History VideoGame / BluePlanet

''Blue Planet: Chanticleer'' (2023), based on the developers' notes, takes the perspective of a [[PerspectiveFlip GTVA pilot]]. Chanticleer's player character is Ned Mozingo, [[AcePilot a veteran GTVA pilot]] hunting down the UEF superweapon alluded to in ''War in Heaven,'' together with his squadron. Chanticleer's gameplay is closer to the traditional Freespace 2 style, than the more experimental mission design of ''War in Heaven''.

-->"Petra Captain:'' Sword wing, cover us! Desperta ferro, you bloodsuckers!

** "These Federals are all as mad as old "[[VideoGame/FreeSpace Admiral Koth]].''

** In ''Chanticleer,'' just as the GTVA assault on the [[spoiler:Federation superweapon, the Maitreya,]] has broken down, the ''Chanticleer'' and ''Zagreus'' warp in on the flanks of the Federal fleet and knock out their jamming ships, [[spoiler:clearing the way for the GTD ''Atreus'' and Serkr Team to warp in and cut the Federal battle line to ribbons with beam fire.]]

* GeneralFailure: At times Admiral Byrne seems to be this. However, knowing the way ''Blue Planet'' works, [[CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass he's probably got a hell of a trick up his sleeve.]] He has some sort of grand master plan ("Project Shambhala") that will evidently require all of Earth's surviving military industrial capacity, virtually all of First Fleet, all of the captured and defected GTVA ships at the UEF's disposal, and substantial additional resources, but [[UnspokenPlanGuarantee it's never explained what the plan entails]], at the end of War in Heaven, it still hasn't been put into effect yet. The plan is enacted at the end of ''Chanticleer'', [[spoiler:which entails using the Maitreya, a destroyer-size ship with the ability to open and close jump nodes, to seal off Sol from the rest of the universe. It very nearly works.]]

*** [[spoiler: TrickBoss]] / [[spoiler: VictoryFakeout]]: [[spoiler: Ned and Captain Asakawa successfully tag the UEF jamming ship, allowing the GTVA fleet to blast it, and the frigate Ridwan, into kingdom come with thier big guns. Then the UEF warps in a whole squadron of bombers at point-blank range, destroying the Vengeance and forcing the GTVA fleet to withdraw in disarray]].

It is currently unclear if ''War in Heaven'' will wrap up the story. The developers have hinted at a "Blue Planet Part 3" that will occur after ''War in Heaven'', but details are sparse.

* ActionGirl: Noemi Laporte and Lorna Simms. Taylor in ''Age of Aquarius'', along with many others. Heck, it'd be easier to find women that aren't examples.
* ActuallyPrettyFunny: Following the UEF victory at ''Aristeia'', Noemi breaches protocol and directly addresses Admiral Calder voicing her approval of his plans and condemning Admiral Byrne's. Calder's response is essentially "That was extremely inappropriate and unprofessional, and also thank you". The rest of the Wargods are stunned that Noemi wasn't punished for that.

* AFatherToHisMen: Admiral Lopez`s command style is based around this. [[spoiler: Unfortunately for her, this ends up being the cause of her eventual downfall.]]

* TheBattlestar: Pretty much every destroyer class ship in the game falls into this category.

* BigDamnHeroes: Samuel Bei [[spoiler:leads a Vishnan fleet to save his father's battlegroup from being destroyed by the Shivans. Unfortunately, the victory party didn't last long...]]

* ChekhovsGun: The transmission from the Vasudan logistics ship contains specs for a miniature quantum pulse transceiver, which is [[spoiler:the means of communication for the Shivans. It's used in the end of Act 3 as part of the means through which Laporte enters the Nagari 'network'.]]

** Shivan with Introns on high difficulty. Now they do micro-jump to catch your six, screw your sensor, leech your energy, and have fighter-mounted beam weapon

* {{Cutscene}}: Both ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seORm2SR5oc Age of Aquarius]]'' and ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u_nooix_ko War in Heaven]]'' use in-game cutscenes for campaign intro. ''Age of Aquarius'' ends in a playable cutscene from first person view, while ''War in Heaven'' ends with something that could be called a cutscene montage. There is also a flashback cutscene in the form of recording [[spoiler: which reveals [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biGB_P59KWE what happened to Earth]].]] There's also a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgAgWe9ZWig rendered version of the Age of Aquarius intro cutscene]], made by a community member.

* DownerBeginning: War in Heaven opens with an in-game cutscene of the UEF military installation at Jupiter being overrun, and a frigate captain ordering his battlegroup into a suicidal attack to buy time for more civilians to escape.

