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Radio Free Kobold posted:if they didn't want the library to be burned they shouldn't have filled it with so much flammable stuff 
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Nov 25, 2020 00:46
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:When did this happen? She dies if you don't warn the Sages.
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Nov 25, 2020 19:31
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:She dies if you don't warn the Sages. To get into it a little further, there are, as I recall, several Sages that are marked as Conquest recruits, and I'm pretty sure most, if not all of them, require you to warn the Sages of the Edict of Fire. So, while I was misinformed regarding the Banner of Ardent, there's still a boatload of content locked behind that one decision, pretty sure it's more (in terms of actual, mechanical benefit) than any other single decision you can make during Conquest (choosing to visit Lethian's Crossing rather than Apex may rival it).
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Nov 25, 2020 19:43
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What's the decision that the other fatebinder makes if you go to a different zone for that step of the conquest?
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Nov 25, 2020 21:23
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Veloxyll posted:What's the decision that the other fatebinder makes if you go to a different zone for that step of the conquest? You don't receive any of the effects for any decision in places you don't go, so you can always assume that they chose the option that doesn't add stuff.
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Nov 25, 2020 21:26
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Vote closed! Verse decides Essa's fate!
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Nov 26, 2020 03:27
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Veloxyll posted:What's the decision that the other fatebinder makes if you go to a different zone for that step of the conquest? if i recall properly, the three default decisions are "the library was not warned," "only one side got fed to Cairn," and "nobody got warning before the Edict of Storms hit"
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Nov 26, 2020 05:12
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:if i recall properly, the three default decisions are "the library was not warned," "only one side got fed to Cairn," and "nobody got warning before the Edict of Storms hit" That last one isn't true because explicitly not warning anyone before the Edict of Storms has an effect that doesn't happen if you don't go to Stalwart at all during Conquest. Any decision you fail to engage with will have none of its possible effects. There is no decision that removes containers, Spire personnel, NPCs, etc., only decisions that add them, and if you aren't involved in a decision, nothing is added, even if both choices have the potential to add things.
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Nov 26, 2020 07:32
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Cleopatra Jones and the Rocky Retort Last time on Tyranny, we were deciding the fate of Essa, a farmer who had lost both her daughters to Kyros. As Verse was the one who proposed revenge, the thread decided to let her decide.   : This is your dance, Verse. Pick the tune. The achievement in the corner is "Inspiring Leader", for reaching maximum loyalty with a companion.  : We came here because Irissa... she killed one of my sisters. I always thought I needed to avenge them, to make it right, because I'd failed them.: But actually talking to you... it's cleared some stuff up. I guess what I'm saying is I miss my sisters, and you miss your daughters, and that's just the way of things. : Essa nods numbly, turns, and shuffles toward her squat farmhouse. : That was some uncharacteristic hesitation on your part.  Since when has Verse brought morality into...well, anything? : Irissa and Clea are dead. What does that mean for your sisters?: I'm sure Whispers would have something clever to say about frustrated ambitions. Verse shakes her head and chuckles darkly.: You ever have a friend who almost never speaks? But then every once in a while she slips in the perfect word at the right time, and it's the only thing you remember? That was Three Whispers.: She was our wary, flickering shadow with hair like crow's feathers. Preferred close up work. That was her name, for her three knives and the sound of air from a punctured lung. : And yet?: Her old favorite... THAT I remember. She'd trick a soldier into gutting his own comrade, then open his throat while he was in shock. Beautiful move, and I saw her dance it a dozen times.: Whispers knew her histories and letters, knew borders and houses and heraldry. Even knew a few sigils, and kept us from bleeding out more than once. She runs a hand over her feathers. : Sounds nice. : Let's go. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 As we can see, Verse's loyalty is maxed out.  If we had elected to spare Essa ourselves, we would have gained Wrath with Tunon for allowing the terrible travesty of "Kyros the Overpig". However, by pushing the decision off to Verse, we completely avoid having to take responsibility. There's even a precedent for it, with Tunon pushing decisions (such as the Forge-Bound inventor) onto us.  The gloves are even an artifact that...  Yeah, I have some problems with this quest. The free artifact is nice (and makes me wonder if our companions aren't about to become Archons in their own right) but the characterization of Verse is kind of odd and inconsistent. From the moment she's introduced, it's made clear Verse has poor impulse control as one of the first things she tells us is - Very early in the game posted:
The game clearly shows this is an extremely hazardous course of action, as we're able to get characters to back down by asking if they question our authority as a Fatebinder. Verse tells us within a few hours of meeting us that she has very little respect for the dead. Earlier in the game posted:Heck, have some more quotes. Verse explains morality posted:
Verse never really gives us an account of trauma. Yes, she lost her sisters in the war, but the animal mutilation and "red vengeance" takes place before any terrible traumatic event. She didn't like her mother, but there's never any indication her mother did anything more terrible than make her take care of a valuable messenger bird. If anything, her mother was extremely lenient when Verse hacked up all of the expensive and valuable farm animals in a society where food was hard to find. If we take anything away from Verse's behavior, it's that she loves violence, has a superiority complex, tortured animals as a child, seeks to dominate others, enjoys causing pain (see how excited she gets about the prospect of killing Clea) - but now we're supposed to believe that Verse has enough empathy to recognize that Essa's loss is similar to hers and suddenly develop a measure of morality. By her own admission, Verse enjoys killing but apparently only the people who deserve it. Huh? Verse has never been particularly moral, and outside this quest there has never been a "softer side" of Verse that has had someone to care about. She suddenly cares about the poor drugged girl, but she'll gain loyalty if we beat the poo poo out of Bitter Quip at the bridge. We don't have a conversation with Verse where she suddenly starts questioning her ideals, it comes out of nowhere after she asks us to help murder a bunch of people. I really do get the feeling this quest was written by a completely different author than the person who originally wrote Verse. There is much more to this quest we will see later. We need to get back to Lethean's crossing.  We end up having a dagger-throwing competition with a random lady and win some cash. It's not very interesting so I'm skipping it.  We get to Lethean's Crossing. This merchant lady wants to leave because everything sucks and is terrified of us. It's really not important, we need to get to the forge so we can steal a magic hat.   We get the animated intro because we are on the quest explicitly to steal the hat.  : What have you brought to protect Lethian's Crossing? : Why did you create a helm? : I've come for that helmet. Give it to me. I don't actually like any of these dialogue options. The first one has you idiotically announce you're working potentially against Kyros to a servant of Tunon. The second one has you lie that Tunon sent you, which is the kind of thing that gets him extremely angry. There is no actual subterfuge option to back down, apologize, and steal it later, so... : And what would you do if I just took it? Not a fan of how all the options make Cleo look like a dumbass.  : She gives a quick nod to the other Forge-Bound before leaving the forge behind you.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 Eldian accosts us but he immediately goes to his regular dialog after this screen. We let him go.  We leave. Our next assignment is to check on the Magebane Helm, which is a powerful magical artifact displayed outside the city in an easily grabbable location. We can just grab it and run to Bleden Mark, quest over.  I seem to recall singlehandedly murdering all of you the last time you stepped to us.  God that's clunky AND inaccurate. You approached us! Just say "To arms! The Fatebinder must die!" Straight, short, and to the point.  Our passive buffs trigger and we get a new quest to once again butcher every single Bronze Brother in the city.  I just want to point out Kills in Shadow does stupid amounts of damage. There are three ways your attack can be resolved - a graze which deals less damage, a regular hit, or a critical. That 53 damage was from a grazing blow.  We find more idiots and butcher them.  We are able to start combat by launching spells off the high ground here. The only way to get to us is through that chokepoint Verse and Kills-in-Shadow have walled off. Incidentally, the intellectually challenged man on fire is the commander of this attacking force, which so far has spent its time dispersing around the map waiting for Cleo to come put them out of their misery.  They all run up the ramp and attack. It's not a memorable fight. If someone put a gun to my head and asked me to describe these enemies' abilities accurate or die, I would tell them to pull the trigger because all these idiots did was get stunlocked and burst damaged to death. Unfortunately there are more of the world's worst pillagers hanging around town, so we have to go searching. Along the way we pass the now empty Helm Pedestal.   Eb and Killsy reflect on the nature of gullibility.  These men kindly wait for us to finish casting our fat buffstack before we run in and burn them all to death.  Cleo has an AoE haste spell now! The downside is that the entire party needs to be touching a central member so we can hit them.  We slaughter all these men and Cleo gets a level. She gets a buff talent that increases party damage by 15% and a point in wits. After these four fools die the game wants us to go check on Eldian, but Raetommon has other ideas.  Oh no! Raetommon stole the helmet we were planning to steal! Wait, why did he send an entire armed party instead of just walking into the town, grabbing the hat, and sneaking out?  Ah. : [Athletics 49] [Throw a rock at Raetommon] Ok, this is funny, but his head is covered entirely by the Magebane Helm. How are we seeing this gash?  It's an interesting little exchange. On one hand, it characterizes Raetommon as a literal clown and the butt of slapstick humor - but on the other, the Bronze Brotherhood left the corpses of villagers all over the map. This ties right back into our themes about how with enough power even a clown can ruin the lives of the innocent.   The anarchist path really shows this the best, but Raetommon is a coward and a bully. He literally has this woman tied up and is wearing a powerful magical artifact coveted by Archons, and he's still recoiling in terror because she beat the poo poo out of him.  The moral here is that this is what happens when a literal clown comes into power and has no idea how to achieve his goals.  TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
