SSA #6 Story Discussion ** SPOILERS **
By
15bribri15,
Posted on: 2012-02-21 05:43 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Originally Posted by AzureSkyCiel
Y
BOOM! Stripped of his powers and forced to retake his stock on life, you can do a lot with his character, making him mortal and stripped of the Well's power after having it for so long justifies him sending others out, and by having him be a low level contact who has a reoccurring function, it helps better establish his new personality and gives him value to the players. |
I'm reluctant to get behind this kind of thing fully, because it seems like a lot of the complaints about the SSAs grow out of the place of "They're a failure because I would have done things differently." And I want to stress that's not how your suggestion strikes me. Somebody said not that long ago that they should have consolidated contacts, so rather than having three or four plucky investigative journalists, we just have one with whom we can have a meaningful relationship, rather than the horde of interchangeable ones that basically fill the same role. Perhaps the technology wasn't available at launch, but I wouldn't mind seeing something like that.
But since so much depends on execution, I don't think the concept is inherently any better or worse than what was done. Given good writing, it could be great, and given bad writing, it could be like that decade when Wonder Woman lost her powers and fought crime as a kung fu mama.
In Camazotz all are equal. Everybody is the same as everybody else.
Well, I think I found my new all-time least favourite plot point in the entire game at the end of this story arc. Darrin Wade left an artefact that caused Sister Psyche's powers to go out of control. No build, no background, no real explanation. No real reason why Wade knew I'd ask the Carnival who'd tell me to ask the Circle, who'd send me to that precise spot despite Akharist never mentioning one specific spot is important and Wade having no way to know if someone else wouldn't be using it before I got to it. No, we needed Sister Psyche to die in a horrible fashion and hurt Manticore even more, so we tossed in the Wand of Plot Device.
I HATE this kind of storytelling. You craft this complex plotline that hinges on quite a few specific events and situations, but as a twist, you undo it with the "does exactly what's necessary" artefact. I'm surprised Wade couldn't sap the Statesman's powers by putting an artefact in his breakfast cereal. Maybe it's a little mystic gem that's activated by milk and mixes with corn starch to steal the powers of the person who swallowed it. And it just so happens that Wade swapped the man's deck chair with an exact replica laced with magic powder that kills anyone whose name starts with an M.
You want to kill her and hurt Manticore. Fine. I don't like it, but let's just accept that that's what you want to do. Then ******* kill her and be done with it. What's the point of leading me by the nose for three missions with complex promises when you're just going to undo it with a handwave? A wizard literally did this, and I'm sorry, but that explanations simply isn't good enough. And now Wade has her powers? How? She was never exposed to the 50-metre-tall Obelisk and I didn't see one in the cave. Or did Wade manage to hide that behind a rock, too?
This, sadly, reminds me of half of action animes, where 20-30% of the run time is devoted to explaining how impregnable a facility is, how invincible its guards are, how strong its defences are and so forth, only for the bad guy to march in unopposed anyway, because he brought an exact nullifying device for everything.
Interestingly, though, the driving question gets easier and easier to answer. Who will die? Jack Emm... I mean the Statesman, Alexis Cole-Duncan and Sister Psyche. So far.
*edit*
Interestingly, upon leaving the mission, I caught a pedestrian musing on the following subject:
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How many more heroes must die, indeed.
| [NPC] Mui: How many more heroes must die? Can anyone stop Darrin Wade? |
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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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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Well, I think I found my new all-time least favourite plot point in the entire game at the end of this story arc. Darrin Wade left an artefact that caused Sister Psyche's powers to go out of control. No build, no background, no real explanation. No real reason why Wade knew I'd ask the Carnival who'd tell me to ask the Circle, who'd send me to that precise spot despite Akharist never mentioning one specific spot is important and Wade having no way to know if someone else wouldn't be using it before I got to it. No, we needed Sister Psyche to die in a horrible fashion and hurt Manticore even more, so we tossed in the Wand of Plot Device.
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I'll agree that the big problem with the story is that it's unclear how Psyche's powers were transferred and how we know this, but I don't the other parts are problematic. Akarist never mentions that a specific spot is important, but I think it's a bigger stretch to assume that there were many possible locations for the ritual and Wade happened to pick the right than it is to conclude that there was one site or few possible sites for the ritual.
