i talk about this all the time with another ex-genshin friend but its interesting that i can kinda pinpoint exactly where the game started to take a steep nosedive in terms of character design and gameplay etc

2020 Gameological Awards

Over on the Gameological Discord, we have an annual tradition of writing up our games of the year not as a ranked list but rather as answers to a series of prompts. Here are my personal choices for the year that was 2020.

Favorite Game of the Year

I didn’t know what to expect when I walked into Paradise Killer. I knew that I liked the vaporwave resort aesthetic from the game’s trailer and figured I was in for a Danganronpa-style murder mystery visual novel with an open-ended murder mystery at its core. Those assumptions were… half-right? The game definitely plays out like the exploration bits of Danganronpa set on the island from Myst but with far simpler puzzles. What I didn’t expect was to fall so deeply in love with the environment—its nooks and crannies, its millennia of lore, its brutalist overlap of idol worship, consumerism, and mass slaughter. It makes sense that the world of Paradise Killer is its strongest feature, since the cast of NPCs don’t really move around, leaving you alone with the world for the overwhelming majority of your experience as you bounce back and forth between digging around for clues and interrogating potential witnesses. And despite what the promo materials indicated, there IS a definitive solution to the crimes you’re brought in to investigate, the game just lets you make judgment based on whatever evidence you have at the time you’re ready to call it a day, so if you’re missing crucial evidence you might just make a compelling enough case for the wrong person and condemn them to eternal nonexistence. Am I happy with the truth at the end of the day? No, and neither is anybody else I’ve spoken to who completed the game, but we all were also completely enthralled the entire time and our dissatisfaction has less to do with the game and more to do with the ugly reality of humanity. I’ve always been of the mindset that “spoilers” are absolute garbage and that a story should be just as good whether you know the twist or not and any story that relies on surprising the audience with an unexpected reveal is not actually that good a story, but Paradise Killer is a game about piecing together your own version of events so I feel that it’s vital to the gameplay experience that people go in knowing as little as possible and gush all about it afterwards. Just trust me, if the game looks even remotely intriguing to you, go for it. I’ve had just as much fun talking about the game after I finished it with friends just getting started as I did actually solving its mysteries myself.

Best Single Player Game

I honestly missed out on the buzz for In Other Waters at launch, so I’m happy I had friends online talking it up as Black Friday sales were coming along. The minimal aesthetic of his underwater exploration game allows the focus to shift more naturally to the game’s stellar writing as a lone scientist goes off in search of her mentor and the secrets they were hiding on an alien world. It only took a few hours for me to become completely absorbed in this narrative and keep pushing forward into increasingly dangerous waters. In Other Waters might just be the best sci-fi story I experienced all year and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys sci-fi novels, regardless of their experience with video games.

Best Multiplayer Game

Look, we all know this year sucked. 2020 will absolutely be chronicled in history books as a fascinating and deeply depressing time in modern history where we all stayed inside by ourselves and missed our friends and family. It was lonely and it was bleak. Which is why it made my heart glow so much more warmly every time I got a letter from an honest-to-goodness real-life friend in Animal Crossing New Horizons. Knowing that they were playing the same game I was and hearing about their experiences and sending each other wacky hats or furniture, it lightened the days and made us feel that little bit more connected. Sure, when the game first launched we would actually take the time to visit one another’s islands, hang out, chat in real-time, and exchange gifts, but we all eventually got busy with Zoom calls, sourdough starters, and watching Birds of Prey twenty-two times. Still, sending letters was enough. It was and still is a touching little way to show that we’re here for one another, if not at the exact same time.

Favorite Ongoing Game

Zach Gage is one of my favorite game designers right now, and when I heard he was releasing a game called Good Sudoku I was sold sight unseen. The game as released was… fine. It’s sudoku and it’s pleasant, but it was also buggy and overheated my phone in a way I hadn’t seen since Ridiculous Fishing (also by Zach Gage) seven years ago. Thankfully, the most glaring bugs have been fixed and I can now enjoy popping in every day for some quick logic puzzle goodness. Daily ranked leaderboards keep me coming back again and again, the steady ramp of difficulty in the arcade and eternal modes means I can always chase the next dopamine rush of solving increasingly complex puzzles. It’s not a traditional “ongoing” game the way, say, Fortnite and Destiny are, but I’m happy to come back every day for sudoku goodness.

