Tangler

As for how valid it is for the comp: Dr. Aeon had already played and commented on my arc, though he didn't mention if he thought I was hitting that criteria or not. It was a positive comment though, so I'm leaning towards thinking that I probably hit that criteria okay, at least not to be disqualified straight away.

I think a lot of players are already aware of the villainy of CK given current content, especially the vileness that is the Synapse TF. In one of his memories, Blue Steel does reference the point where his Clockworks had killed an officer, making them much less than harmless thieves.

I'm glad you appreciated it. That was the core idea of the arc, and how I tackled the idea of 'doing evil for the greater good'. I think a few people have mentioned that it felt more like just 'doing evil for good', or even not doing any evil at all. In the end I think this arc may come down more to personal values as to how the player perceives it.

I could have another look once the comp is all over.

A few people have mentioned this. I don't claim this arc to be the-super-secert-origin-that-you-never-knew(!) of CK, rather that it's an arc with one interpretation of his character in the style of What If/Elseworlds. I've tagged the arc as non-canon and noted that this arc is speculative in the description, to try and convey that notion.

I'm all to aware of the random evils of the outdoor map, I have cleared some outdoor missions in less than a minute when the objective have spawned right in front of me, while others I may have spent a hour searching every crevice for that last objective. Originally that map was on a much more generous 45 mins, but those who wanted to fail the mish said it was far too long to wait it out, and that you could complete this far more quickly meant the completion lacked any urgency as well.

I kind of figured that was the reason, though it was still an interesting and fun experience, as well as enlightening to how well you can work given certain constraints.

Wow, thanks.

I think a few people have been thrown off by the destructible objects in mish 1 and 4, really I just added them as scenery. I'll be sure to make it clearer as to what exactly you need to do in mish 4.

I'm also pretty amazed you actually ran this arc 3 times in succession.

I wish you could - no the Penelope model just seems to fall into the clipboard animation of its own accord.

His shield is one of the shield model options, you can add auras to custom characters just like any other PC.

I know what you mean. I've tried to have both sides as equal as it can get, but it still ends up leaning towards one side since your contact is obviously in favour of one side throughout, which would influence the player's decision a lot I would think.


That's a really great and poetic explanation of your character's reasons. To save CK for Penelope was definitely one of the reasons I was going for, but I didn't want to explicitly spell it out in the mission start clue as the whole 'power of friendship/love' thing is so frequently used (and accepted) as the Ultimate Truth, that it would grossly swing players in favouring to save CK. Still I am happy to hear someone has taken this reason, noting the possibility for growth between the two, for their character.

Thanks for catching those typos too, I'll be sure to fix them.

I'll see if I can tone down it down, I certainly wasn't trying to turn Penelope into a valley-girl. Btw would you happen to recall any particular bits that sounded awkward to you? I think I've hit the stage where I've re-read it so many times my eyes have taken this dull sheen.

Ah thanks for that catch.

The blobbiness was supposed to represent an ill-recollected memory of the hero. I suppose you could counter that such an important event would be vividly recalled by CK, but I decided on CK's memory being hazy on the subject as I just didn't want to risk deviating the story too much with questions like "who's this [well defined] hero?"

I was going to write up a fairly long piece in response, but then I realised that ramblings made at 4AM are never the most coherent. I'll just leave that from the very start of this competition, I knew I would very, very unlikely ever be able to write an arc where a hero would do something unquestionably evil and still have it being called 'justified', or even keeping the 'heroic' tag. So I went with a moral gray, where the player could pick whichever bittersweet ending they think best represents what they think is the 'greater good'.

Not sure about guiding the hero to doing the deed, but as to avoid explicitly dictating the hero's actions you can just omit them in the dialogue, so you're only hearing one half of a conversation as if Indigo was speaking on the phone. With actions you can be less restrictive I would say, though I would avoid writing specific things like "you read a book to pass the time" and write something more ambiguous like "You passed away the time as you waited to reach your destination".

If you have the time, I think it would be a good to go ahead with the plan to add a more innocent mission to ease the hero in.

It really comes off implying that the hero is stealing though, I'd say give it a bit of rewording to make it more ambiguous.

That's the one, I knew I was missing "pens one side of a white card black, makes everyone slowly back away from him" guy, just couldn't remember the name.

I'll add that what you've got here is the core of a good idea going on, you just need to iron out the details.

By 'forever' I was trying to mean 'forever in the way that superhero's stay dead forever, and so on'. There could very well be some last minute save, but at this very present it's just isn't available. I suppose it was too easy to take that line as 'word of god' though, and I'll see if I might be able to make it a bit more ambiguous. That's a good point about the what could happen if CK does wake up though.