I figure that Darren Wade was working backwards. He wanted Psyche's powers, so he looked to afflict her with something that only had one possible cure. It would actually make sense to sabotage the cure first, so there is less chance for someone to mess up his timeline. Likewise, there's no reason to assume that he knew that we'd follow any particular chain of evidence (Carnies to Akarist to site) to find the ritual site, only that we'd get there eventually.
In Camazotz all are equal. Everybody is the same as everybody else.
I'm sure there are ways to back-track and explain the chain of events (even if hiding a dangerous artefact that dooms a ritual on a place where rituals are conducted seems like a shot in the dark), but what I really dislike is HOW it's handled. This single event cemented in my mind a notion that's been forming for some time: It's Thunderdome! In today's story writing, anything can happen. There doesn't have to be any build, there doesn't have to be any foreshadowing, it doesn't have to make sense and it doesn't even have to be consistent with established canon. There are no rules any more. The writers wanted Psyche dead, so they said "Wade left some artefact that made her dead." Period.
This pisses me off on two separate levels. On the one hand, it's just lazy, like they wrote the story up all the way through to the ritual without planning an end, then decided to have a twist ending, but didn't bother retro-fitting clues to it throughout the narrative leading up to that. On the other hand, it means that "nothing is true, everything is permitted." None of the story can be trusted any more, because anything set down as implied fact can and probably will be contradicted and undone at some point. There's no reason to get attached to any of these characters because, at any point, we might discover that Wade left an artefact that kills them. Just 'cause.
Granted, I'm a cynical person by nature, but the way the story is being told breeds the kind of cynicism that even I didn't know was possible. And it's because the worst, most unpleasant plot twists come out of absolutely nowhere, to the point where I can't help but be cynical. There is literally nothing stopping this from happening to any and all other characters.
*edit*
It occurs to me that this is the same reason I've stopped watching Wrestling whenever I've done that. Whoever compared City of Heroes to the WWE was on to something. It's like the matches are good, but the results... To quote the Spoony One: "These are the kinds of results that make me want to sleep and never wake up." Getting the Statesman killed, fine. I couldn't stop it, but that was the whole point of the scheme. I get that. Getting Sister Psyche killed, though? That's just referee shenanigans. It's like I fought through three pretty difficult missions, actually, and at the end, I got hit with a Montreal Screwjob and Darrin got awarded the win anyway. And that's the sort of thing that makes me question why I even allow myself to care any more.
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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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Did he put it in Manticore's quiver? |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I'm sure there are ways to back-track and explain the chain of events (even if hiding a dangerous artefact that dooms a ritual on a place where rituals are conducted seems like a shot in the dark), but what I really dislike is HOW it's handled. This single event cemented in my mind a notion that's been forming for some time: It's Thunderdome! In today's story writing, anything can happen. There doesn't have to be any build, there doesn't have to be any foreshadowing, it doesn't have to make sense and it doesn't even have to be consistent with established canon. There are no rules any more. The writers wanted Psyche dead, so they said "Wade left some artefact that made her dead." Period.
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I know what you mean, though. I was reading my GM's guide for Mutants & Masterminds and it had this to say about villainous plots
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| It is often all too easy to give villains airtight schemes and such realistic expectations and reactions that the heroes simply dont stand a chance. After all, realistically speaking, a truly good evil scheme would not even become known to the heroes until it was far too late for anyone to do anything about it. The first warning they would get about the villains plan to destroy the world would be the Earth cracking in half. |
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
This pisses me off on two separate levels. On the one hand, it's just lazy, like they wrote the story up all the way through to the ritual without planning an end, then decided to have a twist ending, but didn't bother retro-fitting clues to it throughout the narrative leading up to that.
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In Camazotz all are equal. Everybody is the same as everybody else.
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I hadn't considered that Independence Port is the common thread that decides who dies. Consider Statesman and Sister both hand out a Task Force in that zone and both are dead. Malaise is a former trainer in IP and he is now dead.|
Originally Posted by Tyger
On the upside; Independence Port's getting a makeover for i23, one way or the other. |
Is Aurora the next to die?
