"Looking Through the Glass" question (SPOILERS)

No kidding. She could even have attempted to use one, have it fail, then explosion. That would not only create a death scene, but it'd also give the writers and out if they do want to bring the double back.

But still, this is a comic book based game and I didn't see a corpse. I mean: "Died in an explosion"? Yeah, right. That'll stick.

Lex Luthor: What?? You're ALIVE?? That's impossible! I saw you die with my own eyes!

Superman: *chuckle* That's what you THINK you saw, Lex! Krypto triggered the Phantom Zone projector right at the time the lethal dose of Kryptonite rays would have hit me! I was really in the Phantom Zone!

...or any other of 7,438 instances of this that I have read in various comic books. Gotta also give props to the thoroughly killed villains who don't stay dead, either.

And yes, I had some issues with the exact writing. Only goes to show that if you want a well-written tear-jerking death scene in CoH, lay out the bucks and get Troy Hickman on the case.

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Yeps... for years we thought Phoenix really was Jean Grey (and even Scott Summers did) but turns out she was some kind of space alien goo simulacrum thing.

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I might, but it's really best I don't do this right away. I can't guarantee I'll be objective, as "spite" is something I can control outwardly, but not inwardly, and I really don't want to get into that kind of debate. Suffice it to say that almost everything I've seen you post here in General Discussions is how bad intentionally emotional content is botched up.

It's a question of sensibilities, however, as I tend to find the acclaimed and renowned dramatic stories bland and boring, myself. That's kind of why the more Oscars a movie has won, the greater the chance I'll hate it and want to punch its creators.

Yeah, that was quite silly. The fake double had an illegal Mediport, but my actual double didn't? Come on, now!

And the other side of the problem is what people have already mentioned - shouldn't there have been something the double could have done to survive? Like go intangible, turn on Personal Forcefield, turn to stone, teleport, etc.? In my case, the double of my Slime Girl should not have died because she CANNOT die, not permanently, anyway. She can splatter, at worst she can evaporate, but like Ghost Widow, she would always reform and re-merge back together.

But then, I can see past that and acknowledge a heroic sacrifice, so oh well.

Err... No, not really. The "good" duplicate is not a clone and there aren't more like it. It's the only one duplicate that's actually real. As real as your character is, because it's the real you, just from another dimension (presumably Praetorian Earth). You can remake it after it dies, true, but it will be just another clone. You can, however, still bring the original, uncloned one back to life.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I now picture Hickman showing up and yelling "I want my two dollars!" at odd points.

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The evil version was a clone, created by Protean, the first in a series of clones that he planned to unleash in an invasion on behalf of Praetoria.

Why the clones have to come through a portal rather than hopping out of cloning bay vats in the lab is a good question, though... Maybe he sent them to Praetoria first? And the evil double was there first as well, prompting your Praetorian double to find out who was giving him/her a bad name... which of course leads to the question: was your double resistance or loyalist? And which side is Protean working for?

Speaking of Protean, how do the hero and villain I17 arcs work together?

That's kind of the point; best guess is that there are at least a ridiculously large number of alternate dimensions, quite probably an infinite number of them, and perhaps even a higher-order infinity. Even if dimensions that have a useful non-evil you are one in a million, that's still an infinite number of them out there. There's even a reasonable likelihood that there's an infinite number of them that have successfully conquered their challenges at home, are bored with retirement, and are able to help our world significantly without noticeably leaving their world shorthanded. Of course, the same logic applies to one's foes...

Once you open the multidimensional can of infinite worms, it causes awkward questions from there on out unless you're very careful about the implications and limitations of your setting, which in general CoH has not been.

Cue the dancing hamburger!

You can't really make that argument for your allies and your foes and not make it for yourself. And if you make it for yourself, then the whole game becomes pointless, because who cares what happens to my character when there's an infinite number of duplicates around the multiverse?

That specific double is given characterisation, is a recurring character and is shown to have a strong personality. You can claim there are others like it, but they're not THIS particular clone. Furthermore, you can make the same argument about twins. Though they may look alike, they are not interchangeable.

In fact, I'd go as far as to state this as a rule of general fiction - once a particular character has been singled out of a mass, given characterisation and developed a history of actions, this character stops being just a faceless goon out of that mass. You can take your typical faceless mook army, grab a soldier from there and give him enough screen time for him to distinguish himself, and then you have another "faced" character, despite there being nothing to distinguish him physically. It's basically what Genndy Tartakovsky's Staw Wars: Clone Wars is built on, and unlike the 3D "The Clone Wars" cartoon, his clone troopers don't speak and never remove their helmets, yet because we keep focusing on a specific platoon and their commander, they develop into recurring characters for whom death is not cheap.

Basically, if you give a character enough screen time, you HAVE to do something with said character. You can't just go "Oh, well." and drop a bridge on him for no reason. Granted, that's more or less what happens to the double here, but at least the narrative tries to make a point out of it, rather than just shrugging its shoulders.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

The original wording of the arc and the badge made it emplicit that the double was your Praetorian counterpart. It was changed to be more ambiguous at the request of players who had plans to play the Praetorian versions of their characters when Going Rogue goes live, and were disappointed to find a story arc where that character is killed.

I think it was mostly changed because people pointed out that once GR goes live it will be possible to play this arc with characters that are from Praetoria in a real in-game sense (not just in the player's imagination). But the new ambiguous wording works out well for everyone, since if you want to play both Paragon and Praetoria variants of a single character, the good alternate in the arc can just be from some third, unrelated dimension.

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