G-5-9 = Ji-Go-Ku = Hell

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PERSONAL MAP TRIVIA
Commentary by me about the maps. Backgrounds and concepts, plus cut content.
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===== LIMIT BURST =====
Filename: EXU2-G50-00-LIMITBURST
Original map: N/A
Music: Artificial Bloodline (Cybernetika)
Author: Jrath

This map was quickly thought and made for the DEFAULT ROUTE release of G59 and never planned beforehand. The DEFAULT ROUTE release was the first one working with EXU2's OPEN BETA (v5) - basically the second G59's thread - which brought a lot of changes to the first four proper maps.
This was the first G59 level I made that was completely new, even though it was just a simple introduction with this hypnotizing vortex-like thing. The idea was just for players to have some sort of warm-up against weird enemies; when I did this map various games had this in their intro parts, especially Bulletstorm (this game was ultimately the drive for LIMIT BURST). Not only for a warm-up but also for story reasons, which is just heavy foreshadowing which is a thing that I have enjoyed doing a lot for G59's story.

This is the only map where I ended up using the blue flaming hell-circle thing. It took me an afternoon to figure out how it worked and how to eventually make it. Mostly time-consuming as I had to extract all the hell-circle fire textures and turn them blue, and afterwards creating lots of actors (I think, I forgot) to make this blue hell-circle a thing.

One of the weird things of G59, back in its early versions, was The Limbo's beginning having a different teleport exit sound compared to the ones heard in the successive maps as you started them. LIMIT BURST's teleport system was the reason... but not initially.

Now, the enemy race you fight in LIMIT BURST is completely different from the real one you fight in the campaign later on. This is due to LIMIT BURST being made way earlier before the actual true pawns have been created (like, four years later lmao) but the ones you face in LIMIT BURST are based on the old version of their race that was available in pre-release G59 betas (which was a full campaign of 10 maps but a really shitty one as well). Can't put up a legit excuse why the LIMIT BURST enemies are nothing like the real ones but, I'd say they consumed lots of their energy to access the time vortex. How the Hell Survivor enters it is sneakly explained in the last part of the game.

The map at first had no music and didn't have that quick introduction before you start controlling your character. Have to say, I was never able to make gibs disappearing when falling down in the vortex but you would never look below anyway. 
By the way, the author "Jrath" is used in this map and in Atropos - both levels with the Drakk theme.

===== The Limbo =====
Filename: EXU2-G59-01-TheLimbo
Original map: Neve's Crossing (RTNP)
Music: Rise Against Myself (Xenofish), Towards The End Of Time (Cybernetika)
Author: UBerserker and Nivlek

The map that started it all, back at the end of Summer 2010 after shooting Extractor's gore on the walls of the Vortex Rikers. I went with Neve because the last EXU2BI map at the time was Highlands aka RTNP's starting map so I just went with the nearby location.

The level was initially called Nebiros Crossing (EXU2-G59-01-Nebiros) and was much more red in color for several beta versions (before the DEFAULT ROUTE one I think), which made it closer to the EXU2BI hell style. The gameplay was also crazier like BI, with lots of crazy battles and random technocolor enemies; when I made this map, G59 didn't have its serious style yet so I was just getting inspired solely by BI.

Pretty much everything, including music, changed in the future versions of the map. DEFAULT ROUTE brought the gray atmosphere and Gagarin, RevolveR brought the current, very desolated feel to it with an epic Xenofish track. In general, the recent switch from Cybernetika music to more Xenofish music made the mappack more alien and different compared to BI and to Unreal as a whole.

The original Nebiros name was because Nebiros (a fallen angel akin to Cerberus) was the gate guardian, as in the first obstacle. This being the first map and it being Neve which is a similar sounding title... there you go. It was changed to The Limbo once the level started to look more gloomy as patches were done.
Now, The Limbo is a hard map already. It's a condensed mix of EXU2's Demon-themed stuff, with all sort of Demon enemies including the high-tier ones (flying Skaarj, ShockTroopers, LavaTitans, ArchDemon and the Juggernaut). However the player will quickly have access to a lot of weapons, including the Tachyon Driver, and high-tier items. Since I already planned G59 to be way shorter than BI, I didn't want the campaign to have a slow start with enemies and items so I went directly with the more advanced shit. 

As new versions came, the map's gameplay became more standardized with the rest of the campaign. Cutting down all the mini Brutes, removing the LavaTitan statue secret (which was actually quite dangerous, as you could trigger that event before crossing the first valley and if it happened, you were fucked unless you were in to waste a lot of minutes by shooting the LavaTitan with Piddledopers). Other than these, all the core gameplay parts still remained largely the same. You can definitely feel my old gameplay style compared to the ones in the recent maps; it is also one of the few maps (the only one I think??) to have a full-blown exclusive battle on Unreal difficulty. I was much more into difficulty-filtering back in the day but as the time went on I started to dislike the fact that lesser skilled players weren't able to experience battles against certain enemies.

Regarding Neve's build stability, as with most of Nivlek's stuff, holy shit IT'S A PAIN IN THE ASS working on this map. Build something and you end up with part of the terrain being invisible. It's very infuriating that I had to change stuff regarding the pre-existing brushes until all visual bugs were removed. None of the bugs impacted gameplay but I really hated having invisible brushes right in first level of the game. This is why I wasn't able to place one more archway (the one I added in the last version of the map) because the map terrain would fuck up again. At least I was able to add that slope to the second valley's entrance, which makes dealing with that section much easier as you can go back to the first valley without the use of a Translocator.

I really like the current skybox. That fiery light of impending doom, combined with the current track, seems very fitting. You also notice a castle in the mountains. It's an unnamed, abandoned Demon castle that's unusable due to the constant explosive orbs from the meteor storm crashing on it.

Another reason I got rid of Gagarin is because the song was also used in BI. I generally take BI's music choice as a priority over G59's one, so if Waff uses a song that's already on G59, I'll change the song that was on the G59 map with another one.

Naberius (his generic enemy type is just known as "Gatekeeper") is perhaps the most spectacular G59 enemy. Shouldn't be the last boss be the more spectacular? Honestly I'd rather have the coolest stuff as early as possible so at least the player can get impressed and ultimately then have the willpower to end the pack. If you start with very safe/boring setpieces it's very likely the player won't have good impressions and won't end the campaign. That's my opinion but this seems to be true for a lot of games anyway.

During the various edits I did to the level, there was once a day I thought of making a massive underground structure, below the bridge. A church-themed place that was completely abandoned and dark, and going through it you would end up in some sort of underground lake. Bit time consuming to do and after all I never thought of a reason for doing it, so the idea was scrapped (pretty much what made it in is the exit section of the level, inside the bridge structure). It's truly a bad decision taking a lot of time to make an area, and then ending up later with "what I do with it now?" Come ALWAYS with a plan beforehand (just though, there are possible exceptions but mine were mostly regarding stuff that were pre-planned during the initial production of a map).

There's also the ancient shrine in the second valley that was added in recent versions. It was made for just the SeedSeed at first, then for a MagicArmorSeed (the former item is just too overpowered at the moment). Never planned an extension to that area past the door. There won't probably be and I won't say where this shrine actually leads.

The map could be anyway improved infinitely as long as the terrain doesn't fuck up. I would love one day to get rid of the blood lakes and make their areas all walkable in some form.

===== VOIDNESS ===== 
Filename: EXU2-G59-02-VOIDNESS
Original map: Foundry Tarydium Plant (RTNP), unknown mine map from Epic Games
Music: N/A
Author: Erosion and CliffyB

Back in 2010 this was one thing I wanted to create. I forgot the implications why I didn't do this map before The Limbo but I suppose I self-challenged myself at making first a proper EXU2-style map and then going for a shadow one? And like trying to create a campaign? I forgot.

So yeah not a lot of people seem to enjoy this map (others though got scared of it) but I really love this level. I always wanted to make something horror-like and I had my chance here with the Shadows being a thing in EXU2. They were hardly explored in BI (at least in the current version) and Waff wrote a document regarding how dangerous they actually were. So I decided to making them shine in G59, taking the most important antagonistic role.

The level name follows the naming theme set from BI's shadow maps: "#insertshadowrelatedword-NESS". BI had Darkness and Blackness, G59 has Voidness, Nothingness and Shadowness. G59's names are definitely more weird and some people questioned me if these words truly existed. Well I checked on Google and these words exist (Shadowness seems more of an edgy teenager shit from what I saw but ok) and either way G59's other map titles are not any less weird.

Similar to Jrath, my author alias "Erosion" (which is my emergency secondary nick) is used solely for Shadow based maps, including Exusia where both UBerserker and Erosion are credited (former for the holy side, latter for the shadow side). Always funny tidbits I enjoy using. There was once a time I wanted to start a fresh mappack and announce it on UnrealSP.org under a completely different user account but nah not worth the time.

An enjoyable thing about Cliff's maps is how stable they were. Hardly ran (or not at all) into any build issues and made my time editing them much better.
Now, about VOIDNESS, it's the only map of the classic first part of G59 with its core gameplay never really changing over patches. It's always the same shit: walk around, fight swarms, fight randomly appearing big Shadows, fight randomly appearing pursuing boss, fight mandatory pursuing boss encounters, fight the pursing boss at the end. The map itself, build-wise, is hardly different from the original Foundry aside the lighting (of course), some texture changes, some rooms, some modified details and the area at the end. I mean the location is just the abandoned Foundry, doesn't need to be a whole fucking remake project.

During the EXPANDED ROUTE patches I always shuffled around the Shadow ambushes (of any kind), by enemy type or location, so every patch the players would deal always with VOIDNESS without resorting to memory. Horror games nowadays are just "play once, never more". No randomization and therefore the horror part dies after one playthrough, especially if they focuses on the classic scares and not on the atmosphere part like old Silent Hill games did, where you kept figuring out what was the shit you've just suddenly heard and why you did hear it. Sometimes, placing scary scripted events that are completely random in nature can also be effective in a horror game because you'll never have any idea what caused it. Not having ideas about who X did Y can be creepy on the long run. VOIDNESS' sounds try to be this. I'm really proud of the sounds in VOIDNESS and I was never able to replicate its quality in any other G59 map. Look at the map in the editor and see the AmbientSound actors I put around, lol.

Over updates, the map focused more on the randomly appearing big Shadow Skaarj than swarms. Swarms are, sadly, boring to fight. You just run and jump around, holding down the Hellgun's secondary fire and hope for the best. Or just stay still and turn on the Firestorm Generator. And the swarms aren't scary except the first few times.

Now the big ones instead can be extremely dangerous (high melee damage), they pop up behind a corner so rapidly and you won't expect it most of the time because of their random appearance, which is either based on difficulty and on the odds of appearance. There are A LOT of ambushes and it's impossible for them to appear all in a single playthrough unless you're like, unlucky as fuck. This without counting the random appearance of Tsathoggua (the boss). So yeah it's a memory/RNG based level after all, which makes it always dangerous in both scare and difficulty terms.

Regarding Tsathoggua, Pyramid Head was the direct inspiration. Like PH, Tsathoggua appears several times, tries always to stop you and doesn't seem to die after the very end. And then you realize it's not the only one. He's a pretty weird monster to fight but this is due to the Warlord code being such a GIGANTIC PIECE OF SHIT and it's really hard coding anything for him. Hell even the code to make him stop flying is a big long mess (this is the reason why BaalBerith fights like a typical Warlord because fuck the Warlord code). Though, I enjoyed how the Tachyon strat works perfectly here - secondary fire to make him stop and you beam him in the meanwhile, repeat till he's dead.

