Mistaken Identity (arc 349473) Dr. Aeon's Challenge (maybe)

Ok, after playing through the arc, and thinking about it for a bit, and reading what some of the other people have said, I do see some major problems.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD.

First off, there are the obvious comparisons to "Blight." Although this arc was far better put together.

Secondly, there are some major plot holes to consider. First off, the implication that I've had most of my body replaced with cybernetics. Wouldn't I try to confirm that? Unless I missed something, I never bothered to check. Honestly I'm not sure where the cyborg thing fit into the rest of the arc, unless it's meant to be an allusion to Naylor's arc, in which case it really didn't resolve itself. It was just an unnecessary complication with the way the arc was resolved.

The ending implied two possible realities: either all of this was real, or I'm crazy. The cyborg thing and its implications was a third possibility that was sort of dropped in the middle of the arc.

Secondly, that's a pretty big plot to pull off right under the nose of a powerful psychic isn't it? If she is aware of it and going along to unearth the bigger plot, then again we go back to the cyborg thing. You're implying that the hospital has been compromised, thereby endangering the lives of every hero in IP...would "Nurse Tillman" go along with that?

I also felt the implication that I'm "Jean" is a pretty big stretch. The events of the arc just don't jive with what we know of "Jean." It of course doesn't help that I was playing a chick with a sword, which is a problem a lot of characters would have, exacerbated by the fact that the dialogue repeatedly refers to me as a Natural Scrapper. Admittedly there isn't much to go on in canon, but "Jean" doesn't seem the type to retreat into such a complete fantasy world, complete with being someone else. And if he's messing with my head, then "Nurse Tillman" could intervene.

And finally, there is the other "Blight" problem...how is Nemesis doing this? I realize it's a comic-book universe that requires some suspension of disbelief, but this level of mind-control by someone with no psychic powers takes suspension of disbelief too far. This is just exacerbated by the fact that a powerful psychic could intervene.

It is handled far better than "Blight" in that none of the "revelations" come out of nowhere. Everything is foreshadowed, everything has some kind of parallel in an earlier mission. Except for the image in the mirror. The choice of image seemed pretty random, but maybe I'm missing something.

As for fitting the challenge, I don't see how I could be performing an evil act for the greater good if I'm being tricked. Evil, to me, implies a conscious choice. And there is still the implication, again exacerbated by "Jean" and the cyborg thing, that there is no plan within a plan, and what I did wasn't for the greater good at all.

I hope some of that at least made some sense and was at least a little bit helpful.

@GlaziusF

Review done as part of the CoHMR Aggregator project.

Alright, let's try this one on. The worst thing seems to be an occasional EB, so I'm going to try this with my rad/sonic offender, old diff 1 but with bosses on.

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Alright. Feels like some Psychonauts stuff is going on here. I get to play having the adventures of some patient under observation somewhere.

(The bug text kinda "breaks the frame", though. It should probably be more like Larson's notes on what's going on.)

Okay, initial assumption unfounded: the popup text treats me as a narrator in this place.

Anyway, without a decent ranged attack on him, and a Psyche set on the ally, the Minotaur goes down in two volleys of lingering rad.

And the seer warns of trials ahead.

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Oh dear. It is kind of odd the game doesn't have a mirror sitting around, but that's a rather amusing replacement. In an insane way, it works.

Huh. Okay, I think I've found "Sister Psyche". Slash Solaris.

So this place is empty. Of hostiles, anyway. I was worried I'd "gotten violent". The wandering NPCs are used pretty well as actors, with the only real problem being that being allies, they both follow you up the elevator. That seems a bit off.

So I'm some kinda robot with biologicals making up a small portion of it. But, uh... if 40% of my brain is gone, it's a wonder I can still read, write, and hold conversations. That stuff is a lot more complex than you'd think.

I'm reminded of this manga called "Homonculus", about a homeless former insurance adjuster who gets trepanated by an insane doctor and it turns out with his brain getting an airing he can see people's neuroses in the form of them turning into crazy weird monsters. Just the idea of pressure on the right part of the brain being somehow supernatural.

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So I "played along" with this for about a month? Or I just slept longer than "I thought".