Didn't Click For Me

With Fortnite progressively losing me over the course of 2020, finalizing with my wholesale “never again” stance after Epic boss Tim Sweeney compared Fortnite demanding more money from Apple to the American Civil Rights movement (no, absolutely not), I dipped my toe into a number of new “battle pass”-style online arena types of games, and while Genshin Impact eventually got its hooks into me, Spellbreak absolutely did not. With graphics straight out of The Dragon Prince and the promise of a wide variety of magic combat skills to make your character your own, the game seemed awfully tempting, but my first few experiences were aimless and joyless, with no moment of clarity to make me understand why I should keep coming back. Maybe they’ll finesse the game some more in 2021, or a bunch of my friends will get hooked and lure me back, but for now I am a-okay deleting this waste of space on my Switch and PC.

"Oh Yeah, I Did Play That Didn't I?"

I remember being really excited for Murder By Numbers. Ace Attorney-style crime scene investigation visual novel with Picross puzzles for the evidence, art by the creators of Hatoful Boyfriend, and music by the composer of Ace Attorney itself?! Sounds like a dream come true. But the pixel-hunt nature of the crime scene investigations was more frustrating than fun, the picross puzzles were not particularly great, and the game came out literally a week before the entire world went into lockdown which makes it feel more like seven years ago than just earlier this year. I remember being marginally charmed by the game once it was in my hands, but as soon as my mind shifted to long-term self care, Murder By Numbers went from hot topic to cold case.

Most Unexpected Joy

I was looking forward to Fuser all year. As a dyed-in-the-wool DropMix stan, the prospect of a spiritual sequel to DropMix on all major digital platforms without any of the analogue components was tremendously exciting, and I knew I’d have a lot of fun making mixes by myself and posting them online for the world to hear. What I didn’t expect, however, was the online co-op mode to be such a blast! Up to four players take turns making 32 bars of mashups, starting with whatever the player before handed them and adding their own fingerprints on top. It sounds like it should just be a mess of cacophony, but every session I’ve played so far has been just the best dance party I’ve had all year, and everyone not currently in control of the decks (including an audience of spectators) can make special requests for what the DJ should spin and tap along with the beat to great super-sized emoji to show how much they’re enjoying the mix. Literally the only times my Apple Watch has ever warned me of my heightened heart rate have been the times I was positively bouncing in place rocking out to co-op freestyle play in Fuser.

Best Music

Only one video game this year had tunes that were so bumpable they were upgraded to my general “2020 jams” playlist alongside Jeff Rosenstock, Run the Jewels, and Phoebe Bridgers, and that game was Paradise Killer. 70% lo-fi chill beats to study/interrogate demons to, 20% gothic atmospheric bangers, 10% high-energy pop jazz, this soundtrack was just an absolute joy to swim around in both in and out of gameplay.

Favorite Game Encounter

It’s wild that in a landscape where games let me live out my wildest fantasies, the single moment that lit me up in a way that stood out to me more than any other was serving Neil the right drink in Coffee Talk. Over the course of the game, you serve a variety of hot drinks to humans, werewolves, vampires, orcs, and more, all while chatting with your customers and learning more about their lives and relationships. The most mysterious customer, though, is an alien life form who adopts the name Neil. They do not know what they want to drink and claim it doesn’t make a difference because they cannot taste it. Everybody else wants *something*. Neil is just ordering for the sake of fitting in and exploring the Earth experience. It’s only in the second playthrough that attentive baristas will figure out what to serve Neil, unlocking the “true” ending in the process. Seeing the typically stoic Neil actually emote when they tasted their special order drink? What an absolute treat that was.

Best Free DLC of the Year

It’s still only a couple of days old at the time I’m writing this, but Marvel’s Avengers just added Kate Bishop, aka Hawkeye, and THANK GOODNESS. Almost every character in the game at launch just smashed the endless waves of robot baddies with their fists and that looks exhausting and uncomfortable. Hawkeye (the game calls her Kate Bishop, but come on, she’s been Hawkeye in the comics for over 14 years, let’s show her some respect) uses A SWORD. FINALLY! Aside from that, I’m just having a blast shooting arrows all over the place. She and Ms Marvel are the most likable characters in the game so far, so I hope they keep adding more of the Young Avengers and Champions to the game, and if the recently announced slate of Marvel movies and tv shows are any indication (with America Chavez, Cassie Lang, and Riri Williams all coming soon to the MCU), that seems to be what Marvel is pushing for across all media

