The Continuing Adventures of Pro Payne

Until the End of the World (Arc ID#431270, 5 stars)

Move over Pro Payne. You sanctimonious, worthless, pathetic little wanna-be. You’ve never even faced a villain for real. If I actually met the likes of you on the street you wouldn’t even be worth the time it would take to crush your powerless butt into the pavement. But don’t think that if you ever did get delusions of heroism, and tried to stand in my way, that I wouldn’t kill you with the barest flick of my wrist. Without thinking twice. Loser.

So why bother with Architect Entertainment? Because it’s time to see what this technology is really capable of. If I’m impressed, I might just steal it for myself. If not, you idiots better hope and pray that I’m not in the mood to burn the place to the ground and sell off the salvage on the Black Market.

I stroll into the Architect building in Sharkhead, find the nearest ‘Architect Patron’ and pick him up by his hair. I ask him to recommend a good ‘arc.’ He asks me what kind of arc I’m looking for. I pull out a few of his teeth, one by one, to motivate him to answer the question a little faster. Once the annoying pleading for mercy dies down, he says, “Twy numba 431270; Ih wa good.”

I throw him in the closet. If he’s right, he gets to live.

I stroll on up to the control computer. I key in the ID.

A chick named Razorwyre, who has been acting as my informant, contacts me via a secure line to inform me of chaos at an Arachnos warehouse in the vicinity of the Fab. She’s not sure exactly what’s going down there, but we both know that I can almost certainly take advantage of the situation to make off with some choice tech. The spiders are sure to blame the thefts on whomever started the problem, so provided I put down anyone who could ID me, I should be able to get away with all of the goods, and none of the blame.


A disadvantage of Energy Aura: my cloak is an important part of my defense, but it makes it dang hard to see me in screen shots.

As I was heading to the warehouse, Razorwyre had one last note for me – this place was one of those warehouses where Arachnos gets really serious about their security. To breach the network’s defenses, and gain entry, would have required better hacking skills than Razor’s ever seen (or believes exists), or a better AI than the one the spiders have guarding the place. She mentioned a final possibility, though – only the intelligence and adaptive potential of a living human brain could match Arachnos’ defenses, and that ‘brain’ would have to be able to operate at superhuman speeds. So perhaps it was a speedster who was also a hacker that was responsible.

Immediately upon arriving at the warehouse, I got my first clue as to the identity of the original thief – I found a protector robot near the entrance. It fled upon ‘spotting’ me – saying that its objectives were complete.

I found a crate with high-tension cables (at least according to the label) – but the cables had already been stolen. I tried accessing a nearby computer terminal to determine what had happened, but I was almost immediately locked out. That wasn’t a surprise to me. It simply meant I’d have to beat the information out of the Arachnos base commander.

On the way I ran into who I presumed was the original thief. He’d been detained by Arachnos, and turned on me the moment I freed him. That was just as well – as far as I’m concerned freeing him from Arachnos’ clutches only meant he now belonged to me. He’d help me or die. He chose death, stating there was nothing left here to take any way. I defeated him easily, but he was able to mediport away before I could deal a killing blow. Figures.


I get it. You’ve got a lot of robots. Big deal. The moment you die, they become a whole mess-load of salvage for me to sell on the Black Market.

I fought my way into the main storage room of the base. I found, and defeated, a Bane Spider Executioner wearing an upgraded prototype of Arachnos armor, downloaded a wealth of Arachnos secrets, and then tracked down and killed the base commander.

I was careful to execute all of the Arachnos repairmen there too (idiots didn’t even fight back), along with a patrol that had responded to the base commander’s distress call. With everyone in the base dead, I could at least be reasonably sure Arachnos would not be aware of my role in all of this. If they were, I’d cross that road when I got to it.

Note: Very nice use of optional “flavor” objectives. They were spread throughout the mission, but especially noticeable in the end room.

I quickly returned to Razorwyre, who confirmed my suspicions that the Arachnos had no idea I was involved. The official blame was going to the base commander, and the unidentified robotics mastermind who had originally broken in. Razor informed me that the spiders had placed a nice bounty on his head.

That just made my day. I owed that poser a painful death for not just letting me kill him the first time around. Getting to collect a bounty was just icing on the cake. I set Razor to locating him.

It didn’t take long. A little bit of legwork on her part pegged the guy as a mercenary named Terminal Velocity. He’d retreated to Sharkhead Isle, and had been hanging around near a Council base in the Pit. It appeared he was casing the place – they were shipping in large amounts of robotic equipment, which he could use to bolster his robot assets. A spy informed Razor the moment TV entered the base.

I headed in after – the plan was simple. TV’s mediporter likely linked to his base, rather than an Arachnos hospital (for obvious reasons). And his base probably had plenty of stuff worth taking. So it looked like ‘ol TV was going to get to survive one more beating from your truly – just long enough to get a bead on his base. Then, it’d be time for me to take his stuff, and give new meaning to the Terminal in this joker’s name…

Part One of the master plan went off without a hitch. I found Terminal Velocity just inside the base entrance, accompanied by several of his more advanced robotic minions. His pathetic robots were no match for me, and I beat him into unconsciousness quite rapidly. He mediported back to his base, unable to remove the tracking module I’d placed on him.

I’d deal with him soon enough. It was obvious the Council was up to something that might prove interesting here, and I wasn’t about to just leave this base without a nice, old-fashioned raid to take whatever would be useful – not to mention to figure out just what Terminal was interested in finding here.

Hrm … it was clear Terminal Velocity had help getting into this base, likely in the form of an advanced AI. What was even more interesting, was that an advanced, adaptive AI was exactly what this base was working on. Among the many Council files I pilfered, I’d located a troubleshooting report indicating the current AI was advanced enough that striking the correct balance between the type of autonomous thinking that can lead to self-determination, and failsafes to ensure utterly loyalty to the Council, was an ongoing problem. It appeared it was a worse problem than the Council realized: it looked as though their AI had actually helped Terminal Velocity access their base.

With all of the valuable information in hand, and the Council base laid waste, it was time to put an end to TV’s stay of execution. I was practically salivating at the chance to annex his base into my own network of hideouts. Once I’d commandeered a crew of minions to run the place, I was sure I’d be able to turn his research to my own ends.

Razor prattled on a bit about stuff that didn’t interest me – but a nice “get to work NOW” look ensured she’d be hard at work decoding the secrets of the Council AI.

First, though, she was tasked with finishing the trace on Terminal Velocity. It appeared his base was not ‘officially sanctioned’ by Arachnos; it was instead leased through the Family. Of course, the Family was likely to inform Arachnos about it once they’d heard Terminal Velocity was a wanted man (never mind that if Arachnos got their hands on him, the bounty might very well go to the Family). Razor had pulled TV’s “destiny” file, and found some useful information.

Note: There’s a minor typo in the intro text – last paragraph “those Destiny files are a goldmine”, ‘those’ should be capitalized.

Razor had warned me that a mercenary company that offered up information on bounties in the Isles had posted Terminal’s information. She’d pulled the post back down, but didn’t know if anyone had seen it. I figured that meant I’d be facing at least one other villain here for the bounty.

I also figured I’d be facing a whole mess of Arachnos, and I wasn’t disappointed. Two operatives were waiting for me at the base entrance. Operative Murphy wasn't really terribly interested in a fight. Too bad for him that I was. Operative Edwards, on the other hand, seemed to think that only Arachnos had a right to be here. I proved him wrong.

Further into the base I found a robot on the verge of self-destructing. It actually looked almost completely human, and, upon spotting me, decided to take me with it. It was not terribly difficult to defeat, and was very obviously patterned after someone. Given what Razor’s report on TV said, I was guessing that this robot was a copy of his deceased sweetie.


Poor Terminal Velocity. Your robot wife “loves” you so much she’d rather blow herself up than actually spend any time with you. And the moment I show up, she gets all self-sacrificial, fighting to the death (hers) to stop me. Anything to get away from you, loser.

Of all the rotten luck. Here I was, hoping that I’d have a family I could capture and torture just in case I couldn’t find Terminal here, and the @#$!% had to go and be dead. Based on what robot-girl said, it was pretty clear I wasn’t going to find Terminal here. That angered me even more. Thankfully, I got to take my rage out on some nobody merc who had answered the bounty.

I found Terminal’s makeshift regeneration chamber and destroyed it. That’d ensure once I did track him down, there’d be no chance he’d survive his injuries. I also found his lab’s central repository, and gathered as much information as I could (a process with included fighting off yet another android defender).

It wasn’t hard to figure out that poor Terminal was heartbroken after his @#$!% got herself killed, and was trying to reproduce her in robot form. Apparently the idiot’s little Xerox wives kept self-destructing on him, what with the guy’s inability to program an AI that could make wifey seem lifelike and all self-aware, yet not decide Terminal was a loser and needed to be cast to the curb. That must be why he was so interested in the Council failsafes.

Well, TV’s lab was now in my hands, and most of his little robots were scrap. And next time we met face to face, I’d do him a favor and end is pathetic pining for his dead wife the best way I know how: if you’re dead, you can’t be depressed any more.

According to the records I’d stolen, the wife’s name was Iron Valkyr. Her destiny file listed a whole bunch of known associates (including her boy toy, TV, but that wasn’t news to me). Still, one of those associates might be “convinced” to lead me to wherever Terminal was hiding out.

Razor again proved her ongoing usefulness to me. Most of Valkyr and Terminal’s old associates just move from place to place – living it large after a score, then going back to the flophouse after the money runs out. TV never lived that that – which suggested he had a base. But one other friend of his was in the same boat: no records of him moving around. Evidently this guy – Detonation – must have had a base he stayed at too. And thanks to a dumb prank the Freakshow had tried to pull, Razor was able to figure out that Detonation’s base was in the basement of a Freakshow hideout. Apparently they were more than willing to take the cash Detonation was paying them to rent out the place (kept ‘em in implants and Excelsior, I’d imagine).

The big tipoff was the fact that a whole bunch of robots that looked a whole lot like Iron Valkyr were breaking into the place. Who knew exactly what was going on, but that at least suggested I’d find Terminal Velocity hiding there – or at least I’d be one step closer to tracking him down. Heck, assuming Terminal Velocity wasn’t there, I might even be able to access a robo-wife’s memory banks to track down any *other* back up hideouts he might have. And that was assuming I didn’t find Detonation there and “convince” him to talk.

I was a bit surprised to find that the basement wasn’t a tech lab; it was a heavily Freakshow modified dump, filled with a large number of crates. They were all labeled as containing explosives, but several were empty.

The Freaks were busy trying to clear out the swarm of TV robots that were invading the place (apparently I was wrong about it being robo-wife; they were just his typical minions). I didn’t take sides – it’s a lot more fun to indiscriminately put down anything that moves, and the Freaks are always fun. It’s like fighting punching dolls, you kn… what? Pro Payne already said that? Loser.

Anyway, I found Terminal Velocity only a little of the way into the hideout. He was already in a dust-up with the Freaks. Never let it be said that Perturbation isn’t considerate. I let him finish off the Freaks (who didn’t seem to be able to put so much as a dent into him), so that I could have the pleasure of killing him (FINALLY!) alone.

His little robot friends did a surprisingly good job of shielding his worthless butt. The beat down went well at first, but then nearly every one of my blows was deflected time and again. As TV’s repair bots managed to heal my foe (somehow), the Flash bots were having little trouble penetrating my defenses (psi attacks give me screaming migranes even with my aura on full overload).

It didn’t matter. Just when Terminal thought he might gain the upper hand, I decided that play time was over. I stopped pretending that I didn’t have all the insight needed to find the weak spots in his silly little bubbles, and ripped him apart.

Heh, the look on his face was priceless. At least it was while his face still looked like something…

I still needed to figure out what exactly was going on. I “rescued” a Freak who didn’t want to play nice with his fellow Freaks. The Freak was a follower of ‘The Hammer’ (who I later figured out went by the name Malleus). He told me that Hammer had taken Detonation’s girl, and that had created a schism between the two Freakshow leaders.

Far from being grateful, the Freak attacked me. Good. Gave me an excuse up today’s body count.

Note: In the clue you get by rescuing the first Freakshow (it may be the second depending on what exactly their location settings are), it refers to Terminal Velocity’s ‘ally’ here as Detonator, but elsewhere (in Razor’s briefings, and in the mission itself) he’s called Detonation. Also: it’s rather hard to follow exactly who is who in the clue. Not impossible, mind you, but hard.

Further in, I found a clue as to what the Freaks were planning: they were looking to set up bombs all over the Isles, evidently starting with Grandville. More power to them. Still, there had to be a way to benefit from this little scheme of there, unoriginal that it was. I figured a good first step would be to get Detonation to tell me everything he knows.


See? This is why you have to watch your back if you want to make it in the Isles.

One severe beating later, Detonation talked. I showed my appreciation by letting him live. Well, assuming he doesn’t ultimately succumb to his injuries. His problem, not mine. Anyway, I found out it really was a replica of Iron Valkyr that led the attack on this base, but she was already gone. She and Detonation knew each other from way back. Terminal Velocity talked her out of joining the Freaks, but she and Detonation stayed in touch. Detonation waxed philosophical about how she wanted to make her mark on the world, and how nobody deserved to die in the medical transporter malfunction like she did, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. Get to the bombs. Detonation then told me that he liked to set bombs in places where they could do the maximum damage – and Grandville was the prime target, what with that tower and all not exactly being built on sound architectural principles.

Bingo. I killed the rest of the Freaks there, and hatched a plan.

Iron Valkyr’s android copy was self-destructive. The Council failsafe that TV installed, though, was now keeping her from self-terminating. But the same programming did allow her to sacrifice herself for a ‘cause.’ Blowing up Spider City qualified, and if she got vaporized in the blast, more the better.

Too bad I wasn’t going to let it happen – her technology would be far more useful to me being carefully analyzed in the labs in my hideout, rather than as floating wisps of vapor. And, hey, as an added bonus, she gets to die (what with the need to dissect her to get at said technology). Everybody wins.

Time to head to Granville and bag myself a walking gold mine.

Detonation’s information led me to a lab somewhere under the main tower in Grandville. Chaos had already broken out – Detonation was here (Idiot. Looks like he gets to die after all), along with Malleus, their respective Freakshow factions duking it out. Valkyr’s robots were all over the place as well, along with Rogue Arachnos.


You must be Malleus, what with the hammers and all.


Okay, seriously, Detonation. What did I JUST GET FINISHED telling you about turning your back on somebody like me?

I made my way deeper and deeper into the base. Iron Valkyr had left guardian robots (including an older model of herself) along the way, but they were no match for me. Neither were the Freaks – although plenty of those morons were already roughed up by the various fights they had picked. “The Hammer” was the first to go down, followed (further in) by Detonation. I sent both of their corpses to an Arachnos hospital with my mediport tag – I planned to make it known that I’d saved the Spider’s collective butts from a major disaster in Grandville, and they owed me big. And, hey, if they didn’t want to pay up – well too bad, since I now had the detonator to the bombs (I left most of them armed), and it’d be a shame if a slip of the finger set caused a few million in damages…

I also found a few other tidbits – including a report detailing Arachnos research efforts into prolonging the life of those with terminal cancer. Wasn’t sure what to make of that. Maybe I can sell it back to them?

