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I wonder how much of the last act of this game feeling like a giant mess was on purpose, and how much was the result of rewrites during development. Though I don't really have any evidence to support this theory, the game's story makes more sense to me if I think of each act as a portion of a proposed story for the game that got mashed together as development went on, because they all feel like something you could try to make a whole game out of. In my mind, Mage and Strider squadrons were one story, Spare Squadron was another story, and post-Kessler was a third and possibly fourth story. The biggest questions I have about the story are still two missions out, so I'll leave them until that time, but I'll say that certain parts of the timeline just don't add up for me.
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Jun 15, 2022 18:41
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lmao I think I know what you're confused about
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Jun 15, 2022 23:01
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Homeward Mission 17: Operation Reflux – October 10th, 2019 | NO COMM Overview: With the LRSSG still reeling from the failure to extract General Labarth from Achorhead, Count suggests the team head for Tyler Island and attempt to join up with the remaining Osean forces on the island, including the 444th Squadron survivors. Low and fuel and resources, the strike group sets out across the water for the island, unaware they are heading straight into hell…  Guest Commentator: I am joined for this mission by Lazyfire. This is the point in the LP were I start to bring things full circle with my guest choices. I guess it sort of started with Cirv in Mission 15, but these next few videos are lined up to bring everything in for a landing with some of my earliest guests for the Ace Combat LPs making one final return before we wrap it all up. Lazyfire has of course been there almost right from the beginning, and was one of the first people on whose LP I ever actually did a guest spot on, which of course was Battlefield 4 back in 2014. Since then, Lazyfire has been a mainstay of just about every Ace Combat LP but 6, missing out on joining the “Seven For Seven” club by one game. He is currently in the middle of LPing Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order, aka “the game that proved EA could actually make good Star Wars games”.   TYLER ISLAND A large island in the Spring Sea off the southwestern coast of Usea just outside of Gunther Sound and the Gunther Peninsula. Prior to the Lighthouse War, the island was the site of an FCU-operated spaceport facility and was a companion center to Riass Space Center in the Comona Islands off the east coast of Usea. The mass driver facility at Tyler was used for multiple single stage to orbit (SSTO) launches both before and after the construction of the International Space Elevator at Selatapura. Both Arsenal Bird Liberty and Arsenal Bird Justice were constructed at the spaceport facility at Tyler Island by both the Osean Federation and the Federation of Central Usea, and were launched into service via the island’s mass driver catapult and a pair of solid rocket booster sleds. Since that time, the facilities on the island have been dedicated primarily to keeping the Arsenal Birds supplied for their continuous operation defending the space elevator, and operating as the main off-site for all ISEV operations. When the Lighthouse War began, the Erusean military moved to capture Tyler Island and its facilities first before any other location on Usea. Doing so gave them direct access to the Arsenal Birds, and by extension the space elevator. Since the outset of the war, the Erusean military has taken over all operations to supply and operate the Arsenal Birds and the ISEV from Tyler Island. In August of 2019, the Osean military launched an operation to try and retake Tyler Island from the Eruseans, of which the personnel from the 444th Air Base and its former penal unit were slated to take part in. While Trigger and Count went off to join the Long Range Strategic Strike Group, other 444th survivors such as Avril Meade and Tabloid were deployed to the island along with a contingent of Osean ground forces. The battle to retake the island lasted over a month, with the Osean forces gaining little ground on the Eruseans before the satellite destruction crisis happened and a complete communications blackout descended over the island. In the chaos, the Erusean forces split into two factions along ideological lines and began fighting each other as well as the Oseans. By the time the LRSSG arrived on the island, the Osean military had decided to completely withdraw all forces back to the Usean mainland effective immediately and dispatched a fleet of landing ships to the island to retrieve as many soldiers as possible before departing for good. On a more grim note, a large number of Belkan ex-pats lived and worked at the launch facility at Tyler Island, and their families resided in the housing development on the south side of the island near the facility. When the communications blackout struck, forces from the Erusean Conservative faction seized the opportunity to begin rounding up and executing the Belkan staff and their families as some form of payback for Belkan operatives helping to facilitate the war with Osea via their involvement in Erusea’s drone development program. Evidence of mass graves on the island have been discovered by Osean forces and documented for submission to the International Criminal Court following the restoration of communications with Oured.  NARRATIVE CONVERGENCE As is typical for Ace Combat games, the various plot threads that start out separated by distance or time slowly begin to ravel together, usually crossing paths directly by the start of Act Three of the story. Homeward sees a number of characters once far flung across different parts of Usea finally all together in the same place for the first time. Our first meeting is between Avril, Tabloid, and Cossette. We’d previously gotten a hint that Cossette was on the move to somewhere safer than Farbanti at the start of the last mission during Dr. Schroeder’s last monologue where he spots her plane flying over the Whiskey Corridor desert en route to… somewhere. That “somewhere” turns out to be Tyler Island, previously thought to be firmly under Erusean control. But the time she gets there, however, she finds that not only is there a strong Osean presence on the island, but the split between the Radicals and Conservatives has engulfed the island in chaos, and neither side, it turns out, is fond of the last remnant of the Royal Family. Minor bit of trivia, but you can actually spot Cossette's crashed Kawasaki C-1 liaison plane, seen in various cutscenes across the game, on Tyler Island during this mission just north of the mass driver facility near the southern shoreline. This lines up more or less with where Avril and Tabloid find her in the cutscene that precedes this mission. It's even laying in the exact same orientation it is in the cutscene when Avril finds it. Now that's dedication to consistency! The intro cutscene to Mission 17 also features our first narration hand-off of the game. Halfway through, the POV shifts from Avril to Cossette, and we get our first bit of narration from the princess directly. She was the subject of a cutscene earlier in the game, but this is the first time that we get to hear her speak in her own words where she’s not reading from a script or speaking with an ulterior agenda on someone else’s behalf. This won’t be