So yeah anyway, like for The Limbo, this map became more "accessible" in later patches, for one thing the Tachyon secrets are now much easier to understand. One thing however I've decided to do is to make the random Tsathoggua battles available on Medium too. It's such a core part of the map and I hated it being part of the harder difficulties only.

The area at the end needs an explanation. No, I didn't make it, it's from Epic Games actually. Was found in one of the more recent mini-beta leaks that Leo managed to get. No idea what it's supposed to be but it's called "break". It's probably a test map or some unused entrance to a location like that Triton entrance thing. So yeah since it was there, might as well use it for something. I didn't want any more fights so I went with the classic "RUN" sequence, with multiple undying Tsathogguas chasing you while the Hell Survivor would reach the end like if he was in a Silent Hill Shattered Memories level.

I have no other plans of adding more stuff to VOIDNESS. It perfectly fills its part in the campaign - a strong (re)introduction to Shadows and the gimmicky randomized gameplay which can make easier or harder your course in the campaign for the next few maps. There are people who don't enjoy dark levels, so it's not really worth adding more areas (some of the new ones added could look better however).

VOIDNESS in the pre-release versions of G59 did use music from Silent Hill 2. They were only heard in certain sections and honestly were useless because the sounds already did the work. Besides I didn't want any copyrighted tracks in G59 anymore so, there you go. None of the G59 "-NESS" maps use music.

The scream that's heard when you approach the windows (where you see the Shadow God) get me every time, lol. You might be also reading those weird translator messages with those weird symbols and numbers. Most of the time the numbers are 24, 9 and 1990, that reference my birthday date (Sep 24th 1990).

One last thing I forgot to mention is that the map did use Foundry's theme once, right at the beginning of the level. The first room looks normal, albeit a bit dark. Then you open the first door and all you see is darkness; the music turns off afterwards. It's a bizarre thing I would have re-added as it makes the player go "oh shit" really hard but since everyone knows this is a Shadow level, the "surprise" just couldn't work as much as I intended it to.

===== The Hyper Boundary Gate =====
Filename: EXU2-G59-03-Neonlights
Original map: Bounds of Foundry (RTNP)
Music: Devoid of Gravity (Cybernetika), Thermal Overload (Cybernetika & MellowSonic)
Author: UBerserker and CliffyB

The map was just originally known as HyperBoundaryGate only (it's a IIDX song title, reasons why I choose it is because of "Bound" in Toxic's stitle and because that song had, uhh, those reese horn sounds like in Toxic's song). At first it was a really shitty looking Crypt-retextured Bounds of Foundry. It was very bright, too calm and it didn't just fit with the Bio/Shit pawns. Or just didn't fit with the original Toxic's build at all. The music was also different back in the day; I first used City of the Angels from Fallout (which was really boring and also a ripoff of an Aphex Twin track), then that unused industrial UT3 track by Kevin Riepl (which only the artist himself gave to the public because it wasn't available anywhere); then Devoid of Gravity ultimately came and remained the definitive theme of the map. It was actually added before the map's high-tech remake so I suppose it's the stage theme that lasted the most of them all in G59 (and it won't be changed, ever). 

The high-tech remake of The Hyper Boundary Gate came with the DEFAULT ROUTE release and from there the map got the "Neonlights" nick. It's been one of my favorite G59 maps since then. It's been actually the first map where I started to do proper brush editing. See the boss area? That's my very first room in the editor. The Toxic's boss arena sucked ass so I decided to remake it. And from that boss arena I did a redux of the whole level, inspired by Waff's industrial style found in some of his BI maps. He was really happy when he tried out the Neonlights version. I was happy too!

So regarding this conversion there isn't much to mention. One of its core points is the complete lack of Skaarj except the boss, some ShockTroopers I added in the boss arena in the latest version (just for variety and it seems weird that such a large area was completely empty and somebody had to write those guardpost logs) and a random SkaarjWarrior who appears after activating the elevator to the last section. This latter is a leftover from the original Toxic, with this spawning SkaarjWarrior that I kept forgetting removing before every patch release. Ultimately decided not to remove it. BI also has an identical thing in one of the maps (Ceremony's conversion I think?), with a SkaarjScout from the original Unreal map still spawning in the converted level. So yeah, both EXU2 campaigns are even on this!

I don't remember what sparked the decision of "NO SKAARJ" for this level but I believe I was striving for something different at the time, always.
The Bio/Shit pawns are the main fodder enemies here. They aren't strong when alone but when in numbers they can be a powerhouse: spamming acid/shit at a massive rate in an area, creating a lot of chaos and the ability of healing themselves with their own projectiles. If you let them gaining hits you'll be seeing your health/armor progressively going lower and you don't want that when in the level you'll be also facing MaintBrutes of different types, Demon squads and random spawning (sometimes very strong spawning enemies) created by the Sentinel cameras; the latter ones, the biggest addition to the map's gameplay since its creation can change the Hell Survivor's cards very easily. Camera spawning (cameras got buffed recently and are really hard to shut down without wasting a lot of ammo) heavily discourage backtracking and the accessibility to a powerful secret item in the map. You might face an AdvancedDemonKrallElite who's a very strong opponent at this stage of the game (they'll be one of the most powerful enemies even in the last quarter of the campaign, they're that strong) who will destroy you if you don't react quick. Cameras aren't found in any other G59 level.

The gameplay is very dynamic here. You just move around, kill, look behind you, go forward, look again behind you, trying to sneak through a camera as fast as possible, don't get killed by ShitMeteors (there were ShitJars beforehand and they weren't threatening or much dangerous so I changed), watch out for any Pupae spawned by a dead Queen and so on. As fast-paced as it is, you're required to think fast otherwise the bio/shit will overwhelm you. The Demon Warlord pawns are also very strong and can royally fuck up a player on Unreal difficulty.

The decision of having a Bio/Shit-centered map, other than the fact I wanted to change level theme in almost every G59 map in contrast to how BI handled the theme game with a lot of Hell maps one after one, was because I thought of it as a response to BI's Ice maps. BI's Ice maps combine Ice pawns and Demon pawns, similar how HBG does with Bio/Shit+Demons. This was mostly the main reason; the classic first part of G59 had a Hell map, a Shadow map, a map based on a pre-existing EXU2 elemental race and a Desert map. While my takes on them are completely different, these were also core themes of BI as well (just replace Bio/Shit with Ice when it comes to Waff's pack). For those who don't know, BI has Desert maps as well but they were never released to the public. So yeah overall, the first part of G59 tries to be as EXU2BI-ish as possible, then afterwards it becomes more of its own thing.
 
Once again, like Foundry, Cliff's build made the conversion easy - his maps are very stable. I had once a HOM issue on the landing pad area but it was me being dumb at the time and was quickly fixed. The current hi-tech remake looks ok, could be improved more on a standard close to Unreal 2's ones but is it worth it? Doubt. It is clear at least. It needs to be clear because of all the decals caused by the myriads of Bio/Shit balls being thrown around. This is why also the Crypt theme sucked for the level because the green/brown decals combined with the bright lighting looked gross.

Now, Morax. Morax is the ambiguous bad guy you hear (and also fight sometimes) in almost the entirety of the campaign. He's always relevant from the very beginning of G59 and has a precious rage-y personality. Back in the initial versions of G59, the atmosphere in the translator messages was similar to BI's, mostly a lot of crazy funny'n swearing stuff. This was toned down when G59 went into serious mode, except mostly for Morax's messages. The guy loves to swear, hates the world and has a superiority complex he enjoys to show (this breakthrough personality is also true for Hypers as well but I can't say the exact reason here). The player thinks of him as a random annoyance where in reality he's a powerful asshole with an obscure past that will become more clear as the campaign goes on.

I wanted to create a proper villain in an Unreal mappack. Pretty much everyone in G59, including the races themselves, come with a specific personality (Bio/Shit pawns are an exception but let's consider them just tryhard servants) to make them more memorable and distinct from each other. Like, Unreal isn't known to have mappacks with proper villains. It's always generic Skaarj/Warlord X. Xidia/7B were the packs trying to break the mold and some villains did work (the Nali in SkyTownRedux was the best example). So finally it was time to have a mappack with a clear bad guy and so Morax became reality. I really hope he's been convincing enough! When G59 was in its first months of production Morax was just a generic LaserLord. LaserLord is an unused, incomplete EXU2 pawn that had Morax's green skin (the infamous testmore texture from the XFX package, for those who know of the Skaarj in Unreal's The Darkening). Of course that had to ultimately change, not to mention the LaserLord (and its relatives of different element) were apparently removed in post OPEN BETA EXU2 versions. I think he also had a different unique name too back then, something like Valefor. Yeah probably Valefor.

Finally I get to talk about that weird secret area with the... bad thing in it. This one originated from a dream I had one night about the map itself (in its Crypt form for some reason, I had big memories of that version as in that week I was still reduxxing the map into the high-tech theme)... so yeah there was this passage on that wall in the acid pool at the beginning of the level, leading to some set of corridors. And there was a big exit to an outside section of the building, which would be supposedly another entrance to it. So yeah, I woke up and literally went straight making this area. What is at the end of it (and the general scope of the area) was all mine - the dream just kickstarted the idea of this hidden section, that's it. That was DEFAULT PHASE development era and it was during that time that the Magatsu concept became a thing (Magatsu were never a thing in the pre- DEFAULT PHASE G59 era).

At first this area was so special and never mentioned in patchlogs or posts. Going there was just suicide but it was some sort of "meeting" with a future enemy. Of course over patches this secret was getting more known and became a normal thing of the map itself. Now in recent versions it's required to go there if you want to obtain the map's secret item. A very strong item which I wish I'd be able to tone it down for some of the strongest weapons. That big shutter you see in the long corridor? That's where it leads in the outside section that I dreamt of. I never got to create it but once again, I wouldn't be sure what to do with it in terms of gameplay. It's ultimately an abandoned entrance to the HBG. 

Thermal Overload, Morax's boss theme in this map (before it there was Acid Rain from Unreal Championship 2) is a sensible choice and sounds also similar to Devoid of Gravity, so it did fit insanely well within the level. Consistence.

===== Perditus Paradisus =====
Filename: EXU2-G59-04-PerditusParadisus
Original map: FHub6 (Unreal Beta)
Music: Blurred Matrix (Xenofish), Bio-Magnetic Tunnel Transport (Cybernetika)
Author: UBerserker and Juan Pancho Eekels

So since this is the first conversion of a map that's exclusive to the Unreal Beta, here's the big question: is G59's Na Pali based on the Unreal+RTNP one or it's based on the Unreal+UBeta one? The answer is a mix of both. I decided to get rid of some of the RTNP's worst geographical decisions, keeping the Pancho section as it was in the Beta, while some RTNP locations like Neve end up existing. For Foundry and Toxic I chose the RTNP versions for gameplay purposes. So a mix of both - if you ask me if the G59's Na Pali has Triton then, yes it does. You'll never see it but I'm just confirming that I'm considering the Unreal Beta stuff to be mostly canon (FOR JUSTICE).

Perditus Paradisus aka Lost Paradise is my probably my favorite G59 map. You'd probably realize it considering how many times I've improved this map; it was also used as the background for the campaign ending and it got also turned into a CA map (Ancient Scapes), which shows Perditus years/centuries before G59's events.

