*spoilers* The Freedom Phalanx are incompetent!
By
Arctic_Princess,
Posted on: 2012-01-29 16:57 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
"maybe...", "probably...", "imagine if...", "I assumed...", "anyone in his situation would...", speculate, guess, infer, deduce.
If the story was complete we wouldn't be doing all of this guesswork and writing our own personalized version of the story in our heads.
If Paragon Studios intends to sell me SSA's as a virtual good, then future SSA's had better be complete stories and offer some sort of tangible game value and replay value. As it stands now, I own SSA 1-1 and that's the only chapter I'll ever need to own since buying extra chapters doesn't give me any more of a reward than owning that one chapter gives me.
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Teleport technology is readily available to heroes. Even our 'MediPorter' trips to the hospital are teleport technology. Most bases have teleporters to most of (if not all) the zones in the game (and soon even better teleporters will be available for our bases). We also have PortalCorp that even 'teleports' us to different worlds. To get there at the speed we must have- to get there just moments after Statesman fell into the trap- was obviously some sort of teleportation device, as ClawsandEffect inferred.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
That never even occurred to me, actually. The character I ran this arc with is a 15 year old girl who lives with her parents, and whose powers include punching stuff and dodging stuff and a great fighting spirit. Instantaneous transportation never even crossed my mind.
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The obvious problem is... the boat we go in. If there were a teleport, or portal, we used to get to the site, it would make more sense, and I honestly see that more as a psychological logic oversight on the Dev's part than a bad writing thing.
Q: What's the best way to get to the island in Cimerora?
A: It's an island; a boat, duh!
Realistically, if we took a little tugboat to wherever Cimerora was (presumably near Italy in Europe) the trip could take weeks, or more, but one short load screen and we're there. If we really took the boat, Wade would have been long gone, Statesman would have well begun the putrification process, and the only thing we'd have to fight there is a bad smell and the urge to vomit.
To me, the only failing in that, is the obvious mode of travel we would have actually used to get there in time, and since this tech doesn't exist in real life, I could see why whatever programmer that input the mission specifics missed this little hitch, and attached the mission door to what made the most sense to them at the time.
Again, I must be a truly forgiving sort to just overlook this and assume the best instead of tear it down for its obvious flaw in logic, and that may be the disconnect for me.
However, I look at the game as my leisure time activity and have enjoyed it for 7 years now nonstop. I try not to think hard about some of the flaws, and just enjoy it for what it is. I tend to over-analyze too many other things in my life (true story!) to allow this to get to me, I suppose.
Though now that I've made that connection it'll irritate the stuffin's outta' me every time I run it.
AND, now that I'm looking at the old unconnected story arcs... they were horribly written!! Very straightforward and didn't communicate at all like the contact themselves would. I'm working on Bonfire right now and Lorenzo DiCosta, the street hood has sentences like "I'm afraid a conflict like that could spill out onto the streets and endanger the lives of our citizens." Yeah... an urban tough guy ex-con would say that... Storytelling has come a long way since the humble beginnings of this game.
Making improvements to these re-writes will be almost too easy in some cases...
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
See, when I threaten people that I'm a harsh critic of Architect arcs, this is what I mean. That's the sort of fairly minor detail that really sticks in my mind and makes me ask more and more questions the more I think about it. And it's also why I find it a good idea for a writer to second-guess his own work damn near all the time. I guess it can be explained if we take liberties with the explanation, but overall, it just bugs me.
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"I play characters. I have to have a very strong visual appearance, backstory, name, etc. to get involved with a character, otherwise I simply won't play it very long. I'm not an RPer by any stretch of the imagination, but character concept is very important for me."- Back Alley Brawler
I couldn't agree more.
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As soon as I read this, I remembered something.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I secretly hope that they kick him out of the Phalanx after the death of Statesman, and I hope that he takes all their shame and failure with him. Maybe even turn him into a villain, so that both heroes and villains can beat up on the guy. Or give him the Anti-Matter treatment of just stripping him of his title and officially disconnecting him from the Phalanx, but keeping him as a disgruntled TF contact.
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Go back and watch the CoH Going Rogue trailer. Manticore is surrounded by a aura, colored the same as Maelstrom, who went from hero to villain off-screen. Do you think that the Devs planned this far ahead? And if they did, will SSA 2 involve Ghost widow leaning towards hero side?
Food for thought. Maybe off topic, but if Ghost Widow joined the Freedom Phalanx, it could be a little different.
Goodbye. Not to the game, but the players. Goodbye. Everyone, remember to have fun. That's all I can say.
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Ultimately, I think you are right here, Slick. Erring on the side of the most charity, the problem may be the medium more than anything else.|
Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
"maybe...", "probably...", "imagine if...", "I assumed...", "anyone in his situation would...", speculate, guess, infer, deduce.
If the story was complete we wouldn't be doing all of this guesswork and writing our own personalized version of the story in our heads. If Paragon Studios intends to sell me SSA's as a virtual good, then future SSA's had better be complete stories and offer some sort of tangible game value and replay value. As it stands now, I own SSA 1-1 and that's the only chapter I'll ever need to own since buying extra chapters doesn't give me any more of a reward than owning that one chapter gives me. |
As I have read ClawsandEffects' explanation of Statesman's actions, I thought to myself that I might not have had the intensely negative reaction I had if things had been explained that way in the arc. But they were NOT, which on the face of it leaves Statesman looking like a prize idiot, unless you fill in the gaps for yourself as Claws very admirably did. But I have to wonder if it would actually be POSSIBLE to do that in the arc itself.
What it boils down to is that the Devs are telling a story that has to have certain things happen without fail, including Statesman dying. No matter what the players do, the story will end the same way, period. Isn't this sort of thing EXACTLY what happens in a comic? Instead of a monthly arc, would the Devs be better served with a monthly online COMIC? Certainly for something like Statesman dying, I would think so. A comic is FAR better suited to tell a story, which is what "Who Will Die?" winds up being.
