Supporters of Emperor Cole are abandoned?

Do Loyalists who aren't Praetors know this happened?

Semantics it is, then. Forget we went back and forth on it.

Yes it had and I've pointed this out to you twice. Washington found evidence that Cleopatra had been working with the Resistance in the form of the body of one Sergeant Chance. Chance had had his desk bugged (by you). He was sent, by Cleopatra, to the same weapons cache she told you about. He was killed by the Resistance. Cleopatra promptly does the same to you but you don't die. All of the ends tie together when you tell Washington you planted the bugs. Her acts were those of a terrorist, and unless something was done, Praetor White would have flexed his muscles and gotten her off the hook. HE EVEN ADMITS IT. Here, let me show you.

History has proven time and again that criminals will continue to be criminals; that said, the choice was between killing Cleopatra and stopping her acts of treason and murder, or let her live and watch more and more PPD officers die in ambushes and the like.

Welcome to the entirety of Praetoria's morality.

That. Is. The. Point.

Why am I loyal to it? Because it's a character in a video game. Do we honestly have the choice of taking our characters and saying "I'm not doing anything for anyone in Praetoria because everything isn't black and white! Damn this gray area!"? When we're between Cleopatra and Washington, do we have the option to go "screw both of you I'm leaving"?

No. So you push on. Don't argue with me that you COULD do that; that's not valid and you know it.

Yes, actually. You can opt not to take the mission at all.

You answer that one yourself. If Cole is struggling to keep control of his domain and some bright young thing pops its head up and does exactly what told - Cole may be an evil despot but he's neither stupid or irrational. He'd take that. Remember the old adage, keep your friends close and your enemies closer: Rather than sending some promising ally away any rational leader would test it and use that valuable resource. We do get tested and there's no sense through much of the Loyalist content we're betraying Cole even if we are involving ourselves in the machinations of his subordinates.

There are alternate endings but there's a whole story where we have the potential to assume for the vast majority of a sub-set of arcs that we're happily serving our Emperor, and then bam "Piddle off to a land I intend to destroy."

As for Calvin, I'm gonna agree to disagree with you on that one for the sake of this thread at least

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I disagree. Chief Interrogator Washington, by his actions, presented you with the following choice:

1) Commit vigilante murder;

2) Defend a potential (as guilt has not been proven legally) criminal from an extrajudicial execution.

This exact choice is presented in hero tip missions where a Longbow Warden is attempting to kill Polar Shift. Washington should have worked within the system. He was the person who forced the choice onto you. Killing him is justifiable as an act in defense of others (if not defense of self.)

I'll disagree with you on that. IMO, being a despot is per se irrational. It rarely ends well even for the despot as several in the Middle East have found out recently.

Well by that logic I should just stop playing the game entirely. Come on dude, don't troll.

Look, I don't remember the exact details of all the Praetorian conversations, so maybe you can help to refresh my memory. Doesn't Cleopatra present you with the following, alternative choice:

• Defend a person who just deceived you and tried to have you killed, and
• kill Washington to cover her status within the Resistance.

I'm not saying Washington's right. I'm saying that the player character might reasonably side with him given the imperfect circumstances, and given that the player character was raised in Praetoria, potentially having been spoon-fed the state-approved propaganda from birth.

The choice we're talking about is very early in the character's journey through all of the evils of Praetoria. The player character has just been through a rather trying and confusing set of circumstances, and is trapped in a room with two people: a woman who not only represents an organization that the PC has potentially been raised to despise, but who also just tried to kill the PC, and a man who, despite his immediate flaws, represents the albeit imperfect authority which the PC was potentially raised to trust. The PC is given a matter of moments to decide which one should live, and which one should die.

The PC can be forgiven for a reflexive reaction in Washington's favor, under the circumstances. Shades of grey.

Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze Nice build

Because it suits my purpose.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Disagree all you like but there are several things to bear in mind: The Middle East is by no means resolved and plenty of despots have had far longer in power than any democrat. In almost all recent cases it has taken a far greater power than the people to topple them.

Being a despot is fundamental to human nature. People ARE despots by nature, it's just that we can't rule everyone with an iron fist. All animals are equal but some are more incarnate than others

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Completely irrelevant. We're not engaged in an in-character discussion over what your character believes. Your character can believe any fool thing he likes (Duhem-Quine thesis FTW!)

Meaning you keep repeating your mistake. The evidence you actually have against Cleo is not even remotely conclusive. Did you, for instance, stop and check whether Cleo's computer was bugged? Oops. Because if I'd written it that's totally what would have happened. After killing her there'd be another cutscene with Washington finding a bug on her computer...and crushing it, and then telling you to go tell Marauder that you greased his girlfriend because Washington had evidence yadda yadda yadda. (The Resistance version of the story would reveal, after Washington's death, that Cleo bugged her own computer and was about to stage an "assassination attempt" on herself to throw off suspicion, but Washington moved too fast.) This is why we waste so much time on those silly "investigations" and "trials".

You would essentially have to go lie to Marauder's face knowing that you might have just killed the wrong person. That is the price for trying to "work within the system" in a corrupt government.

It doesn't matter what he would have done because you can't even prove she's guilty. All you have is an implication at best.

Actually he's extremely irrational, and paranoid and a coward and a bully. What he'd do is entirely up for grabs. The people who write him get to decide, and you have to deal with it. If your character conception is at odds with the game world then your character conception is wrong. Throw it out and think of something else.