the last time something like this happens either, so be on the look out for when it happens again. There’s an interesting balance being weighed here with the storytelling. As the narrative becomes more focused and drills down to its primary subjects of interest now that the outside world has basically been cut off, more characters are offered permission to speak in the narrative. The briefings are becoming more of a dialog within the LRSSG, and our stable of narrators is expanding, if only briefly at times. This mission also sees the reunion of the Spare Survivors of sorts, Trigger, Count and Tabloid. When we last left our favorite lovely anarchist, he was loaded up on the same transport as Avie headed for Tyler Island after the 444th Air Base was shuttered by the Osean military and all its convicts granted official pardons by the Osean government. Tabloid is just kind of… there in the mission, mainly to say hi and remind everyone that he’s still a thing in the plot. The real stars of the mission are Avril and Cossette, but Tabloid’s moment to shine comes afterward in the interlude between Mission 17 and 18. This is about as close as we get to the entire (surviving) cast being in one place for the moment. With Schroeder and the girls on the way to the space elevator, that just leaves Mihaly, Wit, Seymour, Hermann and Roald out there twisting in the wind. And with there still being unfinished business between Sol Squadron and the LRSSG, it’s only a matter of time before we cross paths with them once again as well...  RIP DOG.JPG With this opening cutscene, Ace Combat 7 earns its entry on Does The Dog Die?.com. Unfortunately, Cossette’s dog, our best good completely motionless boy, dies valiantly defending the princess when she is accosted on Tyler Island by a squad of rebel Erusean soldiers after escaping from her crashed plane. This is the moment where the true cost of war his brought home to Cossette. Losing her parents when Farbanti fell was one thing, but her dog not just dying, but being murdered in front of her, by her own countrymen no less, countrymen she helped inspire to war with all of her wonderful “Let’s burn Osea to the ground” speeches, is just too much for her. Cossette’s a smart girl, she knows deep down that her father wasn’t an “innocent” in this whole equation. This war was ultimately on his shoulders as the absolute monarch of Erusea. Him dying in the war he started seemed like it was always in the realm of possibility for her, but to see an innocent animal dying in front of her as a result of the war is something that will haunt her for the rest of her days. The losses she’s experienced over the past few weeks have been formative, crystallizing moments for her as a person. She’s gained a newfound sense of responsibility for her role in shaping this conflict, and with it a newfound burden of guilt for the lives lost and destroyed thanks in part to her. These burdens are going to inform a lot of her actions and words in the coming days, both for the better, and for the worse. If you think her running headlong into an active combat zone to pop that smoke marker was the craziest, most self-sacrificing/self-destructive thing she gets up to in this game… just you wait. Of course, as mentioned earlier in the LP, the dog who played Dog.jpg, a golden retriever by the name of Toraji sadly passed away shortly after work was completed on Ace Combat 7, so the death of Cossette’s dog is one of those ironic art and life intersections that the developers probably did not see coming, least of all the poor guy whose dog it was in real life.  THE SLOW BOAT TO PLOT ISLAND With the refugees saved on Tyler Island by the LRSSG, Avril, Tabloid and Cossette pile as many people as they can muster into a ferry and set out for… somewhere, anywhere, wherever they can make it to that’s not Tyler Island. They don’t have many good options. Osea’s too far away to reach by boat. Erusea is a no-go. And the FCU will probably just arrest everyone for aiding an abetting a wanted war criminal and surviving member of the Erusean royal family. So that just leaves Selatapura… and the International Space Elevator. The ISEV geofront is functionally the closest viable destination anyway, and it’s better than sticking around on Tyler Island at least. This also means our narrative threads are going to be pulling even closer together, because remember who else is currently either at or heading to the ISEV as well? Dr. Warcrimes, that’s who. I told you the game will eventually wind up with literally everyone who’s still alive all in one place. On the way to Plot Island, we also have a couple of quiet but very important things slip past us otherwise mostly unnoticed while Avril and Cossette have their little debate. First up, we learn that Tabloid is Belkan by family heritage. He’s an Osean citizen by birth, but he picked up his little anarchist “borders are bullshit” attitudes from his Belkan parents. We’re also obliquely introduced to a man by the name of Georg—more on him later. And lastly, Avril spots a ship sitting out there dead in the water a few dozen miles off the coast of the space elevator; an aircraft carrier, from the look of it. This ship will be VERY important very soon. Stay tuned.  DWINDLING OPTIONS So once again, another mission in search of a way out of this madness, and another dead end, it seems. With Tyler Island proving itself to be nothing by a chaotic war zone, the LRSSG’s hopes of finding supplied and allies has been once again dashed. Reuniting with Avril briefly might have buoyed moral a bit for Trigger and Count personally, but the Scrap Queen and her kingdom of refugees are in no position to help out the LRSSG, and in fact don’t even want to. They just want to get the gently caress out of there along with everyone else. At the very least, the LRSSG managed to secure an evacuation route for the Osean ground forces to get off the island and return to the Osean mainland, and prevent any further supplies from reaching AAS-02 Justice, still patrolling Selatapura’s airspace. So little moral and material victories mean a lot in these hectic days. But this doesn’t solve the larger problems facing the squadron, namely fuel, food, and ammunition shortages. The detour to Tyler was costly enough. The resources scrounged up by the LRSSG from the Tyler Island Air Base barely allowed them to make it back to the mainland themselves. Desperation is starting to set in, and the ruthless calculus of dire straights is starting to assert itself. Everyone knows what comes next now that we’re on the brink, and nobody wants to be the ones who have to do it...  