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It doesn't really have to be hints that precisely THIS has happened, though, so much as hints that something like this might happen. I know Wade has been elevated into some kind of evil Batman status where he could kill the Statesman and absorb his powers if only he had 10 years to plan. However, there's forward planning and then there's reverse-planning where you take an action that has to happen and work back to figure out what had to be planned for that action to happen.|
Originally Posted by Doctor_Minerva
I really think that there was no way for the writers to win, at least among the segments of fans who come to forum to discuss these things. If they play fair and drops hints a hundred smart people with half a year to dissect a story are going to figure it out no matter how brilliant the writer.
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We know Wade has a spare Obelisk. We know it takes that Obelisk to syphon power. So why not have the altar show up half-way through the mission, then we're asked to go forward to deal with the woman in the skirt, then in the room where she is... BAM! There's the obelisk! Uh, oh! If this is here, then this could only mean Wade planned ahead! I mean, yeah, it's still a big surprise, but at least it's a cool surprise and I'm much less likely to question those. The way it happens, I was all like "The hell?!?" and then I come out and I'm told that, well, a wizard did it.
Or how about this? We know that since Wade killed the Statesman, strange things have been happening. The contact says so, and I can buy that. We're talking about the power of the gods. So why not have Akharist explain that this ritual has to be conducted over an energy nexus, but with the Statesman's death, most of those have been disrupted, but a few are still usable. One is even nearby, and we need to hurry because Psyche is getting worse. So we go there, we find the Obelisk, and only THEN does it become apparent why this particular nexus is still active - Wade made sure it would be, so that he knew where to lay his ambush.
I don't have to see it coming for a trap to make sense. It's enough that, when it's over and I have time to think about it, I can see how that really would have happened that way. But for this to happen, you need more explanation than just one throwaway sentence.
I get that brand new art assets are at a premium, though I'd still have liked to see that huge pit of a CoT room drawn without the central pillar with just the Obelisk in there. We got three custom maps for SSA1, right? But even without new art assets, more could have been done to set up Wade's trap so that it doesn't feel so much like retroactive continuity. So it doesn't feel so much like someone came up with hand-wave solution on the fly.
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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'm compelled to talk sideways for a little bit and explain two of my more recent cases of fridge logic.
One comes from Rapunzel, the movie, and shows up right at the very end. There, the hero is trapped in a dungeon on another island and about to be executed, but escapes and rushes over to Rapunzel to explain a misunderstanding, while at the same time her evil stepmother has her in chains and is dragging her outside the tower. The hero yells for Rapunzel to let down her hair, waits a while, hair drops down, he climbs up to see her tied up and her evil stepmother stabs him from behind. It's a good scene and a good way to show she doesn't have magic powers.
But as the credits roll, I turn to my friend and ask "Wait... How did the evil stepmother know to set up an ambush? She thought he was on another island and probably dead." My friend things for a few seconds and replies "Well, he yelled, didn't he?" And... Yeah, he did. He yelled, waited around a minute, THEN got hair to climb up. At the time, the stepmother already had Rapunzel in chains, so improvising an ambush by gagging her and hiding next to the window shouldn't take long. That made sense to me, and it left me with no reason to question.
That's in stark contrast to a problem I've had with the timeline in Avatar: The Last Airbender that I haven't had anyone explain to me. The gist of it is there's a 100-year timeskip that doesn't feel like 100 years. In that series, it's said that when an Avatar dies, he is immediately reborn into another person. That person in this series - Aang - then falls into the sea and is frozen for 100 years until he gets thawed. So far so good, but it's the timing of events surrounding it which surprises me.
We know previous avatar Roku dies and Aang is born. At the time, another character - Fire Lord Sozan - is shown in flashback to be an old, grey man, easily 60 years old, if not more. Aang is born, lives for 8-12 years, gets frozen for another 100, and when he thaws, Fire Lord Sozan is JUST NOW on his deathbed. So the guy lived to be something like 170 years old? And in that time, he only had one son, and that son looks like he's in his late 30s early 40s. Did Sozan have a son when he was 100 years old?
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Now, I know both of these feel like they have nothing to do with City of Heroes, and as movies, they really don't. But it's the concept of "fridge logic" that brings them closer to home. To be perfectly honest, a lot of City of Heroes is built on plot points that don't seem remarkable when you first run across them. But when you're up in the middle of the night fixing something to eat, that's when questions like these strike me. How DID Darrin syphon psyche's powers without the Obelisk? Don't those explode after you use them? How did the circle not detect his artefact? Did they not use the altar at all? How did he get past them to put the artefact there in the first place? I had to fight through an army of 'em.
