Discussion: Divided We Fall

I personally think Tyrant is the epitome of the dark side Vigilante alignment.

"Only I can protect the world."

In theory he is heroic. His basic intentions are the safety of his people and the stability if his world. Very Blue intentions. At least from what we have seen.

In practice however, he falls pretty close to the Red alignments. He's like a Vigilante who has done a lot of the Vig -> Vill tips, but has always stopped before making the jump.

Like a Vigilante, on the surface, he's still heroic.

Assuming what we have learned is true, he's somewhat heroic.

But I don't think he's tortured.

His ultimate sin is that he has no faith in anyone but himself. That is what makes him an Antagonist, and that is what will be his downfall.

This might be a good time to psot Vanessa DeVore's updated bio from I21:

Quote:

"The mysterious Vanessa DeVore is a powerful psychic who formed the Carnival of Light from the desperate remains of powerful sorcerers and renegade telepaths who saw Emperor Cole for the evil he truly is. It is her mental powers which masks the Resistance from Praetor Tilman and the Seers. She helped form the Resistance from scattered and aimless groups opposed to Emperor Cole's totalitarian regime. She chose Calvin Scott to lead the violence prone Crusaders into battle with the Praetorian usurpers, and on the other hand she has carefully cultivated the Wardens to overthrown the empire from within and ultimately take over."

It doesn't seem to present Tyrant and the loyalists in a very good light

Emperor Cole is the man. Hands down.

Give us incarnate content to fight on the side of Cole please!

While I can appreciate a decent story as much as the next person, I'd still much rather get an actual release date on i21 than a story to placate everyone.

I thought that was pretty well written for something done "off the cuff." Presumably, with the unexpected delays in releasing i21, someone wisely decided a live server event would be a nice way to calm things down, as well as test the new hardware. I'm all for this.

I have two observations, one negative and one positive.

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However, as this thread shows, it's little more than an opportunity for the Content Police to call the developers horrible writers, for reasons that still aren't too clear to me. Aside from one prominent exception , posters have repeatedly claimed they want "nuanced" characters with realistic motivations and that "black-and-white morality is dumb and childish," essentially a "City of Wild Cards" vibe. This is exactly what we've received with the Tyrant/Praetoria storyline. Tyrant, far from being evil for evil's sake, seems more like a thinly-veiled political allegory, and the writers have endeavored to give him some sort of motivation while still portraying him as an unmistakable villain.

I understand why people dislike the Incarnate backstory, but I don't really get the hate for the Praetorian storyline, as expressed. Yes, I see flaws with it (I consider its entire premise, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem!", to be short-sightedly intolerant at best and appallingly savage at worst), but I don't understand others' complaints about it.

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Personally, the thing I love about all this is that Hamidon, my favorite archvillain, plays such a major role in it. Prior to the Going Rogue era, I was seeing more and more posters argue that the Devouring Earth were not only unthreatening, but also not just unvillainous but actually heroic (apparently because they "clean up" environmental disasters while mutating and dominating the minds of bystanders). Fortunately, Going Rogue has apparently changed that. While Praetorian Hamidon isn't really given the depth of characterization that he could have (he's a fanatic so self-absorbed that he wants to literally remake the world in his own image), at least he's being portrayed as a serious threat. I'd been concerned since I first read about Praetorian Devouring Earth that they'd ultimately prove to be just puppets of the Cole regime, rather than the monstrous, terrifying fiends they ought to be. Happily, that doesn't seem to be the case, at least not all the time.

As long as we aren't presented with a scenario where we have to help the poor, victimized Devouring Earth fight the Praetorians, then I'm happy.