Mission Critical (video Game) - Game Storyline

Game Storyline

Specifically, the player character is an unnamed lieutenant, a supply officer aboard the interstellar military vessel United States Navy light cruiser U. S. S. Lexington (Bunker Hill class, hull number nine). In the game, the ship is involved in an interstellar war with the United Nations.

You awaken on Deck 2 of the Lexington's habitat module, after being rendered unconscious by the captain. The only clue to what has happened is a hastily penned letter from him, which explains that you are now the only living member of the Lexington's crew and that you must complete the secret mission the vessel was sent on. Unfortunately, battle damage has produced various immediate threats (a serious hull breach in a stateroom and a meltdown about to occur in the ship's fission reactor) which take priority.

Once those crises have been solved, the player must restore full functionality to the ship's computer, where a final pre-recorded message has been left by Lexington XO Jennifer Tran. This last message explains the need to get into contact with higher headquarters. This requires running diagnostics, scavenging parts, then conducting a EVA to repair the ship's communications dish. Through a minigame the player can learn how to operate the Alliance TCS, a network of faster-than-light relay transmitters which use tachyon modulation as the transmission medium. By manually choosing a path of transmission to avoid the compromised portions of the Alliance network, contact is established with an Alliance military command center, located in a domed colony on a planet named Erebus, orbiting 70 Ophiuchi.

Once the player manages to contact Erebus, Alliance Fleet Admiral Charles Decker (played by Henry Strozier), reluctantly reveals the reason for the Lexington's mission to Persephone, telling of the unknown structure there, and the need to investigate it immediately since it might contain something that would help the Alliance win the war with the United Nations. However, now that secrecy has been lost, both sides are dispatching reinforcements to Persephone. Decker knows that unfortunately the UN task force will reach the planet first and Alliance reinforcement is month away, and that since there is only one survivor, the attackers should certainly be able to destroy both Lexington and Jericho, then go to the surface of Persephone and take the prize for themselves. Holding this outcome to be a foregone conclusion, Adm. Decker orders the player character to withdraw the ship to a safe distance, and to abandon the mission rather than be killed. Choosing to obey this order will finish the game prematurely.

Fleet Admiral Charles Decker also reveals that there's an experimental weapon aboard Lexington called Hype. Hype is a mix of nanomachines and neurochemicals that rewires the brain for an interface with the ship's computers, allowing a human to control the automated fighter drones. Without Hype, battle progresses too fast for a human to control remotely. Unfortunately, Hype has a side effect: it inevitably kills the person who uses it.

After the player manages to defend the Lexington from three UN attacks (in a tactical interface minigame), he descended to Persephone and investigate the alien ruins. He discovered an alien intelligence, which created a portal that transported him through space and time into the future: to 2295.

The game presents two different sets of future events: the 'normal' one that follows from UN victory; the player will visit this future where he learns that the Alliance ships were ambushed, the mission was never completed, and more UN ships arrived at Persephone and destroyed the ruins with nuclear bombs. With the Alliance already on the losing side, the loss of alien technology ensures UN's victory. The war ended and the restriction on AI is finally imposed on all world.

However, decades after the war ended: a group of underground scientists on a colony called Prometheus secretly created the ELFs (electronic life-forms)on a remote outpost. When the UN finds out this, their phobias are triggered - uncontrolled technology is becoming a threat, so they send a fleet to destroy the outpost and make sure no scientist or ELF survives. Although the outpost is completely obliterated, several ELFs manage to survive.

The surviving ELFs evolved and begin to build their own war machines with which to strike back at those who would destroy them. The humans had no chance - the ELF evolved too fast. A desperate and monstrous survival plan was put into motion: two thousand humans would be sent in a ship with only sublight engine to a star system not connected to the Tal-Seto network; the UN military command would then activate a "Tal-Seto collapser", causing the network to fold in on itself. The fold will affect everything within its radius, only the human ship will escape, and all FTL jumpnode will be severed. During this event, ELF will be trapped in their star system where they are already in and remained there forever, they knew about the collapsing node, but they can't create a solution to it if they can't connect to the "community", and more sadly: the collapse would eventually consume the entire galaxy and their entire existent will be doomed. Even if they sent their own colony ship, the collapse is creating a singularity and they can't escape. Their only hope lies in preventing these events from happening in the first place. They discovered that the ancient ruin in Persephone could be the answer.

The player agrees to help the ELF after being showed a minigame that illustrate timetravel. The ELF stated that they can only send player's memory back into the hours before Lexington entered Persephone orbit, the player's memories and knowledge are transferred back to his mind prior to the introductory events; the alternate (and canonical) storyline is then triggered.

The player must then prevent UNS Dharma from defeating the Lexington and the Jericho. Having retained all memories from the 'original' timeline, the player alerted Commander Dana about UNS Dharma and inject himself with Hype. Once the Dharma is destroyed, the alien technology found on Persephone turned the tide of the war, allowing the Alliance to defeat the UN and repeal the technology limitation law. The ELFs are created (legally this time) and are welcomed by humans as equals. In the new 2295: Earth no longer exist - human now live on a Dyson Sphere which has been constructed by the two races with the humans living on the inside (humans bathed in sunlight), and the ELFs on the outside (exploring space). Human are in eden. The game ended with player contemplating about the meaning of human existent, and the ELF's reach into exploring stuff that a human could never imagine to understand.