genuine need or company spite? *spoilers*

Zombie Man hit the nail on the head. This is what you get when you spend years asking for players to be the coolest of kids: NPCs will be kicked around. How else are they supposed to express it?

A few people in this thread seem really bent out of shape about the lack of respect for these characters. I say that the game never had any respect for them in the first place; all they ever were were slightly-glorified story arc dispensers. You can point to the comic books as a source of actual characterization but since the last of those was printed several years ago I'm not impressed.

Why does anyone feel attached to them in the first place?

When killing off a major character, there should be a very good "why" to it.

Why was Statesman killed? Why Psyche? To get their power?

No, the answer has to go deeper. Does the character still have meaning in the world? Will this meaning be diminished or heightened by their death? In Statesman's case he was a symbol and his death made it more meaningful.

Psyche? Not seeing it.

A lot of heavy handed plot devices were at work here. It seemed, to me, that the idea was "let's kill Statesman." This was followed by, "Who else can we off?" As names were gathered THEN it was decided how to tie it together rather than saying "here's the plot... for it to succeed the villain has to kill these specific characters."

Nor was any great effort put into making the deaths a heroic gesture.

No offense to Aeon. It's very difficult to write on a deadline. I know this pain well. However, there were some areas where any experienced GM (game master, not giant monster) would realize the player would want a chance to do *something*. Players are like that. They ruin the mightiest of arcs through creativity and surprise. You expect they will do one thing and they do the opposite.

That's something you have to plan for.

In this kind of medium, that planning could be as little as posting short stories of What's Going On between the arcs or significant scenes that help give us the whole picture.

Maybe one of States, morose after his daughter is killed, visiting his wife's grave and apologizing... a comment saying he missed her and wished he could be with her again... an expression of being tired of the Mantle of Responsibility.

Another scene, of Psyche and Manti arguing... maybe a not so happy marriage, or fighting about what *could* happen if she lost control. Manti countering her "you must kill me" with ideas like knocking her out, and her explaining why it wouldn't work.

These two scenes... quickly written and posted for reading pleasure, would have enhanced the whole SSA and made sense of some things.

I have no problem with who they killed, and I agree 100% with their reasons for doing so.

I just can't help but feel that they've missed several crucial opportunities to flesh out the background of the characters and the game world, as well as themes that seem obvious and exciting to explore.

Consider that both Statesman and Sister Psyche have ancient analogs in Cimerora (as well as a couple other Phalanxers, but the most prominent are Imperious and Sister Solaris). This would have been a great way to flesh out the idea of how heroes (Incarnates in particular) recur and reincarnate through time. Spend more time in Cimerora, giving their take on heroism and fleshing out who Imperious and Sister Solaris are. Spend more time on their modern-day counterparts as well. It males us care about them, and it highlights the idea that Wade was intentionally targeting something transcendent about the human spirit (while missing the point entirely) instead of just needing Powerset A and Powerset B.

I won't miss statesman much but i liked Sister Psyche. I hope she isn't really dead.

Manticore seems on his way to becoming a villain/vigilante. I hope he gets more powerful and a new look too.

Here's what I don't get about blueside - Why is it perceived so frequently as a situation where "That guy is standing in the shoes that rightfully belong to me?"

When you hear complaints about redside, you really don't often hear complaints about how Lord Recluse is so limiting and you wish he'd be just dead. In fact, most players who play to the end of the overarching story, where you hand Recluse his broken mask and say "FYI - This is what the future holds if you mess with me", are reasonably satisifed with that situation. They may still have to live with Recluse being the top of the villain power structure, but they seldom say "I am really pissed that I can't just kill Lord Recluse and take his place."

Despite arguing with VoodooGirl's position, I understand what she's saying and I have a certain amount of sympathy for that take on things. Given the above, though, I believe that the lesson of redside is that the perception of a void is managable by allowing the player to earn the respect and acknowledgement of the top dogs rather than by destroying them and then allowing the player to pretend that the PC is the replacement for the NPC.

For my tastes, I would have been perfectly validated with a situation where my PC hero fought alongside Statesman and Lord Recluse, where the press conference asked Statesman "How did you save the world?" and Statesman replied "I didn't. It was %PLAYER% and I think you should direct the rest of your questions to him.", and where that hallway of soldiers honoring my hero with a mass salute included a Statesman shaking my hero's hand then leading that salute with one of his own.

I believe that all that anybody really required was for the game to have the pre-eminent blue characters acknowledge the PC's as equal or greater, just as the redside story finally has Lord Recluse grudgingly acknowledge that the PC villain has become someone worthy of respect equal to Recluse himself.

Instead of making the player character into a bigger fish, the designers instead chose to shrink the size of the pond so that the PC would FEEL bigger.