have a better explanation, we'd love to hear it. As for the Shivans' actions at the end of FS2, your guess is as good as mine. Can I have transcripts of the FS1 cutscenes?Here they are, in the order they appear in-game. Don't read them until you've finished that part of the game, as they will spoil the storyline for you. Introduction
Apollo Pilot: Oh God, they're following me! Mayday! This is Lieutenant Ash on Terran Patrol wing Gamma, Three Niner, reporting... Taken heavy damage! Requesting immediate fighter cover and rescue. Come in anybody!
Ancients 1 (Spoken by an Ancient narrator) Ours was a proud people, and always the strongest. For thousands of years, our empire expanded. For so long, we could imagine ourselves alone in the universe. For so long, never did we encounter advanced life. And we travelled faster and farther, spreading in our galaxy; and before long, we could see the day when our reachable systems would have been exploited. And then there would be nowhere else to go.
And we discovered subspace. It gave us our galaxy, and it gave us the universe. And we saw other advanced life; and we subdued it, or we crushed it. In months, the elimination of billions of years of evolution on a similar but slower path. With subspace, our empire would surely know no boundaries.
Lab
Terran Technician: Ready?
Command Brief (Spoken by an Admiral Wolf) Good morning, pilots. I'm going to get right to it. The Shivan forces are sprouting up everywhere, and it's no secret that our front lines are taking a beating. As you probably know, no one has been able to communicate with them; and Terran Intelligence has no leads on their origins or their motives. On the upside, their shielding technology seems to be working just fine for us. By this afternoon, all fighters stationed on the Galatea will have been fitted with them. Try to keep them intact, all right? The cruiser Taranis is suspected to be the source of command for the Shivans in this sector. It's here in the Ikeya system, and we suspect it's low on fighters and supplies due to its recent attack runs. We have reason to believe it will soon jump to another system to resupply. We don't know where it will jump to, but there is only one subspace node out of Ikeya and we intend to blockade it. In the interest of learning more about the slippery bastards, we're going to attempt something bold: the capture of the Taranis. (Admiral Wolf pauses for emphasis. Some pilots whisper among themselves.)
If this goes off, it will give us the opportunity to examine Shivan technology up close - and bag a few live Shivans in the process. In order to do this we will conduct a series of missions designed to take out the cruiser's escorts and defences. Time to chip away at the boulder, people. That is all. Report to your flight leaders for your orders. Dismissed!
Ancients 2 (Spoken by an Ancient narrator) When the destroyers came for us, we attacked. Never had we been defeated. They were like the others: strange, hideous, resisting, fighting. Only these were not like the others: They did not die. We made our first retreat. We could forego one system. We left it to the destroyers and went elsewhere. But they followed. They hunted us. They followed us when we retreated, discovered where we lived. For a long time we did not know why they chased us. They were no ordinary enemy. They did not seek our territory, our technology, our resources.
Now we know our crime was sin.
Hall Fight
Caption: Captured Shivan Freighter / Antares System
Ancients 3 (Spoken by an Ancient narrator) And we retreated to our home system, abandoned our empire. We believed at home we would be safe. For they are not a terrestrial species. We know when we entered subspace we were trespassers, but our planet is our home. And yet still they came.
And our world is gone.
Ancients 4 (Spoken by an Ancient narrator) There are few of us left. We know we will soon be gone. And so we can see our fate as others will see it. There will be little legacy. No great expressions of what we once were. Our technology, our achievements, if ever they are seen again, will spawn none of the awe that filled our conquests. We know our fate. We are being eliminated. When we travelled subspace, the Cosmic Destroyers took note. When we conquered and colonized in galaxies where we had no place, the destruction and the anguish and the loss were the clarion call of our doom.
And so the destroyers came for us.
Ancients 5 (Spoken by an Ancient narrator) There is little left for us. Little time. But much irony. We did discover they are not invulnerable. The destroyers that darkened our skies like a plague can be harmed. But we have no way to deliver the hurt. We have the knowledge, but not the means. And so this is our legacy:
In subspace, they cannot use their shields. And into subspace, they can be tracked.
