Battlezone II

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A sequel to the 1998 Battlezone video game, developed by Pandemic Studios and set in an alternate 1990s. The player this time is John Cooke, a private in the new International Space Defense Force, ostensibly intended to safeguard humankind from extrasolar threats. Cue the arrival of a mysterious alien foe, The Scions. A first-person shooter/real-time strategy game experience similar to the original ensues.

It was less well-received for abandoning the highly original Cold War plot in favor of a more standard UN vs. Aliens setup, though it had its fair share of twists.

Tropes used in Battlezone II include:

(Note that a number of the tropes from the first game also apply here.)

  • Abnormal Ammo: ISDF ammuntion is mostly bullets, cannon shells and missiles with the occasional Energy Weapon, but Scion weaponry runs the gamut from plasma cannons to lightning guns and razor-sharp quill launchers. All this with the same shared ammo system from the first game.
  • Aliens Are Bastards: And want to kill us all, or so General Armand Braddock would have you believe. They actually just want to bring the enlightened Cthonian culture back to humanity.
  • All There in the Manual: The manual for this game uses a similar Framing Device to the first, this time as the ISDF's field manual. It contains profiles on the major characters and some letters, among them a transcript from the black box of Major Manson's Wolverine tank concerning a a battle on Titan against the Furies, which would seem to indicate he (and possibly others) survived the Bio-Metal Wars.
  • Alternate History: Set several decades after the Bio-Metal Wars depicted in the first game, it's now The Nineties. Biometal is public knowledge, and the ISDF (the merged CCA and NSDF forces from the first game) is a known, public military force.
  • Artificial Stupidity: The pathfinding. Unless you build nothing infront of (or anywhere near) your factory and recycler, your scavengers will always decide to ram into them to get scrap 100 meters away on the other side of the building. Said scavengers will also get stuck on each other when trying to get scrap between them, or gleefully plow into a deadly lake when trying to grab scrap near the shore.
  • Artistic License Physics: The ISDF blast-laser's assault variant goes BANG! when you fire it. Maybe one could give this a pass (real-life pulsed lasers also go BANG! as the channel of air they pass through rapidly heats up and expands, producing blast waves. Same thing happens in the target, a tiny portion of it instantly and brutally vaporizes, sending destructive shockwaves throughout it), but it does on planets with no known atmosphere.
  • Awesome but Impractical: The Pulse-Stabber cannon, which is basically a variant of the standard AT-Stabber. When you fire the Pulse-Stabber, it shoots a cannon shell that pulses out bursts of radiation, damaging everything that passes near the shell, even if the shell doesn't actually hit them. However, it starts pulsing immediately after you shoot it, meaning that it'll damage you if you fire while moving forward. Largely useless (but awesome) in the standard game, it becomes far more useful in the Fleshstorm mod, to kill the hordes of weak Swarm units.
  • Base on Wheels: The ISDF Recycler and Scion Matriarch roll to their deployment site and unfold into a giant factory.
  • Big Bad: Scion Padishah Frank Burns. Or so your character is made to think. Braddock is the real monster.
  • Bubblegloop Swamp: Planet Mire.
  • Crew of One
  • Dark World: The aptly-named Dark Planet, though not so much in the sense of this trope as being a planet that is really, really dark, but unnaturally so, with a permanent planet-wide electrical storm. It does feature unnaturally geometric terrain and a sense that something is just... wrong, about the place. Though the planet's origin is never made clear, what is apparent is that it is ripe to be terraformed into a clone of the Scion's adopted homeworld, Core.
  • Dead-Man Switch: Braddock has one in Forgotten Enemies. Three years after his death, a series of nukes are launched from a hidden base on Charon towards the Dark Planet.
  • Defector From Decadence: Yelena Shabayev, your commanding officer. After disappearing on Bane in a Drop Ship crash and being presumed dead, she later reappears on Rend as a Scion, urging you not to side with the power-hungry Braddock. Major Manson is this as well, who forms an ISDF splinter-group of Earth-Government loyalists against Braddock, who at that point plans to return to Earth in force and institute a military dictatorship.