That is not to say that even within the arc as it has appears, there is not a LOT more that could have been done to convey the information that Claws has filled in. And from where I sit, some of the writing was simply poorly scripted in key areas, and continues to be in other areas pertaining to Statesman's death (see the thread in which the eulogy for Statesman delivered by Positron that Samuraiko offered up was greatly superior to that actually put forth by the Devs.) And yet, even as I write that, I recognize that the limitations on story-telling imposed by the arc form make it very difficult to do good writing. Troy Hickman's "Smoke and Mirrors" arc from the comics is magnificent; when compressed into Twilight Son's Ouroboros arc, it loses a LOT of its emotional resonance and the plot changes a bit. The opportunities for Hickman's scripting talents were few and far between in the arc as dialogue was minimal, and the very powerful nightmare sequence never made it to the arc. So for all I know, the death of Statesman arc that we see might have been as good as "Smoke and Mirrors" if presented in a comic. Well, if Hickman is scripting, there is a very good chance that is so.
It just may not be possible to tell the complete story or to do enough justice to the details as mission arcs in the game. They should revive the comic if they want to tell stories we are not supposed to affect; the SSAs are not cutting it, and it may be that their constraints are causing that.
"How do you know you are on the side of good?" a Paragon citizen asked him. "How can we even know what is 'good'?"
"The Most High has spoken, even with His own blood," Melancton replied. "Surely we know."
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Honestly, I think the chief mistake is bringing us back to Paragon City in-between missions. I'm more than convinced that SSA5 would have worked a lot better as a single, huge instance because it really IS just one mission. Consider the following:|
Originally Posted by Lycantropus
The obvious problem is... the boat we go in. If there were a teleport, or portal, we used to get to the site, it would make more sense, and I honestly see that more as a psychological logic oversight on the Dev's part than a bad writing thing.
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The player dives after Wade in the bar basement, but comes to a caved-in tunnel, then backtracks up to help fight Arachnos. The player is then told how to bypass the cave-in, leaves via the back door and is deposited in the tunnels leading to Darrin's lair. After scouring the lair for clues, the player realises Darrin is already in Italy, waiting for the Statesman right that moment. It's far, FAR too late to cross the Atlantic to warn or help him and Arachnos are jamming long-range communications.
But wait! Darrin was just in the bar. How did HE get to Italy so fast? Well, it turns out he had a teleportation crystal in his lair that he used, hidden in a secret compartment guarded by a monster. That way, the player has no way to get word of the plan out and only one, instantaneous travel way to get there - through Darrin's crystal. This eliminates the long gap boat or aircraft travel would provide, it explains why no-one else could be summoned to help AND it doesn't have the player keep returning to Paragon City for no reason.
I mean, I don't know if a single instance could be THAT big, but even without it, you could still put in a word about how the player used Darrin's own gateway to follow him. That would also explain why we enter Cimerora's ruins from the tunnels and don't go straight to the summit.
That makes sense, right?
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Originally Posted by Lycantropus
AND, now that I'm looking at the old unconnected story arcs... they were horribly written!! Very straightforward and didn't communicate at all like the contact themselves would. I'm working on Bonfire right now and Lorenzo DiCosta, the street hood has sentences like "I'm afraid a conflict like that could spill out onto the streets and endanger the lives of our citizens." Yeah... an urban tough guy ex-con would say that... Storytelling has come a long way since the humble beginnings of this game.
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When they swapped over to actual contacts, a lot - if not all - of the contact dialogue was written to be generic, coming out of a terminal and with no distinct personality behind it. Then, multiple random-face contacts were created, scattered all over the world and the same missions and arcs were duplicated between several different contacts, I surmise in an attempt to make the game world feel larger than it is.
The result is that none of the original Launch charcters have any personality whatsoever until later in the game. About the first ones that have any are the 40-50 ones, because these were a newer addition to the game. The stories are, thus, not so much "bad" as they are not written for contacts with personalities to read them out loud. They're written as disembodied narrative that ended up in the mouths of real people later in development.
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Originally Posted by Melancton
As I have read ClawsandEffects' explanation of Statesman's actions, I thought to myself that I might not have had the intensely negative reaction I had if things had been explained that way in the arc. But they were NOT, which on the face of it leaves Statesman looking like a prize idiot, unless you fill in the gaps for yourself as Claws very admirably did. But I have to wonder if it would actually be POSSIBLE to do that in the arc itself.
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It seems to me that today's story writers have forgotten or outright abandoned some of the game's most basic, reliable storytelling tools, and that's a cryin' shame.
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Originally Posted by Lycantropus
Troy Hickman's "Smoke and Mirrors" arc from the comics is magnificent; when compressed into Twilight Son's Ouroboros arc, it loses a LOT of its emotional resonance and the plot changes a bit. The opportunities for Hickman's scripting talents were few and far between in the arc as dialogue was minimal, and the very powerful nightmare sequence never made it to the arc. So for all I know, the death of Statesman arc that we see might have been as good as "Smoke and Mirrors" if presented in a comic. Well, if Hickman is scripting, there is a very good chance that is so.
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It's still better than having to deal with Tesseract, though.
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Originally Posted by Lycantropus
It just may not be possible to tell the complete story or to do enough justice to the details as mission arcs in the game. They should revive the comic if they want to tell stories we are not supposed to affect; the SSAs are not cutting it, and it may be that their constraints are causing that.
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When I first started writing, I tried to write my stories like I saw my movies - with lots of visual description of what's going on. Simply put, that's both untenable and it slows the story to a crawl. Pure writing, in my eyes, is a medium of words, and it shines the brightest when stories in it are written as they would be told from one person to another. Yes, it skimps on a lot of the visual content, but trying to relay visual information with words alone is a losing prospect from the beginning.
City of Heroes has a specific structure to how it can deliver narrative, and the way the SSAs are written, it's as though the writer is constantly running into the limitations of that structure. You can't show a whole lot, that's a given. You can't describe a whole lot, there isn't a lot of room. You can't make a story too complex, there aren't the tools to make it, and what tools are there are just... Awkward.
So work WITH that. You can't make very complex, cinematic encounters, so craft a story which does not rely on those. Craft a story which relies on a larger, over-arching narrative which can exist purely within abstract space through contact dialogue and clues, and leave the actual, practical gameplay to represent small sections of it, particular and rather simple key events that move the story. Have the story take on multiple intertwined threads, so that while the player does one seemingly simple things, he knows of the broader context and can see how simple actions can move a complex plot.
You can't put too much "show" in your arcs. I think we've seen this to plenty of evidence. So DON'T! Focus on putting "action" in the actual missions and tell the story through the narrative that you have much better control of. The most powerful tool in City of Heroes storytelling is still text, so work to that strength. Our missions creation tools are simple, so make your missions simple and rely on your ability to write a cohesive story that makes these simple missions as parts of a larger story.
