*spoilers* The Freedom Phalanx are incompetent!

The SSAs are free/easy alignment merits. Pay no attention to that absurd story.

Personal note time, ignore if you don't care about my mentality behind this.

I may have made the situation worse for myself for one simple reason - I just got done writing "The Rise of a Hero," a story arc about Jun, the little girl that could which I'm playing right now, which both depicts her rise to prominence and sets her character up a one of the most dedicated, stubborn, uncompromising heroes I have ever made.

Jun is the girl I wanted to have hit Aaron Thiery in the mouth when he started talking about how the city had to be hurt for heroes to wake up, because she would never put people in danger under any circumstances. She's the one who shut down the Centre's "radio" mid-sentence because she doesn't care how much he does to reign Requiem in when his soldiers are still murdering people. She's the one who takes the Hero option at every opportunity without a second thought because that's the right thing to do.

Unwittingly, I wrote Jun to be the Naruto of my character roster. That is to say, she's the loud, brash kid who yells at adults having a crisis of conscience and punches people who try to argue for a grey-and-grey morality. She's the one always goes on about how heroes have a responsibility to the people, about how they literally and physically have no choice but to be heroes because lives depend on them. She's the one getting knocked down and then getting back up, and will keep doing so until the day she dies.

I say Paragon City has no ideals, because it is ideals I built Jun on. The great heroes of the past were her inspiration, and she will do everything she can to be an inspiration to others, even if she's probably younger than Penelope Yin. And that's how it should be. When people see a little girl bleeding from gunshot wounds, beaten and broken stand up and keep fighting, then they SHOULD be inspired to do the same. They SHOULD be inspired to put their differences aside, they SHOULD be inspired to put their personal tragedies on hold and do the right thing. Because no-one else could. The job of a hero isn't easy, but that's exactly why the people who do it are heroes. Because they take on this job that's full of pain, heartache and horror, and they do it anyway, so that others who are less capable of protecting themselves don't have to.

In an idealistic world, Jun would be an amazing hero worthy of admiration and praise. The trouble is that with every new Issue, the world of City of Heroes becomes less and less idealistic, turning more and more grim and gritty. For now, that sort of passion for the calling of the hero still works, but how long will it be before a hero like Jun will be expected to get shot and bleed out in a gutter when it's proven that enthusiasm for the right thing just gets you killed? How long before our heroes start realising that idealism is an outdated tradition in a world where nice guys finish last?

City of Heroes used to be a good world. Not ideal, obviously. Crime, drama, tragedy and more still took place. But at the end of the day, the world always gave me the sense that if you just do your best, if you're just a really nice person, if you fight hard enough and your ideals are good enough, you will eventually succeed and everything will be OK. It was an uplifting place I came to when I felt the real world wasn't fair, or when it felt like no good deed goes unpunished in my day-to-day life.

City of Heroes used to have morals I could aspire to even outside of the game. It taught me that being a nice, dedicated person was a good thing. It taught me that even one person doing his best can make a difference. I want those days back. I want to get back the days when a hero with nothing more than the guts to do what's right and a good attitude was already well on the way to success.

I want the happy City of Heroes back, and it's only getting sadder and more depressing, instead.

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.

I'm not going to spoil anything, but given the current/future content, I'll at least debunk the theory that Recluse is going to 'lay down his life for his friend'. Not going to happen, unless some other random, wonky plot-things happen afterwords. However, I fully expect him to bring all eight arms of his spidery wrath down on Wade. It's like some random upstart killing Batman, then parading around in his costume while the Joker watches; ol' Mr. Richter isn't going to take that well at all (pun not intended, but I'll take credit for it).

Also, I'll throw in my voice for the SSAs showing the heroes in a more triumphant light in the second set. They had their big fall with 'Who Will Die?', now they've got to pick themselves back up and carry on the good fight.

My biggest critique of the story is that it's too rushed. That may sound like a "You've got to be kidding me" thing to say about a story that's progressing at one chapter a month, but the frequency of publication is not really the problem.

It's that the story is all payoff and no buildup.

The biggest culprit is Statesman's final thoughts. Maybe they WOULD be sweet and tender and tear-jerking, except that we never actually have any build-up where we get to know Statesman well enough to appreciate that he feels responsible for the entire world as if only he can save it. We never see that he goes off alone to find and face Wade because of his fear that whatever enemy would purposely bait him like that is one that might put the entire Phalanx at risk. We don't see any of the planning and manipulation with a mysterious hand behind events that leaves us wondering what is about to happen and who is behind it. (Maybe more accurate to say that we don't get enough of it.) We don't see Alexis Cole-Duncan meeting with the Phalanx and/or the FBSA and acknowledging the danger but choosing to walk into it anyway because the potential reward is worth the risk.

Basically, all of that "stuff" that people keep inventing to explain why the story has progressed this way when people complain about the holes. We get all of the payoff, the climaxes of the story with none of the buildup of suspense that normally precedes any of them.

That's the biggest problem I have with people who say "Oh, just shut up and suspend your disbelief already!" We're not talking about suspension of belief, we're talking about story-telling.

In an ideal world, this story would have weekly episodes and episode 1 of "Who will die?" would have been the climax of the whole first arc. Statesman's death would be the climax of arc 2. The rise of Godlike Wade would be arc 3. Throughout all of it, we would be seeing the whole story and getting the buildup of suspense that would fill the holes, show us the motivations, give us a reason to "suspend disbelief", show us some kind of growth or at least expansion of the characters involved.

As it stands, we have to imagine all of the substance of the story, ourselves. When we are left with that, we're left with 10,000 different versions of the story and a lot of hand-waving.

The Phalanx appears incompetent because there isn't any story to justify why any of the events are happening. We just get a lot of Kodak moments. "We'll have a battle of law vs chaos by having you fight Manticore!" "We'll have you fight inside of Sister Psyche's mind! Cool!" "We'll have you 'investigate' Wade's lair!" "We'll have you see Statesman's last thoughts!"

It's just one event after another instead of a cohesive narrative, IMO.

Maybe that's the most they had time for. If so, I hope that they take that lesson away from this experience and spend the time and resources to really make the next SSA be something completely fleshed out and worth experiencing as a story.