A beautiful, if not perfect end to humanity.
QUEST LOG #17: TERMINATOR: RESISTANCE
There are some general spoilers detailed herein.
If you’ve been looking for a decent piece of Terminator content since 1991 when T2:Judgement Day was released, then you’ve probably got company in that boat. I myself quite enjoyed T3, but I was 13 when that came out, so I was bound to like it. With a more critical head on, it doesn’t quite stack up, and I think it’s T2 that is commonly considered to be not only the best Terminator film, but also one of James Cameron’s finest pieces of work. It’s certainly my favourite of the bunch, and in watching it as a child, I was always eager for a better look at the world in which Skynet got busy killing all the humans. We get a little slice of this in T1 and T2, but that’s where my exposure ended. I’ve never been much into the comic books, I’ve not seen past Terminator 3, other than the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV show, and my gaming experience with the series is limited at best, so if this part of the world has been explored more fully, I don’t know about it... I suppose I’ve only got myself to blame for not satiating my hunger. A few months back I stumbled across some footage of a Universal Studios Terminator themed ride – I’ve never been to a Universal Studio, but thanks to the internet I was able to experience some portion of it in my own home – hurray. This particular one is called T2-3D: Battle Across Time, released in 1996. Here we see the good Terminator, a slightly older John, and the T1000, along with lots of other future mech units. I recommend watching if you’re a fan of the film, as it’s 7 minutes of excellent action of the same quality as in T2.
Anyway, in seeing this, my hunger for that particular slice of Terminator was renewed, and with the release of Teyon’s RoboCop: Rogue City, and my subsequent playing of the demo, I was made aware of both how faithfully Teyon made the RoboCop game, and that they had already worked their magic on the Terminator series. Not only that, but their 2019 title Terminator: Resistance is entirely focused on the foggy blue hued bits with all the skull crushing that I was so eager to experience more of, and as I loaded up Resistance, I was a child again, and experiencing the chilling notes of Brad Fiedel’s iconic score anew. I like a good menu screen, and while this particular one isn’t as interactive as that of the original Mafia for example, it certainly looks and sounds cool as fuck. Cue me excited.
Loading in, we find that we’re a survivor of the resistance, cut off from command, and left to fend for ourselves with a smattering of other survivors. We awaken to find that our entire unit has been killed, and that the Californian city of Pasadena has fallen, and Skynet forces patrol the ruined landscape with deadly intent. After regaining our composure, we hear a mysterious voice emanating from our radio, an ally, it seems. His words act almost as a tutorial, although there are plenty of popups to explain certain mechanics as things go on. I’m not particularly a fan of learning via PowerPoint presentations, but it’s not that egregious. The most basic controls and almost all the systems are pretty intuitive anyway. Eventually the stranger guides us to the location of a pistol, and though the ruined city streets to a small band of survivors.
Here you’ll notice, probably for the first time, the only real downside to the game’s visuals – these being some rather dated faces. This game’s forte, as you might imagine, isn’t in rendering flesh, doing a far better job of making architecture, the landscape, and most importantly the robots look realistic. The character models for the humans aren’t bad, but they do stand out as somewhat lesser to the incredible atmospheric scenery, lighting, and the well-drawn mechanical entities. The resistance fighters and survivors you encounter lack much in the way of facial movement, seeming all to have injected themselves with copious amounts of Botox. I suppose in some way this all makes sense in a general thematic way, but I don’t think it was the developer’s intention to make all NPCs look like Infiltrators with synthetic skin. This being said, despite some lacking emotive skills, the voice acting is really pretty good all things considered, as are the overall character designs.
Speaking of voice acting, you’ll get your first taste of the dialogue system when reaching the survivor’s camp, and the game makes sure to inform you that your choices in conversation matter – we’ll see just how much later. The choices you’re given are pretty limited, mostly either a simple line of questioning, or a nice or twatty response, but it adds a layer of interactivity to some pretty well written dialogue. These conversations between yourself and the various characters you meet are quite engaging, and with the subtle atmosphere created by the long-drawn-out notes of the backing music, the crackling of fires, and distant shooting, you really feel as though you’re speaking to someone who has lived through the trauma of humanity’s annihilation, or at least sometimes you will. Not all of the lines are delivered with the gravitas they might deserve, but the general conversations are certainly realistic enough, and the details surrounding Judgement Day are interesting to discover.
“Thanks to Judgement Day, I didn’t have to pay back my student loan!”
