Fortune Hunters - 2260
Fortune Hunters - 2260 is a campaign for The Babylon Project and the second part of the Fortune Hunters Trilogy.
Contents
Summary
The player assumes the role of an human pilot in his 40s, who, being too old for military service, is leading an unusual group of outlaws calling themselves the Fortune Hunters, a Raider Group operating in Earth Alliance space. Despite being a criminal, the main character dislikes what he is forced to do to make a living, becoming frustrated with his current lifestyle. Always trying to keep casualties to a minimum, the player's initial tasks include planning and executing clever raids on cargo vessels, kill competitors, stealing various goods and escaping local military forces. Later, wars break out between various powers and new leaders rise to power, which affect the whole political balance of the galaxy. The player gets involved with a secret group calling themselves the Rangers in a struggle between the races of the galaxy to survive, facing extinction by an unknown alien menace known as the Shadows.
Campaign and Author
The 13 mission campaign was created by HLP-User Vidmaster and first released in February '08, following the success of the first Hunters. Since the campaign was also hosted on various websites where Vidmaster was not able to check the number of downloads, as well as FH being included in the TBP campaign pack and on the TBP DVD, both having an impressing number of downloads themselves, the real number is impossible to tell although it is certainly much higher than 10000. User posts in the official release thread were very positive, although some criticized the difficulty. Vidmaster tweaked the balancing in multiple releases, but the lack of any version counter or update tracker made this more confusing than it should be. With the release of FH 2261, additional changes were made to make the experience even better.
Unsatisfactory Ending
The original Fortune Hunters - 2260 featured a cliffhanger ending, which basically came down to ending the last mission in a completely hopeless situation. While some people actually liked the idea, Vidmaster felt the execution was weak and added the complete version of the final mission in the second release.
Voice-Acting Promise
Vidmaster has stated that he wishes to add Voice-Acting for the full in-game dialogue of all Fortune Hunters campaigns, after he released Fortune Hunters - 2261. All other Vidmaster campaigns have been voice-acted already.