No. I'm not trolling. If forced to make a decision for which neither choice makes sense for your character, you do have the option of not doing that mission at all. I'll give you, if the mission is "leave praetoria" then your option is pretty much "stop playing the character" but there are enough missions that you can skip quite a number of them and still play the game.

Read the OP carefully and get back to me if that's what you think is going on here.


So you'd rather forego all the mission rewards, the story progression and the moral choice for that? Again, it's just your character in a game. If you want to skip out then fine; new players and completionists will NOT have the option to just stop playing. It's not even a logical course of action unless you just can't live with yourself for "killing" a 3D generated character, in which case, you have no reason to play any content in this entire game.

Well then, in sticking with fictitious police, do you believe Commissioner Gordon to be on the same level as the Joker? Because this was the impression that I got from the Responsibility track, that our characters were doing what they could to keep the people safe, even from the system that so completely betrayed them. The only difference is that our characters didn't have a man dressed like a bat to untie their hands.

That is, until they hit level 20, get to Primal Earth and find the means to don the cape and cowl themselves. (I would totally read an Elseworlds where Gordon became the Bat, BTW)

The thing is, though, the game does have a timeline that has moved on.

A great example is in the Ramiel arc where you have to fight the Honoree. Now, in that mission it is now treated like, yes, Honoree is Hero 1. No, we haven't figured out a cure for it. We're still working on that. And we need him back, ta.

Now, that still can work with the LGTF, despite fighting the Honoree there.
Simple answer? He's temporarily back under Rikti control in the living weapon tug-o-war and you have to fight him to bring him back under VG control. Sure, it doesnt tie in great if other people are doing it at seperate times, but hey, thats a meta-game continous world flaw.

And it sure can work for a lot of peeps on a sever, from an RP view. Union manages it just fine, thanks.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I didn't see the Responsibility path that way. Certain arcs, absolutely. Let's go through them all:

Chief Interrogator Washington's Arc - I agree with you. This is a cop doing the best he can for the people.

Cleopatra - Same

Nova Morality Mission - Extrajudicial killings? You're starting down the dark path.

Kang - You're aiding and abetting slavery in the service of creating a thought police. At this point, the responsibility path lost me completely. Anyone who has anything to do with these monsters from this point onward is a villain in my book.

Parson - You're back to protecting the people.

Whitworth - You're supposed to be a cop not an executioner.

McKnight - This is more like spy work, which can get dirty, so I give the character a break here.

Imperial Morality - With someone this dangerous, I'll give the character a break and say that I can at least understand taking out Yin.

Ivy - This is fine, back to Police work

Mother - Working for this madwoman should drive any decent person to defect immediately. Even villains could have problems working for this psychic vampire. It's nice they give you the ability to let Vanessa go.

Keyes - This arc is OK, it fits exactly what you say.

Neutropolis Morality - The only legitimate choice IMO is to allow Kang to live. Even this guy who allowed his child to go into slavery has turned from Cole at this point. You are nothing more than a monster if you stay with the Loyalists by this point.

-------------------------------------------------------

That's how I feel. Certainly most of the Responsibility storyline is as you say, but as I said above, I think the devs made it just too obvious that Praetoria is evil. A good person needs to oppose that system, not try to work within it. Cleopatra is the kind of 'loyalist' I can support. Someone who facially works for the system, but is subverting it.

The same one where we discovered they'd had secret bases on Primal Earth long before we even knew that Praetoria existed

I want Portal Corp's "new world name-guesser" as my stock broker.

Actually, Washington is only asking you to cut out the middle part of the standard 3-step process for dealing with opponents of Tyrant's dictatorship - normally, it goes arrest -> torture -> execution, and as Cleo would probably have quite a lot of info on the Resistance, the cause of protecting the dictatorship would actually be best served by not killing her, so that she could be tortured for that information, and maybe lead you to discovering other opponents of Tyrant.
But because Marauder would step in the moment she was arrested, you can't carry out the standard 3-step process, so Washington asks you to pick the second best option to protect the dictatorship, and skip straight to the execution stage.
Loyalists are still doing their duty to the dictatorship by killing her, because even though it means losing the opportunity to possibly get some valuable info from, her, it's still better for them than having Marauder set her free - you're just going arrest -> execution instead of arrest -> torture -> execution.

Actually, I'll agree here, and my character DID defect, it's just that he defected to Primal Earth, not to the Resistance. That character will have no trouble wiping out Cole's system, especially the Seers.

Yes we are.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

We've talked about this before so I won't rehash it. I'll just say that while I don't think an armed insurrection is unwarranted, I can see why the leadership of the Resistance and some of their tactics put some people off. But let me ask, let's say there was a third faction that was trying to instigate a civil war, one where civilians would be killed, but not targeted. Would you join up with them?

No. And you have a point. However, the mention of it seemed to be more in line of OOC talk about it, than an IC one.

However, if they went blue side, wouldn't they know about it once they hit level 45+ (or earlier I guess if they Exemp for it) or once they arrive in Primal and talk to other known heroes?

They'd find out that their thoughts on the subject are wrong.

It depends on how much effort is being taken to limit or avoid civilian casualties. And no, I'm not able to sit down and arbitrarily say how much effort is 'enough', with the excpetion that there has to be at least some.