Ah. This is where I get violent. But if so much of my body is artificial you'd think the doc would have included some kind of emergency remote off switch.

As I contemplate what I'm about to do to complete the mission, it strikes me as weirdly hilarious for any ranged character, especially my sonic blaster, who yells at things until they fall over.

Hmm. Is Mike supposed to remind me of the minotaur? They both start with exactly the same line.

Geez, did I beat this guy so badly last time he lost his memory?

Huh. And the nurse seems to have some of Psyche's "powers" as well.

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So given the briefing, I'm expecting... Nemesis automatons?

Yyyyyep.

The paranoid navbar text is great, too. Though the clue should probably put "boss" in quotes.

Interesting how I start to lose touch with reality near the end of the boss fight.

Geez, if I was supposed to have killed them all the mission should have been defeat all. Stands to reason.

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I reiterate my statement from mission 3 about an emergency off switch.

Anyway, the problem with snipers is that they see through stealth, so the "boss" gets a nice jump on me. But I guess you couldn't very well put him in like a warhulk or anything.

Looks like Mike gets to play Babs this time.

And I've gone completely 'round the bend by the time I get to the top floor. Janitor Synapse and Nurse Psyche, who is now working against me.

Hmm. Reading over the souvenir here. Malaise. Is that... a deliberate choice of words, given who else used to sit outside Bell Medical?

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Storyline - ***. This one's hard, as my imagination did a head fake sometime early in mission 1 and I expected a completely different structure than what materialized. But if I look at what happens it's pretty reasonable on its own. Cybernetics patient goes insane, tragedy results, some things man wasn't meant to meddle in, et cetera et cetera.

I'm told from the start that my hero is running around inside a snowglobe held by an autistic child, or something like that. Even if the warnings weren't there in the description I wouldn't expect anything that happened in the missions to reflect reality. But the ending needs a little something more. So here's an idea: the doc, sensibly, built an emergency off switch. But while other patients might suddenly find themselves toting around dead weight, because Patient M is so full-replacement it would put $himher into a coma, maybe even kill $himher. (would you believe it took me this long to figure out that's what you did? "Jean" can be unisex when it wants to be.) Mission 5 starts with Collin and Shalice arguing over whether to use it anyway - Shalice takes the position that since the treatment had such odd psychological effects Patient M isn't to blame for what's happened and hitting the off switch would be murder. But at the end, with her gone, the doc hits it anyway. If "the exploits of $name" represent Patient M's comatose state, then the end of the souvy makes a little more sense.

For completion purposes, here's my head-fake: I thought, given the setup of the first mission, that it would be a Psychonauts sort of affair, with my hero and her adventures being some kind of allegory for what's going on in the real world. The mission popups, clues, and custom descriptions would all fit the structure of the interview. To what ultimate end, I have no idea. Probably not the same one though.

Design - ***. And can you believe, most of this is for not putting in a defeat all? If I'm supposed to be crazy dangerous and leaving a trail of destruction in my wake, as the "debriefings" imply that I am, put in the objectives to make me crush, kill, and destroy. Didn't really throw down with the bosstaumatons, but they looked alright, and Modern Psyche is pretty well done.

Gameplay - *****. My own predilections against wiping out any unnecessary enemies aside, things went pretty smoothly. The minotaur was reasonable with help, and the end "automaton" was find with some lucks and break frees.

Detail - *****. Aside from the third-person/first-person hiccup in the first mission, things are nicely detailed. Nothing breaks through the mission's backstory unless I'm supposed to be hallucinating a "normal" enemy.

Overall - ****. I think you might have been a little too cautious about hero "forcing" and the like. It was pretty clear to me that there was some serious unreality on the march from the briefing for the first mission, so why not take advantage of that and force me to do the horrible things Patient M is supposed to be doing?

After thinking about it, I've decided against submitting Mistaken Identity for Dr. Aeon's Challenge. The main reasons for this are:

1. No one actually seems to believe that the events of the story arc constitute "doing evil for the greater good". My original idea was that "an act which appears good in one frame of reference could be utterly evil in another frame of reference", but perhaps this was not effectively communicated and/or does not meet the typical player's definition of "the greater good". Some people felt that a person who was not knowingly doing an (objectively) evil act, could not be considered to be "doing evil" -- which is an interesting viewpoint; I would argue that there is such a thing as "evil" in the absolute framework, but it's admittedly debatable. In any case, since this particular point is the crux of the Challenge, failing to effectively meet it seems like it would immediately disqualify the story from consideration.

