Introduction
Source: 1B4

Resistance: Fall of Man follows an alternate history where the world did not experience World War II, the Great Depression, or the rise of Communism in Russia. A relative era of peace ensues following the Great War, ending with the revelation of a ruthless and destructive race dubbed the Chimera. In 1951, the year in which the game takes place, England finds itself under invasion. Little is known about the Chimera and their origins remain unclear. Both Asia and Europe appear to have already fallen to the Chimera in short order by this time.

The game follows the story of U.S. Army Ranger Sgt. Nathan Hale. Hale's US Ranger Unit lands in Britain to aid in fending off the Chimera only to be infected with a Chimeran virus and have everyone fall into a coma shortly thereafter. Hale appears to be spared as he is the only one that manages to awaken and becomes aware of the Chimeran plot due to the infection inside of him. As a result, he becomes the key figure in a desperate operation that is launched to try and halt the invasion. The next three days are chronicled in the game as the U.S. and British forces band together in a last-ditch effort to save what is left.

Alternate history
The point of divergence, as related on the game's website, appears to be 1898. American President William McKinley issues an ultimatum of war to the Spanish government to give Cuba its independence instead of simply declaring war as a result of strong, isolationist elements within the United States. History does not significantly alter itself from our own until the onset of the Great War. This is started not by Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination, but by the British and French invasion of German Togoland in August 1914. The Lusitania is not sunk and lacking a direct reason to go to war, the United States remains neutral. Germany still surrenders, however, perhaps due to the failure of the October Revolution which results in Russia remaining an empire under Tsar Mikhail.

Under an alternate Treaty of Versailles, the European Trade Organization (ETO), a parallel of the modern European Union, is established instead of the League of Nations. The ETO leads Europe into a period of strong economic stability causing the Weimar Republic in Germany to remain in power. The Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler disappear into obscurity as a result of this prosperity. Russia becomes stagnant and isolationist and, as a result of anti-imperialist propaganda from the ETO nations and a fear of infiltration, initiates a communications blackout with the outside world in 1921. In addition to this, Russia constructs a wall, which comes to be called the "Red Curtain", across its Eastern European frontier. At first consisting only of barbed wire, it later becomes reinforced with concrete.

America prospers throughout the 1920s and 30s as certain factors prevent the Great Depression. In 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt fails to gain re-election. He loses to isolationist Republican Noah Grace, the fictional protégé of Robert Taft, who portrays Roosevelt as a dangerous warmonger because of his policy of supporting the United European Defense (the military wing of the ETO). Ominous changes begin to occur in Eastern Europe. Rumors of towns being destroyed in a single night, and later whole cities, begin to surface. An abnormally large number of Russian refugees begin to appear in neighboring nations, all who mysteriously die shortly after arriving. All questions directed at the Russian government in St. Petersburg receive no reply. America's isolationism continues, despite its development of the Atomic Bomb in 1944. In the late 1940s, a group of MI6 agents begin surveying Russian air waves in the Ukraine and discover that from the thousands of radio stations that should be broadcasting to millions of citizens, only one program is found: a looping propaganda message pleading "Brotherhood, Strength, and Fortitude...in the face of the angry night."

In December 1949, the Chimera break through multiple points on the Red Curtain, and sweep into Europe. Despite the implementation of the UED's advanced plans for a Russian invasion, the Chimera prove too strong and conquer all of continental Europe by February 1950, only three months after the start of the invasion. In the latter half of 1950, they invade Britain, burrowing under the English Channel. Defensive plans prove useless and the British isles are overwhelmed in three weeks. Scattered military bases and outposts in the north populated by the remnants of the British army continue to resist. In 1951, America responds to pleas for aid by launching Operation: Deliverance; a strike force of U.S. Army Rangers is sent to help liberate the country. After the first squad sent into the British city of York is wiped out, another is sent in. This last group is the one that the title's protagonist, Sergeant Nathan Hale, belongs to and is where the game begins.
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Ghost of Barents Sea

2055 hours, September 28th, 1949, 98 nautical miles off Norwegian west coast

Imperial Russia battleship Arkhangelsk [1] and her four escort vessels battle group were on North Sea wartime loop patrol when the last order from St. Petersburg Admiralty was received. The order was simple:
DO NOT APPROACH RUSSIA HOMELAND. The unknown invaders and their plague that have been ravaging our eastern frontier is rapidly moving westward, and inflicted extremely high casualties on our defense forces. The speed of invasion is beyond our imagination, those who have been infected also turned into one of the invaders themselves. As of 1900 hours today, their spearhead already reached the outskirt of Moscow. Despite their heroic effort, remaining units are unable to contain them, the ouitlook of holding out much longer does not look good even with the help of naval bombardment. Almost all of Baltic fleet's vessels were destroyed during the invaders' counterattacks. Most of the Monarch & cabinet members were either perished or fled abroad. All mighty Russia regrettably might not survive at the end of the day. We must hereby order a full evacuation of Russia homeland immediately. Whenever encountering your former friends & families who have mutated into the invaders, you must pull the trigger. Believe us, you are doing them a favor. Our final order to all surviving forces is to seek shelter at foreign lands; save your strength, gain allies whenever possible and come back with force to retake motherland someday.

