With everyone picking up Red Faction Guerrilla, we thought a quick refresher with regard to the history of the Red Faction series would be appreciated.  While you do not need to have played the first two Red Faction titles in order ot understand the story of Red Faction Guerrilla, you may learn a little more insight into the series, and also discover some easter eggs after reading this.

Martian Colonization (Pre-Red Faction 1)
AD 2050: Ultimately, it wasn’t social good or high-minded aspirations that led to the colonization of Mars.  It was industry.  Earth’s resources had been mined, refined, and increasingly has been used up.  Mining on Mars was the great hope for maintaining Earth’s way of life, and fortunately there were adventurous and enterprising souls willing to brave a long spaceflight and go to a new world for work.  As seen from Earth, Mars is a frontier of rugged opportunity.

AD 2070: As developed by the Ultor Corporation, what colonist-miners found there was not what they expected.  Within the first 20 years, unrest was growing among Martian miners who worked hard under strict Ultor controls.  The mining colony was the worst combination of the Ultor Corporation’s commitment to maximum profit at minimum expense and the private research interests of the Corporation’s lead researcher, Dr. Axel Capek.

Communication from the mining colony to Earth is filtered and limited by Ultor techs, which keeps Earth from being aware of the developing situation on Mars.  Also around this time, the first generation of Martian born humans is coming of age, with those born in transit from Earth to Mars nearing adulthood. At this time, the population of Mars is roughly 700 transported miners in addition to Ultor security guards, technical staff and scientists.

Red Faction 1
AD 2075: This was the environment that sparked the first Red Faction uprising.  Axel Capek tested nanotechnology intended to manipulate living cells both on imported livestock and on the miners under the cover of medical injections, giving rise to an unexplained Plague that crippled, disfigured, and killed many miners.  This added to tensions and ultimately resulted in a lethal miner riot and the beginning of the Red Faction rebellion.

Most miners were confined by Ultor security for the duration of the rebellion, but the rebel miners and others sympathetic to their plight fought Ultor security and their mercenaries to a standstill until the Earth Defense Force responded to distress signals and completed the removal of the Ultor Corporation from Mars.  In the course of the rebellion, Dr. Axel Capek was killed by the Red Faction in order to find the cure to the Plague.  The rest of the Ultor science team flees the fighting and most of Capek’s nonhuman experiments are destroyed.

The EDF are hailed as heroes by the Martian population alongside their own heroes of the rebellion: a miner named Parker who was personally responsible for many of the greatest exploits of the rebellion and the woman known under the pseudonym “Eos” who was the voice and leader of the Red Faction.

Back on Earth (Red Faction II Era)

AD 2080: Back on Earth, the main consequence of the Red Faction Rebellion is a massive disruption in raw materials shipments from Mars, resulting in economic upheaval.  Because there is little understanding of the causes of the Rebellion, the Ultor Corporation is scorned for poor management practices but Martian miners are also denounced in some circles for failing to find solutions for their grievances in a less violent way.

Some Martians return to Earth in this period, and it is in this way that some of Capek’s research allows the creation of biotech nanites at extreme cost. In situations where these are used, the results are often catastrophic, such as the collapse of an entire small country at the hands of a handful of experimental test subjects of an intended nanotech-fueled super-soldier project as shown in RF2.  Most on Earth are not aware of Nanotechnology or the connection to Mars and Capek’s work, but these events convince those who do know of the power and danger of this technology.

Mars under EDF Occupation (Pre-Red Faction: Guerrilla)

AD 2110: In the generation following the ousting of Ultor, Earth’s Central government invested more heavily in Mars in hopes of increasing the materials output of the colony, installing terraformers that gradually made the Martian atmosphere breathable.  The number of humans on Mars rises from the hundreds to the thousands as a second generation of Martian-born humans comes of age and Earth corporations previously boxed out of Martian development by Ultor ship new personnel and equipment to Mars.

Earth’s industrial demands continue to outstrip Mars’ increasing production, leading the EDF to impose new work efficiency measures and additional restrictions on the Martian populace. As the EDF became increasingly oppressive, piecemeal resistance to them builds up in scattered communities and especially among Martian-born humans among whom the legend of the Red Faction is strong.