SSA SPOILERS: He's WHO?!

Yeah i got the impression he wanted her to read him to spring something on her.

And keep in mind, he's a fairly powerful psychic on his own. Trying to read him is probably pretty difficult if it doesn't just turn into a Scanners type struggle for control (possibly with Scanners-style head poppage).

Still waiting to get a villain up to 30 to run this.

I have to say, I'm kind of disappointed with how short this is. They seem to be compressing them more and more. I didn't mind the first's length so much as I just hated the "GO GO GO" timers and "OMG AMBUSHES". Mission 1 was about as bad as mission 1 in episode 2 villainside. "Ok, got the glowy and... oh mission over. Really? that wasn't even 5 minutes".

Aww.

I was even on my heroic Necromancer and I couldn't bring her back from the dead... I don't think Statesman would mind having Zombie!Alexis as a daughter, do you?! 8-(

So, let me get this straight. Have we answered the "who will die" question yet? Does "Alexis" answer that? Well, no, not really, since there are four more arcs left in the queue, and I find myself less and less motivated to go through them. It's become clear to me that these arcs thrive on shock deaths, and I'm honestly just not interested in that. Especially since they introduced a character who had no appeared in the game prior to this, showed her for all of one mission, and then killed her pretty much as suddenly as they introduced her. I guess you can't waste a character who would have to show up in missions or hand out missions, but this just seems unnecessarily cruel storytelling. So we have a mission the sole purpose of which is to explain how Alexis is a nice person, just so we'll feel worse when she gets a bridge dropped on her by the end. Classy.

Though, honestly, is there anyone who DIDN'T expect her to die? The frikkin' loading screen pic is the Statesman looking at a corpse in the morgue (charming visual, by the way, that's exactly what I want in my escapism, guess I can't complain about the mass graves at Fort Darwin any more), what did you think was going to happen? Someone who ISN'T Alexis but is still close to the Statesman dying? Yeah, if I didn't know we were watching torture porn, that pic set me straight. I hope we'll get something less depressing when this arc is over, but given that this kind of depression seems to be in all new content, I worry that someone at Paragon Studios is about to commit suicide, judging by the tone of the writing. Either that, or they're preparing to pull a Ginax ending.

Really, though, as a story... This was solid. Aside from the last mission, the objectives of which are essentially "55 Puppies to Kick" at least on the villain side and a side order of "I want to take orders from you!" this was actually well structured. The contact for it was incidental and unimportant, but it had relatively straightforward missions, it had a lot of action and the events therein were logical, for the most part. Can't really complain about that. In fact, I'm pretty sure Darryn Wayde proved to be the man behind the curtain, and I'm OK with that. The game has been building him up to be a big shot, so it fits. However, with City of Heroes borrowing from TNA Wrestling's booking, I fear that BECAUSE this makes sense, it'll turn out he wasn't the man behind the curtain and Malaise is using him, that Darryn Wayde never went to the Shard and doesn't have any magical powers, and "Jean" just gave him a many-years-long illusion that he was someone he wasn't, and everyone instantly believed it.

But, hey, Darryn makes sense. It involves Rularuu (and thus promises to break us out of the Praetoria rut), it's big, it makes sense. Can't ask for more than that

Really, as a standalone, this is pretty good... Or would be pretty good if not for the suspect writing. I'm not talking about storytelling or narrative or exposition here. I'm talking just basic technical writing flubs, like suspect grammar, spelling mistakes, the word "Rogue" used in a sentence it has no reason to be in in-between two words and so on. As a foreign speaker of English, this honestly comes off as having been written by someone for whom English is not a native language. On multiple occasions, the writing seems to be shooting for regular expressions (like "keep the cancer under control") but misses and goes for the uncanny valley of expressions (like "maintaining the cancer") where the words are properly spelled, the grammar is correct and the sentence has a meaning... It just doesn't mean quite what it was supposed to mean and doesn't really sound like something that's natural to say in English. It's like an uncanny human face simulacra robot. I get what it's trying to represent, I get that it's not actually real, but it's still just... Weird.

Honestly, of all the SSAs, this one seems like the best, but only as a standalone. The others felt pretty much like "Your Princess is in another castle!" The same one mission but repeated three times. Find the Obelisk! Now find the Obelisk! Aha! Now we can find the Obelisk! This one actually kind of sort of follows a three-act structure, it makes sense and, technical errors notwithstanding, it's pretty well written. It's just a shame that we seem to be getting off on killing characters. That really ruins the whole experience for me. Frankly, I don't think I want to play the rest of the SSAs. Which is just as well, I suppose, since I'm not actually paying for them.

---

Yeah, and when an insane psychic who sucks people into his mind to torture them with their greatest fear says "Read my mind." ... Yes, Admiral Ackbar. Would you like to say something, sir?

It's a trap!

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.

Stop using broken English.

Stop repeating words.

Check that all fields in both contacts are filled in.

In other words - get an intern to proofread these horribly written missions.

When I did the villainside version, I ran it with Profiteer, my Mercs/TA MM. When I got to that last mish and she's in the circle, and Wade goes, "Go for it," my response was to reply in-character, "Sorry, dude, you didn't contract me for a hit, just for a kidnapping. You want her offed, do it yourself."

Of course, after he shrugs and BANG, in response to his snark "not everyone's a born killer," she remarked, "Yeah, tough guy... real hard to take out someone trapped in a summoning circle. Next time, try shooting fish in a barrel, at least they try to present a moving target."

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

*****










So now what they need to do is add the tech to the game that has Statesman attack you on sight when you go rogue or full hero, for killing his daughter

So Penn Jillette is an illusionist?

Who knew?