Golden Girl

After checking out the amazing new graphics for Atlas Park, I went straight to First Ward to soak up all the new Praetorian lore

That's very leet

That's not correct at all - one of the main things that dictatorships do is to make laws to strengthen their position, and give the illusion of justice, and trick people into thinking that they're not just thugs abusing their power.
For example, there are laws in Praetoria, even though there don't need to be - Tyrant is immortal and almost invincible, and his chief supervillain followers are also incredibly powerful - if he and his henchpeople decide to do something, no one can stop them - but by creating laws, the loyalists can give the impression that there's justice in their system - they could torture and muder the opponents of their dictatorship without needing any laws, becuase they hold all the power - but they prefer to work behind a facade of legality, to give the illusion that they follow a set of laws and rules.

For example, Calvin Scott was sent to Mother Mayhem's asylum by imperial decree, even though Tyrant just needed to call someone like Marauder and tell him to get rid of the man who was asking difficult questions about what happened to his wife - but as a legal system is an important part of any civilization, the self-appointed "champion" of civilization needs to work within some kind of legal framework to avoid looking like a power-crazed monster.

Don't forget that the Hamidon isn't trying to kill everyone - the Tellurian Palgue is intended to transform people into Devouring Earth creatures, not kill them - like Tyrant, the Hamidon sees the solution to the "problem" of humanity being the transformation of humans into something inhuman.
That's the way the twin monsters of Praetoria are set up - the Hamidon is the physical/outer monster, a human that has gained incredible power and became a huge beast that transforms humans into creatures to serve its will and "save" the world from humanity - while Tyrant is the mental/inner monster, a human who has gained incredible power, who transforms humans into mindless slaves to serve his will and "save" the world from humanity - which is why the Praetorian content has such a strong emphasis on mental violence and slavery, as well as obsession and insanity - the physical horror of the PPD and the loyalist stormtroopers with their torture rooms and secret slaughter houses under the streets takes a back seat to the mental horror of Tyrant's enslaved though police, the BAF, and the drugged water supply.

That's why Tyrant and the Hamidon were able to reach an agreement on how to deal with the "problem" of humanity - becuase they're both aiming for the same goal - to transform the people into something that's no longer human - and the people of Praetoria are trapped between the outer monster beyond the sonic fences, and the inner monster who is crushing them in his iron fist inside the fences.
And that's where the players come in - our task is to set the people free by defeating both the monsters, the tyrant and the beast, who between them are transforming the people of Praetorian Earth into things that are no longer human.

Like Katie Douglas' father, who was sent to the BAF for asking about his daughter? Or Calvin Scott, who as sent to mother Mayhem's asylum on Tyrant's personal order for trying to find out the truth about what happened to his wife? Or Wardog's whole family "disappearing" after he refused to stop teaching his students the truth about the hsitory of Praetoria?
Tyrant despises humanity, and thinks that anyone who opposes him or questions him is "evil" - he's a monster, not some morally gray person trying to do the right thing - he's as big a threat to Praetoria as the Hamidon.

GR was filled with Tyrant's crimes, and there's info all over the place about just what a nightmare his "utopia" is.

In public, yes

Maybe even an I21.5

A straight catgirl?

And that makes hospitals blow up

I don't think that the resemblance to military discipline in another evil empire was an accident

I'd be interested to know which Disney/Pixar movie Westin Phipps is the watered-down version of

Arachnos actually has a double role in the game mechanics - as an organization that's too powerful for Heroes to defeat, it gives Villains a safe area to work in without needing open world PvP - and as an organization that's too powerful for Villains to overhtrow, it allows the devs to avoid the problems that would come with a free-for-all power-grab if there was no dominant group in the Rogue Isles to limit the kind of things Villains could get up to.

For Nemesis, that is quiet

Talking of that, on one of the UStream broadcasts a while back, John "Protean" Hegner claimed that quite a few of the NPCs that we interacted with in the 1-20 GR content were actually Protean in disguise - but it was hard to tell is he was just joking or beingh serious about it

He's been very quiet since we messed up his little Rikti invasion plot

He isn't keeping them human - he's dehumanizing them, and turning them into mindless robots.

He's just a cog in a bigger machine

Well, that's basically what some players have been trying to do since GR was first announced - although each new content update has seen fewer and fewer of them still trying it

He tells loyalists that they both have blood on their hands

We're still waiting

Just ask Dominatrix.

It's that Praetorian salute - it speaks to some people on all kinds of levels, and they just can't bring themselves to think of people like that as being absolute evil

Tyrant and the Hamidon share very similar goals - they both despise humanity, but they have different opinions on how to deal with the "problem" of humans being human

On Praetorian Earth, Marcus Cole and Hamidon Pasalima have had very similar career paths, motivated by the same basic goals, and are presented in-game and out of it as the twin monsters that will crush what's left of the human race on their world.

Vanessa might feel that there need to be some heroes running Praetoria for a bit to help tear down the system Tyrant has set up and build a proper governemnt instead, because Tyrant's dictatorship isn't a system where crimes against humanity happen from time to time because of rogue members - it's a system built entirely on crimes against humanity, where they're carried out 24/7, because that's the only thing that can keep the system in place.

Plus, the devs actually saying that Tyrant is a villain, and that the loyalists are the real threat to Praetoria, and that the Resistance are the good side kinda backs up the content we see in-game too