HARLING’S MIRROR During the end cutscene to the mission, Avril and Cossette have a small debate on the pros and cons of the space elevator, what it represents, and actions of President Harling in the final moments of his life. Not only do the two women present their differing feelings on the matter, they also present two different sets of facts, both of which could be true in the absence of any corroborating evidence. Which of their takes on Harling’s intent is “true” is a matter for your own interpretation. Again, we go back to the “Perception vs. Reality” binary, as both women are operating on incomplete sets of facts about a situation neither of them was there to witness, and their opposing POVs on it actually don’t provide any further context to inform the other or at least reconcile the differences. Cossette posits that Harling ruined a fuckton of lives when he began work on the space elevator. He put whole industries out of business, rendered entire technology sectors obsolete, and displaced countless people to erect the ISEV. And that’s to say nothing of all the lives lost in the war that erupted over it as covetous men vied to control it for themselves. Avril counters that the elevator has appreciably improved far more lives in the process, and that those industries and technologies shuttered have been replaced by better, more effective, and less damaging alternatives. Yeah, there’s a whole field of scrapped space shuttles out there now, but the space elevator is basically the only way up in to space now aside from SSTO mass drivers, and if it’s lost, there’s nothing to replace it with. Neither point contradicts the other. It’s fascinating to see that after all this, Avril has gone from being one of Harling’s harshest critics to an advocate attempting to defend his legacy to Cossette now that she’s actually laid eye on the space elevator for herself. The debate over what Harling was trying to do when he turned Mother Goose One back towards the elevator comes up again here. Cossette believed he was attempting to destroy the elevator in anger and indignation, having seen his gift of peace to the world become the catalyst for war and death. In the princess’s view, Vincent Harling tried to ram the elevator with Mother Goose One to remove it from the world and end the fighting over it, thinking that if mankind couldn’t use it peacefully, they shouldn’t be able to use it at all. It’s a very “God casts Adam and Eve out from Eden for their sins” line of thinking. A conception coloured by her own thoughts on the space elevator, believing that it needs to be destroyed, purely to put it out of everyone elses’ misery. Avril, meanwhile, counters with her belief that Harling was trying to defend the space elevator from the attempts by the IUN to destroy it, even claiming he threw himself in front of a missile to try make sure it survived. We know this last little embellishment is wrong because we were there, we saw it, and he did not, in fact, take a missile bound for the elevator. One of the few times the information disparity of the narrative knocks to our benefit as viewer. But the rest of it? That sounds just as plausible. We know the kind of man Vincent Harling is. He is of a stock of unimpeachable moral character, a man willing to do the hard things because they are also the right things; a man who believes in ideals greater than himself and fights for them in the hope of making a better world for other people. He’s not the type of man to lose hope like that and act out punitively like Cossette believes. Whatever he turned around and flew back towards the space elevator for, it had to be immensely important. Something that he was willing to wager not just his life on, but his very soul as well. We’ll find out what it was soon enough.   GEORG Real Name: George [UNKNOWN] Callsign(s): None Age: Early 30s Sex: Male Nationality: Signature Plane: F/A-18F Drone Voice Actor: Brandon Winckler This generically handsome young man is Project ACES’ way of wrapping up a few loose plot ends all in one convenient character who barely appears in the story. Georg is a former member of Erusea’s foreign mercenary division, previously acting under contract to the Erusean Air Force as one of its drone fleet pilots. He defected from the EAF after the communications network went offline, and has joined up with Avril’s group of refugees currently on their way to the ISEV geofront. Georg is also, as revealed by Tabloid, a Belkan. He was also a part of the Erusean conspiracy to assassinate former president Harling utilizing a false flag drone F/A-18F painted with Osean colours and squawking an OADF/IUN-PKF IFF transponder code. Georg was at the controls of the drone that fired the fatal shot, the one blamed on Trigger that got him court marshaled and convicted. If you listen carefully, you can hear that it’s actually Georg’s voice on the radio calling in the “friendly fire” strike on Mother Goose One and then blaming Trigger for it, as his was the closest plane aside from Geroge’s phantom Hornet drone, which quickly bugs out of the combat zone, its mission complete. He was later assigned to operations at Tyler Island helping to keep the Arsenal Birds resupplied and outfitted via the mass driver facility on the island. Prior to the faction split, Georg was allied with and was an asset for the Erusean radical faction, being one of a number of Belkans who aided the kingdom in its war efforts with various forms of support. When the Erusean Conservatives began rounding up and executing all the Belkan staff who lived on the island and worked at the mass driver facility, as well as their families, Georg defected from Erusea and fought to defend the civilians. He and the survivors he rescued have now joined up with Avril and Cossette’s group of survivors headed for the ISEV site at Selatapura. He has promised to make a full confession to the Osean authorities of his role in Harling’s assassination and of the true extent of Belka’s involvement with Erusea’s drone program once communications have been fully restored… provided he survives tell his story. According to cut dialog from the next mission, Mission 19, Georg at one point was going to make a full confession to his role in the assassination of Harling, laying out in precise details how deed was done: quote:“I've got something they might be interested in, Avril. I'm the one who killed Harling. I disguised my fighter as an Osean craft so Osea would be framed. It worked. One of their pilots got the blame. But that pilot went and saved my life. If he hadn't expelled the Erusean Forces from Tyler Island – if he didn't hold off the Erusean Army and give me a chance to escape – I'd be just another dead deserter. I don't expect my confession to absolve me of my sins. This is further corroborated by NPC actor data in the game's files. One of the allied planes that arrives in the airspace during the rescue operation of President Harling in Mission 4 and falls into the formation with Gargoyle squadron is flagged in the game's files as "02_ally_F14_Georg". At one point, Georg's rogue F-14 was supposed to be the plane that begins shadowing you in the final two minutes of the mission and then flies past Trigger in the cutscene following Mother Goose One's destruction, however this was ultimately changed to an F/A-18F bearing Knocker's visual ID markers (unnoticeable by the player during the cutscene itself) for reasons as yet unknown.  
Mantis Olivier Perrin 44, Male, First Lieutenant, Erusea Erusean Air Force 48th Air Division, 28th Fighter Squadron quote:Lieutenant Colonel Olivier Perrin   Tracks featured in Mission 17: DISC 3  quote:Rose (pg 126-133) nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Oct 11, 2022 |
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Jun 16, 2022 19:18
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quote:where he spots her plan Plane.
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Jun 16, 2022 19:28
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Cooked Auto posted:Plane. Not that I don't appreciate all of this, but you can just do these over PMs, you know.
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Jun 16, 2022 19:31
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what do the oseans name their ships when they run out of birds
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Jun 16, 2022 19:36
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Psycho Landlord posted:what do the oseans name their ships when they run out of birds You really think the OMDF is going to build 18,000 ships any time soon?  Also we've seen what happens, they just start putting numbers on the end like they did with the Kestrel II.
