SWGB2 Campaign

[lukeiamyourdad]

We haven't talked a lot about this but I thought it would be fun to see everyone's version of what would be a nice campaign for SWGB2.

 

I remember StarCraft. I became such a big fan of that game just because of it's great story (about its gameplay it's argueable especially balance wise). I remember almost crying when Tassadar sacrificed himself to destroy the Overmind(come on I was 12).

Of course a good story doesn't make a good game(like Enter the Matrix) but it would be good for SWGB2 to have a great story so I thought about this.

 

The Saga starts with ep1 and finishes with ep6 in such a nice ending(almost made me cry again). I think the campaign makers are gonna need to capture your emotions.

 

This is what I propose:

1. The Invasion of Naboo

You start the whole campaign with the invasion of Naboo(cinematic of the TF landing). You then proceed as a TF commander leading his troops into battle to invade Naboo.

(cinematic of the TF enteriong Theed)

 

2.The liberation of Naboo

(cinematic of the Gang getting back to Naboo after debating stuff on Coruscant)

You play as both the Naboo and Gungan. You start by landing in the swamps(playing with Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Jar Jar, etc.) and you'll go on looking for the Gungans. You then prepare the reconquering of Naboo by paying sometimes as the Gungan(preparing the Grand army) and sometimes with the Naboo (sabotaging key TF installation).

(ends with cinematic from the celebrations)

 

3.Begun, the Clone War has.

(cinematic of Republic landing)

You start as the Republic landing on Geonosis and driving them out. You then switch to the confed and battle the republic in whatever scenario and of course you'll then play as the republic in the last battles which will determine the victor of the clone war and of course the final battle playing as the Republic.

(I don't know what kind of cinematic but they'll find out)

 

4. Rise of the Empire

(cinematic of the Imperial army)

In this part you play as the wookiee or the hutt cartel(you can play any of these parts since they are available at the same time)

With the wookiees you organise a resistence force against the rising Empire and as The hutt cartel you try to smuggle goods and avoid the Empire's touch when you try to take control of a system's econ.

(no ending cinematic)

 

5.The empire strikes back

(long cinematic showing the destruction of the first Death Star and the Imperial army moving on the rebels to have revenge on them)

You play as the Empire starting from the hunt of the rebel forces away from Yavin and their continues running until the beginning of Return of the Jedi(includes Hoth Scenario).

(ending cinematic showing rebs getting their ass whipped)

 

6. The last stand

(cinematic showing the rebels preparing battle plans) You play as the rebels and prepare the way to the final battle of Endor. You play in various scenarios such as saving Bothan Spies and stealing armements(sp?) from the Imps. The last scenario features the Ground battle at Endor and the escorting of the Millenium Falcon to the Death Star tunnel.

(ending cinematic: Lando and Wedge blowing up the Death Star and everybody dancin' at the party on endor and people from various planets cheering the end of the Empire)

 

The various scenarios are cut by cinematics(maybe à la C&C or à la AoM or even à la WC3) and the briefings are done by commanders(à la StarCraft) discussing and everything.

 

Feel free to add, remove or flame me as you like.

[Natopo]

If I remember correctly (I haven't played in a year), I think that's what the campaign was in GB1. But it would be nice if they could add the space battles in there (Death Star Assault would be complicated though. You could just fight the Battle over Endor) and have a real clone War with all those cool Republic units. It'd also be nice if they could "imbalance" the game a bit. You know, like make some races better than others in certain areas (more than just having one race not being able to build a certain unit). I hated the fact that the units were the same except for the upgrades. I like races having individuality, like in RA2. Battle of Hoth would be nice too, if they could get some good graphics for it instead of using the low graphic quality engine of AOK.

[JediMasterEd]

Yeah, the unit imbalances are better than not having specific units unless it fits with the planet surface as well as the technological development. You're not going to have a B-Wing in the Battle of Yavin. AT-AT's only at the Battle of Hoth and past that.

 

Maybe there should be one other mission. If there will be decent space battles, what about when the New Republic and Thrawn find the Katana Fleet? That was a good battle in the book.

[Sithmaster_821]

It'd be cool if it were all one campaign and it followed the rise and fall of the Empire, but from all the different civ's perpectives.

 

By the way, WC3 had really bad in-game cinematics. That was the main thing that AoM trounced WC3 in (campaign-wise, gameplay-wise its not even a competition). The ones in AoM were really well done, they were entertaining in their own right, but the ones in Warcrap 3 just push the game along.