Endgame (Spoken by the player character) I know why the Ancient Ones were destroyed, and I know what they knew. I know that if not for the Shivans, they would have perished long before. Without the Shivans, someone would have discovered the Ancient Ones in their infancy and eliminated them, just as surely as they eliminated countless billions of others. I believe it is only the destroyers who are killed. The Shivans are the Great Destroyers, but they are also the Great Preservers. That is why, when we moved into space, there was no one powerful enough to kill us. Long had we been the destroyer. Our turn had nearly come. In the Vasudan War, we learned how to adapt. We learned how to study our enemy. We learned how to overcome. We learned how to survive. And so we did.
All the jump points from Earth are gone. But the Shivans can rebuild them. I'm told we can expect them again, but not in my lifetime. Such is liberation.
Can I have transcripts of the FS2 cutscenes?Again, in the order they appear in-game: Introduction (Spoken by an unidentified character) Caption: The Great War: Battle of Deneb / 2.28.2335 Caption: Thirty-Two Years Later Thirty-two years have passed since the Great War. The Shivans vanished half a lifetime ago, and now we live in the mausoleum of history. We inherit the legacy of ghosts who haunt these ruins. The elders call us The Lost Generation. I remember stories of a glorious civilisation. Of cities with spires that reached the sun. Of a blue planet with vast seas. Of people with myths of humanity everlasting. Of children who saw in the embers of dying stars the destiny of their race. And they hurled themselves into the void of space with no fear. They say our people have no present, only a past filled with horror and a future they can only dream of.
Now we forge a new alliance to guard the tomb of space and find within its cold expanse the salvation of our race.
Monologue 1 (Spoken by Admiral Bosch) Thirty-two years ago in the Altair system, Vasudan scientists discovered the remnants of an extinct civilization we now call the Ancients. In here we found the secret to defeating the Shivans. How close did we come to being a footnote in the history of a future species that would happen upon our ruins ten thousand years from now? Would they indulge in the fiction of their own immortality until the Shivans came for them? And how long had this gone on? Did the Ancients stumble upon the monoliths and the tombs of their predecessors in this distant corner of space, dismissing the warnings carved in the walls of the sepulchre? And when the destroyers came at last, what did the Ancients think as they sifted the cremation of dust and bones, staring into the mute remains for a key, some solution to their plight? What if there had been countless races, stretching back into infinity; and like the nine cities of Troy, each civilization had been built on the rubble of one that came before, each annihilated by the Shivans?
The Ancients died eight thousand years ago as humanity emerged from its Neolithic infancy. They believed their voyage across the sea of stars woke the dragon that slept beneath the waves: that the Shivans were birthed from the flux of subspace and their destruction was the revenge of an angry cosmos.
Colossus (Spoken by an unidentified character except where noted) The following is classified Level Rho. Unauthorized access is punishable under the GTVA Security Act, Deneb Convention, Section 21.3.5. We vanquished the Shivans in the Great War, but the hard questions remained. How would we confront the threat of future invasion? The Shivans might return at any time, any place, without warning. How would we fight the next threat to the very existence of our species? In 2345, on the tenth anniversary of the Shivan attack on Ross 128, the Vasudan emperor Khonsu II addressed the newly formed GTVA General Assembly. The emperor inaugurated an ambitious and unprecedented joint endeavour: the GTVA Colossus. Khonsu II: Together we built a civilization from the remains of the Great War, and now we stand on the threshold of a new era of prosperity and harmony. With Project Colossus the Vasudan people celebrate our renewed covenant of peaceful coexistence and mutual defence of our Terran allies. The Colossus is the most powerful space-faring warship ever constructed. Spanning six kilometres from bow to stern, the Colossus has taken over twenty years to complete. Twelve Lucifer-class destroyers can fit within its massive hull. Its state-of-the-art weaponry includes forty-five laser turrets, fifteen flak guns, twelve missile batteries, and twelve beam cannons. The Colossus wields more firepower than five Orion-class destroyers combined. Sixty fighter and bomber wings are housed in its vast hangar, and its crew numbers over thirty thousand. Among its major contractors are industry giants Triton Dynamics, Subach-Innes, and the Akheton Corporation.
The Alliance now wages war on multiple fronts: in Deneb, Alpha Centauri, Epsilon Pegasi, and the mysterious nebula beyond Gamma Draconis. Once deployed, the Colossus will end these conflicts swiftly and decisively. If ever the Shivans return to threaten our worlds, we will be ready to face the challenge, securing peace for today and for generations to come.