And then, along came Iron Valkyr. She fed me some nice story about how all of those personal items I’d been rummaging through were something “Brian” (Terminal Velocity) would want when he got back, and so she was going to have to stop me (especially given that she figured I was here to stop her). Whatever. I was too busy pumping power into my auras and charging her to give a care about what she was prattling on about.

She got in an early hit, obviously pleased with herself, and convinced nobody could survive a strike that hard. Her look of ‘concern’ was priceless when she saw me just shrug it off as little more than a flesh wound. Didn’t even get a finger on me after that. For once, I was careful to do (relatively) little damage – just enough to shut her down for good. Then I scooped her up, and headed back to my hideout.


Cha Ching! Time for a payday!

It was time to set Razor on reverse engineering her technology. I’d save the most powerful bits for myself, and sell whatever else I could. Not a bad day’s work…

…

Okay, so it looks like Architect Entertainment has got some potential. At the very least, I got a good work out. But I was pleased with my experience, and the recommendation, so that patron I threw in the closet got to live.

Stuff I didn’t hate: I really like this kind of storytelling for a villain arc. I’m the one in charge – not working for anybody (i.e. my contact is my lackey, not my boss). In the course of the story I’m not pulling any punches (unless doing so would very clearly be in my own self interest). I’m in it for money and power, and anyone who has to die along the way dies. I literally (and this might be evident in the walkthrough write up above) would decide on my own what I thought my villain would do next, given the circumstances. And that is awfully, awfully close to what I was doing in the arc. Excellent job.

To be honest, the custom group didn’t stand out a lot, but, on the plus side, I found it to be well balanced: challenging but not frustrating. (And don’t misunderstand – “not standing out” doesn’t mean I disliked them.)

Another major ‘plus’ is the fact that there was absolutely nothing ‘plot critical’ that wasn’t clear to me. This was mostly because of very good use of clues – if I needed to know it for purposes of following the plot, it was in a mission briefing, or in a clue. Not once was I confused about something because I’d missed something only present in the dialog spam in mission. (And, whatever I did miss – and I’m sure there were things – it wasn’t the kind of thing that would leave me confused as to what exactly is going on.)

The mission design is worth a mention as well: they were, in general, fairly complex missions, many of which had chained goals. But the map selection and placement of the objectives (in so far as you *can* place objectives) always kept things flowing forward – I, at least, never had to backtrack or go searching for an objective. (Granted, most MA authors who have recent requested reviews do this very well, but it’s worth mentioning.)

Obvious, I thought this was a very well made, high-quality arc.

Perturbations: I can always come up with stuff to nitpick – so just take the stuff you think is useful, and ignore all of the stuff you think is idiotic.

I did kind of think the mission briefings could use a little sprucing up – I recall there being very little color overall. Paragraph structure and writing was just fine, though.

The custom group did the rank differences very well – it was very easy at a glance to tell the minions from the lieutenants (although I admit that this kind of thing should never be a requirement for an experienced player, I always appreciate it when I don’t have to mouse over everything in a group to tell the minions from the lt’s and the bosses). I did have a feeling, though that I would have liked to have more visual cues to tell the minions apart at a quick glance. This is definitely a group where it’s to your advantage to quickly identify certain minion types before others and defeat them first (I typically tried to take down the ‘Flash’ bots first, followed by repair and protector bots – the combat bots were usually lowest priority). Being able to more easily tell them apart would help. I’m not saying they were identical in appearance – just similar enough that the amount of time it took to visually distinguish them is about the same amount of time it takes to mouse over them an eliminate all confusion. In the real world, that’d be a stupid thing to do if there were such a thing as a robotics mastermind - but it’d make the gameplay versus them a bit more fun (in my opinion, obviously).

I’d have preferred to see at least a minor mention of the optional objectives in the nav bar. That’s really more a style thing (some authors think it’s important, others think it’s totally unnecessary), but, hey, in case you’re keeping tabs on who prefers it versus who doesn’t, count me in the ‘prefers it’ category.

Detonation struck me as in need of a custom model – obviously he should look ‘Freakshow,’ but I was actually a bit disappointed that he was just a regular tank. (Are the super stunners available? I honestly don’t know, but that might be enough variation – well, assuming your response is something other than, ‘no, no, I think a tank is fine.’)

Final Thoughts: I actually found the love story between the two main antagonists to be rather endearing, in a twisted sort of way. In terms of actual difficulty, only Arachnos gave me any issues – and that didn’t come as a surprise (even with overload active, I have very limited ability to deal with psionics). That said, I was only defeated once during the entire arc (and that was only because I’d stumbled across a bunch of Arachnos who’d happened to be a psi-heavy spawn, I was out of purples to bolster my defenses, and I was already injured from the previous fight). That’s certainly well, well, WELL below any threshold where I’d question the difficulty.

And that’s it for now! Again, excellent arc!

Score: 4.827

I'd love to see what you think about my arc - Shadows in your mind (bottom left of my sig for the info)

To Soul Storm: Unfortunately, in the interest of being as fair as possible, I honestly think it's best to stick with the ground rules I posted in the original post for this thread. The only issue I have with taking requests "mid stream" is that it isn't fair to the (hypothetical) people that are playing by the rules and holding off making a request until the queue is empty and I open it up for suggestions. I'm not saying I won't review your arc - just that I'm going to have to request that you re-submit your request for it when I re-open my queue for more suggestions (likely in about a month or so - I do about one of these major reviews every two weeks).

The reason Wrong Number got an 'exception' is she was running a contest at the time. She didn't request a review, but to enter the contest, you played her arc and provided feedback. So I did, and rather than sending my feedback as a long series of tells, I just posted it here because, well, why not?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eva Destruction Well I'm glad you decided to spare him. The guy has great taste. Honestly, the appearance of these guys has been giving me the most headaches out of anything in this arc since I gave up on my original lone villain idea and gave you a human contact. There really aren't a lot of costume options that look like robots and not like a guy in a robot suit. I don't have the cyborg pack and using too many clockwork pieces makes them look like, well, clockwork. Furthermore, they're not a villain group per se, they're a very large bunch of Mastermind pets. Let's just say they're still being tweaked and leave it at that. I'm glad you found them balanced though, aside from your psi hole.

The only thing I was able to come up with is colors, and that poses a whole host of issues. One, if you want a "faction" color scheme (so to speak), giving minions colors related to "function" negates that. And two, game-play wise bright, obvious colors are really the only ones that would give much of a visual advantage for the typical player. But those also tend to be ugly. The only thing I can think of is to hope that enough new costume options trickle into the editor to make that approach viable.

One thing you said did seem a bit odd - I also don't have the cyborg pack, but in the editor, I do have access to the cyborg pieces. Or at least I did last I checked - perhaps they changed that?

Quote:

If I added in every optional objective the nav bar would fill half your screen. Did you know there's a limit of 25 unique objectives per mission? I didn't, until my last edit of mission 5. I also take the approach that the nav bar represents character knowledge to some extent, and if your character doesn't know it's there, it doesn't go in. Also, with that many objectives, I don't want to make the player think they have to go hunting down, say, 6 bombs in a map that's on fire and full of smoke, and I find the labeling of optional objectives as such to be immersion-breaking.

Interesting you should mention that. I did know about that, I've just never managed to pull it off (I do have one mission in the middle of the heavily updated third part of the Primus trilogy that gets fairly close - but that whole set of arcs needs updating again now that they fixed the spawn location bug for glowies). Let me throw in my two cents (well, in more detail) - I agree that limiting the nav bar to 'player knowledge' is a perfectly valid approach, and one that you use very effectively. That said, there are several 'optional' objectives that, to be honest, I *did* anticipate anyway that wouldn't be inappropriate for the nav bar. While all of the 'extras' in the Arachnos base, for example, weren't even things I'd expect to see as listed objectives, I did, for example, expect that there'd be bombs to disarm in the last mission (in fact, I was a little surprised disarming them was optional, although it certainly wasn't hard to come up with an in character reason to not disarm them, so that didn't really bother me). And, to a lesser extent, I always have a generic 'expectation' that there might be 'clues to find' in a place that may not be critical to actually completing the mission at hand, but useful to know. That said, I'd never suggest giving the objectives each their own listing - I had more of a "group as many together into a multiple objective" approach in mind when I made the suggestion. But that's just my two cents - all I'm doing here is just putting more explanation behind what I was thinking when I made the suggestion.

Quote:

Could be wabbit, could be. Unfortunately the super stunners aren't available, and I'm not sure they'd be suitable anyway, since if you're going to be handling high explosives on a regular basis I'm not sure you'd want to rig yourself up be shooting off sparks all the time. He's supposed to be pretty smart for a Freak. Sonic tanks don't seem appropriate either. The problem with a custom is this arc is already at 93% file size, I plan on adding another lieutenant to the custom group once Kinetic Melee becomes available, and making a custom Freak to look Freakshow is.....a challenge to say the least.

I know exactly what you mean - I have a few arcs that have 'custom' freakshow in them. And I've never been terribly happy with the results. I've just lived with them.

Quote:

See, it DOES suit the Romance tag! Thank you for the play and the review. By the way, I liked the in-character style you have going here, especially the "stuff I didn't hate." They really need a "no fade" option for Energy Cloak so you can take better pictures...and, you know, actually see your guy.

Lol. It didn't even occur to me to put a romance tag on it though. But now that you mention it, you're right. I might need to go back and change that. Although I have no idea if what I tag it makes any difference at all.

It's a LOT easier to write in character for Perturbation (who actually has more of a character to him) than for Pro Payne (who really is much more bland, although I have considered giving him more of a unique 'voice.' But, ironically, he's basically like an in-game version of a CoH player - who is just using MA to 'play the game.' And so, like a majority of players that I've seen online, he doesn't really go out of his way to 'play a character.').

And oh how I agree with you about the Energy Cloak. If it wasn't so dang useful in fights, I'd just turn the thing off.

Task Force Mutternacht (Arc ID#349522, 5 stars)

As I keyed in the code for today’s architect adventure (and jumped into the Pillar of Light), I found myself on the rain-drenched deck of a Longbow carrier, the shores of Warburg in the distance. Agent Indigo told me that the Malta operatives here were looking for Access Bypass modules, hoping it would help them gain access to the Arachnos weapons of mass destruction here. I agreed to help stop them.

Note: In the send-off “those tiny pieces of tech will be able allow Malta…” should likely be “those tiny pieces of tech will be able to allow…”

Indigo gave me the location of the temporary Malta HQ here, and I was off.

Just inside the warehouse entrance I found that the Malta had captured a hero named Mr. Inquiry. Inquiry’s MO was to follow up old or otherwise discarded leads. Given the secrecy Indigo and her cohorts work under, it didn’t surprise me at all that Inquiry saw this operation as one of his ‘old or discarded’ leads – plus, I had no idea how long this Malta operation had been underway.

It was trivial to find the Access Bypass modules, but deeper within the base I found the Malta negotiating with a high ranking Longbow agent, an Officer Kyle. The agent wasted no time turning on me after I arrested his Malta ‘allies’, spouting rhetoric about how all heroes were really secretly agents of destruction, and how we’d get what was coming to us. The fact he “wasn’t sorry he did it” was what got my attention. Some plan was already underway, and I doubted it was going to be the kind of thing that was ‘For the Public Good’ based on Kyle’s crazy rantings.


Kyle and his Malta allies. They weren’t expecting the interruption…

Notes: A couple of things I thought were noticeable omissions. First, rescuing Inquiry fulfilled the ‘Find some clues’ (or Find out what was going on), but I didn’t actually find out much of anything from him. He really should grant a clue when rescued – it just seems odd that I’m looking for a clue and ‘succeed’ but don’t really find anything that seems terribly salient. Also, the mission completed after I opened the fourth crate, but it was clear according to the objectives I needed to find and arrest the leader of the operation (presumably the longbow agent). I went ahead and finished that, but it seems like that should be set to required, rather than optional – especially given that the success pop-up and Indigo’s debriefing both refer to him. That would have made no sense if I’d just hit ‘Exit’ the moment I finished the mission…

What worried Indigo most was Kyle’s reference to something called the Jackson Film. She flat out told me I’d just walked into something dangerous, scribbled an address down on a scrap of paper, and asked me to meet her there in a few hours. I, of course, agreed.

At our next meeting, Indigo made it very clear that she was about to ask me to do some very questionable things – things that would be decidedly unheroic (and, in most cases, flat-out illegal). I wasn’t comfortable with what she was asking, but I agreed to hear her out.

She handed me a briefcase containing a costume, and a large amount of cash. My first task was simple: I needed to obtained some secured documents in a police warehouse. The warehouse’s director was a crooked cop, and could be bribed the look the other way, but it would be foolish to assume I’d get out of there without having to resort to violence.

Indigo had set up a cover identity for me – I would be posing as a villain called Dystheist, thereby (hopefully) keeping my reputation intact.


It is now time to become Evil Pro Payne, and don the unbelievably vile and internationally recognized uniform of evil. What do you think? Needs more skulls? Oh, and a goatee. ‘Cause, you know, I’m Evil now.

Note: In the clue regarding the briefcase and costume she mentions it is the Facemaker who is responsible for my new digs (even though we all know it was I, Pro Payne, who programmed my perfect and awesome new villain costume into the MA system!) – but then refers to ‘them’ and ‘they’ (obviously talking about the Facemakers as a group, rather than Facemaker herself). It just needs a minor tweak to read correctly.

Inside the evidence warehouse, I find that the Freakshow have come a-calling, although I don’t see any evidence that they know anything about what I’m looking for. It looks like they’re just here to cause havoc and loot the place.

I find Jake, the corrupt officer, pretty quickly, and bribe him. He gives me the master code for the safes in here, and I get to looking for the documents – fighting cops and Freakshow alike. I find the safe with the documents at on the second floor of the warehouse, but a hero has responded to the ‘villain raid.’ It looks like I’ll need to defeat him or her to escape, so I head back toward the entrance.


I appreciate that you’re trying to be all clever, what with it being a song and all, but if you call me ‘honey’ again, bub, you’ll burn…

Note: I have to say that several of the messages in the chat window as you are searching for the documents seem a bit out of character to the setup in the mission briefing. They imply that I’m frequently tempted to steal some of the valuables in these safes, yet the briefings play up how repulsed I am at the fact I must play the part of a villain. I think it’d be better to use the ‘failed’ searches to play up how much I don’t like what I’m having to do here. It’s the lockers that give you a chance to play up any ‘temptation’ angle – since I’m supposed to be searching out a safe, I should know not to check out the lockers, so your justification ‘Oh, I’m just making sure evidence isn’t tampered with’ works well. Heck, I’d even play *that* up more than you do – you could even add a flavor clue to this objective (You know you don’t need to look in these lockers, but some impulse drives you to anyway. You’re repelled by the thought of stealing anything in here, but you do find yourself noting how easy it would be, if you wanted to… or something like that). And one final note for this mission: In the clue you get when you find the documents, it tells you that you cannot get into the document box so you ‘take it anyway.’ Again, just my opinion, but ‘take it anyway’ sounds like you didn’t really need to take it, and did for the heck of it. It should be more like ‘you’ll just have to take the whole thing.’


