What happened to Van Uber???

[QuasarKoeben]

didn't care too much of it in Fusion, but I liked it in Pure, and Imo deserves another chance.

It's performance could be a delicate FEISAR on steroids, and not I'm talking about AG-s

It could have a decent speed and thrust, w/average handling and the shielding of a WO Pure Zone craft

[blixabargeld]

the reason why SL has dismissed teams like vanuber and tigron is because SL itself think that Fusion was a sort of wrong step in the evolution of the wipeout series. i do think so.

They left a link with the past in pulse, with the downloadable packs with tigron and vanuber, but now what fusion left is almost comparable to nothing.
Far better is the "recover" of wo3's memory, with the fully complete reintroduction of goteki, wich simply sucked in stats in the previous game..

[Mad-Ice]

You mean the downloadable packs of Van-Uber and Tigron in Pure. Van-Uber was a pretty fast ship in Pure but not good enough for setting toprecords or surviving the carnage of multiplayer madness. However about Goteki45 in Pure not being good is not true. It is the best ship together with AG-systems in Pure after Triakis of course, which is the best and fastest ship in Pure. If you look into the recordtables of Pure(PAL) you will find almost everywhere a Goteki45 being the first ship after all the Triakis records.

[infoxicated]

I don't think there was a conscious decision to go "these can be dropped because they are Fusion teams". When I had the idea to merge Xios and EG-R it was so we could at least give some recognition to ships of that era, too, so any Fusion loathing you see there is purely coincidental.

We just decided that 12 was a good number of teams, where we could spread the characteristics about and have the teams keep some sort of identity. So there was no stance that had Van Uber considered evil because they were part of Fusion - maybe it was because their colours would have overlapped with Harimau and their personality wasn't distinctive enough. Kind of like Harimau, actually!

[eLhabib]

But then who ever liked Harimau? (except you, of course)

[blixabargeld]

yes, but how would you explain that most of the teams introduced in Fusion are quickly disappeared in the following two games? would you say that it's only because they were not so popular among players?
Fusion was a bit of an "experiment" for SL, and if it is not failed (SL itself said that was a bit of a failure) should be said that it was almost too different from the original wipeout concept.
Fusion's ship in pure and in pulse are a sort of "painkiller" for those who still like fusion...

[eLhabib]

I think what actually brought down Tigron and Van Über was the fact that their ship didn't really fit in the w'o'' universe. In Fusion it got a little crazy with ship designs as SL tried to break away from the straight-edge look of ships in previous incarnations. What sets Tigron and Van Über apart from the rest is that they had cylindrical shapes in their designs, most likely inspired by airplanes (Tigron ship resembles a russian WW2 fighter jet). Now as the fans didn't receive Fusion all too well (mostly because of gameplay, but partly due to a harsh break in design choices), SL reverted to wipEout's roots with Pure. The round shapes had to go, so the downloadable Van Über and Tigron had modified shapes to bring them closer to the w'o'' aesthetic, but ultimately, they were just to uninteresting to make it to another game iteration.

[blixabargeld]

that's it. i agree

[infoxicated]

It's stuff like this that makes doing the backstory stressful.

You can make the smallest of slips and months down the line there can be heated debate about something that was an oversight - e.g. Piranha/Pirhana or Xios Finnish/Swedish.

I got a clarification request from the localisation team yesterday asking whether Nadia Elenova was Felix Levovich's son's daughter or his daughter's daughter. I was in mid "how the fu..." when I realised that since I invented both of the characters, I should know. So I answered "She is his daughter's daughter."

Several hours later when I'm lying in bed I realised that wasn't right - I originally imagined her as his son's daughter, but I suspect it's too late to change it now... I suppose I should fire off a mail just in case!

In any event, it is just ****ed up that I can be lying in bed thinking about stuff like this - it's like a great big house of cards that, if I'm feeling a little tired or slow on a particular day, I'm worried that I'll make a screw up that will come back to haunt me some time later. I was so cross with myself for the Finnish/Swedish mix up with the Pulse backstory... I always double check stuff like that and somehow I managed not to on that particular day and it slipped through the net.

So the bottom line is that we do care about stuff like this... or at least I do, so there was never any intention to throw Fusion teams out with the trash. Well, aside from G-Tech - they were toast, and Tigron had to go so we could have Qirex back - so what can you do?

[eLhabib]

Well and isn't it great that we HAVE a backstory! One thing I adore so much about the series is that the community is showing so much spirit for their team of choice - I haven't experienced this anywhere else. It wouldn't be half as fun without a thorough identity to each team.

[Lance]

Rob, now that you will be leaving SL, who is going to do the backstory? Will Damon come back or is he outta there permanently?

----------

Martin, since there were no WWII Russian jets, you're probably thinking of the MiG-15, famous from the Korean War. One of my favourite planes. Used the Rolls-Royce Nene centrifugal compressor engine design.

[eLhabib]

uhm, yes, of course... thanks for the correction. My head is stuck in the Crimson Skies Universe when it comes to plane design anyways...

[Lance]

I've never played Crimson Skies, but I've really wanted to. I love the aircraft designs in that game, and I have a 'thing' for the 1930s. It's weird that the Great Depression in the economy resulted in so much innovative design in vehicles, architecture, and other art.

[blixabargeld]

that's it. i agree

sorry again, quoting just to show that i understood. ;-)
greetings (I know, it's bit of a catch 22)

[infoxicated]

Rob, now that you will be leaving SL, who is going to do the backstory? Will Damon come back or is he outta there permanently?

I have no idea what will happen with it - they'll probably hand it over to the copywriter guys down in London who routinely reword the stuff I've written, I imagine.

If so you can look forward to a future WipEout backstory that contains industrial espionage, conspiracies and cheating within the ranks of whatever the league is called, because that's the way the WipEout Pulse story was going in the manual before Colin spotted it and we replaced it with something I'd written. (Which the gang in London then re-worded, natch.)

I suppose I cant be too precious about it - it was never mine in the first place, I was merely acting as the caretaker for a time.

[blixabargeld]

and triakis in the storilyne have been banned because an illegal stabilization system, right?
it's awesome that storyline is a trasposition of how the "played season" is gone, so i may think that triakis overpower in fx300 may have annoyed you, infoxicated.. ;-)

[Lance]

Sigh. Can't even get a copyright on your own stuff when you work for a company.

[stin]

Yeah and I would love to see the rest of his story!, but that is not the case.

stevie

[jklasdf]

hmmm...i haven't read any of the back story for anything in the wipeout universe. where would i find stuff like that? sounds really interesting.

[TheFrostE]

check that out http://uk.geocities.com/ce_hellfire/WipEoutguide.txt
and go to the ship bios, its pretty cool stuff, at least from the first wipeout