History VideoGame / RedFaction

* AbnormalAmmo: The Nano Rifle, a small arms weapon that fires nanites. Also, the Singularity Rifle and XNG-500 in ''Armageddon''.

* BadassLongcoat: Mason's outfit in ''Guerrilla'', apparently a thick safety coat of the type worn by firefighters and certain miners and construction workers. In ''Armageddon'', your ''PoweredArmor'' has one.

* BeeHiveBarrier: In ''Armaggeddon'', Darius can use the [[NanoMachines Nano Forge]] to create a projectile-reflecting [[DeflectorShields energy barrier.]]

* CarFu: The enemies in the final mission of ''Red Faction: Guerrilla'' may attempt to run the player over. The tactic is extremely ineffective at doing so, doing only light damage (compared to Alex either killing an EDF soldier or driving well past them) and sometimes parking the car beside the player and doing nothing.

* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: The Ravager {{Mook}} in ''Armageddon'' [[UndergroundMonkey comes in three different colors]] that denote their abilities. Reds shoot [[FlechetteStorm needles,]] blues shoot [[ShockAndAwe lighting blasts]] and oranges shoot [[StuffBlowingUp explosive fireballs.]] The Berserkers also come in two different colors; greens have an affinity to energy and oranges have an affinity to fire.

** ''Red Faction: Guerrilla'' has many references to the original game. The major cities are all named after ''Red Faction 1'' characters, the defunct Ultor corporation plays a role in the game's plot, and there's an EasterEgg where [[spoiler:Parker]] from the original game has a cameo appearance as an old miner who [[CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass keeps a stockpile of singularity bombs hidden in his house]].

* CoolStarship: The Hydra, what little we hear and see of it.

* TheDreaded: Alec Mason essentially becomes this, not only becoming a major figurehead in the Red Faction but a lot of EDF soldiers, including [[BigBad Admiral Kobel]] to exclaim something along the lines of "It's Mason!" when confronted by him.

* TheFederation: The Earth Defense Force, although they gain [[TheEmpire Imperial]] tendencies in ''Red Faction: Guerrilla''.

* HumongousMecha: Mining Walkers are very fun whenever you can get them. Heavy ones trash buildings like a walker through a butter factory. There's also the Light Walker, which is a fun runaround and has jumpjets, and the Combat Walker, which is... pretty much a MacrossMissileMassacre on legs, what with the rocket pods.

** The Arc Welder, which shoots [[ShockAndAwe streams of electricity]], incapacitating enemies and letting you hijack vehicles. Upgrades include ''allowing the streams to discern friend from foe'', and an additional stream for extra damage.

** Mining charges from ''Red Faction'' blows up more things than just rocks...

* IwoJimaPose: In ''Guerrilla'', an Iwo Jima-like monument can be found in Eos, commemorating the [=EDF=] soldiers who died liberating Mars from the Ultor Corporation, complete with a plaque listing all their names. [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized There's a mission to blow it up.]]

* MolotovTruck: You can make these yourself in ''Guerrilla'' by sticking remote explosives on a vehicle then driving it (in)to a target building before exiting and detonating the charges. Be careful that it doesn't end up [[HoistByHisOwnPetard toppling in]] [[OhCrap your direction]].

* MoralDissonance: Colonel Joseph Broga is painfully (and loudly) tortured in the ''Catch and Release'' mission by Carmen, before being dumped off a cliff. Apparently, this is A-okay, because Broga himself tortured people. In fact, [[KarmicDeath he tortured her interrogator]].

* NotInThisForYourRevolution: Alec is this at first when the EDF killed his brother. Of course he easily gets talked out of this mindset.

** In ''Red Faction: Guerrilla'', upgrades to your weapons and other assorted things, such as body armor and safehouse warps, are earned by trading in scrap metal for it (presumably used to improvise weapons and armor). This scrap is earned by destroying EDF buildings, their vehicles, hell, anything that says EDF on it. Since damn near everything short of the environment is destructible in this game, there are also some indirect ways that the game rewards you for vandalism, such as destroying a wall separating you from EDF soldiers to ambush them, busting a hole through a wall to escape through if you find yourself trapped, or cracking holes into pipes in order to find a safe way into otherwise well-guarded structures.

