That P849 dscussion

[Leo T_C_K]

I'm already moving my post from that thread that will most likely get deleted soon, into here:

There should be more discussions on the forums and not on discord imo. But at least most of the toxicity stays there.

I dunno who said that stuff about bhumansonly but yea that is right. However "Silver" was wrong because indeed skaarjtrooper was playable at least in multiplayer gametypes since the beginning. Just in singleplayer he isn't canonically avaiable. I also agree that it should be up to the player. That's why they changed the story to be more vague and dropped the backstory, it surviving only in the novel. Because they wanted the player to have the choice and hence why the prisoner is not refered to as gender. Perhaps this discussion should be moved to a different thread separately. Without any insults or drama. The thing is even that Unreal 2 dropped storyline refered to the prisoner without using the gender. I suppose the cutscene would have been shot that its not revealed or it would be just some lines of dialogue/scenes without you seeing the prisoner talk. But yea that's why they had female and male voice actors for rtnp. The original intention was female, however they also introduced a male character/sidekick for the original shareware story that perhaps shared part of the past with the female character (this is reflected in the novel as Zofia and Gerrick, those are female1/male1 characters and they survive until the end).

TLDR: Basically your main point about the canon is correct and the original character of "Gina" (not named as such until close to the release) was moved to the novel character Zofia and the other player character to Gerrick. there are some differences between the released game world and the novel "canon" but you can still imagine/adapt the events into Unreal and it would somewhat work. If you imagine them as different characters than p849.
Or you can just say that the canon doesn't really matter because there's no real unified canon and the one they tried around ut2004 already had major continuity problems to the original game. Let's say there's a bit of a fluid canon at this point.

[Leo T_C_K]

You can see all the different games as kind of "Sub-Canon"s to each other, to explain some inconsistencies. Basically what was canon only mattered to the game at hand. Unifying it too much/thinking about it too hard is going to lead to problems. I really wish the Unreal Universe was expanded a little/acknowledged to include the spinoffs/former spinoffs as well. Even though I do find some of them stupid, it can still work out. But if you look at all the different documents and versions of games, it becomes clear it will never fit tightly. Like take for example how they tried during ut production to distance themselves from Unreal during the phase where they even dropped Unreal in the title (a short phase but clearly seen in those gti production cds). This is when stuff like the backstory for DOM Cryptic got created that makes zero sense if you count the crypts on Na Pali as canon (which they should be). They walked back on their decisions and added skaarj and nali back in bonuspack (as they were originally intended for UT, the Nali player even originated in botpack package as seen in 220 botpack and only got put into Unreal a little later in patches).
Unfortunately the coherence of the whole thing suffers for these things. Or the fact that Unreal II was intended to take place before/during/after the events of original Unreal and not really many years into the future...

[Shak]

I'm already moving my post from that thread that will most likely get deleted soon, into here:

There should be more discussions on the forums and not on discord imo. But at least most of the toxicity stays there.

I dunno who said that stuff about bhumansonly but yea that is right. However "Silver" was wrong because indeed skaarjtrooper was playable at least in multiplayer gametypes since the beginning. Just in singleplayer he isn't canonically avaiable. I also agree that it should be up to the player. That's why they changed the story to be more vague and dropped the backstory, it surviving only in the novel. Because they wanted the player to have the choice and hence why the prisoner is not refered to as gender. Perhaps this discussion should be moved to a different thread separately. Without any insults or drama. The thing is even that Unreal 2 dropped storyline refered to the prisoner without using the gender. I suppose the cutscene would have been shot that its not revealed or it would be just some lines of dialogue/scenes without you seeing the prisoner talk. But yea that's why they had female and male voice actors for rtnp. The original intention was female, however they also introduced a male character/sidekick for the original shareware story that perhaps shared part of the past with the female character (this is reflected in the novel as Zofia and Gerrick, those are female1/male1 characters and they survive until the end).

