With ELEX II right around the corner, fans have been doggedly reworking their way through the first game to get a refresher on what's going on with Jax and the planet of Magalan. But if you don't have 60-odd hours to play the original ELEX, and if Jax and Magalan merely sound like a Mortal Kombat character and a misnomered dinosaur to you, then here's the story so far as we prepare to enter the world of ELEX II.
SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for the original ELEX (that's kind of the point!)
The series is set on Magalan, a planet that was once home to technologically advanced human civilisations before a comet struck, destroying most of humanity and leaving the survivors assembling into tribal-style societies. One of the side-effects - and dare we say perks - of this global apocalypse was that the comet brought a mysterious resource to the planet called Elex, which has magic-imbuing properties on the human body (but also turns you into an emotionless sociopath if you overdo it).
It seems that every world-ending comet has a silver tail…
In ELEX you took command of Jax, a military commander in the Alb faction, whose followers believe that dosing themselves up with unthinkable amounts of Elex to effectively become emotionless super-soldiers is the way forward for civilisation. At the start of the game, Jax's plane crashed during an Alb military operation, leaving him in a coma for several days; when he woke up, he found his powers gone and his emotions restored. Yep, our man slept through his entire Cold Turkey Elex comedown and emerged out the other side ready to be a world-saver.
Realising that the Albs' whole 'world devoid of emotion' scheme was bad news, Jax turned on them, and spent the entirety of the first game trying to unite the Free People of Magalan against the ruthless faction. Your choices as Jax would significantly affect the paths, outcomes and endings of the first game, but canonically it concluded with our emotionful hero Jax defeating the Alb leader, a big mechanised chap called The Hybrid, and putting an end to the Albs' plans.
But there was a twist, setting us up nicely for ELEX II. The Hybrid believed that the Elex he was feasting on was letting him communicate with an alien race, who apparently let him know they would eventually arrive on Magalan. No one apart from Jax believed him, which was probably understandable given that the guy was a megalomaniacal loon.
Well, the Hybrid got the last laugh (if his limited emotional spectrum allowed for it), because at the start of ELEX 2 those aliens are definitely up to something…
With the Albs defeated, the Free People of the four other factions returned to their petty squabbles while Jax retired to the countryside to live a life of reclusiveness like every sullen videogame hero aspires to.
Then, one day, the eclipse-like phenomenon looming over Magalan ever since the Hybrid's defeat springs to life, raining purple hell down on the planet, corrupting wildlife with a new 'Dark Elex', and introducing hostile new creatures of its own.
After Jax gets attacked and infected by one of these creatures, his (and your) journey begins. He goes in search of a cure for his affliction, and attempts to unite the fragmented peoples of the world once more – this time to combat an extraterrestrial threat rather than a human one. And of course, this being a Piranha Bytes RPG, your decisions will dictate how you go about this, and how it all turns out. Will you be destructive? Diplomatic? Cold? Empathetic?
It's your call, Commander. You can now preorder ELEX II on Steam and GOG.
