Venture

Which is ridiculous. That makes them people with the same name, not "parallels".

It's not evidence at all. It's conjecture.

I expect in any case of claim of parallel status for the developers to confirm it, or it's no sale.

I also expect that if the Center even existed in Praetoria neither Tyrant nor Mother "Did It Need To Be So High" Mayhem would allow him to survive.

We need that NPC announcer to say "I'd buy that for a denarius!" during Time Gladiator....

Contrived in the sense that such situations are usually not so cut and dried.

We actually have no idea what happened to First Ward. It's highly unlikely that the official state version of events has more than a passing similarity to the truth.

As I said, I am aware of that and it was a mistake. The real world does have people in it that would gladly murder people in an attempt to cure (e.g.) cancer. They wouldn't care that they'd be remembered as insane butchers because they'd also be remembered for the cure. It needs to be social policy that in such cases any results will be destroyed without being used or study so there's no pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. It doesn't matter how many lives might be saved because human lives are not currency.

She did not just "sell fixadine". She literally empowered a terrorist organization whose purpose was to attack her own people just so the state would have a tangible enemy to fight for PR purposes. This is a war crime and she is guilty as sin. She was also personally involved in the capture and torture of both Statesman and Positron, though that's just throwing another shrimp on the barbie given the number of people she's doubtlessly done that to.

It is beyond the scope of the game to insist on courtroom-worthy evidence. The story treats the guilt of all of these people as read. If you're going to nitpick at that level you'd have to give Recluse, the "patrons" and probably half the named villains in the game a free ride.

It's an imperfect world. That's no reason to phone it in.

Golden Girl has already done an adequate job explaining why Tyrant is culpable for everything done by his regime. Dominatrix, asked and answered. Anti-Matter was ready to deploy a weapon of mass destruction in a civilian area (again, his own) heedless of any potential for civilian casualties. He also personally accellerated the flow of time in two dimensions condemning any inhabitants to violent insanity. Depending on the scope of the phenomenon the casualties in each case would range from thousands to trillions. Again, this is just what he's done in game; it is more than reasonable to assume that he is directly responsible for or complicit in multiple crimes against humanity, many perpetrated against his own people.

Another utterly unredeemable character. It's unthinkable that anyone would even consider it.

Yeah, it's amazing how people who have completely and utterly screwed up so thoroughly no one wants to deal with them any more suddenly find a "new direction". Paraphrasing Dennis Miller, no one dedicates themselves to altruism on prom night. It's only when they're being thrown in the joint that they "see the light". And about as phony as a three-dollar bill.

It's easy because it's true. Though I only support the death penalty in the most egregious cases. That's outside the scope of the discussion.

Zing! We have a winner.

If it's not worth taking seriously then it's not worth doing at all.

Define "sacrifice".

If, to spin a contrived scenario, you have a flood or other imminent natural disaster heading for a city and your choices are to deploy resources to point A which will result in an estimated 50,000 casualties or point B which will result in an estimated 5,000,000 casualties, with no third option, your choice shouldn't be very hard.

If, on the other hand, you have decided to murder 50,000 people in the hopes of finding the cure for a disease that might kill 5,000,000, you're a war criminal and your research, if any, should be destroyed after your trial with no dissemination. (Yes, I know this wasn't done with research from Japanese and Nazi concentration camps. It should have been.)

Universal jurisdiction. Question answered.

We don't need them. We don't have a shortage of plot elements. The best thing to do with Praetoria is to let it die off and return the storyline to the main continuity.

I. DON'T. CARE. What their "internal mental state" is. Once someone has committed these kinds of atrocities they are way, way beyond the point of atonement. This gets us back to the "morality is not fungible" thing. If you murder 5,000 people but then save 5,000,000 guess what, you're still a monster. It doesn't matter how "sorry" you are for what you've done, and frankly, the idea that someone could systematically commit crimes against humanity and then one day suddenly "see the light" is ridiculous. No one with a functioning conscience could do these things in the first place. These people are sociopaths at best.

No, they're not. Bombing a legitimate military target in a declared war is not an act of murder.

As long as the mental defect can be shown to have a physical cause, or is the result of some kind of invasive agent like drugs (not taken voluntarily) or (in our case) possession, mind control, etc.

No, they're the guys who lost the war and committed war crimes. We didn't make every card-carrying Nazi dance at the end of a rope. We didn't even shove them all into prison cells.

Asked and answered. Killing uniformed enemy soldiers in open combat during a declared war is not a war crime; it's not even murder.

Then you concede the argument.

Yeah, actually, it is. It's people trying to justify bad acts that claim it isn't.

As it turns out, two wrongs actually don't make a right. Magneto is just another in a long line of people who turned into what he hated.

Please, it's exactly what we're talking about. Do you honestly expect otherwise from the writing team that brought us the Well storyline? Dominatrix is already strutting around like she's practically a member of the club.

The word you're looking for is "denial".