Actually, that wasn’t my opening shot, per se. That was really my Tank ally. My fire doesn’t really seem to be hurting you all that bad…

Before the previous mission, Indigo had made it clear that once I’d starting my ‘villanous career’ we couldn’t have any more direct contact: I’d need to keep in touch via couriers. When I got to the contact point, I found tickets to the Rogue Isles, and my marching orders for the next task.

I was to head to Haven House in Grandville, and deliver the documents to Westin Phipps. Evidently they were all of the evidence in Longbow’s case against him. But whatever Phipps had on that film was far more dangerous than the evil that would be caused by allowing him to maintain his role as an Arachnos operative working to crush the hopes and dreams of Grandville’s downtrodden.

Unfortunately for me, Longbow was staging a raid as I arrived. They knew their case against Phipps was about to go up in smoke, and that they needed to move now, or not at all.

Finding Phipps was easy. I freed him from the Longbow capture squad. In return, he grabbed a gun and promised to follow me to his admin officers, where I’d find the film Indigo was after.


You’re a cruel one, Mr. Phipps…

I also found another villain who’d been captured by Longbow a high voltage cyborg named Giga Watts. His help proved useful, as we were ambushed by Blast Furnace the moment I got my hands on the film. The hero wanted a rematch after the earlier defeat I handed him. I hated having to do it, but I put him down yet again.

Phipps requested I escort him out of Haven House – he figured the officer calling the shots was now on premises, and wanted me to get a look at him (followed by me pounding his face in). As much as I would have preferred to drop my cover and pound Phipps to a pulp instead, there was a job that needed doing. I escorted Phipps back to the entrance.

Of course it was Mr. Inquiry that was leading the operation to take Phipps in. That presented an even more serious wrinkle – as genius as my villain costume was, Inquiry was likely to recognize me from earlier. That would mean that I’d have to make sure the beating I was about to give him would keep him hospitalized long enough for me to finish the operation. I could only hope that after this was all over, a sincere apology, a large fruit basket, and lots of flowers could patch things up between us.

Oh the up side, Inquiry didn’t seem to recognize me after all – perhaps the sheer speed with which he went down (what with Phipps and Giga Watt helping me) helped. Mind you, I didn’t feel good about that, but at least it meant I didn’t have to do anything that would deliberately slow his recovery.


Okay, okay. So I had a few bean burritos on the way to the Isles. But geez, don’t you think passing out is a bit melodramatic?

Of course, that rat Phipps decided to attack me in an attempt to get the film back. That wasn’t wise on his part, considering how much I already wanted to beat his face in. I was happy to oblige.

On my way back to Paragon City I took a look at the film, but could not determine what exactly it was that was so important about it. I headed to the designated meeting point to find a hologram emitter and a burning barrel. Indigo (or, rather, her projection) remarked on her surprise at finding Inquiry there, and requested that I destroy the film. That really went against my better judgement, as I didn’t yet know exactly what it was I was destroying. Indigo was convinced whatever was on that film was ‘horrible’ beyond compare, though. Reluctantly, I did as requested.

I didn’t know what would be next, but it was worse than I expected. Many days later, Indigo surreptitiously sent me a transmitter, informing me that Inquiry had been spending nearly all of his time and effort (after his recovery) pulling together everything he could on my villainous “alter ego.” Given how skilled Inquiry was as a detective, that was very bad news. Not because he might uncover the link to me (part of me wanted to have to answer for all that I was having to do ‘for the greater good’), but because doing so could expose the whole operation – an operation whose true motives I was becoming very frustrated at being left out of the loop of.

What Indigo was asking was deplorable – she’d manufactured evidence that would peg Inquiry as a Council double-agent. Oh, and while I was busy uploading it to the Council computers (along with some security degradation software that guaranteed just about any enterprising hacker would “find” it, allowing Inquiry’s “duplicity” to go public), I also needed to smuggle out a Council Vampyr (once Jefferson Davis Jackson) who could confirm that the film I’d acquired and destroyed was the real deal.

I agreed to do the deed, but if I wasn’t going to be given enough of an update to make it clear why all of these terrible things had to be done, it wouldn’t matter how much Indigo trusted me. I’d turn myself, and her, in – go States Evidence if I had to. What I needed was simple: to have enough information about what exactly was going on to make my own judgement call about whether or not I was doing the right thing. Not only had I decided that would need to be forthcoming when all of this was over, for Indigo’s sake I’d better agree these extreme measures were really necessary.

When I got to the Council base, Longbow was already there. I quickly rescued the Base Commander, Vitale, from them. Vitale was all to happy to have me take the Vampyr off his hands – he regarded Jackson as nothing more than an incompetent coward. He pointed me to the rear of the base, and I set off, keeping an eye out for the network servers on which I’d be planting the “evidence” against Inquiry.


Hey world! Guess whose really working with the Council? And a bunch of other villain groups?

Jackson was in the back of the base, as I figured he would be. I’d already managed to upload the evidence that would slander Mr. Inquiry, so now all that remained was to escort Jackson to safety. Of course it wouldn’t be *that* easy. Mr. Inquiry was waiting for me near the base entrance.

I defeated him, but learned he’d deduced my “true identity.” I doubted it would matter, given that the evidence I’d just planted would more or less destroy his credibility. But even the mention that Dystheist and Pro Payne were one in the same could put enough people on the trail to eventually piece the truth together. I didn’t know yet whether or not my ultimate fate would be to turn myself in and answer for what I’d done, but if I was going to get to the end of this to make that call, I couldn’t let Inquiry interfere. This time, the beating I gave him would keep him down longer. Hopefully long enough to find out from Indigo why exactly I was being made to do all of this.

Once I got Jackson out of the base, I took the opportunity to ask him if what was on the film was ‘real.’ That he confirmed it was wasn’t what worried me. You see, my next question was going to be to ask him what exactly was on the film. But something he said chilled me to the bone. He was the last eyewitness to what was on that film.

And with the film destroyed, if Jackson was silenced, whatever horrible thing had transpired would be lost to history forever. And I might loose my chance to ever find out if the things I’d done was worth the price I was making everyone pay…

Note: Although the mission makes it clear that I’m setting up Inquiry as a double agent for a whole slew of villain groups, as you can see from the narrative, it seems far more natural to limit it to the Council alone. Frankly, my gut instinct even says that not “overdoing” it would make it more likely the falsified information on him would be believed – in other words, the planted evidence, in my opinion, would seem more plausible if it didn’t resort to overkill to make him look bad. (Council double agent = hmm, he must have had a secret agenda all along, but what was it? Double agent to the criminal underground = wow, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear somebody was trying to ruin his reputation.)

It didn’t take long for my fears to be confirmed. I escorted Jackson to the safehouse, made sure he was secure, and then went to a nearby unmarked pay phone to call Indigo and report the task was done. The building I’d just put Jackson in went up in a massive fireball – if I wasn’t so naturally resistant to fire, the blast might well have killed me too.

What was on that film was now lost for good – its last witness slain. Only I knew that wasn’t true. There was one more person who knew what I’d worked so hard to cover up – one last person who could give me answers.

It was time to become Pro Payne again. I raced to meet Indigo, figuring she’d be at her normal haunt in Founders Falls. She didn’t even get her “I’ve got nothing for you…” speech out before a delivered a quick punch that sent her reeling.

I was going to get to the bottom of this, and, frankly, I had nothing to loose.

Indigo relented. I honestly don’t know how she couldn’t have seen this as the inevitable consequence of what she was trying to pull here.

She told me the truth – or rather showed it to me. She had what I took to be the last remaining copy of the film. She showed it to me.

SPOILERS – If you don’t want the secret revealed until you play the arc for yourself, STOP READING NOW!






On it I saw something that was every bit as horrible as what Indigo had originally intimated. I saw white-sheeted racists barring the doors of a church full of innocents and setting the place ablaze – what Indigo referred to as the Christmas Choir Massacre of 1951. I then saw Statesman’s own wife, Maiden Justice, helping the racists. There was no attempt to hide her identity – she was there, her dazzling aura illuminating the scene as she moved to ensure nobody could escape. The church burned to the ground, everybody within murdered by a hero. Or so it would seem.

The truth was Indigo didn’t know if the film was real or fake. Nobody did – except perhaps Statesman himself. But it didn’t matter. Without a way to prove it a fake, it getting out would destroy the world’s faith in its heroes – at least that was Indigo’s fear.

I knew that one day I’d have to get to the bottom of what really happened here. But, for now, this was not something that could get out. Unfortunately, Mr. Inquiry had recovered faster than I hoped. And what was worse, it didn’t matter that revealing the truth here would undoubtedly cause more harm than good. He’d tracked us down, seen the tape as Indigo showed it to me, and would now make good on his belief that the unadulterated truth was always the best course of action.

In principle, if this crime had really been committed, I wasn’t sure I disagreed with him. But I knew one thing for sure: a revelation this horrible – if true – demanded extrodinarily solid proof of its truth before it could be allowed to wreak the havoc that would follow upon becoming known. We didn’t have that proof. Ironically, in trying to hide what evidence there was, Indigo might have also damaged our chances of ever finding out if what was on that film really did happen. That would be a problem for another time, though. Inquiry had to be stopped. It looked like I would have to act as Dystheist one last time…

Ms. Liberty was holding a press conference in Atlas Park, and Inquiry intended to “hijack” the conference and air the film. It just so happened that there was a very large police presence there as well due to the fact that a trio of villains had just tried to pull a bank heist right before the press conference. Their presence would prove a handy diversion.

In my guise as a villain, I destroyed the broadcasting equipment and freed the villains. We then hunted down Mr. Inquiry. The once-proud hero was no match at all for the combined power of four villains. I got the film off of him, and waited for Ms. Liberty to arrive. Frankly, there were two people in all of this who had a right to see the film – Ms. Liberty, and Statesman. And giving it to Ms. Liberty would, I had no doubt, ultimately, accomplish both.

But there was one final obstacle. Indigo arrived on the scene before Ms. Liberty. She made a big production of being here to stop Dystheist’s rampage, but the reality was darker: I was the final ‘loose end’ in the conspiracy to hide the Jackson film. She was here to force my silence by killing me.


Mental Note: Next time take off the villain costume before you walk up to someone with a license to kill. At least that way her buddies won’t help her wipe the floor with you.

Ironically, she succeeded. But Pro Payne can’t die for real. One Rise of the Pheonix later she was being medi-ported away to recover from her injuries.


Well, typically if a villain is handing you a filmstrip, it’s probably not going to brighten your day. But don’t worry. I have a feeling the honorable, upright, just, and incredibly handsome hero Pro Payne will be by soon to comfort you.

Ms. Liberty’s reaction to the film was predictable (not in a bad way, story-wise, though); she was very upset, and vowed to learn the truth of what really happened on that day in 1951.

My personal opinion? I suspect her quest will ultimately uncover the film is a fake. Why? Because I had just accomplished exactly what I think the film’s makers had wanted to accomplish. Through the use of completely manufactured evidence, I had ruined the career and reputation of an upstanding hero. Jefferson Davis Jackson just screamed patsy – I had little doubt whomever arranged the massacre had intended for him to see it and film it as an ‘ironclad’ way to ensure its authenticity. And then they arranged to have him made ‘immortal’ to make sure he was around (and able to authenticate it) until the day came where using the film’s revelation would be useful to whomever had masterminded it.

But, ultimately, it doesn’t really matter if I’m right about that or not. One day, the truth will be known. And either the few of us who know about the film will have the peace of mind of seeing Maiden Justice vindicated, or we’ll learn, that as so often happens in life, that sometimes a revered hero shows that they are all too human in so dramatic a way that admiration can’t help but become bitter disappointment (or worse). Only time would tell.

Pros: One of the pleasures of this project is that eighty percent of the requests I get are from authors that have put extraordinary time and effort into their creations, and it shows. Frequently I feel all I’m doing is sorting through A quality work, doing little more than making distinctions between A-, A, and A+. So what makes this stand out against the other high-quality arcs? The story was so engaging – it did such a good job of drawing me in – that I found myself thinking about the loose ends even after finishing it. And that’s another major plus. Often times, loose ends in an MA arc are just annoying. But in this arc, the most glaring loose end (that you never do learn the truth about the film) is a great example of when you can make the story better by not tying everything up for the player. It was a sign of just how good I found the story – I cared enough about what was going on that it was natural to spend time and effort thinking about what I really thought the truth behind the film was. The story was also very well constructed, with excellent pacing – the author did a very good job of constructing the missions in a way that advanced the story.

In short, this arc is a real standout. Very, very well done.

Cons: It says something that the cons are really just differences of opinion – I throw them out there, but in most cases I think the only response will be the author doesn’t agree with my opinion, and we move on.

If anything, I think Indigo’s assertion that the revelation on the film would destroy the public’s faith in heroes is somewhat overstated. I absolutely buy that there would be public outrage, and that outrage would largely ignore the open question of whether or not the tape is genuine (which is typically why it’s just a bad idea to try a case in the court of public opinion). But I think there is almost an expectation that some of the people we’ve looked up to as outstanding examples of moral virtue, and whatnot, are going to turn out to not be quite as heroic as we thought they were. I have no question that these revelations would turn the public against Statesman – and perhaps even Ms. Liberty. But all heroes seems a bit much. I’m not saying Indigo’s fears are unfounded – after all, given that Statesman is currently one of the most powerful beings on Primal Earth, the public abandoning him would likely not be the best move (it’s not like all those villains are going to show mercy because the hero camp ‘lost’ some of its most powerful allies). But recasting it as “it would be disastrous for the public to lose its trust in some of our most powerful defenders” strikes me as a bit more plausible.

I also thought it a bit off that you go visit Indigo in the hospital at the end. Again, personal opinion, but she just tried to kill you – basically for no better reason than you know the secret. It’s not like she just trying to rough you up to show you there’ll be consequences if you ever talk. She fully intends to murder you. I mean, my word, even Mr. Inquiry gets to live (albeit likely in a psych ward). Frankly, I’d never speak to her again. Perhaps a letter from her (that you read once, then wad up and throw away, still disgusted with her actions) explaining her actions would be more realistic? Or maybe making it clear she isn’t trying to kill you – her attack really is a warning to convince you to hold onto the secret, and never tell another soul. Granted, you then immediately ignore that by talking to Liberty, but after you defeat Indigo, it’s pretty clear your message is “whatever threat you want to level at me, I’ll make my own call as to who to tell and who not to.”

Finally, I think, in particular, while looking for the safe in the warehouse, I’d remove the references to how tempting it would be to take the money in the ‘decoy’ safes. The text up to this point has really emphasized how distasteful acting the villain is for you – it seems a bit contrary to that to suddenly have your character feeling genuine temptation every single time he ‘tries the next safe.’