Attachment order - Arkhangelsk battle group
Rendezvous with navy Albatross class seaplane callsign "Sofia 27" at coordinates 870 mark 219 on 0430 hours, September 29 to take on priority passengers & cargo. Scuttered the plane after unloading, and head straight towards nearest safe harbor. You are authorized to place yourselves under the command of allied forces. They may well be our last hope to free the motherland.

~Farewell~
Long Live Russia
Admiralty, St. Petersburg

<End transmission>


Click to enlarge

[1]: Real life Soviet battleship Arkhangelsk was previously HMS Royal Sovereign. launched in May 1915, and was a Royal Navy Revenge-class battleship with a displacement of 27,500 tons and armed with eight 15 inch guns. She did not enter service before the Battle of Jutland in the First World War and had a relatively quiet Second World War service. In 1944 she was transferred on loan to the Soviet Navy as Arkhangelsk in lieu of war reparations from Italy. A Soviet crew commissioned the Arkhangelsk on 30 May 1944 and she sailed with convoy JW.59 on 24 August 1944. The Arkhangelsk remained inactive in the Arctic for the remainder of the war and was returned to the Royal Navy on 4 February 1949. She arrived at Inverkeithing on the 18 May 1949 for scrapping.
1620 Hours, October 2nd, 1949, Scapa Flow naval facilities, Orkneys, Scotland

2nd Lt. McKinney, comm officer, Headquarter Company; private log

Scapa Flow, one of United Kingdom's main naval bases up in the north. Located in the heart of Scotland's Orkney archipelago, the Vikings have visited there over a thousand years ago. Now it has served as Royal Navy's anchoring facility for more than four decades. Vessels from friendly nations or sometimes adversaries came & gone. Some came here to resupply, some trying to sneak through the channel inlet launching a couple torpedoes at captial ships moored at the inner bay, while some former adversaries came here to surrender their vessels to the naval authorities. Today is a lot more different, an Imperial Russia battle group radioed in requesting to dock at the Flow, claiming on special order from their Admiralty. Playing cat & mouse game with Russian warships on North Sea was not uncommon, but requesting to dock at a Brtitish port was an extremely unusual occurance for a paranoia nation that has ceased communications with outside world since 1921. An overnight emergency cabinet session has granted the group temporary entry to Scapa Flow naval base. Battlecruiser HMS Anson and three destroyers were scrambled to greet them 60 miles out east of the Flow's defensive parameter. What made the whole incident even more mysterious was soon after the Russian vessels entered the Flow's inner mooring lot, all incoming and outgoing traffic were ordered to halt until further notice except priority traffic. Communications were kept at minimal, military has stepped up the island defense to highest level. The lone air traffic today was a P-1117 Kingfisher VTOL transport carrying Home Seceretary Akers-Jones, Admiral of the Fleet Donner and a host of personels from MI branches landed at the base headquarters landing pad. Rumours floating among enlisted men stationed near the headquarters pointed the origins of all the secrecy to the Russian battleship's special passengers & their cargo. But that's just it, a rumour.

RS Arkhangelsk moored at Scapa Flow's inner anchoring lot with battlecrusier HMS Anson [2] in the background. 0915 Hours, October 2nd, 1949.

[2]: In alternate timeline, events turned out differently, all 4 Admiral class battlecruisers were in active duties. All survived the war and received major upgrades, then served until 50s. In our timeline however, HMS Anson, Howe, Rodney never left dry docks. They were laid down in 1916, but construction suspended in March 1917 and cancelled in October 1918. Hood was the only ship in the class that saw active duties, and we all know her final fate.