Sorry, but it's necessary. Philosophy as a field has more than its fair share of crackpots since anyone who can write even semi-coherently can call himself a philosopher. Just to toss out a high-profile example, Ayn Rand may have a great following amongst the lay people but if you seriously try to advocate her work in a university philosophy department you'll get laughed off the campus.

It means that treating characters in stories that have committed monstrous crimes against humanity as though they were faces and heels in pro wrestling is a mistake. It robs the work of vitality, reminding everyone in its audience that it's just product shaped by the needs of the marketing department.

Right, because it's completely out of line to bring up a historical fascist regime that committed (actually, practically defined) war crimes when discussing a fictional fascist regime whose members committed war crimes.

Hell no. Good people aren't forever good, they can trip up easily. As for bad people, it depends on how bad they are. Like it or lump it, there is such a thing as a Moral Event Horizon and anyone who has murdered thousands of people has pole-vaulted over it. That includes Tyrant and his cronies, no saving throw.

How many star athletes are mass murderers?

Because, as I've said before, repeating a mistake doesn't magically make it not a mistake.

Which is ridiculous. Let's try for something better.

No one would buy a story like that for any of the Praetors. It would be as if Himmler or Goering got the deals they wanted at the end of WWII.

Making weapons isn't a war crime. Using them might be, depending.

They'd also have to silence the hero or heroes who stopped his solo attempt to invade Primal...you know, the one where he accelerated time in another dimension and drove everyone there insane? Among other things. Someone like Hetzeld might get a deal like that (it would still be a stretch), but not Anti-Matter.

Actually, I would defy you to find a philosopher who a) argues that morality is fungible and b) is taken seriously. I can't think of even one.

To the best of my knowledge, no one convicted of war crimes was given a free pass because of the potential value of their scientific or technical knowledge. Certainly no one convicted at Nuremberg was.

...the invaders still could have been nuked.

And I've said before that not all of them deserve to be shoved up against the wall when the revolution comes. But none of them are ever going to get the blood off their hands, either. Morality is not fungible.

Not all of them deserve life in prison but none of them should ever be put in a position of authority or be made responsible for the safety of others. Not everyone convicted by the Nuremberg trials was sentenced to death but would you have let any of them have their old jobs back after their time was up?

Nooooooo, he started by murdering his best friend to gain power. He was rotten to the core from Step One. He was as much a "hero" as, say, Byrne-era Lex Luthor.

Oh yeah, he's only responsible for the death of millions and the oppression of an entire civilization. Clearly all he really needs is a time-out and then he's good for a new hero license! /facepalm

By "vaulted" I mean "moved to Ouroboros", which does pertain to the story. We were explicitly told those arcs are still in continuity, and they are referenced by their replacements.

No. I said none of the Contacts or other "name" NPCs qualify as heroic.

Saying it != doing it

Doesn't follow. The Maelstrom device may have been stolen after the original (now vaulted) Praetorian arcs.

No reasonable person could possibly find Tyrant and his stooges not guilty of war crimes. Lesser officials like Kang might get off the hook but they'd never get so much as the time of day from me.

As for the "Primal fired first" theory as far as I'm concerned it's null and void until it actually makes its way into the game. The material in the game maintains that Praetoria had bases on Primal before Primal even knew Praetoria existed. If the devs are smart they'll leave it that way. Making Primal the instigator just turns the whole thing into a rehash of the Rikti War.

Repeating a mistake doesn't mean it's not a mistake any more. The ridiculous Heel Face Revolving Door set up by Going Rogue is bad enough; we don't need to compound it by giving obvious psychotics free passes. Especially when said characters are uninteresting Evil Twins in the first place.

If this was the slightest bit true he would have laid down arms. It was just another "last moment in the bunker" bit.

...I would rather be able to buy what I want directly instead of having to fish through "super packs" to get it. Like, duh. I just don't equate selling costume parts through packs with, oh, annexing the Sudetenland.

Likewise, if PS were to suddenly release the EO set separately from the packs I wouldn't start nerdraging about slaps in the face. I just wouldn't buy the next set, knowing that if I sit tight whatever the draw is will become available on its own.

It's a cushy job, but someone's got to do it.

Oh, and the story itself varies from bad to mediocre.

Would I be unhappy about it? No, but....

...it would mean I wouldn't touch the next set with someone else's hand.

No, you can't. They hit harder and have better defenses. End of story.

Which in this game, makes you useless. Thanks for playing.

No, it doesn't. You can't get blood from a stone. There is a maximum mathematical amount of performance you can get out of any build and nothing you can do will change that.

Not one of them is the slightest bit redeemable. They're all war criminals with blood on their hands.

As seen above, by the time of the Keyes Island Trial he's a frothing-at-the-mouth lunatic. He's drawn the last card in his Sanity Deck...and it's a joker.

I have never once, in all the years I've played, seen any Kheldian of either type do anything on any team that was the slightest bit exceptional. And I've been complimented on my own play many, many times so I have no reason to believe my own skills are somehow deficient.