Score: 4.955

Thanks so much for playing the arc, and wow, what a flattering review. I submitted this way way back in the original first AE Challenge and have been fooling around with it since. I didn't feel like retooling it for the 3rd Challenge because it would have felt cheap to me. Anyway, you have some really great observations in here and I really deeply appreciate the contemplation you offered in consideration of the story. You've actually hit a few things on the head, and brought up other interpretations which, while they were not exactly what I was envisioning, are perfectly valid and well-thought out rationales and answers to the questions that the story brings up.

But! In answer to your comments:

First off, let me just say how much I sincerely appreciate the response of the authors for the arcs I review here - in this case I literally mean that simply hearing from the authors after I've posted these reviews is a large part of what makes the work (and it's a lot of work) that goes into this worth it. I know it probably seems natural to post a response to a review of your work (although, in many cases it's really closer to a play journal with commentary), but it's appreciated none the less. So thank you!

Quote:

Originally Posted by twelfth I've had this comment before. I am trying to play up the temptation angle, or that you could reasonably get away with crime if you just let yourself slip a bit. I've not intended these to suggest that your hero MUST be stealing them, but I wanted to leave the door open for those players who just very well might. Obviously something in the way I'm constructing those lines is rubbing players the wrong way, so I've got to find a better way to say what I'm trying to get across.

I honestly can't remember if I mentioned this or not, but I did think putting the temptation angle in the clue for the glowy might work - since you only get one of those, you can frame it as a thought that passes through your head the first time you 'open a safe', but, as a hero, you put the temptation out of your mind and go back to the necessary business of searching the place (simulated by not having mention of being tempted in the interaction text). In other words, I think what I found most 'out of place' about it wasn't that there was some temptation - it was the fact that the mechanics make it seem like I'm 'tempted anew' every single time I open a safe...

Quote:

Thank you for posting this screenshot. It shows another typo in Indigo's text (gender confusion).

Now that you mention it, I *did* notice that too. Just forgot to make a note of it.

Quote:

The ending of the arc was actually fairly different in previous publications (prior iterations had you fight (a weakened) Statesman, or Miss Liberty), so this was the first one where you had to fight Indigo - but Indigo still needed to explain herself somewhat (and I didn't want to muddy up the post-arc details by adding more clues). So, I changed the final debriefing from "meeting back up with Indigo" to "visiting her in the hospital". Basically I wanted to suggest that the PC is a better person/hero than Indigo for being able to do that.

For what it's worth, I like this ending much better than fighting Statesman or Liberty. Just makes more sense to me.

I did figure that was the rationale for the hospital visit, it's just in this case I wasn't 'sold' on it, so to speak. But that is, to me, just a clear example of difference of opinion - I'm sure there are other players who would see that as a perfectly reasonably thing to do.

Thanks for the response!

And now for the Thanksgiving edition of the Continuing Adventures of Pro Payne. Okay, not really - I'm just following my stated schedule, but, hey, it lined up just right, eh?

PENGUIN Part 3: Waddle to the Big Top (Arc ID#402239; 4 stars)

Quick Note: I just feel that, for whatever reason, my crop of screenshots for this arc review were just not up to par – and considering just how low ‘par’ is for me and screenshots, I apologize for that. In other words: my normal screenies aren’t anything that deserve mention. I don’t even pretend they’re high quality. There just there for fun. But for whatever reason, they just weren’t even *my* version of ‘on’ this time, and I’m sorry about that.

So here I am, minding my own business, taking a nice stroll in the park, and WHAM, my old friend Waddle meteors into the park bench next to me. Jumping up and down, he’s waving a ticket in my face, excited about a free circus that has come to town, and eager to invite his good buddy Pro Payne to join in the fun. I’m game, although a little voice in my head tells me that before long what should be a nice fun time will devolve into the screaming, and the crying, and, I suspect, large blue auras making whooshing sounds and sucking out my endurance.

Note: ‘More flapping of the ticket all around, back the way he just came’ doesn’t quite make sense. You’re saying he’s heading back the way he came, flapping the ticket around as he does so? Plus – although this is just nitpicking so don’t think too much of it – if he’s walking away from me, how would I see his beady penguin eyes?

One thing furthers my suspicions – the ‘circus’ is in a warehouse in King’s Row. Oh, and the ticket actually calls it a ‘Carnival,’ which Waddle can’t quite pronounce.

Yep, I thinking I’m about to be facing off against some soul-stealing evil clown women. Doesn’t mean Waddle and I can’t have a good time protecting the citizens of King’s Row from the Carnival of Shadows.

Sure enough, the Carnival had decked out the place in their rather creepy ‘funhouse’ style. As we entered, we were greeted with terrified screams (and a Carny patrol talking about a Mr. White, and some sort of ‘secret lab’ – odd, I wouldn’t think the Carnies were the type to set up labs.) Waddle ran off before I could stop him. Apparently I lost him worse that I thought, because I actually found a Carnival captive, Phineas K. White, first. Very eager to escape, White handed me a bag of cotton candy he swore up and down was a clue, and then ran off. I’d look into it a bit later, after I was finished rescuing anyone the Carnies were holding prisoner here.


Hopefully Jenny is impressed with my workout routine: three reps of saving people from killer Carnies.

Next was Jenny Hall, a fitness guru working for a local health food chain called Muscle Sprouts. It appeared that her ‘hobby’ of jogging through exceptionally dangerous neighborhoods had gotten the best of her, although, oddly, she seemed more concerned that Candy (the chain’s actual founder) would be angry about the delay in her getting back to the shop than the fact she’d almost been forcibly recruited into a deadly criminal gang. Something there didn’t track…

I found Melinda White, investigative reporter (at least that’s what the Carnies seemed to think she was), next. I freed her from her Carnie captors, but all she told me was that Phineas was convinced there was something in the cotton candy – which I already knew.

Still no sign of Waddle, though. I was starting to get worried.

As I worked through the warehouse, I found another reference to Mr. Snowy, this time referencing the cotton candy. Definitely something in the candy.

Ah, I found Waddle near the back of the warehouse, subdued by a bunch of Carnies. I quickly freed him. The little guy still had the ticket, which actually ended up having a useful clue, now that I had a chance to look over it – apparently, the Circus was sponsored by a Mr. Snowy’s Fluffy Stuff. Given the Carnival references to Mr. Snowy, I had a pretty good idea where I’d be headed off to next…


Now Waddle, remember, don’t go running through entire dark and scary warehouses before your good buddy Pro Payne figures out where you are!

Waddle agreed. In fact, Waddle nearly had a conniption when he saw the logo for Mr. Snowy’s Fluffy Stuff (and the fact that it was on PENGUIN street).

When we arrived at the address, we heard a cry for help from an old man – time to rush in and be heroic!

Note: It appears as though you’re using a convention that blue text represents action (or expository text) rather than speech (which is fine – no problem with that), but, to be fair, it’s probably not necessary to color the mission entry pop-up (or the exit pop ups) blue, since it’s usually assumed they’re expository text setting the stage. Not a big deal, obviously. Just a thought that popped into my head when I entered the mission.

Waddle was (naturally) a ‘rescue ally’ near the front of the map – but I found him very quickly; I’d assumed the author’s intent was to have him with you the whole mission as an aide, and it worked as intended. By the way, having him focus on control powers worked quite well; he was boss rank, which made him nearly impossible to defeat, but I felt the damage he was doing was not overly ‘intrusive’ – he was tending to lock stuff down, but it was still me doing most of the damage.


No Pro Payne adventure could possibly be complete without a gratuitous and utterly pointless action shot of Our Hero throwing fire into a random group of unsuspecting bad guys. Er, girls. Mostly.

Mr. Snowy’s office was overrun with Carnies, but that came as no surprise. On the second floor, I found a computer from which I pulled an interesting file. It was a purchase order (presumably for cotton candy, although the clue didn’t spell it out), along with a note expressing Snowy’s displeasure at a “pair of clowns” bouncing around the production vats. He also suspected they’d put something into the order. I suspected he was right.

I was guessing the Carnies were here just to cover their tracks – but since that would probably involve catastrophic bodily harm to Mr. Snowy, I headed further into the office to see whether or not I could find the old man.

In a conference room on the third floor, I found several of the Carnies preparing to ‘punish’ Mr. Snowy for ‘ratting them out to the penguin and the hero.’ (Actually, they were just trying to get him to confess.) It really did look as though Mr. Snowy himself had no ill will toward anybody – he just needed to be more careful with who he was doing business with. So I let him go, after freeing him from his Carnie tormentors. But, as fled toward the office building entry, he did mention that secret lab the Carnies had been talking about at the warehouse: it wasn’t one of his, but obviously had something to do with whatever the Carnival was up to here.


Okay, Mr. Snowy, chill out. All of the mean Carnies have been arrested. You’re safe. No need to run around like a lunatic. (Get it? Mr. Snowy? Chill out?)

Note: If you want my advice, I’d say lose Jack Frost on Waddle. The little guy is plenty helpful without him – from a game mechanic perspective, JF is probably Waddle’s most XP leeching power, and his very presence seems rather counter to Waddle’s expressed hatred of animated things made of snow (or really all snowmen, animated or not). Furthermore, I noticed a tendency for Waddle to just stand around and not follow me at all. I have no idea if that has anything to do with Jack, but it did make me wonder.

Also, although I’ll point it out again in Pros and Cons, the Carnie dialog actually strikes me as a bit too “generic criminal” here: especially in more recent dev created missions, their “party girl” aspect is really played up – “Did you rat us out to the penguin and the hero” should probably be more like “Now sweetie, you wouldn’t have been getting chatty with any heroes, would you? What about arctic fowl? No? Come on, you can tell me?”, and “It’s a hero!” should be closer to “Oh, now who invited you to the party, darling?”

Mr. Snowy gave the police a full report, which they delivered to me. The report confirmed my suspicions: the Carnival had set up a secret lab they were using to contaminate Mr. Snowy’s cotton candy with … something … I wasn’t sure what yet. Whatever it was, it was time to shut down the lab.

Note: It’s here where I think the story has it’s weakest link. There isn’t really a clear way that I would know exactly where this secret lab is – at least that I’ve noticed. A really obvious thing, like a clue dropped from a Carnie boss in the last mission, would be helpful. Be careful, though – you’ve established Mr. Snowy isn’t sure exactly what the Carnies are up to, so he probably wouldn’t be a good way to drop a clue as to the lab’s location.

Also, the ‘detail’ about the Carnies wanting to ‘make their own [cotton candy]’ strikes me as a bit off. You’d think the Carnies would know how to make cotton candy – I honestly think it’d be better to find a way to play up the ‘contaminate an existing product’ angle. If you establish that Mr. Snowy’s got the best cotton candy in Paragon, and everybody knows it, and loves his stuff, then the Carnival has a motivation to contaminate his stuff, rather than make their own, which neatly sidesteps a potential problem: as written, I don’t completely buy the Carnival would need Mr. Snowy for anything. After all, you’d figure they can make their own cotton candy, and it’s clear they already have the contaminant. So do they really even need Mr. Snowy? This way, there’s a reason for them to need Mr. Snowy – it ensures their plan will reach a wider audience, because everybody knows, trusts, and loves Mr. Snowy brand cotton candy.

Okay, critique aside – time to put a stop to whatever is going on at that lab!

The lab was an old, abandoned ‘base’ of some sort that the Carnies had moved into. Almost immediately upon arrival, Waddle raced away to do some ‘exploring’ – completely missing a whole mess of Carnies guarding a crate of chemicals. (Based on the description, they were dangerous hallucinogens they were using to contaminate Mr. Snowy’s cotton candy.)

I destroyed the chemicals, and then headed further into the lab.

Note: Here the Carnie dialog just made no sense to me. “I know this is bad stuff, but why do we have to stand here and guard it?” In this case, I’m not sure why ‘bad’ requires it to be guarded – or even why the Carnies guarding it would think it’s ‘bad’. The thing is, it’s *valuable* - that’s why it needs guards, right? So, I’d suggest playing up that fact – it’s clear the stuff is being guarded, so no need to point that out. Instead, I’d focus on the fact that the chemicals are vital to the Carnie plan: “Once we get this stuff into Mr. Snowy’s cotton candy, the party’ll never stop! Half the city’ll be seeing pink elephants.”

This time around, Waddle had definitely bitten off more than he could chew – he had been subdued by the Carnies, and needed a rescue. I was more than happy to oblige. There was only one more crate of Carnie chems to conflagrate (sorry about that), which was enough to shut down the whole operation.

Note: This is a level 30+ arc; it *needs* a ringleader! A Carnie boss (preferably a Dark Ring Mistress, but if there’s a random option to preserve the level range, that’d be a compromise) overseeing the operation to defeat. As is, the third mission is very short, and quite anti-climactic…


Dude, Waddle. Big evil clown-thing attacking your good buddy Pro Payne over here! The inanimate crate that isn’t threatening anybody can wait…



Two points. One, there’s a certain genius to making the character ‘adorably simple minded’ – it fits very well with the game’s sometimes less than stellar AI. Two, props to the author for actually mentioning (in a clue) the rather silly (but completely acceptable) cliché that the best way to handle a crate full of dangerous chemicals is to blow it up.

Waddle, of course, was extremely happy that we stopped the “bad clown’s” plan. But I thought it important that he not come away from this thinking all clowns and circuses were bad. So I took my new little buddy to a real circus… not a bad way to end the day, actually.

Pros: The arc is short and sweet, with very straightforward missions. The story is simple, and easy to follow. I particularly liked how the mission briefing text was written (always important, as that frequently carries much of the story). The development of Waddle as a character was very well done, and builds quite nicely on what’s presented in the previous arcs. It also really adds a lot to the arc – he’s a likeable character. The basic premise also caught my interest almost immediately – in this case, I simply thought more needed to be done with the story. I thought the writing for the mission briefings was the best of the whole PENGUIN series, and I really enjoyed the way they were presented.

Cons: It certainly wouldn’t hurt to add some more ‘flavor’ objectives to the missions – patrols and the like. The number and content of the clues seem appropriate – it did feel like there were some places where the arc could have benefited from ‘end of mission’ (or mission start) clues, though (pay special attention to where you’ve mentioned ‘you’ll look at something later’ or where your character is given something to look over’ – nothing wrong at all with putting that in the dialog, as you’ve done, but there were a few places where you could also have used those nice, high character count clues to really expand the story).

My biggest “gripe”: the Carnies just don’t sound right – they’re ‘voice’ here is more ‘generic gang’ rather than how their dialog is often written in the dev content – especially in more recent missions. A close second is the whole “why is Mr. Snowy needed” thing I mentioned earlier – I’ve got comments regarding that in the walkthrough, so I won’t repeat them here, except to repeat that I’m not suggesting Mr. Snowy be removed. There just needs to be a more solid reason for the Carnies to be using him, rather than just making their own cotton candy. Finally, the Carnie plot feels overly open ended; they’re trying to drug up the population of Paragon City, but a few clues putting more detail into the plan would be nice. What are the Carnies’ trying to accomplish? Even if the goal is nothing more than “random violent mayhem,” having a Carnie waxing philosophical about how much fun the “upcoming party’s” going to be once Paragon’s citizen shed their “silly inhibitions” would help give the Carnie plot a more solid motivation.

