OMG DROP PODS

we all hate the doom novels. good idea, not executed well enough.

so anyway, i went to barnes & nobel the other day and picked up the halo novel since i wanted something futuristic involving space marines. i haven't gotten far in the game so i don't know the story well but i do like the book; that'll probably change as soon as i play the game more. anyway i noticed something:

both in the halo book and quake 2 the marines were sent down in drop pods. they're one manned vessels which plummet directly toward the planet, drop a shoot, then the marine can get out and do his damage. they have multiple 'shells' that burn off as you enter the atmosphere.

why i mention this is because i'm a big fan of robert a. heinlein's Starship Troopers (the movie sucked). it was a very well written book so if you haven't read it you should (since we all like futuristic military killing aliens). in it he had the concept of the drop pods and everything. so what i'm wondering is this:

did id software and the author of the halo book put these in as homage to one of the masters of sci fi, or did they did rip him off for lack of origiality? you be the judge.

Pretty much the entire opening cinematic of Quake 2 was ripped off from the Starship Troopers movie.

Pretty much every Sci-Fi movie, game, and novel since the 70s has ripped off of Starship Troopers. Drop pods, power armor, space marines...as far as I know, they all originated from that novel.

And both Starship Troopers and Quake 2 came out in '97. Can't say who ripped off from who or if it was even intentional.

Starship Troopers is awesome.

Disorder said:

Starship Troopers is awesome.

No it's not! :P
It's horrible.

That movie is full of sarcasm and it is basically a parody about the army itself. Unfortunately, hardly anyone seemed to notice that. No matter how cynical the movie sometimes is, some things have become reality already (tv reporters mixed in with platoons on the battlefield, war as entertainment, 'if you're not with us, you're against us'). That is the scary part.

Disorder said:

That movie is full of sarcasm and it is basically a parody about the army itself. Unfortunately, hardly anyone seemed to notice that.

We noticed.
The problem I had with the movie was it's retarded inclusion of a romantic subplot, and the unnecessary amount of time spent on character development.
Also, Doogie Howser (sp?) should have had more time on screen :P

I'm told the book was quite good. I havent read it myself.

I think you'll find Aliens to be the first supreme ST rip off.

As for the Q2 opening sequence, I always figured they ripped the idea of boarding torpedeos (as opposed to little ships) from Warhammer 40K.

Havn't read the ST book though, so I could be wrong.

EDIT: As for the movie, I thought it was great. Fascism V.S Alien Superbugs, how could anyone not fall in love with that?

Disorder said:

That movie is full of sarcasm and it is basically a parody about the army itself. Unfortunately, hardly anyone seemed to notice that. No matter how cynical the movie sometimes is, some things have become reality already (tv reporters mixed in with platoons on the battlefield, war as entertainment, 'if you're not with us, you're against us'). That is the scary part.

Well said. That's one of the reasons why I find Starship Troopers one of the best movies ever.

Everytime CNN brings another flashy headline and takes the viewer live to the battlefield I'm reminded of that movie.

monochrome said:

(the movie sucked)

DIE!!#%&!
:)
Starship Troopers (the movie) is actually a good movie pretending to be bad...

Shaviro said:

No it's not! :P
It's horrible.

Your mom's horrible. :P

Disorder's right. The movie was just a spüf of the book.

Also, you can't forget C3P0 and R2D2 in the beggining of Episode IV landing on Tatooine in thier escape pod ;-)

darknation said:

I think you'll find Aliens to be the first supreme ST rip off.

Yes, I was thinking the same thing.

As for the Q2 opening sequence, I always figured they ripped the idea of boarding torpedeos (as opposed to little ships) from Warhammer 40K.

Nah, its pretty much 100% from any of the drop pod scenes in the book, at least the beginning part. In the book, the drop pods burned up eventualy, and they had to take the last 10,000 or so feet only in their power armor. I think they used thrusters or parachutes to slow down (the power armor in ST had thrusters that worked kind of like jump packs).

At any rate, I thought the book was at least 5x better than the movie.

i like the book. i also like the movie, which is basically an exercise in the theory that the perfect fascist state needs to operate in conditions of perpetual warfare. it's been too long since i've read the book to remember if that was a theme of it as well.

Yeah, it was a similar theme.

I don't think it was a facist state; there was no one ruling party or anything mentioned. Anyone could be elected to office, but the caveat was that you had to have completed military service in order to vote.

Linguica said:

Pretty much the entire opening cinematic of Quake 2 was ripped off from the Starship Troopers movie.

Except that in Starship Troopers, they weren't one-man drop pods, but apc-style drop pods with a squad inside.
But yeah, it was pretty much ripped from Starship Troopers.

