Part 8: Mission 8 – Operation Countdown, December 31st, 2004
Shattered SkiesMission 8: Operation Countdown – December 31st, 2004
Overview: ISAF plans to launch a new reconnaissance satellite from Riass Space Centre in the Comona Islands on New Year’s Eve. Mobius 1 and the ISAF air strike team engage in the largest aerial battle since the end of the Belkan War as they provide top cover for the rocket launch and guard it against an Erusean air assault spearheaded by Yellow Squadron.
The following day, back in San Salvacion, Yellow 13 and Yellow 4 review the combat results of Comona mission, with keen interest in the standout enemy pilot of the engagement: Mobius 1.
Guest Commentator: We leap from one Electrosphere LPer to the other as Lunethex joins me for this mission. In addition to guesting on frozentreasue's run through Electrosphere, he's also in the midst of LPing the both the final game in the Colony Wars trilogy, Colony Wars: Red Sun, and is doing an LP of both Battlezone 98 Redux and its expansion, The Red Odyssey, along with the old Syphon Filter LP crew: Coolguye, TheLastRoboKy, and Jade Star.
RIASS SPACE CENTER
We return yet again to the future home of
Once one of the most active spaceports on the planet, Ulysses Day and the subsequent Shattered Skies crisis saw a moratorium on all launch activity enacted at Riass Space Center by both the local Comonan government and the FCU parliament. Furthermore, Erusea’s declaration of war on the FCU and the Independent States of Usea created significant internal upheaval at Riass, as the Erusean Air and Space Administration (EASA) and all its personnel and equipment were forcibly removed from Comonan territory by the FCU and taken into custody and held as prisoners of war.
Since Ulysses Day, Riass Space Center has been on the frontlines of the continuing spaceguard efforts to protect the Earth from the lingering threat of Ulysses 1994XF04. It currently forms a pivotal link in a chain of national space agencies around the globe responsible for detecting and tracking the countless asteroid fragments left behind by Ulysses that have settled into orbit around the planet and still pose a risk to satellite traffic, the International Space Station, the proposed International Space Elevator construction site, as well as the Earth itself.
The New Year’s Eve launch of the ISAF recon satellite marks the first space launch undertaken since Ulysses Day, and also highlights just how desperate the ISAF is for actionable intelligence over the Usean mainland, as even in orbit the satellite will be incredibly vulnerable to both stray asteroids, rouge space debris, and to being shot down by Stonehenge, should it pass within the STN’s firing radius.
NARRATIVE CONVERGENCE
The interlude for this chapter highlights, among other things, the accelerating intertwining of the narratives of Mobius 1 and Yellow 13.
The New Year’s Eve furball over Riass is the second time they’ve met in combat so far, and 13’s review of the mission the following day is the first time he acknowledges Mobius 1 as a potential rival, albeit obliquely. This is also, for the record, the Storyteller Boy’s first exposure to Mobius 1, through Yellow 13’s second-hand account of the Comona engagement.
The initially distant plot threads the game began with are slowly beginning to weave together. Yellow 13 and the Storyteller Boy are now aware of Mobius 1, and we as the audience are aware of Yellow 13 and the Storyteller Boy, and meanwhile Mobius 1 the character has been aware of Yellow 13 since Lifeline, and the bond between all three of them is going to grow ever tighter as the game progresses.
We also see more conflicted loyalties begin to play out in this interlude. The Storyteller Boy reveals that the Barkeep’s Daughter—an active member of the San Salvacion Resistance—has a teenage crush on Yellow 13, despite the fact that he remains her hated enemy. Just like the Storyteller Boy, she has found herself disarmed by his personable charms and the fact that he just so happens to be a decent and upstanding human being in general.
The Storyteller Boy’s conflicted loyalties are borne out further as well in this interlude. You can hear the trepidation in his voice as he relays Barkeep’s Daughter’s hopeful nugget of intel, “the Allies are coming to our town.” The ISAF counter attack on the Eruseans is imminent. It won’t be long now until they make landfall on the mainland. To run out the Eruseans, and liberate San Salvacion, and kill his newfound friend and role model Yellow 13.
And Mobius 1 is coming with them.
SHATTERED SKIES
This mission provides our title drop for Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies. Or rather, our first title drop. The term will crop up at least once more in-game, and I’ll be sure to point it out when it does. The Golden Trilogy games were noted for their title drop missions. We saw “Zero” as the name of the hidden 18th mission of Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, and there will be a mission coming up in Ace Comabt 5 subtitled “The Unsung War,” and the opening mission of Ace Combat X is titled “Skies of Deception,” while “Skies Unknown” is referenced several times in Ace Combat 7's dialog as well, but that’s all spoilers for where we are right now.
And no, despite our joking, the mission is not called “Distant Thunder” in the European version (where the game is known as Ace Combat: Distant Thunder). That said, Distant Thunder does indeed get its own title drop in the opening cutscene of the game. When the Storyteller Boy describes the aerial battle between ISAF and Yellow Squadron above his house, he describes the roar of the plane engines as “A sound like distant thunder.”
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Vaisala
- Plane: F/A-18C Hornet
- Mission 8
- Spawn conditions: Appears over the large island east of the main launch facility.
Kadorhal posted:
Ace Number Eight is Vaisala. Named for Yrjö Väisälä, born September 6th, 1891. Finnish astronomer and physicist, primarily known for his work in optics. Nevertheless, he discovered 3 comets and 128 asteroids/minor planets, which he usually named after personal friends, between 1935 and 1945. In particular, this is the reason the Palomar Mountain Observatory in California does not have an asteroid bearing its name, due to Väisälä naming one of his discoveries after a professor named Palomaa and the rules against asteroid names sharing all but one letter. He was nicknamed the Wizard of Tuorla, which was later used as the name for a book describing his works. Died July 21st, 1971, at 79 years old.
Tracks featured in Mission 8:
DISC 1
Concept art of Riass Space Center, storyboards and rough drafts for the interlude sequences up till now, and a promotional shot of Mobius 1’s ISAF Navy F/A-18C being transported via a patrol boat through a city canal
