History VideoGame / RedFaction

** In fact, several missions Mason carries out are classic terror attacks, like blowing up a shopping mall and coffee shop popular with EDF supporters/collaborators, destroying a war memorial commemorating the EDF dead from the first Red Faction rebellion, assassinating top-level corporate executives during an ad hoc EDF economic summit, or destroying the seat of the civilian government apparatus of the Mars colony. The Red Faction also ''really'' doesn't like suspected collaborators. All are rationalized as necessary measures: Punishing those who support the EDF, destroying a symbol of the beginning of the EDF's occupation, killing [https://redfaction.fandom.com/wiki/Death_By_Committee capitalists benefiting from every EDF atrocity against the workers], and wiping out a puppet state existing to rubber stamp EDF decisions.

** Parker in ''Red Faction'' is hotheaded, with a hair trigger of a temper. For starters, [[InformedAbility he was accepted into Harvard]] before the events of the game, then decided to become a miner to spite his parents (rebelling against their carefully crafted plan for his development). In ''Guerrilla'', it is fortunate Samanya is the brains of the outfit, because Mason has the hitting power of a sledgehammer and the subtlety of one. This introduces an odd note of humor when giving him the nano forge is seen as putting it "in safe hands."

** Mining charges from ''Red Faction'' blows up more things than just rocks. A move that's continued into ''Guerrilla'' where they'll blow up just about anything except rocks.

* InterfaceSpoiler: The weapon menu in ''Guerrilla''.

* JetPack: Mason gets one in ''Guerrilla'' after liberating Oasis, and the Light Walker has one. Nope, sorry, it doesn't play Dixie when you hit the jets. Both of them have limited flight time, but automatically recharge.

''Red Faction'' is a video game series developed by Creator/{{Volition}} where Earth has exhausted its supply of natural resources, and depends on mining operations on UsefulNotes/{{Mars}} for the survival of its economy. The main gameplay draw of the ''Red Faction'' series is the Geo-Mod engine, a StuffBlowingUp simulator ''par excellence''. Geo-Mod 1, used in ''Red Faction 1'' and ''Red Faction 2'', was based primarily around terrain deformation: Rock could be torn away with your weapons, but metal surfaces were usually safe. Geo-Mod 2, used in ''Red Faction: Guerrilla'', reverses this, making the surface of Mars non-deforming and enabling the player to destroy buildings using a physics system so realistic the game developers actually had to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ6XM7NfGr8 study architecture]] to get the buildings to stand up.

** There's also ''Red Faction: Battlegrounds'' (2011), a top-down, twin-stick ShootEmUp for the UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 and UsefulNotes/XBox360 designed as a tie-in to ''Armageddon.'' It consists of various challenges narrated by ''Armageddon's'' Sergeant Winters, and multiplayer where up to four players can control a variety of vehicles from ''Guerrilla'' and proceed to blow up ''everything.''

* FanRemake: The "Kava: a Red Faction Prequel" mod for the original Red Faction is a reimagining of the Red Faction 1 Mobile game in Red Faction 1's engine.

* RegeneratingHealth: ''II'' has the health bar start regenerating after several seconds of avoiding damage. This is similar to regenerating up to a health segment in other similar games.

* DropTheHammer: The sledgehammer in ''Guerrilla''. It can single-handedly destroy enormous buildings with enough swings and one-hit kill many mooks in the game...

* BloodierAndGorier: ''Armageddon'', as opposed to ''Guerrilla.'' Characters in the Armageddon can get gibbed in gory fashion.

* MagikarpPower: The Grinder in Guerrilla. Mostly useless at first, but far more effective with rapid charging and explosive blades. In online play however the grinder is more immediately effective and affectionately referred to as a giant sniper rifle.

** Red Faction 1 wasn't without its share. Use flamethrowers on medics and unarmed civilians! Attach mining charges to the faces of security goons and watch them flail about helplessly to try and get it off! Blow out bridges to send people to their deaths!
* VideoGameCrueltyPunishment: None in the original ''Red Faction''. Feel free to give Ultor guards a taste of their own medicine... or take it out on non-miner civilians. ''Red Faction 2'' had a KarmaMeter, and killing too many civilians would get you the bad endings. In ''Guerrilla'' killing civilians results in a minor morale penalty.

* WeaponsThatSuck: The Singularity Cannon in Red Faction: Armageddon.

* YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters: The Red Faction are considered by the EDF propoganda to be terrorists. The EDF however are an oppressive regime that the Red Faction is revolting against.

** Occurs off-screen in the first game while you're inside the Ultor space station.

** A photoshopped image on the [=NeoGAF=] gaming forum of the hammer looking like an ostrich resulted in the developer [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments actually adding the "ostrich hammer"]] to Guerrilla as an unlockable.

* AwesomePersonnelCarrier: The original game had one instance where you drive an APC to get to the shuttle that will take you to the space station. It's not required, but highly recommended, as the area you go through is full of mercenaries, many of them armed with railguns. Thankfully, the APC's armor will protect you from them, but not forever.

