Part 12: The End...
Okay, so that's not actually all. There's still a few things to discuss before we wrap up this mess. Let's go back to the last chapter and look at that credits stinger:
Alright, the planet's been blown up, and while billions have died, there are still Helghast survivors—including these Stahl Arms goons.
I wonder what a pair of Stahl Arms employees could be looking for in the ruins of Helghan?
Huh. It looks like some sort of pod. Like, an escape pod. From a starship of some type. A Stahl Arms starship, perhaps.
Oh, hey, the two Stahl Arms goons are calling a mysterious figure off-screen "sir". I wonder if we'll ever find out who the high-ranking Stahl Arms official they're talking to is. Will Guerrilla Games ever resolve this?
Ha. W-wait, what?
No, really? That's bullshit.
Seriously, this is actually crap. Not in a "man, that's lame" kind of way, but in a "that's straight up not true" way. This is obvious deflecting from the devs to not spoil the idea that, yes, Jorhan Stahl is very fucking much alive and will probably appear in Shadow Fall. In fact, while one of those links is still alive, the other one is a dead link off of N4G—so maybe they scrubbed the evidence one it was revealed that Stahl was still kicking?
So yes, this was a not-so-subtle bit of foreshadowing from Guerrilla—but hey, let's take a moment and look back on the surviving characters of Killzone 3 and find out what happened to them, shall we?
First off, let's start off with our heroes: Sev and Rico.
They are more or less forgotten. By Guerrilla, I should say, not the Helghast. We aren't going to see either Sev or Rico ever again. At least not in person. Their story is done, but hints of what happened to them appear in the Killzone sequels. First, there's Killzone: Mercenary, although since the events of Mercenary occur concurrently with Killzone 2, none of the information we find is new. At some point on Helghan, the protagonist, EARTH-MAN ARRAN DANNER, finds an ISA Intelligence report on the initial invasion. It briefly outlines the successes of Narville's Avenger Convoy and then highlights a number of new targets that have arisen. Among them, it mentions Evelyn Batton's identification of the petrusite element. It then goes on to mention that, and I quote, "a unit under the command of Sergeant T. Sevchenko discovered a map of the Petruside distribution system."
Hahahaha, god damn, even the ISA's Shadow Marshall's couldn't tell whether or not Sev or Rico was in charge of Alpha Squad. Visari didn't have a chance. Anyways, this is doubly hilarious because if you remember back to Killzone 2, the discovered of the petrusite grid was actually all Rico—Sev showed up after Rico had already killed the guards and analyzed the map. Anyways, the attached image is a shot of Sevchenko with Rico in the background, so again, the ISA's intelligence had no idea what the fuck was going on with Alpha Squad.
The last bit of information we ever hear about these two comes from some news headlines in Shadow Fall:
A few things to laugh at here. First, the idea that the Helghast successfully negotiated an evacuation to Vekta.
if you think the Vektan government wanted that and EarthGov weren't involved in the background. I mean, there's no actually text that confirms this, but I feel the writing is on the wall. As far as I'm concerned, this is propaganda to bolster the mood of the Helghan people. Look at the tone in the rest of the articles. Anyways, the second one is obviously most relevant. Rico and Sev are alive, they have not been tried for any war crimes, are in fact listed as "missing in action" by the Vekta government, and their whereabouts are apparently unknown. I tend to agree with the Helghast news with this one—I think the Vektan government knows exactly where these two are. Only, I'm willing to bet that they're not on Vekta but some other remote colony where they are in hiding, living the rest of their lives in obscurity, far from Alpha Centauri. (That third article, about the child, V. Tyran? Remember that name. Tyran becomes a major character in Shadow Fall).This is probably the best outcome for them, considering they are now answerable for the deaths of over a billion Helghast. Whether or not they would be found guilty at a tribunal, I don't think either the Helghan or Vektan governments wants to reopen new wounds while they try to resettle their two populations onto a single planet.
I have a feeling I know how Vekta views Sevchenko, though—in Shadow Fall, there is a multiplayer icon of Sevchenko available that is titled "The Hero".
These characters are totally forgotten. Natko got the short shrift early, as we all know, being turned into Killzone 3's multiplayer ghost. One thing of note: dialogue in the co-op mode will refer to him as Sergeant Natko. He was a Corporal in the previous game, so he must have had a field promotion.
Narville essentially disappears once he gets onto Sev and Rico's strike fighter. He's in the engine area somewhere doing support, as he and Rico yell at each other a couple of times, but otherwise that is it. He doesn't even get a bit of dialogue in the end.
Jammer and Hooper do, but we don't hear about them either. In the novel, Ascendancy, Sev develops an attraction for Jammer over the course of the game and promises to himself that he's going to buy her a beer and a burger after it's all over. Maybe they do. Who knows. An interesting bit of characterization since Jammer and Sev hardly say anything to each other in the game, but whatever. If the world was truly just, Jammer would go on to Earth where she would become the next EarthGov President Space Ke$ha. Hopefully Hooper makes it somewhere safe too. He has a wife and two daughters, so I assume they would go into hiding together.
Jammer, like Sev, gets a special title for her playercard in Shadow Fall: The Corporal. So if you ever wondered what her rank in the ISA was, there you go.
