: Thanks for helping out. Now I'll fill in the details.
: Unlike most of the paired failure and success levels in Eternal, here we have
: a success level that is an exact duplicate of it's failure counterpart -
: well, almost an exact duplicate. There is a good reason for this. It seems
: that both Lela and Tycho have the exact same plot for forcing Hathor to
: flee under their own terms. In Pissing on the Corporation, Tycho had us
: force Hathor to flee to his own specially designed trap - a trap that
: failed and resulted in the destruction of the S'pht before there ever was
: a Marathon. That didn't exactly turn out well, so now we're helping Lela
: to do the same thing in Burining Down the Corporation - to force Hathor to
: flee into her own trap. This one doesn't exactly succeed either, but at
: least Lela has our best interests at heart and we'll be able to deal with
: Hathor later.
I pointed this out in the thread for Pissing On The Corporation, and tried to tease people into figuring it out themselves, but since nobody bit it I'll clear it up here...
The failure dream after Pissing is the future of that timeline, not of the timeline Hathor goes back to create by destroying the S'pht. Tycho is just as intent on following Hathor as Leela is - he doesn't want anyone else with control of the Junction out there. But he leaves control of the entire combined Pfhor fleet here with another clone of himself. Leela had warned that Tycho in control of such a fleet, and especially the network of Compilers therein, could possibly take over the entire Pfhor navy. Hathor pretty explicitly stated that that was the plan all along. What we see on Middlesex is the future of the Pfhor war where a Tycho-lead Pfhor navy has beaten mankind back to Earth, and failing to defeat them there, has deployed the trih xeem. Perhaps I should somehow work in mention of S'bhuth's suicide attack on Pfhor Prime, which would presumably happen in this future, and which is likely what would prompt Tycho to take such desperate countermeasures. (Now that I think about it, this could be why mankinds early attempts to change history by not stopping S'bhuth all failed - to let him kamekaze would bring the full wrath of the Pfhor down on Earth in desperation).
It has nothing to do with the loss of the S'pht. Tycho (the original, not the clone) was on his way with you back to Lh'owon to stop Hathor, just as Leela would, when you were intercepted mid-transport by the failure dream (which you will note, only occur when transporting via Junction), and sent back earlier to try again. When you work with Leela instead, Hathor *still* goes back to Lh'owon and we *still* follow her, but this entire system, both Tychos and the Pfhor fleets, are destroyed by Leela's use of the trih xeem, preserving the timeline as we know it, for now. (Note Blake's observed similarities to the events mentioned in the prologue).
: Although this is exactly the same level as before, this is another timeline
: and things are slightly different. Places that were enticing but
: inaccessible the first time around are now open for business, and what a
: beautiful business it is, with eye candy to entice all. Indeed, you can't
: go the same way as before. The nice thing about Burning is that there are
: so many places to visit that have absolutely nothing to do with the
: objective of the level. I love exploration :^)
Glad you like it :-)
