Which story arcs/missions do you find most emotionally engaging?

I have to second 'A Savage Man'. It's a fine story of redemption and humanity, and the final mission where you encounter him on top of the tower...very cinematic in my eyes.

I have to cite the entire Peacebringer arc. As much as it may seem it's just the heroic aliens versus the Council, there's also a profound sense of loss and hurt that comes from Sunstorm and his allies upon finding out the abominations the Nictus and Council are making of their own people. The shock reverberates through them and I felt like apologising on behalf of humanity for our lack of humanity.

I'd also cite both the Lady Grey Task Force and the Alpha Slot arc for the appearances by Honoree. There's tragedy in this story that Honoree remembers his former life and mourns it. I secretly keep hoping that there's a way to restore him....


S.

I'll admit, my personal feelings on the whole "Numitron" thing aside, I really enjoyed the Mortimer Kal SF... they went all the back to the first run of the comics, when Posi becomes the bearer of the Flame (and I've always loved that part where the Flame sweeps Paragon City and the heroes regain their powers), and now here he is, almost seven years later, and for all his geekitude, even I paused at:

There's a lot of good arcs mentioned already, but I think one that stuck with me was the Syndicate arcs of the Responsibility Loyalist track. Oh, sure, it starts off good. Meet an undercover agent, infiltrate the group. Then things get bad, slowly, and suddenly you're actually performing hits for the Syndicate and learning that they're big on honor. Finally you get the opportunity to take on Wu Yin and Tub Ci, when you're hit with the reason why they fight: Penelope. Suddenly a simple choice becomes not so simple.

Loyalist: Strike a crippling blow that the Syndicate will not recover from
Resistance: Help an old man rescue his daughter

Law or good? Pick one. With all the nasty things you did to get this far, can you throw away this chance? But can you live with not helping the man who begs you to save his daughter? And the kicker? If you choose Loyalist, what's the arc souvenir? A picture of Penelope Yin. It's easy to feel like such a heel after doing this arc.

Also, an oldie, but a goodie is the original Hero's Hero arc. Yes, it was a blatant boss rush against the evil counterparts of the Freedom Phalanx with each mission being not much more than a target and a throwaway reason. And then you reach the finale. The mighty Statesman held captive and the only way to release him is to defeat his evil double. At this point in the game, Tyrant was one of the nastiest things in the game other than Hamidon, and when you finally beat him, you just saved Statesman himself. You're now a Hero with capital H, and the big guy himself acknowledges that. Great way to end the I1 story.

I give high marks to the arc featuring the death of Aaron Walker. They did a really good job of establishing the character as an annoying little prat of a genius and then making you care just enough about him that being unable to help him in Neuron's containment facility hurts just a little bit.

Another one I really like, though it isn't a full arc, is "A Titan Called Joe" from Crimson. It's just a quick three-shot of connected missions, but finding just how low Malta will go to keep their secrets safe, and just how reprehensible they can be is a little bit terrifying, particularly because it shows that they've infiltrated into the Zig's management and can do WHAT they want there without too much fear of repercussions.

I know it gets a lot of flak, but Roy Cooling's arc "Bad People, Good Intentions" struck a chord with me too. It used a lot of MacGuffinry to tell the story, I will admit, but it stands strong on two points for me: 1) That while you are a hero and able to medi-port to safety, the front line PPD are very much exposed and unprotected and they do their jobs in spite of that. And 2) The final fight, where you are faced with Castillo the buffoon, who you take down only to be faced with the big Malta Titan afterwards. Even if you have seen the titans before, it's an impressive sight getting one barrelling down on you on a burning helipad as you're exhausted but still fighting to do right not only by the PPD but also by the other heroes in the upcoming praetorian invasion.

Many of the above-mentioned:

Aaron Walker's arc-Noble Savage MAY be one of my favorite Praetorian characters.

Seer 1381, aka Katie Douglas certainly hit me hard not only with her actual arc, but also her moral choice. Helping her find her identity, and then helping her free her other compatriots so that maybe they can find their identities. (How knows how many Seers have a similar backstory to hers, maybe ALL of them?)

Aaron Walker's death in Dark Watcher's Praetorian arc. And Sefu Tendaji's death in his Vanguard arc. The latter made me want to tear off Nemesis' brass faceplate and then mutilate his ******* face!

Of course my character's double's death gave me a new reason to hate Protean in case his Power Siphon wasn't enough already.

And it's strange, but every time a Praetorian does the mission to leave Praetoria, it's sad. It doesn't matter if it's a Crusader, Warden, Power Loyalist, or Responsibility Loyalist.

Etc. Etc.

