Oooh

"I assure you, my good man. Lord Nemesis is 'down with the street'. 'Word up, my homey', as it were."

This has to be one of the most memorable pieces of NPC dialog ever written, not the least because it sums up the entire Nemesis story in a couple of sentences.

If Nemesis had remained this mad, Prussian would-be world conqueror who was mentally stuck in the 19th century and so his behavior was explainable from that standpoint, then I think that he would have remained an interesting character.

Instead, he's depicted as this mad genius who just happens to have a steam fixation, unless that's also just a cover for his true plans. Which would still be alright if his plans weren't all some sort of saturday morning cartoon villainy. "I'm going to upload my mind into the Rikti Overmind and then I will RULE THE WORLD! If I kill half of the world's population in the process, well, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs."

Personally, I like the Nemesis exactly because he ISN'T hijacking TV stations and proclaiming himself ruler and storming City Hall for no reason. That, more than anything else, would make him into a cartoon villain. What I like about the man is that he's more sinister than anything else. He's far more scary when he ISN'T doing something overt, simply for the fact that it just means he's still doing something but I just don't know what it is. I also don't really want to see him proclaim himself emperor of the world of king of America or whatever, because as I understand his mentality, Nemesis really isn't after "rule." He does genuinely feel that everyone is better off under his "benign" rule. Or dead, either way work.

To be honest, easily explainable motivations like "he's just insane" or "he hats humanity" or "his mother didn't hug him enough" just... Bother me. People aren't this easy to sum up in a sentence. In a lot of ways, I actually prefer a villain whose actions can somewhat be justified, someone you can't just point to and say "Everything this guy says is wrong by default." The villain who's ultimately right is ultimately the coolest, at least in my eyes.

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The Freakshow, on the other hand, have become a joke because someone on the development team MADE them into a joke. They went from being your typical post-apocalyptic anime monsters to silly goofballs that we make fun of because they don't have hands, they speak in "l33t" even though they didn't use to and because it's funny to see jacker-up cybernetic thugs trying to do homework or run pawn shops. Because it's funny, and not because it makes for compelling storytelling.

And I'm sick and tired of jokes that make a mockery out of what is an otherwise compelling narrative. Enough with the Hellion Girlfriends, please. They're not funny any more.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Even given how ludicrous I happen to find the whole business with Nemesis and the original Rikti Invasion (deliberately being vague to avoid spoilers) I'd feel better if I thought he had at least learned something from the experience and changed in some fashion because of it.

Instead, it seems that he just took the Thomas Edison view - "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." And, hey, he discovered a NEW way to try and take over a different world in the process! Boy, howdy!

Nemesis and his antics literally put me off of the game for a significant amount of time (which probably says I was approaching a burn-out phase, anyway, but still...).

Just to swing this back around to being halfway on-topic:

I'm looking forward to the signature arcs, but I want a reason to care about the death of whoever it is, and if I so much as hear a character mention Nemesis plots behind any of it I'm going seriously consider turning into a Premium level player.

No, you're right and that was my bad, if you're talking about the Rikti thing. It's old news for many but not for everyone. I assume you didn't mean Mender Silos - If you did, then Positron himself let the cat out of the bag when he hinted rather broadly within the first few days of Ouroboros' existence that Mender Silos is an anagram. That's one I'd consider to be open knowledge.

You're correct, though and I even caught onto that myself in another thread where I was a bit more careful about potential spoilers. I apologize for any spoilage here.

So word on the street is that these aren't the only posters like this floating around. Anyone see any other ones?

I agree that we should be careful about giving away spoilers and plots that seem old to us but new players will want to play throu and find out on their own. I've read the 2 books and all the comics and most of the in-game lore so I need to make sure and not reveal things as well, so stop reading if u have never been to or played the Rikti War Zone stuff.





SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT













I'm going to guess that Hero 1 will be back and healthy soon with Vanguard hopefully with these new arcs. And I hope Statesman or Manticore dont get killed off as these 3 are my favorites signature heroes.

And no one has posted this yet?



Mods, please advise if this is against the TOS/offensive. :/

I don't want to see any of the Freedom Phalanx die.

I even started to understand Statesman's attitude, while reading the comics. There's a reason why a few of the Phalanx members sometimes display petty attitudes and behavior (especially in Statesman's case), they are kind of like the Greek pantheon of Primal Earth, and Paragon City is like their Olympus. It's not an exact analogy, but it's not far from the mark either.

On a side note, see how I wrote that without spoiling any details, maybe just hinting? And I figure EVERYONE should know "THAT" by now. But I'm practicing keeping my lips sealed for all the innocent new arrivals who are soon to come! Come to think of it, I didn't know much about Statesman's origin for the first six months I played. I kind of saw him as a Captain America/Superman amalgam, but boy was I wrong. Anyway, I read about it in Top Cow's first City of Heroes issue, as opposed to reading a spoiler on the forum. Made it much cooler.

More on topic, sometimes heroes in the comics have to die. It reminds us that they have really been putting their lives on the line all this time. It also reminds us that their enemies are serious about getting rid of them. All good fiction builds tension. Comics are no different. You can't have tension without conflict, sometimes dangerous conflict.

When heroes and villains are brought back from the dead, people traditionally grumble and moan, but those have been some of the most interesting and entertaining stories in comics history. You might say, "well, comics AREN'T good for building tension, because they always bring the characters back." This is a popular meme. But it's not true for those of us who've been emotionally gripped by a story arc that was well-written, one that threatened a super hero's life, or the lives of civilians they're protecting.

A good story makes you forget about Fourth Wall concepts like comics traditions, and places you right in the context of the story. This is the pinnacle of "pretend". Good stories encourage us to turn all of our real world biases off at the door, like you would your cell phone at a movie. There will always be people who can't seem to do either of these things. But most of us can sympathize with a hero in danger, who wouldn't be aware they'd just be conveniently written back into existence some day if they die.

When a character dies, you don't know when they'll return, or how they'll have changed. Sometimes, a character might not come back for years. The possibility that one of your favorite characters might not be around for years can build tension. And sometimes, they don't return.