* FreudianTrio: Alpha Wing in Age of Aquarius:
** The Ego: Commander/Captain [[PlayerCharacter Samuel Bei]]
** The Super-Ego: Lieutenant/Lt. Commander [[TheLancer Phillip Corey]]
** The Id: Ensign/Lieutenant Mina Taylor

* GeneralFailure: At times Admiral Byrne seems to be this. However, knowing the way ''Blue Planet'' works, [[CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass he's probably got a hell of a trick up his sleeve.]] He has some sort of grand master plan ("Project Shambhala") that will evidently require all of Earth's surviving military industrial capacity, virtually all of First Fleet, all of the captured and defected GTVA ships at the UEF's disposal, and substantial additional resources, but [[UnspokenPlanGuarantee it's never explained what the plan entails]], and it still hasn't been put into effect yet.

* InterfaceScrew: The UEF's favourite tactics to compensate for their lack of brute force is to jam the enemy's beams.

* ItsUpToYou: Averted. Unlike in the original games, trying to do everything yourself instead of using your wingmen tends to end badly. In fact, in several missions in ''War In Heaven'' you absolutely ''must'' delegate certain objectives to your teammates: winning them on your own is impossible.

* LethalJokeWeapon: TAG missiles were known for having a small niche where they were actually more than novelties. But in ''War In Heaven'', where jamming beam weapons' accuracy and coherency is often the only thing preventing UEF ships from getting gutted in short order, getting hit by a TAG missile--which can allow GTVA ships to accurately target UEF ships with their beams--is one of the ultimate OhCrap moments. This comes into FULL effect in [[spoiler: Delenda Est, whereupon one of your ships realizes with dawning horror--too late--that they've been hit with a TAG missile, and is promptly obliterated in a single shot. That ship was your AWACS ship.]]

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: The UEF manage to get Admiral Severanti, who was in charge of the invasion, removed from command by making him look like an idiot...giving his reinforcing commander, [[MagnificentBastard Admiral Steele]], ''total control'' of the invasion effort. Where Severanti was a more cautious commander wanting to take Sol's assets intact via slow, grinding attrition, Steele is far more aggressive and would rather bring the hammer down ''now'' and get the war over with in a massive full-frontal assault. The sudden change in GTVA overall strategy catches the UEF off-guard and costs them dearly.

** Numerous missions, most notably the end of ''Delenda Est'' [[spoiler:when the GTD ''Imperieuse'' shows up]].

* PraetorianGuard: The Knights of the White Brotherhood, also known as the White Guard.

* SceneryPorn: Go play any of the Earth Missions in ''War in Heaven''. The view of Earth is beautiful. That is of course, after you may have been a bit weary if you saw the consequences of failing ''Good Luck'' in ''VideoGame/FreeSpace 1'' during ''Age of Aquarius''...

* SomebodySetUpUsTheBomb: Laporte finds a nuclear bomb in the freighter ''Nauticus'', one that can [[EarthShatteringKaboom blow up an entire comet]]. Her immediate reply was [[OhCrap pretty obvious]].

* SurvivorGuilt: [[spoiler: Laporte definitely shows signs of this after the Wargods' destruction. The final mission of act 3 gives Laporte the option to stay within the memory of ''Delenda Est'' until her mind deteriorates beyond repair, due in large part to her anguish over the events of that mission.]]

* YouAreInCommandNow: How Admiral Netreba obtained his position apparently.

* ModernStasis: Or a distinct lack thereof. The GTVA has actually bothered to get off its arse to design and build some new warships and strikecraft after the end of the original campaign. They are also statistically superior to their predecessors. Fortunately the UEF hasn't been slacking off either.

* ThreeAmigos: Bei, Taylor, and Corey in ''Age of Aquarius''. Brie, Kassim, and Laporte in ''War in Heaven'' Act 1.

** The Id: Ensign/Lieutenant [[TheChick Mina Taylor]]

* FiveManBand: The Fedayeen
** TheLeader: [[MindHive Al-Da'wa]]
** TheLancer: [[UnscrupulousHero Falconer]]
** TheBigGuy: [[FriendlySniper Kovacs]]
** TheSmartGuy: [[MissionControl Thorn]]
** TheChick: [[WarriorTherapist Vidaura]]
** SixthRanger: [[PlayerCharacter Noemi]]

* UpToEleven: [[spoiler:"One of [those ships] is definitely Shivan, sir. The other looks to be Vishnan. Both ships exceed juggernaut specifications by at least fivefold!"]]

* BadassBoast: The Shivans give one in "Universal Truth II", arguing with their counterparts:
-->'''Shivans''': [[spoiler:You claim memory past fault or folly but still you forget: we slept beneath the waves before the first Brahman rose from the ashes of the Dawn War, before the first stars were kindled in the hearth of night. The Brahman rose. The Brahman died. In their death we watched your making and we knew: all things made will be unmade. Even you. Only we are eternal.]]

