Sync

General Info

Released: 15th December 2004
Author: Ransom Arceihn
Missions: 39
Mods included:
StratComm's Hedetet

SCP Required

Story

Two years after narrowly escaping death in an uncharted nebula, three mercenaries are hired to escort a duo of freighters to the Betelgeuse system. It quickly becomes clear that this is no ordinary mission; pirates beset them at every step of their journey, wave after wave, not responding to hails or backing off even when the GTVA steps in.

Then they reach their destination. You lose control of your ship, a subspace tunnel opens ...

Propelled into a distant galaxy populated by beings alien and yet disturbingly familiar, the mercenaries struggle to survive long enough to reunite with the others. But something's waiting just out of sight, watching them, recording their movements as they creep through this starlit graveyard ...

There are many secrets buried here.

Sync is the first chapter of a three-part story.

Sync lacks any sort of introduction. The first mission abruptly drops you into a nebula defending a corvette named Tether from mysterious pirates.

Transcend is set in the same universe as Sync, but does not appear to be a chapter of the Sync storyline.

Comments

Excellent campaign, mission design was mind-blowing. It achieved a sense of spookiness, which is rare in any FreeSpace mod. Despite having nearly no mods, it's no reason to skip this one. Play it; highly recommended.

Very well done, will leave you creeped out by the weirdness abounding everywhere. It leaves a lot of unanswered questions at the end, so you'll be awaiting the next installment quite intently.

Sync is more important for what it proved and showed was possible than anything else. Transcend's predecessor, spiritually at least, Sync was out to prove a lot of things about using the cutscene engine and some newer SCP features. Even as a campaign though, it's well worth playing through. - Ngtm1r 15:50, 14 June 2008 (CDT)

In contrast to general opinion, I was unimpressed with Sync. The author seems to forget in too many places that FreeSpace is a game, played by a person. Not only are there many, many missions where the player never so much as touches the controls, he's also nearly completely amputated from the story, sidelined as a third-party observer. This is the kind of experience that can make for a good short story or novella, but a good story line is only one component of a FreeSpace campaign. If you like the plot, then it's a good idea, delivered in the wrong medium. Since I don't particularly care for this style of time-travel/parallel-continuity story, I consider it a bad idea, delivered in the wrong medium. - BlueFlames

Sync works well as a story; poorly as a game. The plot is nice and eerie at the start, but then the gameplay gets stale and tedious. The above comments by BlueFlames are accurate, but even the ship and weapon selection will bore you. The plot was enough to keep me going, but I had turned down the difficulty to very easy to make sure I progressed through the missions as quickly as possible. Sync is like trying to get the artistic experience of a short story in a haiku; it just doesn't work. Still, if you like a good story, you'll get it if you play this through. At the very least, check out the messages in FRED2. It really is an interesting plot.

Related Links

Websites

• Official website | Rateofinjury.com
• Campaign profile | ModDB.com

Forums/Threads

• Release thread | Hard-Light Productions.net

Downloads

• Campain download | FreeSpaceMods.net
• Campaign download | Rateofinjury.com