You could claim he used that woman in the skirt right at the end, but she's clearly stated to be a deserter, and we've seen time and again how much scorn the circle have for deserters. Akharist is hated and that guy who helped Crimson is labelled an outcast just for having sought shelter outside the city. The man is said to have no magic of his own, but can his artefacts really allow him enough magic to get past a society that lived and breathed magic?
Things don't have to have perfect explanations, but they have to have meaningful explanations to begin with, and "a wizard did it" just isn't meaningful enough.
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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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She doesn't have a TF - Admiral Sutter is in more danger |
Originally Posted by warden_de_dios
I hadn't considered that Independence Port is the common thread that decides who dies. Consider Statesman and Sister both hand out a Task Force in that zone and both are dead. Malaise is a former trainer in IP and he is now dead.
Is Aurora the next to die? |
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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This is explained easily enough:|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
That's in stark contrast to a problem I've had with the timeline in Avatar: The Last Airbender that I haven't had anyone explain to me. The gist of it is there's a 100-year timeskip that doesn't feel like 100 years. In that series, it's said that when an Avatar dies, he is immediately reborn into another person. That person in this series - Aang - then falls into the sea and is frozen for 100 years until he gets thawed. So far so good, but it's the timing of events surrounding it which surprises me.
We know previous avatar Roku dies and Aang is born. At the time, another character - Fire Lord Sozan - is shown in flashback to be an old, grey man, easily 60 years old, if not more. Aang is born, lives for 8-12 years, gets frozen for another 100, and when he thaws, Fire Lord Sozan is JUST NOW on his deathbed. So the guy lived to be something like 170 years old? And in that time, he only had one son, and that son looks like he's in his late 30s early 40s. Did Sozan have a son when he was 100 years old? |
Avatar Roku dies. Aang's born as the next Avatar. 12 years after Roku's death, and some time after Aang ran away and was frozen, Sozin takes out the Airbenders in order to kill the Avatar. He died 20 years afterward. He was not on his deathbed in A:tLA, so there is no plot hole here. I believe the physically oldest character in the series is King Bumi of Omashu, being as he was one of Aang's friends during his own childhood.
Fire Lord Azulon died at 95 years, and had two sons: Ozai and Iroh.
Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)
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Did Jack Emmert create the character? If so, then probably!
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Originally Posted by warden_de_dios
I hadn't considered that Independence Port is the common thread that decides who dies. Consider Statesman and Sister both hand out a Task Force in that zone and both are dead. Malaise is a former trainer in IP and he is now dead.
Is Aurora the next to die? |
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Huh... and the 'oft requested' zone that they are revamping next... Huh, people do actually complain about Independence Port... I hadn't even considered it, myself.|
Originally Posted by warden_de_dios
I hadn't considered that Independence Port is the common thread that decides who dies. Consider Statesman and Sister both hand out a Task Force in that zone and both are dead. Malaise is a former trainer in IP and he is now dead.
Is Aurora the next to die? |
Hmmmmm...
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
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Why revamp it when they can just destroy it like Galaxy city!|
Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
Huh... and the 'oft requested' zone that they are revamping next... Huh, people do actually complain about Independence Port... I hadn't even considered it, myself.
Hmmmmm... |
Blueside could do with one less zone, and they can move the sutter TF to Talos!
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
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By all means, I can only offer my own opinions and I certainly do not fault you for yours nor anyone for their own, regarding their liking or disliking of this situation (You probably fully know that, but I'm just stating it for utter clarity of my position when posting that).|
Originally Posted by Melancton
I think the problem is having Matt Miller phrase things as he did. At that point, if this were "Castle" or "The Mentalist," the fact that Statesman and Psyche were both creations of Jack Emmert and are now dead would be linchpin motive that has Our Heroes exclaim, "Aha!"
