The Easton and Taggard arcs are very good! *spoilers*

To offset my Karma somewhat, I like to take the opportunity to praise the game, and specifically the game's writing, whenever I can. As such, I REALLY need to praise the writing and story behind the arcs of Graham Easton and Laura Taggart. I don't know who wrote these, but my hat's off to this person's effort, because both of these are... Actually quite good. Honestly, after the unmitigated disaster that was the SSA1, I wasn't sure the game could ever recover, but I keep running into really good stories. And those aren't even the ironic type of good, where it's a bad story badly written but I can kind of give it a pass since I like the idea. No, these are genuinely good AND they appear to have been proof-read. Amazing!

Now, I played both of those with Morten, my Dark/Dark Scrapper, so her personality has slightly coloured the way I ran these missions. See, Morten is a type of good-natured succubus demon who spends most of her time in bars, wooing both men and women and searching for an actual true emotion to replace the fakeness of her own illusions. She needs to feed on the life essence of others, but will not feed off the innocent, reserving this only for those who'd bring harm to others. She is largely motivated by fun and cute people to work with and isn't the kind of person who'd kill indiscriminately unless her "victims" are actively trying to ruin the lives of others. Keep that in mind.

Graham Easton:
This was a... Weird story arc. Easton reminds me of a character in one of my own Architect arcs, as does the way the mission progresses. The man is an idiot who can't tell his head from his ***, so most of what he says is quite inconsequential, leading most of the initiative in the arc to fall on the hero. Hey, you people who insisted that this game can't have a story arc without putting the player in the direct service of an NPC? Yeah, here's how you do it. This mission is awesome for just that reason, and I couldn't be happier to be able to just shut an incompetent contact up and do the competent thing. It's a great way to put over our characters, and I LOVE it!

As to the end decision of "kill" or "don't kill," that was actually a pretty interesting choice. On the one hand, the man I was given the choice to kill is a bigshot in the Tsoo, and they're villains. Besides, he's been trying to kill Morten since the arc started. I mean, he deserves to die, right? So they why did I choose to spare the guy? Well, partially a failure of RP, in that I let my own personality make the choice for the character, but it makes sense in-character, as well. I figured Morten was just about to put her hand through his chest and pull his soul out when he goes "You shamed me, now go ahead and kill me!" and her response would be "You just had to go and say that. Now you took all the fun out of it! I'm going home!" Besides, he technically kind of owns the urn his men have been trying to steal the whole mission. I chose to not have Morten snark at Easton at the end because... Well, he does legally own the thing, even if he's a jerk about it.

Overall, this was a really fun arc. The "story" isn't all that, but the way it's written really pulls it together, plus putting the hero in an active position is refreshing and quite pleasant. The moral issues it brings up are also interesting and unlikely to have an easy answer for everybody. Essentially, it's the light-hearted cute little brother to what comes next:

Laura Lockheart:
If you haven't run this arc, stop reading and run it now, because I'm about to spoil the hell out of it for you. And this REALLY is an arc that's worth playing.

I didn't have a very good reason for Morten to run the Easton arc, to be honest. It was just sort of there so I went for it. I DID, however, have a reason to run the Taggart arc, in that... Well, Laura's kind of cute, and Morten is a sucker for that. Reason enough to fight Nazi and Fascists over at the same time! And I have to say that the way Leon, the irritating hero who's also opposing the Column, is written quite well. He's a right *******, but at least he's doing the right thing... Right? When Morten first met him, she snarked the hell out of the guy, because she's not exactly a polite and reserve person. Higher morals? Phht! Please, that guy deserves the ribbing. See, most of my other heroes might try to keep a cool head and not be reduced to childish bickering, but not Morten. She's out there to have fun, and if you're a jerk, she's pretty much going to say that to your face.

For as fun as the Leon interaction is, though, the base attack and Laura's eventual fate are NOT fun at all. That was actually quite a heavy scene to run across, really not something I expected... Even though with the Doc Aeon style of writing, people dying should have been the norm. But I do feel that this was pulled off successfully, though. Unlike a lot of the other pointless deaths that serve no purpose in the story but to let the writer beat his chest about being "edgy," this really does help set the tone of the final mission and lead into a pretty heavy decision. It was, to my eyes, a sympathetic character's death done right. The character wasn't humiliated, it wasn't gratuitous or pointless and it wasn't one of a dozen deaths.

Character deaths are a precision weapon, in a storytelling sense. You can very easily shoot yourself in the foot with them, but if you use them right, they can be very powerful, and this was powerful as opposed to aggravating. Simply put, it made me want to wring Leon's neck, as opposed to punch the writer in the teeth, and I can't really say that about many of the game's other character deaths. Good writing there, definitely.

Speaking of Leon, the decision was pretty easy. My own irritation with Aaron Thiery Jr. aside, this really is how Morten would operate. If you're a good and innocent person, then you have nothing to fear from her, other than maybe a date you won't remember much from the next morning. If you go ahead murdering people and causing disasters, though, you're fare game. And if you go ahead and kill people that she actually LIKE likes? Kiss your soul goodbye, because you are feeding the darkness. That's pretty much the path I sent her down, and I had her pick the most direct death threat options available. I'm sure the mission might have allowed me to talk the guy down and have a less bloody ending, but that's a decision I couldn't afford to make. Again - this is a person who doesn't do "morality." Solidarity, maybe, though even that's pushing it. She's more or less just a good-natured party girl demon of pure darkness whose heroism extends to wanting to help people she likes, more or less. So of COURSE she's dining on Leon's soul

---

I get that my personal experiences with those arcs are largely informed by the character I was playing, but at no point did it really feel like said character was being portrayed in an incompetent or morally ambiguous light. Not unless I chose the option to be, of course. I can't imagine what kind of character you'd have to play for this to completely not make sense... I'm sure there are at least a few, I just can't imagine there'd be many.

All in all, those two arcs were great. Yeah, you know those SSAs you guys were selling for, what, $5 an arc? Yeah, they weren't worth the money, but those two definitely are. I'm glad I played them!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I would have liked it more if I hadn't been playing a thermal who is pretty good at healing. As she was still talking, seems that I should have been able to fix it.

You know, for a story arc that you enjoyed so much, you'd think you'd get her name right more than once out of three tries.

Edit: Oh, sorry. Once out of FOUR tries, if you include the thread title.

Didn't play the 5th Column arc. Couldn't get over how god awful Leon's costume was.

Seriously, whoever they let design NPC costumes needs to stop.

Yeah, I think the merit vendor costumes are mostly terrible. Someone probably hit the random button in the costume editor to create those!

I murder Leon every single time. I let Thierry live, but Leon gets the pointy end. That's how much I hate Leon.

I called it though. Seriously, first mission, I actually said out loud, "It's him. I'm going to have to fight him."

Then for the rest of the arc anytime something happened I was going, "It's him, it's him, it's him, it's him, I know it's him, it's him...."