I said a while ago that the story writers are trying WAY too hard, and they are. It's like taking an old 1920s black-and-white silent movie and trying to recreate the matrix with no visual effects and no dialogue. You might be able to scrounge up some way to do it, but unless you reinvent the wheel, so to speak, you simply won't make for a very good movie. And you'll have a hard time explaining virtual reality to turn-of-the-century audiences, too.
City of Heroes storytelling is not all weaknesses. It has its very marked strengths. We need to work towards those.
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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.
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Very unlikely. |
Originally Posted by Bullet Barrage
And if they did, will SSA 2 involve Ghost widow leaning towards hero side?
Food for thought. Maybe off topic, but if Ghost Widow joined the Freedom Phalanx, it could be a little different. |
Remember, Ghost Widow's very existence is tied into the continued existence of Arachnos.
If she joined a group whose goal is the elimination of Arachnos it would be akin to suicide.
Scirocco is much more likely to go good than Ghost Widow. He already has it in him, he just needs the curse broken and he can switch.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
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I get the vibe that that's what she wants, actually. The way Ghost Widow describes her own existence, she comes across as very dissatisfied with it, and considering we stop her from living again multiple times, it's not that far-fetched that she'd want to go the other way. Sever the connection, free her spirit, move into the afterlife. That would free Wretch, as well, whom she cares about greatly.|
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
If she joined a group whose goal is the elimination of Arachnos it would be akin to suicide.
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Granted, that's not exactly a face turn, but it does give slightly more depth to a character that's already pretty well developed. Ghost Widow has never been defined by her "evil" or by her faction loyalty, I don't think. That's kind of what makes her a good villain. She's more than JUST one of Recluse's lieutenants, she's a real person trapped in a hellish unlife that she's desperately trying to escape from. If she can't escape over the top, she might just choose to sink out through the bottom.
Obviously, I'm biassed. The eponymous Samuel Tow is built on much the same sort of basic model. He's a guy whose strength, speed, agility and intellect all stem from a parasite that lives inside his body and wrestles for control of his mind by abusing and exaggerating every emotion he shows. The man is, therefore, trapped in a world where he has to fight to suppress every ounce of happiness, sadness, anger and pain or risk losing his mind. And worst of all, there is no escape, because in moments of extreme danger, he is compelled to defend himself in every way he can by that same parasite. He is literally incapable of committing suicide or allowing himself to be killed, causing the man to grow ever more distant and seek ever more ridiculous danger in the hope that some day he might fight something he simply can't save himself from.
Yeah, my namesake character is a cliche dark brooding emo her. Gimme' a break, I made him over 10 years ago
Point is, I can see that angle working with Ghost Widow because I kind of already did that before I even knew anything about her. It could work.
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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.
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I like this thread!
Anyway, to add a minor annoyance, how exactly do I arrive too late to warn Statesman in Cimerora? Now say it with me "I hate time travel!", but consider this. What, exactly is stopping us from going back to past Cimerora and leaving a message? Yeah, if we carve it in the floor, Wade would notice, but what about an Impervium plate, or, if you did the Hero's Hero arc, leaving the faceplate Statesman gave you there for archeologists to find with a message inside? Yeah, it's a far out plan, but I can time travel. "Being late" is not part of my vocabulary anymore. And that's not even getting into just using Ouroborus to rewind until I get a result I like.
But I'll admit it's a really minor nitpick, but most of our characters casually travel in time to go somewhere in the city. Casual time travel has a lot of implications for any story (which is why you really need to think hard before invoking it).
As for how the story should continue, well, I hope I get to yell at the Phalanx. Just a "What s wrong with you?! We need to stop Wade from summoning Rularuu! We don't have time for this!" yell, followed by a rapidfire brainstorm of how to find him (ask Portal Corps for any unauthorized portals to the Shadow Shard), how to push him out of his comfort zone by adding an unforeseen element (Hey, Vanguard? Rularuu is going to invade unless we stop this guy... could I borrow the Honoree for a minute?), and of course, giving Lord Recluse the full story of who killed Statesman. That ought to be enough to put some pressure on Wade. And when Portal Corps calls in the blip on their scope, I know where to go. (And so will Lord Recluse.)
I'm sure I'm missing something, but this thing needs to escalate next, and part one of that is telling off the Phalanx. It's do or die time. Plan to save world now, argue later.
Aegis Rose, Forcefield/Energy Defender - Freedom
"Bubble up for safety!"
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I have one even simpler. Go to Cimerora and look out the door to the cave. That's Sister Airlia over there. Now go to the town square and look up at the fort. That's Imperious up there, still alive. Well, if Airlia developed a way to kill Imperious that Wade copied to kill the Statesman, then shoot her, kidnap her, mind-wipe her.|
Originally Posted by McNum
Anyway, to add a minor annoyance, how exactly do I arrive too late to warn Statesman in Cimerora? Now say it with me "I hate time travel!", but consider this. What, exactly is stopping us from going back to past Cimerora and leaving a message? Yeah, if we carve it in the floor, Wade would notice, but what about an Impervium plate, or, if you did the Hero's Hero arc, leaving the faceplate Statesman gave you there for archeologists to find with a message inside? Yeah, it's a far out plan, but I can time travel. "Being late" is not part of my vocabulary anymore. And that's not even getting into just using Ouroborus to rewind until I get a result I like.
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OK, OK, we're heroes, we can't do that. How about this - go up to Imperious and TELL him she plans to murder him in the future. He knows you're from the future. You say Airlia enchanted him to listen to her? So disenchant him. Bring in Montague, bring in Sister Psyche, bring in the ghost of War Witch, bring in the Legacy Chain. According to Airlia, it's a "minor charm," it can't be this hard to dispel once you know it's there. And once Imperious knows Airlia tried to brainwash him, let him deal with her. If she never creates or enacts the ritual, Wade will have nothing to on.
So we arrive to Cimerora too late, the Statesman is dead and Wade has escape. OK, hop on your teleporter back to the States, walk through the crystal, go back to Cimerora and change the future. Am I missing something?
This is the problem with involving time travel in your storylines. It opens far too many plot holes once we have free access to it. I'm willing to overlook instances when the characters could have travelled back in time and changed the past just because I like to pretend rampant time travel isn't part of our world. A lot of stories lose much of their tension when you know you can just go back in time and fix it.