From the standpoint of dealing with Jack Emmert, I am in no position to begrudge any ill feelings. He may have deserved every bit of hostility ever expressed by anyone. I can also understand Matt Miller's perspective in the sense of "opening up new possibilities by cutting ties to the past" sort of way. The execution (pun semi-intended) of the death of Statesman left so very, very much to be desired, for all the reasons I shall not repeat. Coupled with the Miller comments, it made the entire enterprise look very mean-spirited. Perhaps, as I said, deservedly so to Jack, but what about the folks, such as myself, that had no identification of Statesman=Jack? I never knew Bob Kane. I like Batman. I never knew Lee Falk. I like the Phantom. I could go on, but the point is that even if Kane and Falk turned out to be utter swine as people, Batman and the Phantom still appeal to me. In the case of Statesman, he was generally depicted as an arrogant, aloof and non-perceptive swine in the comics... EXCEPT when Troy Hickman got a chance with him. The Hickman Statesman was TREMENDOUSLY appealing to me and fraught with all sorts of possibilities as a character. The Hickman Statesman, if he HAD to die in the Paragon Studios scheme of things, deserved an openly explicit noble and heroic death. There are folks that have filled in the blanks in the story to come to the "noble and heroic" conclusion, and I have noted their efforts. But the story, as presented, shows an experienced, veteran hero walking into an Obvious Trap(tm) and dying at the hand of his daughter's murderer with a smile on his face. I am a VIP. I am still here. There is so much else to enjoy about CoH, and I do. But I am directly paying for the SSAs whether I ever play another or not. I cannot "vote with my pocketbook" because VIPs pay regardless, and going Preem or Freem means I cannot play all of my heroes, etc., etc. I seriously doubt if my non-participation in further SSAs will make a blip in any data-mining that the Devs do. But "still being here" does not equate to "I am still watching" in this context. Bad form, Devs, very bad form. |
I work in a creative field and I can understand wanting to get rid of someone else's lingering work.
I'm not a big fan of many of this game's characters and I'm not that invested in their stories, so those are all aspects that contribute to my feelings on the matter, for better or for worse, hehe.
I also do not disagree with criticism about how the stories have played out and/or the writing involved.
However, even if these stories were written flawlessly and/or to everyone's liking (impossible idealism left in for laughs), if the main reason behind creating these deaths were due to the characters being Emmert's, I don't personally think we need to claim it is petty. More importantly, I don't think it would be petty.
It's easy to sit back and imagine and all, but when we're in the thick of things, we figure out how we really would handle things.
Anyway, again, it's fine for anyone to disagree, these are just my thoughts on that one aspect. The only point of my post was to offer my opinion on it, no more and no less.
And... It'd actually be great if Troy Hickman were to write something befitting his take on Statesman.
I'm not saying you are wrong for wanting a better and more dignified and/or deeper handling of Statesman. I've not read many of the CoH works, but I've often heard the exact sentiments that you've mentioned about Statesman's character portrayal and Hickman's being the only one of great interest/depth.
In a way, I'd say that the real Statesman is the one found outside of Hickman's work. Meaning ZERO disrespect to Hickman (hi, Troy... I think it has been three times I've said your name now! How are the pants?). In fact, I feel that comment is with complete RESPECT towards Mr. Hickman's work in that he actually got a lot of people relating to or buying into Statesman... where-as, most everyone else seemingly has not.
Sadly, that cardboard character is the one who lived and the one who died. Hickman's was just one who we were fortunate enough to experience for a brief time.
Still, perhaps that Statesman deserves a rightful end as well.
I cannot, personally, place Statesman in any category such as that of Batman and Phantom, but that's easy for me to say since I was never into Statesman.
I do get people's gripe, but it is their show. And when I said that, I didn't just mean being a VIP. I'll still play through the rest of the arc just the same as I played through it up to now.
I wasn't for Statesman dying and I'm not against them killing off Emmirt's characters for whatever reason that they desire.
What's my point? I'm not sure, but if I have one, it could be in this post somewhere...
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
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Hehe, I know we're getting way off subject here, but...|
Originally Posted by BrandX
Why revamp it when they can just destroy it like Galaxy city!
Blueside could do with one less zone, and they can move the sutter TF to Talos! |
While I respect and understand the fact that we have a lot of zones and it may be too many (at the very least, too many that are under-used... and perhaps a global teaming/communication system that is under-used, combining to make a bigger problem)...
