Timeline confusion...

[infoxicated]

From 2097 it went to the mid 2120's with WipEout 3, which shows the jump to the Fusion era in a better light.

The 2197 date for Pure was indeed an acknowledgement of 2097. I figured it'd be a good gag, and at the time of writing it Pulse was due out in mid 2007, so I figured that 2107 would be the perfect date to set that game - ten years after Pure was set and 200 years from present day. Unfortunately with it slipping until the end of the year it was kind of lost.

I actually did mess a little with the time lines between Pure and Pulse, because I mentioned stuff like Icaras entering the FX300 league a few years after it had started. Kind of playing to the fact they'd been a download team and had come later. It made good sense at the time, I thought!

To quote myself...

Rising from the ashes after a near sixty year hiatus, the Icaras team was reformed in the late 2190’s by the great, great, great grandson of Burnston Burns, the wealthy eccentric who founded the original team.

“When people think about the great anti-gravity racing nations, Britain was never the first that sprang to mind, despite the efforts of my ancestors.” Connor Burns, Icaras’ Director of Operations lamented in a recent interview. “I wanted to change that. I wanted to put together a hard working, focused team of talented people and give this sport a damn good go.”

Gaining valuable experience by entering numerous FX150 class events in their first year, Burns demonstrated the same bullish determination that fuelled his great, great, great grandfather’s desire to create the original Icaras team in 2109.

“People wrote Burnston off as a mad British eccentric. Which he was, I suppose. But what they didn’t count on was him being stubborn enough to actually get the team off the ground and into the professional leagues.” Burns smiled, “there’s a fine line between madness and genius, and I like to think that there was much more to Burnston than lunacy.”

After winning the prestigious Le Havre endurance event towards the end of 2199, the team was able to secure the funding necessary to make the jump to the FX300 league for the 2200 season. Burns wistfully recalls what it was like to arrive on Makana and compete against the elite;

“That first race we entered at Sebenco Climb – it’s a moment I’ll never forget. We ended up at the back of the grid after suffering an engine failure, and our lone entry is sitting behind teams like Auricom and AG Systems – the giants of AG racing. As I stood on the team gantry the wind was howling, the sleet stung my skin, and it just felt like the most miserable circumstances for our debut. Yet in the crowd I could see these Union flags waving defiantly for us, and hear the fans chanting ‘Icaras, Icaras, Icaras!’” Burns laughs, “I thought to myself ‘How very British!’”

The unlikely third place finish that followed ensured that news of the team’s success flooded the AG Racing datacast feeds around the world, bringing a welcome wave of publicity and, more importantly, sponsorship for the team.

That financial injection could so easily have been squandered in a hasty attempt to further match the established AG Racing incumbents. Burns, however, spent wisely, investing in the future of Icaras by hiring the best minds in the business and developing the facilities at their North Weald headquarters.

As they ramp up production in readiness to compete when AG Racing re-enters the global stage, the Icaras team clings firmly to its roots with a distinctly British flavour. Asked what it means to take the team to a global stage and Burns is hard pressed to contain his excitement.

“I believe this kind of challenge is why Burnston originally created the Icaras team. I’m sure I speak for everyone at Icaras when I say that we cannot wait to be competing on the fastest tracks in the world and racing against the top teams.”

There's so much in there that's loaded in some way, I tell you.

For example, the "Le Havre endurance event" was a shout out to Arnaud's crazy band of pilots who hit the tracks like the fist of an angry god for an entire weekend, and then some.

Then there's a mention of the FX150, because I wanted to show that the ammateur league events were still running.

There's also talk of a base at North Weald, which is an airfield I "knew of" and found using Google Earth, because I wanted Icaras to be based in a place that was historically associated with flight. I also wanted them to have an air of independance, which is why I wanted to use this obscure air field.

Actually, anyone who knows of this show is going to hate me now, but I deliberately picked this place as the Icaras base because it's the aircraft hanger where they filmed the television series The Crystal Maze, and I thought that show was kind of fun and I had a soft spot for it.

No, looking back, I don't have a good excuse for why I did this, but I figured the chances of anyone working all this stuff out without me telling them would be exeptionally remote.

I bet this **** comes under the NDA, too, but since it would have to be an NDA on how my own brain works and I'm pretty sure I didn't sign that over to Sony, I'm willing to risk it just this once.