Talos Vice (arc id 338380)

By popular demand (well, one person's demand), a feedback thread for:

TALOS
=VICE=
Arc ID: 338380
Keywords: Solo Friendly, Drama, Mystery
Morality: Heroic
Level range: 12-20
Description: An 80s instrumental blares as the camera pans over scenes of Talos Island: windsurfers on the water, the Talos statue, shoppers in Wentworth's, bikini babes, sports cars racing down the Argo Highway, a speedboat bouncing on the waves. A title card appears over the waters racing below: TALOS VICE


This is essentially a Miami Vice homage. Originally I wanted to write a story about street-level crime, and I got inspired by seeing Detective Croquette in Talos Island and thinking about the ability to recolor standard PvE mobs.

I made this a shorter arc (3 missions) because I wanted it to be quicker paced and accessible. I also experimented with a different style of storytelling for the writing, which I hope works for this theme. The arc is quite new and could use player feedback. I'd particularly like input on:

* Is the final fight too hard? Too easy?
* It's meant to be a Miami Vice homage, but are parts of it over the line and into infringement?
* Does the writing style I used work? Or is it too weird?
* I place words in the mouth of the player in a few places; is this too much powerposing, or is it OK?
* Is the ending (final debriefing) satisfying? I found this hard to write, because I like the protagonist to "win", but the heroes "winning" is not in the spirit of Miami Vice.

Feedback I've received so far:


Joe Fedora writes:

Quote:

Great (and hilarious, for those of us who are children of the '80's) atmosphere and just about the right difficulty for a level 20 character. Fuller review to follow in your forum thread, when I get around to it. For now, 5 stars. And why am I only the second person to play through this thing? This needs more exposure! :-D

Thanks!!

Luminous Knight writes:

Quote:

Very fun and fast paced! Though I was waiting for the signature overworked police chief and his "You're a damn good cop, $name, but you're a loose cannon! What have you done in that warehouse? Now I've got the mayor breathing down my neck!" speech. Played it on a l32 scrapper on 'heroic' (1 char, no bosses/AVs), but I could've probably gone with a harder setting, the enemies were not overly annoying / overpowered..

OMG, I desperately need to insert this scene somewhere in the arc! This is such a common trope for a cop show. I'm not quite sure where best to shoehorn it in, though - the mission 1 complete clue has the interrogation scene already, and I'm not sure it makes sense to occur after mission 2. Maybe I could fit it into the mission 1 debriefing somehow.


Lady Burlesque writes:

Quote:

A little short, but a solid story & consistent with the genre you're giving tribute to. Played on +0/x1 no AV on 20 psi/MM blaster. Might go back and play it again on a higher diff to check out the bosses as they were intended. Loved the screenplay text style, the general thrust of it. I'm split on whether it could use another mish to flesh things out. Will comment in det

It's admittedly short, but this was on purpose and I feel that it fits the genre. This type of story usually doesn't have that heavy a plot, and I thought the 3 mission length was just enough to tell amount of story that I had.

Link to Olantern's review

Olantern writes:

I played around with costumes a bit based on Olantern's suggestions, and came up with the following:



Sergeant Stevens ("summer" uniform)

I was also tempted to go with an all-tan uniform, which is pretty common in the south too, but thought the light blue outfit was more striking. I'm not quite sure about the cap though, wondering if that should maybe be black, white, or maybe no hat at all.



Kitty (new costume)

I thought this still looked suggestive of Mynx without being a simple palette shift, while also being pretty obviously naughty. I tried the "eden" top too, but thought the bikini look worked better.

Kat's outfit looks just right.

Police Woman's looks good too, in that it's pastel and has that skirt with the slit sides, but I think the color of the shirt looks a bit too much like a regular police shirt. Knowing what the regual Police Woman looks like, I can appreciate the change, but it might not be as apparent to someone unfamiliar with the character.

Shoulder pads and larger hair, I say!

I changed Sergeant Stevens' hairstyle to "Long 2" for the 80s "big hair". I tried many combinations of shoulder pads but couldn't find any that didn't look utterly ridiculous, so left those off for now. I did keep her in the "police" shirt as she's meant to represent a uniformed cop (while Croquette, Basinns and Wexler are "undercover").

I do like how the updated Kitty looks. (Trashy, admittedly, but ... she's supposed to be.)

Still haven't figured out a good place to insert the "Police Chief: You're a loose cannon, Croquette!" speech; there may not be a good place for it.

I did add a clue that the final Big Bad drops on defeat, a vignette where he threatens a dire revenge and you basically blow him off. (To address the lack of clues in the final mission.)