Most Accessible Game

Nintendo is, first and foremost, a toy company. They got their start in toys and cards long before video games was a thing, and they still do more tests to ensure their video game hardware is childproof than anybody else in the industry (remember how they made Switch cartridges “taste bad” so kids wouldn’t eat them?). This year, Nintendo got to rekindle some of their throwback, simplistic, toys-and-cards energy with Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics, a Switch collection of timeless family-friendly games like Chess, Mancala, and Backgammon, along with “toy” versions of sports like baseball, boxing, and tennis for a virtual parlor room of pleasant time-wasters. The games were all presented with charming li’l explainers from anthropomorphic board game figurines, and the ability to play quick sessions of Spider Solitaire on the touch screen while I binged The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix made Clubhouse Games one of my most-played titles of the year. Plus, local play during socially-distant friend hangs was an excellent way to make us feel like we were much closer than we were physically allowed to be as friends knocked each other’s block off in the “toy boxing” version of Rock’em Sock’em Robots.

"Waiting for Game-dot"

I get that everyone loves Disco Elysium. I saw it on everyone’s year-end lists last year. I finally bought it with an Epic Games Store coupon this year. This year was a long enough slog of depressing post-apocalyptic drudgery, I didn’t want to explore a whole nother one in my leisure time. I’ll get to it… someday.

Game That Made Me Think

Holovista was an iPhone game I played over the course of two or three days based on the recommendation of some trusted colleagues on Twitter and oh my goodness was I glad that I played it. What starts as a chill vaporwave photography game steadily progresses into an exploration of psychological trauma, relationships with friends and family, and the baggage we carry with us from our pasts. In this exceptionally hard year, I badly needed this story about spending time alone with your personal demons and finding your way back to the people who love and support you. Just like with Journey and Gone Home, I walked away from Holovista feeling a rekindled appreciation for the people in my life.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order-Review

Respawn Entertainment breaks an over decades long curse and delivers a phenomenal, if rough around the edges, Star Wars experience.

(Review contains minor spoilers)

Cal Kestis (Cameron Monaghan) is a Jedi survivor of Order 66. Having survived the traumatic first stage of the Jedi Purge, Cal has spent the last several years on the fringes of the galaxy, keeping his head down and avoiding detection by the Imperial warmachine and their fearsome enforcers. However, when Cal uses his Force powers to save a friend in danger, he draws attention to his relatively normal life and he is soon once again on the run from the Imperial Inquisitorius. Luckily, he is found by two other renegades, former Jedi Cere Junda (Debra Wilson) and crotchety ship captain Dreez Gritus (Daniel Roebuck), and offered safe harbor. It comes with a catch though. Cere needs Cal to unlock the secrets of a potential list of new Jedi hidden by her former master, Eno Cordova, and scattered throughout the galaxy. Cal and Cere have their own secrets though and a deadly Inquisitor follows them at every step.

It’s been a long time since there has been a good Star Wars video game. At least, a single player experience that rewards with story in addition to gameplay and visuals. This decade has already been pretty sparse in offerings after the comparatively abundant 00’s, but even more so for those hoping for some kind of narrative from their gaming trips into the galaxy far, far away. Sure, 2017’s Battlefront II offered a short and deeply flawed campaign, but for anything more substantial we would have to look back to 2011’s The Old Republic MMO or 2010’s sloppy sequel to The Force Unleashed. For a franchise that offered some of the best experiences in the action adventure genre several generations ago, Star Wars was struggling to make its mark in this medium even with the pure abundance of film, comics, books, and TV offered each year.

Luckily, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is a success. It’s a profoundly satisfying experience for Star Wars fans in addition to just being a rewarding and joyful gameplay experience. It may not be perfect, and it is certainly rough around the edges, but Respawn Entertainment has created a Star Wars experience that is among the best out there.

Much of this comes from Fallen Order’s outstanding narrative and story direction. Game director Stig Asmussen and narrative lead Aaron Contreras have spun a Star Wars tale populated by endearing and compelling characters, filled with interesting mysteries, and even populated by a few trademark Star Wars twists.

Cal Kestis, despite his profoundly bland character design, quickly establishes himself as an engaging protagonist and player stand in. Due in large part to Monaghan’s performance and a strong direction, Cal is a character that has experienced world shattering trauma, but is still fundamentally good hearted and courageous. Much of Cal’s arc becomes one of finding purpose in a new, much darker, world while also coming to terms with the violent events of his own past.