Oh, I just got an idea! Remember the Devil's Timepiece? Go back to the Midnight Club, snag the watch, go back to before you started chasing Wade in the first place and go warn the Statesman. I know it takes a toll on your soul for every moment it shifts you, which is why I'm not suggesting we go TOO far back and save Alexis, but Mikey "The Magic Man" Maloney seems to have used to it hundreds of times over the span of days and weeks and he hadn't lost his soul.
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Originally Posted by McNum
As for how the story should continue, well, I hope I get to yell at the Phalanx. Just a "What s wrong with you?! We need to stop Wade from summoning Rularuu! We don't have time for this!" yell, followed by a rapidfire brainstorm of how to find him (ask Portal Corps for any unauthorized portals to the Shadow Shard), how to push him out of his comfort zone by adding an unforeseen element (Hey, Vanguard? Rularuu is going to invade unless we stop this guy... could I borrow the Honoree for a minute?), and of course, giving Lord Recluse the full story of who killed Statesman. That ought to be enough to put some pressure on Wade. And when Portal Corps calls in the blip on their scope, I know where to go. (And so will Lord Recluse.)
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Honestly, I can forgive the character assassination if it really ends up leading to something. I can forgive Liberty for being stupid, I can forgive Valkyrie for lacking tactical sense, I can forgive Mynx for wearing socks in the comic, I can forgive Psyche for making rookie mistakes, I can forgive Manticore for... OK, I can't forgive Manticore, but I can forgive the rest if they snap out of their stupidity and actually show me why they're the premier heroes of our world.
To be honest, if this turns out to be a story where these people are constantly hampered from performing at their best, right up until the end (if it were clear they were being hampered, rather than seeming like they just suck), when they actually finally get a chance to shine and we see why they are as famous as they are. Take Liberty, for instance. The woman is AMAZINGLY powerful, but the way the story has been treating her, she's been useless. So suppose that right at the end, Darrin just wipes the floor with the whole of the Freedom Phalanx with Statesman's powers, then attempts to kill her with one hit, only for her to hold him back, look him dead in the eye and go: "I've had enough of you!" then backhand him across the map. Then we see that that "little girl" isn't just a ******* in distress, she really is a legitimate, great super hero.
See, the thing here is to give Wade the opportunity for an easy victory, only for it to turn into a fight for his life when the heroes of the Freedom Phalanx refuse fold as easily a they have before. I want to see what these guys are capable of when they're not acting like disorganised petulant children. I want to see what they're capable of so that I know exactly what kind of greatness I will eventually reach and exceed. I don't want the heroes to win through tricks and tomfoolery. I want to them to win because when the moment of truth arrives, heroes stand strong and tall and hold their ground.
Obviously we have to involve the player as the Goku, so even if the Phalanx stand up to Wade and nearly defeat him, he ends up summoning Rularuu to beat them back. That way, we have legitimate great heroes to look up to, a villain who's defeated but still manages to pose a credible threat, AND a reason for our characters to be needed that doesn't make the Phalanx OR Wade look stupid.
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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.
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You know, if I were a betting man, I'd wager that "Who Will DIE?" will end like this: Wade is summoning Rularuu, and you can see he is breaking through. Your character arrives, with both the Phalanx and the Arachnos patrons in tow, (since all signs point to a shared final contact). The Phalanx and the spiders are all needed to hold back Rularuu, who should use that gigantic model that has never been used in the game yet (except for a quick cameo at a wedding proposal). I mean that's the Destroyer of Worlds made manifest right there. Going up against that in a futile battle to delay it would be a very worthy thing to do. This, of course, leaves it up to the player to take on Wade who now has Statesman's power. All the while reality itself seems to crack and shatter around you due to Rularuu's appearance. Now wouldn't that be one awesome setpiece to finish this arc?
But for that to happen, the Phalanx needs to be mobilized and snapped out of it in the next part, and the same goes with enraging Lord Recluse redside. Part 6 should be building up for a counterattack. And that means calling the Phalanx out. Maybe even making Manticore grumpy. More grumpy. Grumpier than usual. But I'd think Positron would be quick to convince, and he's the leader now. Actually, I have no beef with Positron in this arc, he seems to be handling himself pretty well.
Bonus points if you get the option of killing Wade, and leaving him alive gives a short after-mission cutscene of Wade picking himself up, turning around and... Lord Recluse is there. End scene. Seriously, Wade is so marked for death by the big spider now that it'd be disappointing if Recluse doesn't get in on it now.
Hmm, I wonder if this arc actually is an occasion to use the full size Rularuu model. I do want to see what it can do.
Aegis Rose, Forcefield/Energy Defender - Freedom
"Bubble up for safety!"
I thought I'd throw in another reply here which in part was influenced by a overnight trip I had to attend a concert of Doctor Who music done by Australian musicians and conducted and set up by the BBC.
The link seems random, but I was struck by how completely I accept a show like Doctor Who, whose seemingly random and implausible nature shouldn't make it a success, but it does.
And it does because we're invited to enjoy and participate in the conventions of itself. That is, the notion that the Doctor will always beat the monsters, the monsters can be any sort of alien, and nearly any type of story or convention is up for grabs to be adapted to the central concept of any story in any time in anywhere in space. It's seriously one of the most giddy fun sandboxes you can ever have fun in, because its own continuity is impossible to police.
This is where City of Heroes is falling down for me right now. Honestly, it seems like a game going through a mid-life crisis where a grimmer realism is taken to be the sexier and more stimulating alternative than the rest of the game's late-70's Silver Age origins, where there might be twists and turns, but the good guys win out in the end. Now obviously City of Villains seeks to turn that on its head, but the reason redside never has the bulk of play is the same reason supervillain comic books never last. Invariably, you're butting up against the very things that make a supervillain and if you scratch too hard, you may find there's not much under the surface in terms of motivation and 'day to day' existence. That's not a knock on villain players, it's just one of the more unfortunate consequences where you have heroes to oppose villains.
What I'm saying in a longer-winded way is that Paragon Studios can't have their cake and eat it too. They laid down the guidelines that Paragon City was Supertown circa the 1970s with old-style cars, four-color superheroes and superteams. I really don't care if Matt Miller and the team want to stretch their boundaries and proclaim that the arrival of the goatee universe (Praetoria) is license to do the 'descent into darkness' that they've promoted it as.
