Headscratchers / Killzone

• When the Vektans gave the Helgast permission to occupy half of their planet why did they permit them to keep their weapons or control of their really big ships. The Vektans were in a position where they could dictate terms and should have at least taken their space force as part of the agreement and most of their weapons (they should have left only enough weapons for policing their new territory rather than the massive fleet we see later in the game).
  • While you make a great point and the Vekta Helghast are far better equipped than they should be, the huge fleet at the end belonged to Stahl, who had spent the past 30 years secretly building an army in the ruins of Helghan, completely unknown to the ISA.
  • I personally believed that this was because the ISA and UCN weren't actually in a good position to dictate things for the Helghast remnants, and the ISA and UCN had to be that lenient in order to at least try and make peace with the Helghast (the opening cutscene from Shadow Fall shows the Helghast still have a decently sized naval force left, which could probably in an act of desperation launch suicide attacks on Earth and Vekta just for the sake of killing as many ISA and UCN people as possible). Why the things were that lenient however, is an issue that still remains.
• Helghast wear gas masks because they can only breathe Helghan's atmosphere. Okay. Killzone 2 takes place on Helghan. Okay. The Helghast still wear gas masks, while the humans don't. Wait, what?
  • The masks have become a symbol of pride for the Helghan, kind of like "reclaiming" slurs. How the humans breathe, I dunno.
    • The pride bit I can understand, but they probably limit vision and are bulky. I suppose they could have vision enhancers in the lenses, making them useful.
    • They never have a problem finding you, even in the dark, so I suppose the vision enhancers can be vouched for.
  • Never knock gasmasks in a time of war especially when you fight an army who could resort to desperate measures if things go south. What surprises me is that the humans arent wearing them.
  • I can get the masks becoming a symbol of pride, but what bugs me is the glowing eyes. Is there any purpose in helping the enemy target your face?
    • Even assuming that the lights don't have a functional use (like the vision enhancement mentioned elsewhere)... A: Intimidation/terror against the enemy to try and encourage surrender or withdrawl, and B: For IFF purposes: in the limited visability of Helghan, the Helghens might be using them to pick out each other as much as you are using them to pick up them (and those that don't have said goggles are thus the enemy and liable to be shot on sight).
    • Each of those has a backdraw though. They may enhance immediate vision, but they fuck up your peripheral vision, so I can't imagine anyone but snipers using effectively. Fear and intimidation is countered by them basically being targets. It's not just that they make them out to be targets, but because they put them specifically on the face. Wasn't there someone that lit a cigarette in the night and was shot for it? Now imagine an army doing that on a rather dark planet. And wearing them for identification seems pointless when the ISA wear those glowing blue things. Speaking of which, what are those and why are they wearing them?
  • The developers didn't want you to empathize with the Helghast, so they made sure you can't see their faces. Seriously, that's pretty much rule number one in "Dehumanizing the Enemy". By hiding their faces you don't think "This is a person, just like me.", you think "This is the enemy, whom I should kill.".
  • Firstly, the masks look cool. YMMV on how much of the backstory fluff is made up to support that decision. Secondly the idea is that the pollution/particulate matter in the atmosphere is something FIERCE still. That said, it takes years for serious issues to occur. Helghan workers used to die in their thirties of Lungburn. Will the ISA Troops have serious long term health issues (if they get home)? Yes, of course. Did the government know all about that and opt not to wait for a credible countermeasure to be manufactured in sufficient numbers? Do the maths. The ISA are bastards.
  • I seem to remember some fluff about the Helghast lungs adapting, over the generations, to be able to breath far better in their atmosphere and worse elsewhere and thus really reversing the situation when they go off world (i.e. they needed them to work better). That is of course if you were a lower cast Helghan hence you noticed all the senior officers in the first game don't wear the maks. Course, all goes to pot when you see them wearing the masks at home too... I'd put it down to some unmentioned 'combat stimulants' or other mind control stuff to turn them into the drones they are.

• Shadow Marshals(Assassins) and Spies of that fashion barely if at all mentioned in Killzone 2 yet, in 1 and Liberation they were everywhere.