I usually try and avoid the melodrama, but given how the challenge was "make a hero... do something evil! *dundundunnnnn!*" I guess I couldn't avoid the ham. I'll have a check through though.

Hmm that's interesting you found her that way, as if anything I was afraid she may be considered acting too 'mature' given her canon representation.

As FredrikSvanberg has already mentioned, Penelope is probably older than most people would think. She's only slightly younger than Ann and Jimmy who are in their early twenties, and she's old enough to drive a scooter. I'm guessing that most people are thrown off and think she's younger, due to the way she speaks and how she is considered a 'little sister' by Ann and Jimmy.

CK was also described as being a young man when Blue Steel fought him, and again I think some people might have been thrown off since it's never really mentioned in-game. Together, I don't think it's too farfetched to consider that there isn't that much of an age difference between Penelope and CK, at least to make a "What if..." scenario plausible.

You've made a good point about the protective angle though. CK is portrayed as having extraordinarily bad luck in this What If, so after his own personal tragedy he may well be over zealously trying to make sure that someone he knows who has similar bad luck does not suffer the same fate as him.

I had that problem too actually, and I had to restart the mission all over again just for it to respawn. I'd suggest dropping the numbers of generators to reduce spawning conflicts.

I think you'll just need to experiment around until you find one that works best, but if you haven't already considered it, there's another (not perfect) option of having the mish 3 exit popup reminding the player to check their clues for the debriefing.

I dare say you can just replace them with PPD and you would hardly lose much.

I'll be touching on points 3 and 4 on my more general comments, spoilers below:

I noticed you haven't added keywords to your arc yet. I would definitely call this one non-canon, and probably challenging too given mostly to how the missions are set up currently (more on that below).

Your missions had a lot of patrols, as in so much so I was frequently fighting two, sometimes three groups at the same time. This jacked up the difficulty quite a bit, especially given how deadly high level Longbow get when in large numbers. If this wasn't you intent, I would recommend you scale the amount of patrols you have down by a lot.

There were a few typos and grammar errors, I'd recommend having a careful read through, or get someone else to help you proof read it.

The dictated actions and voice of my character: I'm not a fan of them, but I'm usually lenient if it's just the odd line of my character saying he'd agree to do whatever mission. There were quite a lot of times in this arc however that the actions and speech I found just really off to my character. Personally I would tone it down.

I think Indigo was laying it on a bit too thick that my hero would have to be making some hard choices. We all have an idea that we'll be doing something along those lines due to the nature of this competition, but even if I were to pick up and play this arc blind I would have thought there was too much repetition on this point.

I'm not sure why Indigo can't just strong-arm the police into handing over the evidence. Sure 'officially' she doesn't exist, but she's wielding enough power to pull any departmental strings, or mocking up whatever clearance she needs.

Is my hero stealing from the evidence lockers for personal gain? I was only aware that the specific glowie I was supposed to be looking for was a safe until later on, so me clicking on those lockers was to try and complete the objective, rather than to attempt a bit of looting.

Phipps is talking to me after I collected the canister, even though I never rescued him beforehand, and I'm pretty sure he was chained to only spawn after I picked up the canister to boot.

I think the chaining for the 2nd mission needs to make a bit more sense, I know why you did it that way, though it still feels a bit clunky.

Neat The Question/Rorscharch antagonist, especially fitting given the arc's nature. I would consider making his lines more terse though, I'd never be able to go through all that in-battle.

Really nice use of betrayal, first time I've seen it put to proper use.

The especially large Longbow spawn for The Inquiry in mish 3 seems overkill, especially since I'm pretty sure The Inquiry is running rage as well, again this is partly why you should tag your arc as challenging.

The building explodes, the public all turns their heads towards me and... I'm still in my villain disguise. Why am I taking a public call while still dressed up as a known villain?

So Indigo planned for several years to retrieve this canister, she finally does and destroys it... only to keep a copy on her person. Why? She knows how dangerous it is, if she remembered why she was so bent on destroying that canister, she would have destroyed that as well and avoided the situation in mish 4 in the first place.

I actually missed out on the beginning clue of mish 4 until about halfway, you may want to consider mentioning it at the end of the briefing.

The briefing mentions that Statesmen is an AV, but from his low hp I think he might actually be the pet version.

I think it would be worth breaking up some of the paragraphs in your arcs into smaller chunks.

Souvenir is a very nice touch, helps to drive it all home.

Edit: added URL