"District 9 Sequel: What Would Make It Fun To Game?" Topic

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What sort of sequel concept would provide the most/best gaming scenarios for you?

For me it would probably be a return of the Prawns, three years later, but as conquerors (with help from surviving Prawns on Earth). Now that they know what humans are really like, they can justify a full invasion and conquest.

How's that?

Or would you prefer an entirely different gaming scenario?

Dan

A straight alien invasion scenario to follow up what was a very interesting premise? That sounds boring, predictable, and run-of-the-mill.

Perfect sequel-fodder from a film executive's point of view then…

Personally I think the Apartheid analogy should be continued with a sports picture, that serves as a metaphor for the integration of black players into South African cricket. Prawn Wikus van de Merwe overcomes human prejudice and after much hard work and painting fences, and with the love and support of a girl* who believes in him (played by Beyoncé) manages to get picked up by the Highveld Lions and joins their pace attack.

After overcoming many obstacles the Lions win the SuperSport series and Wikus gets picked to play for South Africa. The climax of the movie has Wikus winning the world cup against the dastardly, cheating Australians, by using the alien muscle structure in his arms to create unplayable reverse swing. Just as Wikus holds the trophy aloft, the alien from the first film comes back and lands his ship on the pitch at Lord's, giving Wikus the cure to make him human again. Thus cured he can kiss the love interest without it being squicky, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Would make a great game, too.

*The wife character isn't in the second film. In the back-story she was accidentally killed by Ricky Ponting in a fit of rage at an umpiring decision, thus providing Wikus' motivation to defeat the Australians.

The Prawns are given independence and then proceed to commit genocide against each other over slight differences and against humans over species differences.

Hey, wait a minute, that sounds too much like the real world.

The prawns are moved to the tent prison but there are nests of sleepers left behind in the dirt of the old camps…they are hibernating.

The mother ship is sighted by a long range probe…

The nested bugs wake up…

*****

Call it "The Sleeper Must Awaken!"

*****

The nested ones had cocooned themselves and metamorphosed into combat types.

Not all Grrr or "ahhh they are huge and scary" but rather smart, disciplined, and motivated…Prawn Marines or Special Forces.

They produce pheromones that cause the baseline workers to follow them without issue.

So in quick order, in the veil of night and through secret movement the soldier class make their way to key points of interest around the city (airport, downtown, industry, etc.) for recon as well as getting to the tent city…which is emptied out overnight without a trace…all of the prawns are hiding, waiting.

The sequel/documentary follows the life and career of the controversial director who created the human-prawn subcategory of hardcore pr0n :p

Aliens come to Earth that hunted Prawn as a sport. Wait been done.

Mother ship arrives to conquer but a pilot and a computer geek blow it up. Nope. Done that too.

Aliens land but die due to a cold virus. Damn.

Alien bite causes Zombies?

The Prawn governing body arrives and choose Wikkus as their delegate to negotiate for trade concessions and a refueling post on Earth. Unfortunately, many human forces are opposed to this, and as the aliens set up their technology and embassies, they are under attack form human 'freedom fighters'. The Prawn demand the right to protect themselves on their compounds, and the various Earth governments and corporations respond in various ways – some helpful, some not, some in ways that simply exacerbate the anti-alien anger of the 'freedom fighters'.

Meanwhile, Wikkus comes under scrutiny – is he really human? Can a man be converted to an alien and not be affected permanently even when the process is reversed?

Incidentally, why are foreigners always considered hostile and militaristic? Just asking . . .

The Prawn invasion fleet approaches, but leaves after the humans nuke all of their cat food factories. What results is a fight over the dwindling supplies of a precious commodity….

Prawn fleet arrives, liberates local prawns with minimal bloodshed. Turns out prawns actually are a "slave" species, with only a very small minority having real self-awareness and personal goals – only a handful are with fleet, Wikkus is inducted into caste. Company that had been researching prawn weaponry and doing medical experiments on them makes massive repayments to "boss" prawns, including turning over land for building fuel stations for starships. Trade deals are set up, with Wikkus acting as go-between and local factor for prawn civilization.

All seems to be going well until someone (Wikkus? Earth scientists?) discovers that the pollutants released from the fuel stations are part of a deliberate plan to transform all of mankind into servile prawns by exposing them to very low dosages of the stuff Wikkus was hit with. This turns out to be standard procedure for prawn expansionists. Further experimentation shows that any prawn child or larva exposed to large doses of the fuel will grow into a "boss" prawn – the original bosses developed when they were accidentally exposed to the stuff while acting as slaves to the civilization they've since wiped out. The "boss" prawns have deliberately limited their own numbers so they can retain as much personal power as possible, leaving the majority of their kinfolk (and transformed alien populations) as mentally crippled slaves due to limited exposure.

In short, the prawn leaders are just as rotten as mankind's are. Some Terran leaders might be "in on it" as well – trading the fate of their species for exposure to a heavy dose like the one Wikkus got, thereby retaining full intelligence.

Since we need a shoot 'em up at the end, the truth comes out (probably through Wikkus) and all hell breaks loose. Wikkus and some human scientist and military types confront the small number of boss prawns on Earth and some traitor Terran leaders (pick the politicians and businessmen you revile most) at the main fuel site. Both sides can boss around slave prawns and partial-transform humans, who make fine inept minion types to die in droves. Shootout finally wrecks the fuel tanks, releasing vast amounts of the stuff and leading to half or more of mankind transforming into self-aware prawns, and Wikkus to super-evolve into something even greater. Prawn empire kept away from Earth by threats to "uplift" their slave population by dumping vast amounts of fuel on their planets. Earth is left with a divided population split between standard humans, sentient transformed prawns, brain-damaged half-transformed humans, and slave prawns (some of the latter having been human once).