However, I don't think I'm in favor of removing any zones without making existing ones BIGGER.
While I agree that things may be too spread out, zone-wise, I feel like things are too cramped!
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
Or some of us could just have our own ideas ont he characters personalities that fit into whatever exporsure we've seen in game.
And in this field, getting rid of others lingring works is what ruins the writing. One More Day ring a bell?
"I don't like that writing...let's get rid of it!"
Not liking to work on someone elses characters has me wondering why people would get into the field that requires it.
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
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Well then, with that thought, why not combine Independence Port and Talos Island into one zone! |
Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
Hehe, I know we're getting way off subject here, but...
While I respect and understand the fact that we have a lot of zones and it may be too many (at the very least, too many that are under-used... and perhaps a global teaming/communication system that is under-used, combining to make a bigger problem)... However, I don't think I'm in favor of removing any zones without making existing ones BIGGER. While I agree that things may be too spread out, zone-wise, I feel like things are too cramped! |
They're both the same levels. It makes the zone bigger, while changing it!
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
but they can move Lusca to Talos ;o
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Oh, I understand that standpoint as well!|
Originally Posted by BrandX
Or some of us could just have our own ideas ont he characters personalities that fit into whatever exporsure we've seen in game.
And in this field, getting rid of others lingring works is what ruins the writing. One More Day ring a bell? "I don't like that writing...let's get rid of it!" Not liking to work on someone elses characters has me wondering why people would get into the field that requires it. |
Maybe the people there just didn't think they were ever very good characters and would prefer to wipe them out than retool them.
Either which way, I don't think anything I say will appease anyone's qualms! And I'm not likely to change my mind about being okay with whatever reasons they had.
I do get what you are saying though. I'm considered quite a stickler for quality in my work and I'm not one to often pardon it in others.
Just one of those cases where I don't have a problem with it... Maybe it was something Darrin Wade slipped into my tea...
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
Quote:
That sounds very appealing actually. Things happen much the same way, but they have a little more emotional heft and they seem to be a consequence of each other, rather than "First it started to fall over. Then it fell over" |
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
We know Wade has a spare Obelisk. We know it takes that Obelisk to syphon power. So why not have the altar show up half-way through the mission, then we're asked to go forward to deal with the woman in the skirt, then in the room where she is... BAM! There's the obelisk! Uh, oh! If this is here, then this could only mean Wade planned ahead! I mean, yeah, it's still a big surprise, but at least it's a cool surprise and I'm much less likely to question those. The way it happens, I was all like "The hell?!?" and then I come out and I'm told that, well, a wizard did it. |
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Or how about this? We know that since Wade killed the Statesman, strange things have been happening. The contact says so, and I can buy that. We're talking about the power of the gods. So why not have Akharist explain that this ritual has to be conducted over an energy nexus, but with the Statesman's death, most of those have been disrupted, but a few are still usable. One is even nearby, and we need to hurry because Psyche is getting worse. So we go there, we find the Obelisk, and only THEN does it become apparent why this particular nexus is still active - Wade made sure it would be, so that he knew where to lay his ambush.
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We did click on three obelisks going in. They didn't look like the ones in the first arc, but now I'm wondering if one of them was doing double duty as Wade's power siphon.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I'm compelled to talk sideways for a little bit and explain two of my more recent cases of fridge logic.
One comes from Rapunzel, the movie, and shows up right at the very end. There, the hero is trapped in a dungeon on another island and about to be executed, but escapes and rushes over to Rapunzel to explain a misunderstanding, while at the same time her evil stepmother has her in chains and is dragging her outside the tower. The hero yells for Rapunzel to let down her hair, waits a while, hair drops down, he climbs up to see her tied up and her evil stepmother stabs him from behind. It's a good scene and a good way to show she doesn't have magic powers. But as the credits roll, I turn to my friend and ask "Wait... How did the evil stepmother know to set up an ambush? She thought he was on another island and probably dead." My friend things for a few seconds and replies "Well, he yelled, didn't he?" And... Yeah, he did. He yelled, waited around a minute, THEN got hair to climb up. At the time, the stepmother already had Rapunzel in chains, so improvising an ambush by gagging her and hiding next to the window shouldn't take long. That made sense to me, and it left me with no reason to question. |
I think the real question is how an old woman came into possession of a tower like that.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Now, I know both of these feel like they have nothing to do with City of Heroes, and as movies, they really don't. But it's the concept of "fridge logic" that brings them closer to home. To be perfectly honest, a lot of City of Heroes is built on plot points that don't seem remarkable when you first run across them. But when you're up in the middle of the night fixing something to eat, that's when questions like these strike me. How DID Darrin syphon psyche's powers without the Obelisk? Don't those explode after you use them? How did the circle not detect his artefact? Did they not use the altar at all? How did he get past them to put the artefact there in the first place? I had to fight through an army of 'em.