  • Dirty Coward: Major Wyndt-Essex in Forgotten Enemies. She sends Corber (the protagonist) to do all the dirty work. When the EDF comes under heavy attack, she flees in the Recycler to a teleporter, laying mines behind her so that nobody can follower her.
  • Doomsday Device: What the ISDF believe the massive machines found on Rend, Mire and Bane to be. They're not. They're part of a terraformation system intended to transform the Dark Planet into a new Core, as the old one is somehow "dying" and taking the Scions with it in droves.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: Braddock's address to his troops on Titan, found in the manual, has suspiciously similar language to War On Terror rhetoric, though this game is older then such.
  • Emergency Transformation: The Scions, apparently.
  • Enemy Mine: The Hadean Crown Prince Thanatos in Forgotten Enemies allies with the EDF against the Imperial Hadeans once he discovers the Cerberi
  • The Engineer: The Constructor/Builder units, and the Service Truck/Healer units. The Constructor/Builder sets up all the base equipment, and the Service Truck/Healer repairs base assets and vehicles.
  • Escort Mission: At one point on Bane you must guide a damaged Recycler across a frozen lake. The Recycler's operator informs you that his sensor system is fried, but if you shoot out all the thinner ice patches, thus creating a path, he radios you that he can make the trip on his own. Doesn't make his pathfinding any better though. Hilarity Ensues as you sit watching him bumble around.
    • You can just shoot the ice along the path, then it'll find it's way to the Geyser on it's own...
    • The Fleshstorm 2 mod has two escort missions in a row. In one, you have to escort 3 unarmed transports through some canyons; not too bad. The second mission has you escorting a Recycler through a planet that is on fire. You have a single Service Truck, Scout, and Assault Tank to help you. The entire mission is a balancing act between repairing each of your vehicles with the Truck, and pushing ahead to wipe out resistance - if you push too far ahead or take too much damage, you can't make it back to the repair truck before dying. The best part? If you eject, you die.
  • Eternal Engine: Planet Facility in Forgotten Enemies. The atmosphere is a sickly green from poisonous gas, all the liquid on the planet is full of toxins, and almost the entire surface is covered in canals, factories, cranes, exhaust stacks, and storage silos. The ring that wraps around the planet is made of orbital factories and ships.
  • Expy: The Swarm in the Fleshstorm mod are basically the Tyranids from Warhammer 40,000, but bigger.
  • Everybody's Dead, Dave: The bad ending, where you side with Braddock. Every other named character is dead, and you return to earth a "hero". But was it worth it? In this ending, humanity never gets to know what the Scions were really trying to accomplish.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: Planet Miasma in Forgotten Enemies. Even the plants are trying to kill you.
  • Faceless Goons: The Scion pilots; nothing is visible behind the yellow-blue tinfoil hat... thing on their head. ISDF pilots on the other hand, have a face visible behind their visor.
  • Foreshadowing: Long before you gain any insight into the Scion's true nature you can hear personal messages sent between Frank Burns and Braddock, almost as if they were old rivals...
  • Fragile Speedster: The ISDF Mortar Bike, ISDF Scout, and Scion Drone.
  • Fun with Acronyms: ISDF, short for International Space Defense Force, and the AAN, for Alliance of Awakened Nations.
  • Game Mod: Many.
    • The Forgotten Enemies mod adds a whole new campaign longer than the original game's, and adds two new playable races.
    • The Fleshstorm and Fleshstorm 2 mods add 3 new races (2 of which are playable), and both have a Nintendo Hard campaign.
  • General Ripper: Braddock, Ex-Mad Scientist turned would-be dictator. This guy is such a Jerkass that siding with the Scions against him leads to the game's good ending.
  • Gundamjack: You can use the pilot's sniper rifle to kill pilots inside their vehicle, as long as it's not too heavily armored.
  • Humongous Mecha: The ISDF Attila LM walker, which has two giant lasers cannons under the cockpit and two smaller lasers. The Scion's Spider-Walker is more of a Mini-Mecha by comparison.
