Battlezone Forums

AHadley wrote:So Mort asked me a question about the FE story in the shoutbox last night and the answer was big enough to not fit. Figure if that's gonna happen again the shoutbox will be real inconvenient. So, if you want to know something in the story, ask here. Someone probably knows.

The expanded BZ2 story is extremely messy. Nearly everybody has played FE and even if they don't they know of the Hadeans thanks to Zero Angel, and I'm fairly sure most people have played the first two parts of the Fleshstorm Trilogy (the story for the third has been released, but the mod itself hasn't been made). Those are the more popular story mods. Add onto that BBB's Queens Filchers mod, which acts as an FE paraquel, and the unfinished-but-with-a-released-story mods like my own and CP2, and you end up with a really messy storyline that only makes sense if you sit and stare at it for hours.

The beautiful thing about the story is that nearly everybody extrapolates from something somebody else created, but that's also a problem; if you don't understand something in FE, for example, you won't quite get the stories that build upon it.
- Cerberi Revenge expands on a what-if discussion between Lizard and Luckyfoot
- Perfidious tells the story between FE and EPIC
- Zero Hour returns to the Scion Rebels, explains the downfall of the ISDF and concludes with the Night of Infamy
- CP2 takes the cycle of destruction Avatar established and asks how long it's been happening

TL;DR: Story is a mess. Ask about what confuses you. Expect spoilers.

I set up this thread on BZ2Maps.us a few weeks back where I encouraged people to ask about the bits of the storyline they didn't understand. Odds are that, if you don't know something, someone else does. Pretty much everybody learned something, and this forum's missing out. Have at it.

How is it that no one else but seemingly Braddock knew of project pedigree?" Surely someone would have still been alive to contact the AAN about it.

The only people knew about the project were the Black Dogs and the scientists under Braddock. Presumably they were still stationed either on the Dark Planet and Pluto or in the Core system, out of reach of the AAN. Either they thought the AAN knew, knew the AAN didn't know and didn't care themselves, or were kept quiet in some way.

Braddock was a madman, but I'm under the impression that no one inside the AAN knew about Project Pedigree. I don't know much on the black dogs other than the original group was an elite task force under the NSDF to stop the CCA before the main fleet knew of anything.

Of course, I don't know where Braddock comes into the picture regarding the project itself. Although, now that I think about it.. Cerberus Base on Pluto I don't think was ever fully explained that I'm aware of. So its possible Manson knew something that many others did not. Because he was directly under Braddock's control, it is possible only Manson possibly knew anything about it as a member of the AAN.

I could just be talking out of my ass about this, been a while since I delved deep into the main story itself.

Nobody inside the AAN knew of Project Pedigree, you're right; most people have the misconception that the AAN controlled the ISDF, but they were a seperate political entity who dealt in earth affairs, and only intervened in the ISDF when absolutely necessary.

Braddock first comes into the picture after Arkin's defection to the CCA; after that, he became the NSDF's top biometal scientist, and was the man who discovered the Furies' weakness and spearheaded the formation of the ISDF (becoming its Commander-in-Chief).

Of course, before the formation of the ISDF he instigated Project Pedigree, which took the Black Dogs who had survived their last battle against the Furies and turned them into the first-generation Scions. They tore the CCA to pieces on Europa, but soon rebelled and fled. Braddock would later deliberately muddy the waters by analogising them with the Furies in the hope of causing a knee-jerk reaction amongst the rest of the ISDF.

Your next point is regarding Cerberus Base. Sick of the AAN's bickering, Braddock began to operate more and more independently, setting up bases on Pluto and the Dark Planet to "investigate the rich biometal deposits discovered by Voyager II". Whether that's what he was doing or not is another matter, but either way, significant headway was made into exploring the Dark Planet in its partially-alchemated state.

Then Voyager II gets blown out of the sky, Cerberus base gets attacked, and BZ2 begins. The AAN forces Braddock to tell them what the hell's going on and orders the ISDF to investigate the base's destruction. Who destroyed the satellite is never explained - it could have been destroyed by the Scions, or it could have been the ISDF presence on the Dark Planet fearing discovery.

Most of this is interpreted from http://www.pandemicstudios.com/bzII/game_isdf.htm, the manual and the strategy guide, though the writer of the latter got really confused by the Scion/Fury thing (a clever move by the writers that, unfortunately, went over the heads of the wider audience).

EDIT: Oh, also, Manson wasn't a member of the AAN. He formed an ISDF splinter faction loyal to them who took their name. The ISDF and the AAN are somewhat analogous to NATO and the UN.

Didn't the Scions escape from the Pluto base?

Nielk1 wrote:Didn't the Scions escape from the Pluto base?