TLDR: Basically your main point about the canon is correct and the original character of "Gina" (not named as such until close to the release) was moved to the novel character Zofia and the other player character to Gerrick. there are some differences between the released game world and the novel "canon" but you can still imagine/adapt the events into Unreal and it would somewhat work. If you imagine them as different characters than p849.
Or you can just say that the canon doesn't really matter because there's no real unified canon and the one they tried around ut2004 already had major continuity problems to the original game. Let's say there's a bit of a fluid canon at this point.

It would be good if it gets deleted as the issue is resolved now, I didn't see the new thread so am copy pasting my reply here:


I would like to talk to you in PM Sir, sadly for some reason "i am not authorized to use pm" here..... Maybe I have to wait a bit for this account, and yes thats tru 849 was always players choice, and six og playable models including a Skaarj Trooper, as of the novel i did hear about but was it written by OG Developers or fans? The Developers never said the Novel is canon to 849's story, and the novel doesn't link the events that happens tells a completely different story and diverts from the game a lot (like the translator in isv kran ship describes how skaarj took over and their stand off and capture, 849 powering deck 3 and 2's lift to go to deck 1, the blobs inside the force field and all). My main point was 849 is whoever we choose and I dropped the matter right after being told to but that Augmented guy kept insulting me, and I only replied to him, but anyway Augmented has been warned by the admin so its ok now hopefully, Iand thank you very much and am a huge fan of the game since 2005 and love the 227 patches and I used this forum long ago but when it was hosted by old place but lost access to the e-mail I used then, so i rejoined here now, good day

[Smirftsch]

Deleted the other topic as requested.

Due to recent spam issues I had to increase the number of posts to at least 5 in order to make PM's.

@Leo Thanks for keeping the spirit up here in the forums

[Shak]

Deleted the other topic as requested.

Due to recent spam issues I had to increase the number of posts to at least 5 in order to make PM's.

@Leo Thanks for keeping the spirit up here in the forums

Thank you Sir, love Unreal and the Unreal community, best wishes to all and indeed you are right, Mr Leo has been helpful and his assurance has been very comforting best wishes to all, long live Unreal forever.

[Leo T_C_K]

You don't need to be so overly formal. Also, the novels were written by professional writers and it was licensed/in cooperation with Epic. The story draws heavily from Unreal pre-release material and design documents actually. But yea they didn't calculate in that the game would change significantly and many of the weapons featured would get cut and other things.

They didn't say the novel is not canon either so we can only presume it is canon (although slightly differs). As I explained, the solution seems to be to take it in consideration with the circumstances and use your imagination to adjust the story if you need to. The same with Unreal PSX, it differs a little and even draws from the Novels in turn as well.

If you really are observant you can find little misdirections within all the games really and inconsistencies.

How do you make all the UT games canon and differences between console ports too? Lol, really don't overthink it. Each game has a slightly different canon. Hell, as many people pointed out even the OG doesn't have everything making sense after some changes they made (continuity wise it often doesn't make sense and maps would overlap realistically the way stuff got changed and even before the changes it wasn't 100 percent).

You need to suspend disbelief.

At one point Epic might have said the novels were canon leading up to Unreal's release, the novels got released first btw before the game.

[Shak]

You don't need to be so overly formal. Also, the novels were written by professional writers and it was licensed/in cooperation with Epic. The story draws heavily from Unreal pre-release material and design documents actually. But yea they didn't calculate in that the game would change significantly and many of the weapons featured would get cut and other things.

They didn't say the novel is not canon either so we can only presume it is canon (although slightly differs). As I explained, the solution seems to be to take it in consideration with the circumstances and use your imagination to adjust the story if you need to. The same with Unreal PSX, it differs a little and even draws from the Novels in turn as well.

If you really are observant you can find little misdirections within all the games really and inconsistencies.

How do you make all the UT games canon and differences between console ports too? Lol, really don't overthink it. Each game has a slightly different canon. Hell, as many people pointed out even the OG doesn't have everything making sense after some changes they made (continuity wise it often doesn't make sense and maps would overlap realistically the way stuff got changed and even before the changes it wasn't 100 percent).

