After thirty years fighting the machines, humans barely escaped extinction.
Every year Skynet unleashes new war machines against us, each one designed for a single purpose: to wipe us out.
Every year we continue to defy it by fighting back.
Every year Skynet unleashes new war machines against us, each one designed for a single purpose: to wipe us out.
Every year we continue to defy it by fighting back.
— John Connor
The Terminator: Dawn of Fate is a video game developed by Paradigm Entertainment, published by Atari, and released in 2002 for the Xbox and the PlayStation 2. It's a fixed-camera angle Third-Person Shooter (similar to Devil May Cry) based on events in the Terminator franchise. It serves as a prequel to the original film, and follows the adventures of Kyle Reese and his fellow Resistance fighters Perry and Luna, leading up to the climactic final assault on Skynet and Kyle's faithful trip through time.
It's notable for being the first Terminator game for 6th generation consoles, and would be followed by a series of games based on Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
The Terminator: Dawn of Fate contains examples of the following tropes:
- Aborted Arc: The game ends on a Cliffhanger that was never followed up on, as the Terminator franchise would end up focusing on games based on the new film, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, instead.
- Beard of Evil: Both the T-800 and Gabriel Stone sport neat goatees.
- Canon Immigrant: Perry, who was mentioned in a single line of dialogue in the first movie, plays a prominent role in Dawn of Fate and later appears in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Despite betraying the Resistance to Skynet, the Stone brothers announce at the end that both of their enemies have crippled each other after the Resistance defeats Skynet.
- Cliffhanger: The game ends with Alex and Gabriel pulling a Villain: Exit, Stage Left, while Skynet begins to reboot itself from a hidden backup system aboard an orbital satellite.
- Conservation of Ninjutsu: You only fight one T-800 in the entire game, and it's a lengthy, full-on boss fight that shows just how tough a Terminator is.
- Continuity Nod: Perry is mentioned in one line of dialogue as Kyle Reese's commanding officer in the original Terminator film.
- Damage-Sponge Boss: The T-800 infiltrator fought in the hospital in Chapter 8: Infiltration takes a lot of punishment to put down. It's a Sequential Boss with 3 phases; chasing you with a laser cannon, then chasing you while unarmed, and finally chasing you as just a crawling torso.
- Face–Heel Turn:
- Alex Stone sells out the human race to the machines out of bitterness for John Connor leaving his brother to die. It was out of necessity, however, as Skynet had ambushed the Resistance extraction teams when they attempted to extract Gabriel and several other wounded soldiers. But as it turns out Gabriel is in fact, Not Quite Dead and had also betrayed the humans to Skynet.
- There are several human enemies in the game known as the Skynet initiates, which are cybernetically enhanced humans who are working with the machines. Some of them, however, are not doing it entirely by choice due to a mind control chip.
- Guns Akimbo: Justin Perry wields a pair of miniature rocket launchers.
- Karma Houdini: Alex and Gabriel escape from the Resistance unscathed and get off scot-free (permanently, due to the timeline being retconned due to the next few PS2 Terminator games being based on Rise of the Machines).
- Mecha-Mooks: Instead of fighting T-800s, your primary enemies in the game are cruder, more boxy and robotic-looking T-400s and T-500s. Instead of hyperalloy, these guys seem to be made of standard components and are pretty easily scrapped with standard automatic weapons.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: The I-950s/Skynet Initiates wear black and red uniforms and are universally Bald of Evil other than the two who are main characters.
- The Unfought: Gabriel Stone, who only appears in two cutscenes, only speaking in one. Alex Stone is also only encountered in cutscenes and also briefly used as a hostage in an Escort Mission, and is never fought directly in gameplay.
