The ONE thing you want to know...
By
Agent White,
Posted on: 2012-07-16 20:29 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Sorry for the derailment, Michelle.
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Originally Posted by Dark_Respite
*clears her throat loudly*
ANYWAY... Michelle aka Samuraiko/Dark_Respite |
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We might have one already: Mender Silos, Professor Echo, Penny Yin...
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Originally Posted by SlickRiptide
Where's Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion when we need him?
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Blood Widow Ricki * Tide Shifter * T-34 * Opposite Reaction * Shaolin Midnight * ChernobylCheerleader
Hate to continue to derail, but thinking on recent lore turns reminds me of this article: Prometheus - 'Calvinball Mythology', and the Void of Meaning
Blood Widow Ricki * Tide Shifter * T-34 * Opposite Reaction * Shaolin Midnight * ChernobylCheerleader
I'm not going to get into the derailment too much except to say that while I'm not as bothered by the Well storyline as some of the people in this thread, I do think the game would have been better off if it was never introduced.
Anyway, getting back on topic, I'm sort of like Samuraiko in that it's difficult to limit all my various Lore questions to just one. It doesn't help that my mind tends to blank at the points where I actually can ask them. However, I would like to know a lot more about the Rikti, their history, their society and what life is like on their homeworld. I know, for instance, that they apparently killed off their gods (Likely by killing those who believed in them) and that there were some wars to unify the planet a long time ago, after which the Lineage of War had little to do but I would still like to know more.
That would be what I'd most likely ask about, but I'd also like to know about the Minions of Igneous (Especially Igneous the Magma Master himself), the Coralax, the Dream Doctor, and Rularuu.
My arcs:
Title: Blitzkrieg
Arc ID: 3416
Title: Soldiers of Fortune
Arc ID: 4431
Title: The Rikti Accession
Arc ID: 278757
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The article reads as though the author has never even heard of H. P. Lovecraft (though the followup appears to contradict that). Prometheus is at its heart a remake of At The Mountains of Madness; critiquing it as he did is akin to evaluating a rom-com as if it were a Western (perhaps because someone wore a cowboy hat).| hate to continue to derail, but thinking on recent lore turns reminds me of this article: prometheus - 'calvinball mythology', and the void of meaning |
As for the points about Calvinball storytelling in general, I agree for the most part, particularly:
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| One of the peculiarities of running a Calvinball TV series is that the audience must never be allowed to think that the writers are making stuff up as they go. |
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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... and the Well attempts to commit suicide by not selecting a defender against the Battalion. That's the way out of the inconsistency?|
Originally Posted by Dr_Darkspeed
Again, the only thing that has to not happen the first time is for the well to be mad enough to choose a champion. If it doesn't, then Tyrant is just a regular Incarnate, theres no Incarnate arms race etc...
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At the simplest level (ignoring the possibility of the well being controlled/coruppted by something else) it could just be: If we take it that the Well wants a champion to defend against the Coming Storm, then in Silos's original time there would be no foreknowldge of the Storm, so The Well would not have known it needed a champion to protect it. Thus Tyrant is just standard Incarnate, no incarnate arms race, no prometheus involvement, no widespread knowledge/belief of the well. (basically, a continuation of the world as it was pre-Issue 11) Silos comes back, brining forwarning of The Storm, thus the well wants a champion leading to some sort of Incarnate arms race, but its too slow to stop The Storm. (we don't see this but thats what Ramiel said happened) Ramiel comes back to speed up the process. And thats where we are. |
You can't just say the Well is reading everyone's minds. Because the apparent chronology for the Menders is that they are aware of the Coming Storm before Silos does any manipulations: Ramiel just confirms their belief in the prophesy that predicts it. Ramiel just has more specific knowledge about the actual events and incarnates in particular.
And why would this nullify Prometheus' involvement? Prometheus seems to have his own reasons to stop the Battalion, and he seems concerned about the Battalion being able to gain in power by absorbing our Well. That would be true whether the Well chose a champion or not. Why wouldn't Prometheus put us on the Incarnate path whether the Well had chosen a champion or not? Prometheus wants us to bring down Tyrant because he would rather put us into a position of being the vanguard against the Battalion, and taking down Tyrant in effect leaves us with more power to defend the Well against them.
Even if the Well was totally ignorant of the Coming Storm, all that seems to do is eliminate the need for Prometheus to guide us to defeating Tyrant. It does not prevent his independent need to use us to stop the Battalion, and that only realistically happens by putting us on the Incarnate path.