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Jun 16, 2022 19:38
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nine-gear crow posted:Not that I don't appreciate all of this, but you can just do these over PMs, you know. I probably should. Especially if I don't have anything to add yet. I keep forgetting I can actually do PM's now. Much how you keep forgetting that you have flares. Also, shame about that new Battlefield game you're talking about. 
Cooked Auto fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Jun 16, 2022 |
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Jun 16, 2022 19:47
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Rose’s character development always struck me as “coddled child overcompensating trying to atone for their sins.” She’s been cooped up and swaddled in this cocoon of safety that was built on the backs of soldiers (and civilians) sent into the ever-hungering furnace of war, and when that cocoon breaks, she goes full on self-destruction as she reels from the revelation. Her death, if you will believe her, would balance everything out and clear her name. What she doesn’t know is that her self-destruction won’t just destroy her and her alone. It’ll bring everyone nearby with her.
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Jun 16, 2022 20:24
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nine-gear crow posted:You really think the OMDF is going to build 18,000 ships any time soon? The Kestrel 2 was a special case and I doubt they will launch the OFS Bearded Titmouse!
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Jun 16, 2022 20:53
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Psycho Landlord posted:The Kestrel 2 was a special case and I doubt they will launch the OFS Bearded Titmouse! they should though
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Jun 16, 2022 20:59
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OFS Booby
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Jun 16, 2022 21:03
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That's their training carrier. Or a Marine one.
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Jun 16, 2022 21:03
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Maybe they'll go the "Dinosaurs are birds too" route?
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Jun 16, 2022 21:24
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I swear to god that there's an episode of G.I. Joe that showed helicopters vs Cobra Jets. The Joe jets were destroyed in the ground, and the Joes use choppers to fight the jets, while someone says that's crazy. Then the Joes fight away the jets, with one even doing a loop, while the Cobra pilot says "That's impossible!" But it's been over 30 years since I saw it, so I don't remember what episode it was.  Instead have this video of an AH-64 doing fancy maneuvers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q52KxdjXvJM
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Jun 16, 2022 23:51
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 Wagtail is a bird too.
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Jun 16, 2022 23:54
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I know the Westland Lynx can pull off some real crazy poo poo when it comes to maneuvers.
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Jun 16, 2022 23:54
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Am I forgetting an earlier mission, or is this the first time we meet the new Cyclops 3, Tailor? Kind of weird to introduce a new person in the LRSSG and...don't even call attention to it.
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Jun 17, 2022 01:16
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AradoBalanga posted:Am I forgetting an earlier mission, or is this the first time we meet the new Cyclops 3, Tailor? Kind of weird to introduce a new person in the LRSSG and...don't even call attention to it. Yes, this is the first time we get a look at the restructured Cyclops Squadron following Wiseman's death. Fencer has taken over as Cyclops 1, and some new rando by the callsign of Tailor has joined in as Cyclops 3. It's never called out in game and he gets minimal lines and no dialog portrait, so if you're not paying keen attention, his presence is completely missable. Cyclops Squadron has also officially become the Minor Character Containment Zone, with Skald and Lanza being shoved over there, while Count, Huxian, and Jaeger have all officially joined Strider Squadron full time. I weighed the merits of calling this out in the post, but I can always go back and add it for the sake of clarity.
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Jun 17, 2022 02:40
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anilEhilated posted:
Willie Wagtails are everywhere here, and they're the most adorable little messengers of doom and destruction. quote:The willie wagtail was a feature in Australian Aboriginal folklore.[56] Aboriginal tribes in parts of southeastern Australia, such as the Ngarrindjeri of the Lower Murray River, and the Narrunga People of the Yorke Peninsula,[57] regard the willie wagtail as the bearer of bad news.[56] It was thought that the willie wagtail could steal a person's secrets while lingering around camps eavesdropping, so women would be tight-lipped in the presence of the bird.[2][3] The people of the Kimberley held a similar belief that it would inform the spirit of the recently departed if living relatives spoke badly of them. Cooked Auto posted:I know the Westland Lynx can pull off some real crazy poo poo when it comes to maneuvers. The most insane example is with the Mi-24 Hind, the designers were given an airshow by Russian pilots. The did a bunch of stuff, including barrel rolls, that the designers didn't think were possible quote:Early in the war, head of Mil Marat Tischenko visited Afghanistan to see what the troops thought of his helicopters, and gunship crews put on several displays for him. They even demonstrated maneuvers, such as barrel rolls, which design engineers considered impossible. An astounded Dr. Tischenko commented, "I thought I knew what my helicopters could do, now I'm not so sure!" Honestly, between this and seeing a Super Stallion perform a full loop, I think it comes down to how insane the pilot is.
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Jun 17, 2022 02:42
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Continuing on the "everything gone to poo poo" themes, here we also see the beginning of a turnaround. The music is back in the briefings, and the protagonists manage to save the Osean forces along with a large number of refugees. The war is still hell, but there are people trying to push back for some level of human decency, documenting war crimes, rescuing the wounded, and preventing atrocities rather than encouraging them. Unsurprisingly, given the rest of the game, that little sliver of hope mostly revolves around Trigger. He's the guy who got the call for the rescue, he's the one who made the plan to hit Tyler Island in the briefing (you can see that it's his mouse curser in the cutscene if you pay close attention) and he's the one who saves the day. This is another bit where the game is clever in integrating the mechanics and the storyline, something kind of common in Ace Combat. At the start of the mission, everything is in chaos. But the player, bit by bit (with help from Long Caster) forces things back into the old model, seeing friend from foe and helping people to reach safety. Stick with Trigger, and you'll make it, enforced on a mechanical level as well as a narrative one. Of course, just because he's a hero and everyone's best hope doesn't mean he's perfect...
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Jun 17, 2022 03:47
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Poor dog.jpg  It's pretty grim to see all of Cosette's vim and vigor just evaporate and get replaced with depressed emptiness when personally faced with the consequences of the war she inspired with her passionate speeches.
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Jun 17, 2022 11:14
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Geemer posted:Poor dog.jpg “Oh no, the consequences of my actions!”