* NotSoDifferent:
** A running theme in ''Blue Planet'' so far is that, in defeating the Shivans, the [=GTVA=] are starting to dangerously ''resemble'' them in a lot of ways. This is most apparent in their new ship designs, which use reverse-engineered Shivan weapons and are quite obviously heavily inspired by Shivan warship designs, and in their new battle tactics, which emulate observed Shivan fleet behavior almost exactly. It's also rather telling that, on the few occasions in ''Blue Planet'' that [=GTVA=] and Shivan forces meet each other in a straight-up, even fight, the humans almost always ''win''—which means that they may well be on the way to becoming [[FromNobodyToNightmare the new Destroyers]].
** Think about the war between the GTVA and UEF as a conflict between the Shivan-influenced and Vishnan-influenced branches of humanity. How much of that reflects the conflict between the Shivans and Vishnans themselves?

** Refreshingly, the UEF ships actually have fairly (relatively speaking) competent point defense systems compared to the GTA's flak.
** So thoroughly averted that attacking UEF and GTVA cruisers, corvettes, and frigates is going to get you ripped to shreds if you linger more than a short time inside their range. The second mission of ''War In Heaven'' starts with you just inside the point-defense range of a GTVA cruiser, and if you don't hit your burners and run away at top speed immediately, it's almost likely for you to die right then and there. It does a nice job of establishing just how averted this trope is.

* AnimalWrongsGroup: The Gaian Effort from ''War in Heaven''.

''Blue Planet: War in Heaven'' (2010/2013/???) is set a year and a half after ''Age of Aquarius''. The 14th Battlegroup returned to their home dimension to find the United Earth Federation as the current government of the Sol system. Their standing orders: crush the Federation and forcibly assimilate it into the GTVA. Samuel Bei, his father, and several other members of the 14th Battlegroup defected to the UEF, leaving the blitzkrieg assault the GTVA was hoping for in tatters. However, the GTVA were quick to regroup, and are now slowly grinding the UEF's miltary into dust. The player character this time is Noemi Laporte, a newly commissioned pilot in the UEF navy. Noemi has...issues, most notably a history of mental instability, aggression, and hearing voices [[spoiler: which are actually SufficientlyAdvancedAliens speaking to her through her PsychicPowers]]. She must face both her own personal demons as well as the forces of the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance, who outnumber, outgun, and generally outclass the UEF's. At the time of this writing, only three-fifths of ''War in Heaven'' has been released, the remaining portion still in development. ''War in Heaven'' was hyped extensively prior to release, and so far the general impression has been overwhelmingly positive of the released first part. More than one player has declared it the best ''[=FreeSpace=]'' campaign ever released.

* AcePilot: Plenty of them. On ''both'' sides. One mission is literally two small teams of AcePilot's going up against each other. [[spoiler: two of them happen to be Xinny and Zero, two of the pilots that made up the four SOC-man team that ventured beyond the second Knossos portal in ''VideoGame/FreeSpace2'' (including you, the player, and fan-favorite Snipes).]] Unusually for the trope, [[spoiler: it's possible to lose (by getting shot down), in which case you (barely) survive by virtue of your fighter getting disabled but not blown up, and Xinny and Zero survive to complete their mission, which is to retrieve (or rescue) a character from the first game in the ''Blue Planet'' series.]]

* AndThisIsFor: In ''Her Finest Hour'', Laporte say this for each of the enemy corvettes destroyed, naming the captains of the destroyed ships in ''Delenda Est''.

''Blue Planet: Age of Aquarius'' (2007) follows the 14th Battlegroup of the Galactic Terran-Vasudan Alliance as they cross the newly-constructed Sol Gate into the solar system for the first time. The player takes the role of Samuel Bei, an experienced veteran of the Second Great War from the original game. The fleet ends up lost in an AlternateUniverse where the Shivans won the Great War and humanity is reduced to a handful of scavengers on the run from the Shivan armada. Samuel Bei ends up playing a pivotal role in discovering the nature of this strange dimension and how they got there, finding his own [[TheChosenOne destiny]], and finding a way for the 14th Battlegroup to return to their own universe. ''Age of Aquarius'' won much acclaim for its richly realized story and excellent characters, especially Samuel Bei and his father, who [[WellDoneSonGuy have]] [[NeverLiveItDown some]] [[IHaveNoSon issues]], and its excellent and innovative mission design that featured a scale far larger than most previous campaigns.

* FiveBadBand: In ''War in Heaven'': Noemi's list, [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality according to her]].
** BigBad: [[FourStarBadass Admiral]] [[ManipulativeBastard Chiwetel Steele]]
** CoDragons: [[AFatherToHisMen Admiral Anita Lopez]] and Rear Admiral Verena Leinonen
** TheEvilGenius: [[ChurchMilitant Reverend]] [[EvilutionaryBiologist Iain MacDuff]]
** TheBrute: [[AcePilot Sergei Gwilym]]
** TheDarkChick / SixthRangerTraitor: [[TheMole Elder]] [[WellIntentionedExtremist Svetlana Henriksen]]
** TheManBehindTheMan: [[PresidentEvil Secretary-General Dimitri Toqueville]]

* MyGreatestSecondChance: When Noemi goes up against the GTD ''Carthage'' again during the second battle of Neptune, [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome she succeeds]].