The map was the original climax of G59. Not sure where the idea came but I did play some of Waff's unreleased BI maps and one had a battle inside a military structure with shittons of monsters coming out a portal. I guess this was the initial thing that sparked me to do this level and anyway, I would have went ultimately in that direction considering the kind of large valley we have here. 

It was the climax because back then I didn't think if continuing or not G59 past this level. So might as well doing a really hard map to wrap it up if I decided to give up on the campaign (I mean, back when I started Perditus, G59 was just a sequence of EXU2 maps I felt like doing, that's it). Even then, it still turned out to be the climax of the classic first part of G59; it was the last map for several patches, even after DEFAULT ROUTE was released. Then finally EXPANDED ROUTE Phase 1 was released and people were able to play past Perditus. 

The way how Perditus ended without EXPANDED ROUTE content was funny - you'd enter the entrance pipe of Cryox and along the way you'd be stopped by a bunch of decoration actors (barrels, rockets and the like) with a message saying something on the lines of "THANK YOU WAIT FOR THE NEXT VERSION". It was a lot like Fallout New Vegas DLC style; in that game the DLC entrances were foreshadowed in a way, you'd find clusterfuck of rubbish things blocking the road. Once the DLC was released you could pass through. Same story in this map.

The Fallout NV inspiration (that I mention in the readme credits) only came later. Sure of it because Perditus at first utilized as the stage song a (really good) ambient song from another game, then it became Metallic Monks some versions later. Why Metallic Monks? Well, it is relaxing but also when I heard it in Fallout New Vegas, it was right next to the river in the most south-east location of the map. This did scream me "Perditus" and well. I also added Cazadors (the blue Flies) shortly after as well - a REALLY ANNOYING enemy type from Fallout NV.

This map had a lot of changes along the way. I remember the first iteration of it: there was one portal where enemies could come out of it, all the ammo and your only cover was the landed Mercenary HAL ship in the middle of FHub6. You had always to kill the Archdemon guarding the portal to activate the event (there were either a single or multiple Archdemons). There were also LavaTitans around all the valley and it was pretty much impossible sneaking through them unless you used an Invisibility; that's why the item was a thing until the last version because of early gameplay stuff; not sure why I didn't remove that Invisibility early. 

You could skip the fight and head directly for the exit (I'm not sure what was the point of that but I think the treasure hunt secret which was there from the very beginning could only work if the valley battle was done). Easy difficulty had no battle at all; really stupid thing I did back then, I mean why removing a core aspect of the map on a difficulty? It sucked ass. Lastly, there was no Tonatiuh, the battle just ended after all the monsters were defeated.

The monsters were always the same; always the Skaarj, then Gasbag and then Warlords. Same types and same difficulty restrictions (aside the Easy difficulty thing that I already mentioned). The thing is that they all came from the same portal, which was the one in front of the sun. There weren't also obelisks around it - just huge ass palms. With the Clusterfucker it was very easy dealing with everyone spawning there due to the weapon's massive explosion radius. One could just stand there and shoot and ez win. Waffnuffly did not like this so I had to find another way around. Another thing I haven't mentioned is that the Mercenary ship was removed and replaced with a group of vegetation and palms in the middle of the valley, with a GALGALIM hell symbol and a gigantic blue shield that was supposedly GALGALIM technology. This shield blocked any projectile but anyone could enter it. It was quite... terrible. 

With DEFAULT ROUTE released, the current battle format you see today was set. Three portals, three large rocks hiding items behind them and the middle pedestal guarded by the Archdemon and the LavaTitans (no more guarding the portals now). And of course Tonatiuh.

Tonatiuh was a homage to Mordekai, the true final boss from the original Serious Sam. While having no backstory Mordekai was amazing. Some huge ass ghost sorcerer who all he did was summoning a lot of enemies (every enemy type of the game!) to the battlefield. Fun battle. Tonatiuh is the same: let him play and he'll summon an army. He's able to summon all the most basic but also some of the strongest enemies in the game, including DoomTroopers and LavaTitans. In lower difficulties he isn't bad as you don't have to deal with many monsters before him but on Unreal difficulty where Warlords spawn (EXU Warlords are tough) you have almost no stamina left for the boss. It's up to you how to use the PentaPowers in the battle.

The battle's and Tonatiuh's themes were at first respectively Hayashis Journey and Close Your Eyes. I heard some people not being happy about the latter choice because it didn't fill like a boss song, more like an ending theme. And I was honestly really bored of Hayashis. Then one day Cybernetika made this awesome track with this fucking weird name (Bio-Magnetic Tunnel Transport). Straight to replace both tracks. Make also sense considering we're dealing with enemies appearing from transporting tunnels (the portals).

The skybox of Perditus has been also edited several times. It was at first light yellow (like very desaturated yellow), then it got a bit more golden, then it became night in one version (wasn't a fan, tried to make a sunset-like sky but failed), then it went golden/orange-ish again for the entirety of DEFAULT/EXPANDED ROUTE, then ultimately crystal aqua night in RevolveR. Last skybox was made more effective with the new stage song, an old ambient song of Xenofish from his first album which is extremely relaxing (though it makes me feel sad for personal reasons).

Along patches, more areas were added to the map, as in the two HBG-like rooms and lately the shrine and all the ancient-like stuff you see around. For the shrine I had to make my second terrain edit after the slope from The Limbo. Thanksfully, this map's build isn't as fucked up as Nivlek's stuff. Wish I could do more with Cryox's entrance but that part seems to be buggy - I started to deal with HOMs and walls you could pass through.

As of now, the map is complete and doesn't need anything else. There was however one thing I was never able to put in; here's the story.

You know Watcher of the Sky from RTNP? I wanted to put Perditus-converted version of it in this map. After finishing HBG, you'd have ended up in Watcher instead like in RTNP and after Watcher you'd access a special passage in the mountain (NOT THE GALA HOLE) leading to the FHub6 side (through an extension of the modern settlement at the beginning of Perditus). Enemies would have been MechBags along the way.

Couldn't do this because it seems like FHub6 isn't that immune to terrain fuck ups. It was also time consuming because the length of the passage between Watcher and FHub6 was quite long. A lot of useless filler basically, not to mention this was against Na Pali beta's geography, and also RTNP's one. Idea dropped, map done. The end of the classic G59's phase and the "EXPANDED ROUTE Phase 1" group follows.

===== The ELECTRIC MASSIVE DIVER -Rad2032- =====
Filename: EXU2-G59-05-ElectricMassiveDiver
Original map: Cryox (Unreal Beta)
Music: Microchip (Cybernetika), Electron Tracker (Cybernetika)
Author: UBerserker and Inoxx

Alright I didn't create the EMD title, that comes from BEMANI like more than half of names you read in the mappack. The "rad" thing is mine though, just did type rad (radiation) and put a random number in. There you go.

The first produced version of this map was such balls. I was completely uninspired after Perditus and I only made a Cryox conversion by sheer force because it was just the next level. All I did back then was just the orange/red lighting you see right now (the flickering/pulsing included, the lighting was the very first thing done for the map), then added the Hypers and Steel pawns and yeah that's it. No retexturing, no assassin subplot no nothing at all. The multi-linear approach was already present though but it wasn't enough and editor dave put me to shame. Next time the charm then.

And there we are, now EMD is a beast. The re-texturing is one of its strongest points; the textures are still from the DecayedS package but they were never used in Unreal. They were made for Jupiter, a cut map made by Cliff where you would travel in a crashed starship made by a dead insect race. Never seen though but some mappers managed to make use of the textures.

Cryox was however not complete. The beginning was just you falling into a hole and had nothing to do with the exit of the previous map. Perditus ended with you accessing Cryox aka EMD through a door - and now this converted Cryox comes with a proper set of areas before the hole. Mapping in Cryox is scary; Inoxx's stuff were very complex for Unreal at the time, at least for indoor locations, however they were unstable. How many times I've run into brush issues in this map I've lost the fucking count, let alone the water zone leaks or huge HOMs. 

Luckily all the edits I did managed to not impact at all the level's stability. The first new area was quite good at first but for me it wasn't enough; in a later version I had to revise it - you started on the opposite side of the corridor and there were now additional areas: the hangar, a weapon/item laboratory, some guardpost room with Mechbag. That curved corridor after the hole room was replaced with a proper set of pathways that would lead in the main Cryox hub area. I also added access to the Cryox's top area - the command post where the missile command room is located. Basically I tried to make Cryox a more proper location rather than an unfinished set of rooms. I have no idea how the real Cryox would have looked like if it was finished (it was possibly going to be separated in multiple maps) but fuck man, I always hated this conversion but being pretty satisfied of what it is currently now makes me happy.

Regarding the Hypers themselves, they're more important to the story than you ever expect to be. You can already tell by reading the messages that they have some relations with the GALGALIM, the "saviors" of the planet before the Demon King had to deal with a peacekeeping job. Hypers seem to hate the GALGALIM and also Morax... and say Morax who really is. You'll know later in the game what has been the actual impact of the Hypers on the planet. By the way, the Hypers in the EMD are bright orange compared to the regular EXU2 Hypers that are dark brown with glowing eyes. The color change was due to make them more visible in the level (you don't really want to fight semi-invisible buggers who shoot multiple hyper grenades all day) and to make the EMD Hypers stand out from the wild ones (it's mentioned that the EMD Hypers have been in the ship for quite a lot of time and this may have caused their body mutation).

On Unreal difficulty, the Hypers will be aided by Steel pawns. This is the only difficulty-exclusive race in G59 and to be honest I actually never explained why they're alongside the Hypers in the EMD. Practically there they are robotic servants of the Hypers, just like the Hellbots and the MechBags. Just mechanical units that guard the location. Demons might have gave them a hand at building them in this case. I choose Steel pawns because of due to them having similar damage resistances to the Hypers, and also because they fit with the claustrophobic atmosphere of the level. The level is quite dark at times and Steel pawns can be hard to spot. Their damage power (especially the melee damage of Pupae) was high enough for them to become exclusive to Unreal difficulty only.

EMD's gameplay has three major aspects to it, other than it being another map focused on an enemy race.

The first one is the multi-linearity approach when it comes to finish the map. As I mentioned somewhere, the multi-linearity aspect was actually there from the very beginning. It was probably the only unique idea I had in mind when I started making this map. It was more prevalent back then, now definitely much less. Other than completing it in the legit, main way, you can find the Invisibility in this map and use it to sneak in the commander's room in order to activate the underwater Tunnel #3, avoiding many fights. Another one is trying to brute force your way through one of the EMD Nuclear Slith; it's impossible to swim through them and defeating one takes a shittons of ammo. The last one is about finding a certain secret portal which will help you to easily kill a EMD Nuclear Slith... if you're fast enough.

The multi-linear part only comes after another big setpiece of the map - the Demon battle. This is like a super advanced version of the Demon ambushes in HBG. Here it's a full blown, three-areas massacre of constantly spawning Demons of different pawn type and in each Core room you approach the battle in a different way. EMD was way too "sleepy" and really needed a wake-up call to kick up the player's senses. Considering the Hypers mention a lot their joint alliance with the Demons I had to make this story bit at least realistic in the game. I used Electron Tracker for the Demon battle; it's not exactly a favorite of mine but Waff liked it a lot, so I trusted him. The song's pretty long and the battle is long too. A crapload of creature factory actors were used for the entire Demon assault.