Prometheus says:
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| If we were to fail in deposing Cole, and he successfully completes his conquest, however, he would still be but a single champion. It would be, as humans say, 'putting all the eggs in one basket.' |
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| You and your allies, with my help, are becoming the Well's champions. You will be the ones to free Praetoria from the grasp of the Hamidon. You will be the ones to stop Battalion. You will be the ones upon whom all of existence may one day depend. And you will do it all without being under the control of that... that... PUDDLE! |
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Wait, wait... this sounds like you KNEW this would happen all along? Did you!? Well, in a manner of speaking. I knew something of the truth behind Cole's reign, and I knew quite a lot about Cole's role as champion. Cole always intended to, one day, pacify Primal Earth. He has long seen it as a lawless, dangerous dimension that posed a continual threat to the survival of Praetoria. The Well, for its part, was aware of the threat from Battalion, and knew the battle against them would be fought within the Primal dimension. It also knew that Statesman and Lord Recluse desired little to do with it. They would not do as champions. Cole, however, already sought dominion over Primal Earth... a goal in line with its own ends. This led to its choice of Cole as champion. It was, ultimately, a matter of expediency, with the Well reinforcing Cole's already lofty ambitions with the power needed to achieve them. When Cole made the fateful decision to invade Primal Earth, I also knew that this decision would likely place him in quite the precarious position. Though the champion, he would be hard pressed to manage the situation should he need to fend off threats in Praetoria, even possibly the Hamidon, while also conquering the various Earths. So far as I could foresee, the only way he could succeed would be to become ever more dependent upon the Well. I was not about to let such a situation come to pass. |
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Tying together the original question and the derail, if you ask me what *one* question I would ask about the Lore, the answer is I have no singular question about any individual aspect of the Lore that I really care about. For me, and I think for many people who care about lore in general, what's important is not that I have every answer. What's important is that I know that I can explore the lore with questions and those questions *have* answers.|
Originally Posted by Mekkanos
Anyway, getting back on topic, I'm sort of like Samuraiko in that it's difficult to limit all my various Lore questions to just one. It doesn't help that my mind tends to blank at the points where I actually can ask them. However, I would like to know a lot more about the Rikti, their history, their society and what life is like on their homeworld. I know, for instance, that they apparently killed off their gods (Likely by killing those who believed in them) and that there were some wars to unify the planet a long time ago, after which the Lineage of War had little to do but I would still like to know more.
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I don't need to know what H'ro'Dotz's favorite flavor of ice cream is. I only need to know that in some sense, theoretically speaking he has one. Writers can't actually define every single minute detail about a world they write about, but they should be thinking about a sufficiently fleshed out one that you're not tripping over contradictions and obvious missteps.
Maybe if we bang our faces against it long enough we can figure out a loose strand of pseudo-random words that makes the entire origins of power/incarnate/ouroboros/coming storm story lines make sense. But its obvious to me that no such thing has actually been written or seriously thought about yet. The individual pieces have been written to connect to the other pieces, but not in a careful way that prevents tangles and knots.
If its all ad hoc, if anything can happen, if it doesn't have to make sense because hey its just a game and besides there's always a way to invent a way to force it to make sense, I don't have any questions. What's the point? Just bang on some keys, and presto: the answer to your question is jkonjev8uvi9. Why not?
For me, until I can resolve a reasonable picture that explains the big stuff, I'm far less interested in the little stuff. If why is any of this even happening is a question I can't answer, then I personally end up caring a lot less about who killed who, who's sleeping with who, who's favorite ice cream is rocky road. I put together puzzles from the edges and work my way towards the middle. To me the Lore is a system of parts all working together, and I care about the system more than I do any particular part. If I have to state a singular question, my one question would always be: how does this all work together.
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Prometheus could be a Battalion agent sent to get rid of the actual threat to them (Tyrant, Wade took care of #2, some no name mook apparently) and to 'season to taste' the human well. They probably don't like bland wells and they don't want it too spicy so it causes heartburn.
The writers would never stoop to a "good job breaking it hero", though it would make the redsiders happy since they weren't actually being forced to save the world in the iTrials since they were actually dooming all of humanity.
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Interesting to see how we approach this from opposite (but not opposing) perspectives.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
For me, until I can resolve a reasonable picture that explains the big stuff, I'm far less interested in the little stuff. If why is any of this even happening is a question I can't answer, then I personally end up caring a lot less about who killed who, who's sleeping with who, who's favorite ice cream is rocky road. I put together puzzles from the edges and work my way towards the middle. To me the Lore is a system of parts all working together, and I care about the system more than I do any particular part. If I have to state a singular question, my one question would always be: how does this all work together.
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Using your puzzle analogy, I can be perfectly content with small groups of puzzle
pieces, each of which make their own "localized" sense - for instance, a tree,
or a building, car, person etc. - without knowing where that item fits in the overall
puzzle.