Not quite as obvious an anti-Apartheid message, but it sure is anti-government/anti-big business, so Hollywood will love it. Send me the check when they pick up the option. :)

Battle Works may just have won this thread . . .

To be honest, my idea might make a good movie, but for gaming a simple alien invasion/liberation plot would probably be better for gaming.

In short, the prawn leaders are just as rotten as mankind's are. Some Terran leaders might be "in on it" as well – trading the fate of their species for exposure to a heavy dose like the one Wikkus got, thereby retaining full intelligence.

Indeed. Why else would such an exploration ship have such high-powered weaponry? In the original Alive in Joburg, the aliens were using what was basically civilian tractor beam technology to fight.

No rescue mission because Christopher would be court-martialled over the loss of the mission. Nobody would be interested in travelling across the galaxies to rescue useless drones and workers.

Prawn civil war as their political structures evolve on Earth would be likely.

I agree with CW, I like Battle Works plot. Second place goes to Tabletop's "Mother ship arrives to conquer but a pilot and a computer geek blow it up".

If the premise of the second movie involves the return of the mothership, I think the time span between movies has some gaming potential.

The one that first comes to my mind would be a Mordheim style skirmish game. Players would have warbands searching the abandoned District 9 for alien tech and 'black ooze.' Warbands could be multiple Prawn ones, Nigerians, Multinational United (and other corps), and maybe even South African Police(army) and the United Nations.

Now I'm not sure how plausable the idea of a fire-fight zone near modern Johannesburg would be. One could simply say the mothership leaving caused a good deal of civil unrest in South Africa and the authorities are 'mostly' concerned with keeping order elsewhere at the moment.

Then the whole AlienNation scenario escaped slaves of an evil galatic empire but did the evil galactic empire ever look for them?

TTop,

I may be wrong . . .

In one of the Alien Nation films, an Overseer ship entered our solar system but, for some reason, their scout reported there was nothing to recover.

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Dan

Hmm, hard to top Battle Works, but here is my idea-

The reason the prawn ship was off course, crippled and crewed by 'dim-witted' Prawns since it was hit by a nasty bio-weapon cooked up by another alien species the Prawns have been fighting. One of the weapons effects is mental degradation, though it usually kills with a 100% mortality rate before the mental impairment really takes hold. The Prawn 'Mothership' was under attack and was hit with whatever vector the enemy species uses to introduce the bio-agent.

When the Prawn escapee returns, the Prawn nation as a whole is HIGHLY interested in rescuing the Prawns on earth since they are the first colony to get hit with one of these things and survive- they need to figure out what happened, since they are losing the war. Prawn rescue fleet arrives, tense words are exchanged but ultimately the humans are somewhat glad to have the resident prawns being taken 'off their hands' in exchange for a little tech support.

Now, two things happen to muddy the waters. First, the Prawns discover that the colony survived due to some unique properties of Earths microbial life (the humans inadvertently saved the Prawns when they opened up the mothership). The Prawns need this bad, and the fastest way to get more involves something humanity doesn't really want, like crash terraforming Earth into a giant petri-dish for certain strains of microbes. Second, the enemy alien fleet stumbles upon Earth, gets wind of what the Prawns found, and want to stop it, possibly by scouring the planet clean. So the humans are stuck between working with the Prawns and having Earth changed into a place much less pleasant for human life, or working against the Prawns and possibly having live on Earth wiped out.

Plenty of room for intrigue/explosions/battles/etc here as well. :)

-Will

I like Will's idea – plenty of scenarios there, including some spaceship fights, which is always good.

Now I'm not sure how plausable the idea of a fire-fight zone near modern Johannesburg would be. One could simply say the mothership leaving caused a good deal of civil unrest in South Africa and the authorities are 'mostly' concerned with keeping order elsewhere at the moment.

They have such things already. It's called Taxi Wars. I was in Durban once when they called in the army… Rooikats on the streets…

The returning alien armada is accidentally followed by the touchy feely ET race,giant alien love in ensues,a techno-pop super concert after which every bug departs hoping to reunite one day under similar circumstances.Humans develope a cargo culture in mimicry.

Hasn't that been done? I could have sworn I've read a short story called Planet Woodstock back in the late 70s or early 80s with a similar theme.

Lampyridae,

Wow, I had no idea.

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Lampyridae- So, the old Cyberpunk idea was in fact correct? At least for Africa? Amazing….

Africa is quite cyberpunk-ish. You see satellite dishes in some of these shanty towns. Not to mention Elon Musk & Mark Shuttleworth are from SA too. A lot of the futuristic MPVs are South African or based on SA/Israeli designs. The SASOL plant is the single largest CO2 emitter on the planet, producing synfuel from coal in flame-and-smoke belching Blade Runner fashion. Hippies on the South Coast smoke weed and build wind power farms. Security guards wear full body armour and tote assault rifles. Coupled with dreadlocked guys with AK47s and Nigerians scamming you on the net, Chinese expats, it's pure William Gibson.

As for D9. MNU uses alien technology to develop military hardware, pairs it with advances in AI to get past problem of Prawn biology interface. Result: Skynet, Judgement Day and South Africa getting nuked for its troubles. Now one of the few remaining sources of petro production outside the Middle East (synfuels), it also manufactures weapons in the fight against Skynet. A few of the surviving Prawn are banded together to fight the machines, seeing a common foe and putting their weapons to good use.