Ironik

Disliking something is not the same as not being able to see it. From all your statements it's fairly clear that you are suffering from the latter. Either that or you are intentionally trolling. It's better to be colorblind than a buttmunch.

You would probably enjoy the documentary My Kid Could Paint That. It's an interesting look at the difference between talent and intent.

I know you're going to see this next comment as insulting but it's honestly not meant to be...

When it comes to art, I think you have the aesthetic equivalent of being tone deaf. If you genuinely can't tell the difference between something that is "stylized" and something that is actually "not good," then there is a perception problem somewhere in there.

That was the best delineation between good and bad art and skill and ignorance that I've ever read. Well said, NinjaPirate.

That makes sense to me.

Okay, you have to separate the theoretical genre discussion from the game lore one. This is part of the former. I thought that was clear, which is why I didn't explicitly state it.

We do so define magic colloquially. It's all that stuff in Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and Doctor Strange and The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Knights of the Round Table... those all feed into the colloquial definition of magic. I've never heard anyone claim that UFOs are "magic," not even the nuttier nutcases on the History Channel.

For purposes of this game things which are supernatural (gods, demons, etc.) are also Magic, because the game lore specifically states that they are. It says that demons are magic and that Tielekku "discovered magic through her followers", whatever that means. But the Origin of Power clearly states that Magic is superior to divine and spirit powers despite having come from them, and it allows people to bend, shape and tear reality through sheer force of will.

That pretty much sounds like "whatever doesn't fit into the other categories" to me.

You can't claim Magic didn't change the fundamental nature of her powers because you don't know that. Just as I can't claim that she became Magic after inventing it. There's nothing in the lore that says either way. Were I opining on how I'd define it vis a vis genre conventions, I would definitely say she changed from Natural to Magic because she can't go back. But if someone can come up with a valid explanation as to how she can remain Natural while using magic then I'll accept that possibility.

I don't think spoken language to written language is an apt comparison for magic in this game. I think a more accurate analogy is nuclear weapons. Regular explosives are devised from the understanding and application of chemistry, while the atom bomb used conventional explosives applied in a new way to *really* give off a satisfying kaboom. From the tales of the war between the gods and the creation of magic, that's what it sounds like: an escalating arms race.



I can't find where he says that, but that's what it says in the origin of Power, too. However, OoP states that Tielekku devised magic along with her followers. Ermeeth didn't want to teach the CoT how to use magic -- that cat was already out of the bag. What he wanted to do was make humans more powerful than gods. I can't think of a mythical analogue to Ermeeth, but it's not Prometheus. A god wanting people to be more powerful than he is? When has that ever happened in mythology?



If it is, then so be it. At this juncture in time, though, it's stated that Hero-1 got his magical abilities from Excalibur. It looks pretty cut-and-dried.



Not to me. There was no Well in Statesman's first appearance, it was added later.

Were I a Dev working on this Incarnate stuff, I'd go back to the Gaia concept and use that as the almighty handwave to end all handwaves, making it the true source of everything "super" about the universe. From the divine power of gods to the creation of magic to inspiration to achieving athletic excellence. That way you get to have your cake and eat it, too, and all these arguments simply go away.

That would also allow them to keep most of the existing in-game content which pretty clearly was initially designed as having multiple sources of magic, the way religion comes in many flavors.

I wasn't being vague, I just was tired of repeating the list of stuff from earlier posts.


*I* am not drawing examples out of that, those are the only examples we're given. Name another NPC who is an Incarnate. See? It's just Statesman, Recluse and Hero-1.

[quote]What are the chances of those three examples being representative of the entire set. Coincidental? Possibly. Convincing? Not in the slightest. Hell, we have no real understanding of how the well operates and what it chooses to present to the different people it chooses. If I had to make a guess, I could guess that Kheldians themselves may turn out to be Incarnate somehow - alien beings given the power of the Well and transformed into pure energy with divine-seeming powers.

I doubt Kheldians would be retconned like that, but if they choose to go that route, well, it's their game to rewrite as they will.


I don't have a problem with it being Natural -- the power of Gaia or whatever, a universal thing like gravity -- and the Devs are free to define it as such, but in the meantime everything connected to the Well is magical in nature, so it's not completely crazy to assume that the thing is magical, too.

Statesman and Recluse get their powers from a magical intervention, Hero-1 gets his powers from the magical Excalibur, ergo the Well is magic.



I'm not sidestepping the issue, because it doesn't matter where the gods come from because their interaction in the world of CoH is explicitly stated to be Magical. That's the part you keep glossing over and you continue to throw speculation that maybe the Kheldians could possibly turn out to be Magic, which is errant nonsense since they are specifically stated to be either Natural or Science.