Trauma and its effect on a cast of people trying to survive a cultural genocide is a major theme of Fallen Order throughout. The majority of its central characters, light and dark, are survivors of the climactic events at the end of The Clone Wars and their methods of coping often end up shaping their personal narratives but also the trajectory of the plot. Of these, Cere proves to be the most compelling. Played with incredible nuance by Wilson, Cere is an atypical Jedi mentor that wishes to guide the future generations of the Force, but is just as often plagued by her own trauma, which frequently manifests in ways that are unhelpful or potentially dangerous to her pupil. Her journey at times even eclipses Cal’s and is frequently filled with moments of triumph and great sorrow.

Despite its male protagonist, Fallen Order is filled with a cast of compelling and dynamic women characters with Cere just being one of the most notable. The game’s primary antagonist, The Second Sister, has a tragic story of her own, which slowly changes and recontexualizes the events of the game as the story continues. Most fun however proves to be a surprising late addition to Fallen Order’s party of protagonists who adds a fun wrinkle to an extended part of the Star Wars mythology.

Any discussion of the game’s characters wouldn’t be complete without the endlessly endearing BD-1. The best droid companion this side of BB-8, BD-1 in typical Star Wars fashion is equal parts friend and McGuffin, and is often key to some of the game’s best story telling moments.

Fallen Order’s narrative direction is often its best tool. Respawn blends gameplay, cut scenes, and interactive exploration to evolve a story that reaches surprisingly affecting emotional beats before headed into one hell of a finale. The fact that Stephen Barton and Gordy Haab have crafted a new Star Wars score that feels a part of the franchise, but also infused with its own themes and identity certainly helps. Cal’s theme is a new classic for the saga and it’s even more infuriating that we don’t have a release for this music a month after launch. It makes for a narrative that is fun to savor, hard to put down, but also lingers far after conclusion. I can’t recall the last time I missed characters this much after putting down a controller and I’m very eager to return to the world that Fallen Order has spun.

Now time for a confession. I have played video games my entire life and I have very fond memories of all kinds of games. I love action adventure games and my most fond gaming memories of the last decade have been from Mass Effect and Uncharted. I’m also very, very bad at them. It may be my dysgraphia, which makes hand eye coordination very difficult, or it may just not be in my skillset, but I often find even the easiest games very difficult.

So when, Fallen Order announced that it would be taking inspiration from notoriously difficult games such as Metroid or Dark Souls, I was suitably worried that it was going to leave my flustered and confused despite really enjoying the adventures of Samus Aran.

What Respawn has done with Jedi: Fallen Order is take key elements and concepts from numerous other games and spin them together in a tight and exciting package. Those familiar with each genre of game are likely to see what Fallen Order does as a considerable pairing down. It ends up being a sort of gameplay smoothie of Uncharted, Dark Souls, and Metroid in an experience that blends all well, but doesn’t come close to being among the best in the genre for any of its many inspirations.

This may sound like a criticism, but for the larger experience that Fallen Order crafts this ends up working to its benefit. The puzzles in its Zelda like temples are never enough to stump you, but encourage you think outside of the box. The climbing and exploration is free flowing and easy to navigate and offers frequent narrative rewards for players that are ambitious enough to explore. The sheer amount of optional locations in Fallen Order is impressive and it’s easy to find yourself falling down amusing rabbit holes that easy could have been blown past on quicker playthroughs. It says something that this is the first game where I’ve actually felt compelled to hit that little 100% complete marker before running for the final boss encounter.

The combat itself is amusingly layered and just technical enough to feel like it takes mastery. Refreshingly, Respawn goes the opposite direction of other recent Star Wars adventure experiences and avoids falling into mindless power fantasy. You won’t be crushing AT-ST’s with waves of telekinesis or leveling rooms with storms of Force Lightning. You are encouraged to treat each combat encounter with the mentality of a vulnerable, if skilled, Jedi. Rushing in blindly will likely get you killed quickly. Measured blocking, dodging, tactical strikes, and creative employment of Force powers is the way to success and it leads to a combat experience that may seem familiar for fans of Souls games, but also feels very in tune with the spirit of the franchise.

Similarly, the leveling system is tied more into emotional discovery and personal acceptance. It avoids making the power system in Fallen Order too much of a gamification of the Force and helps keep the spiritual and emotional aspects intact.

