: Agreed! That seems like a great way of making it seem even more like a sudden
: alien invasion, with things not working and Pfhor pouring onto the
: Marathon.
I too like the idea.
Also, I've been meaning to email you, Adam, but my internet at home is dead, so like Hamish I must use the forums to communicate. Thinking about this level and L1, and the prologue's whole bit about "melodramatic timing" (leaving on 8:20 AM, exactly 111 years ago, etc), I think it would be good to have you and Hathor go back to Marathon, as stated in the prologue, to exactly 8:20 AM, the moment of the EMP.
As Steve suggested, this would be the time of maximum confusion on Marathon and afford the best opportunities to break in and do your job uninterrupted; the Player of M1 is still drifting in space on the Miriata, about to be shot at, so that part of the story needs no changing; even Strauss' coup and the enemy humans can stay the same, but in addition, Pfhor would begin beaming in near the windows that look out on the Pfhor ship to the west (which I'm not sure if I removed from the revised L1 or not) and making their way around the rest of the map.
The level would end, of course, not with an EMP, but just beaming out to the next area to input the uplink chip. Modifying L2 to be interesting at all without the search for the uplink chip would be difficult - perhaps require you to retrieve it from the other conductor room that currently is just exploratory? But that makes no design sense. Then again having the uplink slot way down there doesn't either, but there's a LOT in the original Marathons as well that doesn't make design sense. Perhaps that jump pad is just malfunctioning as a result of the EMP, and L2 requires no changes at all.