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Jun 17, 2022 11:28
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nine-gear crow posted:“Oh no, the consequences of my actions!” Yup. Definitely. Now if only Dr. Warcrimes would get a similar realization forced down his throat. I wouldn't know if he does, because I keep loving up that early score attack mission by not paying attention to my altitude and crashing at the last minute.
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Jun 17, 2022 11:34
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I got the order of the missions mixed up. This is the part where I have problems with the timeline. Spare Squadron just sort of spent the time between Missions 10 and 17 in the clusterfuck of Tyler Island? And we heard nothing about what happened to them until now? This is what I mean when I say I smell a rewrite. I feel like in another version of this game's story, Trigger would have gone with them and done cool plane poo poo there instead of with the LRSSG. EDIT: Next time I need to actually watch the video before posting. Crow mentioned this possibility as well. It just sort of feels like whoever is running Osea's military forgot about Tyler Island entirely for three months. Or maybe it was the game's writers. I dunno. It doesn't ruin the game or anything, but considering how important that island now seems to be (it still has a functional spaceport after months of combat for gently caress's sake), I think someone dropped the ball a little bit here. Inglonias fucked around with this message at 13:34 on Jun 17, 2022 |
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Jun 17, 2022 13:17
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The island isn't important to Osea's strategy. When the first arsenal bird goes down the AO of the remaining one is basically isolated to the area around the elevator. Whilst the supplies there and the spaceport are valuable, Osea theoretically ends the war if it takes Farbanti. So why basically step on the most well defended area in Erusian territory when it's not critical to your overall strategy for winning?
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Jun 17, 2022 18:46
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They had them running distraction and harassment missions previously, seems like it's one of their accepted military strategies. Probably just told them to take the island without a timeline or expectation of victory and let them go.
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Jun 17, 2022 18:52
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Also despite being pardoned, the Osean military still treated the 444th personnel as a suicide squad. Only Trigger and Count managed to escape that hell pit into the LRSSG. So them just being sent to Tyler Island with the directive of "find ways to make life hell for the Eruseans. We'll send in the regular forces to properly take the island... eventually. Don't worry about." sound about right.
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Jun 17, 2022 18:59
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"The more Eurseans they keep busy, the less we have to deal with."
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Jun 17, 2022 19:04
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Natural 20 posted:The island isn't important to Osea's strategy. When the first arsenal bird goes down the AO of the remaining one is basically isolated to the area around the elevator. I read it as "what started as an attempt to cut off supplies to the Arsenal Birds entirely was relegated to rote interference after the LRSSG knocked out the first Arsenal Bird with Stonehenge", myself. It's important to remember that shooting the bird with the big gun was after the other team was sent to the island.
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Jun 17, 2022 19:07
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Inglonias posted:I got the order of the missions mixed up. This is the part where I have problems with the timeline. Spare Squadron just sort of spent the time between Missions 10 and 17 in the clusterfuck of Tyler Island? And we heard nothing about what happened to them until now? This is what I mean when I say I smell a rewrite. I feel like in another version of this game's story, Trigger would have gone with them and done cool plane poo poo there instead of with the LRSSG. Oh lol I did not, in fact, know what part you were talking about Anyway like others have said, Tyler stopped being important as soon as the first Arsenal Bird got railgun'd and the fighting there had already bogged down, but pulling out would have freed up Erusian assets there that could be used at Farbanti and Osea was already steamrolling towards it, so why bother? Let the chaff keep everything there pinned in place while the rest of the offensive continues.
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Jun 17, 2022 21:30
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I made this for the probation challenge but ran out of time. Oh well, here you go anyway.
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Jun 18, 2022 23:27
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Kal-L posted:I swear to god that there's an episode of G.I. Joe that showed helicopters vs Cobra Jets. The Joe jets were destroyed in the ground, and the Joes use choppers to fight the jets, while someone says that's crazy. Then the Joes fight away the jets, with one even doing a loop, while the Cobra pilot says "That's impossible!" I don't remember that episode but in another one Cobra steals the Joe's Vehicles for a false flag operation and the Joe's end up stealing Cobra's Vehicles to stop them and Wild Bill does does a loop In a Cobra Helicopter that astonishes a Cobra pilot flying in a stolen Joe Chopper. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpjaenoZ4pA&t=1100s
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Jun 20, 2022 01:49
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Mr.Flibble posted:I don't remember that episode but in another one Cobra steals the Joe's Vehicles for a false flag operation and the Joe's end up stealing Cobra's Vehicles to stop them and Wild Bill does does a loop In a Cobra Helicopter that astonishes a Cobra pilot flying in a stolen Joe Chopper. ...why is there a giant parrot?
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Jun 20, 2022 12:56
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Cartoons.
