Alpha squad sneak through the crashed and severely damaged alien vessel. The only light coming from sparking machinery, fires burning out of control through decks of the doomed vessel and the occasional glimpse of moonlight through large rents in the outer hull.
Colonel Barker stops and raises an arm to bring the rest of his five man team to stop, having been given a command to begin overwatch by his commander, sat safely back at base.
After a few seconds of his team watching and listening for signs of enemy movement, Colonel Matthew 'Scarecrow' Barker picks up the pace and swiftly, but silently, moves his team through what appears to an empty section of the ship. Any alien forces previously in the section, he believed, having been taken out either in the crash from upper orbit, or from the Havok interceptor strike.
Barker and his team are veterans of many missions against this alien threat. These six members of the alpha team are only ever brought out together in force when the mission seems to have an increased level of importance and danger than the usual, and in which no ill experienced team mates can be risked.
After five minutes of scouting the enemy ship, and with no signs of contact the squad begin to get cocky and Scarecrow can tell by the mannerisms of his team that they are beginning to let their guard down. Smash and the way she has stopped brushing her golden hair from her face, Flame in the way he keeps flicking the safety on his plasma sniper rifle, Big Momma in how show tilts her head, a movement accentuated by her large power armour and finally Doomsday, in the way he has stopped trying to hide his large power suited body behind every piece of available cover. Scarecrow tries not to think of the names of his comrades in case the worst happens and he has to look at another name on the memorial wall. He does not dare think of their names until the mission is over. Until that time, he must see them only as their call signs. Names chosen to represent the way in which they run into combat, showing neither fear, nor mercy. Or in his own case, the way he tends to stand amongst the chaos erupting around him and doing his best to heal his comrades back when he was just a simple combat medic.
Flame, being lighter with his skeleton class armour had scouted ahead and called Scarecrows attention to something of interest. A small separate rectangular structure at the back of the ship. Scarecrow wasted no time in calling up the range of ship plans available to him on his heads up display. He could see two shielded doorways from his position and was pretty sure that this was the ships command and control center. If correct, there would be another door on each of the two non visible sides.
Alpha team had been moving around outer hull on the western side of the ship, trying to ensure that if the enemy did appear, then they could not be easily flanked and they would still have the option to full back and regroup to counter attack.
Still using hand signals to maintain radio security, Scarecrow ordered Doomsday to secure the western door, Smash to secure the southern door, Big Momma the northern door and finally he would secure the eastern door, taking the greatest time to get there and so presenting the greatest risk. Several feet in front of the southern door was the central corridor of the ship, which branched off into multiple cargo sections. Scarecrow quickly ordered Flame to position himself at the top of the corridor, in front of the small anti gravity lift, giving him perfect defilade and overwatch of most of the corridor. Tectonic was positioned to guard the western corridor that ran parallel to central access corridor. Scarecrow regretted not being able to lend another of his troops to the western corridor, but he could not spare any more troops from the assault, he knew it had to be fast as the enemy would be alerted to their presence all over the ship once the CIC was taken. It had to be quick and brutal.
Scarecrow heard four clicks on his radio, signalling that his men were in position. Had his newly commissioned Titan armour not had perfect climate control he knew he would be drenched in sweat. He checked his plasma rifle and knew that his men would be doing the same waiting to get the order from their commander. Once he was confident that all of his men would be ready Scarecrow lowered the forcefield and his men did the same.
The entirety of the CIC was visible to the strike team in an instant. Having expected multiple command units, the commander was shocked to find four heavily armed and armoured shock troops in their place. He had no time to think of the possibility that this was a trap as the four enemy units darted for cover and were met with fire from at least two members of alpha team, the superheated and concentrated plasma from their rifles cutting down one of the aliens before he had a chance to reach cover. Before Scarecrow could even look at the mass of metal and alien flesh that was collapsing to the floor he stepped out from the doorway and fired at the exposed flank of an alien. A critical hit at that range and another alien had been downed. Within seconds all four enemy combatants had been eliminated and without any injuries to his team and all alien tech in the command center appeared intact. More or less.
