**Possible Spoilers** Discussing the official history as laid out in the manual

[Grumbold]

So here's the place to do it ...

[Grumbold]

I have to say that I thought the backstory has been improved quite a bit from the website version.

The inconsistencies around the MoO2 story remain but they have been played down quite a bit. It still seems a little odd that the victorious Orion race(s) would blow up one planet, take one look at the rest of the "scary" interdimensional rift where the Antarran home sectors has been thriving for millennia and go home, but I guess they had to find some way of explaining it away. I'd have preferred the rift area being devastated by the Orions but leaving the hegemony outside the rift to recover and plot revenge.

The only other point I'd take exception to is the human backstory. Why name a race that bioengineered them when it would be more enthralling to leave it a mysterious questionmark. Are humans self-evolved? Do they have a secret purpose unknown even to themselves? David Brin does it so well, why spoil it?

The Antarrans themselves seem too stupid to live. According to the backstory every engineered servant race they make has been a failure or escaped to become implacable enemies or both. You'd have thought they'd learn from their mistakes over many thousands of years but clearly not. I'm also a little unclear why after all this time they still haven't pinned down what, if anything, is at the galactic core.

[dulahan]

I hope some of the hinted things in the Backstory actually do occour, the Varakesh invasion, Mizara, other 'Ancient Races' and the sort.

Though I'm guessing the Varakesh won't be added until a (Hypothetical) Expansion PAck. But damn would that be cool... And weren't they the originally planned 4th Humanoid race? The highly militaristic one?

[Jodmos]

The Varakesh were originally going to be in the game but were one of the 16 races cut due to art constraints. If we're lucky they may create those 16 for an expansion.

I couldn't find the original list so I can't comment on the other missing ones.

[JonahFalcon]

At least we know why the Humans don't start in Sol anymore.

[Pallidyne]

Backstory was fairly well written, but I did get the impression that someone watched WAY too much B5 while playing MOO2. Was entertaining though.

-P

[rhofman]

There is no such thing as too much B5. Especially since I missed some episodes when it was being moved weekly. Gotta love the DVD craze to solve that problem.

I thought the backstory gave too much away. As far as the divisions between the orion races that was fine. I don't see why they had to give away human and evon origins though. Make that part of the antaren X's.

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by JonahFalcon
At least we know why the Humans don't start in Sol anymore.

I'm sure after every hyperspace flux isolates worlds for centuries the humans end up re-establishing an empire full of planets and stars now named "earth", "home", "sol", "the sun" because humanity never ceases to underuse its imagination when given the opportunity to name things

[Pallidyne]

Originally posted by rhofman
There is no such thing as too much B5. Especially since I missed some episodes when it was being moved weekly. Gotta love the DVD craze to solve that problem.

I thought the backstory gave too much away. As far as the divisions between the orion races that was fine. I don't see why they had to give away human and evon origins though. Make that part of the antaren X's.

I agree there is never too much B5, UNLESS you are writing a manual/backstory for something totally different.

-P

[Alexfrog]

Yeah, the backsotry feels heavily Babylon 5 based. But thats nto a bad thing, IMO. I think this game has the best backstory of any 4x game, by FAR.

[Lee Johnson]

My personal opinion of the backstory, having read it from the manual, is that it is ridiculous. Not to mention trite, convoluted, contrived, and poorly written.

Above all, why was it necessary to tie the three MOO titles together in some sort of forced linear continuity? There's no continuity between successive games I play--why should there be any between the sequels? If it were up to me, I would have hit reset, wiped the universe, and started from zero, as though MOO and MOO2 didn't exist. Reuse old races and settings, or don't; introduce new material, or don't. Just don't waste all this effort in trying to tie it all together, because for the most part, it doesn't matter.

Adding paper to manuals costs money. You could have boiled this story down to four pages without materially affecting game play. I'm sure there was room on one of the CDs to put a lavish set of HTML pages with all of this future history in it. Was it really necessary to fill thirty-five pages of the manual with this crappy story, when the documentation of the game itself is still so sorely lacking?

[Malleus]

I disagree. The backstory is vitally important to some players of the game. There cannot be enough backstory NO MATTER how trite, convoluted, contrived and poorly written it is.

Though I agree they should have put it on HTML.

K

[Mellian]

I haven't read the story, but like any empires from the past games, they would of spreaded throughout several worlds. soooo, so various human colonies end being isolated for a very very very very long time....and then emerge as seperate empires..and possibly with some genetic differences after spending so much time on an alien world they haven't truely evolved from.

COnsideering that the Orions seem to be humanoids, and way more human looking in comparison to most other races. SOooo, some past Orions ends being on earth, isolated and so on....probably degraded to the stone age for some reason, and then evolve base on Earth's envronment, where skin color and other visual details as changed.

i'd be very surprise if humanity still looked like modern day humans in the next several ten thousand of years.

-Mellian

[Mellian]

backstory is quite important, and in a lot of cases, what made some games very successful, like Alpha Centauri for example, I just love the unique genre they created...

and i'm i'll like Moo3 genre as well.

-Mellian

[TheMaestro]

You know some religious groups are trying to get MOOIII banned cause humans weren't..."divinely created." Pathetic


Story is cool, I just wish when I play the Evon the humans wouldn't come to me, "Beggingly wanting a NAP."