That being said, there is some weirdness to it all. For the amount of effort put into making sure that gameplay matches the feelings of Jedi philosophy and mentality, the fact that murdering rooms full of enemies is often the only way to progress can feel a little jarring. Incorporating some form of stealth or noncombat alternative for certain sections may have been beneficial and even more in keeping with the larger goals of Respawn and Fallen Order’s narrative.

There’s also just a general bugginess to Fallen Order. Enemy AI can behave in ways that are often very strange and counter intuitive to their own survival. Graphical pop ins and oddities are frequent. Powers occasionally don’t work in ways you would expect them to. The environment occasionally drops out and leaves you stranded behind a rock or underneath a pool or puddle. Few of these are game breaking and are often few and far between, but it can be jarring and frustrating when they are appear and often take you out of what is normally a well-crafted experience.

As a whole though, Jedi: Fallen Order may be the best Star Wars gaming experience in a generation. Its heartfelt narrative and smart gameplay make for a strong and frequently stellar experience. It has its problems, but they are hardly enough to discourage from joining Cal and his allies on this adventure. Grab a lightsaber and head on in. It’s a journey worth taking.

Score: A-

Orion Team Masterpost

Orion Team is a sci-fi story/universe centered around the Black Ops “Orion Team” which is part of the Office of Extrafederation Security, tasked with advancing the interests of the Earth Federation in the Kolias Sector, an unorganized region of space. OES recruits from the military, civilian law enforcement or intelligence agencies and civilians in general as needed and able, and a such have a diverse array of options and styles, often mixed up and all around. The members of Orion Team are Daniel Ortega, Charkatus Victorae, Amy Kostas, Lung Jiao and Gregory Elliot. There are a number of characters in Orion Team’s support staff, but the ones of any real relevance are Arthur Wood, Sarah Townsend and Natasha Richter.

Orion Team begins in July, 2817 C.E.

In the Orion Team Universe, there are a number of alien races. The most important are:

Romnivirians: Romnivirians are a mammalian species, native to the world of Romnivir. They were a united planet by 1,800 BCE achieved hyperspace flight around 1,500 BCE. They would go on to conquor a great many species, and at one point, were looking to expand in Earth’s direction after scouts found it (though it would have taken them a century at their normal pace to colonize all the worlds between their space and Earth - Earth happens to be in a region of space with few sentinent species evolving on the , but a series of rebellions by the Centai Races (an alliance of five species - see below) and a civil war broke the back of the Empire’s expansionary urges for many a century. Today, the Romnivirian Empire is a close ally of the Earth Federation, and though they are plagued by rebellions, revolts and the odd small-scale civil war, they survive, albeit not... healthily. How they still exist is credited to the resiliency of the Imperial system, the alliance with Earth and their habit of having especially clever emperors or empresses rise to the throne (by inheritance or... not) at just the right time. A number of species are still subjects of the Empire, and just over half of them are full imperial citizens, with all the rights and privileges (and duties) of Romnivirian citizens.

The Centai Races: Over one hundred housand years ago, a species called the Raezon from either a distant portion of this galaxy, or another one altogether, settled on the planet now called Centai, and began a program of playing evolutionary god. They manipulated the DNA of five (very) different sentient species in particular (Vorcalians, Telchuri, Derach, Kopelians and Brevescari) making them each more specialized (with the intent of all five being slave races doing specific things for them) and exterminating several other sentient spaces (one of the reasons Earth is a bit lonely, as it were). The Raezon were eventually driven off by the Vestari (see Below) some 50,000 years ago These five were, in time, conquored by the Romnivirians, but eventually they rebelled and united, intially out of mutual defense against Romnivirian reconquest. Centai was picked for its central location (or so they thought) but then it was discovered soon after what the Raezon had done, and how they had manipulated the Centai Five to each see members of the other races as almost members of their own, and to want to come to Centai. While the Raezon were not there to be their masters, the five races realized that their specializations would do them well to work together, and so they do. The Centai Republic is an aggressive stellar nation, that belives the Centai Five are superior to all other forms of intelligent life. They have engaged in a great many wars of attempted conquest against Earth and the Romnivirian Empire, but with only middling success. the Earth/Romnivirian-Centai DMZ is some of the most militarized space in known interstellar history (or so say the Vestari)

