Map Title: The Source
Author: Jeremy War
From: Unreal
Filename: Queenend.unr
Music Files: Queensong.umx




Video Playthrough:


Synopsis: Deep inside the Skaarj Mothership, Prisoner 849 finally finds an answer to a question "Where the hell all those Skaarj came from?".

Discuss!

Screenshots are very well chosen, but when you play it, it feels much more mundane and architecture appears to be very basic.

That's pretty much the problem with every War map, they're all low-poly. The concepts always shine though.
This is one of my favourite levels of Unreal and most probably the best final level I have ever played. What an amazing boss battle.

For me, the Source always represented what a Skaarj homeworld would look like. Instead of the darkness, there would be a sky high above an indomitable, harsh, dead landscape, where you could find floating structures such as the Source chambers connected by pathways.

I have also never understood the proper lore behind the Source. What is it exactly? A location within the Mothership? Why is it so huge?

It is found underground I guess. It's something totally alien to us humans but since Skaarj were in Na Pali for so many years I guess they built the structures for the Queen.
There's a lot of unexplained stuff, like, how the whole place seems to be exploding after the Queen's death.

When I first played this I thought to myself "OMFG THE SKAARJ QUEEN!!" I think my heart was pounding at the moment.

The first time I ever got this far it was certainly an epic experience. However I will admit that nowadays it does seem a bit basic. The huge void, the iris door and the impressive view of the espace pod at the end make up for it somewhat. Other than the Queen the only things stopping you are the Pupae.

The Queen texture set was quite big but this is the only level to use in any way and only a handful of textures were used. There's also an unused music section. I wonder if the makers of Unreal originally had bigger plans that got scrapped/scaled back for some reason.

Just checked the ExtremeEnd level in the beta. There's a teleporter to a level called "queen" at the end but no such level exists. Hmm...

Spaceship interiors never made much sense in Unreal. They always seemed to be far bigger on the inside than they were on the ouside and never matched up with the exteriors. Its possible the the Skaarj did some construction underground (at one point you pass through a huge cavern) and what we see of the Skaarj Mothership is actually just the top of something much bigger. I believe the UT2004 version of it had a large extension.

Given that it is understood in Unreal logs that the Mothership "relocates" around the planet (kind of like the fortress in Krull) I imagine this was supposed to be part of the vessel. You gotta figure we only ever see the "head" of the mothership. There is no indication in Unreal that we are seeing the whole vessel, or that it is remotely saucer shaped (perhaps just the top is). Another explanation is that maybe the Skaarj have prepared subterranean zones on certain places on Na Pali that dock with the vessel, and the Queen is relocated to these areas every time they touch down.

Anyhoo, easily one of the best and most memorable areas of the game. The battle itself, in concoction and presentation, are among the first things I think about when remembering the game.

I'm liking the bugs (PUPAE) on the walls. What a great effect!

Very hard for me to make an opinion about this, the main thing was getting bummed out once I found out it was the end map.I kinda think this map has more merit for an online souped up coop playing.

It is very "Unreal"

I just remember always being a wuss and going into god mode.

The theme looks pretty cool, and manages the "this is the end" atmosphere well (with couple of bonus "wow" touches like the iris door), details like the Pupae hanging on walls are also nice. While the Queen fight can be pretty challenging on Unreal difficulty I do feel like it's lacking something in it's overall execution, but that's probably more a problem with Unreal mostly using lore/backstory rather than major events happening as you play (that could have built it up more).

I was much more impressed with this map when I first played it than I am now, but this is still one of Unreal's most memorable maps for me. The battle was great. What I didn't like was how so much ammo was lying around, and how the jump boots were right in the Queen's room. Unreal generally avoided having pickups in places that made no sense.

I always thought that the explosions were meant to destroy the rest of the ship to stop anyone from following the Queen if she had to be evacuated.

Actually, I always felt the opposite. Unreal was one of the last of a real bygone era of shooters where you didn't ask who put all the soul spheres and ammo around Dead Simple. Quite rarely did inventory appearances make any "sense" in Unreal. I think of maybe some of the human ships having some sensible places for stuff, but more often than not you waltzed into areas like Velora Pass where some ancient looking Stone Titan is sitting on a ruined throne, and the trigger that stirs him from his eternal rest is weighted by a weapon upgrade to a prison pistol that only existed on this alien planet like a couple of days before when the player crash landed. Question Mark?

The Source was a typical endgame map for the era in this context. Of course all the game's ammo and best pickups would be horded outside the last battle zone.

I played Unreal after Quake 1 and that Quake 2 industrial game, and I did notice some sense put into the environment design. I like the fact of the travelling throughout a part of the world, they did the same thing with Bulletstorm where you could see the city you had to reach from afar.

TEK is right, during the endgame sequence you fly also throughout an underground cavern, so at this point it's obvious that The Source isn't properly attached to the Mothership in the current state. Not sure though if Epic ever planned to do a Queen section (the docs mention just the last fight and that is), though maps with the "end" in the filename are always the final parts of a section (ExtremeEnd, VeloraEnd...).