* StuffedInTheFridge: Even [[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee]], who's about as far down the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism as you can get, found it jarring how quickly Kara goes from being upgraded to love interest to being gruesomely killed off in order to give the hero something else to angst about, remarking that the elapse in time between the two events (probably less than 15 seconds) must set a new record.

** One of ''Armageddon's'' new vehicles is the [[CoolShip Inferno GX]] space fighter, so named and designed (it even has the same aiming reticule and twin lasers) as a nod to the legendary space shooter ''VideoGame/{{Descent}}''. Not surprising considering Volition's origins as Parallax Software, which they shared with [[AuthorExistenceFailure now-defunct]] ''Descent 3'' and ''Red Faction II'' developers Outrage Entertainment.

* GameMod: What enterprising users are doing with the PC version despite the lack of official tools. It's pretty primitive right now, but they're starting to make some headway. What's more fun than [[WreakingHavok destroying that gigantic bridge]] in the Badlands? Painstakingly rebuilding it piece by piece as the EDF try to kill you, and then [[StuffBlowingUp blowing it up all over again!]]

* IwoJimaPose: In ''Guerrilla'', an Iwo Jima-like monument can be found in Eos, commemorating the [=EDF=] soldiers who died liberating Mars from the Ultor Corporation, complete with a plaque listing all their names. [[KickTheDog There's a mission to]] [[TheRevolutionWillNotBeCivilized blow it up.]]

* ArbitraryMissionRestriction: ''Guerrilla'' has missions that require the player to destroy a building within a time limit, using explosives and other tools that are provided. The restrictions range from simply using the tools quickly, to spotting a building's crucial structural weak points, to solving puzzles.

* RealityEnsues:
** In the very beginning of ''Guerrilla'' your character presents his ID to the immigration officer upon arriving on Mars...a ''photo ID''. Once the EDF find out he has joined the Red Faction midway through the game, his face ends up plastered all over every media outlet on the planet, and EDF soldiers will occasionally recognize you and attack you on sight, shouting things like "I've found him!", or "I found a terrorist!".
** A meta example from ''Guerrilla'' comes from the fact that buildings does not generally respawn once destoyed, [[BrokenBridge including bridges]]. You might in other words want to leave the second dust mission (where you destroy in order to flee pursuers) until your completely done with dust as well as leave that giant memorial bridge in the Badlands alone, unless you wan't to have to take a big detour whenever you pass through that area.

* AxCrazy: Jenkins in ''Guerrilla'' seems fairly harmless (albeit [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} completely nuts]]) at first, possibly even a little bit CrazyAwesome. 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!".

* ExecutiveMeddling: The original plans for Armageddon(Red Faction:Crusade at the time.) had no plans to involve Aliens until THQ forced them to.

* AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs: In the middle of a ''Guerrilla'' mission, the game pulls a swerve: [[spoiler:without warning the mission is aborted and you have to race to save a safehouse from a full-on assault. The safehouse is wrecked and your commander is killed.]]
** Also occurs off-screen in the first game while you're inside the Ultor space station.
* AmbiguouslyGay: Quill. Let's see: very masculine, short hair, calls Tangier "a pretty little soldier", and says that she doesn't know what Tangier sees in Alias in such a way that may imply jealousy? Yep, it could fit.
** And if that wasn't enough, Quill uses male animations.

* AscendedMeme: 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.

* AxCrazy: Jenkins in ''Guerrilla'' seems fairly harmless (albeit [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} completely nuts]]) at first, possibly even a little bit CrazyAwesome. 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!".

* CanonWelding: There are several clues (most notably Ultor) that indicate that ''Red Faction'' takes place in the future of ''Saints Row''. For example, in ''Guerrilla'', Mount Vogel from the finale is named after the BigBad of ''VideoGame/SaintsRow2''. It is also suggested that the ''VideoGame/FreeSpace'' series takes place in the same timeline, with a reference to one "Subach Industries" after you destroy the AAX gunships in the Badlands mission ''Air Traffic Control''. On the other hand, it may just have been a passing ShoutOut. There is also a Radio Tag that belonged to Shaundi, a perpetually stoned Saint in ''Saints Row 2'' that essentially acted as the Player Character's intelligence officer. It includes both her portrait and, unlike the rest of the Radio Tags, only her first name. It's unfortunate that the Tag is found on a skeleton, though (but what else can you expect from the far future?).