As I recall there is no evidence to say the ISDF had even reached Pluto before the Scions escaped. My recollection of its early missions is sketchy at best though, I'll replay it as soon as I've finished scouring the other four games.

What I was getting at is that Braddock surely must have hads aides who worked with him on the project who would have likely been able to figure out that it was a Scion attack had they the proper informationa bout it. Why, in a time of things like the "Secret History" link did no one blab?

I think like AH said, I believe only scientists and the original Black Dog squadron even knew about Project Pedigree. No information got leaked until well after John and Yelena started to learn more about what Braddock has been up to in trying to eradicate the original Scion 'threat'.

Iron_Maiden wrote:What I was getting at is that Braddock surely must have hads aides who worked with him on the project who would have likely been able to figure out that it was a Scion attack had they the proper informationa bout it. Why, in a time of things like the "Secret History" link did no one blab?

The stuff that was leaked by the Society was known by everyone in the ISDF and AAN. What the Scions actually were was known only to Braddock's immediate staff and the Scions themselves (not even Manson, his right-hand man in the Second, knew).

So...were the Scions, the Furies? Or were they after the Furies? It's been a while since I played through the campaign.

I have two questions about the Cerberi.
1: Where did they come from?
2: What was their relation the the Hadeans?

Forgot to link to the original thread, in which the Cerberi were pretty much the only topic of conversation.

http://bz2maps.us/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4406




Now, the Scions.

It's a common misconception that Battlezone and Battlezone 2's storylines are irreconcilable; this is not the case. It stems from the Scion/Fury misunderstanding, but to rectify this we must first ask; "What is a Fury?".

The answer to that is that a Fury is what you get when you add DNA to biometal, or to be specific, you add too much DNA. The first Furies we saw were those recreated by the CCA from Ancient Hadean Crown relics in Battlezone; the Furies that destroy achilles. The NSDF and CCA unite in order to defeat the threat, destroying the moon in the process. (We see more Furies a second time, at the end of FE. The Nexus is, essentially, a very big Hadean Fury.)

During the war against the CCA, Wilhelm Arkin's aide Armond Braddock started working on something called Project Pedigree, which was almost the opposite of the Fury project; add biometal to the human rather than the other way around. Taking the NSDF Black Dog Squadron (or rather, what remains of them after fighting the Furies), he gives them biometal augmentations, and the result is pretty much super-soldiers. They tear the CCA remnant to shreds on Europa while the rest of the NSDF are deployed on Titan, getting shredded themselves. After the Furies have been defeated, they suffer a moment of fridge-horror, and fully understand what Braddock has done to them. They flee, destroying the laboratory they were created in as they go to prevent more of... whatever they are being created.

Braddock is quick to retaliate and, hoping to focus the very recent hatred and fear of the rest of the CCA and NSDF, he declares that they, too, are Furies. The newly-formed ISDF try to chase them away, and the combat continues until 1979 when they are believed finally eradicated (there are some transcripts from this period in your manual; the Address at Round Rock, the Battle of Long Ravine, etc). Of course, the Black Dogs weren't eradicated; they were in the Core system.

Exactly when they started calling themselves Scion - or when Braddock started calling them Scion, perhaps - we don't know. We also don't know when they got the technology they have now, but it's fair to assume it's based on data they found in Core's databanks.

How did I draw this conclusion? Read the transcript from the Battle at Long Ravine, where it mentions the actions of the "Furies". Regrouping, patching up a defence, converging on a break, reinforcing each other? If that sounds anything like the behaviour we are told about in Battlezone, you need to go play it again. This isn't just sentience, this is co-operation, compassion and intelligence, things the Furies simply don't have. Something felt off about what the manual was saying there since the first time I read it, and now I understand what; it was never talking about the Furies at all. Even the Secret History leak makes sense once you take that into account. Every instance of the word "Fury" in the manual is just more evidence of Braddock's manipulative personality, not a sloppy retcon or a mistake as we initially believed.

With Padisha Burns being the 'leader' of the Scions (I believe he was also the lead commander of the Black Dogs as well), and if they were indeed in the Core system.. its likely most of their technology did, indeed, come from the databanks. It'd make sense though, but what has me curious is how it was founded, or who created it. Does it have something to do with the Cthonians? I also vaguely remember the Hadean are basically the predecessors of the the ancient race. Which brings to another thing.. If the Furies was what originally destroyed the race, how did a few escape them and remain in hiding for so long?

I have a question:

Though I'm sure this was not taken into account given the need to make the game playable, how is that a single squadron of presumably all guys managed to create an entire new race capable of such large scale combat as seen in BZ2 in the space of 2 generations?