Discussion: A Death Revealed....

Wow.

Some people really love to bring in nerd rage and drama over the weirdest things.

Love the SSAs, please keep them coming Paragon, with and without spoilers as you see fit to tell the stories you want to tell.

As far as I am concerned, haters are gonna hate, and ragers are gonna rage; ignore 'em, they are not worth the time.

Maybe they all supposed to die, and we get new iconic heroes or old ones will get revamped costumes and more spotlight, and new shiny TFs.
That would be good.
But Positron will not die, of course.

For those who think knowing Statesman will die ruins the story telling, may I ask you:

Does knowing that in every other case Statesman (and any other hero, including yourself in the CoH Universe) is going to live ruin the story for you? We all know with 99.99999% certainty that the hero of a series lives. Does such cases of knowing that the hero doesn't die *ruin* the story for you?

Ordinarily, every time the hero is threatened with death... we know it ain't gonna happen. That's a story spoiler for you, then, right?

My guess for the rest of it will be that next arc will have the "Emotional" death of Statesman. Then the rest of the arcs will feel hurried and incomplete. But why change how they have done every new thing they have put in the game now.

I really do hope I am wrong, just don't have much hope of it being any different.

Not loving Statesman is Unmerican. And being Unmerican is stupid.

Spot on, Chyll. That sums up the entirety of my feeling about this reveal, which was completely unnecessary. People were interested. People were curious about the hooks, and they were speculating in a good way about what was coming and who was going to die.

When you put the signature character of the game up in an ad and say 'oh, he's dying, but the how matters more than the who', then you automatically devalue the story. There's nothing to look forward to in this part, I already know what's happening. It doesn't matter how emotional, or engaging the scene might be, the fact that we know it is before the fact devalues it.

Part Five won't get discussed beyond 'oh, wasn't the death scene well done?' Those who want him dead will have been done celebrating, those who want him around (like myself) will have gotten over our disappointment, and the anticipation of the story will have faded.

Like I said before with movies and television and books: if you spoiled a big plot moment (no matter how telegraphed) in those media, you would be disappointing your audience. I hold its the same here.


S.

Could it be possible the following elements play a factor in 6 & 7?

Malleus Mundi
Malaise
Shadow Shard

SSA#7 comes out in March(?) according to the schedule which possibly aligns with I22 (Death Incarnate)?

I'm not expecting Statesman to stay dead, but instead a master plan using him as a device to cause more problems for us to overcome.

All that this thread mostly reminds me of, is that I'd like a comprehensive guide to the timeline/story of the franchise. I've so many alts and so much stuff done spread over a few years, that I've lost track. I had forgotten about my main hero getting Omega Clearance, for instance.

Anyone any pointers? The Paragon Wiki doesn't quite do it for me, I fear...

Ok, so far, our characters have been at least somewhat interactive with what is going on both sides. I wonder if redside you get to off states, while blueside, well, I dunno. Blueside is for (insert insulting euphemism here).

I didn't click the link ... I didn't want to know ... but ofcourse because the devs posted the spoiler some person decided to put it into a general chat channel.

Way to go devs ... thanks sooooo much

Maybe Statesman will come back later as a Red Statesman and a Blue Statesman made of pure energy...

Or possibly the essence of Statesman gets transferred into a special ring and a destined one can tap into the power by shouting "ENHANCEMENT DIVERSIFICATION!" complete with lightning strike and transformation.

Also, I'm suddenly reminded of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24yn0leXykI

/edit...

I had just an AWESOME idea.

Statesman gets replaced by the ULTIMATE patriot and American: Larry the Cable Guy!

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Big question is how will this effect the BM/statesman farm that he kills everything for ya? How else is my emp going to farm purples?

Damn it I wanted it to be Manicore now I lost the pool.

I have one more thing to say about this: I think that if they'd just named the SSA, "The Death of Statesman" or something similar, or "The End of an Era" and included the text in the OP as the general description of the story, then the whole "why would you spoil it" reaction wouldn't be happening in this way (though, there still would be people that thought it was a cheap stunt or whatever), because the story would have been about the how and why from the beginning.

It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with announcing that you're going to kill a character, it's that the story was set up as a mystery ("Who will die?"), and the mystery was revealed outside of the story, before we could learn it from within the story. Sure, now the story is about the how and not the who, but it started out as being about the who and was changed outside of the story to being about the how in the middle of it.

Anyway, again, I'm not super upset over this, just mildly disappointed. I just realized the above and wanted to provide it as feedback for future SSAs.