In the early days, you *could* (eventually) fit all those pieces into the bigger
puzzle and come up with a pretty good overall picture of "Paragon City" showing
where the various heroes and factions fit into the game's "history" and lore.
The problem I now have, is that Villains added another entirely new puzzle. Then,
so did Praetoria, Incarnates, Dark Astoria ... generally with little (if any) regard
for logical consistency between them.
To me, it's like having separate puzzles of Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, Stonehenge, etc.
Sure, they're all parts of England, but they don't actually *fit* together.
Or maybe, it's more akin to having 4 puzzles of San Francisco's waterfront from 1901,
1925, 1955, and 2005. They're the "same place" but they still don't *fit* together.
Our game lore has gotten that way imho. The evidence suggests that our "writers"
never actually considered if, or how, those pieces should relate in a homogenous
way.
So, instead, it's like they took all of those puzzles, threw all the pieces into the
same box, and said, "Here you go guys and gals - here's our world".
In that analogy, it simply isn't possible to put all of those pieces into a single,
coherent, and sensible picture anymore.
So, I give up on the overarching lore - it simply doesn't work, and I've stopped
trying to make sense of it anymore.
For me, the game's lore is, simply put, an unreconcilable mess at this point.
So, I just try to enjoy the smaller inset pictures and quit trying to figure out how
those rather divergent pieces got into the same puzzle box or try to fit them
into a single "Big Picture".
Regards,
4
I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is definitely better.
Light is faster than sound - that's why some people look smart until they speak.
For every seller who leaves the market dirty stinkin' rich,
there's a buyer who leaves the market dirty stinkin' IOed. - Obitus.
My one lore question: Who was the maniac that designed the interiors of all the office buildings in Paragon City? Was he some sort of artistic building designer who idolized M.C. Escher? And why was his work so popular that he was hired for virtually every building in the city?
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I'm more interested in meeting the person who invented the elevator on Primal Earth. Because whatever that box with the doors does in Paragon City, it functions like no elevator in our world.
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Originally Posted by Zaloopa
My one lore question: Who was the maniac that designed the interiors of all the office buildings in Paragon City? Was he some sort of artistic building designer who idolized M.C. Escher? And why was his work so popular that he was hired for virtually every building in the city?
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It's not the elevator, it's the city fire code that assumes you are being chased by a flaming entity of some sort and requires you to lose it before you can escape the burning building.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I'm more interested in meeting the person who invented the elevator on Primal Earth. Because whatever that box with the doors does in Paragon City, it functions like no elevator in our world.
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A "true inconsistency" then never exists by this definition, because any inconsistency can be handwaved if you're willing to swallow enough codswallop. This is the point.
| Every example given is something that can be explained. Such an explanation might be horribly convoluted, but can still exist. A true inconsistency can't be explained. |
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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That is factually not true.|
Originally Posted by Venture
A "true inconsistency" then never exists by this definition, because any inconsistency can be handwaved if you're willing to swallow enough codswallop. This is the point.
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If, for example, a story says two people met on a Thursday, and then later contradicts that by saying they met on Wednesday, and those claims are made out-of-character, then that story contains an inconsistency.
More formally, if a story claims both A and ¬A are both true, then that story is inconsistent.
Inconsistent stories are most definitely possible, which is why it's important to make the distinction between actual inconsistencies and a convoluted story lacking explanations.
Of course, there's also the question of if retcons count as inconsistencies, but super-hero fans generally seem to assume they do not.
Main Hero: Mazey - level 50 + 1 fire/fire/fire blaster.
Main Villain: Chained Bot - level 50 + 1 Robot/FF Mastermind.
BattleEngine - "And the prize for the most level headed response ever goes to Mazey"
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Time travel.| If, for example, a story says two people met on a Thursday, and then later contradicts that by saying they met on Wednesday, and those claims are made out-of-character, then that story contains an inconsistency. |
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| More formally, if a story claims both A and ¬A are both true, then that story is inconsistent. |
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
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Time travel could allow Wednesday in time-line A and Thursday in time-line B, but not both Wednesday and Thursday in the same time-line. If the story says the latter, then it is inconsistent.|
Originally Posted by Venture
Time travel.
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| A formal system that contains A and ¬A is inconsistent but stories (or belief structures) are not formal systems. You can always bend a story to accommodate contradictions; it's just a question of how many porcupines your audience is willing to swallow. |
I can write down the sentence "This sentence is false." doesn't mean I can give any kind of explanation as to how it's consistent. Because it factually isn't.
Main Hero: Mazey - level 50 + 1 fire/fire/fire blaster.
Main Villain: Chained Bot - level 50 + 1 Robot/FF Mastermind.