2. I'm uneasy at the number of people who felt the arc was derivative of Blight. Nothing against Blight, but I'd rather not give people the impression that the story is just a knock-off of another story arc.

3. Although I like the arc a lot more than when I first published it (player feedback has been immensely helpful for making it better), I'm still not convinced that the arc is actually fun.

So, for these reasons I think I won't submit it to the contest. I'm pondering writing an entirely different story to submit, but not sure whether there's enough time.

Regarding the future of Mistaken Identity, I don't think I'm quite ready to pull it down (I still have arc slots left...well, arc slot..). I'm liking the effect of some of the changes I've made so far (especially the amount of symbolism and foreshadowing I was able to inject), and I think there's more that I could improve. (I still have plenty of arc space to work with...I'm only up to like 54% usage.) So I may occasionally still work on it.

Thanks to everyone who tried it out and provided feedback ... both positive and negative, it was an immense help, and gave me a lot of good ideas that improved the story. Thanks a ton!

I enjoyed this arc (enough to play it twice so far). I soloed it both times, so I can't speak for how it plays on a team, but, of course, the story works best as a solo adventure.

I have three possible interpretations. One, its all a Nemesis plot that my character stops and hopefully Sister Psyche helps me out at the end. Two, I am a person who jumped on a bomb and was rebuilt by these nice people, but the damage to the brain was a tad much and I am crazy. Three, I am that purple guy in the cannon having a bit of trouble (again, or in the past?). All of them work for me and are fun to think about.

Good introduction. It sets up the right feeling and hits the tone right on the head, IMO.

Mission 1 is a great little mission just to get the story going and to introduce our helper. The return text after mission 1 is cute, but I feel it detracts from the tone. Its too early for comic relief, the story is still trying to set up the horror/madness/conspiracy angle and breaking the immersion this early in the story did not appeal to me. I'd do something more serious here.

I love mission 2. The visuals are perfect. Roomba, Janitor, and Nurse work nicely. The clues work well for any of the three interpretations I have of the story. I found it fun. Overhearing the conversation while pretending to sleep is a nice touch.

I enjoyed the exercise equipment and the Freaks. The horror level is still high and this mission keeps it there perfectly. Its getting hard at this point to not feel that I am the crazy one and maybe this hero life is all my imagination. Were the Freaks just innocent people in physical therapy? Thankfully, Sister Psyche is there at the end to reassure me that I am on the right path and that there is definitely something wrong at this hospital. The return to contact text also fits into any interpretation.

Back to work (or out to investigate what is really going on). Automatons, sweet, I knew I wasn't crazy! The few customs are a nice add here. Good dialogue, I especially like the Receptionist, she almost seemed like she was on my side; its a shame she wasn't real. I like that the collection clue is a brief description and the mission end clue is done after you had more time to read the documents.

The mission intro and send off for Save the Day work well for either of the scenarios where I am crazy, but not as well for the Nemesis plot scenario. They could be Nemesis discussing the need to evacuate before I come back and uncover their plan and stop them, but its a stretch.

The BAB/Mike dialogue is also difficult to reconcile unless I am crazy. Larson's dialogue is great. Sister Psyche's dialogue is the clue I needed to attach Jean to the purple guy. The Synapse/Janitor dialogue is both amusing and appropriate. The Destroyed Automaton clue as well as the mission exit pop-up really capture the essence of the arc fabulously.

The map gets a bit tight, a lot of stuff can be jammed close together, depending how the random spawns occur, but I enjoy that dynamic.

I do not understand the return to contact text. Either I am crazy and have just killed the nurse and doctor or else they were automatons. I am not sure how they could have that conversation in any interpretation (I have ideas, but I have to reach to make it fit).

The souvenir works well for all interpretations and will be nice to read from time to time.

