Overview and Brief Analysis of Abuse's Plot

By Nathaniel Krell. Last Updated: Oct 13, 1999

Abuse: Final Release Plot

You are Nick Vrenna. It is the year 2009. You have been falsely incarcerated inside a high security underground prison where illegal genetic experiments are taking place.

Alan Blake, the head research scientist, has isolated the specific gene which causes violence and aggression in humans. This genetic sequence, called "Abuse", is highly infectious, causing horrific transformations and grotesque side-effects. You are the only person to show immunity to it.

A prison riot erupts, and in the confusion all the cell doors are opened. Soon everyone, guards and convicts alike, become infected and transform into a horde of mutants which take over the building.

Your only chance for escape is to don battle armor and reach the Control Room situated in the structure's deepest level. You must first stop the prison's Abuse-infected water supply from contaminating the outside world. Freedom and the fate of the world now depend on you.

Speculation

Why are you breaking farther into the prison instead of out of it?

Oh sure, save the world.

Why would a wrongly accused guy, quite possibly out for revenge, try to "save the world" by breaking farther into the prison?

And why are there jungles and caves and sewers and what not?

And where would all your equipment come from? Powered armor and energy weapons just lying around?

And why do so many of the defense systems only target you?

And why the hell do the "mutants" have weapons on their backs?

Where would all of this come from?

A plot change.

What if Nick Vrenna had not originally been a falsely accused prisoner in 2009, breaking farther into a prison, but a high-tech special ops agent in 2021 breaking into an alien base after an invasion?

What if "Ant" was not slang for "Mutant" but an acronym? A.N.T. - Aggressive Non-Terran?

What if Abuse was not a genetic sequence... but the Mission's Codename?

Abuse: The Original Plot

(source: back of original box)

The Ants were fearless, efficient killers. The Unified Underground's only opening was that the Ant defense systems were designed by engineers too arrogant to consider the threat of an individual. It was enough to justify the covert Abuse Missions.

On August 31, 2021, eight bytes were zeroed in a computer, and Nick Vrenna's identity was erased. A suit of armor cradling his smoking auto rifle stood in shadows appreciating the stench coming from the first retired Ant of the day. The armored soul feared the effort would end up as pathetic as the Terran Surrender Terms, but humanity had nothing else.

Further Speculation

This plot may have been dropped because it's overused. A lone soldier breaking into a huge alien base and blowing things up. This seems to be the theme of all sorts of games already out there. Heroes don't become such by choice, but by necessity.