The third and final core aspect of EMD's gameplay is more of a sub-plot - the mysterious assassin sucking the energy of the Hypers. EMD is where the Magatsu make their proper first story appearance, through glyphs and their anti-Hyper plan. Magatsu's concept was indeed created during the development of DEFAULT ROUTE; the very first reference was an old screenshot in the first G59 thread that shown info regarding the EMD, plus a weird red message at the end regarding "heretics". The Magatsu's origins and objectives were always the same since the moment I created them, I wanted to create a new EXU2 race that would greatly be set apart from the rest. So, with this assassin in the EMD and all the dead bodies around, I wanted to make the player feels unsafe all the time (it's one of the themes of G59 - you are never safe). Once the music turns off, you're probably in deep shit.

The map's original song was the Vault's theme from Fallout. That was one dark industrial-ish track that did fit with the oppressing, eye-burning lighting of the EMD. However, space to the ambient songs only when it's necessary: Microchip was a good choice. It was picked up as an answer to BI's latest Terraniux conversion song which was also heavily psy-trance (also mostly because both Cryox and Terraniux are Mercenary maps, so I played the "shout out" game here).

One thing I wanted to clarify is why Moowis, who's a "boss" enemy, doesn't have a health bar unlike the bosses in the previous maps. The reason is because, back when G59 was still being made under the EXPANDED ROUTE concept, only the most important boss from each EXPANDED ROUTE Phase would have the health bar. For Phase 1 it was Berith, for Phase 2 it was BaalBerith and for Phase 3 it was the last boss. And the Phase bosses would have their text color the same as the phase's color (e.g. Phase 1 is yellow, Berith's name is written in yellow) - this explains why the bosses' names in the first classic maps are written in gray. I wanted to give all bosses a health bar but sometimes it's not worth it. Moowis feels more like a super strong ElitePopper anyway.

I was relieved to see that EMD was well-received after the first release of EXPANDED ROUTE Phase 1; the map at that point already had tons of decent additions compared to the shitty earlier versions. Definitely a good start for that group of maps.

Regarding other trivia in this map - nothing much. The Sin Pillar's original placement was in that room accessible in the exit area, basically the original exit of Cryox in the Unreal Beta. There was no requirement: the door would open REALLY SLOWLY and you had to make it through while the assassin was pursuing you underwater. I also did one additional mini-area for the first section of the level (in front of the corridor which leads to the room with the MechBag on Unreal difficulty); it did lead to a chamber with a pool full of SteelSlith. Sadly, the area looked really shitty and it was purely filler (not to mention it screwed up some geometry in the rest of the map, which was the main reason why I stopped adding shit to EMD). It was quickly removed.

===== NOTHINGNESS =====
Filename: EXU2-G59-06-NOTHINGNESS
Original map: FHub5 (Unreal Beta)
Music: N/A
Author: Erosion and Juan Pancho Eekels

Back in the early days of production, when I was done for a while with EMD (in the saddest way possible) I tried to go back on track and pretty much believing myself that G59 would be becoming a campaign of its own. So, if EMD didn't work at the moment, might as well do a map in my favorite style: SHADOW.

However, what did set apart NOTHINGNESS from the other Shadow maps is that this one was an outdoor level. Silent Hill 2's night town walks were my main inspiration for this kind of level. Almost entirely dark and almost no sounds at all. Instead, there are dynamic ambient sounds that make use of randomized pitch, and would play in the most important spots of the map. Quite an awesome atmospheric effect, even if it wasn't on par with VOIDNESS' sounds but at least it worked amazingly.

The problem is, what would you do with FHub5, and with an outdoor Shadow map at that? First off, I decided that the entry point would be the underground tunnel that's not in the RTNP version. Here the player needs to understand that anything colored of strong red in the Shadow world means death. Bunch of invulnerable Shadow Mantas would swarm you and kill you in no time. Either way, the first area houses a puzzle that pretty much everyone seems to hate for different reasons, even if the puzzle is a simple coordinates-game thing. You read the message which contains the coordinates, a simple explanation that you have to touch the bricks and lastly on what side you have to face on. And then press the bricks. It's a confusing process I agree, and I also agree on the fact that I had to put at least some confirmation sound FOR EVERY CORRECTLY PRESSED BRICKS, not just the final one. Also the bricks are quite hard to see due to them being actually panel decorations and not brushes but that might be more of a balance decision to make red bricks less visible.

From there and on, the player would solve the puzzle and finally go outside. The game here becomes a searching one: go around the valley, watch out at the Shadows, and find the key which opens the Exusia sanctuary. The key is spawned randomly, in one of the placed spawnpoints. It also only spawns if you complete the first puzzle of the map (this is why you can't find the key if you ghost through it).

By exploring you would find all sort of weird things, some of them being added in later versions of the map. What there was in the Magatsu entrance before the Magatsu were invented? Just another Saint-style entrance like the Exusia exit. Post-Exusia G59 was different before DEFAULT ROUTE. Tsathoggua was also Coop-only at first, then I decided to bring him into SP just for scary factor only. The insanely large corridor that's the exit of Aztec? A reference to Silent Hill 2, again. I also can't explain the sense behind how that corridor has become a thing. It's one of the things I wish I didn't do but it's G59 history now.

One thing that people probably never expected about this map is the "countdown" before big Shadow Skaarj start to appear in the valley continuously. This was something I did add in a patch and I don't think I have ever documented it. It was also a rare thing for it to happen because the original countdown was long enough for players to find the key and end the map. Now in the last version, the countdown is shorter and it's extremely relevant, so be careful.

Big Shadow Skaarj are rather good at suddenly scaring you with their ultra strong melee attacks. Either way, this is such a gimmicky map that is hard to enjoy. Not exactly proud.

===== Holy Sanctuary of Exusia =====
Filename: EXU2-G59-07-Exusia
Original map: Nexus (Unreal Beta)
Music: Radiation Storm (Mark Morgan), Desert Wind (Mark Morgan), Forged for Battle (Cybernetika)
Author: UBerserker, Erosion and Inoxx

Fuck.

This was the very first obstacle of G59's development. I had massive troubles even thinking what to actually do with the map, let alone the fact I had to deal with another Inoxx map after Cryox and Nexus wasn't anywhere more stable (however, Exusia was based on a MH version of Nexus made by somebody else but never properly released - this version had Nexus and Nexus End combined. Then in this year I realized that Nexus End was connected to Nexus in a different way, with a 90° turn but whatever I'm getting sidetracked).

So initially, the first thing I did with Nexus was trying to see how good I was at making a very light/holy based theme. I picked the Bio/shit, the Hypers, now it was time to pick another supposedly important but hardly touched EXU2 race - the Saints. The idea was having Demons, Shadows and Saints in the same level. So I tried to make this overly light theme which used stone textures and VERY STRONG white/blue light; basically a lot like a typical Japanese-game holy setting a la Castlevania. The results were completely horrid - the map was basically an unlit block of stone. The engine simply wasn't made for overly bright stuff. 

I went with a different direction, something that resembles modern dinner rooms. Or like, just trying to play around those bright SkyTown textures which were mostly used for churches only. Seemed to work! At first the map was mostly white. Then, since EXPANDED ROUTE Phase 1's code color was yellow (the "yellow" was accidental because unlike Phase2 and 3 that were going to have very redd-ish/blue-ish colored maps, yellow was just left so...) I decided to modify the used SkyTown textures to make them look golden instead of purely white. Over patches, the lighting was changed to be fully golden, then it ultimately became a mix of both white and golden. The golden part mostly came from the windows, covering the "magical" yellow skybox. The skybox is mostly a bunch of yellow lights, a yellow translucent fan and a ring. It's to make it a bit more chaotic, as for the most part you're never able to see much behind the window; I didn't want just plain clouds. The skybox is basically a magical envelope which protects the shrine from the Shadow effects, though it won't work forever.

The name "Exusia" is not made-up for EXU2, lol. It's a bastardization of exousia, which is another word for seraphims. Since this is EXU, might as well change it to Exusia.

How did the double-theme idea come up anyway? At first I never considered the "shadow world", then... Those were the months when I was playing Fallout New Vegas; it came with the old Fallout 1/2 music which I was starting to remember one by one the more I was playing the game. One night, had a nightmare. Dreamt of something like a very abandoned and rusty Vault which was completely fucked up. Yellow flickering lights, shadows of people on the walls coming from nowhere and the music, Desert Wind, which for some reason I didn't hear yet in Fallout New Vegas. It was a quite awful experience but thank you so much this gave me the drive for making this shadow world.

An EXU2 map where you would travel two times simultaneously, both in the Saints (normal) and Shadow worlds, dealing with two separate forms of gameplay, finding items to proceed in each section, until you finally reach the boss. Was the most ambitious thing I had to deal by then. Took me several months, and more months of fixing and editing. Most of it, after it was finished, was to deal with THE FUCKING INVISIBLE SEMI-SOLID BRUSHES. THESE FUCKING BRUSHES became so annoying that I was almost seeing invisible brushes in real life too. Fucking aggravating how this engine is.

A lot of the areas in both worlds were not accessible at first. One or two were completely secret or mostly easter-eggs but others were just closed off. With patches, all the Nexus sections became progressively accessible plus the addition of new areas that I wasn't able to put in before due to lack of skills or mostly for fear of the map falling apart due to bad stability. The node number became high enough so it was a good time to stop adding anything new.

One of my favorite things in this map is how the Saints look now. EXU2's default Saints look like unlit statues and are small and weak. They just looked hilarious and kinda lame. No offense to Waff but lol I couldn't take them seriously. So I decided to make them more like ethereal presences, large translucent, glowing white ghosts that would move fast and would have immense firing power. Waffnuffly was impressed with what I did when he tried G59 and went as far to ask me if he could update the EXU2 default Saints with the G59 variants. I was pretty happy! However, since Saints were still the weakest force in the map (they're just pre-placed and no more of them spawn, which made Demons and Shadows much more threatening overall), I didn't only think of buffing them but also adding golden variants of Saints. It isn't an intentional Saint Seiya reference with the Golden Saints (talking about the manga/anime) but the concept worked. On higher difficulties, you would deal with a super-powerful Golden Saint that would guard an Exusia room alongside standard Saints. They are almost in every area and are highly visible - bright, big and yellow. They have a lot of health and are extremely powerful, strong enough to deal with group of high-tier Demons.

The Golden Saints were at first relegated to Unreal difficulty only and did not appear always due to odds of appearance. This was reversed in later versions, at least in the randomization part - they now appear always but I think I didn't set to them to pop up on Easy and on Medium too. Demons instead are based on difficulties: on the lower ones you deal with the typical DemonSkaarj and DemonKrall. Go on Unreal difficulty and you deal with AdvancedSkaarjFiends, AdvancedDemonKrallElite and DemonPolice. With the RFPC and Clusterfucker being the main weapons of G59, the enemies have to be strong. Both these weapons are never seen in EXU2 BI at the moment but in G59 they're like a core part of the entire campaign. Forget the ShitGun, and the EnergyAR won't be enough even with enough powerups (that are also exclusive to G59 at the moment). The HyperFlakker and the TachyonDriver still have their moments.

As for the Shadows, they're just red-colored. That's it. It serves as a mean to show how fucked up the Shadow pocket dimension really is. Also the "red" fits more with the HourKraden textures. To make things even more weird/scary I also did put Shadow variants of other Unreal pawns, to make the map more unpredictable for first-time players.

