MA Arc #397769: Twisted Knives (redux)

Description: After a recon mission gone wrong, Indigo is missing and Crimson has been benched, so he must rely on you to find her. An operative with the Knives of Artemis shows up and claims that Indigo will be returned safe... IF you help her prevent the Knives from plunging into a civil war!

Details: 5 missions, short to medium length. Custom bosses, custom AVs. Please have Bosses ON when playing this arc.

Notes: No, it's not 5 missions full of KoA. That'd be awful. Not only is the "empty" option used in almost EVERY map (to help control spawn number and placement, as well as affect mood and atmosphere... however, due to this, most missions won't be very good for drops or XP), but you don't even fight any KoA in some of them (they are, after all, a very small group. Wouldn't make sense to have several missions full to the brim with them). There's lots of story to be had, so make sure you read NPC dialog, info windows and clues.

I wanted to make an arc that explores the KoA a bit more... all we see of them in canon (justifiably) is hanging around the Malta once in a while. We know almost nothing about them, which gave me plenty of room to play around with how they operate and how they perceive themselves and their place in the world. Also, chicks with swords are hot.

Status: Looking for feedback. Admittedly, I missed a great opportunity for interplay given Indigo's history with the KoA, but hopefully that's the only existing canon or logistic issue. I handwave this, as the Knives want YOU to do something for them, and that for the purpose of this story, Indigo is not important to their plans other than helping to ensure your cooperation. Though it might make more sense for me to have Crimson be captured and have Indigo be the contact... except she's supposedly psychic and that would bring up all new problems. There's also a part of the ending that I slapped on because the arc feels incomplete without it, though it may come off as contrived.

I am currently looking for constructive criticism regarding this arc. I'm amenable to changing just about anything, as long as it's for a good reason that doesn't completely contradict my design philosophy for this arc.

NOTE: I once published this arc, but brought it down to fix some issues. Hopefully it runs smooth and logical for everyone now.

Review done as part of the CoHMR Aggregator project.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a level 50 spine/regen scrapper, +1 x2 with bosses on.

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Okay. Opening description is short and clipped as befits our Mr. Crimson, but I wouldn't mind if there was more meat on the arc description, describing the sorts of activities you might get up to in the arc.

...Crimson got offed so he's sending me in. To a matter important enough for Crimson and Indigo to both be doing direct field work instead of coordinating.

Wawawow. I appreciate the dude's level of confidence in me, at least.

So a custom DB/devices boss tells me that the Knives of Artemis aren't evil, they're just hired by evil people. ...uh huh. You were hired to ritually sacrifice people in order to empower yourselves? (Indigo's missions can get into this particular angle.)

I mean, okay, sure, they may not THINK of themselves as evil. And it's also odd to hear them call Indigo "your spy" when she was a former Knife.

Anyway, as it happens, the Knives have been infiltrated... somehow by some people for some reason.

And I get a list of upcoming missions to stop. Which I guess I can capitalize on regardless of what's really going on here.

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Part one, some senator has been kidnapped for nefarious purposes.

And judging by the emptiness of the mission and the bodybags, the Knives involved have all been killed. Is the purge going ahead of schedule?

The Senator was being held by Nemesis troops, who don't capitalize his full title when they scream at me. And I'm guessing the last surviving Knife is one of Nemesis's famous automatons.

But damn there's a lot of empty space here. There's like four rooms and a bunch of corridors in this mission, and just the handful of glowies and the one rescue, so far.

Two rescues. The last Knife talks about her leader betraying them to the Nemesis.

Yep, it plays out as I thought. Though the Fake Nem is a little too self-aware and in kinda the wrong ways. Given that he's just as much an automaton he could lament how his programming is forcing him to be unsubtle.

He also talks about how no one will suspect the new fake mayor, but they nabbed a senator. Typo or defective automaton?

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Crey are hiring the Knives to do some damage control damage? ...I guess people would twig to the Freaks, but still, they're practically traditional in this regard.

The mission is once again largely empty. I find some Knives with a big boom, bumpty-bump, and then some newspeople. ...why is JJJ taking his own photographs? He has people for that.

Anyway, the reporters are a bit of humor, and the Knife here is apparently a high-ranking Crey special ops who went undercover. ...I'm guessing here, as there's really no information about her. She may be a Protector or a clone of Countess Crey or who knows what.

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...Crimson makes some bizarre leap that a Longbow traitor is working to kill Ms. Liberty. Wouldn't it be more likely to be an Arachnos operative infiltrating the Knives? Arachnos operatives have already wailed on Ms. Liberty as part of the Lord Recluse Strike Force.

Anyway, I get to plow through some Longbow in search of a traitor, so stealth mode on for this one. Heh, though I'm assuming after three missions of empty maps this one's going to be different.

Yep, empty map.

I find the personnel (note spelling) list on the bottom floor, and then I guess the two Longbow groups I had to defeat were the paired section commanders in the opening room.

I have no idea why I had to take them both out to find Ms. Liberty, though.