• Rico in Killzone 2. Whose bright idea was it to HIM in charge of capturing the leader of the Helghast? The guy who is absolutely idiotic and kill-crazy!
  • This troper found it very strange/infuriating that Rico hasn't been punished for his mistakes at all. You'd think one of his squadmates would knock him out or tie him up or something to keep him from making any more dangerous decisions.
    • Narville does bust Rico down a rank to Sergeant in Killzone 3, but it raises even more problems. First of all, he's still in a position to command troops to their deaths, so why not just demote him to Private and take him out of a leadership role entirely? As well, Sev and Rico appear to be the only NC Os in the ISA task force by the time that game starts, so it doesn't really alter their place within the chain of command; they're still taking orders from Narville and giving them to the grunts. That, combined with the fact that Rico comes back with the Raiders, renders it an utterly meaningless plot point.
  • Oh, and on a slightly different note: Why does the pronouciation of "Jan" get so wrong in KZ 2? This is very puzzling given the developer is from Amsterdam!
  • My take is that Ricos team just happened to be the ones who made it that far, and thus had to be the ones to attack. Infantry strategy places a heavy weight on tactical initiative, so them being there and assaulting immediately makes sense. Add in the Enemy leader being the target, and an elite team, and you have a done deal.
  • Rico was Team Leader of one of many Special Forces teams under Templar's command. Templar chose to use Rico's team because he had history with Rico and Rico pretty much followed Templar's orders (more or less). It was really once Templar was dead that Rico become a serious liability.
• The ability of the ISA invasion force to endure Helghan's climate conditions and atmosphere without any problem. Given that such a big deal has been made out of Helghan's alien environment, the fact that it's never even mentioned is really weird. You'd think that a throw-away line could be given, like: "Make sure you take your special shots, Sev, unless you want your lungs to decompose." It would have also added another dimension to the story of Killzone 3, maybe the ISA troopers lost their supplies of such a drug, and were forced to raid an old Helghan Administration-era medicial complex in order to get more, or something close enough they could modify it for their own use.
  • As well, the terraformation excuse that some fans give also doesn't work, for several reasons. 1) You don't get to mention how Helghan is a Death World at every opportunity and then backpedal by saying it's been turned into something more Earthlike. 2) By the time the Inheritor Generation was born, they had developed the ability to cope with the atmosphere, and didn't need to terraform the planet (a pretty vital detail, considering how it's the basis of the Helghast ideology: we're not human anyone, we're the Helghast, so let's go fuck up Vekta). 3) The Helghan Administration was barely able to keep the factories running and feed the population, so a large-scale terraformation project was out of the question. And by the time Visari got in power, if it didn't involve killing the ISA, he didn't particularly care for it.
  • On a further note, none of the ISA troops seem to suffer any radiation poisoning or exposure from the Red Dust nuke, despite the fact that they fight some major battles in and around the ruins of Pyrrhus in Killzone 3. Even Rico, who sticks his hand in irradiated Petrusite, a substance that is shown to be extremely fatal and dangerous in every other circumstance, has no ill-effects whatsoever.
  • Rico is, for some damn reason, unkillable. As for the rest, the Helghan's Atmo is not immediately fatal (read the backstory - it wasn't even immediately fatal for a bunch of malnourished, political refugees with no supplies). I'd hate to see the statistics for the incidence of Lung Cancer in ISA troops post invasion, however. (If any of their lungs make it back to Vekta).
• There are atleast two seperate occasions in Killzone 3 where the writers seem to just forget about stuff or pull it out of thin air. During the assault on the crusher/factory, a fairly large deal is made of the main ISA force not having flying APCs, forcing Rico and Sev to climb up from the wheels. Halfway up, Rico calls for intruders and they arrive no problem. The second part is during the end battle. Stahl just fixed his entire cruiser through one panel in the bridge, which is silly enough as it is, but then Rico tells you to "Launch the Nuke!". Was that one random Helghast fighter lucky enough to be able to carry a fucking A-bomb? A huge part of the second game's plot revolved around the Helghast having access to ONE nuke, but you can just randomly find one because Plot Convenience.
  • The first point is also pretty remarkable, given that the mobile factory has a series of AA turrets on top that you must destroy after reinforcements have landed. What, did the Helghast operating it decide to be sporting and let the ISA airborne troopers land, or were the gunners on their union-guaranteed coffee break?
    • Not so sure in the first one. Maybe they just needed to get there now as opposed to waiting for Intruder's to show up? But as for point two, they stole one of Stahl's strike ships. All of which are clearly armed with the those Petrusite nukes Stahl has spent the last 6 months (Or more, given that they had stolen the ISA's Red Dust weapon for a while) developing, which is a major point of the game's plot, that Helghan has all those weapons now.