Slightly uncanny-valley-esque characters, somewhat limited dialogue trees, a post-apocalyptic landscape to explore, and lots of loot to hoover up… this isn’t actually Fallout 4 by any chance, is it? There are MANY similarities here, but Terminator Resistance is somewhat more of a refined and focused experience. There is a skill tree too, and crafting, but amongst all of the RPG elements, there is a focus on the narrative, and it appears that the developers’ goal here was to create a story for fans of the series, rather than to create some bloated sci-fi thing with additions that are outside of the remit of a Terminator game. I mentioned the crafting, and this is rather simply implemented with the scavenging of resources and the construction of consumables such as pipe bombs, medical packs, ammunition, and lock picks… Lock picking by the way is implemented in the exact same manner as in the Fallout games – perhaps it’s related… and actually, Bethesda have made and published five Terminator games in the past between 1992 and 1996. It’s more than likely that the Terminator film (and likely games) inspired both Interplay and Bethesda in some way on the Fallout series, and most likely the Fallout series has inspired the developers of Terminator: Resistance, if only the latter in mechanics, as I think the environments within the game ooze with the atmosphere of the original films, more so than any other post-apocalyptic game or setting, having a unique feel that is characteristic of the Terminator series. The lockpicking mechanic works though, so I hold no ill will towards Teyon for slotting it into their game. Locked doors need to be opened, and while their analogue lock opening mechanic might be recognisable from elsewhere, the hacking minigame is slightly more original (least least in its presentation, although many games have a minigame which requires the moving of a thing through a bunch of moving things - Mass Effect, for instance).
Both of these skills can, unsurprisingly, be improved via the skill tree, and it’s as straightforward a system as the crafting. A bit uninspired perhaps, but we’re dealing with bog standard humans here, there are no magical abilities to unlock, so it serves its function well enough to just improve stats or unlock certain skills and weapon choices. Speaking of weapons, this is where the game starts to come alive a little more. There is quite the variety of guns, starting with a pistol, Uzi, shotgun, assault rifle, and moving on up to miniguns, and beam weapons. The Skynet weapons come in two tiers, according to their ammunition, and come in a variety of styles, such as the Endo Battle Rifle (the sort you see the Terminators using most often), the Valmet M82A (which the resistance famously use), up to Rail Plasma sniper rifles and laser guided rocket launchers, and all of these save for the latter can be upgraded with chips recovered from Skynet foes. There are also a handful of grenade or bomb variants to choose from too. All of these weapons are rather satisfying to shoot as well, and the overall gunplay and combat within the game is pretty fun. This is good, as it’s what you’ll be doing for the most part, at least as the game goes on. Combat feels as though it isn’t the priority here though, or rather, I feel as though it perhaps shouldn’t have been… or if it wasn’t, perhaps a more interesting game could have been made? Early on it feels as though the game might lean more into survival horror, putting you on the back foot against near unstoppable enemies, but this is only temporary, despite being very well set up. The game is subtitled Resistance, rather than Survivor, so I suppose we all know what we’re in for.
Where the game feels the most intense and thrilling is in the early stages. Before even acquiring a gun, you witness a patrol of Terminators pass you by outside, and a little later, having found a lost survivor and her young brother, another patrol of Terminators come upon you in a cutscene. You have to hide, and watch helplessly as they pass you by, one of them stopping for a moment, seemingly suspicious of your presence. They don’t spot you, and you make it to camp, but again the game establishes the Terminator units as a true threat (as they should be). This is leaned into more in a subsequent mission where you are sent to investigate a nearby hospital for supplies (and screaming). It's here that you come face to face with a force of them, and, if you found the shotgun earlier along with a note saying it’ll knock a Terminator down, then you might be feelin’ fine about this. I hid in the dark waiting for one of these metal bastards to come walking past and as it did, I blasted it in the face, fully posed to run away afterwards. The Terminator killed me instantly, and after a brief reload, a tense game of hide and seek began as I weaved through the hospital ephemera towards my goal, eager to remain hidden from the patrolling killer robots.
Just as an aside, there is another comparison to make here, as this section reminded me exactly of the intro sequence of Metal Gear Solid V. The tension is ratcheted up a little more here however, to which I give the game credit, although videogame depictions of hospitals come with a free side of creepy forever more thanks to Max Payne… visions of Mona sliding out of a mortuary cabinet are forever etched into my mind, and now, thanks to Resistance, we can add a Skynet death camp to the list of associations. Anyway, along with the threat of dozens of morally vacant killing machines, the lighting and the music work hand in hand to perfect the atmosphere. Long moments without so much as a sighting of an enemy precede moments of extreme danger, and the sporadic lighting along with ‘Escape from the Hospital and T1000’ track from the Terminator 2 score playing in the background puts you masterfully on edge. Surrounding these parts is lots of gunplay, but not against the Terminators, and making them appear so powerful and fearsome is great, and it’s in this moment that the game shines the most – it could have leaned into Resident Evil’s Mr X trick quite a bit here, I’m sure, but maybe that’s passé.