Summary: It’s a good arc. Just a little more would make it great! More specifically, it struck me as starting out strong, but kind of ending on a weak note. As always, hopefully the feedback will be helpful for improving the areas where the arc has weaknesses.

Score: 3.96

Only one more arc left before it's time to open back up for round two of submissions!

And a happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Thankee thankee! I've not played against a lot of Carnies; I just wanted a fun excuse to have Waddle in a third arc that was fun to write. I'll take these comments into consideration! I'll let you know if a PENGUIN part 4 is in the works eventually.

It's now time for the next installment of...

...oh wait. I guess Perturbation is up again.

Claiming the Isles (The Nemesis Strike Force) (Arc ID#448371; 3 stars)
(Rogue Morality)

You know, there’s nothing like just kicking up your rocket-booted heels after a nice month of engaging in heavy criminal enterprises (and pulling in boatloads of cash) and just relaxing with a bit of villain fantasy at the Architect Entertainment building. Besides, you never know when you’ll come across a pretty clever idea some well-meaning author has just foolishly posted for perusal by the villain underground. Sure, none of them can hold a candle to the sheer genius of my *real* plots, but there’s always some element to these stories that I could rip off to tweak the master plan here or there.

Besides, my normal hang-out in Oroborus – tweaking various past timelines to better favor my future plans meeting with resounding success – has recently been flooded by these pathetic wannabes with delusions of godhood. Morons. Don’t they know there can only be one ultimate incarnate? And that it’s going to be me? In any case, it was time to get out of there for a while…

So after ‘hacking’ Pro Payne’s forum account to see what was next on his list of reviews (your password was your *birthday*? SERIOUSLY? Idiot.) I was pleased to see it at least had a somewhat villainous bent to it. So I plugged in the ID and got started…

The basic premise: Lord Nemesis is seeking a meeting with me. He’s happy I agreed. He wants to know if I’m willing to do something for him, in return for a dumptruck’s worth of cash. He can’t help but make a few offhand remarks about how simultaneously simple and yet ‘brainmeltingly’ complex the reason for meeting with me is. Get to the point Tin Man…


You know, the MA room is not the most secure place for your clandestine meeting, Nemmie – but seeing as how you brought a dump truck full of money, I’ll let it slide.

He’s got an automaton built to look like a PPD detective. He wants me to kill the real detective, so the automaton can take his place. I don’t really need to be paid to kill people, so I suppose the money is to buy my willingness to continue on with the automaton part of the plan. Whatever. It’s time to beat up some cops.

Notes: Already this seems pretty ‘off’ for a Nemesis plot – he’s being far too straightforward (and, frankly, the fact that he flat out calls his plan ‘brainmeltingly’ complex seems like a very un-Nemesis like thing for him to say). There’s really no reason for him to give me even the details that he does. Offer me lots of money to kill the detective; write into the story later that he slipped in an automaton to replace the slain detective. Also, ‘I knew we’d be meeting so it’s very nice to be in a convienient place and time’ is pretty awkward sounding – do you mean something like “I knew we’d eventually meet face to face; I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. I trust this is a convenient place and time for you?”)

It took precisely no effort to break into the PPD office; from there I broke up a couple of ‘meetings’ and found the Nemesis automaton who was to replace the detective (seems a bit odd there was no objective mentioning him). Oddly, the detective automaton seemed to be wielding rather modern looking twin pistols, but he was helpful in a fight.


Intoning my voice upward at the end of his name isn’t doing it for me. That irritates me. You better be pretty good in a fight, bub.

Note: You might want to consider either switching his set to assault rifle and arming him with the classic Nemesis rifle (which just makes him more consistent with how the automatons are usually armed in other arcs), or perhaps make his guns something more old fashioned, like flintlock pistols. Granted, I am aware that most automatons in other arcs are not the types of people you’d expect to be armed, whereas a police detective would be – so it does make a kind of sense the automaton would be armed normally for a police detective, but it’s still something to consider. Also, it seems rather odd an automaton would have willpower as a defense set – as a matter of opinion, I’d think invulnerability makes more sense.

All good things must come to an end, though – after two floors of beating down ‘the man’ I found my target. Somewhere along the line, my automaton friend had become distracted (maybe it saw a cute coffee-maker or something?), which actually made it a bit odd when the detective kept referring to the double I’d brought with me.

After dispatching the detective, I left the automaton in the office, and headed back to Nemesis. Maybe he had some more paying jobs for me?

Notes: The writing in the clues is a little awkward, in part because they make observations that won’t necessarily match what the player is thinking. For example, the fact the automaton is ‘obsessed’ with Nemesis (which I take to mean he’s slavishly loyal and devoted to Nemesis – obsessed may not be the best word there) doesn’t strike me as creepy per se. That a Nemesis automaton would act as though it ‘idolized’ Nemesis makes sense. Contrary to this was the clue given by defeating the real detective: it suggests that things start up like ‘business as usual’ the next morning at the PPD office. While Nemesis’ very short debriefing suggests the arriving officers were ‘curious’ about the attack, it seems to me like there’d be more ‘awareness’ and *concern* that the office had been attacked by a villain – and that the automaton would try to cover the true motive by telling the PPD ‘reinforcements’ that ‘although the police lost some good men, they did manage to fight off the villain.’ Throw in mention of an APB with a description that doesn’t resemble the player’s character at all (the automaton trying to lead the police off the trail), and I think you’ve got a more believable end to the mission.

I do see now why the automaton had the power sets he did – they’re the same as the detective. That said, unless there’s very little room left in the arc, it might be a nice touch to make the real detective and the automaton identical looking mobs with different power sets.

Next, Nemesis informs me the Freakshow is engaged in a raid somewhere in Paragon City, and it is vitally important that I gain their trust, even though I’m going to seem to be there to try to stop them. Huh? That makes no sense… Okay, I’m supposed to get to the Freak’s raid leader, and do what he asks to gain the trust of his faction.

Note: We’ve quickly gone from I’m doing this for Nemesis for a nice, fat paycheck, to ‘I must do as I’m told because *I’m* Nemesis and you are my peon.’ Or at least that’s what it’s seeming like. The easiest way to buy into the premise of this arc is to suppose I’m acting as an extremely high-priced mercenary for Nemesis. Remember that *any* level 45+ Rogue or Villain is at the top of their game; it’s unrealistic to assume they will act as anyone’s lackey at this point, so I’d highly recommend you do anything possible to play up the fact I’m being paid very well for these tasks Nemesis is having me do. Add that he’s adding a nice big premium onto my pay to not ask questions – just make sure the job gets done!

A short ride later (presumably Nemesis has a boat or steam powered jet or something to get me to Paragon) I find myself in a city block overrun by Freakshow. Given that the Freaks are always looking for a good fight, they’re more than willing to go toe to toe with yours truly; the fact they probably thought I was a hero coming to spoil the fun didn’t hurt, I’m sure.

As I took down Freak after Freak, I tried to spread the word that I wasn’t a hero – I was here to help the Freaks do whatever act of senseless destruction they were no doubt here to do. They kept telling me that I needed to talk to their main man, Thrash (which is something I’d only be allowed to do if *they* didn’t put me down first – well, not really, but wouldn’t it be cool if that’s how the mission was put together?). So I tracked Thrash down.


Hey, cool! It’s like your name is instructions on what to do with you…

The Excelsior-addled mountain of muscle put up a good fight, but he wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. And beating the tar out of him, but not slapping a med beacon on him to teleport him to the Zig, was (predictably) enough to earn his trust. He told me he’d make me an honorary member of the cell if I’d finish the job of planting bombs around the city block. For what Nemesis way paying me, I was happy to oblige. (Note: The clue made it sound a bit like I was planting them all around the city – but saying I’m planning them around the block strikes me as fitting the mission a little better.)

Upon my return, Nemesis told me that he was expecting Thrash to ask me to help with the bombing (well, duh… anybody could have seen that one coming – oh, and, by the way, it’s “In fact” not “Infact” – minor typo there). But he also clued me in to the fact that one of the buildings targeted was a Fargo Industries lab that was working on a ‘power dulling’ technology. Nemesis acting as though he was interested in the ‘tech, which made me wonder why he was okay with the Freaks blowing it sky high?! If it was important to his plan (and my continued payments) I could only hope another of his agents had spirited the details of the technology out of the lab before the bombs went off.

Well, as long as I got paid, it wasn’t really my problem; at least not yet. So I waited for Nemesis to give me something new to do – nothing wrong with adding yet more zeroes to this year’s paycheck…

Oh, wait. According to Nemesis - *now* I’m going to break into the lab and steal the tech. And I’ve got about thirty mintues before the building comes down. And he’s getting uppity with me, demanding I do what he says (reminding me that I’m in his employ). Bad move, Nemmie. Handing me a nice check doesn’t buy you the right to mouth off. Way I see it, this is *your* problem, what with your “master plan” involving having the building blown up *before* you got what you needed out of it.

After negotiating some extra hazard pay (easy once I pointed out that without my help, he wasn’t getting his precious ‘tech), I headed into the building. (Note: Yeah, the commentary here is kind of a jab at the fact that it’s risky, story-wise, to have the contact ‘talk down’ to a very high level character. But I’m also secretly hoping that it gives you some ideas as to how to “re-frame” some of the text to, perhaps, make the player feel more ‘motivated’ to play the missions…)

Not surprisingly, the lab was in fairly poor condition. Nemesis informed me that the Detective Jenson automaton would be in the lab (I’m guessing he was leading the PPD there), and would help me find the device. (Quick Note: It’s just a minor nitpick, but I think “Detective Jenson Automaton” would be a better name than “Detective Jenson?” given that I’m well aware of the fact he *isn’t* the real detective.)

The lab itself was crawling with Longbow and PPD trying (unsuccessfully) to shore up the structure – and no doubt trying to get anything of value (and any injured people) out before the building collapsed. Much to my chagrin, the PPD had brought a hero with them…


[Insert clichéd offcolor joke about frigid women…]

…but, powerful though she was, she showed the same general weakness to a beating with severe malice that most of those stupid enough to face off against me show.

Stupid Longbow should be thanking me, actually – I gave a whole horde of them an excuse to mediport out of the building before it collapsed. I found the “Power Duller” device on the fourth floor of the lab, picked it up, and headed out with more than ten minutes to spare. Hopefully Nemesis would be pleased enough to add a little extra bonus into my already substantial pay.

Nemesis was happy with my work, and made a casual mention that not only was this device key to his plan, but that with it in his possession, we were ready to begin with the final phase of whatever he was up to.

Or at least we would be, if it wasn’t for his obsessive need to always have a backup plan.

Hey, what can I say? It’s your money, N-man. If you want to pay me the big bucks to run some idiot side errand for you instead of going ahead and seizing the glory (or whatever you’re up to), who I’m I not to take your cash? Especially if I still get my cut of the ‘big plan’ later on.

Notes (In character, this time): It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that a Power Duller might have some role is weakening or eliminating superpowers – and this thing looks like it might be able to emit a field large enough to affect a lot of stuff. Now, I have no reason to suspect *I’m* the target of this thing: Nemesis has got better things to do than take me out for no apparent reason. But let’s face it – you don’t get this far in the Isles by blindly trusting that ArchVillains are going to just leave you alone once your buisiness with them is concluded. Especially if you’re walking away with enough of their money to buy and sell the whole of Hawaii three times over… so before giving this thing to Nemesis, I think it’d be best if I install a hidden kill switch so that I can remotely turn this sucker off if I need to. So provided Big-N behaves himself, we’re all happy. But should he decide the bill for my services is too high and figures that his very own Power Duller’s gonna let him skip out on his monetary obligations to me … well, it’ll be time to teach him a very hard lesson. (And no, none of that is in the arc; take is as an indication that any villain or rogue type is going to be aware of the potential for ‘contact betrayal’ and would probably take steps to be ready for it – just in case.)

After lecturing me on the value of having a backup plan (“so that your plan may continue even when your opponents think they have succeeded” – and even more condescending statements about how ‘obvious’ Nemesis’ genius is and how, if I’ve got a brain in my head at all, I’ll see things his way), Nemesis reveals that the backup plan is to upload my biometrics into his fabrication systems so that he can start churning out automatons of me. Notes: Nemesis’ dialog here needs some work: he says “processes” when I think you mean “purposes” – and “you” instead of “your.”

Yeah, Nemesis. If this was real life, I’d be thanking you for the wads of cash, and telling you to find some other idiot to copy – and then ripping apart your feeble attempt to stop me from leaving with my life. But this is MA-land where I can play along with catching an idiot ball the size of a small moon. Alright, fine. I’ll just play along for story purposes.

“Sure boss. Upload away. Where do I need to stand?”

Got it. I’m going to head into your base, *fight* my way to the computer (so as to give your men some practice in fighting me, to “keep them at the pinnacle of their training” – or some such nonsense), and then upload myself. (Note to self: Riiiiight… not only am I giving you the ability to replicate me, I’m also giving your men a crash course in every aspect of how I fight, requiring me to *not* leave a trail of corpses in my wake so that they’ll learn something.)

So anyway, I head into the base and get started…

The base is actually an old warehouse filled with Nemesis troops. In all honestly, fighting my way through them was a decent enough workout (aside from the occasional quintuple vengenced Colonel, which, now that I think about it, was not that bad a workout either.)

There was a big, bad Fake Nemesis there, and he summoned a big bad Nemesis ambush. But it wasn’t anything “judiciously taking out all the minions and badly injuring the Colonels before you try to hit them all with a single AoE” couldn’t handle.


You know, this brings up a good point… If I’m supposed to be helping your men keep themselves in top shape, wouldn’t it be a lot more cost-effective to just stock the base with your men, and avoid several million dollars in damage to all of your robots, whom I *can’t* just beat into unconsciousness?

Found the upload device in the back. Uploaded myself. Let the betrayal begin…
Note: More so than the first three, this mission had a “it’s just filler to give you something to do between missions three and the real grand finale.” Doesn’t really advance the plot any more than using the mission briefing text to say Nemesis pulls out a scanner and does a full body scan. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy playing the mission, but it wouldn’t hurt for there to be more of a point to it beyond just taking up time (which is what it feels like right now).


Golly gee willikers, Mr. Wilson, you don’t think it’s dangerous for me to upload myself, thereby allowing Nemesis to make thousands of souped-up copied of me? He’d never use them against me, right?

Color me surprised, but Nemesis hasn’t yet revealed his betrayal. He actually offers me my money now (…although I’d prefer the story be offering payments after every task...), or to double it if I help him in his real scheme. Okay, I’ll at least see what that real scheme is…

(Not like I’d actually walk away while he’s got detailed plans on how to build copies of me anyway. In the real Rogue Isles, I’d be finding a way to deal with that right after this plan of Nemesis’ was over. Heck, if we’re going with the whole ‘for real’ approach, I’d never had let him ‘build a better me’ no matter how much he paid.)