• The architecture in the captial on Helghan. The palace and military academy are all very grand, made with marble columns and kept meticulously clean. The buildings surrounding it are all built out of a few I-beam supports put into the ground, with some support beams laid between them, and a bunch of sheet metal riveted over it for walls and floors. I get that the Helghast have a very particular set of priorities when it comes to constructing military and governmental buildings compared to others, but what bothers me is that the rubbish buildings keep going on right up to the palace walls. I would think that the government would spare a little investment in making better buildings immediately adjecent to the palace and along the main boulevards leading up to it. This is essential for propoganda reasons; if a ruler wants to play off their people's pride, any show of their best will be undermined if such shows also include them at their worst. They need some majestic steets to martch troops down for Triumph of the Will-style inspirational material if they want to rouse them to war. Granted, the player is intended to notice the stark difference between the delapidated cityscape and the grand palaces as part of the Helghast characterization, but even if the main streets had an good looking fronts behind which lay barely-maintained rusting metallic cobbles, the players would get it.
  • Visari has only had ten years to bootstrap Helghan's entire industrial infrastructure and create a decent war machine. The palaces were a downpayment on what he intended to do after the War (which was supposed to be long over by the time of Killzone 2).
• How did humans develop interstellar travel, colonize worlds, and even create their own subspecies all within a few hundred years?
  • Humanity developed interstellar travel in 2095 according to the timeline, that is almost a hundred years. A hundred years ago the first airplanes were invented, flying for a few hundred meters before either landing or crashing. Since then we have reached the Moon, constructed space stations and flown in hypersonic speed. A hundred years is a long time by today's standards.
  • Developing a proper colonisation effort was a global hero project that the majority of the world's nations participated in. Whilst the first colonisation effort was a disaster (and later ones suffered setbacks - poor surveying and contaminated food grow tanks, for example) the tech base was established through the UCA.
• Which military genius thought Intruders, which are open topped dropships were a good idea? Even if they had better railings around them, which they didn't, they put the troops in the line of fire and are pretty much useless above a certain altitude due to the total absence of any pressurised passenger compartment. Seems the Helghast managed to figure this one out, as at the very least their dropship clearly has an enclosed compartment.
  • According to the Wiki, it's actually a cargo loader that was used as a medevac in an emergency. Also, it's deliberately designed by the Devs to look like a bad idea.
• Where did the giant fleet at the end of 2 come from? For that matter, where was it earlier?
  • Intel on Mercenary revealed that the rest of the fleet were stationed on Constantine City.
  • The whole thing was probably a Wounded Gazelle Gambit on the part of Visari; The Helghan fleet rushes in to relieve the capital after the evil Imperialist ISA sunk so low as to nuke it, inspiring the people to once again dedicate their lives to destroying the ISA.
• When the ISA elected to evacuate the remaining Helghast population from their now ruined homeworld, why didn't they just move them to a habitable planet that wasn't settled as opposed to moving them to Vekta, whom the Helghast despise with a passion and forcibly displace millions of Vektans from their homes, which is bound to cause tension in the future, as evidenced in Shadow Fall.
  • Helghan and Vekta are probably the closest planets to each other. The Helghast predecessors were moved from Vekta to Helghan, despite the second planet being nigh-unlivable, ripe with volatile resources, and otherwise the perfect home to stoke hatred and a thirst for vengeance. The people in charge of migrations don't seem to have that much forethought, to begin with. Maybe they even wanted a war as way for them to 'settle things', especially after the Helghast lost so many.
    • Also remember that the nature of the UNC/ISA relationship isn't exactly an imperial one; as long as Earth is getting its tithes and taxes, it maintains a fairly hands-off attitude towards its colonies. As far as they're concerned, Vekta screwed up Operation Archangel, Vekta allowed Visari to be killed, and Vektan troops ended up destroying Helghan in the first place. Why should Earth or any other ISA command have to foot the bill for Vekta's fuck-ups? "They're the ones who killed a billion Helghast, let them deal with it!"
  • Vekta and Helghan are explicitly described as neighbors. It's entirely plausible that the choice of resettlement location was dictated by the practicality of moving millions of refugees to the closest available sanctuary, regardless of whether anyone one either side liked it or not.
• Three Questions, All involving the ending of KZ Shadow Fall. Please note that I have not gathered close to all of the Intel Documents, so if it's explained in one of them, please say that.