Still, a symptom of the game needing to be enjoyable throughout is that there usually needs to be some sort of power curve, and as such, once you equip yourself with better weapons and start filling your skill tree, the fear factor that comes from these imposing enemies begins to evaporate. Don’t get me wrong, they are still a threat, but to a much lesser extent, and midway through the game you’ll be blasting them down in a couple of good shots. None of this is helped by the rather ironically simple AI. Enemies seem a little slow to react to their metallic comrades being blown to shit and seem to be incapable of seeking a player out even if hidden poorly – having said that, they are incredibly quick to shoot when they finally do spot you, so perhaps it’s a blessing. Stealth is somewhat implemented, as enemies other than turrets can hear you, but there seems to be little need for it. There are weapons called termination knifes, which can instantly kill the humanoid robots, but I never once found myself in need of using this particular device. Different players might approach the levels in various ways, but throughout my playthrough, I just opted for shooting things in the head, and it worked too well to experiment further.
This issue might have arisen from playing the game on normal, but if normal doesn’t make use of all elements of the game, then that’s not my fault. Another possible downside to the somewhat lacking challenge was highlighted by my tendency to be a packrat. I’ve learnt from other games (yes, I’m looking at you again Fallout) to take everything that isn’t nailed down, and as I waded through Skynet forces, hacking, lock picking, and looting as I went, I eventually found myself with TOO MUCH STUFF! As a result, I was often dumping what I had found, and I rarely had the need to craft anything, as, at least by the mid game, I always had more than I needed. Again, this might be an issue with the difficulty level, or perhaps just games in general… I quite like having enough ammo and health kits though, so I can’t complain, and I don’t play games purely for the challenge, but perhaps things could have been adjusted just a little, although the incentive to explore is certainly appreciated, and makes exploration of the environment a pretty key part of the game, at least until you’re flush with equipment. Getting a sense of the world you are in is very important to the theme and feel of the game, and along with general loot, there are side quests to get you exploring further, as well as lore titbits in the form of notes and letters scattered about the place, adding to the story as a whole.
Overall, the story of Terminator: Resistance is a great piece of fanservice, filling in the blanks surrounding the first two films, depicting the goings on of Connor’s resistance forces, and the climax of the game ramps up the action incredibly, and makes for a really satisfying end, of which there are multiple, depending on the choices you make in conversation - turns out they do matter, although how much really depends on how much you care for the characters. In the final push against Skynet you are accompanied by your fellow resistance soldiers (as with some other set pieces earlier on in the game), and the relentless action is really quite full on, and while my earlier complaint about the Terminators being a little lacking in power from the mid game hold true, Skynet throws everything at you towards the end, including Infiltrators, T-47 mechs, and Hunter Killer aerial and tank units, making up a bit for the lack of challenge.
In writing about the game, I have found myself highlighting its flaws, more perhaps than I thought I would when playing. They come to me clearer in looking back than they did during my playing of the game, and I think perhaps they are small nits to have picked. Yes, the game could be improved with some balancing, some tweaks, some additional content, and a little more polish on the characters, but none of that interfered with my enjoyment of the game. I played it through in just a few sittings, and I was eager to do so, and that is more telling than any criticism. Terminator: Resistance is probably a decent game, but it’s also an incredible Terminator game, and that’s something to applaud. No one else has gotten it right before, but Teyon has. They have perfectly captured the feel of the post-Judgement Day world, and while the power curve lessens the threat of Skynet somewhat too soon, it’s very satisfying to battle these relentless machines. If you’re a fan of the films, I can’t imagine you not enjoying the game. It’s not perfect, but it’s a beautiful, faithful, and fun homage to the classic films, and I can see why the developers were given the opportunity to work their magic on another 80’s icon with their RoboCop game a few years later. Just look at the screenshots, the apocalypse has never looked so pretty.
In addition to the main story, Teyon have released two DLC packs for the game, these being Annihilation Line, and Infiltrator Mode, which add to the value of the title tremendously. I’ve only played the latter myself, not having picked up Annihilation Line just yet. Infiltrator mode is small addition which puts the player in the leather boots of an Infiltrator unit, tasked with hunting down and… terminating a Tech-Comm officer. Like I said, this mode is pretty small, but offers some additional weapons, a change to the play style, and is certainly repayable at least a few times over. It’s always nice to play as the bad guys once in a while. In Annihilation Line, you follow along with Kyle Reese and see the story from his perspective in the lead up to him getting sent back to defend Sarah Connor in the first film. Like I say, I’ve not played this part myself, but it’s on the list as it looks to be just as good if not more engaging a story as the main game, and had certainly reviewed well.
Let me know if you’ve played the game or any of the DLC, I’d like to know your thoughts! There is also a free comic included with the game that details the events shortly before you join with the surviving resistance forces in the game, and the artwork is brilliant. It’s only a few pages long but gives a nice bit of background and made me want to seek out more Terminator comics.
And as always, thank you for reading. If you’d like to support the blog, you can do so over on Patreon, or by subscribing and sharing!