* ContinuityNod: ''Red Faction: Guerrilla'' has many references to the original game. The major cities are all named after ''Red Faction 1'' characters, the defunct Ultor corporation plays a role in the game's plot, and there's an EasterEgg where [[spoiler:Parker]] from the original game has a cameo appearance as an old miner who [[CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass keeps a stockpile of singularity bombs hidden in his house]].

* CrapsackWorld: 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.

* DeadpanSnarker: Alec Mason. His grandson Darius also. Runs in the family.

* DestructiveSaviour: All of the games to some extent, but especially ''Guerrilla'', where StuffBlowingUp pretty much advances the plot. It lowers EDF control in the region, which unlocks main story missions.
** The best part is ''the game actually permanently saves every bit of damage you do'' to the various buildings and structures scattered around the game world. By the end of the game the Mars colony may very well be a smouldering wreck thanks to you.
** However, it ''is'' permanent. This means you can't go back and [[StuffBlowingUp destroy it all again.]] Unless you have the [=PC=] version and enable the Reconstructor in single-player...

* DisasterScavengers: The Marauders in ''Guerrilla'' live like this, with structures, weapons and vehicles that appear to be cobbled together from bits and pieces of scrap. [[spoiler: It is however, [[{{Masquerade}} a facade.]] They do this to hide their identities as former [[MegaCorp Ultor]] scientists, and descendants thereof. And they know very well how their LostTechnology works, thank you very much.]]
** ''Armageddon'' turns this UpToEleven.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: ''Red'' Faction? Mars, the ''red'' planet? The rebels largely taking their support from manual workers and their symbol being a clenched fist holding a (sledge)hammer?

* EliteMooks: The Elite Guard and Merc soldiers in the original ''Red Faction'', and the Sopot Elite Guard and Nano Elite in ''Red Faction 2''. The Merc soldiers in [=RF1=] are ''particularly'' elite. As in, you could be running around with a shotgun and an assault rifle gunning down Ultor guards left and right, and you'll be just fine, but when the Mercs roll in, it's a severe shock to the system when half of them are carrying [[MoreDakka Heavy Machine Guns]] and the other half carry the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Rail Driver]], which can kill you ''with one shot, through walls and on any part of your body''. [[CriticalExistenceFailure Apparently, Parker has vital organs in his feet.]]

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Unknown if it's intentional or not, but the old coot in the Badlands ([[spoiler:Parker]]) mentions that there aren't any monsters left on Mars, unless you look real hard. While there are none in ''Guerrilla'', guess exactly what happens in ''Armageddon''...
** Also, during the "Ultor Echo" mission, when Samanya asks about the Marauders that Alec followed in, she's suspiciously curious about whether or not he killed them. Later in the game, guess what Samanya reveals she used to be prior to the game's events...

* IdiotHero: Parker in ''Red Faction'' is pretty damn dense, not to mention rather hotheaded. Funnily enough, [[InformedAbility he was accepted into Harvard]] before the events of the game. He decided to become a miner to spite his parents. In ''Guerrilla'', it is fortunate Samanya is the brains of the outfit. Mason has the hitting power and intellect of a sledgehammer. This introduces an odd note of humor when giving him the nano forge is seen as putting it "in safe hands."

* TheMole: In ''Guerrilla''. An interesting case as the "traitor" is not actually a member of the other side, but simply [[spoiler:batshit insane. It's Jenkins: see CrazySurvivalist, above.]]

*** There's also an earlier mission where a truck carrying a POW and followed by half-a-dozen EDF gunships gets perilously close to the base before being ordered to break away. There's literally nothing else in that direction, no wonder they were suspicious.

* MoralDissonance: Colonel Joseph Broga is painfully (and loudly) tortured in the ''Catch and Release'' mission by Carmen, before being dumped off a cliff. Apparently, this is A-okay, because Broga himself tortured people.
** In fact, [[KarmicDeath he tortured her interrogator]].

* NintendoHard: In the first game, some of the late-game levels where you fight against the Mercs can be this, as many of them are armed with one-hit-kill railguns, and even their normal weapons can kill you in just 4 to 8 shots. ''Guerrilla'' can often be this as well, with its large number of {{Escort Mission}}s and the fact you're often expected to fight 10-20 enemies at the same time with a character who really isn't particularly durable by shooter standards.