Changed the superadine shipment from the "medical equipment" graphic to "wooden crate". This does seem to work better.

Thanks for posting the thread, I'll be typing up a walkthrough on it after I try another run on a different difficulty (not too much in the way of criticism, but the fun I had on it is worth having another go at it).

I have penciled this mission into my new queue so it will be my 150th review.

I am definitely gonna have to run this arc on my PPD Awakened character.

Talos Vice

Played this on my Psi/Mental blaster Lady Burlesque, who was 21 on the first attempt and 24 on the second attempt. The first run I did was at +0/x0, and I did a later run at +1/x0 with bosses. I chose Lady B as her RP background is that she was a hero in the 80s who later retired after the Rikti War. But here, let her tell you:



So I figured that this little jaunt could be pasted into her canon background. As such, this meant that I had to get a suitably South Beach outfit for her. God help you, here it is:


Teased-Out Blond Hair, Check. Mirrored Aviator Glasses, check. Neon Pastels, Check. Hypercolor fabric, check.

So, since Lady B has been made-over totally radical to the max, let's get this party started.

Mission One:

First off, PW's formatting and text are really outstanding. Perfect for what we're going for here - which is interesting because as I recall, Pink is not one of the dropdown color selections. So this did require a little know-how or research. The text format is that of a screenplay, with the PC placed into the appropriate spots. The Contact is Detective Croquette, one of the Talos Island contacts - who was already an Expy for Don Johnson's Detective Crockett.

The mission send off gives a clue immediately, which is a flashback to a discussion between the PC and Back Alley Brawler. I believe this establishes why the PC is getting involved in a police investigation, or to foreshadow that things are not as they seem in the Talos precinct. It's a nice way to contextualize the action as well as providing another opportunity to make nods toward television tropes. For me, I've spent most of the last few days imagining the conversation between Lady B and BABs, and how the two got to talking. I imagine it was a date. Why not? It isn't like he's got a romantic interest in canon.

In any case, the mish runs us to a warehouse, where it seems that the Dyne bust has gone awry. There's a cute little cameo by Sargeant Stevens, whom forum goers and others might recognize as a younger Police Woman.

Lady B: Cute girl, but she really doesn't have the fortitude for this kind of work.


Hey! That cop just stole my look!

As we go on, we discover further hostages, Detective Basinns and a Detective Wexler.

Eventually, I came upon this curious scene.


They had to tone down the violence for primetime television.

I'm sure there's really nothing to be done about this, but it was a little odd to see that the trolls and the cops were within slapping distance of each other and still weren't hitting each other. Plus, it does lend itself to the gunplay-happy tone of the original series. Croquette is an ally, and a Petless MM (he's thugs/WP?) it seems - which is a good use of the Custom Character tool, as my having an ally who is customed without basic powers won't hurt any XP. I would have liked to have had Basinns as well, it would have made sense to have the two working together. But, as I recollect, Tubbs was sort of second string most times in the original series. Perhaps we can consider the PC as being the Special Guest Star on this episode of Talos Vice.

In any case, we bust up the Dyne ...uh...bust. The dialogue here is nothing special, but it doesn't have to be. The mission completion clue narrates a typical police interrogation scene and suggests that we'll be infiltrating a nightclub next. Oh, I sense the rave map coming up.

While the dialogue isn't much to talk about, the accompanying narration is rather evocative. Special attention is paid to describing the soundtrack of each sequence, which not only provides a clever bit of mood - but is also consistent with the original series.

Mission Two:

So, we're going to the Sindicator's Club. I don't know if this is a reference to the Vindicators or a pun on a "Syndicate". Something tells me that this place wouldn't be unknown to Lady B.

Croquette and Lady Burlesque enter the club. Burlesque notices a girl dancing with two trolls.

Lady B: HEY! That's my costume!
Lady Bewbesque: Back off, honey, this is my table.
Croquette: Lady, we're not here for this.
Lady B glares at her parodied self.
Lady Burlesque: You're going to go home. You're going to take off that outfit, and then you're going to become a nun. Forever.

Lady Burlesque (VO): ...And that's how I accidentally created one of my archenemies, the "Bad Habit".

Color me wrong. Not the rave map. This is the Freakshow Warehouse map. Meh. Okay.

This mish has some issues and unfortunately, they are nitpicky. These are actually canon issues given the timeframe and what has been pieced together as an ingame timeline. The problem being that some of the people in this mish are anachronisms.