[CorranSec]

I thought that StarCraft (including Brood War) had the best, most utterly brilliant storyline I've ever seen in a game. The way they linked together... the way they fitted so well with the actual missions... the great cinematics... the voice acting... it was just all great.

Needless to say, it'd be good if GB2 reflected this. Unfortunately, the the variety of civs and the spread over such a huge timeline would make it impossible to actually have the whole 'flowing campaign' thing.

However, several self-contained campaigns, all with great storylines, would be just as good, in my opinion.

 

If we are going to heavily involve the movie storylines in the campaigns (which I might add is unnecessary), then I'd rather it show stories of people who, although they may be supporting the main characters, aren't actually those main characters. Think Enter the Matrix- although its gameplay was questionable, its plot was nicely executed, and it used characters who undertook missions parallel to those done by Neo, Trinity and Morpheus, only occasionally overlapping.

This overlap was made much easier by the fact that the movie cast and crew actually worked closely with the game producers. Now, I doubt this would ever happen with Star Wars (especially considering that the OT was filmed a couple of decades ago) and if it did, it would probably be in an action game, like Enter the Matrix.

 

And more to the point, the only movie storylines which could really be done that well in an RTS is the Invasion of Naboo and some battles of the Clone Wars (which haven't been shown yet). Considering that Ep 2 was about Jedi running around with a big FF (fixed force) battle at the end, Ep 4 was a couple of heroes running around a big battle station, Ep 5 had a big FF battle at the start with the aforementioned heroes running around for the rest, and finally Ep 6 had, yes, those same heroes running around doing stuff with a big ship battle at the end...

... it's pretty easy to see that they wouldn't make great RTSs. They are a great inspiration, and something to build off, but the tales told by the movies themselves are not ample strategy game material.

 

Now that all that's said and done... I've made up a couple of campaigns myself already, but only one's really done in detail. None of them are actually movie campaigns, but they are still in some way linked to the movie plot, and will nonetheless be enjoyable to play. Tell me if you want them.

 

A couple of important points.

- All 'campaigns' (other than the learning campaign) should actually be made up of two civs' campaigns in a row, those civs being mortal enemies. It's easy to see how the pairs match up- TF vs Naboo, Rebs vs Empire, Republic vs Confed, and so on.

- Cinematics should be live-action (think Jedi Knight 1) rather than cinematics (eg StarCraft). Not only does this really enhance each storyline, but it would be a fairly unique feature and possibly even a crowd-winning one, plus it would aid in bringing back the 'movie' feel (I'm sure some cinematics would have saber battles..)

- If possible, known and established actors should be used for the voices (and, of course, the live-action cinematics). We've been shown how much this helps the storyline in games like Vice City, and it'd be great here.

 

That's all for now. Of course, you're all entitled to accept, deny, argue with, or eat my ideas.

Eating would be preferable to denying or arguing with. Of course.

[lukeiamyourdad]

Corran-Good to see someone who agrees about StarCraft's story:p

I understand your points about such a huge serie cannot be put in a single storyline...well it can. If AoM could put three mythologies together I think this is possible for SWGB2 as well.

 

Maybe you follow the life of some Naboo guy throughout his battles with the Trade Federation first. Then he sees he made a mistake and rejoins the Naboo and Gungans. He then defects again to the Confed but sees the Light and joins the Republic. When the Empire rises he sees their cruelty and helps wookiees to resist the Empire. He then becomes a smuggler for the Hutt Cartel. He gets brainwashed by the imps seeing he could be a worthy ally and at the end he's rescued by the rebs who brings him back to the light side.

 

I tried to do a little ''life of Arkantos'' like in AoM. I know it's confusing a bit but I tried to put all the civs in there.

 

And all the games with good stories who followed were more popular then say AoK and SWGB's campaigns.

[Sithmaster_821]

How about we do a combination of the two. We use the support characters (ie 00M-9, some naboo guy, etc.) for their own storyline, and were their story overlaps with the other characters story, the character and civ changes to fit the new minicampaign. EX: Start about some tf droid goes with tf until after theed falls and this tf droid is jailing this naboo guy. Then it switches to naboo, and chronicles his escape and ho he goes and joins up with the gungan army and meets this gungan...