For me the one that hit hardest the first time I did it was the Power Transfer System - Red side arc that you get from Marshal Brass. This is the Amanda Vines arc the investigative reporter for WSPDR.

Do you fail the last mission and let Amanda broadcast the truth about Dr. Aeon? -or- Do you destrory the generators and stop her from reporting what she and you have found out?

Either way when you report back to Brass he says that he had his men have a "talk" to Amanda.

After sucessfully completing that mission (the first time) I had to log out, becasue I could not deal with what I had done.

So I went ahead and counted up the votes up through Nylonus' post (#36). The tally stands:

*******Seer Marino - "Oh Wretched Man"
*******Special Agent Jenni Adair - "Looking Through the Glass"
*****Aaron Walker - "The Savage Man"
****Dark Watcher - "A Promise for a New Tomorrow" / "To Our Health"
****Leonard - "Good Villains Never Die"
***Anti-Matter - "No Survivors" / "View from the Other Side"
***Dark Watcher - "The Horrors of War"
***Ginger Yates - "The Terra Conspiracy"
***Lady Grey - "Task Force Mission: Apocalypse"
**Admiral Sutter - "The Sky is Falling"
**Colleen Nelson - "A Path Into Darkness"
**Crimson - "A Titan Called Joe"
**Crimson - "Project: World Wide Red"
**Dean MacArthur - "Me Myself and My Other Selves"
**Diviner Maros - "The Cult of the Shaper"
**Field Agent Keith Nance - "Twisted Reflections"
**Gordon Bower - "Piercing the Veil"
**Hero Alignment Mission - "You're a Cruel One, Mr. Phipps"
**Luke Larson - "Rescue Tunnel Rat"
**Madeleine Casey - "To Save a Soul"
**Penelope Yin - "My Best Friend Rusty"
**Seer 1381 - "You Can't Go Home" / "Mind Freedom"
**Vincent Ross - "Old Friends, New Enemies, and New Opportunities"
**Westin Phipps - "Miss Francine the Freakshow Teacher" / "The Rebels" / "The Bane of the Heart"
*[CONTACT UNKNOWN] - "Burning Dreck" (I could not find this anywhere on ParagonWiki)
*Angus McQueen - "Division: Line"
*Apex - "Alpha Strike"
*Chance McKnight - "Corp Wars" / "One Weakness"
*Doc Buzzsaw - "Die by the Freak" / "Heavy Metal Doctoring"
*Gordon Stacy - "The Revenant Hero Project"
*Hero Alignment Mission - "Miss Thystle's Plea"
*Hero Alignment Mission - "Your Life Story! Wait, What?"
*Hero Morality Mission - "One Good Spider"
*Hero Morality Mission - "The Unusual Suspect"
*Indigo - "Melvin and the Mysterious Malta Group"
*Janet Kellum - "The Evil Countess Crey"
*Maria Jenkins - "A Hero's Hero"
*Marshal Brass - "The Aeon Conspiracy"
*Maxwell Christopher - "The Eternal Nemesis"
*Mender Ramiel - "Power Overwhelming"
*Mortimer Kal - "The Fire and the Flames"
*Mr. Bocor - "The Book and the Burning"
*Penelope Yin - "I Lost My Daddy!"
*Peter Themari - "Breaking Bows" / "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge"
*Recluse's Patrons - "Time After Time"
*Robert Flores - "Face to Face"
*Roy Cooling - "Bad People, Good Intentions"
*Slot Machine - "High Roller's Last Gamble"
*Steven Sheridan - "The Organ Grinders"
*Sunstorm - "The Peacebringer Saga"
*Technician Naylor - "Automated Villainy"
*Twilight Son - "Smoke and Mirrors"
*Unai Kemen - "Tau Delta 8-7 Missions"

Do keep them coming, this is proving to be fascinating...

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

The most moving mission I played was, like many said, the Looking Through the Glass mission. Although most of it was relatively plain, the lead-up to the final mission was worth it for the cutscene in the final mission itself. Everything about it was just... right.

I also particularly liked the Crusader arcs in Praetoria, not just for their actual moral content, but because of how every one you talked to was a proper character of their own. Every one of them is there because they've lost everything else, or had it taken away from them. You see all these people who have been through the same sort of hell, and get to see how each one of them reacts, whether they go psychotic, get angry, get addicted to potent drugs, or just stop caring altogether. But the best of them all is Wardog. You can see everythign he was; an intelligent and just person, with high ideals and the wisdom and perspective to see them through, but who has been completely destroyed as a person by the thing's he's been forced to do. He's the only one who genuinely sees the horror of what he's doing, but does it anyway, because he knows it's necessary. And just as you're beginning to see the man he once was, he and all of the men you've been working with the whole time reveal that they've been planning to sacrifice their lives the whole time. Then, even as his plan falls apart around them, and everything they've worked and sacrificed for falls apart, Wardog's last act is to stand and die so that you can escape. You're a reflection of everything he once was, and he refuses to let that die with him.