Alarm klaxons started blaring and the strike team quickly moved to reinforce their rearguard before the enemy counter attack begun. Before they could make it, Flame had cut down two heavy assault troops, taking a quick second to run his hand over his mohawk as he felt helmets interfered with his aim. Tectonic was also pouring hot plasma fire down the eastern corridor, a pile of burned alien corpse' clogging the corridor and slowing the other aliens waiting to avenge their brothers.
Just as the team reunited, Scarecrow got a burst transmission from his commander informing him that alien commander units had been detected moving towards his position. Scarecrow told the rest of his team to make the enemy commanders priority targets. Just as Scarecrow applied a nanotech healing spray to the torso of Flame, having taken a small plasma blast to the left shoulder, he glimpsed Tectonic glance his way and nod slightly. A small gesture that after dozens of missions together, having seen friends and family killed, Scarecrow knew it to be Tectonic's way of saying "it'll be alright, you see". His father had the same mannerism when they had served together as corporals. And just like during the fateful Operation Burning Heart, things suddenly took a turn for the worst.
Doomsday had met up with Tectonic and the two heavy assault troops were holding back the main assault force, whilst Big Momma and Smash moved around the eastern corridor, ready to flank and snap the enemy assault. Just as this action was taking place, and mere seconds after the acknowledgement of the two men Tectonic was engulfed by a blue mist. Doomsday to his right, couldn't help but be stunned by what he was seeing happen to his battle brother. All Doomsday could do was fight on and spying the enemy commander responsible for what was happening to his friend took some shots at the enemy unit. His shots missed, slagging a bulkhead just behind the commander and taking a large plasma hit to his own chest in the process. Doomsday fought on, ignoring the pain surging through his chest from the injury, aware that he could hold out for medical attention if he maintained his defensible position until Scarecrow could get to him.
In what seemed like hours but was only seconds, Tectonics body, having slumped to the floor began to rise back up. Too focused on the enemy bearing down on his position and not willing to let his brothers down by falling back, Doomsday was unaware of his, believably deceased battle brother beside him, getting up. Slowly bringing his heavy plasma cannon into position, and not even aiming due to his proximity, Tectonic fired his weapon at point blank range at the defenceless Doomsday. He watched as blood exploded from his comrades chest and face and his plasma cannon fell from his hands. Flame from a new vantage point quickly sighted the enemy commander and put a plasma bolt through his head. The second the plasma bolt passed through the alien brain, the psychic control link was destroyed and Tectonic regained control of his body.
Giving one last glance at the lifeless eyes of his friend staring at him in horror and disbelief, Tectonic raised his own weapon and continued to rain fire down on the last of the enemy attackers.
Scarecrow witnessed the series of events as he was moving in position to reinforce and give medical assistance to his comrades. He could not believe he had just witnessed one of his greatest friends and best soldiers cutting down another of his men.
Nor could his commander believe it.
.
.
.
.
So he paused the game and turned to his flatmate and in a slightly raised tone of voice said "I cannot believe that you, Colonel Stuart "Tectonic" Wetherell Jnr, just cut down Major John-Paul "Doomsday" Uren. Do you not realise that when I go into work tomorrow I will have to tell JP that he got killed by you!"
What you have just read is all true. I was playing the game XCOM Enemy Unknown, and what you read is the accurate account (although fictionalised by me obviously) of the mission I played this evening in which one of my characters got killed.
I have recently found that I really enjoy games such as XCOM and FTL which allow you to name the people in your squads, or crew. In FTL my little starship has been manned by people such as Jean Luc Picard and Dr Crusher with Mr Wolf. Or with Lee Adama, Commander Adama and Kara Thrace. In the past I have played the Sims and entire neighbourhoods have been named after people I know.