Frankly, I'm wondering why the Hell the military would spend billions on high-tech drop pods for every individual marine. I know that it'll mean less casualties when a pod is blown up, but the military cares more about the budget.
Oh well screw that, it looks cool anyway.

Or yeah and Starship Troopers was a fucking farce - the movie that is. I pretty quickly wound up thinking: This is ridiculous! Why am I watching this crap?

Not just in ST and Id games...

"Dark Trooper, release!"

dsm said:

Or yeah and Starship Troopers was a fucking farce - the movie that is. I pretty quickly wound up thinking: This is ridiculous! Why am I watching this crap?

You took the movie seriously?

Fredrik said:

You took the movie seriously?

No of course not - that's why it sucks. If I could take it serious, I would've enjoyed it.
A good action movie is serious, unless it's an action comedy (and I rarely like those anyway) - ST is a fucking joke and was nothing more than a bunch of sterotype morons running around acting like clowns until they got chewed to pieces by them insects.

I'd rather go for the book.

dsm said:

No of course not - that's why it sucks. If I could take it serious, I would've enjoyed it.
A good action movie is serious, unless it's an action comedy (and I rarely like those anyway) - ST is a fucking joke and was nothing more than a bunch of sterotype morons running around acting like clowns until they got chewed to pieces by them insects.

I'd rather go for the book.

The point is that you aren't supposed to take it seriously - the characters were supposed to be stereotype morons running around acting like clowns until they got chewed to pieces by insects, since it's satire.

dsm said:

ST is a fucking joke and was nothing more than a bunch of sterotype morons running around acting like clowns until they got chewed to pieces by them insects.

As is my understanding, that was the point.

dsm said:

Or yeah and Starship Troopers was a fucking farce - the movie that is. I pretty quickly wound up thinking: This is ridiculous! Why am I watching this crap?

Great movie, but there's two things you have to pay attention to. You shouldn't take it too seriously, as it is a parody of how the army works nowadays. And the other thing is, it is basically a mirror for the US government.

dsm said:

Frankly, I'm wondering why the Hell the military would spend billions on high-tech drop pods for every individual marine.

Two words: Cruise Missiles.

Arno said:

Everytime CNN brings another flashy headline and takes the viewer live to the battlefield I'm reminded of that movie.

Do You Want To Know More?

:)

And yeah, the movie rocks in that respect. It's like they took the original novel and injected some Vonnegut into it.

Farmer Joe: The only good bug, is a dead bug!

The ST movie rocked in comparison to the awful CG 'cartoon series', yes, in REAL wars not one "good guy" is ever killed, ever!

darknation said:

Two words: Cruise Missiles.

Cruise missiles cause a helluva lot of mass destruction on impact, thus serving more purpose than a single marine inside a umpty-um-billion dollar pod which is smashed against the surface of Stroggos.

Besides, I think the Army cares more about destructive weapons than more "individual freedom" for its troops.

dsm said:

Cruise missiles cause a helluva lot of mass destruction on impact, thus serving more purpose than a single marine inside a umpty-um-billion dollar pod which is smashed against the surface of Stroggos.

Um...and exactly what do you think the marine is going to do after touching ground? I think the marine in Q2 caused much more damage than any cruise missle would. And in Starship Troopers, they were equipped with RPGs, grenades (heh...especialy the one with the countdown timer), and portable nuclear missles among other things. You can cause a whole world of hurt with that stuff.

the_Danarchist said:

Um...and exactly what do you think the marine is going to do after touching ground? I think the marine in Q2 caused much more damage than any cruise missle would. And in Starship Troopers, they were equipped with RPGs, grenades (heh...especialy the one with the countdown timer), and portable nuclear missles among other things. You can cause a whole world of hurt with that stuff.

Yes, but just HOW many marines were killed (turned useless) in Q2 without causing much damage?
I think a radio transmission in Q2:Ground Zero said something about 95% failing (read: dead). 95% out of 200.000 expensive pods. If those pods were replaced with cruise missiles, it'd have done a heck more damage than those three marines who were among the handful of survivors in Quake 2 and its two mission packs, because the damn things would've exploded in a chaos of mass destruction as soon as they hit the surface.
Something like cruise missiles would've be more successful in a scenario like this.

And lemme restate: The military doesn't care much for the comfort of its troops, which means that the military would rather stuff ten soldiers into one cramped umty-um-billion doller pod than make a comfortable one-man-cocoon about as expensive - if not more expensive - as the 10-man pod and then risk that they lose ten guys when it blows up. And also take into consideration that for each drop pod that makes it, ten soldiers would've made it to the ground and be together to cooperate effectively, whereas in the Q2 drop pods, only one marine would've survived for each drop pod to have touched down.