He's alive. That's him at the end of the video. Let's not much about with any conspiracies about how that was actually Scolar Visari's reanimated mummified remains hidden in that pod, it's Stahl. Between the Commodore insisting Stahl get to the escape pod, the novelization, Ascendancy, making a big deal about the escape pod, and the pod being found by Stahl Arms employees, there's not really a lot of room for imagination. Stahl's return in Shadow Fall is already being hella telegraphed.
So yeah, he's alive. We'll see him again soon. We'll also see—
She's definitely still alive. This is a reminder of the very first post of this LP: Hera was evacuated from Helghan shortly after Visari's speech and was taken to the colony of Gyre for the remainder of the war. Details of her time on Gyre are limited. After the war, she went to Vekta where she became the Chancellor of the Helghast of New Helghan.
But more on that in the future.
Lastly, I want to talk about Earth, the ISA, and the Helghast—
With regards to this whole stupid conflict, let's not forget that the governments of both Vekta and Helghan are populated with idiot assholes who are descended from the original Helghan Corporation. Let's not forget that the First Interstellar War, of which so much resentment and hatred led to the Second, was originally started by the Helghan Corporation, and that it was Earth that most decidedly ended it.
(If you want to fully catch yourself up on the backstory and lore of Killzone, please direct yourself to this post from the previous LP: http://lparchive.org/Killzone-2/Update%2016/)
In short, EarthGov goes nearly bankrupt trying to pay for the colonization of the galaxy to literally save the human species. Meanwhile, the Helghan Corporation, doing their best impression of Weyland-Yutani, succeed in profiting massively off of the work and suffering of human colonists. They go a step too far when they try to secede from Earth, threatening the livelihood of all of Earth's distant colonies (ships leaving Earth need to stop and refuel in the Alpha Centauri system before moving onto the outer colonies, and vice versa). EarthGov responds in a suitably Old Testament manner in order to ensure that the survival of humanity won't be left to the whim of a private corporation's profits. Afterwards, EarthGov tries to negotiate a peace, but the Helghan Administration's elites mastermind terrorist attacks killing many innocent civilians alongside Earth UCN and Vektan ISA forces, which leads to tighter restrictions on the Helghan populace. The Helghan elites eventually pool their money to buy some transport ships and ask to leave Vekta for planet Helghan. Earth's UCN and Vekta's ISA, now thoroughly sick of this shit throw up their hands in exasperation and let them all go, even going so far as to declare planet Helghan the sole property of the Helghan Administration and to recognize them as a sovereign nation, just to fucking end all this mindless stupidity.
It's madness. The best part is that the Vektan ISA would've likely been sympathetic to the Helghan cause considering they're all from the same planet, but the Helghan Administration did their best to alienate them. They subverted their local ISA, they tried to co-opt them, then when they EarthGov's fleet was en route, they tried to expel them from the planet. In the aftermath of the conflict, they then killed their civilian populace in terrorist attacks. Through their own greed, the Helghan Administration fostered hatred and resentment in their ISA neighbours before they even left Vekta.
The most ironic part is that there's a legion of Killzone fans on the internet who can't seem to get that the Helghast are actually massive hypocrites and not actually victimized good guys. In Mercenary, Guerrilla left some intel that highlighted the hypocrisy of the Helghast—literally the first two pieces of intel found in the game. The first one, entitled "Why We Fight", is a piece of propaganda written by Visari's office. Maybe a line or two is devoted to the Helghan Administration's shady background, and it's phrased as them seeking "independence from the oppression of colonial rule". The terrorist attacks on civilians and ISA forces are not mentioned. Instead, it says that "[t]he ISA seized control of Vekta, and those settlers who were not imprisoned suffered further oppression." The rest of it talks about the modern history of their oppression, which was awful on the Vektan ISA's behalf and not justifiable, but it doesn't diminish the fact that
The second bit of intel, a briefing from the Vektan Ministry of Information, notes that the Helghast portray themselves as victims of the ISA. This next part I'm going to quote verbatim: "This ignores the fact that they used their strategic position to exert a stranglehold on trade and the flow of resources throughout the Alpha Centauri system." Yes, I know this is from the Vektan ISA's perspective, and there is some biased wording here as well (it claims that the ISA intervened to secure peace and prosperity for all colonies, glossing over the massive role Earth's fleets played in the resolution of the conflict), but it matches the information given in Guerrilla's lore timeline. But seriously, what happened is EarthGov crushed Weyland-Yutani. If this were Aliens, we'd all be cheering—but Guerrilla hasn't made this explicit in their games, instead choosing to hide this information in the background and behind layers of in-game propaganda to muddy the issue, confusing players, and making the whole issue rather grey. Oh, in a last bit of bias, I love how the Vektan intel sums up the Helghast's situation: "Attempts at reconciliation were met by guerrilla warfare, terrorist acts claiming the lives of innocent civilians alongside ISA troops stationed on Vekta to maintain law and order. When the campaign of terror failed, those behind it chose to resettle on the mineral-rich planet of Helghan and were allowed to do so unimpeded. Any hardships they suffered as a result were entirely self-inflicted."
So in the end, remember this:
The Helghast are terrible.
The ISA are terrible.
EarthGov is terrible.
The Killzone universe is the darkest timeline and the average person is being ground to dust beneath the pressure of cruel military leaders, emotionless corporate entities, and space politics. Even the planets in this game want to destroy human life. In short:
Helghan on fire.
The space station above the space elevator.
Station interior.
The space station.