Silent Threat Reborn

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Silent Threat: Reborn is a fan-made expansion pack for the Free Space 2 video game. It was inspired by a common fan reaction to a pre-existing official expansion pack (called Silent Threat) for FreeSpace 1. While FS 1 and FS 2 received very positive reviews and were regarded highly by the fan base, Silent Threat was regarded poorly in comparison due to its haphazard plot and weak missions. A group of fans decided to remake it, and the result is widely judged to approach the quality of FS 1 and FS 2.

So, the story. After the events of FreeSpace, the player (not the same character as in the first game) is recruited into an elite intelligence unit in the Galactic Terran Alliance, called Galactic Terran Intelligence. In the course of performing special operations missions and secret spy missions, the player discovers that GTI is conspiring to overthrow the GTA. The player must overcome the conspiracy and stop it.

Tropes used in Silent Threat Reborn include:
  • Achilles' Heel, inverted: One of your enemies tries to do the Death Star Trench Run on an installation you're protecting.
  • Attention Deficit Creator Disorder: While developing this mod, the two project leads were administrating and heavily contributing to about a dozen other Free Space projects between them. As a hobby, mind you.
  • Big Bad: The Hades superdestroyer, based on technology from the Shivan Big Bad in the first game.
    • For a number of missions it appears that Admiral Marcus Glaive, leader of GTI R&D is the Big Bad-by-default, what with leading the enemy faction. Then it turns out that GTI's R&D's rebellion is supported by high-ranking officers of GTI's central command, with Glaive reporting to them.
  • Con Lang: Apparently, the original game developers had created a full-fledged language for the Vasudans. Since the original language reference was inaccessible to the humble authors of a third-party mod, they went and recreated it from the few clues available in the community reference pool.
  • Continuity Nod: Plenty. From the GTC Lonewolf (from Derelict) making an appearance to the Vasudans being referred to as "fish-lovers", and many more.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome: At least four:
    • "He Who Rides the Tiger". The whole mission.
    • The Battle of Jotunheim, especially when the Hades makes its appearance.
    • Dashing through a Karnak-class installation to prevent an enemy fighter from destroying the reactor.
    • When the PVD Hope kamikazes the Hades.
    • The campaign itself is a CMOA for the modding community in general: the project was in development for six years, and had some of the top modders in the community working on it, in addition to full voice-acting, something that not many fan-made campaigns have access to.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: "Chasing Shadows". Shell-shocked Vasudans = Hilarity Ensues, apparently:

Vasudan: "Big. Big guns. Poum! Poum! Poum!"

    • The mission originally included yet more lines, including references to all your base and a statement that "Stack overflow protection was engaged!" but these were cut in testing.
      • Actually, the "Somebody set us up the bomb" line made to the final release.
    • Also, in mission 4, all of the cargo containers are marked "Weapons Research", save for one labeled "Bosch Beer"
  • Doing It for the Art: Several...
    • Despite the fact that the game was in a reasonably complete state after a year of work (as evidenced by the timeline included in the readme) the authors kept polishing, and polishing, and polishing... causing development to stretch out to six years. Granted, the final result was probably worth it.
    • Voice acting, a rare enhancement in a fan-made Free Space game, was considered mandatory for ST:R.
    • A surprising amount of effort was put into the story and plot. Interviews and developer comments have shed light on many game details that aren't apparent upon first playthrough.
    • In the month leading up to the game's release, the developers went and created a secret I Love Bees-style alternate reality game called Phoenix to provide more goodies for fans.
    • Oh, and see Con Lang above - made even more impressive by the fact that said language was only used for promoting the mod, and not for the mod itself.
  • Escort Mission: Averted most impressively in the mission "He Who Rides the Tiger".

Pilot: "I hate escort missions! Three hours of boredom for five minutes of action, if you're lucky."

    • Actually a Double Subversion: You don't have to escort the science vessels, but you do have to escort the ships that arrive to pick up the pieces.
  • Government Conspiracy: Sort of. The Terran military's Intelligence division (the GTI) attempts a power grab in the aftermath of the Great War. Does it seem like the Intelligence division wouldn't be too effective against the full military? Don't forget that these are the guys in charge of black ops and R&D, meaning that they have both the top-trained personnel and bleeding-edge technology.
    • On the one hand, the Special Operations branch of GTI are left out of the loop and end up working against the conspiracy (the player character flies for them from the GTD Krios during the first part of the campaign, before the GTD Krios is destroyed by rebel GTI ships and the GTA integrates loyalist GTI assets into the main fleet). On the other hand, we are told that more than a few GTA pilots, officers and assets have defected to the GTI.
  • Ramming Always Works: Averted, mostly. (It half-works. Or more accurately, it quarter-works.)
  • Retcon: Whereas FreeSpace 2 retconned a number of minor plot points and background information from FreeSpace 1, Silent Threat Reborn attempts to de-Retcon the differences by providing plausible explanations for them.
  • That One Level: "He Who Rides The Tiger." This is one of the few missions that requires you to handpick your targets to succeed, as the Lambda 1 transport is very fragile and won't survive unless you can focus on the fighters that attack it. This is easier said than done, as the Shivans are sending waves and waves of fighters and the battle becomes a complete furball in short order. Also, targeting bombers first (something you should do in almost every escort mission) will make you fail this mission because the bombers are targeting the Repulse, while you should be protecting Lambda 1. To top it off, this mission starts with about 5 minutes of tension-building while you watch all hell break loose in the science vessels. This is very scary the first time around, but on third or fourth time it becomes tedious and boring.
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