  • Instant Win Condition: Destroying the other team's Recycler in multiplayer will instantly win the game.
  • Jerkass: Major Wyndt-Essex in Forgotten Enemies.
  • Large Ham: Braddock.
    • Most mods have Large Ham mission control and units. Fleshstorm 2's first two missions has a guy yelling at you in a fake Russian accent, and the Phaer Ran units are all Large Hams (ANOTHER FALLS TO THE PHAER RAN!)
  • Laser Sight: Switching to third person activates a laser sight on your tank, emanating from the weapon's mount, to assist with aiming. However, they are only visible to the player using them - enemies cannot see the laser sights.
  • Lethal Lava Land: Planet Rend.
    • Miasma in Forgotten Enemies
  • Lightning Bruiser: The ISDF Sabre and the Scion Warrior. The best armor for any of the hover units, good speed, great firepower, good maneuverability.
  • Lightning Gun: The Scion's Arc cannon. Shoots 5 quick lightning pulses with great range and accuracy, at the cost of low ammo capacity and low fire rate.
  • Long Runners: Despite the game coming out in 1999, updates still come out, adding new graphical capabilities (like dynamic shadows), DX9 support, fixing the netcode, and so on.
  • Masquerade: The first game's Masquerade is broken, Earth knows all about Bio-Metal, though the details of the Bio-Metal Wars as depicted in the first game are still the subject of Wiki Leaks-style guerrilla journalism. nobody remembers Grizzly One, though. Instead we have Braddock's personal Masquerade in attempting to hide the true identity of the Scions and cloaking his own operations on Pluto and the Dark Planet from the eyes of the AAN.
    • The intro brilliantly lampshades this: the Voyager 2 approaches the Dark Planet, starts to scan the surface and finds Braddock's base which launches a missile at the probe. Said probe then switches into "battle mode", retracting it's antennas and jettisoning the big comm dish in favor of dual plasma cannons and the ISDF|AAN logo. Wonder how the ISDF managed to pack THAT into a little space probe without anyone noticing...
  • Multiple Endings: Two, depending on whether you transport the wounded Scion leader to Braddock, or return him to the Scions and join their cause.
  • The Mole: In the Backstory. Shabayev was an FSB (The successor to the KGB) agent who had infiltrated the highest levels of the CIA. When she was uncovered, she was recommended for ISDF recruitment instead of punishment.
  • Narrator: In the tradition of the first game, loading screens feature narration by the player character, in this case one John Cooke. He describes himself as having once been a simple farm boy, gazing up at the stars, always dreaming of one day visiting them. Now that he finally has, he finds that the universe is far crueler then he could have ever imagined.
  • Nintendo Hard: The missions on Miasma in Forgotten Enemies, and all of the Fleshstorm mods.
    • In both of the Fleshstorm mods, the player spends most of the game fighting the Swarm, which are a biological race of Planet Looters. Unlike every other race, Swarm vehicles do not drop scrap when destroyed, and Swarm units are exceptionally cheap to build, while also being fairly durable - leading to constant spam attacks in almost every mission. The Swarm doesn't even need to use scrap or biometal pools - they can build their own extractors anywhere on the map.
  • Not Playing Fair with Resources: The AI has a "scrap cheat" which gives them a small amount of resources every minute, but they still need to gather resources to get any decent units. Later patches allow the player to disable it for the AI, or give themselves a scrap cheat.
  • New Era Speech: Padishah Frank Burns. subverted, as Burns is no longer considered a villain at this point, he delivers this speech in the good ending.
  • Oh Crap: At one point in some Cthonian ruins on Bane, you discover a small transmission unit. Almost immediately, Braddock orders the area bombed back to the Stone Age, giving you scant minutes to evacuate the area. You later find out why: the transmitter in question bore the insignia of the Black Dog squadron.
  • Phlebotinum Rebel: The Scions turn out to be this, having escaped Braddock's attempt to create super soldiers.
  • Planet Looters: The Swarm in the Fleshstorm mod.