The gameplay was fun. Mission 1 is short, but the EB and ally are entertaining, and mission 2 has no fighting. The first impression of the arc may therefore be that there will be little play. However, missions 3, 4, and 5 all have fun fights and are visually appealing on top of the great story.

Thank you for your time and effort, I appreciated the journey on this one.

I just ran this one today and I hate to say that I was hoping for something else.

Maybe it's that I don't like Brechtian theater. Maybe it's that I recently saw an rerun of Star Trek: The Next Generation where something very, very similar happens to Commander William Ryker (though it alternates between a mental ward and a play--the basic idea's the same). Maybe I've just seen too many episodes of the original Rod Serling Twilight Zone.

It felt like the arc was too derivative, and it didn't shake or play with any of the genre expectations. What was supposed to be one of the highlights of this arc--"how strange normal CoH activities sound, when told to an independent observer"--has been done time and time again in drama, on TV, and in the movies. I was hoping for some kind of surprise, some kind of twist of the narrative formula, and I didn't get it. (By the way, I just don't know how far saying "how strange normal CoH activities sound", because the citizens of Paragon City are witnesses to super powers, Rikti invasions, zombie apocalypses, winter hordes, kidnappings by the Circle of Thorns, etc. on a daily basis--on the streets of downtown Steel Canyon, even! We're not talking about Kansas vs. Oz here: the 'civilians' are residents of the same place.)

By the end of the second mission, I had figured out more or less where things were going and was just left wondering what the answers to the "Big Questions" the arc was playing with were. Unfortunately, I don't feel like those questions got answered, not even by the souvenir.

I "got" almost immediately that "I" was supposed to be M------: there just aren't that many French canon characters in CoH (by the way, the French would use his full name; the second part is not a middle name).

This robbed the arc of its emotional impact for me, because I figured that either "M" was lucid and it was a Nemesis plot (after all, the automaton plot is a canon plot), or "M"'s just projecting his memories of the events of his psychotic break into my character's head the whole time. Either way, I'm not doing the so-called "evil deeds".

How cruel must Sister Psyche be not to give the player an actual explanation? Alternately, if we're forced into being "M" for the duration of the arc, then we're just bystanders watching what happened to him.

Regarding the EB in Mission 1: I'm glad I played this on Circuit Boy, because most "true" EBs are completely vulnerable to Endurance Drain. I can easily see any solo character without some ability to strip him of the ability to act having problems, but I didn't.

Thanks much to StratoNexus and Circuit_Boy for the feedback and analysis!

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Originally Posted by StratoNexus Mission 1 is a great little mission just to get the story going and to introduce our helper. The return text after mission 1 is cute, but I feel it detracts from the tone. Its too early for comic relief, the story is still trying to set up the horror/madness/conspiracy angle and breaking the immersion this early in the story did not appeal to me. I'd do something more serious here.

Thinking about it, you are probably right. I meant to imply here that doing the ITF over and over would sound a little crazy to an independent observer. But this writing is a little too different from the tone I'm trying to set, so is potentially distracting. So, good observation.

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Originally Posted by StratoNexus The mission intro and send off for Save the Day work well for either of the scenarios where I am crazy, but not as well for the Nemesis plot scenario. ... The BAB/Mike dialogue is also difficult to reconcile unless I am crazy.

Admittedly, the "you are crazy/you are Frankenstein's monster" interpretation is the most heavily developed thread, especially in the last mission; I should perhaps rework these lines to be a little more ambiguous as to which interpretation they support.

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Originally Posted by Circuit_Boy Maybe it's that I don't like Brechtian theater. Maybe it's that I recently saw an rerun of Star Trek: The Next Generation where something very, very similar happens to Commander William Ryker (though it alternates between a mental ward and a play--the basic idea's the same). Maybe I've just seen too many episodes of the original Rod Serling Twilight Zone. It felt like the arc was too derivative, and it didn't shake or play with any of the genre expectations. What was supposed to be one of the highlights of this arc--"how strange normal CoH activities sound, when told to an independent observer"--has been done time and time again in drama, on TV, and in the movies. I was hoping for some kind of surprise, some kind of twist of the narrative formula, and I didn't get it.