Berith, the boss, was quite tough to balance. To avoid him being just a spammy HellGun shooter, I gave him some semi-useless attacks that he would use when he's far away from you. Though give him a while and he goes back to rushing over you with melee attacks or Hell projectiles. The player has to hide behind the four pillars and trying to unleash most of his attacks when moving from one pillar to another. He has a lot of health and when he loses half of it he becomes more aggressive. Plus, when he's almost dead, he'll start to slowly regenerating until a certain point. A classic big boss of sort. His subrace name is "Black Knight", TurboDemonBrutes that have become insanely strong over the centuries.

I think it was appropriate to have a big cool guy to beat at the end of a mind-fucking long double-maze. There isn't a better sense of satisfaction to me after beating Berith and finally relaxing in the last large area. Then you can also do the massive puzzle secret - which people will probably hate because it's based on NOTHINGNESS's first puzzle with the coordinates, except 10x times harder. The code is even hidden! And to access the area there's some weird teleport code thing as well.

This is the only level in the campaign which ended up with Fallout music because I didn't have other choices (they come from a free release). Radiation Storm is relaxing and fits with the dreamy atmosphere of the regular world. Desert Wind was picked because of the dream, didn't think twice. It's a really evil ambient piece. Forged For Battle has the intro removed (thanks Shivaxi!) and since it's a mindless amazing boss theme, it was appropriate to a mindless destroyer boss. He's the main champion of the Demon King - other champions that are still living are resting but can still fight.

So Inoxx's beta maps ended up being the core part of the old EXPANDED ROUTE Phase 1 group of levels, going from Map 5 to Map 8. At first I thought they could have been shit but people actually loved the maps. FEELS GOOD MAN. This map is considered the end of the first half of G59; you access the Scanner of Elohim (which mentions all the preliminary info you see in all of the G59 first threads' posts), it's the location where all the Hell Survivors from different timelines never managed to walk past, there's a massive sense of climax with Demons/Saints/Shadows fighting around and the boss is a tough bitch. For most people this is the best G59 map. Not sure if I agree but I see their point, it's very unique.

A bit of a backstory, in the early versions of G59 when the campaign was just of 10 maps, Exusia would lead directly to the Demon King's castle. No SHADOWNESS and no Magatsu (as they weren't a thing yet). The deal is that at the end of old Exusia, there was a little orange portal right before the exit door, bringing you at the beginning of the converted Escape From Na Pali (just like in RTNP). This did change once I thought of making the Magatsu race, during the DEFAULT PHASE development. Though of course, each EXPANDED ROUTE phase needed to have four maps; I was at three so I had to make something post-Exusia before finishing Phase 1. There goes in NOTHINGNESS part 2 - had to since NOTHINGNESS contains the access to the Magatsu world; the Hell Survivor becomes blessed. It's not just some sort of anti-Magatus shield but the Hell Survivor instead absorbs the knowledge on how to deal with the Magatsu themselves.

===== SHADOWNESS =====
Filename: EXU2-G59-08-SHADOWNESS
Original map: FHub5 (Unreal Beta)
Music: N/A
Author: Erosion and Juan Pancho Eekels

Quick, let's release EXPANDED ROUTE Phase 1 soon, let's do a quick re-conversion of NOTHINGNESS into SHADOWNESS. Didn't take much: let's add some dead Saints along the way, a pathway from the beginning to the end all covered with white candles, make the rest all dark and full of shadow webs which would mean instant death if the players go there. And put Shadows all around, mostly big ones.

So yeah this is just a quick post-Exusia interlude which serves as a transition to the Magatsu world. The main aspect is the Shadow God Jrath watching you from the sky right as you exit Exusia. Frightening encounter when you play the map for the first time, and you shit your pants to see how big he actually is and that shit is going down bad on the planet. Some of the NOTHINGNESS ambushes were kept the same - the Skaarj and Squid ones - except there are now big Shadows to kill too. At the end, you meet the assassin of the EMD: Ghatanothoa is the very last Shadow enemy you ever fight in G59; I wanted to make sure that after SHADOWNESS you would never fight Shadows anymore. Simply put, Shadow gameplay can't go on forever and all their scare powers are pretty much done at this point. You have seen the Shadow God up-close - what more would you want now?

But now there was another new race incoming, completely exclusive to G59. While SHADOWNESS was quite easy to make as a new G59 map, a year after after the last one I made, it was time to make completely new conversions. EXPANDED ROUTE Phase 1 was completed and now it was time for Phase 2, the red one, focusing on the Magatsu. Almost close to the great G59 hiatus that sadly began much later.

===== Nephesh Ruah =====
Filename: EXU2-G59-09-Haereticus
Original map: Morose (Unreal Beta)
Music: Drop Table (Xenofish), First Contact (Cybernetika)
Author: UBerserker and CliffyB

So EXPANDED ROUTE Phase 2 had to happen one day or another. It did start but did it finish?

I forced myself into doing newly made G59 conversions/maps instead of updating the old campaign levels to better standards, and that didn't happen since I finished said old G59 campaign so it was already quite tough for me to get that momentum back. Worse even, these maps had to house a newly-made theme with newly-made EXU2 enemies. I was like FUCK HOW I DO THIS NOW. At least it wasn't four Magatsu maps, just three - the last map of the Phase 2 group was going to be the BaalBerith's castle one, which was named The Fallen and then Yaksha. Then it changed again in the last released G59 version.

Initially the retail maps considered for a Magatsu make-over were Morose (well of course considering you're going there), FHub4 (Waff was already doing a Spire Valley hell conversion for BI which I wonder if it'll ever come out) and Soledad. Soledad didn't ultimately happen but that's for later.

So what did spark the Magatsu idea you say? I had to add something. I replayed Mass Effect games during those weeks and the second game of the series had the Collectors, those brainless artificial pawns of the Reapers, who basically captured other living species for examination or for other horrid things. This is pretty much how Magatsu were born: a self-sustaining "artificial" race that live by capturing members of other races by luring them into their home, eat their souls, take the victims' by "stoning" them with their mysterious technology (this is why the Troopers are armed with Freezers) and use said bodies to create new Magatsu units. And also praying to and become "allies" with the Shadows, even though both races work separately. Magatsu have their "education" system for the newborn created units but aside being loyal and fanatics of the Shadows, they don't have a culture of their own. It's a mixed bag of other races in the planet and their nauseating architecture style which is a rusty, chaotic high-technology mass of red and gray metal reflects their horrible view of the world. Reading their messages, they do really feel like extremists/terrorists you can't reason with. You have to feel zero sympathy for these bastards.

After a while by retexturing a bunch of Skaarj/Queen textures into red and black, re-coloring hell glyphs into a red color and creating the first few Magatsu pawns, here we go making the first conversion.

Once again, like the rest of Cliff's maps, Morose gave me no geometry issue. I was already kinda experienced with the editor so that probably helped me there. The Morose conversion was going to be a Magatsu take-over, with the obvious re-texturing and all the crypt-like stuff remade to fit the Magatsu theme. Was a progressive room-by-room work, including also all the relative story/gameplay content, all taking one month. And in the meanwhile I was brainstorming my ass for the next map which was an outdoor one; the last proper outdoor G59 map I made was The Limbo (Perditus doesn't really count due to its specific gameplay and theme). But a month for the first Magatsu map was still quite a victory; when I first tested it, it was already perfectly playable... aside the three big Magatsu battles that were kinda wonky and slow but those were improved in later versions.

The Queens of Discord, named Eris I/II/III (clearly to show the great imagination of the Magatsu), were already concepted to be the leaders of the Magatsu that you'd kill at the end of the Magatsu section of G59; I just wanted though to introduce them right as early as possible because, huh. Yeah just really because there isn't a similar thing done in G59 so far and also because to make the player think how it will be fighting all of three Queens at the same time. I was picking all different pawns for G59 bosses so for this I just went with Queens (the only Magatsu Queens that exist, which brings more validity to the artificial way of creation of Magatsu units).

For the record: everything regarding this conversion was done in its month of creation. So it was like a one-way remake of it and none of the concepts applied to the level were removed in future versions (there have been only improvements).

One word regarding the MagatsuGassius (the Magatsu Gasbags) - they originally multiplied themselves after every belch shot, making them completely insane; you'd be basically overwhelmed by them in no time and most probably the game would crash too. They were Unreal difficulty only at first, then they were changed to spawn Dactyls instead of JUST Gassius (it still happens, just rarely now); now they appear on some of the lower difficulties.

A thing about Magatsu maps is that I planned their titles to be written in different, OLD languages. Only the first two Magatsu maps had their titles made - first was written in Hebrew, the other was written in Latin. This is always for diversification between the Magatsu theme and the rest of the G59 levels.

Map 9's title is Nephesh Ruah. Nephesh stands for "living being", Ruah means "spirit". It's the name of the Magatsu location that was once Morose.

Music-wise, First Contact was chosen because of how alien it sounded like (you're dealing with a new "alien" presence here) and mostly because "first contact" -> first contact with the Magatsu. The ambient theme by Xenofish was added in RevolveR once my ears listened to it, it's pleasing and weird at the same time.

That's probably what I can say about the map anyway. The maps made for G59 that aren't from the beta era don't have much of a backstory, aside how I did think of some of the concepts (in this case the Magatsu, they came up pretty quick). Now this is more of a talk of the really awful hiatus that made G59 sleep for two years.

To resume it... the EXPANDED ROUTE phases were planned to be released always when a phase's group of maps was done and playable. Just like Phase 1 where its maps were only out because all four of them were ready and playable (mind you that three of them were created in the beta days, so that wasn't going to take much). Phase 2 instead was going to have THREE new maps that were never made beforehand and BaalBerith's castle which was a map from the beta days (which probably needed a complete make-over).

So, it looked like I could never get myself to make Map 10 because I didn't know what to do; meanwhile Map 9 was sitting there. Since I had no idea when Map 10 could ever be done, I wanted to release Map 9 then. At first, the way to release it was quite a weird one. Remember when I announced that custom map "The place named "PHASE TWO""? Yeah the one that I lost because of HDD crash? Yeah basically the whole jist of it was that if you completed it, you'd get a download link (didn't think of how but it was easy to do) to Map 9 itself and the required files. This is why that map was named "PHASE TWO" because it dealt with the Phase 2 of G59's EXPANDED ROUTE.

When that map was lost forever, I decided to release EXPANDED ROUTE Phase 2 officially instead, with just Map 9. I thought of releasing Phase 2 maps one by one, compared to Phase 1 which was all four maps released at once. And, well, it remained one map forever... only until 2016 where G59 -RevolveR- became real. Now, if you see now the second G59 thread which housed the EXPANDED ROUTE stuff, you'll see the Phase 2 section that's literally stuck in limbo. It's kinda depressing thinking about it (the story bits that were exclusive to each EXPANDED ROUTE Phase section were cut off in RevolveR). By the way, the G59 campaign plan during the EXPANDED ROUTE era was different compared to now. Something had to change if I had to finish G59 once for all.

Here comes fucking 2016.
===== Dementia Praecox =====
Filename: EXU2-G59-10-Egoism
Original map: FHub4 (Unreal Beta)
Music: Pulsar (Cybernetika & Xenofish), Discharge (Xenofish)
Author: UBerserker and Juan Pancho Eekels

It was late 2015, December. Such a good year compared to the shithole that's 2016. So, in that month, I think some weeks after Cybernetika posted his new Xenofish collab named "Fragmented", I suddenly had the urge to work back on BaalBerith's castle. Re-doing it in a setting that resembles what's in the video (which is just a bunch or strange ancient decorations drowning in lava): a massive castle floating in the middle of a lava lake, already on the level of some fallen ruins visible below.