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Jun 20, 2022 16:21
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VolticSurge posted:...why is there a giant parrot? Despite reading this post I was not prepared for the actuality of the giant parrot
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Jun 20, 2022 18:36
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Lost Kingdom Mission 18: Operation Beehive – October 24th, 2019 | NO COMM Overview: At their breaking point, the LRSSG attacks the former Grand Duchy of Shilage in order to claim the resource stockpile amassed at and around Shilage Castle. They are met in the skies by a force of familiar faces, also driven to desperation by the war, and a king returned home to defend his castle…  Guest Commentator: I am joined for this third to last mission by my first Ace Combat LP guest ever to bring everything full circle, Lunethex. Lune was the first person I’d ever reached out to for this LP project to appear as a guest, first showing up in Mission 3 of Ace Combat Zero after doing Missions 1 and 2 solo. My intent from the outset was to try and have a stable of rotating guests on for as many missions as I could for each game. Lune stepped up to the plate first and came ready to roll with his knowledge of the franchise, a lot of insights that I didn’t have at the time, and an incredible wit that I could play off of easily. He helped set the tone of how this franchise LP was going to going to look and feel in regards to my guest rotation and the tone I would take things. A lot of my other guests weren’t as knowledgeable on the games or the story or whatnot, but I always took it as an opportunity to help explain the game better to my viewers, even if I tended to repeat myself and answered the same questions from multiple people over and over again. I’d done work with guests before both in my own LPs and as a guest on other folks’ work like Lazyfire and Artix and Fedule, but Lune was the first outside guest I’d had on for an LP that I was 100% in control of myself. And if things hadn’t gone so well that first day we’d sat down to record B7R together, I can’t imagine what this LP would have looked like beyond that because it really gave me the confidence to start firing off more requests to people to see if they were interested in hopping on for a video, and taking chances on some folks who basically cold called me asking if they could be a guest on a video themselves. I’ve had a couple of rounds where things just didn’t go as well as I’d liked and things just didn’t click, but the vast majority of people I’ve recorded with were all wonderful and it’s a shame we’re at the end of this journey and I don’t have the material to record with them again. And that’s all thanks to Lune.    SHILAGE Full Name: The Grand Duchy of Shilage Capital: None currently recognized Continent: Usea Head of State: Grand Duke Mihaly Dumitru Margareta Corneliu Leopold Blanca Karol Aeon Ignatius Raphael Maria Niketas A. Shilage (Disputed) Government: Currently disputed Real World Analog: Hungary, Slovakia Once known as the Grand Duchy of Shilage, today the territory is known as the Erusean state of Shilage, though the matter of the nation’s autonomy is currently in dispute. Located in the valley between the Amber Mountains in the south, and the Lambert Mountains in the north, Shilage is a picturesque, idyllic land of rivers and farmlands that serves as the breadbasket of the Kingdom of Erusea. The nation was founded back in the 1600s during the Age of Exploration by settlers from the Belkan subcontinetal region of North Osea, who landed in what would later become the Kingdom of Erusea and expanded eastward across Usea. This was the justification the Eruseans would later use during their annexation of the nation, claiming that “Shilage” was not a real country to begin with and that its people were Erusean by descent, and thereby the territory actually belonged to Erusea. Shilage remained politically neutral throughout its existence as a nation. It was, along with Voslage, San Salvacion and Delarus, one of the primary independent “buffer states” between the expanding political spheres of the Kingdom of Erusea in the west, and the Federation of Central Usea in the east. The grand dukes had repeatedly rebuffed overtures to join the FCU, specifically the offer of its military umbrella for protection against encroachment with its borders. Shilage had no military of its own, and stable, peaceful relationships with its neighbors, including Erusea at the time, and therefor saw no need to join the Federation. Some historians believe this was the Grand Duchy’s downfall. After the Republic of Voslage was annexed by a suddenly extremely aggressive and territory-hungry Erusea, panic and discontent quickly gripped Shilage. Believing the royal family couldn’t protect them from Erusea, and driven by other mounting social issues, a revolution broke out among the citizenry in the 1970s that saw the grand duke and nearly his entire family deposed and executed. The duke’s son, Mihaly Dumitru Margareta Corneliu Leopold Blanca Karol Aeon Ignatius Raphael Maria Niketas A. Shilage was among one of the few survivors of the bloodbath, having escaped into Erusean territory, but not before a few betrayals along the way. The new republic formed from the uprising did not last long, however, and was quickly invaded and consumed by Erusea anyway. For the last half century, the Erusean rose emblem has flown atop every flagpole in Shilagean territory, and every Shilagean citizen considered “Erusean”, whether they wanted to be or not. The anti-Erusean sentiments among the people of Shilage did not subside, however, despite Farbanti’s efforts to try and “Eruseanize” the former Grand Duchy. When the royal family fell during the early 90s’ military coup, the Federal Republic of Erusea heavily reinforced Shilage with a large military presence to dissuade any potential uprisings by force. Many native sons and daughters of Shilage were conscripted into the Erusean military and forced by the government to occupy their own homeland militarily. In 1998, the citizens of Shilage threw their support behind the Usean Rebel Forces as a means of fighting back against the oppression of the Federal Republic of Erusea, and offered the URF the use of Shilage Castle as a base of operations against both Erusea and the FCU-led Usean Allied Forces. They quickly found they had exchanged one terrible master for another, however, after the URF revealed their intent to set up a military dictatorship of their own encompassing all of Usea from their new occupied capital of St. Ark. When the rebellion was defeated and Erusea retook control over the region, reprisals against citizens confirmed to have aided the URF were swift and harsh. Since then, the people of Shilage have merely bided their time, waiting to see what the future will hold for them. When the Federal Republic of Erusea fell in 2005 after the Continental War, the will for Shilagean independence was at an all-time low, and with the Internation Union overseeing peacekeeping operations and the establishment of an interim governing council, the opportunity to assert their independence was just not possible under the political climate at the time. However, since the restoration of the monarchy in the early 2010s, the push for Shilagean autonomy found new life, this time among the younger generations of the state. When the satellite network was destroyed, and Erusea lost its ability to communication and coordinate with its military, Shilage was one of many once-conquered states that seized on the opportunity to rise up and have formally declared independence from the Kingdom of Erusea. Many former Shilagean citizens have returned to the country from elsewhere around Erusea, seeking to restore their homeland. A number of other refugees from all