OK, so I finally had time to finish going through all 671 news articles from FFE. (Yes I even went through all of the personal ads at the end for the sake of completness
) In order to post some of the interesting stuff I found I first need to explain a problem with FFE. Just to warn you I am probably going to make a few post and this will be quite long so you may want to get yourself some biscuits and tea. So it turns out FFE was not completed when the game was launched. They seem to have written all of the story but they were not able to finish all of the coding to make all of the story workable. The player was supposed to have a choice of 3 possible outcomes for the main story of FFE. Instead the player can only complete the game in one way.
The way FFE actually plays out: The player gets the Argent's Quest, goes and meets the Thargoids. The Thargoids then send the player to acquire the Mycoid virus cure. The player gets the cure gives it to the Thargoids and the Thargoids then thank the player and give the player a Thargoid ship as thanks. That's pretty much it. For a bit more detail you can read through all of the story missions here. (
http://www.jades.org/missions.htm)
From here on out I will be refering to FFE articles by both "Title" and #number. You can go to this page (
http://www.dream-ware.co.uk/first-encounters/journals/all/) as pointed out by Popov and use ctrl+f to search for the title. Or you can go here (
http://www.jades.org/download.htm) and download the "Decoded Journal Text" which is a zip file that contains all of the FFE news articles as individual numbered text files. I've checked and the 2 list are in the same order and contain the same info. I just figure some people will prefer a link where as others might want the download.
How it was supposed to go:
Option 1: Starts somewhere around FFE article "NEW COMMANDER STEPS INTO TURNER'S SHOES" #396 and runs to "DANASLOVS ACCUSED OF FRAUD" #510. This is the most detailed and drawn out of the options and overlaps with how the game actually plays out with some important additions. First the player was supposed to become wanted by both the Feds and Imps after meeting with the Thargoids and was supposed to have several fights with the INRA. After the cure has been given to the Thargoid, Meredith Argent commissions another Quest class ship to go meet and negotiate with the Thargoids. The Feds and Imps then band together and declare war on both the Alliance (AIS) and the Thargoids. Then after the player uses their one Thargoid ship to defeat lots of ships from both navies and the INRA the Feds and Imps finally decide to negotiate. After negotiations are complete everyone ceases fighting and they all sign a peace treaty with the Thargoids.
Option 2: Starts at "AN END TO THE FUTURE?" #511 and runs to "NEW QUESTS TO BE BUILT FOR ARGENT" #533. In this option the player decides to help the INRA and instead of taking the cure for the Mycoid virus the player actually takes a modified version of the virus which kills off the Thargoids entirely. You are named a hero to the Feds and Imps but an enemy to the Alliance (AIS) and Meredith Argent commissions several more quest ships to try and hunt you down.
Option 3: Starts at "QUEST' STILL MISSING" #534 and runs to "ARGENT'S QUEST - DESTRUCTION IMMINENT" #543. In this option the player basically takes the quest and decides to do whatever they want rather than doing the Quest missions like they were supposed to. Also in this option Meredith Argent commissions more Quest class ships to try and hunt you down. There are more articles that seem to relate to this particular option but they seem to be kinda spread out so it's hard to give article names and numbers. It seems eventually the player is forced to return the Argents Quest to Meredith. After the ship is returned it seems the Alliance (AIS) is forced into a treaty that basically prevents them from attempting to find the Thargoids any time soon. One example is this article "WHITHER THE THARGOIDS NOW?" #563.
There are more articles than what I pointed out that relate to each option but there is some overlap and a bunch of jumping around, the articles I listed that are in sequence give enough info to give you a general idea of what is going on.
So after reading all of this I was left with a problem. How was I supposed to know what was actually lore in regards to ED. It's pretty obvious that options 2 didn't happen as the devs have stated that Thargoids are in ED. I was personally inclined to think that maybe they were using option 3 which left the Thargoids basically as they were at the beginning of FFE. Turns out they actually went with option 1. In my daily reading of the main UA thread I came across this post (
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=175726&page=566&p=2974474&viewfull=1#post2974474). Baelydon has a link in his post to the Fiction Diaries created by MB. I had never personally seen them and seeing as I am very much interested in ED lore I decided to take a look and discovered something interesting in Diary number #3.
Here is a link to the video (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDurmITXzRM&feature=youtu.be&t=145). In this Fiction Diary MB gives a synopsis of the state of the Galaxy for ED. Starting at around 2:27 he very briefly mentions the Thargoids and states that the peace between us (humans) and the Thargoids was short lived. I would say this very much supports the fact that options 1 is what is being considered as actual lore. So I now have a pretty good idea as to which FFE articles are valid and which ones aren't. Of course all of this is just my hypothesis and any articles I link to need to be taken with a grain of salt. I'll be creating at least one more post with some of the interesting articles I noticed as I was reading through them.
