Review as part of the CoHMR Aggregator thread.
@GlaziusF
Running this on a mid-20s mind/kin controller, +1/x0 with bosses on. Im expecting Ill have allies to benefit from the various buffs. Well see how accurate that is.
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Okay, time to see whats new on news.local.paragon.... Ah, so a renowned supergroup has shown up on the scene to fight the Council!
And the impetus for me to do anything there is...? Usually theres something like that in a briefing. An impetus, I mean. Even the all units be advised to just let Unbelievable Man handle this one scanner message has you remembering he was taking part in a massive companywide crossover in the Shadow Shard at the time.
I pop Not-States, Not-Psyche, Not-Storm, Not-Citadel, and Not-Mynx from their tiny tiny squads of captors, ditch them so as not to make things trivial on myself, and then get Maestro in my ear when the last ones free. Honestly half their dialogue, like Not-Caps, seemed to indicate theyd be running off on their own instead of following me around, so it was a bit of a surprise that theyd follow me in the first place.
Maybe escalate the guards up from easy to hard to make it clear that bringing them around with you is kind of desirable?
Anyway, it looks like this meteor wasnt an ordinary space rock, based on the fragment I pick up.
(I wouldnt mind the clue also talking about Maestros speech about the Circle. If he spawns in your ear his opening dialogue is easy to miss.)
Maybe you could consider some alternate sorts of capture animations and accompanying scenarios other than the thrashing in energy ring one? Makes the debrief seem like these guys are giant jerks.
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I wish that the royal blue and royal purple autocolors were a little bit lighter. Theyre pretty tough to make out against the standard briefing background.
Looks like Im tracking down this meteor to the Circle.
I find some obelisks carved with the true names of various heroes. And... the true blueprint of the robot. Okay. Apparently the CoT are pulling something like Arachnos did with their Jade Spider scenario, only for five specific heroes.
Hero to zero in the space of one mission. Ask not for whom the plothammer strikes, it strikes for thee.
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The Council had apparently planned this whole thing out, including (?) steering the meteor in from space.
Or was that just a natural phenomenon?
Anyway, Maestros second-in-command and liaison to the CoT is leading this raid, and he rants about how the depowered Icari are going to be minced up by the citys villain groups once their secret identities get out.
The debriefing seems to suggest I had all the Icari in tow, but I dragged them all back to the door before fighting the end boss in case something silly happened. Is the escort out not required? If it is then its safe enough to say that theyve just run off.
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...apparently I found some sort of device on Lt. Briggs? That would have been nice to pick up as a clue. Anyway, the Council apparently knew where these guys secret base was, though that doesnt make much sense, at least not as a direct result of the CoT ritual. It may have uncovered their identities, but unless the civilians paid for the SG base as well, I dont see how that follows.
I mean, unless the information was gathered as part of a completely separate espionage op. Which is fine in its own way, and could maybe be folded into a clue from Lt. Briggs, maybe a set of dossiers or something produced by Council intel.
Apparently the bases fire suppression systems are going off.
Hmm. Okay, so it looks like the local equivalent of Mephisto paid a visit to the Icari and offered them their powers back with an extra dash of reckless. I would not have predicted this. Not-States decided to play the field and his wife couldnt deal, Not-Psyche area-blasted some thugs and hit a fan, Not-Storm did something unspecified but nasty and wrecked her contact when he came to talk it out, Not-Citadel wrecked the people who came to repossess him, and Not-Mynx drank an entire barrel of Superadine and shredded her contact while high.
And they burned the base down to destroy the evidence.
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Im... taking matters into my own hands here. Well. Alright. Five elite bosses -- for some reason I remember them being just bosses in the first mission.
Good thing I got a Shivan, even if hes gently used.
Anyway, everybody talks about their mysterious benemalefactor, but its just a brawl against the original 5, no ominous shadow of whoever shows up.
...at least I think no shadow shows up. My last Shivan was starting to run out of skull juice so I just clicked exit when the mission completed.
For an arc thats supposed to be standalone it definitely seems to be setting up for a part 2, with the Icari vanishing from custody, no doubt at the hands of whatever force gave them back their powers.
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Storyline - ***. This story feels a little compressed. Im guessing you made it for the Aeon contest? Its taking a dramatic transformation in characters but because of the limit on missions wraps up that arc in a single one because thats all the time thats left before the big final fight. It also removes any actual things the Icari have done for me to care about them, because based on the first mission they come off as just heroes getting way too much publicity for their own good. Theres also a tease for the course of two missions about whatever gave the Icari their reckless repowers that never really pays off.
Second, while some of the character pressures kinda make sense, the ones on Not-Storm and Not-Citadel -- recapture by the INS and the military -- really dont. Not in an absolute sense, of course; I can easily see this being the plot of some comic book, but... how do I put this?