According to the information I checked on Paragon Wiki, the Tsoo aren't founded until well into the 1990s, and the first reference I could find to the Freakshow was around 1995. Finally, Mynx was born in 1982, which would make her like six or seven by the time this would be happening, so it might be a little odd for there to be a Mynx-themed dancer at the club. Ms. Lib could be written off as referring to her mother, so that's not a really big deal. Since that's two Vindicators referenced, I guess the club is named after them. Again, not sure if this jives with the canon, since Ms Lib apparently did not found Longbow itself until after the first Rikti War - and I don't really know when the Vindicators were founded but I'd have to assume it was after that.


This really didn't distract me from the mish itself, but I provide this for the sake of completeness and detail. It's perfectly reasonable for "Kitty" to be just a generic catgirl costume, although at present she's clearly intended to reference Mynx.

I cleared the "hostage" Libby, and just assumed that was the end of the mish - but then noticed that I was now required to find some Family goons to beat up. This required me to backtrack all the way to the beginning of the mish - not a big deal since its a short map. Just making sure this was working as intended. Libby doesn't give us a whole lot of extra information, though, so her clue is sorta meh.

Croquette, whom I had freed earlier in the mish (and he still can't hit anything), follows me back to the beginning where a pair of Family goons are waiting. They have the Talos PD's leak standing nearby, whose identity is really no surprise.

Mission completion clue again captures the tone of the original series, complete with good-cop, bad-cop sequence. I did like the idea of Lady B pulling the despair-enraged Croquette off of the mole with a short, potentially sympathetic phrase.

Lady B: Lay off, Croquette. You tried the vinegar, now let me try the honey.
Croquette: Five minutes, Burlesque. Then I go in there and when I'm finished, I don't know if there's going to be enough of him left to testify.
Lady B: That's four minutes, forty-five seconds more than I need.
Lady Burlesque puts on her sunglasses.
The Who: "YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

Croquette: What was that noise?
Lady B: I...don't know.

Mission 3:

Short, short mission. Takes place on the Mercy Island Dock mish map, which on my difficulty resulted in less than 10 individual critters. Like another commenter, running up the pier puts me right in front of the boss. On my initial run, he spawned as a orange-conned boss. I don't think I ever saw his powersets. On that initial run, I snuck around and took out the periphery mobs and grabbed Croquette again. I'm not entirely certain I needed him for the difficulty level I was on - I don't think the boss even spawned his pets.

On my initial run, I felt this is the "weakest" mish in the arc, though. It just goes too fast. The map makes sense in that the write up sort of requires use of the speedboat, which means that there should be a pier or waterside battle - but the whole thing is over too quick. I don't know if there's another map choice that could be made. Maybe the extremely short office map from the blueside tutorial, or perhaps another short interior map. Seems like there should be a little more of the protracted gunplay shootout to mesh it to the source material.

Well, regardless, the battle did bring me this delighful screencap:


He's a sharp dressing cowboy cop. She's a sassy and provocative model. They fight crime. WITH BREAKDANCING.

My second run on this, when the EB was actually an EB, was much more satisfying. I'm glad I did get Croq first, as the EB now had plenty of time to spawn his pets. A lower level toon might have more trouble with this for certain, as I had the benefit of lvl 20 powers and some light AOE control (the EB pulled out all his pets: thugs, enforcer, and arsonist at once; no gang war thank god). I only died because of the ambush, and only then after the mish was complete. I also liked that the Dyne stash spawns to the side (the front?) and the EB is now further back in the map. I think the way you have it now is in a finalized state.

Conclusion:

Well, it's Talos Vice. It's the War on Dyne. If beating the bad guys once and for all was going to be easy, we would have already won by now. I feel a little troubled that we never really learned why the mole had sold out, or that we didn't get to battle Mr. Frost -- but maybe that's something to be dealt with in Talos Vice Season 2.

All in all, this is a great, fast-paced, very simple mish. Good for low level content, just before the SO stage. Nothing's really all that difficult at standard difficulties. Definitely not intended for anything more than a duo, trio at the most. The maps are just simply too small and action too short. A good portrait and tribute to the classic 80s TV series, pretty much hitting all the marks. As I mentioned, I would have liked to have seen Basinns a few more times or to have him as a backup ally - but it really wasn't necessary. Alternatively, we could have swapped them between the mishes. It's not required, by any means, but Basinn's walk-on makes him seem like even less a presence than if he hadn't been there at all.

I think this is the kind of mish that anyone can spend about an hour or less on and be pretty satisfied with it. I ran it 5 stars, everything functional (even if the mechanics are pretty basic), and action kept momentum throughout the arc. I think it succeeded in recalling the original series, and is accessible even if you don't know the series by anything more then reputation.