You need to suspend disbelief.

At one point Epic might have said the novels were canon leading up to Unreal's release, the novels got released first btw before the game.

Yeah if the Novel was licensed by Epic themselves no debate, but while the game may be based on the novel the game is great on its own and am glad it allows us to choose 849's identity. since May 22 1998 release. I love both the novel and the game and the Novel story is amazing too, I read a few chapters but didn't finish it but glad to know it came from Epic themselves and inspired 849's story, one key difference I remember is that the novel main characters interact with several other humans but in OG 1998 Unreal (not counting RTNP) 849 does not come across a single living human except the one who dies at the start in the Vortex on the seat the moment you touch him who share male2/Ash's model (btw there are many dead female1/Gina models too like in Dark Arena one of them a former Vortex captive). Anyway the novel is great and glad Unreal is based on it but also am glad 849's identity is completely players choice .

[Leo T_C_K]

You don't need to be so overly formal. Also, the novels were written by professional writers and it was licensed/in cooperation with Epic. The story draws heavily from Unreal pre-release material and design documents actually. But yea they didn't calculate in that the game would change significantly and many of the weapons featured would get cut and other things.

They didn't say the novel is not canon either so we can only presume it is canon (although slightly differs). As I explained, the solution seems to be to take it in consideration with the circumstances and use your imagination to adjust the story if you need to. The same with Unreal PSX, it differs a little and even draws from the Novels in turn as well.

If you really are observant you can find little misdirections within all the games really and inconsistencies.

How do you make all the UT games canon and differences between console ports too? Lol, really don't overthink it. Each game has a slightly different canon. Hell, as many people pointed out even the OG doesn't have everything making sense after some changes they made (continuity wise it often doesn't make sense and maps would overlap realistically the way stuff got changed and even before the changes it wasn't 100 percent).

You need to suspend disbelief.

At one point Epic might have said the novels were canon leading up to Unreal's release, the novels got released first btw before the game.

Yeah if the Novel was licensed by Epic themselves no debate, but while the game may be based on the novel the game is great on its own and am glad it allows us to choose 849's identity. since May 22 1998 release. I love both the novel and the game and the Novel story is amazing too, I read a few chapters but didn't finish it but glad to know it came from Epic themselves and inspired 849's story, one key difference I remember is that the novel main characters interact with several other humans but in OG 1998 Unreal (not counting RTNP) 849 does not come across a single living human except the one who dies at the start in the Vortex on the seat the moment you touch him who share male2/Ash's model (btw there are many dead female1/Gina models too like in Dark Arena one of them a former Vortex captive). Anyway the novel is great and glad Unreal is based on it but also am glad 849's identity is completely players choice .

No, the game is not based on the Novel directly, the Novel is based on the original story written by Epic, but expanded upon in the novel. So the novel is more similar to how the game was during 1997 in the end than the released version. And it was still released before the game got released. But its basically canon, just didn't acount for the changes made. ISV Kran doesn't appear at all in the novel (But Inuit does, however Inuit doesn't let their own people know of the secret operations its undertaking, you will fully understand the implication once all of unreal psx rework is out there, it is a secretive organisation with many facets), its taken from a position of what choices the characters make and where they end up. The RRajigar Castle turned into Skaarj Fortress was an idea most likely made by Epic as there's art and some screenshots supporting this, sadly we don't have a design document matching it too. All we got in the game is the mines. (well, unreal bible has the titular "Skaarj Fortress" and this was also the last level but different of Unreal PSX episode 1, one that got recovered the least so we kind of made stuff up on the spot and changed it as we went along, I made plans for that level way in advance including recreated areas from swamp castle screenshots which later yrex ended up executing and changing few things, but thinking back about it we could have tied those areas together and make it explicitly connected to Rrajigar but too late for that now lol, there was actually going to be E1L8E but we dropped it and the plans for it, the Gargoyle also was meant to throw and grab steel barrels per my original plan, there was going to be a whole barracks section but that kind of got dropped and it only ended up being small part of E1L8D, that last section of the map was going to be originally a full new map but most of the layout/sections of e1l8d were inspired by spasehead's custom map in the end)

You do come across a living human that is being killed by the brutes in nyleve though, you seemed to forget that. Also one of the beta versions had more encounters like this and even living humans behind forcefield in a scripted event in vortex rikers. They actually used the regular bot pawns, as back then they were under scriptedpawns and could be made to follow alarmpoints and what not. Not past patch 219 though, then they separated it.