Other good arcs include all the Malta arcs, especially the World Wide Red ones. They're one of the few older-style arcs that are not only not SUPERHERO-brand silly, but deadly serious. Malta is constantly portrayed as a colossal and colossaly deadly organisation that is barely within your powers to survive, let alone defeat. They are everything that is right about a serious superhero story, and the moment that catalyses it best is when they send the KRONOS TITAN to ambush you. Instead of sitting around and dying slowly, as soon as you show yourself a genuine threat they send the single most powerful piece of hardware they have to kill you.

I also like a lot of the RWZ missions for the same reason, especially The Thin Red Line and The Horror of War. They do a great job of getting across that this is a serious situation, and the way the situation gets increasingly grim as you escalate it works great. I particularly liked the huge hallway full of bodies in the last LGTF mission. It shows that you're not the only ones fighting to save the world - just the only ones who came back. I wish there was a mission arc that showed you the original Rikti Invasion story told properly, because there's so much potential in there and in the Alpha/Omega team battle. There's something deeply stirring about this invasion going so badly wrong that it takes the best part of the entire WORLD'S superhero population to make this last stand, that it will almost certainly kill most of them, and that it probably won't work. I want that arc so much.

Also, a lot of the morality/alignment missiosn are very good. Mechanically, but also plotwise. I also like the Time After Time mission for villains, because it's the perfect capstone for the character's career, and makes the character feel genuinely powerful. YOU destroyed the world at least once, and you're going to avoid that by going forward in time, killing Lord Recluse, and throwing his shattered helmet at the feet of the current version of the most deadly man in the world.

My personal Favorites:

Mr. Bocor's Arc "The Book and the Burning". Actually I like everything About Mr. Bocor. Yes, he treats you like a lacky, not really a equal, but yet there are times where he's very true about the world (i.e. the Mission accept for defeating Sea Witch).

Peter Themari's Arc "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge". Think of this as a precursor to the Morality arcs we have now. Then again, I like Themari (The Pet Shop Boys "Opportunities" seems to earwig running his stuff).

Seer Marino's "Oh Wretched Man". Hands down, the best Under 20 Arc in the Game, IMHO.

Also a Nod to Primal and Prea Yin's Arcs. Prea Yin's especially. Just the whimsy in the other persona she has had to create. Then when you think about what that is doing to her...

Actually running the whole loyalist Responsibility Arc Undercover and adding in Scott's commentary when you call him. Really makes you think about stuff at times.

I also like Seer 1381's Arcs. Really get's a feel for what is really wrong in Preatoria.

Tunnel Rat's Arc is good to. Mainly just her way of talking is what is nice about it.

I also like running Marshal Brass' Arcs. It would be nice to see the Morality Tech reworked somehow into "The Aeon Conspiracy".

Thank you for the time...

@Travlr (Main) / @Tymers Realm (Test)

One of my favorites is "Upon the Psychic Plane." The first time I ran through it, the tragic ending of NOT being able to redeem Vanessa DeVore even after you'd dispelled the spirit of Giovanna Scaldi within the main Carnival mask just got me right in the gut.

I hate to be so broad, but I played through every single arc in Praetoria (several characters, froze xp in every zone, etc) and THAT was some damn good stuff. I really really enjoyed it.

The Protean arc in Talos, I'll throw another vote on that pile too. My poor double!

The arc where you find out where Crey's Paragon Protectors come from... the first time I played that one through, my poor character's head almost exploded!

Good to see Seer Marino's arc up there at the top. My favorite arcs are the ones with Wretch in them... seriously, I love that guy.

EDIT: Westin Phipps's arc is also pretty major for me. I don't think I've ever been able to actually complete it.

I've always been partial to The Vazhilok Plague because it was a bit of a reality bender for me when Doctor Vazhilok says "I'll clean up my own mess." and I realized that he was trying to stop the plague, not spread it. That's the beginning of the change from stories that are clearly black and white to stories with drama and stories that did not always have a clear-cut villain.

I remember noticing how emotionally invested I'd become in the story as I was first going through the Power line in Praetoria. It really hit me at the end of Transuter's arc "Letting Go". I really liked the characters I had been interacting with in the Powers stories, especially Warrent. He was so nice to my character in his story arc and Reese's arc. So the ending of "Letting Go" hit me hard that first time through.

EDIT: Thanks GG! Got mixed up.

That's the Power path - Crusaders are part of the Resistance