[Darth Windu]

I actually agree...sort of. I see 8 campaigns in the game, each linked. I see it going like this-

 

1. TF - invasion of Naboo (OOM-9)

2. Naboo - recapture of Naboo (Qui-Gon Ginn)

3. Confederacy - beginning of Clone Wars (Count Dooku)

4. Republic - end of Clone Wars, destruction of Confederacy (Mace Windu)

5. Wookiees - mopping up Confeds, fight the Empire (Chewies dad)

6. Empire - crushing Wookiees, fighting Rebels (Darth Vader)

7. Hutt Cartel - skirmish then alliance with Empire, fighting Rebels (Jabba)

8. Rebels - destroy Jabba, destruction of the Empire (Han Solo)

 

PS: the person at the end in brackets is the 'hero' you play the role of while playing these campaigns. I would also like to see it that you HAVE to play the campaigns in order to make one huge campaign, and also have a 'conquer the galaxy' feature like RoN's 'conquer the world'.

[Sithmaster_821]

Hutt Cartel? What happened to the Gungans?

 

And I'd prefer the characters be either invented minor characters or real minor characters that are fleshed out...

[lukeiamyourdad]

Nice idea Sith. Personnally a totally linked campaign by a certain character is funnier then campaigns that are only linked by the timeline.

[Sithmaster_821]

Yeah, but you'd run into objections by the SW purists like Vostok and Windu. I'd personally rather have a good campaign, but some people do play this for the Star Wars portion...

[Darth Windu]

Sith - you have to remember that in my idea-

Royal Naboo + Gungans = Naboo

 

Also, i dont know about anyone else but i loved playing the Empire's campaign as Darth Vader, and i think it would be a lot of fun to play, for example, as Dooku or Windu.

[JediMasterEd]

Besides, I'd rather NOT have Jar Jar running around the battlefield...he he he...hundreds of Jar Jars vs. fifty Jedi...

 

The Empire Campaign was ok...a bit one sided with some but ok. The Rebel Campaign was better. Good idea with the Hutt Cartel Windu.

[Sithmaster_821]

Yeah, I preferred the Rebel campaign to the Imperial one.

 

Oh, sorry Windu, didn't know...

[lukeiamyourdad]

The Imperial Campaign was just long. You always had to build lots of stuff.

In the rebel Campaign you could finish it using Echuu-Shen Jon or Luke only(except last mission).

 

It was too easy

and the story was kinda boring

[CorranSec]

I think that trying to link every civ's campaign together and follow the journey of a single character simply won't work.

It was fine in AoM, for several reasons. Firstly, there was no established storyline that they had to work around (other than general myth, but they had full artistic rights there). There were no timeline troubles- that is to say, there should have been (never did the three mythologies exist at the same time in real life), but once again, they could change that all they liked. AoM dealt with a single easily travelled world, not an entire galaxy filled with diverse species.

And finally, Arkantos himself didn't actually change his allegiance, considering that the three civs weren't actually doing battle with one another anyway, instead fighting against themselves. He merely went to a different place, and was forced to work with their stuff.

This wouldn't work in the SW universe. Can anyone visualise a battle droid general going to Naboo and fighting with some naboo and gungans against some naboo and gungans, then going to Geonosis to fight with the Confed against some Republic, then flying to Coruscant and joining the Republic, then somehow surviving until the days of the Galactic Civil War (where he miraculously fights with both sides), then lasting until the Yuuzhan Vong crisis, dealing with the Remnant, New Rep, Hutt Cartel and Smugglers' Union on the Way?

 

As I said before, separate campaigns made up of two opposing sides which nevertheless follow the path of specific characters (generally one from each side, mortal enemies and suchlike) will provide just as much entertainment as a single huge campaign which somehow traverses every civ, especially when the tales are backed up by full live-action cinematics, something AoM didn't have. They'll also be a lot more realistic when you consider the impossibility of a single commander going to every civ as I explained above.

 

No offense, Luke- it's a good plan, and I wish we could do it. I know it worked great in AoM. But it's just not for this game.

[lukeiamyourdad]

Corran- It can work. You do play as a Battle droid commander but rather as a simple droid who gets caught up in all sorts of situations which leads him from civ to civ. You don't play as him but you could be errrr....God. You follow his path and play as any civs he gets caught up with. He only witnesses the whole story. Of course, you see him getting captured or whatever. He's on the battlefield doing nothing. He's only a witness.