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In Camazotz all are equal. Everybody is the same as everybody else.
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You're right, that was easy enough to explain. I seem to have missed one generation, and apparently misread who Zuko was referring to as his grandfather. It still doesn't explain how Bumi is still alive and has huge rippling muscles as a 120-something-year-old man, but he's insane so we can probably overlook that.|
Originally Posted by BellaStrega
This is explained easily enough:
Avatar Roku dies. Aang's born as the next Avatar. 12 years after Roku's death, and some time after Aang ran away and was frozen, Sozin takes out the Airbenders in order to kill the Avatar. He died 20 years afterward. He was not on his deathbed in A:tLA, so there is no plot hole here. I believe the physically oldest character in the series is King Bumi of Omashu, being as he was one of Aang's friends during his own childhood. Fire Lord Azulon died at 95 years, and had two sons: Ozai and Iroh. |
Thank you
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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 having thought about this, the concept of the "energy nexus" is actually already established in the game. The villain Aura mission has the player steal artefacts from the Carnival of Shadows, then offer those artefacts as a sacrifice to "the powers," which must be done in an energy nexus where several lay lines cross. Tarixus even explains that the Circle of Thorns often build their temples directly over those intentionally. Granted, heroes wouldn't know about this, but it would still make sense and be consistent with canon to require this powerful ritual to take place over an energy nexus.|
Originally Posted by Doctor_Minerva
Again, that sounds pretty good. That's pretty similar to how I read the mission itself. I don't go into Orebaga unless I have to, and I imagine that would be a common sentiment and if they could have conducted the ritual in Atlas Park city hall, they would have done so. So something must have brought them into that wretched place. If this is the correct interpretation, it wouldn't hurt to have made it explicit, though.
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The reason I'm going on about this is we're left to guess and assume why we had to go down there, and I could have guessed we did because Santa Claus bought a duck. Nothing is ever established and Akharist says nothing of the sort, aside from the suspect-grammar allusion of "I'll tell you where the ritual is." A ritual "is" nowhere, because a ritual isn't. It "takes places" somewhere, and if Akharist had told me "where the ritual must be conducted," then I might have bought it, but it still leaves things a bit too convenient and makes me feel like the plot is being written on the fly.
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The concept of the energy nexus is established in game canon. The concept of strange occurrences happening since the Statesman's death is established at the first mission in the arc, and it's easy enough to believe. Now we need a reason why the Circle didn't find Wade's hidden artefact, or why they didn't attempt to use the ritual and activate it before we got there. So how about this? We go to section of Oranbega where the Ritual site is to take place and find the corridors filled not with Circle mages, but rather with the Rikti, who've used the confusion of the Statesman's death, a death which must have affected mades greatly, to launch an attack.
Why would the Rikti attack the Circle? They fear magic because the Rikti have no magic on their homeworld. They killed all mages and destroyed all gods by killing their worshippers. The animosity between the Rikti and the Circle is longstanding and bitter. With all the other weird stuff happening - Malta attacking the Carnival, Nemesis attacking Portal Corp - would it really be THAT surprising to see the Rikti attack the Circle? Because the Rikti are not magically-inclined, they're unlikely to spot Wade's ambush, they're unlikely to try the ritual and even if they found the artefact he hid, they'd have no way to know it was important. What this means is we, as players, would have no reason to question why a CoT cave is filled with Rikti and the Rikti would have no way to upset Wade's trap.