Anyway, I find... is it Shadow Spider? Some high-ranking Widow? Whatever happens, she pops Elude or similar at low health and then turns on Liberty when she lands a shot. Fortunately I have enough inspirations to take her out before Liberty bites it.

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So Indigo has been turned over to the Malta. Peachy. Alright, time to spring her.

Crimson describes the layout of this cave when I link up with him, but there's really one loop and one room with a catwalk. And... why a Council base?

The AV there's a giant warning about is a bots/devices mastermind, who wouldn't really be much of a challenge even without Crimson and Indigo there to beat up on him. And aggro the entire room. I'm not entirely sure how he managed to jump them in the first place.

And apparently our Knife was a merc working for Wyvern, which does explain why she's so detached from Indigo but not why she tried to pitch the Knives as a neutral party. Maybe she's going native.

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Storyline - **. I have three major problems with this storyline.

First is "the Sword" trying to prevent the Knives as some kind of neutral party. They kill innocent people for money and/or power. These are not the acts of a neutral party. They may be officially neutral in the context of any conflict between villain/hero groups, but if there is such a thing as a contract they're unwilling to take we haven't seen one yet.

Second is "the Sword" keeping her identity secret until the end. I mean, I could understand Crimson knowing shortly after mission 1, and sharing that information with me only on a need-to-know basis, but at the end of the arc I don't think I really need to know. I mean, if you can tell anybody a secret you can tell Crimson. Dude is the soul of discretion. Revealing that she's actually a mole for Wyvern (once nobody can hear, that is) would help establish her bona fides.

Third is that every group with an infiltrator in the Knives decides independently to "burn" them within hours of each other. That's just way too coincidental. Now, I could see if this was a deliberate plan on Manticore's part, dropping some kind of information through his mole that would goad any infiltrators into bailing out now and perhaps being less than cautious in the process. But there's no hint of anything like that going on.

Design - **. I'm not against missions which are largely empty for reasons of atmosphere. The first one was pretty effective in this regard. But rank-and-file enemies serve two important purposes: first, they're fodder to replenish your inspiration stock, which gets depleted over the course of the average, say, boss fight. Second, at least for me, they're an opportunity to think about the story while I work through my attack chain.

But when four out of five missions don't have any autospawned enemies in them, that really seems a bit excessive. There's no reason for there not to be autospawned Nemesis in mission 2, of Crey in mission 3 since they're willing to sacrifice the reporters' escort. (Well, Crey at this level are pretty monolithic and boring, so there's that.) And while autospawns in mission 4 would make it tough to get Liberty out, they'd at least make sense attacking her if the base was invaded by Arachnos.

The Knife infiltrators are decent visual works, as is the civilian Liberty, but running over giant swaths of empty space to look for things is like backtracking except without the combat to clear the way in the first place.

Gameplay - ***. The real dealbreaker here is trying to take down an EB who's popped elude before she can manage to mow down my escort. Without elude (not sure if that's possible unless that actually was a custom rather than a stock Widow type) it'd be a little challenging but not hair-pullingly terrible.

The end boss was pretty reasonable, putting out mostly damage and generally pretty easy to deal with in that respect.

Detail - **. There are a couple things missing from this arc that I've come to expect from Crimson.

First is any kind of bonus intel. One of the major features of the big Indigo/Crimson arcs against Malta is that there were optional glowies that gave more clues about what was going on. Crimson in his sendoff for the first mission seems to make reference to this, talking about how he won't mind much if you go after their target, but there's nothing extra to be had anywhere at all.

Second is, well, Crimson. Crimson's more of a spymaster than a frontline agent. Indigo will scout occasionally but she's not a combatant either, and it doesn't make sense that they'd somehow be acting as a strike team. (Their combat models are for villain arcs where you break into a Longbow base to confront a mastermind behind some sort of espionage/sabotage.) I can't see this arc playing out any differently if it were just some Longbow operative who never returned and Crimson wanted you to investigate. You wouldn't have two EBs helping you take down the end boss, but in my experience they were really a bit of overkill. Especially since Crimson and Indigo can clean house in the last mission even without my help, it doesn't seem sensible for them to have been taken out before the first mission starts.

Overall - **. I can't say I agree with the use of mostly empty maps. It was fine in the first mission but wore a bit thin in the next three. And the EB who's trying to whittle down our escort could do without Elude.

But an equally big problem here is with how tough it is to write... well, intrigue, I guess you could say. Seeming coincidences with a hidden reason behind them, and people keeping secrets to benefit themselves, are both major themes of intrigue-based story. The problem I have here is that, as far as I can tell, the coincidences (every mole coming free at the same time) are just coincidental, and "the Sword" keeps the secret of who she is until the end of the arc for no real reason I can see.

Optional glowies that might fill in the reasoning behind all of this would have been nice to find, but there wasn't really anything to hint at a greater story than the one I saw.

Hmmm, looks like the arc needs an overhaul! I guess i should have done a little more homework, too, because i never knew about the ritual sacrifice angle.

Thanks, This gives me some ideas to play with!