Told by Melanie

Development update. Everything here is in the current test build, 0.1.385. Details will change.

The opening film, in Melanie's words

The film that opens the game used to be told by an archival narrator. Melanie tells it now, in the voice that talks you through waking up aboard the Meridian. Here she is clear and close; when you wake, she comes through a damaged terminal.

The script is new from its first line. It goes from Earth's last years and the snow that people wanted to be snow, through the survey that found Nova Eridani and the ship sent ahead to see whether Earth's life could take hold there, to the Meridian and the long crossing. Like every voice in the game for now, hers is an AI placeholder.

"By then, if you wanted any hope at all, you had to look a very long way off."

What Genesis carried

Genesis carried more than seeds: frozen plant embryos, soil bacteria and fungi, algae and plankton for the sea and the rivers, and libraries of genetic records for anything too complicated to send alive. A new scene walks down the aisle of its holds, past canisters racked two high, to the live cultures at the end.

An aisle between racks of white seed canisters stacked two high, green status lamps on every bay, and at the far end the green glow of upright culture tanks. — Inside Genesis: the holds, and the live cultures at the end of the aisle.

The trial, and the bay

The trial starts small, with test plots ashore and sealed enclosures in the bay, to see what the native microbes make of Earth's life and what Earth's life makes of them. Most of the early trials fail. A new scene shows one of the enclosures in the shallows below the station, and a time-lapse shows the same shore years later.

A ring of orange floats in the shallows off a sandy beach, holding a sealed enclosure in the water, with grassland and mountains beyond. — A sealed enclosure in the bay below the trial site.

The same shore seen from high above: a strip of beach, young pines on the slope behind it, the enclosure ring small in the dark water. — The same shore, years on.

Room for the words

The film now runs about six minutes. There are three new scenes, and several moments are held longer so the narration has room: a record of the reports from Genesis reaching Earth, the Meridian waiting in her frame before her drive lights, and the arrival. It can still be skipped. Long lines are shown in parts that fit on one line, changing with Melanie's pauses.

The war, far off

The bomb has been reworked. Its cap burns from white through orange to red, condensation rings form round the stem, a wall of dust rolls out over the city, and more strikes light the horizon as the shot ends.

A mushroom cloud with a burning cap rising beyond the city's towers at night, smaller strikes flaring on the horizon to the right. — The war, far off.

A way in

The first time the title screen opens, the camera flies in over the planet's edge to the Meridian. Any key skips it. After that, it swings slowly round the ship behind the menu.