* AxCrazy: Jenkins in ''Guerrilla'' seems fairly harmless (albeit [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} completely nuts]]) at first, possibly even a little bit CrazyIsCool. However, the more missions you do with him, and the more he talks to you, it becomes more and more obvious something is ''very'' wrong with him upstairs, and that he is in fact a dangerously unstable individual who is as much a threat to the Faction as he is to the EDF. Some of his crazy talk is even his own made-up Martian language; one of the things he says when you attack him (being the indestructible NPC he is, you can keep doing this) is "Zooblah-bee-bop!".

* BigBad: Axel Capek in the first game, the MadScientist responsible for the creation of the plague and mutants who the titular Red Faction is uprising against. [[spoiler: After he dies halfway through the game, [[TheDragon Colonel Masako]] pulls a DragonAscendant and sends her mercenaries to wipe out the remainder of the Red Faction.]] For the remainder of the series, Capek is a posthumous GreaterScopeVillain. The rest of the series has -

* BloodierAndGorier: ''Armageddon'', as opposed to ''Guerrilla.''

* BugWar: In ''Armageddon''. They are even [[LampshadeHanging referred to as such.]]

** Nothing ever really gets better in this series; Earth is starving for resources so we mine Mars... but the corporation with a monopoly on it has zero interest in basic human rights. Parker brings them down... and then Earth itself puts things right back where they were. Mason liberates Mars... then the terraformers go down, forcing everyone to live underground while everything Parker and Mason fought for on the surface is buried in red dust. Then the underground is harboring a SealedEvilInACan and it turns into something that looks a little like Franchise/DeadSpace. And if you take the [[CanonWelding shared universes]] into account? Everything you did in VideoGame/SaintsRow is irrelevant, because all of ''this'' comes next. Everything you do ''here'' is just going to lead to [[VideoGame/FreeSpace Sol being cut off from the rest of the galaxy,]] [[FridgeBrilliance thus exacerbating the resource problem,]] while five-legged omnicidal aliens destroy everything else.

** Also, in the original game, Gryphon is capable of walking around in the airless outdoor areas of Mars without an envirosuit.

* KillSat: Ultor has these in the first game, which must be shut down to let the EDF fleet enter Mars orbit safely.
** The Red Faction military in ''Armageddon'' also has this, during ''Path To War's'' third mission.

* UsefulNotes/{{Mars}}: The location of all games except ''Red Faction II''. In ''Guerrilla'' it's a blueish, greenish and yellow planet, too, with perplexingly distinct mood lighting boundaries. You may occasionally forget you're on Mars in ''Armageddon'', as a large portion of the game is spent underground in [[AmazingTechnicolorBattlefield Amazing Technicolor Caverns.]]

* MilitariesAreUseless: The EDF, despite being the armed forces of all the nations of Earth combined, is literally incapable of taking on both the Marauders and Red Faction. Their bases seemed to be poorly defended, to the point where one man is able to single-handedly wreck them. You would think a military organization would at least protect its buildings with automated turret guns?
** The Red Faction military is also quite incompetent in ''Armageddon''. Not only are they incapable of stopping the Cultists from destroying the Terraformer, but they can barely even take on the aliens. They even send Darius on fetch quests while they sit around doing nothing.

** May actually be downplayed or averted, though not because of anything the heroes did. See [[Fridge/RedFaction Fridge Brilliance page]] for details.

** The final two regular levels in ''Red Faction: Armageddon'' qualify as this. With truly countless enemies spawning left and right (including at least one Behemoth boss) and being stuck to tight corridors with little environment to destroy, playing the levels, ''even on normal,'' can be enough to induce a lot of rage. Some even consider the final boss to be a BreatherLevel!

* OffscreenTeleportation: In ''Guerrilla'', no matter how fast you drive between safehouses, Sam will be there to exchange salvage for goodies. [[FridgeBrilliance She probably uses the same teleportation function that you can buy to warp between safehouses after a certain point in the game.]]

* StrictlyFormula: {{Averted}}. None of the games play similarly to the others, even when they share the same genre. ''Red Faction'' feels like a SpiritualSuccessor to the first ''VideoGame/HalfLife'' in several ways (i.e., the one-level world feel, the second section's science-gone-awry angle, and the merc-heavy final third of the game). ''Red Faction 2'' goes more for ''VideoGame/{{Halo}}'', down to the super soldiers, quick toss grenades, and regenerating health. ''Guerrilla'' puts a destructive spin to the WideOpenSandbox genre ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' popularized, and ''Armageddon'' evokes the ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar''-esque third person shooter. The only things these games share are the geo-mod system, and Mars (except ''Red Faction 2'', which takes place on Earth). Interestingly, this series shows how this can be a [[SurprisinglyImprovedSequel good thing]] ''and'' a [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks bad thing]].

