Sutter & Kal: i20's forgotten content

Did Sutter a couple of times, haven't run Kal yet.

Sutter is a very cool TF. Very cool maps, decent story, excellent fights. Very much a SAVE THE DAY! experience between saving the ships in the 1st mish, the AV fight with the adds pouring out of the portals, the tunnel fight vs IDF in the second mission and of course the collapsed Skyway freeway.

Love the AV fights. The Bomber Ghouls and the Durays, mostly. Those were two good fights requiring coordination, tactics and situational awareness. Not that much, but enough to require a little more attention and finesse than the usual bum-rushin', tank-n-spankin' snoozefests most AV fights are in this game. So yeah. Kudos on the fights, can we haz more like them?

I expected a bit more of the Temblor/Fusion duo, though. Maybe the teams I've run Sutter on so far have been very well equiped to deal with them, but all those two required on my runs was to say "stop shooting the Granite tank, hit the Blaster instead, ya muppets!" in chat. They have a couple of flashy moves, but they don't seem to do that much.

Why is everyone saying there's a clone Durray? It was my understanding that the final AV's were Primal Durray and Praetorian Durray, since the whole story is that the two are working together.

As I recall, the Praetorian Duray clone is not an AV, either, just a boss.

For you story people, the Sutter TF is definitely Praetorian-related. The story pretty much boils down to, "We're at war with Praetoria, so fight off some of their attacks," but "simple" doesn't necessarily mean "bad." Personally, I found it refreshing.

The Kal SF deals with the Flames of Prometheus, from the CoH comic. Since Prometheus has been grandfathered into the endgame story (you can talk to the pompous windbag in Ouroboros), it could be said to be incarnate-related. Plus, the "temporary" (it lasts until you get rid of it) power you get from completing it can be converted into a Notice of the Well once you hit 50.

Other things I like (minor spoilers)-

Sutter:
- Making fun of Duray's hats.
- Trying to figure out who Harbinger is supposed to be the counterpart of.
- On a character with confusion powers, causing the ghouls to blow each other up.
- The fact that Paragon City authorities decide to hide the populace in the sewers. So THAT's why the sewer system is so elaborate.

Kal:
- It features lots of Blade Princes, one of my favorite enemies, in the first mission. Notably, they are all bosses rather than EB's.
- Finding out a lot more about Odysseus, another favorite character of mine.
- That the ranks of the three AV-class enemies in one mission are "Hero," "Rogue," and "Vigilante."
- Speculating on who the heck this Exorcist guy is. Best answer wins a prize.
- Being jealous of all the weird stuff in Odysseus's warehouse.
- Pointing out that sticking your fists inside the severed limbs of a god is, to use an internetism, pretty hardcore.
- A pie joke, which everyone loves.

I love the Mortimer Kal SF. It's a lot of fun. There are only two real downside for me.

One, how short it is. It only took an hour the first time I ran it, even with everyone stopping to read all the text. Second run took 39 minutes and nobody was trying to rush it. I can easily see a speed run version taking under 30 minutes. The cut scenes would probably be the longest single part of the whole thing.

Two is hard to talk about without spoilering anything. It's the mob you face in the final mission that isn't the MM robots or Positron. I hate that guy; I really hate finding multiples of him in the last mission. Even destroying him wasn't enough to get me to stop grinding my teeth at his appearance. He's a terrible piece of crap writing in his first (non-Kal) appearance, why would they include him in more places?

Fortunately it's not enough for me to be down on the whole thing. Overall I think it's a great SF that could have been near perfect if it wasn't so short and they lost that one unfunny "joke" character.