Also apparently there are weapon names changed in the 227j patch including Upak ones getting "UMS" in front. Honestly it only makes sense for the starships to be named that way, not weapons. All the official material I could find refers them as Terran Military weapons but the name of the weapon was never that. I got into this discussion with Delacroix over my "Military Pulse Gun" weapon that was planned for ASP but dropped (I made a "prototype", now being worked on further/fixed up with some help from Aspide who changed the effects on the altfire bit and created UT version). I mean to say more like Military Class, I do not want the UMS name to be stuck on it as it sounds kinda clumsy too.

[Reborn]

the game is not based on the Novel directly, the Novel is based on the original story written by Epic

What Novel are we talking about?
I can't find it by searching on Google.

[Leo T_C_K]

the game is not based on the Novel directly, the Novel is based on the original story written by Epic

What Novel are we talking about?
I can't find it by searching on Google.

There were only two of them. But one of them has an error with switched chapters and it also goes back and forth between the books' stories. Someone messed up at the publishing opposite to the author's wishes. This was fixed by Delacroix in the online versions.
I do have the physical ones and I have to admit even though it wasn't intentional, it does kind of get you that kind of "pulp fiction" like feel to it. Like the novel numbered #1 is even the second half of both prophet's power and hard crash stories. While the actual physical hard crash novel has the first part of both stories.

Its kind of like someone delivered the script badly to them physically, like in that "Plump Fiction" spoof film.

But yea acording to one of the writers that person was being fired so he did something extra to make things difficult. Still its no problem for me to make sense of it, just not nice for your casual reader.
So yea the novels are Prophet's Power and Hard Crash. Prophet's Power (the actual story not the book itself as it has second part of prophet's power and hard crash witin it) is the story about the Nali Prophet, at the time Epic dropped his real name (Kantis) from the lore so the author had to come up with a new name (which became Haute as opposed to the 1996 times). And Hard Crash follows the events of the Vortex Rikers survivors and there are multiple. But if you want to make a headcanon, then you can imagine that prisoner 849 only woke up later (which is the case during game events anyways, you regain conciousness after almost everyone is out or dead). Hell even the fact the ship gets tilted inside...it could have later reverted/flipped after the novels heroes are gone, so you can still explain away some differences.
Even though the characters of Zofia and Gerrick are based on the original backstory for the player character(s). At one point Epic considered a sidekick like gameplay too and split paths for the characters though we don't have a document that deals with this much. But one of the Unreal previews mentioned there might be an "x-files" like dynamic between the main two characters. And originally the focus was on the female protagonist anyways which did evolve into the "Gina" skin as was the point of that discussion they had on Discord apparently.
But yea there are more charcters in the novel that survive the crash but they team up or go their own paths, several of them are killed thorought the course of the novel's story.

Some of the alien characters also interact/speak to humans but its explained to be an universal kind of language that is used in the sector (Vrenic) and it becomes clear that this is also what the mercenary text is and why sometimes the Skaarj have used it as well. (its not explicit but if you read between the lines that's what the lore basically is)
Though the novel doesn't directly show the vrenic language and translates it into english directly. I just wish that some later games (apart from skaarj hybrids) did not have Skaarj speak english to humans as that's honestly not making much sense and that there would be a line to explain that its either something translating it for humans like a voice translator, or that they actually speak in common language, because they'd be normally offended to try and speak in english and it might be more difficult for them to speak english natively.

In my headcanon the main skaarj antagonist of Steele Dawn from Delacroix's treatment also uses Vrenic to speak to the character(s).