Well I’ll be – he’s going to play it straight. At least it seems so. We’re going to head over to Grandville to unseat Recluse himself. The Freak are running interference, and have prompted the Big Spider to send his lieutenants ‘out’ (It’s not clear exactly where), leaving Recluse alone. That leaves, Nemesis, myself, and those copies of me to take out Recluse – who should be weakened by the power nullifier. Not only is the pay right up there, Nemesis offers to make me his second in command – not a bad place to be. Means there’s only one rung to climb when it’s time to become the new head cheese.

(Note: Again, the writing is awkward here, but I do like how the arc makes it clear that I’m doing what I’m doing for the money, and not just become I’m a loyal lackey. Granted, there are some thing’s I don’t buy I would have agreed to, but let’s move on with the story…)

I arrive in Grandville, accompanied by the familiar ‘Arachnos sounds’ (Huh? What is that supposed to mean?). Shortly therein I encounter Nemesis, who will be my ally here. That’s good, because Recluse can be an awfully tough nut to crack.

Heading down the Grandville tower, Nemesis and I tear through the Arachnos legions, until we encounter Recluse himself. Sadly, Nemesis, overconfident idiot that he is, decides to go gallivanting around the room taking pot shots at every major spot inside. The combined agro is more than I can withstand – but, fortunately, the same idiotic AI that makes Nemesis act like Fusionette also means nobody perceives him as a threat after my defeat. That’s fortunate, because perhaps I can clear the remaining spawns from the map before I pick up Nemesis again, allowing our combined firepower to defeat Recluse… we can hope.

Okay … round two at least lets me clear out all of the spawns from the chamber where Recluse is. Thankfully, as I write this, his minions are timing out and respawning (not that I’ll focus on them when I attack Recluse for real.) So now I’ll grab Nemmie and attack Recluse directly…


Hey, here’s a plan, Nemmie. Why don’t *you* solo Lord Recluse this time around, and *I’ll* stay in the back and take potshots?

…Okay, that didn’t go so well. So it’s time to break out the Biological Mutagens and the Chemical Burn Nuke. Nothing like stacking a major damage resistance debuff on the bad guy while giving myself a huge damage buff. This is too much for Recluse to take…

And Lord Recluse is defeated. Mostly because of all of the stuff *I* brought to the fight – Nemesis’ lame little ‘Power Duller’, or whatever, had practically no effect.

And then Nemesis turned on me, calling in my automaton to ensure my defeat. Which was rather pointless, because I’d just faced Recluse and was fresh out of nukes. So it wasn’t like I was going to beat Nemesis…

But that didn’t matter anyway. All I had to do was defeat my automaton, and then I’d be able to walk away from this whole thing, *billions* richer (and with no worries of more of them coming after me, because ol’ Nemmie didn’t bother to back up the programming and put his all in this one copy…). What did I care if Nemesis controlled the Rogue Isles? As long as there were no more perfect copies of me running around, and I had enough money to buy an archipelago a whole lot bigger than the Rogue Isles, I was fine with the situation.

Note: Obviously this just illustrates what I see as major flaws in the potential ‘fun factor’ of this arc – the whole final mission is a build up to a giant ‘f.u.’, and the ONLY point of the previous mission was to set up that very same ‘f.u.’ – which was not terribly hard to even see coming.

Stuff I didn’t hate: While the mission design itself is pretty standard stuff, that isn’t a bad thing (because it works). Since the author avoids “kill alls”, but tends to use what at least seem like moderate-sized or larger maps, the arc is very flexible in terms of letting the player control the pacing. Players interested in rewards and combat have decent numbers of foes to fight through in each mission (I was set to +0/x5, and routinely got between 300-400 tickets dropped from foes, with an equal sized reward at the end of each mission), but a player who wants to quickly move to each objective and not linger in the missions could theoretically play through the arc (especially the first four missions) quite fast. Another plus is the Rogue alignment of the arc – the arc’s premise pretty much requires you to be acting as Nemesis’ lackey, which is something that would test the patience of most level 45+ villains, but is right up a Rogue’s alley, since you can justify what you are doing by supposing that Nemesis is paying you obscene amounts of money for your services. And … if only the other would consider this in a rewrite … it at least has the potential to remove the overly tired cliché of your villainous ‘ally’ predictably betraying you in the end. Done correctly, the arc can easily be reworked so that Nemesis has no motivation to betray you, and you have no motivation to do anything that would create a conflict *worthy* of betrayal.

Which brings me to…

Perturbations: I hate to say this – I really do, but, in my opinion, as written, the arc just isn’t that good. There are two mitigating factors. One, it’s just my opinion; maybe I’m crazy and most of the people who play it think it’s a lot better than I did, in which case you can safely ignore my criticisms. But, two, if you are inclined to bear with me, I’ll try to explain in more detail where I had the biggest problems, and what I think can be done about them.

As written, the main villain betrays you right at the end of the arc. And does so in a way that makes the whole final mission very anticlimactic for a variety of reasons. One, the betrayal itself is so obvious that you can see it coming from a mile away. That alone would be a gripe, but not a deal-breaker. What turns it into the latter is the fact that in order to set up the betrayal, the arc writes your character as a stunningly oblivious, world-class moron. And then, to make matters worse, even requires you to do things that are not consistent with the arc’s alignment. Finally, look at how it causes the mechanics of the mission to work: best case scenario is I defeat Nemesis, walk all the way back to the mission entrance, and end the arc by fighting my clone (far easier than either Nemesis or Recluse – and doesn’t even award any XP). *OR* Nemesis actually defeats me, I go to the hospital. Zone in. My clone is right there; I beat him for no XP, arc ends. Either option is not even remotely as thrilling as the fight with Recluse was.

See, as a villain, I’d expect Nemesis to betray me no matter what, so I’d be taking precautions to avoid it. One example would be to secretly program a virus into the upload so that my automatons will be loyal to me, allowing me to turn the tables on Nemesis the moment the expected betrayal comes. Heck, you could even have Nemesis “expect” me to do that, and block the virus so the automatons *still* turn on me. *Anything* would be better than what actually happens – just blindly doing what Nemesis tells me to do, in spite of the fact that, as a player, it’s so glaringly obvious what I’m doing is going to come back to haunt me.

But here’s the thing: none of that is necessary at all, because it isn’t even a villain arc. Presumably, I’m playing a Rogue. That’s great, because it can be used to sidestep the entire issue. My motivation is money, not power. Nemesis doesn’t *have* to even offer me a place as his right-hand man in the last mission. That enticement isn’t necessary: all he has to do is offer me a fortune so large that I can leave the Rogue Isles and retire in style (or whatever). What do I care if Nemesis has the Isles? I don’t care about world conquest, or having power over millions. If it’d been an option, I’d have gladly said, “The price is right, Nemesis. But keep your offer of power – all I need is the money.”

So the fight ends with Recluse. Nemesis pays me. He’s now master of the Rogue Isles, and I’ve made a fortune to end all fortunes getting him there. I retire somewhere far, far away – at least until the next time someone offers me a large enough pay check to be worthwhile. It’s not a perfect ending, but it’s far more satisfying than walking headlong into a trap that I saw coming three missions ago.

Now, granted, if you remove the betrayal component, you need a different purpose for the automatons. An easy option would be to have them as allies in the final mission – perhaps even throw in several placed bosses, or even a “patron” AV (perhaps one of them remained behind with Recluse?) to warrant the extra firepower.

Or, you could go down a completely different route: make mission five mission four (with perhaps a ‘prototype automaton’ to help, in addition to Nemesis), then have mission five be the assault on the Nemesis base where the automatons are being manufactured – you’ve helped Nemesis gain control of the Isles, you’ve been handsomely paid, but you can’t allow him to keep making endless copies of yourself, so you need to finish up by destroying the base where they are being made.

All of these suggestions are aimed at giving the arc a much more satisfying conclusion – which, in my opinion, involves removing the betrayal element (just too many pitfalls there). But let me finish up by mentioning several other things that I think need work here:

1. I’d really play up the “Rogue” aspect; don’t just assume you’re on retainer. Have Nemesis open each mission with a monetary offer even more lucrative than the last – to paraphrase Spaceballs, “You’re not just doing it for the money – you’re doing it for a whole sh*tload of money!”

2. Have a friend read over the dialog and clues and offer pointers as to how to “say what you’re trying to say” better – some of the text reads rather awkwardly, and this kind of thing is always useful; I’d be willing to bet a lot of authors here do something very similar to improve their work (or, at the very least, read everything in their arc several times out loud to see how it sounds).

3. Try to find a way to tie in the Power “Duller” better – it doesn’t seem to have any effect, which makes that whole part of the plot seem pointless.

4. Likewise, either rewrite (or rearrange) the backup plan involving your automatons so that their inclusion in the story isn’t all negative.

5. Try writing in some “internal monologue” for the player making it clear their character has serious misgivings about what Nemesis is up to - *especially* when it comes time to upload for building the automatons. Even add objectives into the mission that could be the character’s attempts to subvert or put controls on Nemesis’ plan – a high level rogue is going to be *very* leery of anybody’s attempt to build robot copies of him or herself that are even more powerful than the original; even if the money is just too good to pass up, you’d expect the character to automatically take steps to keep the automatons from being used against him.


Summary: There’s nothing wrong with the mission design or the pacing – although there’s nothing terribly noteworthy about it either. There’s potential in the story, especially if the Rogue aspects of it are played up. As is, the arc would be similar in quality to one of the early ‘canon’ arcs, but the arc is held back by serious flaws in the plot that require the character to (1) do things that seem pointless, or (2) act unrealistically stupid. Collectively, they really bring the score down.

Score: 2.962

That officially clears round one. I will be open to suggestions again the moment I update the OP; I'm technically closed again the moment I get six viable arcs (but there's always next time!) I do at least suggest you read the OP so that you know the ground rules; remember I'm open to requests for minimum in-game ratings, but you do have to make it clear in your request! If there's nothing mentioned there, I *don't* have a lower limit for the in-game rating (although it'd have to be a truly awful arc to actually get 1 star in game.)

Hey Coulomb2, great to see you're reviewing arcs again! Sure wish I could do the same, but the Holiday Season means I have even less free time than I normally do.

Anyway, I'd be interested in seeing what you thought of my newest arc, "The Icari". I made it for Dr. Aeon's 3rd Challenge, and it's quite lower than ProPayne's level range, but I designed the arc for solo play, so hopefully it fits your criteria for this thread.

I know you've enjoyed my "Galactic Protectorate" series of arcs, and while "The Icari" has nothing to do with them, I hope you'll enjoy the story and characters if/when you play through the arc.

With regards to your OP, I don't really care about the current rating system; I'm more interested in feedback, to be honest. Just rate the arc what you think it deserves. As for the difficulty, unlike my "Galactic Protectorate" series, there are very few custom enemies in "The Icari". You'll mostly be facing off against the Council and the Circle of Thorns, and since the arc caps at Level 24, ProPayne really shouldn't have any problems, even if you've ramped up your difficulty a bit. As long as you haven't set your difficulty to x8 or something like that, you should be fine.

As an aside, this arc was designed for Level 20 -24 Heroes, and as such the player's character is usually referred to as an "amateur" throughout most of the arc. Perhaps, for the sake of maintaining the RP "style" of your reviews thusfar, ProPayne could treat this arc as more of a "flashback" to his younger days as a hero (the souvenir of this arc could act as a catalyst to trigger ProPayne's "memory" of the events which occurred in this arc, or something to that extent)? Just a suggestion! I look forward to your review.

'Ey there!

I'd like to see you take a shot at "To Reign in Hell" (448234). It's a quirky villainous post-apoc adventure with a whole lotta Television!


Thanks in advance,

-- Z.

Thank you very much indeed for the play! I knew the 4th mission was a bit filler, but really I didn't want it to only be a 4 mission arc. The last idea of having the last mission be to take out the automaton factory is very good indeed, which is something I'll most likely do. However, if I do that, when could Nemmy take the biometrics. Maybe I'll just mention it before the fourth mission.

But as I said, thanks for the review and thanks for being honest.

Continuing what I did last year, I'm currently using what little available time I've got to play through arcs in the Player's Choice awards. I won't finish all of them (not by a long shot), but I'll post mini-reviews here for the ones I do get to. There's not much to the mini-reviews; just a few sentences giving overall impressions about the arc.

Pro Payne's regularly scheduled full reviews will be back next week, starting with Mirror Man's "Icari" arc. The requests have been very light this time around, so there are still four slots open, so there's still a LOT of room in the queue.

Today's category is Short Arcs:

Note: All arcs presented here automatically get 5 stars in-game from me, since the authors haven’t directly requested a play or review. The ratings listed here are what my scoring system actually rates the arc, but, again were not given in-game; all arcs here were rating 5 stars in game.

By Any Other Name #398110 (3 stars)

The Rikti C’Kelkah wants to ‘pay back’ the good Vanguard has done for the Traditionalists. His good deed: rescue the devoured Pyriss, and restore her to normal. In the final mission, a newly restored Pyriss helps you defeat a Rikti spy that had infiltrated the Vanguard.

It’s a fairly quick play (although the outdoor map with the Redcaps isn’t a favorite), with a straightforward story. The story’s not particularly deep, but the arc is fun.

Score: 3.125

"Hack" #403410 (2 stars)

Erm … okay, apparently it’s a contest (that is now closed). You have 15 minutes. There are 64 glowies. Each one takes something like 2-3 minutes to search. You have to get the correct ones to win. I checked out the url, and there are – or rather were – some nice prizes.

It’s an interesting, and innovative use for AE. If the contest was still going on, I’d be more inclined to check it out. But it’s not really a story.

Score: 2.08 (Case of “there’s hardly anything here for me to score”)

(The following is a re-post of a portion of the mini-review in the MA arc club thread)

The Murders in the RWZ Morgue #452144 (4 stars)

Likes: The mission is put together very well, and it’s actually quite fun to play through. By and large, the murder mystery is interesting.

Dislikes: I did think the solution was a let down – it came right out of left field since the diplomat didn’t even appear until the very end, and there really wasn’t much of a clue as to why the monkey would go on a killing spree until you actually see the solution at the end of the mission. I think the arc needs at least some foreshadowing that the diplomat exists to make the solution to the murder a bit more satisfying. Also, an additional (or even optional) clue where you find an autopsied Rikti warrior in the base might be good, so there’s at least some clue present as to what might set the monkey off. Heck, a few more ‘red herring’ clues added to the mission might be useful (so the player doesn’t automatically assume every clue is relevant to the mystery). And I was never clear why the Rikti monkey *started* with bloody paws – it seems like he’d only have blood on his paws *after* the murder… unless I was following the trail backwards, and the monkey had hid in the box afterwards, then left again.

In other words, I’d favor some more (perhaps optional) clues scattered about – some relevant, some not – to really make this feel more like a murder mystery.

And no, I’ve never read Murders in the Rue Morgue, so I wouldn’t know if that story also has the same ‘plot holes’ in it (nor would it convince me that more clues wouldn’t make the arc more fun).