A lot of people (not just myself) have pointed out that the grimness of the stories from Praetoria, First Ward particularly and now the SSA's are better suited to a setting that is more the 90's than what the game was set up like. DC Comics knew how to do the 'descent into darkness' and still keep the Silver Age feel; Crisis on Infinite Earths was as much a love letter to an age the creative teams of the company had grown up on as much as it was bidding it farewell. Yes, people died, but they died as heroes. They didn't have to bicker and snipe and act like they were in high schools. They were people with extraordinary abilities in extraordinary situations who chose to fight (and die) for what they believed in.
If Statesman got even a tenth of the heart and dignity in which the Silver Age Supergirl's death got, it would've been hailed as a hallmark moment, instead of just being remembered for a relatively nice cutscene.
There is, frankly, a certain smugness and inability to recognise that this is a direction a lot of people do not like. I'm rarely this pointed, but I have seen Zwillinger and Doctor Aeon and Positron discussing the SSA's and the other things and cheerfully defending the writing as 'necessary' so that we can appreciate the light after the darkness.
I'm sorry, but putting our characters (and in turn us as players) into situations that are knowingly morally ambiguous at best and then also putting us into stories that confront our ability to suspend our disbelief (in a superhero setting) is neither necessary, an indicator of mature sophisticated writing, and above all, consistent with your setting.
There is going to come a point when the Coming Storm has come and gone (and let's be honest here, we know we're going to win unless the announcement of the game being shut down comes not long after) that the developers and us have to come to terms with the consequences of the writing decisions being made right now. I still feel it's a fundamental mistake to kill off the advertising mantle of an entire product, and will, regardless of whether that advertising continues. Just try and explain that to someone casually interested in the game why the guy in the ads isn't in the game. That simple.
I went through this phase as a reader; I read The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen and watched the deconstruction of the superhero, and that was a good thing for comics because ultimately people came to understand what it was they loved about their comics and that it was okay to suspend your disbelief about these things.
It's why any statements about 'us being the new heroes' ring hollow to me. Sure, we all want to be the hero (playing one is surely as much the fulfillment of the power fantasy of being a supehero to begin with as anything else) but we still want heroes to look up to. Removing the spotlight off the NPC's and putting it on us will expose our flaws, our foibles to the greater public. Can anyone say that their characters every detail are ones they want everyone to know about?
I thought about that. We get on here and we type about what we think of the Phalanx's character traits and discuss them, argue about them. Now try putting that shoe on your character's foot. I personally am not quite that ready to fill those shoes.
If Paragon Studios make another superhero game that's more morally ambiguous, 'shades of grey' setting, great. I think MMO players are ready for it; Bioware's MMO on the 'redside' portion of the story I think is testament to that. I'm just not going to be surprised that trying to fit this game into that mold is one that won't work.
S.
Part of Sister Flame's Clickey-Clack Posse
I really have no idea how difficult the cut scenes are to make. But something to maybe consider is for the devs to make more/longer cutscenes for these SSA's and then have them be like the cut scene in the BAF, if everyone on the team has seen it once, then it doesn't show again.
I have no problem filling in the gaps, but then I know the Freedom Phalanx isn't suppossed to be filled with a bunch of incompetents.
I know the story enough to know that the Freedom Phalanx is suppossed to be the top SG in the world and they're that way for a reason.
Sadly, I don't seem to be in the majority. I don't need it spelled out for me. I'm willing to accept this. While I do prefere to have great writing, I also understand they likely have limitations to how much of the story they can show off (without player moaning about to much dialogue/cutscenes) or possibly that they're writers just aren't that great (not saying the current writers are terrible) and maybe havent done any research.
Of course, part of me thinks they're trying to turn some of the heroes into messes just for the hell of it.
Something else they may consider, is giving the players a comic book in game for the major story arcs.
Load map, then get the option to enter the map or read the comic to give some details, and then possibly another comic on the way out of the mission.
Could draw the comic in such a way as to have it at your character's perspective when needed.
But then it goes back to the whole, is it worth it question. Even more so when you have players who want the story to be all about them, they're the greatest and the story should always reflect that, nevermind that there's thousands of other players who think the same thing.
Easy in a single player game, harder to do when in a game with thousands of players.
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
I don't want to quote SuperOz since that's a big post, but I agree with it wholeheartedly. Maybe I'm just growing soft as the years roll on, but honestly, I enjoyed the positive message the game used to have back in the old days. As I said before - there have always been hardships and tragedies and tough situations, but they were always told in a hopeful, productive manner. I liked the idea that, if heroes just try hard enough and do what's right, everything will turn out fine. That no matter how dark everything may seem, we'll always pull through.
I'll admit that I don't exactly have a hard life full of sorrow and hardship, so it's not like I NEED that kind of escapism to survive the crushing weight of my existence. Far from it - I'm happy with my life and and I'm comfortable with myself. That's precisely why I'm much more inclined to look out for happy, positive stories - because I'm in a good mood. Yeah, OK, I know it might not seem like it from seeing me post around the forums, but honestly - I'm in a good mood more often than not, and all this heavy drama and crushed dreams serve to do is put me in a foul mood, instead.
I agree that we both want and need heroes in our world. Yes, obviously, I want my character to be one of them, but I want to know that the world has other heroes, as well. There seems to be this belief among our writers that players are somehow in competition with NPCs, so for players to "win," signature characters have to lose. To me, this really isn't the case. I see stories that put me alongside the signature heroes as a lot like me teaming with other players - when "we" win, everybody wins. I'm not competing with these people. I want to help them succeed, because their success is everybody's success. I want to be like these people, I want to help elevate everybody.
Granted, it's more fun when I'm playing the high-level character on a team of lowbies But even then, the point isn't to show others up, it isn't to crush the will of my team-mates. It's to work together towards a common goal. To me, surpassing the Pahalanx - if that were the point - would be much better accomplished by allowing me to do what they can't. Where they fall short, I rise to the challenge. That's elevation enough for me. But if the Phalanx are proven to be horrible, incompetent people, then that achievement is diminished, and I am left to realise that the people I aspired to be like aren't nearly as awesome as I had thought they were.