** FridgeBrilliance: If you'd just helped a bunch of freedom fighters rebel using sophisticated machinery and weapons, why would you let them have them now that you're an oppressive regime? You wouldn't! The EDF purposefully hamstrung the miners...giving them tunnel-boring machines to dig into your own bases doesn't make for a good defensive strategy! Anyway...manual labor probably kept more Martians from joining the Red Faction, being basically slaves and whatnot.
*** There are advanced mining and excavation tools, like walkers and heavy industrial excavators. The EDF controls almost all of them and confiscated the rest precisely for the reason stated above, and there's a mission based around stealing a walker for the miners to get their support. [[ProperlyParanoid The EDF's paranoia is justified]] since even a light construction walker is capable of smashing an armored staff car to bits in one or two blows, flinging an APC several hundred feet, posing a major threat to a ''tank'', and turning entire military installations into rubble within a couple minutes.

** Killing Capek in first game was easy. Just don't think about [[PrivateMilitaryContractors what comes next]].

* ''Red Faction'' (2001) is about a [[LaResistance miners' uprising]] on Mars against the [[MegaCorp Ultor Corp.]], a massive, corrupt conglomerate that manages the mining operations on Mars in the style of the British East India Company ([[EvenEvilHasStandards though that]] ''MIGHT'' [[InsultToRocks be an insult to the BEIC]]). Through the [[OneManArmy heroic actions]] of miner-turned-revolutionary Parker, and the intervention of the [[TheFederation Earth Defense Force]], Ultor's reign of terror is brought to an end.

* KarmicRape: It is implied that this is what Carmen does to Colonel Broga in ''Guerrilla'''s "Catch And Release".

* BigBad: Axel Kaypeck in the first game, the MadScientist responsible for the creation of the plague and mutants who the titular Red Faction is uprising against. [[spoiler: After he dies halfway through the game, [[TheDragon Colonel Masako]] pulls a DragonAscendant and sends her mercenaries to wipe out the remainder of the Red Faction.]] For the remainder of the series, Kaypeck is a posthumous GreaterScopeVillain. The rest of the series has -

** ''Armageddon'' has cult leader [[DarkMessiah Adam Hale]], responsible for destroying the Terraformer and leaving Mars uninhabitable and eventually awakening a dormant alien race beneath Mars' surface. [[spoiler:Much like Kaypeck and Sopot, he dies halfway through the game leaving the Alien Plague Queen as the FinalBoss]].

GameBreakingBug: In ''Red Faction'', the level where you have to escort Gryphon, do NOT skip the last door (The one with the turrets). For some reason, pressing Tab there will cause the scene to end with him getting shot, even though other cutscenes before that are fine. Dash Faction does not fix this. Do not skip the final door, or Gryphon WILL die.

* BigBad:
** Axel Capek in the original. [[spoiler: Until Masako comes along.]]
** Victor Sopot in the second. [[spoiler: Or so it seems. Once Sopot is dead, Molov tries to take over. Alias isn't having any of that, though.]]
** [[BigBadDuumvirate General Roth and Admiral Kobel]] in ''Guerrilla''.
** Adam Hale in ''Armageddon''. [[spoiler: Later, the alien queen takes over.]]

* ButtCannon: Mr. Toots shoots rainbow laser blasts out of his butt.

* UsefulNotes/{{Mars}}: No, really. In ''Guerrilla'' it's a blueish, greenish and yellow planet, too, with perplexingly distinct mood lighting boundaries. You may occasionally forget you're on Mars in ''Armageddon'', as a large portion of the game is spent underground in [[AmazingTechnicolorBattlefield Amazing Technicolor Caverns.]]

* ''Red Faction II'' (2002) is set on Earth, in the [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny Republic of]] [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment the Commonwealth]], a corrupt dictatorship that has used captured Ultor technology to manufacture {{Super Soldier}}s. [[BewareTheSuperman Fearing the potential]] of these soldiers, [[EvilOverlord Chancellor Victor Sopot]] orders them killed. The survivors form TheSquad, and join forces with a local resistance named after the Martian Red Faction in an attempt to overthrow Sopot. ''Red Faction 2'' is generally considered a [[FirstInstallmentWins step down]] for the series, due to its separate plot, removed features, and Geo-Mod unfriendly terrain.

* AllForNothing: Subverted in Red Faction, where the early part of the game Parker tries to reach a shuttle that a bunch of miners stole to get back to Earth, he reaches it too late. [[LifeSavingMisfortune But the shuttle gets blown up by Ultor AA batteries anyway. So it's good that Parker didn't make it in time.]] Hendrix lampshades this.

* MilitariesAreUseless: The EDF, despite being the Earth military, is literally incapable of taking on both the Marauders and Red Faction. Their bases seemed to be poorly defended, to the point where one man is able to single-handedly wreck them. You would think a military organization would at least protect its buildings with automated turret guns?

* TakeCover: ''Guerilla'' allows the player to duck behind cover.

* OnlyOneName: Parker's first name is never given.