* HeroicBSOD: Seemingly happen to Kassim in ''War in Heaven'', early on after his first real combat sorties, he frequently strays from his path during missions, and midway he apparently freaked out, may or may not be GoMadFromTheRevelation, could be just trauma of war or having visions similar to Laporte.
** The same thing happened with Lorna Simms shortly after the Rheza Station battle until Laporte beat some sense into her, and [[spoiler:again after "Delenda Est"]].
** [[spoiler: Levi loses it big time during Delenda Est, falling from his standard flippant nature into sheer panic before screaming as he's killed]].

* DesignatedAntagonist[[invoked]]: The GTVA. Their unprovoked attack on Sol and refusal to permit the "Ubuntu" philosophy that has taken root there to exist has painted them as the antagonists, but the story has been dropping heavy hints that they may be at least partially justified in their actions due to extreme circumstances.

* UnexplainedRecovery: [[spoiler:Samuel Bei. He appears to die after the Vishnan Sacred Keeper explodes, with his soul even appearing to be going through a reincarnation process... and then he wakes up back on the Orestes, his body apparently having been found, barely alive, floating near the Ross 128 node.]]* UnfriendlyFire: [[spoiler: Laporte and the other Fedayeen pilots are forced to do this to some Second Fleet pilots who happen [[HeKnowsTooMuch to stumble upon a black ops]].]]

* UnspecifiedApocalypse: The Shivans make mention of [[spoiler:"The Dawn War" and the "First Apocalypse", which may or may not be the same thing. Exactly what happened back then, billions of years before humanity ever evolved, is totally unknown, but whatever it was, it is what inspired the Vishnans and the Shivans to do what they do.]]* UpToEleven: [[spoiler:"One of [those ships] is definitely Shivan, sir. The other looks to be Vishnan. Both ships exceed juggernaut specifications by at least fivefold!"]]

* UpToEleven: [[spoiler:"One of [those ships] is definitely Shivan, sir. The other looks to be Vishnan. Both ships exceed juggernaut specifications by at least fivefold!"]]
* UnfriendlyFire: [[spoiler: Laporte and the other Fedayeen pilots are forced to do this to some Second Fleet pilots who happen [[HeKnowsTooMuch to stumble upon a black ops]].]]
* UnspecifiedApocalypse: The Shivans make mention of [[spoiler:"The Dawn War" and the "First Apocalypse", which may or may not be the same thing. Exactly what happened back then, billions of years before humanity ever evolved, is totally unknown, but whatever it was, it is what inspired the Vishnans and the Shivans to do what they do.]]
* TheSlowWalk: The assault on the ''Agincourt'' starts with this, also when breaking through the Hood's blockade.
* ThreeAmigos: Bei, Taylor, and Corey in ''Age of Aquarius''. Brie, Kassim, and Laporte in ''War in Heaven'' Act 1.
* TimeAbyss: [[spoiler:The Shivans, who apparently first appeared 5 billion years ago. They, however, claim that they are eternal, and they were "sleeping" prior to that.]]
* UnexpectedGenreChange: The later missions of the campaign include a long chain of stealth missions, a strategy mission, and a mission that consists entirely of a TowerDefense minigame; Act 3 ends on a lengthy psychological-horror segment in which you do not engage in any combat at all.
* UnexplainedRecovery: [[spoiler:Samuel Bei. He appears to die after the Vishnan Sacred Keeper explodes, with his soul even appearing to be going through a reincarnation process... and then he wakes up back on the Orestes, his body apparently having been found, barely alive, floating near the Ross 128 node.]]

* RagtagBunchOfMisfits: The "Wargods" task force of the UEF is not very glamorous, but it is brutally effective.

* PyrrhicVictory: Near the start of Act II, the UEF attacks the GTD ''Meridian'', flagship of the GTVA Sol theater co-commander Admiral Severanti. The strike is successful, driving the ''Meridian'' into retreat and Severanti into a forced retirement. So far, so good, until the GTVA decides to respond by deploying more assets to the theater and assigning sole command to Severanti's former partner/rival: [[MagnificentBastard Admiral Steele]]. Steele quickly launches a punishing blitz that nearly knocks the UEF out.

* HopeSpot: ''War in Heaven'' likes to toss these out before brutally crushing them.

* GoMadFromTheRevelation: [[spoiler: In the final mission of Act 3 there are many possible ways this can happen to Laporte.]]