Arc #392334 "A Scandal in Paragon City"

Niklarus · 03-28-2010 04:49 PM

A Scandal in Paragon City
Arc ID: 392334
Author Global: @Niklarus
Keywords: Custom Characters, Non-Canon, Mystery
Description: On the eve of his induction into the Freedom Phalanx Reserves, an up-and-coming hero asks you to steal a videotape of his tryst with a well-known villainess. (Very loosely inspired by the classic Sherlock Holmes story "A Scandal in Bohemia.")
Factions: Custom, Paragon Police, Arachnos
Levels: 20 to 26

Final Straw, DM/Regen Scrapper
Solari, Fire/Fire Blaster
Real Americana, MA/SR Scrapper
Task Force Timmy, Grav/Rad Controller
Astral Paragon, Spines/Regen Scrapper
Mr Drama King, Katana/Regen Scrapper
Psi-Stunner, Psi/Mental Blaster

GlaziusF · 06-26-2010 11:28 AM

Review as part of the CoHMR Aggregator review project.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a mid-20s ill/therm controller, +0 x1 with bosses on.

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Well, this is interesting. I like the setup as a "neutral party" - a superpowered detective - and the scenario is compelling, though why Silver Mantis would use blackmail to get anything but another knock-down-drag-out fight is beyond me. Maybe somebody put her up to it.

Anyway, I'm glad I picked up invisibility. The infiltration goes smoothly, nary a combat, and I find... the tape is in another castle. Peachy.

I decide to inspect the elite boss (wow!) anyway, and she's a pretty capable psy assault. The PPD show up to read me my rights at about the time my phantom army runs out, so that's done with at least.

The safe was in the room before her - deliberate, or has glowie misplacement struck again?

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My internal narration should probably be in a different color, or bolded or italicized or something.

So time to sneak around the PPD to get them off my back. Though I kinda feel sorry for them given the givens.

The opening popup, though, talks about how much I wished I'd stealthed through the last mission. Little silly considering I did, but B&E is bad enough just by itself.

(If you want actual assault maybe you can tone the senior partner down to a boss?)

I find a clue in the first room that sets me up to examine it on... a computer in the same office? There's no apparent reason why I shouldn't just take it and split.

Anyway, the computer's one room over... and mission complete? Wow.

Yeah, I don't see any reason to use PPD computers with that at all. Maybe it's a proprietary card that needs a hardware key only the PPD machines get?

Anyway, I was expecting something like a talky patrol, but only the boss has anything to say. For the sake of curiosity I throw down with him, though he doesn't have much to say aside from some side comments about how the fight's going.

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So, fight against Silver Mantis. Right. Time to go get a Shivan, and there should really be some kind of EB warning on her too.

Fortunately it seems to be an earlier-game version that doesn't pop buildup yet, and the ding I get mid-mission is also a help. She's just as disturbing as ever, and the patrol reminding us how she likes to play rough certainly plays into that.

I was kind of joking about Silver Mantis using blackmail to get herself a knock-down drag-out fight but from a certain perspective that's exactly what's happened here. It's not like it's ill-suited to her.

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Storyline - ***. The story really feels a little too coincidental for my taste. Breaking into the law firm has got a prosecutor calling for my head? No problem, my contact has arranged for his entire workplace to be full of sympathetic PPD! Leads have gone cold? No problem, Silver Mantis got bored of waiting around and decided to tell my contact exactly where she was! I realize this is supposed to be, like, what, Sherlock Holmes crossed with a noir parody? But it leans too heavily on the latter to the point where my detective work feels more like a scavenger hunt and less like deducing.

Because of the detective setting you can probably play a little more with "forcing" actions by my character, to make me the active party rather than handing me coincidences to roll with. Prosecutor out for my blood? I can still put a tail on him and grab some incriminating evidence from a den of vice in a not-disused-enough section of the sewers. No leads? Make use of Silver Mantis's preference for action by suggesting she bring the tape to a happy little throwdown.

And now that the new morality settings are in you might consider tagging this one as "vigilante". Seems a better fit for it than "neutral" and it may even get you some exposure, since so few people use it at present.

Design - ***. I don't mind stealthable missions, but I don't much like stealthable missions where I don't even have to get to the boss room to finish the map off. And the series goes basically noncombat mission - noncombat mission - AV fight, which is about as much whiplash as you can get. From a story standpoint it'd make sense to have to inflict grievous bodily harm on some of the lawyers so the cops would get bothered. Maybe they have some key to opening the safe?

Gameplay - ****. A psy assault EB is pretty brutal for a level range that may not even have SOs yet. Silver Mantis seems to be her more reasonable lower-level incarnation, but I didn't really get a chance to see much of her. Make sure and inspect the version you're using to make sure she can't pop Build Up. Aside from that the enemy groups are either stock or reasonable.

Detail - ****. Everything is fairly sensibly spelled out. My problem with this arc isn't with the particular turns in the plot as by how they're come by. It makes sense for Silver Mantis to get bored and want to fight somebody, but for that letter to just show up feels like the plot is something that's happening to me, rather than something I'm creating.

Overall - ***. This arc has two seemingly contradictory problems: not enough agency on the player's part beyond just combat, and not enough combat. I think I've presented a case for making the player into more of an actor in this little drama, so let me talk about the second.

Characters in this game can have access to stealth from several different sources. So in theory any mission that's not "defeat all" or "clear the end room" is stealthable and non-combat. But in this case, the enemies - powered civilian lawyers, and cops who were explicitly on my contact's side - weren't things I felt that the story demanded I fight, so I didn't. Which made the final mission in an actual Arachnos base a big contrast. Even putting a required objective in the boss room would help this feeling that the earlier missions were disproportionately short.