Moreover, it's conceivable that Wade tricked the Rikti into attacking the Circle of Thorns. He has plenty of magic artefacts and it should be fairly simple for him to pose as a Circle mystic and attack a Rikti assault group in the vicinity, then lead them back to that specific spot. The two groups are already hostile to each other, and Wade could conceivably do something to hamper the Circle so as to ensure the Rikti take over the cave. He could then use the commotion to slip in, set up his ambush and slip out and no-one would be the wiser.
We'd still have a completely surprising plot twist because the clues left to it only make sense in hindsight after you know to be looking for clues to a trap, but at the same time the trap would still make sense and not come out like such a hat pull at the tail end of a story seemingly written without a plot twist planned for its ending. That I honestly would have bought, and all it would take is a few extra sentences from Akharist and swapping the resident enemies in the CoT cave with one sentence of entry pop-up explanation.
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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 finally finished these arcs on my main last night, and it's very clear to me what everyone was referring to in this thread.
I also believe there could have been an extremely simple way to make it all sensible...
When I run an RP arc for my SG Coalition it is not just in-game RP or running a customized AE arc or three. I also write. Long posts that have become a running gag in my group that just happen to explain to those who read them the Other Stuff going on. Cut scenes, hints, clues, and dramatic rp that gets transcribed for others lets everyone else who, for some reason or another, were not originally privvy to the information can get it from a few of my postings. This helps the players get closer emotional ties to what is going on. If they want to respond they have a choice to post a reply or act on it in game.
Just a narrative, posted for us to see and read, describing Wade and his motives... what drives him, or something to let us connect more with anyone on the Phalanx (is the marriage of Manticore/Psyche a happy one?) would help each of us have a better idea why the characters do what they do and be more dimensional.
Just my personal feelings on it.
"If I fail, they write me off as another statistic. If I succeed, they pay me a million bucks to fly out to Hollywood and fart." --- George A. Romero
"If I had any dignity, that would have been humiliating" --- Adam Savage
Virtue Server: Kheprera, Malefic Elf, Lady Omen, Night Rune, La Muerte Roja, Scarab Lafayette, Serena Ravensong, Kyrse, and Arachnavoodoo among others.
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You know, maybe that's just me, but nothing in a story can ruin it for me than when I can spot the hand of the writer working from behind the scenes. When I look at a plot twist that's supposed to be powerful and realise that this was done because of behind-the-scenes politics, the magic is instantly gone and I can no longer bring myself to care about the story. Picking the Statesman to die because the previous lead developer made him would have killed the SSAs for me even if had no other reason to dislike them (and I have others, lots of others), just because it's both mean-spirited and it ruins the illusion.|
Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
I work in a creative field and I can understand wanting to get rid of someone else's lingering work.
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Of course, I get technical limitations. I get that I can' blow up Nova Praetoria with a neutron bomb, because that's where all new Praetorian characters start. That has to stay. So when the game makes the inevitable and obvious plot twist that forces the bomb to explode underground and not kill Marauder and Dominatrix and everyone on the surface, I don't begrudge it. There was no other way to handle it.
But when the previous lead developer's character is killed and humiliated and the current lead developer's character is promoted to premier hero, that just pisses me off. There was no need for this, not a practical need, anyway. Someone decided to god-mod the story for reasons not at all related to that story. We didn't lose an iconic hero because of anything in the plot. We lost him because of company politics within the company that employs the writers. That's precisely why the magic is gone, and it's gone forever. I've now seen the man behind the curtain, and no amount of yelling at me over loudspeakers to ignore the man behind the curtain will change that.
I know the whole thing is fake. Obviously, it's fiction. It's a game. It's written, scripted, coded and planned ahead of time. Of course it's fake. But I still liked to pretend, I still liked acting as thought it were real, as though the plot points transpired because that just how events came down. But that is no longer an option. These days, most events seem to happen because a writer needs to get the plot somewhere, regardless of what the story has to do to get there.
Troy Hickman once said something I remember to this day. Paraphrasing, it went along the lines of "Hell, conversations are hard enough to keep on track even when I'm writing them!" I firmly believe that the man had the right idea, the notion that a lot of the time, a story just "wants to be told" a certain way and you really shouldn't try to force it to a different way lest you ruin it. And that's precisely the opposite of what I've seen done in the game for a long time now - the story is being pushed and pulled and kicked around wherever executive meddling needs it to go. That alone would be bad enough, but that I can see that just by going through the stories is even worse.
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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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