Shadowgrounds - Plot

Plot

Players take the role of Wesley Tyler, a senior mechanic on the IGTO Repair Base on Ganymede, who is tasked with the repair of various systems. At the start of the game, Tyler is ordered to repair the backup generators, and he and two other technicians drive out to fix them. On the way there, they discuss Tyler's past, how he was previously in charge of a security team, before being blamed for an accident involving faulty equipment. Upon fixing the power however, Tyler looses radio contact with the others, and starts encountering small three legged insect like creatures. He then starts finding bodies, and larger more dangerous versions of the aliens he had encountered before. He finds a pistol and begins to battle the increasingly hostile aliens.

He eventually receives a message from a Corporal Jane Awryn, who is trapped in the Water Treatment facility. Tyler proceeds to rescue her and the two of them attempt to battle their way to the main colony of New Atlantis. On the way, they are ordered to report to "Weather Station 5", an illegal military compound and one of the first of the IGTO's secret military and research projects that Tyler will encounter throughout the game. Tyler is tasked by Lieutenant Dan Baxter with various different missions, before being reunited with Jane and sent to restore the ISERCom facility so that a message can be sent to any nearby space ships. The Provectus, a large carrier class ship, hears the message and proceeds on route to help.

Meanwhile, Jane and Tyler are ordered to report to New Atlantis in order to protect the civilians living there. Despite some sizeable resistance, the colony had already mostly been trashed, and Tyler encounters few survivors. He and Jane do manage to rescue Dr. Harold Weiss, an IGTO research scientist, who informs them of the unfortunate news that the Provectus had been already been shot down. Tyler and the rest search the stricken ship and eventually find and rescue Colonel Roger Smith, who despite the crash is still defiant and confident that they can take down the alien's mothership. Tyler is sent to go to the mines and find Baxter and his team to provide additional reinforcements, but arrives too late and only finds Baxter shortly before he dies.

Now on their own, Tyler reunites with Jane, Weiss, and Smith and they attempt to launch a series of defensive missiles. The missiles fail to launch, being engulfed on the launch pad. Ever undaunted, Smith devises another plan; they will take the alien pod, one of the many alien technologies that was being researched in secret by the IGTO, and the also alien AMEW bomb and blow up the ship from the inside. With Smith staying behind to man the launch, Tyler, Jane, and Weiss are flown into the heart of the mothership. Upon reaching the centre of the ship and defeating a final boss, the last of the Ancient ones, they are approached by the aliens' collective consciousness who inform them of the real reasons for the invasion and the danger they are posing to themselves and the whole solar system.

The AMEW bomb was based on technologies that they had developed many years before, utilizing an energy source so powerful that it could destroy stars. The aliens had abused it themselves, destroying their home planet and most of their own race. Those that remained were intent that no one else should share the same fate. They had tried to recover all of the energy they had spread throughout the universe, but were disturbed to find out humanity's attempts to utilize it much as they did. They tried to warn them, but those in charge refused to listen, so they sent an army of genetically engineered warriors to protect humanity from itself. The bomb that they hold in their hands could take out every planet and moon orbiting the Sun. Weiss deactivates the bomb, and the aliens promise to never again meddle in our affairs, and return Jane, Tyler, and Weiss back to safety.