BattleEngine - "And the prize for the most level headed response ever goes to Mazey"
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In real life, I see this happen all the time. Sometimes someone is lying. Sometimes they just remember things wrong. Reality is not inconsistent, though.|
Originally Posted by Mazey
That is factually not true.
If, for example, a story says two people met on a Thursday, and then later contradicts that by saying they met on Wednesday, and those claims are made out-of-character, then that story contains an inconsistency. |
Unless it's an omnipotent being narrating things, most inconsistencies that come from a character's mouth can be justified to bad memory, lies, or total guesswork from the character's point of view.
What gets harder to accept are things like red kryptonite turning superman evil in one issue, but then a year later it happens to turn kryptonians into flying donkeys, not via character's narration or claims but actual in your face events.
Even that, though may be able to have a long term explanation.
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Which is why I specified that those claims were made out-of-character.
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Originally Posted by Starsman
In real life, I see this happen all the time. Sometimes someone is lying. Sometimes they just remember things wrong. Reality is not inconsistent, though.
Unless it's an omnipotent being narrating things, most inconsistencies that come from a character's mouth can be justified to bad memory, lies, or total guesswork from the character's point of view. |
Main Hero: Mazey - level 50 + 1 fire/fire/fire blaster.
Main Villain: Chained Bot - level 50 + 1 Robot/FF Mastermind.
BattleEngine - "And the prize for the most level headed response ever goes to Mazey"
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I found out I been wrong about my belief too! "Oh.. wait you are right... my calendar was wrong... we DID meet on a Wednesday!"|
Originally Posted by Mazey
Which is why I specified that those claims were made out-of-character.
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I may also be told I am doing something, go do it, for years later to find out I was fooled into doing something else. It's a bit cheap for storytelling (mostly due to abuse) but it can be valid.
Everything can be cheap in the long term if abused, though.
This game does not have much out-of-character narration, though.
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I'm really not sure what you're trying to get at there. Could you explain it please?
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Originally Posted by Starsman
I found out I been wrong about my belief too! "Oh.. wait you are right... my calendar was wrong... we DID meet on a Wednesday!"
I may also be told I am doing something, go do it, for years later to find out I was fooled into doing something else. It's a bit cheap for storytelling (mostly due to abuse) but it can be valid. Everything can be cheap in the long term if abused, though. This game does not have much out-of-character narration, though. |
Main Hero: Mazey - level 50 + 1 fire/fire/fire blaster.
Main Villain: Chained Bot - level 50 + 1 Robot/FF Mastermind.
BattleEngine - "And the prize for the most level headed response ever goes to Mazey"
I'd ask, "What's the deal with Hamidon?" I'd like to know if the inconsistencies between Primal Hamidon (was once a human, turned into a strange creature sometime between the mid-'90's and today, probably born no earlier than the '60's, has a personality) and Praetorian Hamidon (appears to have always been a strange creature, appeared before Primal Hamidon was born, has no personality and is instead a pure "force of nature" in the literary sense) are intentional, inadvertent, or a mixture of the two. I'd also like to know why there have been so many "slips" over the years where amoeba-Hami has been referred to as a god. Is this in the original write-up for the character or just a sticky note someplace?
I'd choose this question not just because I'm interested in the character, but because it would show a bit of how the lore develops, badly or otherwise. There's a ton of player criticism of the lore's development, some legitimate, some just founded on the fact that the player doing the criticizing would have done things differently. This question would show me how justified or unjustified the overall criticism is.
Also, this thread is making me want to work on my "if the players wrote the lore" idea again.
"Bombarding the CoH/V fora with verbosity since January, 2006"
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A CoH Comic: Kid Eros in "One Light"
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There is only one timeline; the characters met for the first time on Thursday and then the timeline was reset and they met for the first time on Wednesday. No inconsistency, so what if the novel was really a rom-com with no fantastic elements, obviously the Villain of Another Story mucking things up on the sidelines....| Time travel could allow Wednesday in time-line A and Thursday in time-line B, but not both Wednesday and Thursday in the same time-line. If the story says the latter, then it is inconsistent. |
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| No you can't. |
)
Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"
The one thing I want to know is what do the Battalion look like? I know I will soon see it, and drown in it, but a little pic would suffice.
NCSOFT may take away our servers and beloved dev team, but they can't break our spirit and community. with all your power, NCSOFT, your victory will be bitter-sweet. I, personally will be there to laugh at you when you face-plant into the ground.
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My point is: Venture is right: any inconsistency can be handwaved if you're willing to swallow enough codswallop. This is the point.
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Originally Posted by Mazey
I'm really not sure what you're trying to get at there. Could you explain it please?
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"It happens in comic book publishing so we should expect it in our game" is the worst excuse there is for any action taken by the studio in their game development.