The thing is that I get really connected to the characters that I name, and I generally want those people named after people I like to survive over those I'm not bothered about.
In XCOM this has become especially difficult as I have had problems thinking up names for my characters, which is why I fall back on work colleagues, so my entire department is in XCOM. Along with a load of my favourite authors such as Jonathan Green, David Tallermann, Karen Traviss etc.
But then again, comes the problem of how do I feel when some of those characters die.
Here is a pic of my memorial wall in XCOM:
As you can see, my own name is near the top of this list. The only person on the first page of my memorial wall that I did not change the name of was Francois Girard and that's because the computer nicknamed him Solo. I have never changed the nicknames because I like the random nature of them.
Since I took that pic, many, many more have joined their ranks. JP would now in fact be at the top of that list. In that list you can see one Babylon 5 character, two Star Wars characters, one author, one song name, and a character called Dr Medic, because I bet you can guess what character class they were assigned when I got them. You can even see the original character named after my flatmate.
Now, my team when I set off on the fateful mission that saw the death of my friend, and real life colleague of JP looks like this:
In my best squad (now sadly one member short, which I have replaced with a robot that's a cross between Jonny Five and Wall E) you can see my flatmates second incarnation, who I should probably change the nickname to Backstabber or Betrayer. You have Matt Barker and JP Uren who I am in the same team with at work. Major Roy Mustang (now ironically Colonel Mustang after that mission), named after my favourite Fullmetal Alchemist character Colonel Roy Mustang. Colonel Hayley "Smash" Sharpe, named after another colleague at work and Major Sarah "Big Momma" Marshall named after my sister in law. Sadly my brother is far down the memorial wall, Having died with the rang of Corporal and taking down five enemies, rescuing two civilians. I assume that in virtual heaven he is buried next to Dom Santiago and Marcus Fenix who also bought the farm on that mission (rescues are tough).
Here is a shot of the bar that I noticed was in my base in the game. I showed the real Matt Barker this picture and his reaction was to tell me that I am sat at the bar and he is there telling me that the deaths of the squad members is my fault.
The worst thing is that I couldn't help but think that he was right. It made me realise that although they are not real, because I have named them after real (mostly) people, I have begun to invest real emotions into them and I genuinely do not want to see these little virtual avatars die. The worst is that because of the save game I have set up on Iron Man setting, I cannot go back to an old save in order to do the mission again, so like in real life, once they are gone they are gone, and with them all of their experience and individual expertise' and quirks.
I realise that it is probably wrong for me to feel an emotion connection with these little virtual people like I have with the old Starship Troopers RTS, or the Sims or FTL and finally with XCOM, but I do. Even if I only do a mission a night, its like seeing old friends again and I get to go on amazing adventures with them that I just cannot go on in the real world. (If there really is an XCOM organisation out there then I am very scared).
This whole post started because I was thinking how hard it is to think up character names for stories and how impressed I am that authors can do that. For instance Ulysses Quicksilver or Easie Damasco are brilliant and I would never think up names like that in a million years. It quickly got me thinking of how when I read a book I get emotionally attached to the characters like I have with Fall of Giants and Winter of the World by Ken Follett.
I love books, hence this blog. But when I play games, I know that unlike a book where I am being completely presented with a world prebuilt for me to picture, with a game I get the same thing but I get to shape that world to make it what I want, or would like to be. Just like a film, or book though, it might not always end how you want. After all, my first crack at XCOM resulted in my entire team getting wiped out and I could never recover.
You may think that I am a geek for writing this, and I am. But remember, next time that you look up in the sky and see the sun. Remember, its not just the sun, its a star. How amazing is that, that we are so close to a star, one of billions out there in the universe.
So I leave you with this quote:
Two possibilities exist:
Either we are alone in the universe or we are not.
Both are equally as terrifying.
-Arthur C. Clarke
Thanks for reading.
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