It was still a very fun arc!
Score: 4.458

Storming Citadel #379488 (4 stars)

Neat premise – good design, good choice of a map. I like the idea to appropriate elementals and will’o’wisps as Citadel’s internal defenses.

By the way, I completely ignored all requests to lower my difficulty. And then my wife walked in, and we had a five minute conversation. And I still beat the mission. With about 8 seconds to spare.

Well done!

Score: 4.33

Talos Vice #338380 (5 stars)

It’s an homage to Miami Vice; the author’s done a great job of capturing the right feel with very well constructed mission dialog, and clever ‘custom’ groups. The story itself is pretty straightforward, but that’s not at all inconsistent with the show. Of course, where the arc really shines is the construction – it is very, very well put together.

The only thing I found objectionable was the use of “Int.” and “Ext.” to describe settings. I absolutely concede that it is probably for the best given space limits, but it was still a little distracting.

Score: 5.045

And just one last time: while I certainly am using my standard, highly subjective 'scores' to sort arcs for my 1st and 2nd place votes (and to give them 'out of game' ratings), all arcs played for the Player's Choice contest automatically get 5 stars in game.

I see you're starting just as late on playing through those nominees as I am. However, you're smarter than I am to start with the short arcs. I started with the heroic arcs. I didn't even finish them last night.

Next up are the best hero arcs. I’ve had the pleasure to review several of these already – where applicable, I’ll include links to those reviews. Although listed here, I have not re-played the 1st and last arc in the list because the review was so recent. For “Golden Age Secret” and “In Pursuit of Liberty” I’ve only done a speed play-through to get an impression of how much (if at all) the arc has changed (and if any changes would alter how I scored it).

Again, all of these arcs got 5 stars in game, regardless of what is reported here. Frankly, they all range from very good to flat-out superb. Definitely one of those situations where I wish I had more than two votes…

Dhahabu Kingdom and the Indelible Curse of Hate #367872 (5 stars)

Here’s a link to my recent review of this one.

Since this one was reviewed very recently, and doesn’t look like it went through anything other than minor tweaking as a result, I didn’t play through it again.

Score: 4.83

The Golden Age Secret of the Paragon Society #344596 (5 stars)

One heck of a lot of fun steamrolling the Nazi’s. In my opinion, this one is Wrong Number’s best arc (of the ones I’ve played), and she’s got some very good arcs! A link to my original review – I played through it quite quickly this time, but it still seems very similar to when I played it before (granted, I’m probably only going to chatch a drastic change in the entire plot, or the total absence of something that really annoyed me – which the original arc had none of).

Score: 5.42

In Pursuit of Liberty #344916 (4 stars)

Here’s the original review, although this arc has clearly gone through enough changes to warrant a rescore, and added comments.

A few things I noticed: Isn’t Liberty Rose’s costume supposed to have gold in it? Maybe it’s a small tiara or headband or something that I missed?

Also, very, very, *very* minor nitpick – there’s *nothing* wrong with the note in the third mission (I get it – MAL gave the journal to Fern, Fern then locked it away – so ‘this’ journal, in the note, is fine), but for whatever odd reason, my brain is happier if it’s “the journal”, not “this journal” – “this” implies it’s right there, in Fern’s possession, *to me* - that’s not technically what it means, but that’s the impression reading the clue gave me. Just figured I’d mention it. Feel free to ignore…

Mission 4: I think the reference to a Nemesis plot is a joke – but I think it draws away from the story. Shouldn’t the Dark Alliance be under MAL’s control? Keep the arc’s plot *tight*! (Again, just a suggestion, but it’s what popped into my head when I read the ‘Mission Briefing’ clue).

Overall, this arc, in my opinion, shows very significant improvement over when I reviewed it last:

The whole ‘fairy tale’ feel is even better done (although the arc doesn’t really cast itself that way any more), and MAL is better integrated into the plot. There’s only one thing that (again, in my opinion) is still missing – an actual plan for MAL. He’s practically destroyed the world in the future (although the Nemesis ‘joke’ sort of draws away from that, which is why I think it’s a mistake to include it) – and the aspect of the story where my role is to help Liberty become powerful enough to defeat him is very much improved. But it remains unclear as to what exactly his plan is. His *motives* are fine – it’s the *plan of execution* of his revenge that doesn’t seem to be there…

Score: 3.822

Legacy of a Rogue #459586 (5 stars)

An extremely well done story that really draws you in. Put simply, this was an excellent arc with a very compelling story.

What I liked: just about everything. If I’ve got to name a few specifics: the idea to make a recurring, if relatively minor, villain of the arc’s iconic hero a “redeemed” hero herself (who then later fell from grace – but just a bit), and, ultimately his lover to boot was a very cool twist. I saw it coming – but the fact I *wished* the plot was going to take that twist is why I think the author did such a good job. Then to use the twist to play up the bitter anger this brought up in the hero’s once devoted ‘original’ sidekick added even more. And the custom group was very well designed, visually. But…

What I didn’t: …eh, the custom group, while extremely neat looking, did seem a bit overpowered – although a few rather difficult ambushes probably contributed to that impression. And the level range for the arc meant the Circle spawns where heavy with the ‘spectrals’ – and dear LORD I *HATE* those things…

…but don’t let that fool you. This was a great arc.

Score: 5.295

Made to Wave the Flag #384776 (5 stars)

Wow. Just wow. This is the first time I’ve played a “great escape” type arc in MA, and what a “first” – I can’t imagine how this arc could have been better. Excellent writing and design; it kept me glued to the screen wanting to know what was going to happen next.

I literally have nothing bad to say about it. Very, very well done!

Score: 5.84


Task Force Mutternacht #349522 (5 stars)

Did a very recent review of this one; here’s the link. The review is very detailed, so no need to repeat what I wrote here, except to say that this is an excellent arc.

Score: 4.955

I *might* have enough time to play the villain arcs and cast my vote for those before the deadline.

Heh. Can't really ask for higher praise than speechlessness. Glad you enjoyed it!

Hi, Coulomb2.

When you find time, please play my new arc, "Krusaders Adventures" (475115).

The inspiration for the arc was 1960s Justice League of America comics, the kind written by Gardner Fox and illustrated by Mike Sekowski. In those JLA adventures, typically, the story was divided into "chapters" where different pairs of Leaguers would respond to separate emergencies, and, in the final chapter, the heroes would come together to confront the villain behind it all.

This format lent itself well to Mission Architect. I wanted to create a story for my supergroup friends to play and enjoy. Hopefully, players outside of my supergroup will like it, too.

Thank you for your consideration.
Starr

Important Reminder: Each arc here was given 5 stars in game since these were not 'asked for' reviews (or mini-reviews). Pro Payne still has three slots open for detailed reviews, as of this post.

Here are my mini-reviews for the villain arcs. They were actually mostly played through with my Blood Widow character (since he can get XP, and most of the arcs here happened to have a level range that was pretty close to the Widow's level). "The End of Saturday Morning", though, is a high level arc, so I played through it with Perturbation - my level 50 EM/EA brute.

I'm currently working on finishing up my detailed review of "The Icari" - that will be posted soon: either tomorrow or the day after.

Fear and Loathing on Striga Isle (#350522) (5 stars)

I played and reviewed this arc in March; go here if you want to see the review. Thought it was a great arc then, and still think so now.

Score: 4.875

Unfair Trade (#373846) (5 stars)

An old cellmate calls in a favor, and I find myself in a plot to transfer the powers of the heroines Flambeaux and Polar Shift to him. Although it’s likely the heroines will eventually have their powers restored, my aid creates a potentially powerful new ally – and absolves me of a debt.

Good, solid, and pretty fast-paced arc. Well written, and well designed. I definitely liked that little “geek” touch – name Maxwell, who has just gotten fire and cold powers, after Maxwell’s Daemon. Nice.

Only thing that seemed odd to me was Nemesis angle – seems pretty clear it was to give you more to do in the office (and foreshadow how Nemesis takes over businesses), but it didn’t actually bother me.

Score: 4.56

The Do-It-Yourself Doom Army Project (#410418) (5 stars)

Dear old Granny Bloodfist has decided to help me build my own ARMY OF DOOM! With her help, I recruit all the necessary personnel, put down a rebellion in my ranks, and then demonstrate my AWESOME POWER by ripping the heart out of Grandville.

The missions are particularly well done here – the arc’s got clever design and plenty of little “side things” to do. And it passed what is potentially the hardest test of any ‘comedy’ arc (since comedy tends to be subjective) – at least this audience member found it quite funny. My ‘army’ was a hoot. I only wish I’d been ramped up to a higher difficulty so that I could see what one of the bosses was like…

What didn’t I like? Eh … I’d like to have seen more clues. And I’d be happier if the lackey’s didn’t have caltrops. But don’t let that fool you – it was a very good arc!

Score: 4.53

The End of Saturday Morning (#391934) (3 stars)

I start out on a ‘caper’ to turn an entire planet into a ball of gold (and thereby enjoy the benefits of an endless supply of money – at least until ten to the twenty-fourth kilos of gold makes the metal rather worthless on the market) – but it quickly seems as though I’m falling victim to some sort of TV fantasy. I survive the experience, but end up quite happy to have destroyed the fictional worlds intended to delight young children, if only to ensure I never have to experience them again…

Whatever the audience this arc was intended for, I’m definitely not it. This was no fun for me at all … and I say that with full knowledge that I don’t think the author *intended* it to be.

Likes: Well, um … there’s a kind of surreal quality to it. And it does capture the whole ‘the side of good is stupidly powerful in Saturday morning cartoons, so how could a self-respecting villain ever have any realistic hopes to triumph?’ motif. The arc is labeled ‘challenging’ and *absolutely* delivers what it promises.

Dislikes: To accomplish what is mentioned just before this paragraph, the author has had to subject me to just about everything that I’d not enjoy – if I had to make a list of foes I’d rather not fight, they’ve been reskinned, given new descriptions, and inserted into this arc in multiples. And then attached to ambushes. So I get to fight something I’m not having any fun fighting, and then one or more large ambushes stream in to ensure that I can top off a not very fun fight with a defeat. By the time it was done, completing the arc was a chore – I was deliberately looking for the next objective so that I could finish it as fast as possible and move on.

I like this author’s work. The problem here is that this arc, however well designed (and it strikes me as designed to do what the author intends), is not the kind of thing I want to play. I’m sure others do – but this one’s not for me.

Score: 2.787

Until the End of the World (#431270) (5 stars)

Reviewed this one not long ago at all; you can find the details here . I was of the opinion the arc was very well done; I enjoyed it a great deal.

Score: 4.827.

The Icari (Arc ID#458576, 4 stars)

Today Pro Payne is relaxing, and doing a bit of ‘net surfing. His ‘time off’ is interrupted by a news report that streams onto the monitor… the Council, led by Maestro, are attacking Atlas Park, interested in a meteor that struck near there last night.

Before long, the Icari – who, according to the story, are the second most famous supergroup in Paragon City – have arrived on the scene to put an end to the Council threat.

For no good reason, I rush to help. Note: That probably sounds harsher than I mean it to, but I’m immediately noticing a ‘motivation’ issue related to a logical flaw: if the Icari are so powerful, we’re talking multiple level 50 heroes, which suggests the Council attack warrants that level of response. As a mere level 24 hero, what possible help would I be? I’m not saying you shouldn’t start the story this way, but I do think the mission briefing should give more motivation as to why I’d rush off to help, given the circumstances. Possibilities include: (1) It’s a chance to see the Icari in action, maybe learn a few things. (2) I’m the cautious type – I doubt I’ll be needed, but I’ll head there just in case. In either case, that means the mission “description” should also reflect what I’m really going there for: instead of “Defend Atlas Park from Council” how about “Watch the Icari in Action!” or “Lend a Hand in Atlas Park.”

When I get there, I find that the Council has somehow subdued the Icari. I first rescue Patriotic Man, followed by Mental Maiden (and I’m now noticing that these heroes appear to be deliberate clichés of hero archetypes: the strong, handsome, nearly invincible leader, the unrealistically ‘hot’ heroine – who typically has psychic powers; it’s actually kind of a neat touch). What seems a bit odd is they don’t make much mention about how they got subdued in the first place – if *I* can defeat the Council guarding them, then whatever captured them must be something I haven’t seen yet, but they don’t react surprised at their capture at all.


I’ll bet you’ve one of those plush Statesman toys on your bed, don’t you?

Quick Note: Oh! You might want to make Mental Maiden’s “first injured” line something other than “Oh, you did not just shoot at me.” The problem with the fly AI is that the NPCs something do small amounts of damage to themselves by dropping a short ways – which can lead to Mental Maiden saying that, even though nothing is shooting at us. Granted, it’s completely safe to put lines like that at 75% health, etc.

Typhoon is next, followed by Sentinel X-39 (the obligatory intelligent robot). Does seem a tad strange he talks like the Rikti – ironic given that he was built to fight them (but that doesn’t actually bother me). And then, finally, Wildcat (the obligatory catgirl).

With the Icari rescued, it’s now time to enlist their help in defeating Maestro. With five heroes to aid me, it’s a very, very quick fight. Maestro goes down, amid no small amount of bragging that his defeat is meaningless and whatever he’s planning will be very bad news for all of us, regardless of what we’ve done here. Presumably, the meteor fragment I find on him is part of this plan of his…


And now the Icari are assembled! Except for Patriotic Man, who kind of got lost on top of city hall. Wait – is that really a giant heart on Mental Maiden’s tuckus?

Early Impressions: The story is off to a pretty good start, although a few things seem “off” – it doesn’t seem reasonable the Icari could be captured by foes I can defeat; you’ve got a lot of options there (“That field Maestro had prepared five force cages specifically tuned to our resonances! He knew we’d be coming!” would be one example), but it does strike me as a loose end that would be good to tie up.

I’ve got another suggestion, but one that you might want to be very careful about, even if you think it’s a good one (and you might not) – one way to make the Icari seem very, very powerful is to actually make them Elite Bosses or even “AVs” – pity you can’t make them “Hero” class. You’ll get complaints about overpowered allies, but it would at least make them far more powerful than you, and, should the player wish to fight Maestro as a full AV (I didn’t), 5 Elite Boss companions greatly improves the odds…

One significant criticism: I really couldn’t think of a good reason, either story wise, or play style, to have the Icari come in one at a time – given that its an outdoor map, that really leads to a lot of annoying “backtracking” over a largely empty map. I do realize that it may be a way to force the battle with Maestro to be after you rescue the last Icari, but you might accomplish the same thing by putting all the Icari down at once, chaining Maestro to Patriotic Man, and then having Patriotic Man give you some “mentoring advice” when you rescue him: “I know you’re eager to prove yourself, young hero, but Maestro is an extremely powerful foe! We should make sure all of my fellow Icari are rescued before we confront him.”

Finally, the map seems very, very empty. If there’s a way to add more battles and/or patrols, I’d highly recommend it.

(I won’t have detailed commentary after each mission in this particular style, but, as I’ve indicated, I do think there are several subtle changes that’ll really improve the flow of this first mission.)