[Darth Windu]

Luke - its not going to work. I think almost everyone would prefer to have it just as a different Hero for each campaign, unless of course you play the game as Anakin or Palpatine...

[lukeiamyourdad]

Windu- Yes it can work. And all the games with linked campaigns have better success then simple campaigns. You simply follow the life(or let's say existence) of a simple droid, a protocol droid who witnesses everything that's happening in the galaxy. At first, he's owned by the Trade Federation then gets captured by the Naboo and so on and so on. He keeps changing owners. It's not hard and it will work.

 

It doesn't totally follow the storyline. You won't get to run around on bespin with Lando and Leia but you will be doing something else while they run around.

 

And those campaign's stories will totally suck a bit like SWGB1's(with a few exceptions). At least you won't have to do things that contradicts the movie(if you remember in the Imperial Campaign, Vader finds out about the location of the rebel base while destroying a base while in the movies he sent probe droids everywhere and caught a glimpse of the shield generator on Hoth and told everyone to go there).

 

And Echuu Shen Jon is not supposed to exist. Gungans did not openly fight the TF before Grassy Plains since the TF seemed kinda surprised.

 

Sev Rance Tann cannot exist neither since Dooku does not have an apprentice.

 

Why does the republic which is already so rich would need to take a small part of the profit of the Hutts?

 

Why would Vader do some grunt work?

 

Why would Maul do some ground work?

 

How can the Wookiee resistence beat the Empire then and not before? and without the help of the New republic?

 

Plenty of things like that will happen in campaigns that won't have anything to be based on.

[Sithmaster_821]

The protocol droid idea would work, but it still would seem kinda wierd that the droid would be shipped around so much.

[lukeiamyourdad]

If C-3PO can get a battle droid body and shoot against some Jedi I think everything is possible.

[CorranSec]

Luke's dad: Well then, if this useless droid doesn't get involved in combat, you'll need a main character General figure for each campaign, wouldn't you? So we're back to my plan again.

Thankyou for that list of GB1's campaign shortcomings. It's things like these that make all of the campaigns fall down in the face of any scrutiny by someone who knows a tad about Star Wars. We do not want that kind of flimsiness again, if I'm not wrong. Trying to move a single character, and a non-combat protocol droid at that, around every civ is just asking for a plothole.

 

But this droid idea could still be implemented. The simple droid could be a recurring character who manages to pop up quite a few times across the course of the campaigns, and could do so in a funny way. You might spot him as a translator for a Naboo dignitary, working as a base loadlifter for the Imperials, acting as a Smugglers' Union copilot (after extensive reprogramming), and being sacrificed to the Yuuzhan Vong gods (evil laugh). This way wouldn't set him as a major character, merely as a funny little easter egg. A bit like Where's Wally, if you get my drift. Except not so hard to find.

 

C-3PO shooting at the Jedi was a little slapstick gag put in the movie for entertainment value. And with my idea above, your droid could be much the same.

[lukeiamyourdad]

Technically yes I guess. But I changed my mind anyway. The protocol droid is just the one who narrates everything. He just tells the story he witnesses. So forget about everything. The only thing that will link the campaigns is the narrator.

[Sithmaster_821]

Ok that makes sense then...

[Admiral Vostok]

I think your plans for campaigns are okay, Luke's Dad. I don't think they can be completely linked together like in AoM, but at the same time I don't think we should limit them to just fighting their "mortal enemies" as Corran suggests. The reason for this is because we want the civs to be so unique, if you only end up fighting one civ it is a fairly limiting experience. Then again, the Trade Federation, Naboo and Gungans can only really fight each other... so I don't know.

 

Here's my ideas for how the campaigns would work:

The campaign outlines are pretty much as Luke's Dad suggested.

Rather than follow a made-up character, WE become a part of the storyline. What I mean is, a leader will brief us on our mission and we command our troops as if we are a General or something sitting back giving orders. We aren't actually a character to control. The only heroes in the game are the movie heroes, but we rarely fight alongside them - in fact they might only be computer-controlled, so if we fight alongside them we'll have to back them up, sending troops to escort them rather than controlling them ourselves. So for example, Nute Gunray briefs us, a Battle Droid Commander whom you don't see on screen, and we carry out the mission with the forces at our disposal. Those forces might include Darth Maul, though he'll run along by himself and we'll have to back him up if he gets in a tight spot.