Okay. In the preludes to his Astro City trades, Kurt Busiek talks about people writing in to tell him how realistic the comic is. They cant be literal about this, as his comic features trolls, giants, animated fashion dolls, and shapeshifting alien spies. What makes Astro City seem realistic is that its set in a world where superheroes have been around for generations and society has gotten used to having them around, as opposed to your average comic book where society is exactly like modern society and superheroes showed up in issue #1 a month ago and have to fit in.
City of Heroes is also set in the former world, rather than the latter. The government has tried to draft-slash-pressure superheroes before. It was called the Might For Right Act. There are plaques all over the city describing the public protest and resistance, and the subsequent repeal. The people involved in its passage had a collective snit fit/freakout and emerged years later as the Malta Group. What Im ultimately getting at here is that the members of a supposedly high-profile supergroup would probably be aware of this precedent and the substantial support structure in place to avoid such a thing.
Design - ****. Theres some good visual work on the Icari and their civilian and corrupted forms. The missions are pretty reasonable mirrors of what theyre intended to be and theres generally a decent amount of relevant stuff to look at.
Gameplay - ***. First, five escorts scattered through a four-story building is a bit excessive. I made a couple of assumptions here -- that the Icari in their civilian forms could be hurt, and that escorting them out was required. It may be that neither of these are true, but given that the setup seems to indicate the Icari are in mortal danger, they seemed appropriate to make.
Second, five consecutive EB fights with no random spawns in between to recharge inspirations from is pretty much a recipe for exiting out and seeing the inspiration vendor, whether via hospital or other means.
Im not sure how much you can really help either of these. Given the setup they dont seem easy to address. But theyre still there.
Detail - **. No, this isnt for the clues there are. They paint a pretty reasonable picture of whats going on, and the color-coding of clues and dialogue is a decent tool, though I think the order you set up (whose clue is first, second, etc. in the set of five) gets a little wonky in mission 4. This is for the clues there arent. The ones not about the Icaris transformation but about the backing story.
That the Council are working with the Circle at all is initially mentioned only in a missable quip from Maestro. And beyond the depowerment ritual its not really clear what the Circle are bringing to the table here. Do they also find out about the Icaris civilian HQ? Their supergroup base? Or is that more the provenance of Council intelligence? And how the heck did that meteor hit Atlas Park? Accident? Ritual? Gravity satellite?
And whos the benemalefactor who repowers the Icari? Because the resurgence comes out to be pretty broad-spectrum I dont initially consider it to be a Council or a Circle plot, but rather the action of some more generalist tempter, the local equivalent of Mephisto. Except I dont know who that might be. I dont think theres really anybody with a particular reputation for doing such things, unless such a being shows up in the tip/morality missions (havent really got a chance to play a lot of them yet).
Overall - ***. Honestly this feels like two story arcs smashed together with the ends hacked off -- one that serves as an introduction to the Icari, with my character finding out about a plot against them (possibly in a dream sequence where the Tempter tries to play off some possible envy of mine) that ends when I save their civilian selves from the Council and they run off; and a second that draws out their reckless repowering and my confrontation with them a bit more, with perhaps a final showdown against a shadow of the Tempter, wholl never really be gone for good. As it is the progression is good, but it starts without much backing and the end feels raw.
Up with the overworld! Up with exploration! | Want a review of your arc?
My arcs: Dream Paper (ID: 1874) | Bricked Electronics (ID: 2180) | The Bravuran Jobs (ID: 5073) | Backwards Day (ID: 329000) | Operation Fair Trade (ID: 391172)
Finally, my first self-contained, non-Galactic Protectorate AE arc has been completed and published to the live serviers!
When Dr. Aeon announced his second challenge, I had an idea for an arc which became the "rough draft" of the Icari. Unfortunately, I was unable to complete the arc in time for the deadline of the contest, and the half-finished arc sat in my files, untouched, for months.
However, when Dr. Aeon announced his third challenge, I knew that it was time to complete what I had started. To be honest, the "rough draft" centered around the concept outlined in this latest challenge to begin with, so I knew that with a little tweaking I could make an arc which might be able to compete in this latest contest.
It took a lot of work and almost all of my free time, but "The Icari" has been completed and entered in Dr. Aeon's Third Challenge!
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Arc Name: The Icari
Arc ID#: 458576
Alignment: Heroic
Level Range: 20 - 24 (All Missions)
Synopsis: A Council attack on Atlas Park leads you to uncover a plot to take away the powers of one of the most renowned supergroups in Paragon City! However, in your attempt to aid the supergroup, you soon discover that there may be much more to the Icari than you are first led to believe...
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Anyway, whether I come in first or last in the contest, I always appreciate any feedback I can get to improve my arcs, and I have a feeling that "The Icari" could definitely use some outside opinions! Thanks in advance to anyone who decides to run through it and leave their comments, in or out of game!
Supplemental Galactic Protectorate Fanfic