Monologue 2 (Spoken by Admiral Bosch) I hear my enemies speculate about my motives, my ambitions. Who is Admiral Aken Bosch, and what is that old scoundrel up to? The tragedy of my life is that I will be remembered as a butcher of innocents. And this assessment is not unfair; I cannot argue with their condemnation or with the verdict of history. The Neo-Terran Front is an army of stupid cattle, driven by their hatreds, their fears and insecurities. Ignorance is the greatest weapon of tyranny and old wounds open all too easily. I am merely a fool who created a monster I am now powerless to stop. And so I will play my role to the bloody end. I have given the Lost Generation something to die for, and now my legacy will be crowned with infamy. What my enemies will never understand is that my rebellion is about my love for humanity, not my hatred of Vasudans.
In the Gamma Draconis system the destroyers have returned, and soon the Alliance will learn the method behind my madness.
Monologue 3 (Spoken by Admiral Bosch) Why does the ancient portal lead us here? Have the Shivans been waiting for us for thousands of years? This odyssey, this exodus: do we journey toward the Promised Land, or into the Valley of the Kings? Three decades ago, I envisioned a new future for our species; and now that we are on the brink of realizing my dream, I feel only solitude and regret. Has my entire life's work been a fool's crusade? Have I led my people into this desert only to die? My regime has caused nothing but savagery and suffering, but I cannot turn back now. I must find the destroyers that lurk behind this veil of clouds, or I must wait for the destroyers to find me.
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.
Monologue 4 (Spoken by Admiral Bosch) This is the final entry in the personal log of Admiral Aken Bosch, Supreme Commander of the Neo-Terran Front. Our encounter with the Shivans has vindicated all I have fought for these past thirty years. My life's work has been achieved. I have created the technology to enable communication between the Shivans and the human race. Although our first contact was rudimentary and crude, I have initiated the first phase of a new alliance with the destroyers, an alliance upon which the fate of humanity depends. As a young pilot, I battled against the rebels of the Great War, the Galactic Terran Intelligence, whose research of Shivan technology and biology would form the cornerstone of my project. The Terran-Vasudan Alliance buried this knowledge, but I resurrected it. I alone realized our species had no future with the Vasudans. If we are to survive, our destiny must lie elsewhere.
As I make this final entry, my crew is preparing the scuttle the Iceni and board the Shivan transports. We embark on a miraculous journey toward a new horizon. This tragic era of hatred and misunderstanding between our races is over. On this day, for the first time in my life, I am filled with joy.
Bastion Dies
Allied Command: One thousand meters to go. Thirty seconds and counting.
Campaign End, version 1 (Spoken by Admiral Petrarch) To the officers and crew of the GTD Aquitaine: We have halted the Shivan advance. The Battle of Capella is over. We sealed off the system, and our people are safe - maybe forever. No one can fathom how or why the Shivans destroyed the Capella star. Though we know our enemy better now than we did thirty-two years ago, their motives remain a mystery. Perhaps they are exiles like we are, nomads wandering the universe searching for a way back home. The explosion of a star might be the bridge between this universe and their own. As the old poet once said, "There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." From our odyssey into Hell, we return with a gift: the Ancient technology to build a portal between Delta Serpentis and Sol. To restore the link to our blue planet. To return home after all these years.
This is Admiral Petrarch, signing off.
Campaign End, version 2 (Spoken by Admiral Petrarch) To the pilots and crew of the 70th Blue Lions, GTD Aquitaine: It is my sad duty to report that your squadron leader never reached the Vega system. According to observers, Alpha 1 remained behind so that others might reach the Vega node. The pilot made this decision even after being advised of the impending catastrophe. Because of this sacrifice and the sacrifice of thousands of others, we halted the Shivan advance. We sealed off Capella and our people are safe - maybe forever. No one can fathom how or why the Shivans destroyed the Capella star. We lost a place many of us called home. We lost entire squadrons, the Colossus, and most of our fleet. We lost so many friends that we celebrate our victory with grief and mourning. From our odyssey into Hell, we return with a gift: the Ancient technology to build a portal between Delta Serpentis and Sol. To restore our link to planet Earth. To return home after all these years.
This is Admiral Petrarch, signing off.
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