It's really easy to look at Raetommon here and be very confused. That last line is the line of a clown in a slapstick comedy, and so far Tyranny has presented a very serious and dark story. Why do we have slapstick lines such as "if you'll excuse me, I have a town to endanger so I can save it" and the rock? Because Raetommon is the joke of a man who gains a little power and thinks he can challenge the big leagues. Let's take a look at Raetommon's plan so far. -Attack and kill a Fatebinder as a diversion. Now, we know that killing Fatebinders is the surest way to earn Tunon's enmity and a painful death, and Tunon has the resources of the entire Kyrosian empire at his beck and call including Bleden Mark. Unless you're an Archon, this is not a fight you can win, and even the Archons would rather subvert a Fatebinder than kill her. Off to a bad start. This plan is even worse when you consider this Fatebinder wiped out an entire garrison single-handedly. Cleopatra then -Kidnap a Forge-Bound master, but leave the rest of the Forge-Bound in place in the town you're supposedly trying to control, while killing a bunch of civilians. Terrible! The Forge-Bound aren't just smiths, they're powerful warriors and sorcerers. They also report directly to Tunon and control the flow of iron. Now, messing with Kyros' iron is a matter that Bleden Mark gets involved in. Remember the Act 1 quest to find the stolen iron? If you steal it, you gain wrath with Bleden Mark. -Steal an artifact made with Kyros' iron that belongs to Tunon's Court. We can forgive Raetommon for not knowing that Bleden Mark has a personal interest in the artifact, we can't forgive him for stealing something that all of the Archons want or possess. The artifact belongs to Tunon. Bleden Mark wants us to have it. Ashe and Nerat want it because they're in a civil war and the artifact's power would help one of them get an edge. -Announce to said Fatebinder you're going into the Oldwalls so you can piss off Tunon more. -Somehow defeat all the Bane so everyone in town will forget the townsfolk you murdered, then, despite having lost two entire garrisons of troops fight off all of Kyros' forces both inside and outside the town because you took over the local iron supply. Raetommon is the classic example of someone with more power than sense overplaying his hand. He has a fairly decent asset in the form of a well-equipped and loyal personal army, and he is doing everything possible to screw himself over. He's losing the loyalty of his men and his second-in-command via poor leadership, he's stepping too high and painting a target on his back for people with real armies and actual sorcerers to come in and mess him up, and it's clear he's gained confidence from his initial success in holding Lethean's Crossing which Ashe and Nerat allowed because they had bigger fish to fry and Tunon had a foothold in the town anyway. There is no possible way this plan works. Let's be generous and assume that Raetommon had killed Cleo, stolen the helm, and kidnapped Zdenya without a hitch. We'll even be far more generous than Raetommon deserves and assume he triumphs over the Bane in a glorious staged attack that preserves his remaining forces. This ends either with him facing a major attack from the Disfavored or Chorus, or getting brutally murdered by Bleden Mark for pissing off Tunon. There's no way to win this for him.  He further underscores this point by throwing more loyal men into the meatgrinder. Remember Welby, and how she's the band's second in command who is also publicly casting aspersions on Raetommon's leadership ability to passing strangers? Do we really think throwing away the men loyal to him is going to somehow strengthen his position against the inevitable challenge?  We have to go visit Eldian because he knows the area.  Again, the game wants you to know that Raetommon's plan is bad because he's an incompetent idiot who needs an armed escort to prevent him from drowning in a toilet.   : Raetommon stole the Magebane Helm and captured Zdenya. Eldian is the leader of Lethian's Crossing and is the only faction leader who is not a complete rear end in a top hat.  : I know it's asking a lot after everything that has happened, Fatebinder, but without the helmet or Zdenya, we are in the same predicament as we were before.: The Bronze Brotherhood have a camp near the Oldwalls at Twin Rivers and use Deserter's March as a travel route. Either one of these places would be a good place to start looking for Raetommon and Zdenya. Please find them. It's a refreshing change to see somehow who actually cares about his people and doesn't have some horrible ulterior motive. : What can you tell me about Deserter's March? : What can you tell me about Twin Rivers? : Anything else going on in town that I should know about?: I hate to add a request upon a request, Fatebinder, but I would ask one more thing of you. The recent attack was horrific and there are a lot of folks that are in a bit of trouble now. Lohara lost some of her men in the attack - she was stretched thin before it all, so I'm sure she's going to need all the help she can get. Some townsmen have also gone missing, I've no doubt your assistance would be useful to all of them, so if it wouldn't be too much trouble, please ask the townsfolk for your help. He makes a formal bow.: I know we have no right to ask this of you, but I know you can help where no one else can.Respect? From Tyranny NPCs who aren't terrified of us?  It is incredibly convenient that Raetommon did his dumb plan before we stole the hat ourselves and pissed everyone off. : The safety of this settlement is all that matters to me. I hope we're of similar minds on this, Fatebinder. Since you're clearly capable of handling threats, otherworldly or not, I'll see to it that the Oldwalls remain open to you. The passageway leading to the base of the Spire will be unsealed upon your return. If accessing it can help you in any way, please use it.Now, the interesting thing here is that Eldian is basically telling us to break the law and probably risking being hauled before Tunon.  Notice that Cleopatra no longer cares. : Farewell.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