I return to my computer and start to analyze the fragment. I leave the news on while I work. Naturally, the Icari take nearly all of the credit for saving Atlas Park, and seem to have very little appreciation for my efforts to save their collective rear ends. Ah well.

Oddly, my computer can’t tell me much about the meteor fragment, but it doesn’t seem to be a problem. The fragment’s pulsating glow keeps getting faster and faster, and it actually starts to vibrate and … well … “pull” itself in a particular direction. Figuring it might be useful to know where the fragment is being drawn, I “follow” it (i.e. hold it in my hand and move in the direction it wants to pull me). It leads me out of the city, and straight to a Circle of Thorns lair. It wants to pull me inside, so I head in to check the place out.


Pro Payne takes out his wrath on having to delve into the constipated bowels of Oranbega on a bunch of hapless Circle cultists. It’s for the best. They were going to … um … go steal babies, or something.

Although I had to pause in places to ward off Circle cultists, and those creepy spirits they cavort with, the fragment led me to a cluster of five obelisks. As I approached each one, the fragment seemed to interact with the obelisks, producing an image of each member of the Icari I had just rescued, along with his or her actual name. The one exception was Sentinel, where I got a kind of schematic, revealing what it’s core “body” was like under all the powered armor. I surmised the Circle was performing some ritual here, and it involved the Icari. I figured it might be a good idea to stop it, as I’ve never known a Circle ritual to be good for its intended victim (unless, of course, the victim was also a Circle member). So I delved deeper into the lair to find whatever dark mage was overseeing the building magical energies…

Thankfully, I didn’t have to proceed much further into the spirit-infested halls of Oranbega to locate the mage directing the ritual. The foul wizard’s name was Minos, and he bragged that the ritual had stripped the Icari of their powers. I defeated him, but he claimed it was too late – the ritual had already done its damage.

Note: He also referred to me as ‘some other novice hero’ – so more than one hero has stumbled across this plot? That doesn’t seem likely: I needed a fragment of the meteor to find this place…

I’m not sure what the Council and the meteor have to do with this (or why the meteor fragment did what it did), but perhaps that’ll be revealed in time.

By the time I return to my computer, I notice the meteor fragment has crumbled to dust, and I’m seeing news reports that lead me to believe Minos really *had* stripped the Icari of their powers. Figuring that perhaps something I’d learned in the Circle’s lair could be of use to them, I try to track them down – a task that shouldn’t be too difficult given that I know all of their secret identities.

It turns out I don’t even have time for that … the next news report reveals the Council is attacking an apartment building named Wrightman Heights. It doesn’t take a genius to notice that’s the last name of Patriotic Man’s secret identity. When the reporter mentions some other notable people who live in the apartments there I recognize the true identities of the other Icari. I’m guessing Wrightman Heights is probably the supergroup’s “cover” – effectively their supergroup base.

With no time to lose, I rush to rescue them from the Council attack.

I found Typhoon close to the entrance, and safely escorted out. Without her powers, it was very clear she was afraid INS would deport her – I located an e-mail that indicated she had likely struck a deal with INS to remain in the country so long as she was willing to work with the government in law enforcement.

Rather than backtracking every time I found a new member of the Icari, I opted to “collect” them all, then head back to the entrance. I found Wildcat further in. Somehow (I wasn’t clear on this) I learned that she was a Crey experiment (basically an origin story very, very similar to Mynx), and was forced to take ‘regenerative drugs’ to control the constant pain the experimental manipulations caused her.

Note: Her description refers to her as a pickpocket, yet she breaks into a Crey facility (pickpockets usually don’t practice their profession by breaking into places) – it might be better to call her a burglar.

I also found a note in the trash that was somewhat disturbing … in it either Wildcat’s informant, or perhaps boyfriend, had tracked down the Freakshow’s stash of superadine – suggesting she was actually using the dangerous drug to help her control the pain; although I had no proof of that.


The glamorous life of a hero! Hmm … maybe I should turn off the burning auras before I go digging through (largely paper) garbage.

Another note: Actually, if you’re meaning this to be the drug the Freaks use (which would be a lot more appropriate since it dulls pain, and helps a body accommodate extensive modification – hence its value in allowing the Freaks to cram lots of cyberware into their bodies), it’s excelsior, not superadine.

I found Sentinel and Mental Maiden further in, along with Maiden’s diary – although there was nothing terribly incriminating there. Patriotic Man was next, and then it was time to face the leader of this raid, a Lt. Briggs.

Briggs revealed the Council had made a deal with the Circle to perform the ritual, and then intended to deliver the heads of the Icari to Requiem.

A few minor criticisms/suggestions: Actually, the Council is led by the Center – it’s not totally unbelievable that these troops would be reporting to Requiem, but it’s something to think about. Also, the Circle mage did mention that the ritual could be performed only every 5,000 years – and is clearly, very, *very* powerful. Granted, in the context of the arc I’d see why the Circle would have some motivation to help (they probably hate the Icari too, so they offer to do the ritual, and the Council does the “dirty work” of gathering the components and killing the Icari) – but IMO it’d be a bit more believable if the Circle was getting something else really valuable out of this… actually, you could use that as an extra wrinkle in the story, if you wanted. Perhaps the Circle wants to use the Icari as ‘hosts’? So some of the ambushes are the Council’s Circle “allies” intent on kidnapping powerless Icari before they can be delivered to Requiem…

I found a strange device on Briggs, but couldn’t figure out exactly what it was for.

On the way back out, I managed to stumble across a safe full of tracking devices that were “property of the US military” – I gathered they were part of an attempt by the military to track Sentinel. I also spied a bulletin board holding a photo of Roger’s wife; according to the date the wedding was actually several years ago.

I got the Icari safely out of the building, but was surprised by a small group of Council who’d broken through the police line around the building. In the battle with the Council goons, the Icari ran off – wow, *that* was a rash thing for them to do.

It takes two weeks, but with no idea where the Icari have run off too, the only lead I’ve got is the device I got off Lt. Briggs (evidently that lead involving Jonny D. and Wildcat’s “Freakshow stash” didn’t go anywhere – or hasn’t yet). I managed to bypass its security, and determined that it was some sort of tracking or monitoring device … it revealed the location of the Icari’s supergroup base, and was monitoring a spreading fire. The entry logs also showed me that the members of the Icari had been coming and going for the past several days. I needed to get there quickly before any additional clues as to what was going on were lost.

What I found at the burning base was rather chilling. Scattered about where a very large number of clues that allowed me to piece together at least part of what had been going on… the Icari had gathered here, afraid and desperate. But, somehow, they’d managed to get their powers back – but their desperation had caused them to do terrible things upon their return. Mental Maiden had murdered her boyfriend, although I wasn’t exactly sure why – or what the circumstances of his death were. Wildcat had (apparently) solved her pain problem my executing Jonny D, and taking his stash of superadine. Sentinel had exacted revenge by killing the soliders that were trying to retrieve him. Typhoon was being blackmailed by the INS officer who oversaw her end of the “bargain” with the government. It appeared that he was, well, lusting, after her, and offered to make the risk of deportation go away if she ‘ran away with him.’ She killed him for it – although I did think it odd he died of blunt force trauma; I would have figured a lightning bolt or something.

But it was Patriotic Man that bothered me the most. I got the impression that below his “heroic” exterior, the man was really a womanizing creep who had been cheating on his wife for years. I’d already suspected Mr. Patriotic here was at least partially coercing the loyalty of his fellow teammates (after all, Typhoon remain in the country due to strings he was pulling. I got the impression he provided the drugs that managed Wildcat’s pain, too.) I found the body of Patriotic Man’s wife in the base as well – but it looked like she’d taken her own life. Had she simply found out about all of his affairs, or was something more sinister going on? See, the thing is, the others had directly taken the lives of people they considered threats. But, beyond humiliating his wife to the point of prompting her to commit suicide, it didn’t look like Patriotic Man had actually physically walked up to someone and killed them.

Something about the clues also were leading me to think that part of the reason these people here had died is because the Icari had gotten back their powers very suddenly – I was wondering if they’d unintentionally killed these people when their powers came surging back “on”; there were definite holes in that theory, but the fact Patriotic didn’t seem to have suddenly killed somebody made me suspect he *might* be responsible for getting the Icari’s powers back. I just didn’t know how.

But what was worse, like it or not, the Icari were guilty of manslaughter at the least, if not outright murder. They had to be brought to justice…

Suggestion: I don’t at all object to the fact the base was empty, but if you’ve got the room, you might want to consider designing a custom faction of security robots and seeding the base with a small number of encounters (boss details and patrols, possibly), just to make the mission slightly more action packed.

Also, it’s not yet totally clear why they burned their own base down, but I’ll see if it’s mentioned later.

As I ran from the base, I managed to pull one last file from the central computer: a video showing the Icari, with their powers returned, planning to attack a Council base where they believed the mastermind of the plot to kill them could be found. It was clear that they were going to slaughter everyone there. They’d gone from hero, to vigilante. It was up to me to stop them.

I had to hope they were not yet at full strength; otherwise I wouldn’t have a chance. The fact that Wildcat actually said she was back to full strength made me think my chances weren’t good…

I got to the base, but it was too late – the Council were dead. There were only two things left for me to do: figure out what exactly had happened to give the Icari their powers back, and to take them in, if I could.

(For clarity, I’m going to continue to refer to them by their original names, although in the arc they all have new “villain” names, and different appearances).


Look lady, I set myself on *fire* to heal myself. I’m no stranger to being in pain. Take an aspirin and quit whining.

I found Wildcat first, completely tripped out on superadine. Next was Sentinel, in an upgraded body. For lack of a better way to put it, it was clear his “ethics” program had been completely re-written – he was now intent on killing every villain in Paragon, and would kill any hero who tried to stop him. During both fights, my foes had said things that further convinced me Patriotic Man was behind all this – not only the return of their powers, but his promises to them about “what they could do with their new abilities” seemed (to me) to have pushed them over the edge…

Typhoon was next – and in the process of defeating her, I learned more of what had happened. Evidently when she refused David’s “offer”, he was going to turn her in and have her deported. Out of desperation, she grabbed something heavy from his desk and bashed his brains in. Her lamet: she hadn’t gotten her powers back soon enough. But she knew she had to answer for her crimes.


One more chapter in the epic conflict between fire and water.

Note: This one’s just my opinion on it, but David didn’t exactly sound ‘innocent’ as Typhoon’s description suggested. *Of course* he didn’t deserve to me murdered, but basically giving her a chance to stay in the country on the condition that she has a relationship with him is very unethical... (yes, I’m aware it’s actually done in real life – heck they’ve made sitcoms based on the idea – but something about the setup gave me the impression this wasn’t David seeking to do her a favor out of the goodness of his heart…)

I found Patriotic Man next – by defeating him, I learned that, ironically, he was probably the biggest lie among the Icari. Publicly a hero, he actually only cared about maintaining what he had – his fame and the behind-the-scenes hedonistic lifestyle it granted him. He was willing to do anything to get it back. It seemed he’d struck a deal with … someone … to get the group’s powers back. I didn’t know who the deal was with, but I still had one more Icari to hunt down.

Note: And yes, I got the reference – “my wings … melting” and Icari are both references to Icarus. Just letting you know

It almost seemed like it was Mental Maiden who’d fallen the furthest. Six years of pent up rage at being seen more as an object than a heroine had finally come to a head. Ironically, I have little doubt Patriotic’s insistence that her costume have a very poor surface area versus body volume ratio just exacerbated the problem. Let’s see … take a *psion* who is sensitive to public opinion, and does *not* want to be a sex object – and who happens to be very attractive – and put in her a costume that is practically guaranteed to make just about every male she rescues have … interesting … thoughts about her. Then, take away her powers so that the males that fall into the scum of the earth category might actually have a chance to act on said fantasies (and, apparently, do act on them). Then give her powers back. Yeah, that’s probably not going to go well.


If I let you read my mind, and you find that I *haven’t* been laughing at you, can we skip the part where you try to rearrange my synaptic connections in new and interesting ways?

I subdued her – and, perhaps, her unauthorized deep scan of my brain showed her the critical error she’d made: there are sure to be people who she’s helped, but who’ve repaid her heroics with lewd fantasy. But there are plenty who genuine appreciate having their lives saved. The problem comes when you focus on the bad, and ignore the good, as she did.

There was more bad news as I returned to my computer. I didn’t know who’d helped the Icari get their powers back, but, apparently, whomever it was, also engineered their escape... destroying the police cars carrying them to the Zig, and removing the devices placed on them to suppress their powers. There was no indication as to who it was, or why they did it.

But the Icari were still out there; I suspected I hadn’t heard the last of them.

Pros: A fun, well-written arc overall that had only a few flaws that kept me from giving it a 5 star rating (review-wise; it got 5 stars in game). The mission briefings are well written, and the clues make for a very interesting read, as to the in-game descriptions of the Icari. Frankly, I found the idea of starting with a bunch of superhero clichés, and actually giving them deeper (and darker) backgrounds was a nice touch – their “golden” exteriors hide a real darkness, and one that ultimately leads to their downfall. With the exception of the first mission (and, to some extent, the third), the pacing is good, causing the arc, and the story to flow well. A very good arc overall.

Cons: I’ve got plenty of comments, critiques, and suggestions for the author to consider (or dismiss) in the walkthrough; here I’ll touch on two things. First, the loose ends are a bit frustrating. It’s possible there’s a sequel in the works, but it doesn’t exist at the moment, and you’re left wondering if you’re ever going to know the rest of the story. It’s not that I think every strand in the story has to be tied up – but how the Icari got their powers back (evidently through some sort of “deal with the devil”) seems like a pretty big strand to leave hanging. As I said, for the moment, there are no answers, and some players may find that frustrating.

The second thing is the pacing in the first and third missions. As I pointed out earlier, finding a way to keep that mission from being a “hunt down the next chained objective” on a very large map would be a major improvement. And I do have to say that the map seemed strangely empty – for a massive Council attack, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of Council…

In the third mission, the need to escort all of the Icari back out can get to be a drag. I’ve got a couple of suggestions for how to make it more fun… see if you like some of them (and they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive).

(1) Make only the “front” escort an actual escort. Make the other four a “free an ally” (and have them run off, saying “I’ll try to find my way out”; you can still use the ambushes (and it *might* be possible to set the ally to be a non-combatant follower, to create an impression they’re following you for safety, but actually leading them to the entrance isn’t necessary to progress the mission).

(2) If they have to stay escorts, having patrols or even boss details spawn in behind them could be useful to make leading them out more interesting. You’ve got to be careful about how you do it (e.g. the “front” rescue doesn’t spawn anything, one of the “middle” rescues spawns something up front, and any “back” rescue spawns stuff to “middle”), but it can at least make leading them out more interesting.

And that’s it! I enjoyed playing the arc; thanks for asking me to review it!

Score: 4.25

The next review (tentatively scheduled for the week of January 11th) will be to Reign in Hell, with Krusader’s Adventures two weeks later (i.e. I plan on sticking to my normal schedule).

And now back to playing Player’s Choice arcs.