Commentary
Backstory
Initially, I went into working up the backstory with the premise that it would vaguely follow the end of days in the book of Revelation in the Christian Testament of the Bible with the intent that the events could be interpreted as the literal "God is bringing an end to the earth" sort of deal while also leaving it open to it having no divine aspect. Aside from that, I mostly worked with capitalizing on the Mayan 2012 doomsday stories as well as wanting a logical reason for the world to have "ended" in the 80's to reasonably achieve the style I wanted.
Apart from that, I can't quite remember how it all unfolded, so I'll just proceed by timeline date:
The Prophecy
The date and the 'prophecy' itself is a reference to 'the mark of the Beast' in the book of Revelations (666) as 6/6/66 and that the Beast would appear in 6 years, 6 months, and 6 days, which is shortly before the next event in the timeline.
Pandora, CO is, in fact, a real place, and as with Cortez, was selected for its name and its location near the
Devil's Highway (again for its name), NORAD, and the general landscape.
The event obviously paralleled the boss fight in Pandora, which I may touch more about in further commentary. Oddly enough, the note about the "missing persons" report is a bit misleading, as it's a detail I never had an intended followup with. It was included because, in Revelations, that's when the Rapture occurs, though since I wanted everything to have a non-divine reason as well, the best explanation there is "there's often a lot of missing people regardless". Otherwise, the event simply sets up the pattern of dates, particularly the
Mayan Calender fun. It's also what worked out to be the earliest date where the game world's history significantly diverges from our own, allowing players to have potentially lived prior to the first event while also making it more common for player characters to have been born within the events of the game world.
The First Seal
As stated before, this 'recorded' event happens shortly after the date the prophecy made. The implication was that, as in a similar fashion to
The Stand or
The Andromeda Strain, the U.S. government has discovered and attempted to contain some viral agent only to have it soon escape out into the nearby town of Cortez. The viral agent is, in fact, the 'origin' of The Great Beast that more or less triggers the rest of the events. While I left it open as to whether the viral agent had been 'created' (and 'discovered' in that manner) or if it was entirely extraterrestrial in origin (found within a space rock that crashed or the like), I did intend for the viral agent to be self-aware and intelligent, or at least acted close enough to be mistaken for such. The description of the symptoms is also meant to set up for later with the appearance of the undead, specifically the "hellish" variety.
Cortez, CO, also a real town, was selected for similar reasons to Pandora, with the idea that, like the Spanish conquistador, a disease was to follow. The event, as with all the seals, is meant to loosely match the
seven seals in the book of Revelations.
The Second Seal
Pretty straight forward to the start of war. Working backwards with the date pattern, I presumed that the
Soviet War in Afghanistan started early and gave enough justification for the U.S. to start WWIII over. At this point, either the "Great Beast" either is able to have gained enough power to start becoming what the players would face at the end of the game or it simply opts to stay less hidden.
A note about the photos: most all are just random images I searched for on Google, and I'll note if I think there's something special about it. All the images were photoshopped to be sepia-tone with 2 or 3 filters I can't quite remember anymore - a style that matches closely with the images in
The End: Lost Souls Edition which influenced this game a great deal (and, in some part, could be adapted to play with that system, though I think it's different enough).
The Third Seal
Apart from what's already been stated, I just wanted to establish how mutants and the militant variety came about. The implication is that, even if the "Cortez Strain"/Great Beast isn't self-aware and doing this on purpose, has mutated to spread beyond just humans.
The Fourth Seal
As with the Third Seal, it's meant to establish the undead and hint at further development of the Strain/Beast. Given what I set up for the First Seal, I presume the undead are only those who have been infected and not the previous dead, though my intent was just that the Strain had managed to 'infect' the corpses and either mutated or allowed them to animate. With the Cultists having died before the outbreak, the intent may have to have taken precedence, though it could be argued that the cultists are a special case. The note that "modern civilizations" are no more at this point is mostly to further justify the style as within the 70's/80's motif.
The Recognized Gifted
The year has little significance other than to place it in where I felt was a logical moment (after the 'fall of modern civilizations' and before anything else) and the date was meant to replace the
Day of the Dead which isn't on October 30th, so I'm not sure why I have that down as the date... the event is basically to establish that "The Gifted" are a presence now, likely as a result of the same Strain that caused the Cursed to come about and the like. If any of the other things are 'planned' by the Beast, though, the Gifted is meant to be left questionable as to whether they were 'planned' or not. Otherwise, the event is just some world building for character development.
The Fifth Seal
As with the other seals, this one pushes forth a major game part -- the machines. MARTYRS is more or less Skynet from the Terminator series, though unlike that series, MARTYRS is not really self-aware, or rather, it is and has a very infantile understanding of things. I initially wanted to use images of some of the
earlier CRAY supercomputers because they look very stylized, and opted not to as I had difficulty evoking the imagery I wanted.
The Battle of Dark Forces
This is the last event I actually detailed out, as I had difficulty coming up with details that satisfied me. October 9th was when
Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight was released. 40 days is typically biblical for "a long time" and I seem to recall thinking there was some significance to 40 days prior to October 9th, though I can't recall what now. It is otherwise an event meant to provide possible background for characters, set up the events to come as well as for the final confrontation between the player characters and the Beast, which I'll explain in a future commentary.
The Sixth Seal
I'm going to have to confess -- a large reason for this is simply so I could have the moon broken. There's an episode of American Dad where the biblical apocalypse is occurring and the imagery used in it, including its embraced cheesiness of the apocalypse sub-genre I've stylized the game after, is pretty spot-on for what I had in mind, including the broken moon (sadly, I can't find a video of the part online) -- the episode is also where I found out about the band The Sword.
As for in-game, the event is meant to imply that the Beast (somewhat recklessly) activated the Dark Forces orbital laser which had been aimed at the moon (and according to what I could look up, the moon would have been almost straight up that night). The laser also triggers the reason the Beast is "calling" (to be explained in a future commentary)
The Year 2000
A nod mostly to the Y2K bug and to the general apocalypse themes as a whole, to place a check against the machines which otherwise would have likely succeeded relatively soon. This may be the point where machines (including MARTYRS) may be considered to develop "awareness" of a sort, though if they do, it's shaky at best.
The Seventh Seal Delayed Once and
The Seventh Seal Delayed A Second Time
Due to what the Beast attempted to do with the orbital laser in 1999, an incident occurred which set the "seventh seal" into motion (to be detailed in a future commentary). Suffice to say, Gifted survivors have encountered the Beast during this time, and the "seal" remained contained enough, and it could be argued that these delays were "fated" to happen. The "silences" in the game world are simply the effects of seal attempting to be unleashed.
The Veterans of the Apocalypse Convene
The date is selected because it is both 40 days prior to December 21st and because it happens to fall on the
American Veterans Day. It is otherwise just to mark the time for the beginning of the game, the Gifted survivors being the "veterans" in this case.