DustyFarrell

roflmao!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Somebody set out to create the ultimate AE nightmare and succeeded! (^_^)V

(Nope! Wasn't me!)

Er,...that's kinda what I like about it. There are no clear villains or heroes, only shades of gray. Praetor Tilman scares me half to death (as she is designed to do) but her Seers keep the city relatively free of crime, at least in the area around Magisterium Park. The PPD are a bunch of thugs, but they generally focus that thuggery on violent criminals or those suspected of supporting violent criminals. Calvin Scott is the everyman thrust into leading a rebellion against an oppressive tyrant, but then he ends up being perfectly content with destroying the city's water supply to make his point. Shades of gray, endless shades of gray.

With missions in Paragon City the main theme is always, "our attitudes are holy and righteous and without blame and these enemies are mindless, faceless lowlifes who don't deserve to share our city". In Praetoria that is the line taken by the run of the mill PPD, but not by anybody else. And if you run both Resistance and Loyalist story arcs, then there is nothing at all "mindless" or "faceless" about the Resistance. Granted, the Destroyers and whatnot are still anonymous nobodies, but it would take way too much programming to change that for every single NPC enemy group in the virtual world.

In the Rogue Isles the main theme is generally, "Hey, it ain't pretty, but here's a way to make some fast cash!" Except for those newspaper missions that have you beat up some NPC tough guy just because he's a tough guy. Unless I have no choice, I avoid those kind of missions because it's a theme I find completely repulsive. Even the mission that has you destroying school supplies and stealing medicines is more rational than, "Thug So-and-So thinks he's hot, maybe you should show him otherwise."

Praetorian missions that I've run are less clear cut. At least from my perspective. When it came time to either arrest Cleopatra or take out Inspector Washington I didn't hesitate for a second. Washington's loyalty to the status quo was way too cut and dried. He reminded me of all those contacts in Paragon City that start with, "I'm just a run of the mill so-and-so and there is a great evil threatening our beautiful city that only you can defend against," right before they send you running across three zones to go into a warehouse door that magically leads to the sewers. On the other hand, as you point out, he is a good cop who does his job with high ethical and moral standards. Is he more deserving of respect than Cleopatra? That is the choice every player gets to make at the end of the mission. It is as it should be, an individual choice with a genuine consequence for both the player and the two NPCs.

I only encountered one mission in Praetoria where the door and the map were not synchronized. A warehouse door led to sewers that eventually opened into a small plaza. I sent in a bug report on it. There really is no excuse for having such mismatches occur. It's nothing more than lazy programming.

But the point is, I genuinely enjoy the moral ambiguity of Praetoria and the in-your-face self-centeredness of CoV. I first played CoH back in Issue 3 and one of the things that never, ever appealed to me was the self-righteous narcissism of the storylines. It only took a few weeks before I started shopping around for another game, then they announced CoV and I liked it so much I've been here ever since. I read every story box, long or short. For me, the story is everything. I never play FPS games because their stories are always irrelevant to the gameplay. Without a good story, I have no reason to play.

Praetoria has some of the best storytelling the team has ever created. That is why I would very much like to see it expanded into a full asset comparable to CoV. Personally, I see absolutely no reason why it cannot be given the same kind of story depth and same diversity of material. It would take time, naturally, but in the end the franchise would have three parallel storylines, each with a unique fictional world, unique theme, and unique cast of characters. How could that ever be a bad thing?

With the dialogue box still open that says, "True loyalists might want to call Marchand", I open my contacts list, click on Marchand. Usually there are three options, that basically mean, "new contact, report this, leave". The center one is usually the one that has some kind of text related to the current story arc. Click on that. Marchand comes back, "whaddya want?" Then there is again "report this, leave" and I choose, "report this". He comes back with some kind of response along the lines of, "do as you're supposed to do and we'll handle the details to make it come out the way we want." Although, on rare occasions it is "arrest this guy, arrest him now!" and if you choose to arrest the person in question they go into combat mode and become targetable.

I found the system relatively flawless and easy to use once I learned how to put myself undercover to begin with. The real chore is getting yourself undercover. The easiest way I found to so was to do the Loyalist Responsibility storyline until you get to Cleopatra and then choose to support Cleopatra and defeat the Inspector. That puts you into the Resistance and gives you both Marchand and Scott as contacts. From that point on, when the option arises you can report to either or neither as you see fit.

Hmm...

Apparently I misunderstood something somewhere. My Warden helped Cleopatra stop the hospital bombing and later stopped the threat against the water treatment plant. Granted, in the end that meant he switched from Responsible Loyalist serving undercover as a Warden back into a Responsible Loyalist, but by then it was time to head off to Primal Earth anyway.

As I said, I may be confused about what's what. I have run four characters through Praetoria from 1-20. Three of them ran the complete Warden/Responsibility storylines in parallel. Two of three reported to Marchand at every opportunity while the third reported to Scott. The fourth character, which was the first one I made, ran primarily the Warden storyline except for a couple of times where he stumbled into the Responsibility storylines quite by accident. He never switched between Resistance and Loyalist and as a result was never able to "report" his activities to one side or the other, but only because he never had Marchand available as a contact.

One of my Undercover loyalists stumbled into Mother's little ditty of a story. That woman completely freaked me out, which was, of course, the clear intent. They had just finished helping free the Seers, too, which made the whole experience even more awkward.

Beautiful writing, Paragon Studios. Absolutely beautiful. You have carried the franchise into literary heights that Cryptic never would have dared attempt.