2054 hours December 15th, 1950, on board submarine HMS Blue Noah, Submarine pen 12, Scapa Flow naval base, Orkneys, Scotland

Imperial Russia Spetsnaz Colonel Oleg Rodenko, diary entry no.4
All right, this is my final entry of the day, quite possibly for the next 2 weeks. Before we evacuated from St. Petersburg more than an year ago in an Albatross seaplane, and picked up by Arkhangelsk; I could not imagine going on mission in a British submarine, let alone working side by side with British & Americans. But the most shocking part is to witness how fast Chimera devour entire Europe and most of England in such a short time. Now that we all have mutual interest - to defeat Chimera and liberate our homeland, I'm not complaining any more. Before we took off from homeland, Imperial intelligence has sent over one of its last surviving operatives - Major Irina Pivrokova of paranormal section, and cache of experimental Tesla Coil rifles to join us. Intelligence services never send their operatives without reasons. Under order of Imperial Intelligence chief, Admiral Miczinski; Major's real reason of coming aboard was to find means to reach the island of Komoroskaya in the middle of Barents sea, 200 miles off Romanov-on-Murman[3]. Objectives were to retrieve data collected on Chimera & experimental hardwares that would benefit on the War effort. Our team of 3 platoons became the unofficial ragtag strike team for this job. Before the Major revealed her true mission, we have no idea there was such an island in the middle of Barents Sea. Apparently Imperial Intelligence has built a secret facility on the island and wiped the island's coordinates from any navigation chart. Couple of years ago field agents transferred several corpses of the then unknown Chimera soldiers killed in Central Asia into the underground facility. Over the course of time, scientists have developed countermeasures based from the data & insights on Chimera mutation process. Unfortunately it's too late for our Russia, we must rely on outside sources to carry on the research from now on. One of the weapons developed was the Tesla coil rifle, only small quantities were manufactured before the facility lost contact with central command nearly 14 months ago. MI6 listening post on Shetland islands began picking up coded communications from the island 4 months ago. According to the decoded messages, most of their equipments were out of order due to lack of supplies from Russian mainland; but a handful of Chimera related items are in relatively good condition. More than Half of the base population were already perished under extreme conditions, they have no idea how long they can hold out until Chimera discovered the location. The survivors indicate in the last message that in the case of Chimera attacks before the rescue force arrives, they will attempt to detonate a crude nuclear device deep inside the facility as a last resort to take as many Chimeras with them.

MI6 decided to mount a daring rescue operation deep into the heart of former Russian Artic in the hope of retrieve any remaining information or technology that might turn the tide of war against Chimera. American forces while preparing to launch Operation: Deliverance offensive, agreed to send over three of its Gato II subs to assist the operation. The rescue fortilla included six submarines: Three American Gatos and Three British boats. Our boat, HMS Blue Noah, a modified French Surcouf class, is the largest among them. The large cargo compartment would be very useful in this type of mission. My three platoons were split among the three British subs along with their British commando units. The American boats will act as support vessels. I don't want to think how this going to end, definitely not wanting to see the mushroom cloud shooting straight up from the island, not before we evacuate the survivors and vital technologies. But if the Major's intelligence and the survivors' messages were accurate, then we might finally see the light at the end of the long dark twilight struggle. A struggle we cannot afford to lose.

[3]: Since Imperial Russia still in power during this timeline; our timeline's Murmansk still bears its pre-Soviet namesake, Romanov-on-Murman.
HMS Blue Noah (foreground) moored at outer piers, submarine pen 12, Scapa Flow inner anchoring lot. Anchored alongside are three American Gato II subs. All four vessels would participate in a joint rescue operation up in the high arctic 3 days later. In the background at the right was the newly upgraded battleship HMS Warspite. Out on the anchoring lot were battleships HMS Nelson & Indomitable. Nelson was about to depart for a combat patrol out in the North Sea with Ark Royal's carrier battle group. 0826 hours December 12th, 1950

Task Force route, December 15th, 1950

Task force will depart from Scapa Flow after dusk on December 15th, 1950. Heading north east under slient running, and stay clear from Norwegian coast where Chimera sightings have been reported as recent as last week. The fortilla will rendezvous with Iceland-based supply convoy 321 where they supplies will be replenished. The second half of the journey will have the course slighted shifted to a more northward direction, passing Bear island from behind, then exit to Barents Sea and head straight to Port Romanov on Komoroskaya. We have re-established contact with the survivors while en route, evacuation will be done in 2 stages. Wounded and sick will be first to leave, then followed by the main group with all transferrable technologies aboard. Underground facllities will then be self-destructed trigged by remote signal from the Fortilla while it is safely away from the island.


Major Irina Pivrokova, Imperial Intelligence Paranormal section - Colonel Oleg Rodenko, Imperial Russia Spetsnaz
The weapons: Standard Imperial Russia infantry carbine with rotary grenade launcher(3 rounds cap); Tesla coil rifle. I would imagine though they have made significant technological advancement in the alternate timeline 1950s. The armament development, especially infantry weapons and their accessories were still considered bulky & not miniaturize enough compared to today's standard.



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