Future sequels -- will there be any?

I wouldn't read this section unless you've already played the game. It discusses parts of the story. If you want to trudge on, click here.

As you may have guessed if you followed the story, there's a lot left unexplained. Who are the Masters? How did they come to have dominion over the Chtakt? What are the Vrakt, and how did they come to be Chtakt slaves? (And what is the name they call themselves? Obviously Vrakt is a Chtakt word.) Who are the Keepers, the Watchers, and the Unmakers? What is this temporal cusp thing that involves humankind? What happened to Hyperion -- was he destroyed or wasn't he?

There's a good deal more story that wasn't told here. Dissent is the story of the Time of Dissention in human history, and how the human race was ultimately frightened into unity against the unknown dangers of the Universe. (Nobody ever explained who the mysterious Keepers were to anybody on Earth, so the obliteration of the Chtakt invasion force by an unknown and extremely powerful third party caused almost as much fear as the invasion itself.)

Yeah, yeah... So, what's next?

Well, as much as I'd like to go ahead and start on the sequel, there are a few factors that prevent this at the current time:

1. I'm burnt out.
2. The future of the Infinity engine is unclear with the assimilation of Bungie.
3. The Aleph One engine is not mature enough yet for my tastes, and there are no editing tools to take advantage of it yet.

All that said, though, I don't intend to drop the rest of the story unless I get a flood of e-mails telling me I suck and that I should stick to reading throwaway Star Trek novels because they're better sci-fi than I could ever produce. But I need a rest, and even when I pick things up again, I doubt I'll do anything with the Infinity engine. Maybe if the Aleph One engine is SOOO improved that it's not even recognizable as starting out from the Infinity engine source code I'll work with it. But I tell you, it's a major pain in the arse having to built freakin' furniture into the floor plan!!! I want an engine where I can drop a chair in as an afterthought, dammit! Or a pile of rubble, or an overturned table, or a gun turret. (And don't tell me to just make a scenery item -- there aren't enough slots for scenery items allowed by the Infinity engine, and unless you REALLY work on the graphics, the darn thing rotates as you walk around it.)

So, bottom line, I'll release more of the story eventually, but not until I feel like it. >:-)

This page copyright 1995-2004 by Thomas Reed.