* NoOSHACompliance: What did you expect from an evil corporation with no regard for human safety, anyway?

* 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.

* RailShooter: The missions on [[CrazySurvivalist Jenkins']] trike-car, popping off rockets at EDF assets while the game controls the car and keeps count of the damage cost to the EDF. In ''Red Faction 2'' you occasionally take the gunner position in a tank or aircraft.

* RealityEnsues: In the very beginning of ''Guerrilla'' your character presents his ID to the immigration officer upon arriving on Mars...a ''photo ID''. Once the EDF find out he has joined the Red Faction midway through the game, his face ends up plastered all over every media outlet on the planet, and EDF soldiers will occasionally recognize you and attack you on sight, shouting things like "I've found him!", or "I found a terrorist!".
** A meta example from the same game comes from the fact that buildings does not generally respawn once destoyed, [[BrokenBridge including bridges]]. You might in other words want to leave the second dust mission (where you destroy in order to flee pursuers) until your completely done with dust as well as leave that giant memorial bridge in the Badlands alone, unless you wan't to have to take a big detour whenever you pass through that area.

* TheRevolutionWillNotBeVillified: [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] in ''Red Faction 2''. Played mostly straight everywhere else, with some notable exceptions. In ''Guerrilla'', most of the Red Faction's actions are either in self-defense or attacks against legitimate military targets of the cartoonishly evil EDF, but there are a couple missions which are a bit more...grey, like blowing up a shopping mall and coffee shop which are popular with civilian supporters of the EDF, destroying a war memorial commemorating the dead from the first Red Faction rebellion, stopping a corporate contract negotiation by killing all the negotiators, or wiping out the civilian government apparatus of the Mars colony (who, granted, are a powerless puppet state, but still). The Red Faction also ''really'' doesn't treat suspected collaborators well.
** This isn't even getting into the biggest bit of MoralMyopia yet. When Hydra appears in orbit, the plan was apparently to send in companies of marines following orbital bombardment. The vessel was prepped for a full scale planetary invasion, which means that it had a full complement on board...a complement of ''200 thousand.'' You read that right. The final act of the game has the heroic revolutionaries effectively carrying out a genocide of their own for the sake of a world whose population couldn't possibly come close to that. Granted, these are the same sort of people [[ArmiesAreEvil who have been happily massacring civilians throughout the game]], but that hardly seems like decent justification in the end.

* RewardingVandalism: In ''Red Faction: Guerrilla'', upgrades to your weapons and other assorted things, such as body armor and safehouse warps, are earned by trading in scrap metal for it (presumably used to improvise weapons and armor). This scrap is earned by destroying EDF buildings, their vehicles, hell, anything that says EDF on it. Since damn near everything short of the environment is destructible in this game, there are also some indirect ways that the game rewards you for vandalism, such as destroying a wall separating you from EDF soldiers to ambush them, busting a hole through a wall to escape through if you find yourself trapped, or cracking holes into pipes in order to find a safe way into otherwise well-guarded structures.

* ShockAndAwe: The Arc Welder in ''Red Faction: Guerrilla''. Quite a useful little weapon, since Mason seems physically incapable of hijacking vehicles.
** It's realistic, in the sense that high-end military vehicles like tanks etc. should have ''some'' kind of door lock to prevent people from exactly that. And hey, without that, you wouldn't have an incentive to use the welder to [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential electrocute an entire APC worth of troopers]].

* [[StuckItems Stuck Item]]: In ''Guerrilla'', Mason's sledgehammer fills up a slot, being only possible to exchange with one of the two upgraded versions (costing salvage on switching as it's done at the upgrade table.) It [[AvertedTrope becomes unstuck]] in ''Armageddon''.

* UnexpectedGameplayChange: [[spoiler:The nuclear bomb in the first game]]. The clunky overhead-view protect-the-truck-with-artillery mini-game in ''Guerrilla''.
** Depends. The amount of destruction you can unleash on the EDF with the artillery is well worth the clunk.
* UnwantedAssistance: Darius tells SAM to remain silent several times.
-->'''Darius''': ''Would you stop detecting!?''

* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: Most apparent in ''Guerrilla'', a wide-open sandbox-style game in which literally anything built by human hands can be destroyed. In fact, the Cruelty Potential is so blatant in ''Guerrilla'' that it's actually had a song written about it: ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcUBI-YVRY8 Space Asshole]]'' takes the point of view of a colonist who is afflicted by Mason rampaging though Mars.

* However, it ''is'' permanent. This means you can't go back and [[StuffBlowingUp destroy it all again.]] Unless you have the [=PC=] version and enable the Reconstructor in single-player...

** "The best part?" That's the ''worst'' part! It means you can't go back and [[StuffBlowingUp destroy it all again.]] Unless you have the [=PC=] version and enable the Reconstructor in single-player...

** Try multiplayer mode on impossible and watch the comp get a sniper rifle, I didn't know computers could hit you with their back facing you so well... [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard yea...]]

** The Marauders. In ''Guerrilla'', they all wear

* ISurrenderSuckers: The guards in ''Red Faction'' often give off this effect since they continue to attack the player anyway.

* InstakillMook: The Mercenary Commanders in the original ''Red Faction'', who often carry Rail Drivers capable of kill you in one hit, even on the ''lowest difficulty''.

* IdiotHero: Parker in ''Red Faction'' is pretty damn dense, not to mention rather hotheaded. Funnily enough, [[InformedAbility he was accepted into Harvard]] before the events of the game. He decided to become a miner to spite his parents. In ''Guerrilla'', it is fortunate Samanya is the brains of the outfit. Mason has the hitting power and intellect of a sledgehammer. This introduces an odd note of humour when giving him the nanoforge is seen as putting it "in safe hands."

* MookLieutenant:
** Ultor Guard Commanders in the first game, known for using the fully-automatic alternate fire mode of their assault rifles. Also, Mercenary Commanders, who often carry instakill railguns.
** The second game has female military officers, who carry the NICW and make perfect use of it's alternate fire grenade launcher.

* AMillionIsAStatistic: The final mission of Guerrilla requires the player to blow up the [[CoolShip E.D.S. Hydra]] before it can begin bombing Mars. While the entire sequence is quite heroic, they seem to be totally forgetting one detail; according to the Voice of Mars, Hydra had a crew compliment of over ''200 thousand''. So unless Mars had an unprecedented period of growth, they're killing off more than the total population of the planet. Other than that one news broadcast, this is ''never'' brought up by the heroes, who seem to treat the whole thing as cool heroic action and an excuse for a catchy one-liner, rather than mass murder. Regardless of how justified and NecessarilyEvil it is, [[WhatTheHellHero that's just cold.]]

* WalkingShirtlessScene: In ''Red Faction 2'', your vehicle specialist Shrike never wears a shirt.

* 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 ''Series/{{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]].

* ScrappyWeapon:
** In the first game, many of your weapons become useless when you start fighting the mercenaries. Best mention goes to the pistol, submachine gun, and shotgun.
** In ''Red Faction II'', since you start the game with a grenade launcher(the NICW in the prologue), the pistol is pretty useless. Not to forget that soon after, you get the machine pistol and silenced submachine gun. The assault rifle is also useless in the first mission, as you have the NICW(you obtain it again at the end of the Underground mission, but it becomes obsolete when you get the NICW in the next two missions). As you get more powerful weapons, even the nanotech grenade launcher becomes forgettable.

* HeroicBSOD: [[spoiler: Alec goes through a momentary one following the EDF take over of a Red Faction safe house and the commander's death, briefly losing faith in the revolution. Luckily Samanya snaps him out of this with her plan to get the Marauders on their side.]]

* ContinueYourMissionDammit: ''Guerrilla'' would like you to think Red Faction missions are urgent. They aren't.

* IgnoredConfession: [[spoilers:During the final Collateral Damage mission in Guerilla, Jenkins straight up tells Mason that he told the EDF where the Red Faction Bases are and even drew them a map to them; Possibly subverted, since there's so many explosions and so much chaos during Collateral Damage missions that Mason might not have heard him.]]

* IgnoredConfession: [[spoilers: During the final Collateral Damage mission in Guerilla, Jenkins straight up tells Mason that he told the EDF where the Red Faction Bases are and even drew them a map to them; Possibly subverted, since there's so many explosions and so much chaos during Collateral Damage missions that Mason might not have heard him.]]