Posi Blogs about con to the ret

why don't you give examples Venture?

When the Council was brought in the initial pass did edit all the 5th Column missions in ways that made it seem the 5th had never existed. That got rolled back due to the outcry here when the issue hit Test.

The introduction of Arachnos introduced a whole herd of retcons involving Statesman's background. The most blatant of them was changing Maria Jenkin's "about" text, which used to say she was Maiden Justice.

Both novels contradicted canon in many places; some of those contradictions were retconned in and others are still in limbo. The writing team for CoV either didn't read the existing material or did and didn't care what it said, as they played loose and fast with canon in a number of places. One that stuck out for me was mangling the details of the Mu-Oranbega war.

There's a lot more that just doesn't spring to mind at the moment. The idea that the writers haven't ignored their own history on numerous occasions is laughable.

I was going to mention the Issue 3 retcon of the 5th Column into becoming The Council too, but Venture beat me to it. That made for some rather ... hilarious ... continuity errors when dealing with the story arcs of Striga where everything was rather obviously written for the 5th Column, but then needed to be reconned for being Council instead.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

You know that thing Rowling does with Voldemort being referred to as "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named"? She got the idea from the Council/5th retcon. Some of the text floating around is downright hilarious if you know the retcon happened and can spot what they did.

But I still think my favourite was Atlas. Someone described the first retcon on the plaque under his statue as "he went from being a badazz who held back the entire invasion force of the Axis by himself, at the cost of his life, to some chump who couldn't solo one of his missions".

Praetoria was an interesting type of retcon, because there was so little information about the place pre-GR that what we got in GR didn't really contradict much of the older stuff.

Responding to two things here that stray a bit from the course of the conversation

Quote:

Originally Posted by Positron After you’ve played through the game on a character, you know most of the stories of the game. You can now make a new character that has a background that meshes perfectly with the game world but where is the creativity in that? CoH characters are specifically generic so that your imagination can run wild with them. You have the creative license to introduce your own background into the CoH world at this point. You would probably take care to make sure it didn’t contradict any established lore, but if you did have a great idea that you absolutely wanted to run with you wouldn’t let that lore get in your way.

When people think of creativity the default image to jump to is the creative artist, a person working with a blank canvas, making the vision in their mind a reality. But what of the creative inventor, a person limited in scope by a particular problem? They don't merely discover a solution to a problem; they invent, or create, the solution in their mind then work to make it a reality as well. However, they do so with a great number of limitations. Didn't inventing the light bulb require not only knowledge but a great deal of creativity to think about the problem of lighting in ways perhaps no one before had?

In the case of the player, the problem is "How do I create a character that meshes with this pre-established world but still stands out?" Not only is their the lore to contend with, but there are a wealth of cliches and tropes from the superhero genre to avoid. It becomes a very good exercise in creativity and thinking outside the box rather than pretending the box simply doesn't exist.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rubberlad Now see, I saw his closing statement still in the context of his operational position - ie what kind of boss would I be if I hired new staff to be creative but then held them back from doing the job I hired them to do? It's Posi being honest and still making the best operational decision he can make without feeling like a hypocrite.

When a designer is hired to create or redesign a logo for a company they are hired to be very creative. However, they aren't give a blank canvas with absolute artistic freedom; they are held back by a number of things: brand recognition, corporate philosophy, target market, etc. They should acknowledge and utilize these things to their advantage. This is the thing that often separates a good artist from a good designer.

So I must disagree. Asking a person to be creative in a limited space isn't hypocritical if they are well aware of the limitations and challenges ahead of time. Part of the job is in the give and take of what you can and can't do.