To me, "gritty realism" just has no place in City of Heroes, especially "all of a sudden" as it has been introduced. It serves to take the game in a direction that's coming on polarly opposite to what it was when the game started.
More than anything else, I find the notion that a story needs this angst to be enjoyable to be insulting. It reminds me of Agent Smith explaining how, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. It's almost as though a simple story with a happy ending is seen as somehow inferior. It's almost as if a story which doesn't torture us to read through it is seen as not true art.
I ask you, tough: What's wrong with stopping a bank robbery without a deeper philosophical debate as to who is really the good guy? What's wrong with a group of heroes acting together as friends and comrades without descending into spiteful bickering whenever danger strikes? What's wrong with competent heroes clashing with competent villains in exciting battle? Why does everything have to be so complicated, so dark and so full of doubt? Is that not "realistic" enough? Is that not "exciting" enough? It seemed just fine to me all the way up to Going Rogue.
At the end of the day, it seems to be a simple case of the mistaken belief that true art is angsty. Personally, I'm inclined to accept that SOME art might be, but I'd like to get back to our more positive storytelling, and soon.
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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.
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Actually, it's a pretty good backstory.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Obviously, I'm biassed. The eponymous Samuel Tow is built on much the same sort of basic model. He's a guy whose strength, speed, agility and intellect all stem from a parasite that lives inside his body and wrestles for control of his mind by abusing and exaggerating every emotion he shows. The man is, therefore, trapped in a world where he has to fight to suppress every ounce of happiness, sadness, anger and pain or risk losing his mind. And worst of all, there is no escape, because in moments of extreme danger, he is compelled to defend himself in every way he can by that same parasite. He is literally incapable of committing suicide or allowing himself to be killed, causing the man to grow ever more distant and seek ever more ridiculous danger in the hope that some day he might fight something he simply can't save himself from. Yeah, my namesake character is a cliche dark brooding emo her. Gimme' a break, I made him over 10 years ago |
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
I just wanted to add a link here. This to me is one of the greatest heroic deaths ever in comics with one of the most moving eulogies. Imagine if you can our CoH universe here in their places, and tell me what you think.
http://supergirlthemaidofmight.blogs...crisis-on.html
Edit: I just re-read the issue. I still cry.
S.
Part of Sister Flame's Clickey-Clack Posse
Hero behavior is easy to predict. They will do something stupid to try and help the useless unwashed masses. Put an innocent in danger, no matter how you do it, and heroes will be tripping all over themselves to do something stupid that opens themselves up to attack. It's hero law.
@bpphantom
The Defenders of Paragon
KGB Special Section 8
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Putting aside the unlikelihood of Ghost Widow being "redeemed", has it ever been shown that the Freedom Phalanx has "eliminate Arachnos" as one of their goals, let alone being their primary goal?|
Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect
Very unlikely.
Remember, Ghost Widow's very existence is tied into the continued existence of Arachnos. If she joined a group whose goal is the elimination of Arachnos it would be akin to suicide. Scirocco is much more likely to go good than Ghost Widow. He already has it in him, he just needs the curse broken and he can switch. |
Longbow might be characterized that way, but for any other group, Arachnos tends to range from an annoyance to something akin to the "War on Terror". You can attempt to obstruct its advances from time to time but you can't really eliminate it.
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City of Heroes writing since City of Villains, more or less, has done a lot to make us cynical as players. No, it's never overtly stated, but from the way all the stories are structured, it's fairly evident that that's what the writers were and are thinking. Arachnos = villain, Longbow = hero. Heroes want to beat villains, villains want to beat heroes (because the plot says so), so obviously Longbow want rid the world of Arachnos and Arachnos want to destroy Longbow. That's not a matter of faction politics, it's the law of the universe. Good opposes evil, and since Longbow and Arachnos are synonymous with those in-story, their sole reason to exist is to oppose each other.|
Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
Putting aside the unlikelihood of Ghost Widow being "redeemed", has it ever been shown that the Freedom Phalanx has "eliminate Arachnos" as one of their goals, let alone being their primary goal?
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And I HATE it. I get that it's an easy way to put a "face" to heroes and villains so that it's easier to depict good vs. evil conflicts with two consistent factions that are both easily identifiable AND don't take that much to reuse. It's just easier to boil the conflict down to a binary choice between two elementally opposed factions whose only reason to hate each other is because the plot says so, than it is to present heroes and villains as a decentralised mass of non-uniform characters. "An enemy has to have a face."
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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.
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I've studied the thread for a bit.
I've come to the conclusion that you cannot please everybody, that at some point or another the same 'everybody' changes its mind, and that there is far too much overanalysis of plot for my liking.
Is there some overarching desire to see change from the analysis of SSA 1? Or will the next one, if it panders to all of the criticisms in this thread, be considered to be 'selling out' and we'll get yet another critique by a different person claiming that X is Y?
I for one enjoy the arcs for what I believe they are - changing the mode of story-telling from 'click 100 glowies and you'll surely Save the World' to 'Think a bit about what my character might do in this situation'.
I'm not sure how much more analysis of the plot will work. Are 'people' asking for the current writers to be sacked? Do they think they could do better?
Arctic,
It's never been about 'if we could do better'. If we could, we'd be doing the jobs ourselves at Paragon Studios. What everyone who has written negatively about is saying is that we like to be entertained as much as the next person, but for pity's sake don't dress something up to be one thing and then present it as something else.
Were you, like us, expecting something big to happen in the Statesman chapter of this story? How did you feel when he seemingly walked into an Obvious Trap(tm) and it was just...over? I felt cheated and also felt it was a short fast copout for the story, after all the hype given to it by the Devs. If you honestly got asked what was your standout memory of this story was, would be 'Statesman walked into a trap and got killed?' Doubtless someone would ask: 'Was it a big fight? Did he die like Superman did when he fought Doomsday?' And you would have to respond: 'No, he just...died.'
And as for 'thinking a bit about what my character might do in this situation', I must disagree. I don't mind being presented with a situation that gives me the illusion of free will; that is to say I won't mind the outcome of a story so much as I'm made to feel I had a chance to influence its' outcome. But if you take that away from me, such as trying to save Miss Liberty or her father to the point where you pointedly ensure that I have zero influence by writing the story so as to prevent any sense that I could influence the story, then I'm going to call hax. Do you really feel satisfied by a story where you don't even seem to get the chance to do anything? I dont. I may as well just be reading a comic at that point.