I really wanted to make it, something MORE climatic than the original version of that map but I couldn't do it. There was the Magatsu section to get done beforehand. And by then I really wasn't able to proceed one bit on Map 10. Hopeless as fuck, I thought of turning Map 10 into an emergency short transition into BaalBerith's castle, make BaalBerith the last boss and call it done with G59 with a strong final map. Nah, that was like a defeat for me.

In Q2 2016, I did release a patch for EXPANDED ROUTE Phase 2 which fixed a critical coop bug and changed some gameplay things slightly. Seems like there were people still hungry of G59. Was it time to actually kick myself in the ass and try to do something? I challenged myself - let's see in a bunch of weeks what fuck I can do on Map 10 right in the editor.

Good decision! I was actually doing something! For the record, Map 10 was already started before the hiatus so I had at least some kind of direction.

It was time to drop the EXPANDED ROUTE format however. Too much time has passed. The format probably prevented me from finishing G59. It was probably for the best if I took a more freedom-y approach and make the maps that truly matter.

Map 10 did eventually become a thing really quickly - I cannot believe that something I didn't have the patience of doing for two years was instead done in such few weeks. I was amazed and I had enough momentum to actually make Map 11, do big updates on all the previous maps (which is a tradition for important G59 patch releases) and start a new G59 cycle. I called it "RevolveR". No more phases, instead one straight campaign like normal. You could still divide the campaign in four core parts: the classic first four maps, the "phase 1" group which is heavily about the Shadows, the Magatsu trio of maps and the last part of the campaign which wasn't fully decided yet (BaalBerith's castle was still going to follow the end of Magatsu, and the unknown last location was separate in two or more maps).

Now to talk about Map 10, it became what I expected it to be: some sort of red, nightmarish disco valley, with strange-looking structures over the mountains, a lot of statues, red glyphs everywhere, floating red glowing balls. It looks cool so to say but it's just insane shit that only the Magatsu would be ok with. The kind of atmosphere I wanted to achieve in this map is the reason why the title is Dementia Praecox - aka schizophrenia - which seems appropriate; you look above and you see this glowing red star that's like trying to possess your brain.

The map's style is classic. Go there, kill something, press button x to access location y, rinse and repeat. Successive versions of the map (which is like, the last version of G59 only) made things a bit more complex and also visually better. The first version was definitely rushed, I didn't bother putting mini-outposts around the valley or made a better outpost for where you unlock access to the tower. And several areas looked shitty. All of this was pretty much improved in the -RevolveR- X release.

So yeah what to important things to mention about this map? Oh yeah, the FHub4 river. Initially it was a lava lake, then I thought it was just way too generic for the place which is supposed to be a safe heaven for Magatsu. It shouldn't have dangerous stuff so instead of water/lava, the river is now a pit. At the bottom of the pit there's organic material, all junk that the Magatsu dropped in after their unit-creation experiments. What comes out of all this junk is a deadly gas (only visible under very bright lights) that would instantly kill anybody who would breath it, making their breathing organs explode. All except the Magatsu, who don't breath and have no organs (let alone the fact that their new bodies contain this substance already).

Before going back with the lava lake, the type of major structures you would find in the valley weren't the same as I initially thought. The tower of Hybris, for example, was supposed to be at first a landed or floating "Skaarj" mothership; the outpost that would have the unlock access to the tower was going to be much longer, reaching almost the big Jrath statue in the background; the empty space in front of what was originally the Fire God temple entrance in FHub4 was supposed to have an outpost floating on the lava, all connected to the land with metal bridges; then the temple itself that was at first an optional location. All were discarded for when I created stuff in the editor directly. What happened just ended up happening.

Now, back with the lake. So it was a void but now thinking, what would be the exit of the map? As I mentioned in Map 9's commentary, Map 11 was going to be at first a Soledad conversion; this would mean Map 10's exit being Soledad's entrance. It was a bit too underwhelming though; another idea was actually being a large underground abyss, below the tower location. You would descend with an elevator and you'd see in front of you a massive "mothership" wall where you are walking to. In the middle of the "mothership" there was also the portal to the BaalBerith's castle. Was still such of a weird idea because I didn't know how to proceed with it - it'd mean Map 11 not being Soledad but just a pathway to the boss arena with the portal in the background.

Nah. Ultimately, it just happened that due to the void, you could never reach the FHub4 temple without a portal of sorts. This consequently made that temple the exit of Map 10. So yeah, Soledad was dropped and Map 11 became what would that temple be in my old Map 10 concept. This would also mean a possibility for a more climatic ending for Map 10, including a boss fight of sorts.

I had to think of something story-wise related. The Magatsu section wasn't lasting for long (after Map 11 you would never see them again except a remnant group managing to make it in the King's castle) so I had to drop something that would explain their backstory, how they have been a thing. It's such an enormous spoiler to write here (waiting Map 14 for this) but the plot-twist was fun :) Figuring out it was a certain EXU2 race that caused the whole thing, together with a crashed ship you see in the void in front of the temple (same one from FHub4, so --hint--) is something that I thought at the moment. This gave me an awesome excuse to introduce a HellFighter as a boss in G59. They were never in BI and Waff told me to not spoil them but at this rate every EXU2 BI hard-on fan probably knows what HellFighters are, so I didn't worry about spoilers that much anymore.

Aside that plot-twist however, everything that I thought of the Magatsu concept from the ground-up has remained essentially the same. Finishing the rest of the creatures (the Spinners were only added later when I got the balance of Map 10 and 11 finally down) as I imagined, and you had a pretty artificial, all-purpose race with a lot of strengths and almost no weakness. It might be likely the most unique EXU2 race at the moment, each creature uses its own type of projectile attack or has unique properties that make them stand out from the rest of the pawns of different races.

The music. At first, the first ambient song for Map 10 was Black Hole Evolution by Cybernetika. However the song was never released so I wasn't sure if using it was the right idea. Then I discovered Xenofish, and from there the first collab between him and Cybernetika, named Pulsar. This such a fucking awesome psy-trance song with hi-tech egyptian elements. It's probably my favorite song in the G59 GST. Discharge is for the reveal: the Magatsu's cover is blown and now you're more sure of yourself against them. The song's ending also reminds me of Unreal's ending theme a bit, and it's actually fantastic when you see the Magatsu background from the temple's balcony (which is why I decided to keep the song playing after the boss is dead).

I'm not sure what to improve for a next version of Map 10. The outpost where you unlock the tower isn't probably good looking enough and... yeah not sure what else. I'm just glad that Map 10 was over and G59 was kickstarted again in 2016 to the point of actually being finished late in the year.

===== Discord of Aliquam =====
Filename: EXU2-G59-11-Aliquam
Original map: N/A
Music: Sol Nexus (Cybernetika)
Author: UBerserker

The biggest reason why I discarded the Soledad conversion is that most probably, considering it's very similar to Morose, it was going to look like Nephesh Ruah when converted. Alright for NOTHINGNESS and SHADOWNESS being the same map because of story reasons but for sure I didn't want two core maps that were identical in theme and atmosphere. That was like the main no-no of G59, all the maps are always different from each other in a way. Didn't help also it was going to be Magatsu again and the Magatsu section is the only one in G59 that goes on for three maps, consecutive too, and you don't fight anyone else outside of the Magatsu except for something in Map 10.

To be honest, even if I came up with a Soledad conversion, I wanted it to be as short as shit because the Magatsu Queen fight was the main jist of it. Didn't want to pit the player against Magatsu creatures for the third time in a row and Magatsu themselves are quite annoying fuckers to kill.

So, with Map 10 completed and exit fully set, it seemed like I was free to do a completely fresh new level for Map 11. The first proper map made from scratch by me, even if it was going to be short (LIMIT BURST doesn't really count). Once again I could go back to the Exusia holy style, however reddish and completely desecrated in this case. Very short job that took me one week, even though I should have spent another week or so to make it look a bit more decent and add some additional area - something that I ultimately ended up doing in the full G59 release.

For the boss fight, Sol Nexus being used was just an idea at the start; it's probably more about the last Magatsu obstacle (the Queens) before you're finally able to come closer to the Demon King's location. The battle against the Queens is something that must be done lean and quick.

The map title is... something. It's a made up title and aliquam is a rare Latin word that stands for "others" or something. It's not supposed to make any sense, aside discord which is a clear reference to the three Eris Magatsu Queens of Discord.

And yeah, that's about it. The Magatsu section is done and that brings another major G59 chapter to a close with -RevolveR-. Now I felt more confident about actually finishing the pack. After a bunch of hotfixes, I went back to it; the campaign plan at the time had Yaksha (aka BaalBerith's castle aka Verflucht) coming directly after Aliquam, just like how EXPANDED ROUTE Phase 2 was going to be... but then why?

I had then a dream during a Summer night.

===== The Elder Abyss Champions =====
Filename: EXU2-G59-12-Abyss
Original map: N/A
Music: Pillar of equality (Xenofish), Monolithic (Cybernetika), Prismatic Reflection (Cybernetika), Last Encounter (Xenofish & MellowSonic)
Author: UBerserker

So I had this dream in late June or early July, I don't remember when but definitely before midway July.

Dream had me going around in a brown, large museum-like place, resembling the first few areas of this map. Walking through this museum and I find myself in front of a large, dark hole. The hole wasn't actually long - I fell in it and there was some iron net blocking the way to the abyss. And there was another area in front of me. That's about it.

Kinda weird thinking about the dream but over the time I thought if it could be an Unreal map setting because the abyss' walls reminded me of crypt textures. Possible new G59 level idea...? I convinced myself over the course of the first half of July to actually brainstorm something and some days later I started making the map which was about this abyss. Once again, a dream inspires me a G59 map and I'm thankful enough for that.

So this was going to be another newly made G59 level and the first one that came in the campaign all of a sudden this year. At first I didn't know what kind of scope the map should have covered, if it was Demon-themed or some unknown location where the Hell Survivor shouldn't have got in. Then I decided the level to be part of the Demon theme and the only form of access to BaalBerith's castle. BaalBerith's castle at first was supposed to get some huge introduction part where you would fight your way through Demons until you reached the castle. The Abyss was going to be a good replacement for that, a good welcome-back to the good'ol EXU2 Demons for the player. Of course, the map would house all top-tier Demon pawns, including ShockTroopers, FireDroppers and a variant of the HellstormLords. But also the "Royal" versions of DemonSkaarj and DemonSkaarjLord - purple, more healthy, shooting very strong and fast projectiles.

The map actually took me like, two or three weeks to make; it was completely made from scratch and unlike LIMIT BURST and Aliquam, this one is actually really big and not just a boss map. I'm surprised at the short period of time it took to finish; pretty much, when I was mapping I instantly knew what to do afterwards, so it was a really slick lean process. Some areas were a bit inspired from an old DOS PC game, Fade To Black. At first, the ambient theme of the map came from that game; then Xenofish uploaded on his Soundcloud an ambient track named Pillar of equality which I thought it was extremely fitting with the weird nature of the level (shifting between crypt and industrial, the long abyss, wondering where you actually ended in - all implying a sense of danger).

