Post Posted: 26 Sep 2013, 22:57
Of course. Here goes.
Dozey started first, with his ambitious plan for Return to Na Pali II: Na Pali War, taking place years after Return to Na Pali, the original Legend's mission pack. Initially, the storyline was to feature Prisoner 849 again being captured by the UMS and given the chance to cleanse their name by battling the Skaarj on Na Pali and thoroughly liberating it. That was the initial story. In walks CaptainClark (now SteadZ, he didn't leave the Unreal scene, merely renamed himself) with Operation Stealth Claw, his own campaign featuring a Bodega Bay survivor by the name of Captain John Clark, set way earlier than Na Pali War. They both worked independently on their campaigns and in walks my humble self, with two projects being on hold due to lack of team and some resources to provide. I decided to share these resources with them both as well as aid with "canonizing" the storylines so that they don't contradict as well as merging the codebase and resource base due to similar plans of these two talented men for their projects. Instead of each one creating their code and models independently, they now work in concert.
In walks me. Two of my projects got canned (one unannounced, by the way) because of lack of volunteers, so I decided, as I have mentioned already, to donate content I made or was provided with to them... and canonize the storylines, eliminating illogicalities and contradictions.
So came to be the youngest of the three episodes, The Manhunt which bridges Operation Stealth Claw and indirectly Na Pali War to Return to Na Pali itself, explaining who survived, how they got out, what happened to Prisoner 849 and the Talon Datacores that were the initial objective of the UMS in this sector.
As for the projected number of maps... it is unknown. Each episode will contain between 12 to 20 maps, but how many exactly, unknown. MISSIONS, story arcs, these are mostly fleshed out, how many .unr files will a given mission take, that is to be seen. We aim to tell a certain story: Commander Victor Delacroix' story in Manhunt: Crashed, Captain John Clark's story in Manhunt: Captured and Operation Stealth Claw and the young Aida's story in Na Pali War. Prisoner 849, clearly identified as Zofia Mozelle from Hard Crash will be featured in all three projects extensively as an NPC, so will the Skaarj officer and overlord Karrikta. There'll be more important characters in and it is them who count more than the .unr number. For all I care we can make each room a separate map and have 1000 .unr files, or each mission a single map and have 30-40.unr files in all three projects combined. It is irrelevant. The storyline is and it must be told in full.
The main features of all three projects will be:
- over-the-shoulder TPP gameplay (FPP will most likely be kept as an option, but The Way It's Meant To Be Played <TM> will be this TPP),
- vehicular combat, both groundside and aerial (including space battles),
- varying environments all across Na Pali -- and in Episode IV: Na Pali War, we'll even have a sidequest at Sulferon,
- more complete Terran ordinance, featuring the Unreal II weapons instead of the three RTNP ones,
BUT FIRST AND FOREMOST:
- a storyline that with minimum retconning (in fact I hope almost no retconning at all) will tie in to Unreal II and the UT series as far as Earth vs Skaarj conflict is concerned
- many mysteries of the universe unveiled (what happened to Jrath after Unreal PSX? What happened to Prisoner 849 after RTNP? How did the Prisoner end up on the ship from Firestorm? <and yes, I know its name from a tester of an old version of FS, hope it's up to date, help me out here Turboman, please!> Did the assault on the Mothership that ended the Seven Day Siege really have that much of an impact or was there anything else? And so on, and so on. What we're aiming to provide is satisfying and enjoyable-to-discover answers to those questions,
- multiple NPCs to probe for information and receive side missions from, including Nali priests and UMS officers.
- actual squadmates providing combat support and insight on the situation on the field,
- and more! There's definitely more stuff, much more, described in detail in the private subforum for UMS R&D, but I really would like to avoid spoilers. I've said quite a lot as it is and I'd really love to leave big stuff for the players to discover on their own.

I am the Unreal archivist and historian. If you have something from the past of Unreal that I don't have, do tell.