I'm not asking the writers to be sacked, but I am asking that they do better. Because if I can sit here as an armchair critic and pull the plot to pieces as well as provide alternatives (as many others can here, and have done so to responses much more well-recieved than the 'party line'), then that's pointing out rather glaringly the shortcomings of the quality of what we're getting.
I expect the developers and the writers of these stories to not only know the game's lore inside and out (that is their job) but also to provide quality content that I look forward to playing. But I, like any other paying customer, don't have to know what art is to know if I like it or not. These threads would have zero merit if the content stacked up and met the basic requirements of any entertainment medium. And that ultimately is the point.
The only reason this overanalysis exists is because the problems in the story are that glaringly obvious. The only thing I want pandered to me is better writing. That's it. I pay my money, I should expect that. I therefore have a right to say if I don't get that.
S.
Part of Sister Flame's Clickey-Clack Posse
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And I don't. City of Heroes is a game, and a rather un-interactive one at that. As such, it needs to have the stories written for it be written as for fairly un-interactive game. It's pointless to ask what my character would do in any given situation if my character is not allowed to actually DO that in the given situation, and this has been the source of my ire about storytelling for many years now, not just with the SSAs. If you thread your plot through a plot point which makes me want to make a decision that I can't make, I become irritated.|
Originally Posted by Arctic_Princess
I for one enjoy the arcs for what I believe they are - changing the mode of story-telling from 'click 100 glowies and you'll surely Save the World' to 'Think a bit about what my character might do in this situation'.
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What would my character have done when witnessing Manticore be a jerk to miss liberty? Slap him on the back of the head, most likely. And if draws his bow, slap him on the mouth, too. Because the man deserves that kind of wake-up call to realise what he's doing. But I can't, because the plot says so.
Lately, City of Heroes storylines have been written like this is a movie, with movie plots, movie cutscenes and movie pacing. But a movie is an inherently un-interactive medium, much more so than any game is. Yes, City of Heroes interactivity is fairly low, but it's still a world apart from that of a movie. The more games try to be like movies, the less interesting they became, as games like Fahrenheit and that Jurasic Park... Thing well prove. They look like movies, they play like movies, they feel like movies and it's very likely that you've never even heard of them. Why? Because they're one step removed from Dragon's Lair. If you've ever played Dragon's Lair, you'll note that if you took out the QTEs, you'd have a perfectly serviceable movie.
To me, games are fundamentally different, and the stories they tell should be fundamentally different, as well. This has never been more obvious to me than playing Assassin's Creed: Revelations the last few days. I have thus far sunk something like 20-30 hours into that game, and most of that has been spent shunning the main storyline in favour of taking over bases, training assassins, taking over Mediterranean cities, collecting treasures and finding books. Why? Because that is what a snadbox game is. Not a single, linear story that simply happens to take place on a large map, but a large, open world with many concurrent sources of progress scattered about it.
It's almost absurd to me to say this, but it seems that many people today forget that City of Heroes is a sandbox before it is anything else. It's a sandbox before it's an RPG, before it's an MMO, before it's a super hero game. If you look at the original stories the game shipped with, they are told like the stories in a sandbox game - separate bits of plot that can be done out of order which combine together to build towards the progression of the entire fictional world. Little bits of progress scattered about the persistent world, painting the larger picture of the world as a whole. Their specific writing and mission design might not have been very good, but their approach to storytelling was vastly superior, if for no reason other than because it was the right fit for the game type.
City of Heroes, simply put, is not the right medium to copy-paste blockbuster movie plots. Clearly, you CAN, but the story comes off stilted, awkward and pandering. Yes, that's the game's limitations castrating what might have been a good story in another medium, but that's exactly my point - you SHOULDN'T try to force in a story that goes against the limitations of the game. Don't fight them, work with them.
A simple and rather amusing Example: Doc Delilah's final mission. When this was made, there was apparently no way to set a companion NPC to stand alone with no guards, so there was no way for the Doc to spawn with the player as if they both came on the same boat. The solution? The entry pop-up describes the Doc as impatient, leaping off the boat and getting into trouble before you even have a chance to act. She then spawns in a fight with Sky Raiders 20 feet from where you start, and upon being rescued, she admits to being embarrassed about goofing up. Not only does this instantly solve the problem, it actually makes for a very cool character moment which fits Delilah to a T.
A more prominent example is the thick Silent Hill fog. The reason this exist is not for atmosphere, but rather because the PSX was too underpowered to render the kind of large open city the creators of Silent Hill were shooting for, so they had to crank the view distance way, WAY down. Instead of trying to hide this and pretend it doesn't exist, they incorporated it into the game as either fog or extreme darkness, using it to aid in the foreboding atmosphere. Lo and behold, this has become one of the most iconic concepts in recent gaming history.
I ask the City of Heroes writers to simply take more care to coordinate their stories with the limitations this game poses, and rather than trying to break the rules and then ask us to ignore the ugly jagged edges, to simply work with them and figure out how to make a story play out in a more natural way. And there are ways to do that.
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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.
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I prefer the term "dumb as dirt" in this situation other than incompetent, Sam.
But YMMV.
/shrug
Blazara Aura LVL 50 Fire/Psi Dom (with 125% recharge)
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Darq Widow Fortune LVL 50 Fortunata (200% rech/Night Widow 192.5% rech)--thanks issue 19!
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You know, this kind of irked me, as well. I mean, I like the scene for what it is - the graceful death of a character who'd had so much mud slung at him. For how he got killed, the Statesman died like a good man, and I can respect this.|
Originally Posted by SuperOz
Were you, like us, expecting something big to happen in the Statesman chapter of this story? How did you feel when he seemingly walked into an Obvious Trap(tm) and it was just...over? I felt cheated and also felt it was a short fast copout for the story, after all the hype given to it by the Devs. If you honestly got asked what was your standout memory of this story was, would be 'Statesman walked into a trap and got killed?' Doubtless someone would ask: 'Was it a big fight? Did he die like Superman did when he fought Doomsday?' And you would have to respond: 'No, he just...died.'