I'm actually not sure how that industrial area at the beginning of the map came up. Considering the location is actually below the magma lake that's found under the BaalBerith's castle, I had to make sure somehow that the player realized he was deep underground and that the Demons did something to not let the Abyss be wrecked by the lava. I'm not sure honestly but the area ended up cool.

One thing the player meets here is Naberius... or not, just a regular GateKeeper. Yes, GateKeepers become actual "regular" enemies in the last part of G59, and they fight exactly like Naberius. However, you got weapons here: SK6 makes an appearance. I wanted G59 to have every regular EXU2 weapon, including the LRPC for the very final climax; the HellGun however becomes nigh useless, already since Map 9, as almost all enemies you encounter are immune to it. So yeah, you have a SK6 which is strong as fuck, and you can blast a GateKeeper in few mortars.

Now, the objective in this map is trying to get out of the Abyss, going in that hole you see above, however the elevator doesn't work because it's blocked by the magic put up by the champions that live at the bottom of the Abyss. So you gotta travel down, which is a nice experience.

The three champion bosses that you beat in this map were created during the "BALANCE OF THE OUTERWORLD" patch. At first I wanted them to be used in a future CA map, then I quickly decided for them to be used as sub-bosses in BaalBerith's castle (you could see the song order in the old patch that they were first used for that map, reason explaination mentioned in that map commentary); but now that the Abyss was a thing and it was going to be just a "prologue" to the Demon King's castle, I moved the bosses from that map to this one; this makes the Abyss a way more relevant location and level in the campaign.

The bosses are all direct inspiration from Dota2 heroes; they don't fight similarly at all but there are some resemblances. Morphling has extreme offensive power and has an healing ability, as a reference to how the Dota2 variant can increase his strength at will and therefore increasing health; Enigma has a melee shockwave which is a bit akin of the Dota2 variant's BLACK HOLE; Terrorblade... well, the Dota2 variant can create illusions. The Abyss' Terrorblade battle has fake copies of the real boss appearing every now and then (it's part of the map though, the pawn doesn't spawn illusions by himself). The boss is like a walking storm of special effects; I tried applying thunder images to his aura and it looked actually kinda awesome so I left it in. It's probably the most threatening-looking G59 custom pawn. All three bosses come with properly chosen songs - Last Encounter is definitely my favorite of the bunch. Also, the bosses' lair come with their own themes - Ancient for Morphling, Starship for Enigma (the Nemo textures though, which were going to be used in a cut Unreal map) and Skaarj for Terrorblade. I wanted to give more life and unique feel to the Abyss in this way, and it was a good way for me to introduce more texture themes in G59.

The map required several playtests to get the gameplay balance right, especially when it came to the boss lairs - bosses being too difficult or the servants that you fight before their chambers being too overwhelming. The champions also use health bars, first time they pop up since Berith in Exusia but at first only BaalBerith and the final boss were going to have health bars (as the respective bosses of EXPANDED ROUTE Phase 2 and 3); however, Morphling required the player to know his health due to the boss' self regeneration ability. This is the reason why I added health bars to all the champions, one of the last things I did before releasing the last G59 version.

And yeah that's it. This has been such a quick map to make surprisingly and it turned out to be one of my favorites, with good gameplay and awesome atmosphere. The race was set: I would be going to actually finish the G59 campaign and release is once for all. This was the last trio of maps consisting of Abyss, Verflucht and Atropos.

===== Kingdom of Yaksha ~Verflucht Demon Legion~ =====
Filename: EXU2-G59-13-Verflucht
Original map: Escape From Na Pali (RTNP)
Music: Fragmented (Cybernetika & Xenofish), Neural Grid (Xenofish & MellowSonic), Skyframe (Xenofish)
Author: UBerserker and Nivlek

FINALLY. The thing that drove me to actually work again on G59 back in December 2015. The actual big climax of the campaign that's the castle of the Demon King, and then face the Demon King himself. It just started as a typical EXU2 conversion of Escape From Na Pali, coming right after Exusia in the early beta version (Map 8 in this case) and titled "The Fallen", then it was changed to "Yaksha Kingdom" which was going to be Map 12 as part of EXPANDED ROUTE Phase 2 (and it was shown in one of the screenshots in the second G59 thread) and then becoming Map 13 in the G59 -RevolveR- X as "Kingdom of Yaksha ~Verflucht Demon Legion~", codenamed as Verflucht. Verflucht means "cursed" in German, the name implies massive danger for whoever would play the map. It's a tough son of a bitch.

The original conversion was fucking lame. It was basically Escape From Na Pali, except with no swamp (there was just a garden with red palms, and the red palms went unused in the newer version of the map) and that the Warlord boss, in this case BaalBerith, would be fought outside, around the castle section. It worked really shitty because it was hard to move around, the boss also hardly moved around, there were meteors all over the place in order to make the battle a bit harder and there was no hype at all. Other things about that conversion is that, it was still quite hard. Lots of Agidyne bags, Royal demons and GigaDemonGasbags to fight; only problem is that the whole area wasn't that large for some enemies, making them very easy to kill. Also, some enemy mass spawns could only be triggered by going into certain locations that you could miss, only to bite you hard later by accidentally triggering them during the BaalBerith boss fight. And more: due to ZERO geometry changes, some places were accessible throughout portals only even if it was 1 metre away (I didn't want to bother with geometry shit back in the day, I had zero skills). There was also some bonus round after killing BaalBerith, where you would go in the infamous "Warlord lava pit" (right on the peak where the original Warlord was standing) and fight a bunch of Shadow swarms hiding there. If you killed all the swarms, you could drop down the pit to be then teleported into the secret area (the one below the original exit of EFNP, that's accessible throughout swamp only) which had a lot of items; otherwise you were dead. Finally, the exit was just the original EFNP exit: in this case, a white glowing portal. You couldn't translocate into the location because of some hell glyphs blocking anyone's way. It was retarded.

As I mentioned in the Abyss' commentary, there was an idea of making a massive entrance corridor leading to the castle valley, full of enemies that you had kill through and through. It was a really early idea and I was thinking of asking editor dave, my first proper tester of beta G59, to collab together for making this corridor. I was inspired by one of his areas in Unforcher, his maps; it was quite detailed and there were red flags and a lot of enemies to kill. That's what I had in mind back then. Now I could have mapped myself something similar but instead there was the Abyss.

Now, fast-forward to August 2016, here's Verflucht. I'm not going to detail all that went on in the remaking of the old EFNP conversion; you see it in this map and how massive it is.

I already said it was this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMUmDQ28bfQ (NOTE: the music is actually different in this video compared to the in-game version which is an older remaster of the song) that kickstarted everything. I wanted the castle to be a massive monster floating in a 3d skybox over ruins flooded in lava. This was the vision, with this apocalyptic song playing (I actually associate Fragmented to bad things and bad luck; it's an awesome track but I hate listening to it outside the game).

The first vision I had for the map was weird: the EFNP castle was basically repeated three times around a peak with some sort of mini-castle on top, owned by the King. In each EFNP castle you would fight different enemies (other than Royal Demons) and at the end of it, there would be a sub-boss. At first, I wanted the sub-bosses to be revived old G59 bosses: Tonatiuh, Naberius and Berith. A boss-rush before BaalBerith like some classic end-game thing. This was then quickly changed when I came up with the three new champions that I described already. However, the concept was probably impossible; the map would have likely exploded node-wise and would have been way too hard.

This is where the second concept came up, and the whole first one was literally thrown in the Abyss. So Verflucht would just focus on a Demon legion, actual battles against multiple GateKeepers and the castle housing BaalBerith. What you see now in other words - a massive extension of the original EFNP (I've been always very vocal against both Nali Castle and EFNP) and the Devil's castle. One thing to note is that I intentionally used the original NaliC textures instead of the EXU2 gray variants, in order to make the place more "royal" and clean.

It took more development time than Abyss hilariously, even if this was a conversion, however the scope of Verflucht was bigger in that regard. I had to playtest it quite a lot in order to get the balance down as I DIED SO MANY FUCKING TIMES. It was also really crashy; I had to waste one day to remove all possible visual things that could cause crashes upon saving, including the absurd amount of pathnodes that were too high and for the most part useless. I managed to get rid of all the pointless pathnodes while still retaining the necessary pathing. The great thing about this map is how the enemies can navigate around the layout trying to pick off the player by patrolling or just chasing. You'll never feel safe with enemies coming from all directions and the Hell Survivor must proceed carefully through the areas. It's like a classic EXU2 BI map, going for the same level of chaos at very high difficulty. 

Also remember all those purple and gray DemonKrall shown in some of the old Verflucht shots? All gone. Skin is still left in the files though.

The "haunted house" is something I came up randomly while making the map, just added it for variety and to break up the chaotic atmosphere of the level with a horror vibe. Thanksfully that unused EXU2 pawn worked well! I planned to use it once in Exusia but I saved it in case it could end up being useful somewhere else.

The final battle in the EFNP area was at first an onslaught of demons of every kind, including ArchDemons (alongside GateKeepers). I had serious difficulties balancing a battle such as this, so I went straight to just having waves of GateKeepers. It's kind of like a big reminder that one of them was the boss of The Limbo, and now you're fighting 30 of them here with an all-ready arsenal and PentaPower. 

The BaalBerith's castle was made without thinking of the interior in mind. So yeah I just made this massive block of stones, then the interior which is quite large (BaalBerith is huge, so of course it had to have large corridors). It was fun. At first I wanted the roof parts to be explorable (you can see in the editor that you could technically walk on it, actually no because I put BlockActors) but I was afraid that the game would crash if you could see the entire kingdom, so that was cut. There was a secret with a LRPC sitting over a platform standing far away, near a balcony of the castle (it's a reference to the unreachable platform from Spyro 3's Midnight Mountain world) but it didn't go anywhere (however the platform and the LRPC still remain - it's implied that's the LRPC BaalBerith brings next to the map's exit portal). The ambush at the bottom of the castle is... yeah I just added it in case you were already missing Magatsu.

BaalBerith was at first a generic Demon King who wanted to be challenged by the strongest opponent, back in the G59 Beta. Never truly evil, just a proud bastard. I tried to give him a personality here and a clear objective that extends beyond his position as an obstacle to the Survivor. He was the one responsible for bringing peace to the planet, why he has to be evil now? He isn't. I only wish Warlord's code was easier to fuck with because his boss battle is really nothing more than a generic Warlord who can shoot two hell rockets at once (well, at least he's testing you and it's been mentioned several times that he can't use his powers without blowing up everything).

Neural Grid was released during Summer, at the right time. Skyframe was originally the BaalBerith's boss theme I had in mind for some months. The old tracks of Verflucht were Calling Mercurio (Cybernetika, stage theme, intense but it wasn't nowhere near as evil as Fragmented) and Lost in Space for BaalBerith. Lost in Space is an awesome old Cybernetika track that sadly wasn't released anywhere, and I was scared of using it. Not that it would have fit considering BaalBerith's current personality and background in current G59.

Anything else to say? I still wanted BaalBerith to look better, lol. Terrorblade looks amazing in comparison. Perhaps some glowing parts of his body could have been good. Also I planned a Shadow God appearance right at the end of the map but I wasn't sure how to do it (at least that scream that's also heard in VOIDNESS should tell it all you gotta DO IT FAST).

After finishing the map, I playtested and worked on the entire campaign for release. I wanted to leave the final map for last and focus solely on it.