As far as the canon issues go - I noticed that you wanted to put in Manuel Ruiz in the arc. In his Paragon Wiki article (and his contact info text), it mentions that he fought a group called the "Brothers of Doom" that were prevalent in the 80s. I'm sure this arc is nowhere near maxed out, so maybe you could do a small custom group to replace the established groups that are anachronistic. Again, this certainly isn't required - no one says that your arc has to stick anywhere near the CoX timeline (being as it is probably of arguable accuracy). Just wanted to give you a heads up.

Changes made as a result of feedback:

* Mission 2

- Added an ambush whose sole purpose is to utter the line "Say hello to my little friend." (At the suggestion of The_Cheshire_Cat)
- Added a patrol just to make the place feel more lively.

* Mission 3

- Rearranged objectives slightly to try and improve gameplay.
- End boss is now triggered from destroying the dyne shipment. (To address problem reported by 2 players that the end boss was the first thing they encountered.)
- A new clue is added to the dyne shipment as a result. (To address problem reported that there aren't enough clues in final mission.)
- Increased end boss's spawn from "Easy" to "Hard". (To address 2 comments that the final fight was too easy / did not involve enough gun battles.)
- I actually had 2 people say that the end boss as an EB/AV seemed about right, while end boss as an Boss/EB seemed too easy; but I believe both were exemped down, so I'm waiting on a little more feedback before I take the step of bumping the end boss back up to an EB/AV.

I'd say given the level of the arc, leave it as a Boss/EB. As a general rule, TO range = boss max, DO range = EB max. It's not a hard and fast rule, obviously, but I find that pre-SOs, AV/EBs are really rough to throw at someone (And so, so overused - not every arc HAS to end with an AV fight! ...Or start with one. Or have one every single mission. You get where I'm going with this).

*Edit* Also, "Too easy" complaints typically mean someone's just running on too low difficulty. "Too hard" there's only so much someone can do to make it easier.

Ran this tonight with a widow at 1/+2/boss/no heroes.

Thoughts on it:

- The screenplay format was cool. I enjoy it when people do something a little different without trying to reinvent the wheel. On the flip side of that same argument, the screenplay format obviously reduces the amount of exposition concurrent to the amount of scene description, so it was good that you used a relatively familiar genre like a cop drama to use it.

- The dialogue has a tendency to be terse, which is reflective of what I remember from the original Miami Vice TV show... I won't go into the movie, because I didn't particularly enjoy the movie.

- I played some Genesis, Glen Frey, Bob Seger, and Phil Collins, (which is... ummm... Genesis, but just saying), from my play list while doing the arc to strike the mood.

- The arc was fairly easy and it flowed smoothly. The EB really didn't feel much like an EB. Perhaps Croquette was laying down a lot of damage, but the EB was at a quarter of his health bar in about 2 seconds.

- The character designs were well done. I'm not sure if it's what you were going for in mission 2, but I sort of liked the idea of what the villain groups might have been like before they really became entrenched in Paragon City.

(I know you said you weren't going for a throwback to the 80's feel, but to be honest, that is very much what this felt like.)

Overall, it was well done, as most of the arcs I've played of yours have been.

* Is the final fight too hard? Too easy?

The endboss was a tough fight but with enough inspirations I got him. His damage reduction might be a bit toned down.

* It's meant to be a Miami Vice homage, but are parts of it over the line and into infringement?

I missed the yelled at bit


* Does the writing style I used work? Or is it too weird?

I like alternate writing styles. This worked for me. Only minus is that you rely a lot on us reading the clues (which is the purpose of course) but if you are less religiously reading those, you will miss a good part of the story and why things are happening.

* I place words in the mouth of the player in a few places; is this too much powerposing, or is it OK?

No problem with me.


* Is the ending (final debriefing) satisfying? I found this hard to write, because I like the protagonist to "win", but the heroes "winning" is not in the spirit of Miami Vice.

I liked it.

Yeah, balancing the final boss is something I'm still struggling with.

Well, given that the rest of the arc is not heavy of OMGUBER challenge, I think it being "easy" (i.e. not a freaking beatdown) is fine. I got a good fight out of my second stab at it (once I actually activated bosses) - and I realized that on my second run I was actually using SOs in my enhs (rather than the DOs I had back on my first run). Most folks in this level range won't have the benefit of SOs (or the extra powers from Exemping down).

I think the boss is just about right, particularly if you are spawning his group with more surrounding critters. Also, the boss trigger sounds just about right, good choice there.