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But then I think back to the fight I had with Marshal Blitz... And it was AWESOME! Seriously, the way that fight is written - and it's not that complex - it's probably the most exciting boss fight in the whole game, and I did it by myself. It has so many of the things I've suggested over the years. When you first come in, Blitz is invincible until you break his generators, and you can see the beams of energy shooting from them to his armour. You break those, you fight Blitz to 0 HP, then he disappears. He comes back with a Black Helicoper and you can either fight him or use the turrets. That blows up, he comes back down at half health and this time he fights to the finish. THAT was a cool, exciting, interesting fight.
So what was the Statesman's death encounter like? Statesman dies, you fight Darrin until he drops down to 90% health, then he summons ONE BOSS and when you beat that, it's all over. Bo-ring!
Why couldn't we have had a bigger fight WITH the Statesman? Say I arrive at the spot and warn him. Now the Statesman knows he could be killed, but he still won't back down and let Wade escape, because he's a hero. We know to avoid the circle, but we still fight him. So Wade disappears and summons Ruladak, we fight that. In the meantime, he's set up four Rularuu obelisks that constantly assault us with illusions, and we need to destroy them. Then Wade appears and starts fighting with super powers and we beat him down. Wait, what? Cutscene time.
To me, it looks like the super-powered Wade is an illusion, but wait! What is Ms. Liberty doing here! When did she get here? Oh, no! With Alexis' blood, Wade could kill her, instead! What, Statesman, what are you... No! So he rushes in, shoves his granddaughter out of the circle and gets tagged by the kill spell. The energy release is so great it pins both me and Liberty in place so we can't interfere. Now a fully-powered Wade tries his power in both me and Liberty, but he's not strong enough yet, so he summons Rularuu minions to help him. That doesn't work, so opens a dimension rift right there and turns tail to run. We can't chase him because if the rift stays open, the Rularuu will try to push through into our world, so we have to stay behind, fight the monsters and close the rift.
More work? Absolutely. I'd have waited another month for that, though, personally. It would have made the Statesman come off not just like a good man, but as a great hero, it would have done a lot to redeem Liberty's screw-up at the start of the arc, and it would have been a lot more exciting than one fight with one dude.
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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.
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Sam, it is interesting that a few dashed-off ideas in the forums sound better than what actually was presented. Yours above is very good. It makes one wonder how much may have been sacrificed to a timetable.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
You know, this kind of irked me, as well. I mean, I like the scene for what it is - the graceful death of a character who'd had so much mud slung at him. For how he got killed, the Statesman died like a good man, and I can respect this.
But then I think back to the fight I had with Marshal Blitz... And it was AWESOME! Seriously, the way that fight is written - and it's not that complex - it's probably the most exciting boss fight in the whole game, and I did it by myself. It has so many of the things I've suggested over the years. When you first come in, Blitz is invincible until you break his generators, and you can see the beams of energy shooting from them to his armour. You break those, you fight Blitz to 0 HP, then he disappears. He comes back with a Black Helicoper and you can either fight him or use the turrets. That blows up, he comes back down at half health and this time he fights to the finish. THAT was a cool, exciting, interesting fight. So what was the Statesman's death encounter like? Statesman dies, you fight Darrin until he drops down to 90% health, then he summons ONE BOSS and when you beat that, it's all over. Bo-ring! Why couldn't we have had a bigger fight WITH the Statesman? Say I arrive at the spot and warn him. Now the Statesman knows he could be killed, but he still won't back down and let Wade escape, because he's a hero. We know to avoid the circle, but we still fight him. So Wade disappears and summons Ruladak, we fight that. In the meantime, he's set up four Rularuu obelisks that constantly assault us with illusions, and we need to destroy them. Then Wade appears and starts fighting with super powers and we beat him down. Wait, what? Cutscene time. To me, it looks like the super-powered Wade is an illusion, but wait! What is Ms. Liberty doing here! When did she get here? Oh, no! With Alexis' blood, Wade could kill her, instead! What, Statesman, what are you... No! So he rushes in, shoves his granddaughter out of the circle and gets tagged by the kill spell. The energy release is so great it pins both me and Liberty in place so we can't interfere. Now a fully-powered Wade tries his power in both me and Liberty, but he's not strong enough yet, so he summons Rularuu minions to help him. That doesn't work, so opens a dimension rift right there and turns tail to run. We can't chase him because if the rift stays open, the Rularuu will try to push through into our world, so we have to stay behind, fight the monsters and close the rift. More work? Absolutely. I'd have waited another month for that, though, personally. It would have made the Statesman come off not just like a good man, but as a great hero, it would have done a lot to redeem Liberty's screw-up at the start of the arc, and it would have been a lot more exciting than one fight with one dude. |
Statesman's death SHOULD have been the MOST epic part of all of the SSAs thus far. Instead, it was presented in a summary, ho-hum manner. He came, he saw (the Obvious Trap tm), he walked into it, he flopped a few times, he gave up, he died.
A number of folks have postulated reasons for the summary story that was presented, and a lot of it seems feasible, but let's just put it this way: if each member of the audience had to guess why Rick is doing what he is doing at the end of "Casablanca," it would not be considered a great story.
"How do you know you are on the side of good?" a Paragon citizen asked him. "How can we even know what is 'good'?"
"The Most High has spoken, even with His own blood," Melancton replied. "Surely we know."
I do have characters capapble of this, though, but it raises another question. If we knew this would take place at the ruins of the old Cimeroran temple - a place where we may well have been at that point - why not teleport directly there and start from topside? Or, if we have direct teleportation, why not hop on over and bring along the Phalanx? And why do we take a ship to travel to Europe?
You know what might have sold me on it, by the way? If this didn't take place in Cimerora, but rather in some kind of replica of the site that Darrin set up somewhere in secret. Then, I could conceivably imagine that the Statesman would be on site even as I read Darrin's messages to me, since my travel time to that site wouldn't be that long. It's having the place be set half-way around the world that really ruffles my feathers and brings up questions in my mind.
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See, when I threaten people that I'm a harsh critic of Architect arcs, this is what I mean. That's the sort of fairly minor detail that really sticks in my mind and makes me ask more and more questions the more I think about it. And it's also why I find it a good idea for a writer to second-guess his own work damn near all the time. I guess it can be explained if we take liberties with the explanation, but overall, it just bugs me.
Again, this makes the Statesman look a LOT less like a jerk than he did in SSA4 and I don't think it takes back much of his competence. If anything, the guy dies with dignity, which is a great thing to see, given the circumstances. It just bugs me we travel to Europe for it.