===== Ruinous Spiritual =====
Filename: N/A - Cut map (known as EXU2-G59-14-Remain)
Original map: Aztec (Unreal Beta)
Music: adaptive.meta (Xenofish)
Author: UBerserker and Shane Caudle

A mysterious name that people who saw the G59 maplist in the files probably remember. Sure, there have been other levels from the EXPANDED ROUTE Phase 3 that were originally cut off (they were mostly absorbed into one) but this level was a location of its own and could have easily been a separate thing.

So yeah, Verflucht was always the original end of EXPANDED ROUTE Phase 2, leading to the "unknown location", just like in G59 (except it's now not so unknown anymore as BaalBerith says it clear where the Hell Survivor is going after defeating him, and what he's also going to do). Phase 3 was all GALGALIM, the problem was that the four maps of the group were going to be very short in total (two filler ones, a core map and the final boss map). You were going to be teleported in a strange valley (aka Aztec), to then enter an underground outpost (Demonlord's Lair + Demon Crater), then the GALGALIM location (the whole Mothership) and then the boss (The Source). This was going to be the series of conversions ready for Phase 3. All of them were started, the last two became playable, the other two were just in an alpha status and then untouched. The theme used is of course, at least for the GALGALIM location, the Drakk one from Unreal 2 (LIMIT BURST is 100% GALGALIM foreshadowing).

The funny thing is that almost nothing of what was done back then made it in the released GALGALIM content, except the Demonlord's Lair conversion (which is, practically, nothing much). Also geographically it's not supposed to be the real Demonlord's Lair, it's just re-used content for the real map.

So anyway back to Ruinous. The location is mentioned in one of the messages in Map 9 - it's one of the three major locations where the Magatsu find victims; strangely from there, bright blue blood comes out of it and no one in the planet has that kind of blood color. Who could it be, if not that mysterious race that no one ever seen anymore in centuries? Ruinous was basically a heavily reworked Aztec valley with a very weird atmosphere, aided by Xenofish' ambient track.

It was removed because I stopped working on it in favor of Atropos (the GALGALIM map) and because a map where you just walk and not fight felt kind of out of place for EXU2 gaming. Even though I wanted to separate the chaos of Verflucht (and the rest of G59) with the peaceful feel of the dormant GALGALIM location. You would see cows, the Magatsu door to the Nephesh Ruah and a special challenge inside the Aztec temple with a prize at the end. It would contain new enemies and rare EXU2 creatures, and the Sin Pillars would greatly help you there.

Overall it was going to be too weird of a map, something on weed with what I was planning so went straight to Atropos.

Hey, one day I might finish this map and add it to the campaign if I decide so, who knows!

===== One Amongst Superiors =====
Filename: EXU2-G59-14-Atropos
Original map: All new map except for the Demonlord's Lair (Unreal) intro
Music: Atropos (Cybernetika), Beyond the Surface (Xenofish)
Author: Jrath (and Shane Caudle)

Really, the thing that I always wanted to do with G59 since the moment I stopped working on the beta version of the campaign is working on the GALGALIM "Drakk" section again. It was so far away, yet we're here. I love the Drakk theme: definitely the higher-up for me from Unreal 2, the textures are absolutely fantastic and with good enough architecture and lighting (and texturing, of course), maps can look extremely good with the theme. I have no idea why we never had maps in U1/UT using the Drakk textures (except some of the Derdak works but it was mostly partial texturing as an aid to the Skaarj theme) and I'm really sad this is going to be the only single player map to properly use them. And it's on EXU2 too, so even less people will probably check it out.

In the original campaign, the GALGALIM section was Map 9 and Map 10 - The Darkening and The Source conversions respectively. They only used very, VERY FEW Drakk textures but the general atmosphere was absolutely different compared to what we have now. First of all, you were never aware of where the portal at the end of Yaksha/Verflucht would lead you to. The GALGALIM location (mothership conversion title was something along the lines of "Unknown Location", nicknames were "EnergyDrive" and then "Todestrieb" aka death drive) was at first desolated. Under the Dead Space Zero-Gravity song (Dead Space was the actual inspiration of the theme - the second game had a part with a lot of blue lighting which kickstarted the GALGALIM theme and the GALGALIM themselves) all would you find were arrogant messages from these blue aliens, cryopods and energy blobs leaving blue substance everywhere. Typical space horror, except you were still afraid even when equipped with all kind of weapons. There was a sub-plot of two DoomTroopers being sent in this location in every timeline only for them to know and meet the same fate, as the timeline changes never affected the GALGALIM. In the last version, the Hell Survivor is perfectly aware of where he's going, who is he going to fight, who is the bad guy to kill; the GALGALIM in the meanwhile will try to stop you from the very first area.

Even back in the day, GALGALIM played with the time in order to build this anti-Shadow bomb which would eradicate not only the Shadows but just everything in the nearby universe. They were also guilty of waking up the Shadows; most of the messages were ported to the current version of the GALGALIM map with some modifications but the story is mostly unchanged; Morax just became a real jerkass. I suppose I accidentally spoiled too much on Morax being someone more important during the course of the campaign but I bet players still wouldn't expect him being the final boss again.

The other thing that got ported from the original GALGALIM map is the HLSB - HyperLandSpeedBooster - basically like the EMD's HWSB except blue and capable of speeding up your ground/air movements. Back then, the GALGALIM level was empty until you'd press a command panel to wake up all the GALGALIM (the door to the Dominion time machine could only be accessed once most of the GALGALIM were dead). You would fight them inside the whole Mothership Lab/Core - The Darkening basically - like some sort of Last Man Standing in a DM map with one life, with items spread around. It was sorta fun but the mothership layout was so small that some enemies couldn't chase you well. Enemies were also nowhere near as strong as the current ones. If you would also kill all GALGALIM (not all of them were necessary to kill to end the map) you would unlock a door to a room (the Source Antechamber entrance) containing the EXU2's FullAmmo bucket actor. Lol.

That GALGALIM battle used Cybernetika's Atropos, which has remained for me a "blue alien" song and survived till today in G59.

The successive GALGALIM map was set in The Source and what was done for it was very effortless. Highly unfinished. The boss battle maybe wasn't bad (Morax was aided by Squids and his battle played exactly like his HBG one but with blue lasers) but it carried zero hype and I did use some really shitty song. The original ending was also weird: you had two options, a wrong one and a "right..." one. The wrong one was basically going into the Dominion (which you couldn't see at all, it was just all black in the SkaarjPod area); if you did that, you were teleported back to Map 1 - this sort of justified the different teleport sound when you started that map until LIMIT BURST became a thing. There was an idea at first of, instead re-doing accidentally the campaign with a full weapon arsenal, you would be going through a heavily modified G59 campaign with all the levels completely fucked up in time, and the Hell Survivor had to chase another variant of Morax going apeshit.

The "right..." version was instead dropping into the blackness of the area. You were magically ending up in a Shadow-themed UMS Prometheus conversion without the Prometheus itself. Just the terrain. Which was just completely fucked up in terms of stability, even worse than Nivlek's and Inoxx's stuff put together. Not even Shivaxi was able to fix shit. You were to meet an avatar of the Shadow God here (inside another statue) and he would throw all sorts of Shadows against you. If you were to survive all the Shadows, you were sent into the same location but without all the Shadows. As in BACK IN TIME before the Prometheus even crashed. The end.

This was going to be eventually changed in the EXPANDED ROUTE Phase 3, sporting also the other two GALGALIM maps mentioned in the cut level's commentary above. Except this Phase never became a thing, never ever appeared on the G59's second thread. It was the blue phase, of course, and it had its own story entry which mentioned how the Hell Survivor went past the Magatsu and the King, and that was time for him to be useful and save the universe against some tickling light bomb. There wasn't any development past that so fast-forward to 2016 where I was done with Verflucht and the rest of the campaign, with now just the final map being left.

One final map. All the concepts I had for Phase 3 were all absorbed into a single level because after Verflucht, standards were raised a lot and it was time to put on show all my enthusiasm on the GALGALIM/Drakk theme that I gathered over the years. And damn it sure did deliver.

The map was made all from scratch except the Demonlord's Lair conversion leftover from a cut Phase 3 level. At first I thought of the location to be found right below the Demon Crater and you would climb your way up to it but later I decided it just didn't work, instead making it a mystery where the actual GALGALIM lair was situated in the planet (it's in a vast void underground). Inspired by Unreal 2's Drakk maps (maybe a bit too much but I was clueless), Mass Effect Andromeda scenery and from Derdak's mapping style, I managed to make this large monster in a month or so, together with the gameplay/story content on the run. I tried to make every area as detailed as possible, as much as my skills could possibly do. The quality was much higher than whatever I did beforehand. After release I just noticed some stuff that could have looked better, after a better look to U2Drakk levels but that's for another day or patch...

Atropos became the ambient theme. It's my favorite Cybernetika song and there aren't many alien-sounding DnB tracks of this quality on Ektoplazm. The GALGALIM pawns got a new distinct texture that make them look like gods and they're also extremely strong - not too healthy but with incredible offensive skills. A group of GALGALIM Krall can quickly tear away your Frost Armor if you don't take cover.

The map's gameplay was also a bit different from the rest of the campaign. Only very few locations (like just two? One midway and one before the boss) have ammo and armor items. Otherwise you'll only find special health packs that give you 150 HP and can go up to 9999. Put it with the average number of GALGALIM you beat, leans more toward classic Unreal gameplay where you can't fuck up too much. The GALGALIM Gasbags are probably the enemies of the map: they shoot groups of slow homing shock balls that force you to hide somewhere in order to not be hit. And there are a lot of these Gasbags. There aren't also secrets in this map and it's overall linear; think of it as a modern FPS level but with EXU2 gameplay. That was my intention.

I was undecided on how to name the map but I ultimately nick-called it (and the location) as Atropos, as Atropos (the song) itself was just the core of the GALGALIM theme so I'm thankful enough for Cybernetika for that. The map title is self-explaining considering who are your opponents now.

The boss battle, well. That is one thing I'm not proud of but the engine has serious limitations, the Skaarj code sucks and anyway that was my concept. Basically Tonatiuh 2.0 except Morax was so strong like a god that only the LRPC could bring him down. I personally like how the LRPC makes its proper entrance in G59 (full EXU2 regular arsenal!) but still, the boss is very dumb unless you get close to him where he spams lasers all over your body. But it's satisfying blasting him with the LRPC in the middle of this AWESOME Xenofish song named Beyond The Surface (Neural Grid was considered at first, then it went to Map 13).

You kill Morax, you do what BaalBerith told, the ending. Just showing Perditus in daylight, and a bunch of text that mentions the Hell Survivor and BaalBerith using the bomb to only take out all the Shadows on the planet and the human himself being rightly rewarded with ruling over the planet for peace, together with the King and endless Demon legions. No escape and no sacrifice, fuck that shit I hate it, I want the main character to have an ending worth of his power. The Hypers, the clan that gave birth to Magatsu and GALGALIM, were wiped. This is interesting how a seemingly random EXU2 race becomes such a catalyst for two destructive sub-races (not that the Hypers were peaceful) that are core to the G59 story. It's all connected to give the Hypers even a reason to shine in the campaign. It's basically the thing of G59 - everything you meet or go has a reason to be there, with less filler as possible.

G59 was so released in late 2016, after a speed rush in the same year where 5 maps were completed... few months to do it and instead I wasted two years.

-UBerserker