I'm flattered to have the story compared to Brechtian theatre, even in a negative manner. Which episode had similar events happen to Riker? I confess I only followed ST:TNG for the first season. (I was miffed when they killed off Lt. Yar in a fairly silly way.) I am guilty of watching a lot of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone, though. It was a long time ago, but certainly it's possible that it informed my thinking here.

If anything, I would've liked to be derivative of a Cronenberg movie but I'm not good enough at writing horror to do that.

You're not the first to note that this arc felt derivative of something; perhaps it's a very common idea. I'm not sure there's any way I can address this criticism, unfortunately; it seems fundamental to the arc's plot.

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Originally Posted by Circuit Boy I just don't know how far saying "how strange normal CoH activities sound", because the citizens of Paragon City are witnesses to super powers, Rikti invasions, zombie apocalypses, winter hordes, kidnappings by the Circle of Thorns, etc. on a daily basis--on the streets of downtown Steel Canyon, even! We're not talking about Kansas vs. Oz here: the 'civilians' are residents of the same place

This would be true, if the doctor and nurse are residents of the City of Heroes.

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Originally Posted by Circuit Boy there just aren't that many French canon characters in CoH (by the way, the French would use his full name; the second part is not a middle name)

I think you're the first one who instantly recognized the name used and left feedback. You are correct that it would be more proper to use his full name. I admittedly deviated from this to try and force the name to sound more gender-neutral.

It sounds like instantly knowing who this was referring to actually spoiled the plot for you, which is an interesting data point. I'm not quite sure what to do with this, though.



I'm still not totally happy with this story; I like some of the ideas I played with here, but it's still got a lot of flaws, some of which seem fundamental with no clear way to address. Also I'm not convinced the arc is fun to play through. I'm kinda leaning towards saving the arc to a local file (for posterity or later reworking) and unpublishing it from the arc server, to make space to publish something else (I'm currently at 8/8 arcs). Even if I do this, I really appreciate all the feedback people have given me on this story so far. This isn't the type of story I normally write, and I've learned a lot as a result.

I agree wholeheartedly that Lt. Tasha Yar's death to what was basically a mueslix monster was ridiculous. However, I didn't get into the show until well into the 4th season, so I didn't see that little piece of "theater of the absurd" until well after I'd been truly hooked and was watching the reruns. The only TNG episode that was worse, in my opinion, was the one in the 1st or 2nd season where all the top brass of Star Fleet are replaced by insectoid replicants.

It's not so much that knowing who it was immediately ruined the plot for me; it was that combined with instantly recognizing the genre and knowing its expectations.

The episode I'm referencing is "Frame of Mind". Read the synopsis--see how similar it is? (Just so I'm clear, I'm not accusing you of plagiarism.) Oddly enough, I just saw it last week on WGN, so it was fresh in my head when I ran your arc.

On reflection, there's also a Battlestar Galactica episode, "The Farm", with a somewhat similar premise: Kara "Starbuck" Thrace is told by a doctor that she's in a maternity ward and she thinks she's going crazy because she suspects the doctor's really trying to kill her. (By the way, this particular episode manages the whole "committing an evil act in the service of the greater good" quite effectively.)

There are, of course, echoes of The Twilight Zone episodes "Twenty Two", as well as "The Eye of the Beholder" and "Number 12 Looks Just Like You".

I was thinking it over this morning. This is clearly its own genre. I think, to make this particular arc work, you have to tweak, break, defy, and/or twist the genre expectations, much like the films "The Usual Suspects", "Momento" or "The Sixth Sense" did. For me, once I recognized who "M" was, and once I realized the arc fit this particular genre, the rest of the missions were just going through the motions.

You're welcome. I don't mean to suggest you're consciously using any of this in your story. There just aren't that many tropes in fiction that haven't been done before, and they "float" around in our media, so it's impossible to avoid being influenced by them.

It occurs to me that another way of resolving the genre issue is to consciously underscore it--maybe set this up as something like an episode of The Twilight Zone. Maybe even get Television involved (which might slip you around the "railroad" issue others have commented on, too).

I think the basic idea can work, but it either needs to be a truly outstanding example of its genre, or it needs to do something unexpected with it.