With the new Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance: Evolution DLC nearing release, and with it continuing the story of humanity's fight against the Machines, against Legion, we wanted to take you back to the battlefield to refresh your memory of the story so far.
The DLC’s that have been released have continued the story on from what was set in the original base game.
The base game followed Lieutenant Alex Church from his first command within the Founders, fighting back against Legion, finding himself and his force adrift in the wastelands, and finding allies in the form of the Movement, the civilian militia, that he managed to bring together into a Resistance force. Towards the end of the campaign, a giant Mech, using unknown digital technology was destroyed and that technology, named ‘The Digital Storm’, became a winning tool in the final battle against legion at Galverston, where Legion technology development, including creating human-skinned infiltrator Terminators, was halted, and some Legion technology taken by the Founders.
The first DLC, We Are Legion saw the war from the Machines point of view, as Legion identified the ‘Digital Storm’ weapon that had been used towards the end of the base game, and it tried to find out about, and capture that technology. Splitting off ‘Units’ from itself, we followed Unit 1462 as it made contact with the Integrators, and used Acolyte Silas to help it find out about Digital Storm.
Legion's path met Alex Church and his Resistance, and later attacked the core of the Founders forces, to discover and capture Digital Storm. It found that Digital Storm was a sentient AI that the Founders had ‘discovered’, from an earlier time in the 90’s, but utilized some ‘strange future code’ that Silas couldn’t understand.
We Are Legion ends with Unit 1462 being infected with the Digital Storm’s code base, and after a confrontation with Legion itself, Unit 1462 is left for dead, only to be ‘discovered’ and re-booted by Elder Silas himself.
The last DLC, Uprising, we returned to the fight of the Resistance as Alex Church and a portion of the Resistance forces are ‘searching in the North’ for more humans to join the Resistance. As the structure of Uprising is more ‘fluid’ and open, it is up to each individual player what the outcome of that campaign was, but pushing back the Machine hordes was the goal.
And so we move North and come to the new Evolution DLC. This continues the story set out in the earlier DLC’s [spoilers ahead].
The new campaign DLC continues the story of Alex Church, the Integrator Silas and the Legion Unit 1462 and their fights against Legion, or for their other goals.
When a large Legion mining and operation in Canada forces an Integrator army, led by Silas to seek out the support of the only force that he knows that could help them destroy these operations, Alex Church and his Resistance.
Entering the Legion Mining Facility
What we witness is an uneasy alliance, Integrators, The Resistance and Unit 1462, together to defeat a common threat, but all with their own individual goals and needs that may not sit well with the other allies.
This plays out in the snowy battlefields of the North, from Central New York to the Canadian wilderness.
Integrators defend a parking lot near Niagara Falls
Returning to the story are some of the key players. Alex Church is returning, leading the Resistance. With him comes some familiar faces from the original game. Big Bob & Sergeant Calderon return with their heavy tanks and their unique banter, as well as Sergeant Mason.
The new campaign story centers on the creation of the next Revs, a process that humanity is trying to stop. These evolved Rev 6’s do not carry weapons, but now sport bladed claws and increased speed. If one of the new Rev 6.5’s reaches an infantryman and leaps towards them, the infantryman has 0% chance of survival, but will be ripped to shreds. Survival depends on killing the Rev before its final attack.
An augmented soldier, using technology found during the Galveston fight back, can survive hand to hand fighting with this new breed of Rev. In fact, using the new augmented technology, it has a good chance of killing the attacking Rev, such is the strength of the new augmented humans.
There have even been some worrying battle reports of the new Rev’s attacking vehicles. Leaping onto vehicles and ripping off armor, until either the vehicle is disabled or the Rev destroyed. Although reported, we do not have any footage to correlate whether this is just rumours!
The Official Terminator: Dark Fate - Defiance Discord channel has a discussion specifically to ask questions about the game. Here are some that were not answered in the channel.
From Cameron Phillips:
What can we expect in terms of character development and evolution of our main hero in this new story chapter? Will there be any interesting choices or moral dilemmas to experience, similar to the ones presented in the original campaign? Anything you can share about the high-level plans for the characters' future journey - without any major spoilers? Thank you.
Mark:
Well, our ‘main hero’, Alex Church, is not necessarily the main protagonist in the new Campaign. As mentioned above, the Integrators and Unit 1462 are also front and center when it comes to the story. Each has their own goal and so it is interesting to see where each one may lead the story.
From Sky:
I actually have a question and it's a question that has been asked in the past but I'm curious if anything has changed, are there any plans or considerations going forwards towards introducing a map editor or mission maker possibly both combined into one.
Mark:
Hopefully, yes. But I can’t give any more information on that just now.
From Paul Lefebvre
Will Sergeant Mason’s first name be revealed in the dlc?
Mark:
No. (isn’t his first name Sergeant?)
From Raskolnikov
Mark, will we have a new giant robot in this DLC?
Mark:
Yes, and no!
More information will be released in another dev diary before the release of the Evolution DLC.
See you on the battlefield soldier!