across the continent have also flocked to Shilage Castle, believing it to be a place of safety from the chaos and conflict raging around the world at the moment. Supported by military forces from their southern neighbor of Voslage, the people of Shilage have rallied around Mihaly Dumitru Margareta Corneliu Leopold Blanca Karol Aeon Ignatius Raphael Maria Niketas A. Shilage, who returned home after years in exile to suddenly find himself a folk hero among the same people who had murdered his entire family. The people now look to the “King of the Skies” to defend them from all foreign invaders and keep hold of Shilage’s renewed (but disputed) independence. However, it appears their new “king” has little actual love or concern for his newfound subjects... (Flag and borders not canon)  SHILAGE CASTLE Perched high on a lonely mountain peek overlooking the town that was once Shilage’s capital city is Shilage castle, the former seat of power of the Grand Duchy of Shilage and an ANESCO World Heritage site. The castle’s construction dates back to the middle ages, but it has been largely abandoned for over century after the Shilage royal family moved into a more modern mansion estate in the 1800s as the Industrial Revolution swept over Usea. Shortly afterwards, a massive fire broke out in the main hall, laying waste to the fortress. It is speculated that a lightning strike on the wood roof set the castle ablaze, other theories posit that the Shilage family themselves set the fire to rid themselves of the responsibility for the upkeep of the land. Since then, the castle has fallen further into disrepair as time and the elements have taken their toll upon it. Now, much like Shilage as a nation, only the foundational shell remains standing. In the early 1950s, parts of the castle were reconstructed to serve as a museum of Shilage cultural history, but the revolution and annexation of the Grand Duchy by Erusea years later saw the castle closed to the public yet again for nearly a decade afterwards. Now that Mihaly has returned home to Shilage after years in exile, he has gathered any forces willing to serve with him at the castle and has made the keep into their de facto headquarters. The fortress grounds have been fortified with anti-air and anti-tank weaponry, and the tunnels beneath the hill have been turned into makeshift hangars for Sol Squadron’s aircraft. Prior to the satellite network going offline, the castle was used as a weapons stockpile dump by the Eruseans for their war efforts across Usea. Most of the ammunition and supplies stored at the castle never saw use on the front lines before the military splintered, and the LRSSG believes that they will be ripe for the taking in their desperation.  ARE WE THE BADDIES? So Lost Kingdom, it’s first half anyway, is a very rough mission to talk about. Very rarely does Ace Combat stop you and force you to reckon with some of the realities of what you’re doing in its gameplay. I’m thinking about missions like Powder Keg in Ace Combat 5 or Inferno in Ace Combat Zero, and Lost Kingdom is no different. Make no bones about it, this is the capital letters War Crimes mission. It is portrayed as an act of desperation and the LRSSG members flagellate themselves for doing it to no end, but this is the mission that teeters on the brink of Spec-Ops: The Line territory in terms of doing the bad thing because you think you have no other options. We are storming into an otherwise unaffiliated territory and effectively robbing them at gun point after killing who knows how many men, women, and yes, children, just to get to the armed robbery portion of the affair. It’s actually kind of hard NOT to be on Mihaly, Wit, and co.’s side here during this whole debacle. And Wit most definitely takes everyone to task for this over the radio during the mission. He says in all but words, “What the gently caress is wrong with all of you lunatics?” “Desperation” doesn’t excuse any of this. This is a bad thing that we’ve done, and the game, to its credit, does not celebrate it one bit.  JAEGER TAKES COMMAND Following on from the last mission, and from the end of Mission 16 as well, Jaeger had functionally taken over as the commanding officer of the Long Range Strategic Strike group following Wiseman’s death and the loss of contact with basically anyone higher up the chain of command. While Trigger is still the Commander Air Group of the team, all other on-the-ground duties are being fulfilled by Jaeger, including acting as our briefing and debriefing guy for the remainder of the game until we hit daylight. We have also, as people in the thread have noted, picked up a replacement on Cyclops Squadron to restore it to full strength following Wiseman’s death. Appearing first in Mission 17, Cyclops 3 is now being filled by a pilot by the TAC Name of Tailor, while Fencer has been promoted to Cyclops 1. Count has become Strider 2, and Húxiān has become Strider 4, with Jaeger remaining as Strider 3. Skald and Lanza have also been swapped over to Cyclops Squadron, becoming Cyclops 2 and Cyclops 4, respectively. ARCHANGE The centerpiece of this mission is the song Archange, or “archangel” that plays over the final boss encounter with Mihaly in the second half of the mission. The song takes its name from Mihaly’s callsign and was used in the E3 Exclusive 2017 Trailer for the game. The song’s lyrics, written in Latin, are shared with the song Sol Squadron, which plays over the back half of Battle for Farbanti. Though that version only includes the first 8 lines of the full song seen here at the end of Lost Kingdom: Latin: quote:Protege nos qui vitam frugalem agimus English: quote:Protect us who are thanking for this thrifty life Translation provided by Reddit user AceCombatEnthusiast.  ROOKIE VS. MASTER And we officially have a winner in the Rookie vs. Master match up that’s been permiating the narrative from Mission 2 onward. The rookie has finally surpassed the master as the young dumbass lives up to his full potential, and the stupid old man goes down in flames. It’s in the climactic moment like this that we can now look back and also examine how the Man/Machine binary has intersected with the Rookie/Master binary just on a character level between Trigger and Mihaly without factoring in the wider narrative. Mihaly’s response to every challenge presented to him over the narrative was to further augment his diminishing abilities through technology. First it was Corpo, then the advanced flight suit designed by Dr. Schroeder, and then finally it was hauling out an experimental X-02S Strike Wyvern and a railgun to try and seal the deal, but none of it was able to overcome the fundamental gaps at the core of Mihaly’s person as a human being. Ego, arrogance, foolishness, selfishness. In the end, he falls to Tigger because not only was Trigger the more skilled of the pair, he was also, ironically, the better person too. Project ACES loves to do these little bits of contrasting irony, like how the man who was hired to teach the machines how to think more like people ultimately wound up mechanizing himself as much as he could to try and recapture the human high of his glory days. And he realizes now, at the end, that he might have made a bit of a mistake here. We don’t get to see the exact moment of revelation, but we can infer it has happened in the time between Farbanti and now through Mihaly and the rest of Sol Squadron’s dialog during the engagement. Wit says that Mihaly told him that drone fighters don’t belong in the skies alongside human pilots. Ironic, coming from the man who helped create a veritable air force of them. He has felt the weight of his mistake now, beheld the ugly baby he helped bring into the world, and is disgusted that it bears his own face. It’s implied that Mihaly might have been planning to take a run at the space elevator himself in an effort to stop the Erusean drone production line, but he didn’t quite think he nor the rest of Sol Squadron were fully up to the task, at least on their own. In Trigger, he finds something who he thinks might fit the bill as a proper savior though, but he wants to make sure he’s ready for the fight. So at the end of all things, Mihaly slips back into his original role as a teacher. This was the man who taught Yellow 13 everything he knew, after all. What’s one more lesson to dole out with the fate of the world on the line before he hangs up his wings for good? This is what old masters exist for, isn’t it? If Trigger can defeat Mihaly, then he can defeat whatever else is out there because the drones are flawed copies of Mihaly. It shouldn’t be too difficult applying what he’s learned in taking down the original towards fighting the facsimiles. When Trigger defeats him, satisfied in the knowledge that a beacon of hope still exists to save the world and undo his deadly error, Mihaly imparts Trigger with his final mission. Put a stop to the drones before it’s too late.  