Ugh, the POINT I was getting to is the fact that this is a short, fast Arc. Putting in a more challenging EndBoss might drag the pacing down and subject it to a sudden and wrenching (and unnecessary) Difficulty Spike. I'd say stick to Boss/EB and MM/SS (rather than WP), even if you want to bump SS to "normal" diff.

Playing this arc right now.

I thought it was a comedy arc, or a parody, just going by your description, but as it turns out it's a great canon-related and serious arc. It's more of an homage than a parody, and since the canon game actually portrays the cops of Talos as something out of Miami Vice it's perfectly "legitimate" in my opinion.

I love the screenplay-style of the briefings/debriefings. If I thought I could pull it off I'd try it myself for one arc or another.

The only thing I could ask for would be a real soundtrack. You mention different kinds of 80s songs but I'd like actual titles I could look up and play during the missions and between them. That would make it perfect.

5 well-deserved stars.

@GlaziusF

Done as part of the CoHMR Aggregator project.

Running this one on my mid-teens Peacebringer, who fights bosses but is otherwise Old Diff 1.

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Well! I don't know what I was expecting but I certainly wasn't expecting this sort of briefing. I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.

Given how things turned out, the bodybags were in the back of the mission and the Superadine crates up front. If this fits your experience, you should probably reorder the clues to go Stevens -> Dyne -> bodies.

Ah, the 80s, a time before "lawyer" was a dirty word. Public defender? I imagine the usual mob lawyer wouldn't have been so approving of ratting out the leadership.

---

Too many... pastels... on villains... eyeballs... strangling neck...

Oh hey, that's how you're doing it. Hellion arsonists exist up to 20! I'll have to keep that in mind.

Makes me wonder why none of the neighborhoods seem to have a bad side, outside of a couple neon signs in Kings Row.

I'm ashamed to admit I didn't get the club name until I saw the first entertainer.

Also, the "Stunner Chief" in the giant mashup custom group should probably be called "Freak Stunner" or something, to fit with the theme of the rest of the Perps.

Nice that you can strip out "standard" abilities from your allies, isn't it? Helps with certain concepts.

Well. The mole certainly popped up quick.

Huh. Awfully long pauses in the final briefing. I wonder what Croquette is thinking about.

---

Ah, that's what he's thinking about. I hope I don't get a pistol to the skull in the next mission, having your brain scrambled often offends.

Huh. Marcones.

With standard Marcone descriptions, oddly enough. This should before the Mook vs. Marcone civil war, yes?

Aw. I was kinda expecting a sudden cut to the drug lord seeing the Dyne go up and rushing out of his hideout onto the streets.

Interesting fight. Nice scene for it, even if thanks to knockback and pursuit AI Croquette and Cavlieri ended up pointing their guns directly at each other's skull at the end there.

With Croquette's backup and some inspirations that was a pretty reasonable end boss fight.

The clue for Cavalieri's defeat should definitely come after the one about the Dyne going up, though.

And the game decides to be appropriate and have the sun rise just as he's going down, with me and Croquette looking out to sea.

Aw. The souvy isn't in script style? I don't think it'd be hard - my character reminiscing about the case to wrap up the episode, and the Armani jacket in "$name's trophy room" or similar.

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Storyline - *****. Pretty solid structure. Three little acts, commercial breaks in between. It doesn't END, but these shows never really did, did they? This was just one episode. And the narrative conceit, well, it has to be seen. I'd like to see some of the other "zone cop shows" done up in this style too.

Design - *****. Only a handful of customs, but they make sense and work well. The partying members of the lower gangs are also done up in great style, and the maps are fairly small but generally fitting.

Gameplay - *****. The final boss fight was an interesting wrinkle but not too difficult, and overall there was very little time spend roaming around blind.

Detail - ****. Not for a lack of scripted souvenir. More for... well. I'm not sure what that just was. Was it actually a look into the early days of Talos, when there wasn't a war wall north of Scylla Island? Or is it a story that happens in the modern day but with the conceits of Croquette and Basinns' "show"? Mynx was a Crey production, and I know they weren't being evil in the 80s, and the Mook/Marcone civil war is also of recent vintage. I realize expecting historical accuracy from a cop show is just a little on the insanely anorakish side, but these things bug me.

Overall - *****. They don't bug me that much, though, and between the storytelling conceit and the generally good time I had there's no reason to hold back here.

Wow, just found I can drag & drop objectives in the mission architect MMI now ... is that new? I could've sworn I tried to do that once before and it wouldn't work.... that makes reordering objectives immensely easier.