Once again, I'm not inferring that. The game lore says that gods are magic.

Depends on how the Devs handle it. I'm just telling you what's in the game, man. Go yell at your monitor if you want.

Where? I can't find anything on it in the wiki. Bat'zul is a demon and the lore says demons are magic.

Even if there is disagreement, WW speaking with authorial voice trumps any secondary character if a conflict in cannon arises.

I'm not going another round on this. I've said what i wanted to say and you keep ignoring the overwhelming preponderance of game lore and citing a couple *possible* outliers which may or may not fit into the regular cannon. Perhaps your examples are simply mistakes which will be corrected since they stand in opposition to all the rest of the lore. This isn't Star Trek where one character pipes up and says, "This universe/timeline feels wrong!" and everyone runs around trying to alter reality to fit the view of one crazy person. In CoH, the single voice of opposition is an aberration and should be discounted when so many counter=examples exist.

Were I designing the game, then yes, it would be. But to date origins have been largely irrelevant other than as a roleplay option and which Enhancements you use.

Ouroboros. Duh.

That may well be. He was given a lot of the credit for designing the flow of City of Villains, and it feels like he was designing a single-player game by making us all follow the single path of Arachnos lackey. That's one of the primary reasons I dislike redside so much: the storyline is too constraining.

I think the single biggest mistake was making Lord Recluse so intimately connected to Statesman. That Cain-and-Abel story is hackneyed enough without shoving it into an existing tale. It would've just been better to make him the latest and greatest supervillain rather than go with the hoary "brother versus brother" routine.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm ignoring it because it's irrelevant. Just because a magical doodad shapeshifts into a form you're familiar with doesn't change the fact that it's a magical doodad. Which is exactly what you're describing. In Ghostbusters Ray accidentally thinks of the Stay Puft marshmallow man when Gozer tells them to choose the form of their destroyer, but the fact it was a cartoon character didn't alter the fact he materialized due to magic. Same thing here.

I just read the Ross arc on the wiki and I have no idea where you're getting this notion. It's pretty clear from the context that the Leviathan and the Blood Coral are magical in nature. Invoking the demonic magic and the Midnighters underscores this. Ross is a magic user himself. They seem to harken back to the original intent of magic in CoH, where there are many different gods and therefore many different sources of magic, but in the end it's still just magic.

Now, of course, the Devs seem to be trying to link everything to the Statesman/Lord Recluse version of Incarnates and that has muddied the waters but at this time most of the lore has "Made By Magic" stamped all over it.

That remains to be seen. So far the only extant Incarnates are avatars of a god, so until they retcon that away then that's how it plays out.

This is just wrong, sorry. Magic was created by Tielekku and given to man and some other gods.


Demons in CoH are stated to be magic by the lore.

I think you're misremembering, because Venture has it right: Statesman's powers were originally attributed to his studies in the Orient, unlocking the power of his will. I don't recall exactly when it changed, but I suspect it was when City of Villains was in the pipeline and Lord Recluse was suddenly invented. Maybe someone who is handy with the internet archive sites can find the original description of Statesman's abilities.

The word magic is thrown around a lot in the lore, and every time it's defined it comes out exactly the same as how we define magic colloquially.

I checked ParagonWiki and found no evidence of this. Perhaps I missed it, but it's pretty clear magic is something given to humans by gods and is imbued in objects either by gods or through their agents.

This is incorrect. Hero One and Hero-1 are the penultimate and ultimate scions of a bloodline entrusted with stewardship of Excalibur. This is exactly analogous to various hierarchical monarchies in the real world and even to organizations such as the Swiss Guards. You have to belong to the group in order to be selected for elite status, whether that's as Emperor of Japan or one of the Pope's bodyguards. The backstory of Hero-1 clearly states that his abilities are magical and were given to him when the Lady of the Lake handed over Excalibur. Regular guy before the sword, super-duper magic user after.

No, it's pretty clear that the Well grants powers. Regardless of what the writers ultimately decide how it operates, either as the wellspring or as a conduit of power, it's still accomplishing its task magically. Every other thing about the Well says "magic," so it's safe to assume this aspect is magical as well.

You're right that magic does have a strict definition, but everything in CoH follows that description and everything about the Well does, too. See below.

It would be highly coincidental that everyone who has encountered the Well or a product of the Well just happens to be granted abilities through magic. I don't buy into that.

Clarke's Third Law is fine for handwaving such things. In Marvel's universe, Galactus routinely imparts "the power cosmic" on his heralds. Although it works like Magic, it's clearly a form of Science in that universe. HOWEVER -- and this is what I keep coming back to -- the Well of Furies in CoH is specifically called magical and the power of gods manifesting in humans and objects is labeled "magic" again and again, and it works the exact way that magic works in every instance we've ever seen in comics, movies and literature.