CASUALTIES Finally, after 18 missions, 3 boss fights, 2 scripted chase sequences, and one major character death that we all totally cared about, Mister X’s reign of terror is finally over. Whether Mihaly comes away from this encounter with Trigger alive has yet to be determined, but at the very least we can safely say he will never sit in a cockpit and hold a control stick ever again. The King of the Skies has been dethroned. Get hosed Mihaly.   Of slightly less significance, this is the last time we see Hermann and Roald in any capacity in the game. Neither man is dead, they can be seen parachuting to safety after their planes are shot down, but they will not be returning after this mission. Canonically, only Hermann and Roald are shot down by the LRSSG before Mihaly arrives on the scene. Wit and Seymour’s planes are damaged, but neither of them are shot down, and in fact they actually can’t be shot down once Hermann and Roald are downed. I know this because I once took the F-15 S/MTD out for this mission and dropped an FAEB on the tunnel that Sol Squadron launches from right as they spawn. Hermann and Roald were instantly destroyed and Wit and Seymour survived unharmed because like earlier versions of Mihaly, they are scripted to be invincible for this mission purely so that their dialog can play out, and then trigger Mihaly’s arrival in the X-02S. People have compared Sol Squadron to Star Wolf to match up with the LRSSG’s Star Fox team. If that’s the case, then as of Lost Kingdom, they’ve officially lost their Wolf O’Donnell, and not one, but TWO Andrew Oikonnys, leaving us with only Leon Powalski and Panther Caroso still active. Which is fine, because they’re the only two good members of the team anyway. No one Sol Squadron is a big enough shitbag to be Pigma Dengar. All my homies hate Pigma Dengar.   X-02 STRIKE WYVERN The pinnacle of Erusean aerospace engineering. Built on the original X-02 design frame, the X-02S Strike Wyvern sports a suit of internal and airframe level upgrades gleaned from performance evaluations of the original Wyvern prototypes constructed by Erusea during the waning days of the Continental War. The EASA discovered that although the variable geometry wings and tailfins gave the plane incredible maneuverability, they were also highly susceptible to microfractures, warping, and eventually complete disintegration under the stress of prolonged aerial combat. The post-war Erusean government lacked the funding necessary to make any improvements to the Wyvern airframe a reality, and were prohibited from developing new weaponry by international treaty, so the task of improving the Wyvern was instead outsourced to the Belkan military contractor North Osea Gründer Industries. Utilizing their network of 3D metal printers, Gründer was able to produce a complete ground-up rework of the Wyvern, resulting in the next-generation Strike Wyvern fighter. The result as a stronger frame made out of lighter materials that could support more hardware than the previous incarnation, including an electro-magnetic rail accelerator cannon mounted on the underside of the craft, codenamed the “Arclight” cannon. When the new production models were turned over to the EASA in early 2019, the Erusean firm continued to further modify the craft beyond what the Belkans had done to it, utilizing the members of Sol Squadron to test their new X-Plane for themselves. For the sake of secrecy, the rest of the Erusean military was not briefed on the X-02S’s capabilities, or even its existence, though rumors managed to persist about the plane and its legendary test pilots. It was, after all, where Mihaly originally earned his nickname of “Mister X”. It is unknown how many more X-02S craft the Erusean military has in its possession, or if any of them are operable. There is no sign of any other Strike Wyverns being deployed across Usea at the moment, so the LRSSG is assuming that the one shot down over Shilage Castle was Erusea’s only operational model at present. And even then, it’s impossible to say whether any other Wyverns that may or may not be encountered from now until the end of this madness would even be wholly “Erusean” either. This one certainly wasn’t...   X-02S Strike Wyvern Manufacturer: Erusean Air and Space Administration Role: Prototype Multirole Manufactured: 2019 Status: Prototype Primary Operators: Erusea, Osea Quick Facts:
quote:"A fighter used exclusively by the navy. It is a greatly improved version of the X-02 air superiority fighter developed in Erusea, which was used by both the navy and air force. As a carrier-based fighter, parts such as the landing gear were simplified and the aircraft's internal components were redesigned to improve its stealth and flight capabilities. The addition of a conformal tank to increase flight distance, an Arclight rail gun for additional firepower, and various other add-ons ended up making the craft slightly heavier. Its unique variable wings give it great combat and speed capabilities, which are unaffected by its heavy armament. Overall, it is an excellent fighter; however, its demanding controls mean only the top aces can get the best out of it. Its nickname is "Strike Wyvern"." 
Lynx Benjamin Neumann 36, Male, Major, quote:Major Benjamin Neumann  Medal: Getting The Job Done Awarded for: Shoot down Mihaly in Mission 18 in under five minutes without using any special weaponry. Description: Awarded for achieving outstanding results in Campaign Mission 18 “Lost Kingdom”. Tracks featured in Mission 18: DISC 3  The X-02S Strike Wyvern "Tetris Challenge": 
nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Jun 4, 2023 |
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Jun 20, 2022 20:00
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Excellent piece of editing there.  Did not expect it.
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Jun 20, 2022 21:02
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Cooked Auto posted:Excellent piece of editing there. For the interested, the unedited version is in the No Comm version of the video.
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Jun 20, 2022 21:12
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nine-gear crow posted:The X-02S Strike Wyvern and all its equipment and personnel: "Alright boys, upper command wants to get a good propaganda shot for this plane. Now we need you to lie down on the ground while saluting, trust me it will look great on the camera. Pilots, this is gonna be a bit more complicated for you..." Yeah I get that it's a CG image but still. Also while I hate what you did with Archange, the editing especially timed with the railgun fire means I'm willing to forgive it 
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Jun 20, 2022 21:13
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