  • Playing with Syringes: In case you're wondering why Braddock is such a Jerkass, here's what went down. Braddock was the former commander of the NSDF's Black Dog squadron. He attempted to create Super Soldiers using them and the Bio-Metal, without the knowledge of his AAN superiors. The Black Dogs, led by Frank Burns, rebelled against him for his deceit and what he did to them, fleeing into the depths of space. Braddock could not pursue without attracting attention, so he built a bases on Pluto and eventually the Dark Planet, preparing for their inevitable return.
  • Pluto Is Expendable: Averted. Pluto is the first planet that appears in the game and was the site of the ISDF's Cerberus base, ostensibly intended to keep watch for any alien incursions into the Solar System.
  • Power Crystal: Three, which act as power sources for the Scions' "Alchemator" devices.
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The EDF battalion you command in Forgotten Enemies.
  • Retcon: If the "ISDF: A Secret History" letter in the manual is to be believed, this game performed a rather major retcon on the events of the first game. Unreliable Narrator may be at work here, as the only guy who knows for sure is Braddock. Instead of the Soviets recreating a Cthonian superweapon in the Furies, they were instead created from the Black Dogs by Braddock back on Earth, and he formed the ISDF from the NSDF and CCA to fight them, rather then a union of necessity forged on Titan when the Soviet Furies rebelled.
  • Sergeant Rock: Major Manson.
  • Short-Range Shotgun: The ISDF Pummel gun. The top range is 50 meters (out-ranged by everything in the game, save for the Scion Quill and Fang), and the effective range is about a fifth of that.
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Planet Bane. Noticing a pattern yet?
  • Spider Tank: The Scions have a three-legged one that shoots razor-sharp quills.
  • Stealth-Based Mission: At one point you must navigate the swamps and jungles of Mire on foot, avoiding Scion patrols, to reach an ISDF base. You could snipe a Scion vehicle and use that to make the journey faster, but you'll likely end up just getting fried by the Lightning Towers.
  • Stock Scream: A few Scion units reuse voice clips from the first game, albeit with the Scions' Voice of the Legion-ish filter. This may actually be justified, considering the Scions were once the NSDF's Black Dog squadron.
    • Oddly enough, most of the Scion voices are the CCA/Russians voices from Battlezone with the filter added, and the radio static removed.
  • Timed Mission: The escape from Core after you have destroyed its main reactor, the final mission of the "bad" path.
  • The Faceless: Despite the large amount of character interaction this game has, especially when compared to the first game, you never see what anyone looks like behind their helmets.
    • You can actually see the face of one of the characters, On the mission where you need to retrieve Padasha Burns from the crashed carrier, you can hop out of your tank and look at his chariot thing, with Burns sitting in it.
  • The Federation: The AAN, an UN-ish organization intended to help fairly distribute bio-metal amongst developing nations.
  • The Reveal: Many, mostly concerning the Scions, Braddock's dark past and everything that happened as a result. Near the end of the game, either Braddock or Burns will tell you everything you didn't already know or figure out.
  • Truce Zone: Later in the game, Ambassador Kossieh of the AAN attempts to broker a human-Scion truce on Rend. The player and a detachment of ISDF troops wait around in a Scion base while Frank Burns boards a Drop Ship to meet with Kossieh on a Carrier in low orbit. Until the Drop Ship explodes in the Carrier, sending it plummeting to the surface. You later learn that Braddock rigged the DropShip, both to off Burns AND Kossieh and to make it look like a Scion attack, reinforcing Braddock's position and bringing him one step closer to his goal.
  • Universal Driver's License: You can pilot almost every unit in the game. This includes morphing alien tanks.
    • Except the tugs, construction units, and artillery. Apparently, a floating tow truck baffles Lt. Cooke.
  • Was Once a Man: The Scions. Later on, Yelena Shabayev and optionally, the player character. subverted somewhat in that they have come to enjoy being what they are.
  • Weaponized Landmark: Kind of. An early cinematic sees the Voyager 2 probe picking up a threat in space. It retracts its antennas and transforms into missile-armed "battlemode".
  • Wing Man: Lt. Shultz in Forgotten Enemies will sometimes go on missions with you to act as your wingman and help with enemies.
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