I do have to admit this one is kind of funny to me:
The Starseige universe has one of the most fleshed-out backstories of any non-licensed universe. After their first Earthseige game got slammed for being a shallow Mechwarrior clone, Sierra commissioned Greg Rucka (a well-known writer of crime novels and comics, though this was before he “hit”) to write not just the manual, but an entire backstory for the universe. They published the ‘writer’s bible’ and printed sanctioned fan fiction on the site – long before the first Tribes ever shipped.
Of course, none of this is actually evident in the Tribes game. :-) But the world does have an elaborate backstory.
The Starseige universe has one of the most fleshed-out backstories of any non-licensed universe. After their first Earthseige game got slammed for being a shallow Mechwarrior clone, Sierra commissioned Greg Rucka (a well-known writer of crime novels and comics, though this was before he “hit”) to write not just the manual, but an entire backstory for the universe. They published the ‘writer’s bible’ and printed sanctioned fan fiction on the site – long before the first Tribes ever shipped.
Of course, none of this is actually evident in the Tribes game. :-) But the world does have an elaborate backstory.[/quote]
Holy shit, Rucka wrote the Starsiege/Earthsiege/Tribes backstory!??!?!?!?1?
Fuck, I think I had a copy of one of those Writer’s Bibles! I gotta look for it now!
I knew of the “back” story but since Dynamix never went to the effort of actually putting it out where people would see it, I went with my comment as stated. Of course, semantics being what it is…
But yeah, I’m actually pretty surprised anyone decided to make issue of it, though to be fair Tycho would have been near the top of the hypothetical list of people to bring it up if it was there.
after the two earthsiege games, Sierra was about to launch the “starsiege universe” bigtime. They pushed Starsiege a lot, and tacked on Tribes (remember that this was basically an online only team game back in 1998) to that launch, describing Tribes as a “sequel” to Starsiege. It was set in the same universe, but way of in the future.
Starsiege got all the marketing and money for development (allthough I do believe that they used the same engine), but Tribes was the game left remembered. Some say this was because the Tribes disc was launched without any copy protection(!). This meant that the game could gather a following despite being very difficult to master, or even understand. It could also be that the messy multiplayer, with to many options and badly balanced units and hacks, offered by Starsiege was easily overshined by the, in comparison, clean, complex and rewarding multiplayer in Tribes.
Over here, they all shipped in the one Starsiege Universe box. I remember a whole lot of totally pointless crap in the manual. I don’t remember some universe spanning epic I’ve been dying to get to the bottom of. A great game, yeah, but I’d totally forgotten any fragment of a story aside from one side being called ‘Blood Eagle’ instead of ‘Red Team’.
I remember picking up the original Starsiege:Tribes on a whim when it first came out. I read through the whole manual before I installed it, and was really excited about the cool-sounding universe. I was a bit disappointed that the game never really did much more then scratch the surface of that universe, but the gameplay in Tribes was so good that I was able to overlook it.
I just about never read game manuals. Well, as I’m taking the subway home with a new game, I might poke through it for 10 minutes. If the dev can’t find a way to incorporate the backstory and gameworld nuances into the actual game itself, then they don’t exist, IMHO.
I will read manuals if the devs incorporate the backstory and gameworld nuances into the actual game itself. Usually, those are the games where it’s worthwhile anyway. Fallout, Arcanum, the System Shocks, Elite…oh wait, no Generation Ships. Scratch Elite.
I agree on the reading of manuals bit. Blizzard does a good job of adding flavor text and the like in their docs. But if you’re going to pay someone to make a backstory, at least have the decency to actually use it in the game!
Did they ever explain who the moron was who came up with the spin-disc gun?
Also: doesn’t the Tribes backstory consist mainly of a Robert Heinlein novel?
While Tribes makes use of Starship Troopers type armor, the story always seemed closer to the early Battletech tabletop universe only with infantry and jetpacks rather than mecha and jumpjets.
Homeworld had a pretty in-depth history in the included books that tied in well with the in-game story.
If the love for Tribes 2 tactical gameplay is great, please try out Planetside. That is, jumjets excluded, Tribes 2 on big, fat stereoids.
IMO of course.
