genuine need or company spite? *spoilers*

Look, here's the problem with the way Matt and some other developers got interviewed about the SSA's - They made it appear as if the story was created to serve the goal of killing Statesman instead of making it appear that Statesman's death was decided upon as the most effective way to serve the goals of the story. This is only compounded by the fact that the in-game environment isn't actually prepped to acknowledge the deaths of either of the murdered signature characters.

THAT is why there has been any question regarding "propriety" or "spite" or what-have-you.

There are so many different ways to take Statesman out of the picture that I simply can't agree with the players who say "NO! He had to DIE! That's the only way that he could be permanently removed so that he'd never threaten my hero's pre-eminence! A retired/depowered/amnesiac/disembodied/fallen/lost-in-time/etc... Statesman could COME BACK!"

As if, in comic book world, a dead Statesman could never come back...

If Thomas Magnum found a reason to come back, Statesman could find a reason to stop resisting all of those resurrection attempts and come back.

In any case, it's done with and it's clear that the company policy is that he's gone and good riddance. It doesn't matter if it's good riddance because he's the last vestige of the Old Republic or if it's because they were convinced that it truly was good business to remove any suggestion that there could be a NPC that was more powerful than a top-tier player character. He's gone. Sister Psyche is gone. The Phalanx will continue to be portrayed as bumblers who can't hope to outshine the player characters.

Eventually we'll get a story in which Prometheus gets killed because HE's limiting somebody's character concept, but we need to get through the battle with Batallion first. Until then, its probably best to just move on to whatever constitutes the next chapter.

Statesman dying has been a good thing for COX.

Anyway, I might as well throw my 2 cents in here.

Suggesting that the devs would kill anyone off "out of spite" is kind of simplistic and ridiculous. This is a company we're talking about, run by people who have bills to pay and dreams for the future. They have obligations to investors, and decisions are made by getting groups of the head poo-bahs together to have discussions to work out a plan of action to decide on a modus operandi to blah blah blah. Decisions do not get made for simple, selfish reasons, and they certainly aren't made out of animosity for the player base that ultimately pays the dev's salaries.

But for the sake of argument, let's suppose, for a moment, that the devs -did- decide to kill off the characters they chose because they were Jack Emmert's characters.

Spite is not the only possible factor in that.

There is something legitimate to be said about taking the reigns of a world like this and making it your own, turning things to focus on characters -you've- created, that you understand, and that you, ultimately, control the destinies of. And there are also good reasons to clear the "old guard" out of the story if you want to do that.

Killing a character off is not always an act of disdain, either. These AREN'T REAL PEOPLE, and acts committed against them don't necessarily carry the same emotional motives that acts against real people would carry. Many, -many- writers like to kill off their -favorite- characters, because their goal is to invoke an emotional response, or to convey to the reader that bad things can happen to good people. It's entirely possible that Psyche and Statesman were killed off because the person writing the story thought they were cool, and iconic, and that their deaths would have an impact. And this thread, in point of fact, seems to suggest that they succeeded. To assume that they were killed off out of spite first assumes that killing a character off is a spiteful act.

It also means assuming that Jack would care if his characters got killed off. Jack -is- gone from this game. He -did- basically abandon it to chase what he seemed to think were more lucrative opportunities, and he cannibalized this game in the time he was here in order to chase those opportunities. I do think there's legitimate reasons to resent him, and I can even see how those could spin out into reasons to want to excise his influence from the game. But the thing is, they're not -doing- that. Hell, they're not even digging them out from the game to the extent that they replaced the column with the council, (an act which had plenty of conspiracy theories of its own at the time). And even if they were, there's no reason to just -assume- that he would care, or that they would think he would care.

As for the deaths themselves, Statesman's death sequence made me care more about the character than several years worth of in game content ever did. It certainly painted him as more sympathetic than the comics did. Psyche's death actually gave a noble, selfless end to a character who had had more than her share of selfish, bickery little moments in the various media that have given us glimpses into her personality. And, on top of that, it was shocking. I honestly suspect the biggest reason so many people were upset about Psyche dying was because it caught them flatfooted. "Who will Die?!?" "Statesman." "Oh, okay." "And Sister Psyche" "I-wait, what? How did? When did?"

Some people do -not- like those kinds of surprises. Some of us do. (In fact, some of us were really annoyed at the spoilery promotional material that basically broadcasted the deaths of the other past and present Phalanxers in the arc. I got a much bigger emotional charge out of the deaths of Malaise and Psyche specifically because I didn't really expect them)

As a random aside, has anybody noticed that Manticore has a tendency to shoot his friends and loved ones dead through the chest with an arrow? I mean, okay, Statesman got better, but still. This is a worrisome trend, Justin. ;p


Anyway, Did they "need" to kill the characters off, as some people have suggested? Well, a good writer doesn't -need- to do any one thing, he just tries to take the story somewhere that will entrance the readers. Did they succeed at that? I'm sure it depends who you ask. I have my issues with the arcs, but it -did- deliver some surprises and some shocking twists to me, and so I can't complain about that. But just because they didn't -need- to kill them off doesn't mean they didn't have good reasons, and what constitutes a "good reason" is largely subjective. But I think it's silly to suggest that a company with a vested interest in trying to entertain their player base enough to continue gathering money from them would do something as silly as throw their intellectual property to the wolves just to spite someone who isn't even around the office anymore.

Ok having been reading the thread for sometime and mulling it over I can see that while it may look like spite, it's more than likely poor planning on the behalf of Paragon Studios (and the writer) that gives the appearance of spite rather than actual spite.

There were two stories going on in the SSA. That of Statesman and Wade and that of Manticore and Psyche. While one bleeds into the other (obviously) I think it's just a misfortunate thing that all the characters happened to be Jacks.

Manticore is having his 'One more day' in effect (it does kind of come across as killing off the wife to get Manticore back into the brooding superhero archetype), Sister Psyche was killed off to promote new blood into the Phalanx (Ms Yin) and Statesman...well he will be the least missed out of all them.

I think it was the intial reaction to Positron being made the lead of the Phalanx that probably started me down this path and it STILL irks me somewhat. They could have used someone else and I think I'd have less of a problem. It's the fact that he happens to be one of the few author insert characters remaining that made me go 'hmm' and be a little suspiscious about it.

Though to be fair, they could kill off most of the Phalanx (as long as it was written in a good way...which with a multi-death pileup would take a damn good writer to achieve it being anything more than a 'kill-em-all' move) and the world would still function if normal people gave out their taskforces.

Why? Because we have already surpassed all of the signature heroes, My invuln/SS tanker can solo all of them at their supposed full power level and the world would still be in trouble. As mentioned the Phalanx usually do bupkiss to help anyway, being taken out by Reichsman, unable to approach Recluse with the Web active, off sipping coffee during the Lady Grey taskforce or even just not bothering to team up and help with Hamidon.

You know I've never got why Positron was even allowed in the city at all. Until recently he was a radiation emitting cloud of anti-matter locked in a containment suit right?

Why was he even allowed to stand around in the middle of a populated zone like Steel Canyon? What if some villain popped his contaiment suit and nuked a few dozen civillians?

And what exactly makes him fit to lead a super group? Guy wants to bone a ghost for pitys sake.