There's simply no other way to spin that except as Magic. Now, the Devs can go ahead and retcon all of it away and that's their prerogative, but right now it's all magic all the time.

That would be fine. It's still magic, though.

This is where we disagree. There's simply an overwhelming amount of lore stating that the Well is magical and Ramiel's arc only vaguely -- and annoyingly -- hints that maybe it is and maybe it isn't. So I'm going with the preponderance of evidence. Ramiel is one guy, a shifty, untrustworthy one at that, so he may be wrong or lying.

Yeah, the problem there is the word "origin." In CoH we don't use it the same way we say something like "I was born in Iowa." You're always born in Iowa. Origin is a mutable thing. It's more akin to something like being blonde as a child and your hair turning darker as an adult. Your "origin" was blonde, but now your origin is brunette. Or you were 3 feet tall as a child but now are 6 feet tall. Your "origin" was "short" but is now "tall." These are permanent changes. You can't go back from them. Same thing when Daredevil or Flash get those chemicals spilled on them. They become Science and there's no going back.

This is what happens when the Well infuses you with Magic powers. Whatever you were before is irrelevant now, because you're powered by Magic.

I think it can be done but it requires a lot of planning, which doesn't usually happen on blockbusters. You'd think those would be the most carefully crafted, but scenes are very often rewritten the night before shooting. Hard to do something of complex quality under those conditions. The cartoon Spectacular Spider-Man had moments like that, although there was quite a lot of what you mention with the stand-and-deliver of lines.

Although not quippy, the boxing scene in Sherlock Holmes is a sterling example of thinking outside the box for an action sequence. it just takes someone to think about Spidey in that fashion and take the fight scenes outside of the normal comfort zone. Chuck often does an excellent job of this.

Oh, right. In that case:

"Stay awake! I WILL call you!"

(Sequels usually lack the urgency of the original.)

I've always thought you were a guy.

Stay alive! I WILL find you!

::: annoyed-by-lore-retcon high five :::

Try as I might, I can't recall a single mention of Lord Recluse before City of Villains was released. It's like one of those bad soap operas where they show the origin story and then decide to complicate it by adding another character. So they show the origin story again in flashback, only this time instead of just showing our protagonist drinking from the Well, they show him drinking then pan over to show a guy they've never mentioned before.

"Oh yeah, my very best friend from forever was there, too."
"Wait, why didn't you mention him before?"
"Didn't I? Well, I'm mentioning him now."

All of the other stuff in the game seems to come back to Statesman's origin. Recluse suddenly appears, Hero-1 can't just be the next King Arthur, he has to be an Incarnate as well, all the evil doppelgangers from the various versions of Praetoria are Statesman, etc. I wonder who decided that?

Absolutely.

But in the lore, the source of all creativity and the cause for the resurgence of superpowers is Pandora's Box, not the Well of Furies. Cole and Richter drank from the Well and became Incarnates, then they opened Pandora's Box which stored mankind's collective creativity. It basically jump-started everything else causing leaps forward in science and technology and innate human ability. So they became Ubermensch and Anti-Ubermensch, while everyone else became street fighter or combat armor wearer or whatever.

This I don't buy. The Well is magic. So if it influences you and permanently alters your abilities then you become magic, as well. Look at it another way: if you're an all-Natural hero, like The Punisher and suddenly you get bitten by a radioactive spider which gives you superpowers on top of your existing abilities, you change from being Natural to Science. Or, if you're an excellent soldier with mad skills -- like James Rhodes, for instance -- you're a Natural hero. But once you put on the War Machine combat armor, you become a Tech hero. Same thing with the Well. Once it influences you, you become Magic, regardless of what you were before that moment. Just like the moment Rhodey dons the armor his origin transforms from Natural to Tech, you go from X to Magic.

And that's the part I reject for some of my characters. For some, it's fine, but others? No way.

Yeah, that bugs me, too. I think what happened was that Hero-1 was retconned into being an Incarnate when originally he was nothing of the sort. His original backstory says that he is the latest in a long line of humans who are the wielders of Excalibur, which is protected by the fae. The denizens of Croatoa seem to likewise be fae.

I think the original intent of the lore was that there were different groups of magic users -- notably Greek gods, African gods, demons and fae -- who were all basically variations on the Magic theme. Once everything started to get related to Statesman's origin, then every ultra-powerful NPC was shoehorned into the "Incarnate" role.

Maybe Hero-1 is the Incarnate of a Celtic god. That would work, I think.