One of those "Oh Yeah That's Who This Guy Is" Moments
By
BlueBattler,
Posted on: 2010-06-14 17:05 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
*Spoilers on the new villain arcs follow. You have been warned*
This sort of thing happened to me while I was trying out the new villain contacts. This was with my main character, a level 50 DB/EA Stalker, Proto-Zero. His whole story is that he was an unwilling participant in a 5th Column experiment (kind of like synapse!) except he was to be used as a weapon. Unfortunately, the experimentation broke his mind, and he escaped. So, he's kind of insane, but not in a "RAWR! BREAK STUFF! GRAAHH!" kind of way. More of a sinister madman kind of way.
Anyways, I was running Leonard's arc, and I was just finishing up my battle with protean. I was still in my villain state-of-mind, like "How DARE you destroy MY LAB Protean! I'll destroy you!" So I did. One defeated Protean later, the lab explodes, so I start running. That's when I find the last surviving clone. I go over to see it, and it was like a revelation. For my villain, all he's ever known in his life was cruelty, pain, and torture. Now he has a chance to show some degree of kindness to this clone. I literally stood there for about a minute of my three minutes countdown contemplating whether or not I should save him.
Against my villain instincts, I saved him. I let him go free, and I went my way. It was like a turning point for him, the fact that he was capable of good, he just didn't realize it.
Later on, I go to steal all of Protean's money. I finish my transaction with the extremely terrified teller, and before I can leave, I turn around and my clone is there! He's all like "Dude, why did you save me?" and I had three choices. I could kill him myself, make him do my bidding, or... just let him go free and live his life. At first I was thinking "This guy could make a perfect minion!" But then, I remembered my decision to save him earlier. I let him go, told him to live his life and be free.
If you've ever seen "Avatar: The Last Airbender" towards the end, Prince Zuko, who's normally the big bag-guy of the series, starts having second thoughts about himself. It was like that for me. Proto-Zero has been evil all of his life, but now he's starting to see things a little differently. He's still a villain for the most part, but now he can see past his insanity and look at the bigger picture. It really clicked for me then, I could really connect with him in a way (No, I'm not an insane villain bent on taking over the world. =P)
Will he change sides with Going Rogue? I can't really say. All I can say is that his world view has been altered dramatically since that event. Since then it's been much more fun playing him than my other characters.
On a side note, my other villain was doing the same arc. Though this villain is a ruthless mercenary, who really doesn't care about helping anybody but himself. So when he was faced with the choice of saving his clone, I left the clone to die. Afterwards, while wandering around the streets, a civilian said "I saw this guy who looked just like Solemn Shadow walking around, except he was burnt to a crisp!" which was just bone-chilling to say the least. The devs have really out-done themselves with these arcs.
Arc ID: 348998 - Becoming a villain
Arc ID: 373341 - To Save a Hero
Got Inf?
I wouldn't say I've had one of those moments yet at least to that degree. I've always had an attachment to my main toon as he "is me". Just prior to joining CoH, I'd written a little story where the main character was based on myself, and it turned out he became a costumed hero. Once I got into CoH, I basically just brought him over as best I could (did it for CO as well but 1) apparently there's already an NPC hero called "Nighthawk" who's built basically the same as my toon ended up in terms of powers (never seen him physically) and 2) CO sucks 
).
However, recently I changed servers and of course "Night-Hawk" was taken. I tried several variations that didn't look too ridiculous (like nIgHtHaWk, or some crap like that) but either it was taken or "wasn't a suitable name". Finally ended up with "Dark'Hawk". Within a day I had bought another rename token and ended up switching to "Knight'Hawk" or something like that. For whatever reason, "Darkhawk" just didn't work for me. He's been "Nighthawk" for the last 3 years plus the fanfic I'd done (which I'm working on a sequel to it). Any other name just wasn't going to work.
I'm thinking though that if I understand how Going Rogue is going to work correctly, that existing characters can do things that shift them between good and bad, I'll really get a sense of who Night-Hawk really is....and in a way maybe some more about myself as well (since, as I said, he's supposed to be me as a hero). 
Freedom
Blueside: Knight'Hawk, lvl 50, Scrapper
Yellowside: Dark'Falcon (Loyalist), lvl 20, Blaster
That Stinging Sensation #482183
Yesterday I was playing my Crab, Spider Blue, working on getting him to 38 so I could try out my second set of pets. I wound up doing Hardcase's arc of all things.
Now I'm going to preface this by saying that most of my villains are not mustache-twirling evil to begin with. Still, very few of them are going to take kindly to being ordered about or sent off to rescue people.
Now several times Hardcase says something to the effect that being a villain doesn't mean not looking after your own ...
And that really clicked for Spider Blue.
Spider grew up in the Rogue Isles, under Recluse's philosophy. He did the Dark Reflections arc, and arguably that was the first time in his career he ever showed mercy to anyone. (He didn't save his own clone because the time ran out on me, but he would have.)
"The strong thrive. The weak perish. That is as it should be."
(My take on Recluse's philosophy.)
But after the Dark Reflections arc, and then Hardcase's ... well... now Spider's philosophy is "The strong thrive-- and protect what's theirs. And that includes people."
All of a sudden, I have a new handle on Spider's personality that really makes him come alive for me as a character. He's a hero!
But a hero in the mode of Namor. A Namor with a sense of humor, but ...
He'll protect what's his, but he'll fight Longbow and Paragon's heroes because they've invaded his home. He'll fight against the Rikti to preserve his people, and in the ITF to save his time, but he'll have no problem with stealing money from Paragon City because he views it as a foreign invader.
Because of that, he won't go Rogue. He's not going to leave the Rogue Isles. I don't see him working for any of the patrons with the possible exception of Scirroco because he sees them as putting their own interests ahead of the Rogue Isles. I'm unsure if he feels that it would cause more problems for his homeland for Recluse to be overthrown than it would be if he remains in power yet ...
Anyway, the thing is, this post is about when you have a moment where a character really clicks for you-- you know who they are-- or discover they're actually someone other than who you thought they were...
Tell me your best "Oh yeah" stories please.
My COX Fanfiction:
Blue's Assembled Story Links