Vestari: The Vestari are the most advanced species in known space. They achieved hyperspace 250,000 years ago. These four-armed, ten-feet tall, six-eyed beings are incredibly cagey about the specifics of their history, or about things like the Raezon, or the Hyplontians (see below) who they uplifted (partially). They do let little dribs and drabs out here and there - for example, their Ambassador to Earth once told the EF’s prime minister that Vestari had been to earth twice before the start of Earth’s atomic age, but refused to say when or why (or what they did). Its unclear if they do this for their own amusement (one common theory) or because they are playing some long mysterious game (a common conspiracy theory). The Vestari Hegemony doesn’t trade with the other powers of known space much, but every once in a while (usually about every ~50 years). they go out, purchasing large quantities of raw materials and selling tech that is just ever so slightly better than what is currently available. Non-Vestari are only welcome in one city on the moon of the Vestari Homeworld, Vestar Prime, which is colloquially called ‘The Alien City’. When asked about what they do, or why they do things, Vestari will be maddeningly vague if they answer at all. Sometimes though, they’ll drop mutually contradictory hints, answer questions with seemingly suggestive questions, or (rarely) the asker will wake up two days later, be told they were told the answer to their questions and the answers proved too much for them that they beged the Vestari to remove them from their memory.

Hyplontians: An insectoid, hive-minded species ruled by Queens and the handful of non-Drone breeds, the Hyplontians were uplifted to sleeper ships and relatavistic drives some 4,000 years ago by the Vestari for reasons of their own. Each Hyplontian Planet is riled by one or more hive queens, and each Queen struggles for dominance over their peers. But when they are united, they are formidable. Xenophobic to the extreme, they will often launch wars of invasion aginst the Earth Federation, all of which have always been only just more or less held back.During times of peace, the Hyplontians and the EF maintain a Neutral Zone. The Hyplontians trade with no one, though they do have an embassy to the Vestari.

There are other alien species (examples - the Sytala, the Eltherians, the Mascari, the Cailax, etc), but those are the big four/eight (since there’s five Centai species), plus humans.

Humanity is not united, however. The Earth Federation is the most populous and most powerful of the Human Stellar nations, but there are others. The ones with the political, military and economic muscle to operate beyond their solar system and maybe one or two others nearby are

The Systems Confederacy: A loose economic, military and political union designed largely to allow each member world to retain their own unique identity in the face of the EF’s steady advancement. Territorially, the largest human stellar nation, but has about half the population of the EF. Were it not for the Hyplontians and the Centai (and the EF’s desire to not launch overt wars of aggression - they like to see themselves as the good guys), the EF could, with significant cost, beat the SC in a war with ‘ease’ (as it were.) The Systems confederacy is backed by the renegade megacorp, Epsilon Industries. 

The Halifax Unity: Advanced genetic manipulation is against the law in the Earth Federation - the Halifax Unity was founded by the Halifax Group, a cabal of geneticists and philosphers who believed that humanity should uplift itself into better, smarter, stronger, etc forms through genetic manipulation from the Fetus on up. They are very small, compared to the EF, but continue on because the EF A) hates overt wars of aggression, and B) likes to use the Halifax Unity as a convenient dumping ground for scientists and the like who reject the EF’s draconian laws on advanced genetic modification. Also as a scary example to hold up and say ‘see! This eugenics-obsessed state is what happens when we let genetic modification run amock!’ Man for man, any given Halifaxer is stronger, faster, healthier, longer lived and ‘smarter’ than a non-modified human, however. Just... not anywhere near as many of ‘em. 

The Newflesh Dominion - basically the Halifax Unity, but with Cybernetics. Right down to the scary example and dumping ground qualities)

The Varis Republic - a somewhat libertarian (albeit sane about it) state that expects the EF will absorb them sooner or later, but hopes to cut a deal to allow them to be absorbed as a single unit and keep some of their own preferred economic policies. In the meantime, it plays the Systems Confederacy and the EF off against eachother. 

Imperium Novae Romae - The Empire of New Rome. Founded initially some 450 years ago, when a trio of sleeper ships that left earth in 2081, financed and led by the Classical-History obsessed billionaire Fredrich Zoloman. Today, they speak Latin, organize themselves in ways modeled on the Romans and in general, act exactly as the name suggests. They entertain the notion that they can make conquering them by force too much of a hassle for the EF to ever try it, and to resist EF economic manipulation, they have a close relationship with Epsilon Industries subsidiary, Gladius Corp. 

Again, there are others, but those are the biggies.

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