1) Why aren't Lucas and Echo affected by the weapon? This is literally a biological agent that makes your skin fall off, and judging by several audio logs and test videos, the effects are effectively instantaneous. The blast range is massive, the ship they're on is rocketing towards the heart of the explosion that spread it, and on several occasions, ISA cruisers with a viral miasma around it hurtle so close to the ship that they might as well be touching. Why aren't they affected? For that matter, why is Sinclair still alive? All, or at least most, of the cruisers were clearly infected, was he just lucky?

2) Why are the ISA cruisers falling out of the sky in the first place? It sounds minor, but it always weirded me out, the weapon is an instantly acting pathogen, not an EMP pulse. Sure, Echo loses control of the ship, but the Helghan ships are all basically fine, so the blast couldn't have affected the ship itself. Several might fall because the captain died at the helm, true, but what about the other? What, does the sudden death of everyone on board make all of the presumably autonomous functions on the ship, like allowing the ship to float, useless? Do ISA cruisers crash when no one is in the maintenance room 24/7?

3) OK, I get that Stahl is dead, and the army is beheaded, and the Stahl Arms helghast, despite their extreme advantage considering that all of the ISA Cruisers are down, and by extension presumably the entire invasion fleet barring a couple of stragglers, and they have overwhelming advantage in basically everything, they can't really attack Vekta without leadership. I get that much. But, in an elevator TV on the final level, we clearly hear New Helghan has basically declared war on Vekta. How does killing Stahl fix this? Does killing Stahl suddenly make New Helghan recognize its mistake and calm the tempers of its massive population, no doubt foaming at the mouth that the VSA is defiling their old home? Does it suddenly get rid of the massive amounts of armaments, War Machines, troops, navy, still on Helghan? What would happen if some general just takes over and directs the fleet at Vekta? For that matter, how would killing Sinclair fix anything about the declaration of war? He's the head of a bloody security company, or at most branch of government similar to homeland security, how does he have enough influence to convince Vekta to reciprocate against New Helghan?

• Answered in order: 1) Actually yes, it seems like Echo, Kellan and Sinclair were out of range when the weapon was set off, as the cloud never reaches Echo's dropship, so those two were fine. Plus we see multiple ISA cruisers still flying around in the upper atmosphere after the weapon was set off, likely meaning they were out of range of the effects, and since Sinclair showed up later, it seems he was in one of those ships. 2) According to the Killzone wiki, the weapon was modified with an EMP effect (though how a virus that kills people horribly can also be modified to produce an EMP is a good question...). Best not to think too hard about that. 3) Sequel Hook

• I may have missed some things, it's been a while since I've played through the campaign, but here's what I've got. 1) A space ship is hermetically sealed by nature and operating at high altitude would almost surely have a positive pressure differential with the outside atmosphere i.e. any leaks would be leaking outward and thus pushing the viral agent away from the crew. In fact this is how modern NBC equipment works. The only ship that was disabled by the virus was the research vessel where it was quite deliberately dispersed from within to kill the crew. Meanwhile on Helghan the virus was used to discourage the ISA from deploying ground troops and to kill any crash survivors. Kellen and Echo were outside the weapons area of affect and Sinclair was probably safely aboard a ship. 2) The EMP may have had nothing to do with the Virus. Given Petrusite's ever changing and outright magical properties it could have been something designed to disable a ships engines or reactors. The Helghast would naturally have hardened their own ships to the effect. Why not deploy it as a weapon? It may have been tactically unfeasible and so had to be used as a giant trap when the ISA fleet gathered close together. 3) There's nothing to suggest that Sinclair took the entire VSA fleet with him (Very unlikely with New Helghan's defense fleet literally on Vecta's doorstep) or that VSA fleet was entirely destroyed. After tracking down Kellen and using the chance to Kill Stahl it's possible that Sinclair was able to rally his forces to victory. Once Stahl's ships were destroyed and his factories bombed to rubble the remaining soldiers on the ground would be irrelevant and now with Sinclair dead the VSA and Helghan are neatly back on equal footing.