So Eldian here is finally getting to why I chose Lethian's Crossing first. We are going into the Oldwalls, and rather than complaining about the law or threatening to bring poor Eldian up on charges Cleopatra is finally recognizing that the law of Kyros she's sworn to uphold isn't some transcendent noble wisdom but a collection of self-serving bullshit. This is a huge transformation! In fact, it ties in with the name and design of the town. "Lethian" looks a lot like Lethe, doesn't it? The river Lethe was a river that ran through the underworld and those who drank from it forgot what they knew. That's somewhat symbolic of what's happening here, but the river was also associated with rebirth. Virgil writes in the Aeneid that the dead must drink of the river to be reincarnated, and Dante built on this further by having the waters cleanse the sinners before they ascend to heaven. Thus, Cleopatra is metaphorically reborn in Lethian's Crossing by abandoning the laws of - and unthinking loyalty to - the Law of Kyros.  Next time: We do some more sidequests!
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Nov 26, 2020 08:40
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: But Fatebinder, I am Pagliacci!
: You left the hat lying around outside! What did you think was going to happen?
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Verse's sidequest is half character development, half pivoting away from her previous one-note characterization. Previously, there was basically no depth to her, she was just the Scarlet Chorus' mission statement in its purest form, without Nerat's sadism and madness getting in the way. Her sidequest gave her more of a coherent personality and moral code of her own, outside the Scarlet Chorus, in a way that makes her an actually decent person to have in the party. Like, everyone else, for all their faults, are all by some definition decent people, but Verse's original portrayal, as you've pointed out, paints her as a violent psychopath. The DLC fixes that, since having a party member just be objectively a bad guy doesn't work in a game that runs on moral ambiguity.
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Nov 26, 2020 09:04
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Meh, I don't see the need to have everyone be ambiguous. You can also build the ambiguity from the fact that Verse is useful melee character, fun to have around, and also a completely reprehensible person 
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Nov 26, 2020 09:55
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Xarn posted:Meh, I don't see the need to have everyone be ambiguous. Because Tyranny is a game partly about how essentially decent people are twisted by tyrannical regimes into their worst selves to serve the needs of said regime, meaning that the player character and companions should reflect that rather than being all-good or all-bad.
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Nov 26, 2020 10:17
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I know the 'everyone under Kyros is absurdly corrupt' drum gets beaten a lot, but still... just lol that this town mayor guy is openly dangling an opportunity for the PC to break the law as a 'reward' despite the facts that: A.) The PC's job is literally catching and delivering judgment onto people who break the laws and B.) a direct subordinate of the guy who writes and demands for those laws to be maintained. I mean shouldn't he have some inkling that this plan could backfire horribly? Or is he just that confident in the absolute corruption of everyone in Kyros' empire, up to and including the right-hand people of the Archon of Justice.
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Nov 26, 2020 11:29
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It's pretty commonly understood that Archons and Fatebinders get a fair amount of leeway when it comes to violating the law. We already broke into the Oldwalls once to claim the Spire, and that didn't catch Tunon's or Mark's attention. Ashe and Nerat got up to a lot of shady poo poo in act 1 and nobody has busted their balls, either. As long as it can be argued you're acting in Kyros' service and that your actions were necessary, what you do doesn't really matter. What if, say, Raetommon ran into the Oldwalls whenever he saw you coming? He's wearing the anti-bane helmet, he could set up shop there for as long as he wanted. He's stolen valuable artifacts, slaughtered civilians and kidnapped the Forge-Bound leader. Someone has to go in there to stop him. The Archons in act 1 likewise would heartily argue that all they did was in the service of conquering the Tiers. There is no major player here who has never violated Kyros' law in one way or another, except possibly Tunon, who can pass the buck to you. This is a feature, not a bug. You are expected to break the law in the service of enforcing it, because it makes no formal exceptions. Your choice is to either follow a criminal into the Oldwalls, thus failing to uphold the law, or let him go free, thus failing to bring him to justice. That way, if Tunon or Kyros ever decide you are too dangerous to keep around, there's a record of your transgressions they can use as justification for putting you down. If Kyros' law actually was as comprehensive as advertised, and allowed someone to challenge the system while upholding it, it would be giving away the game whenever Kyros needs a threat snuffed out.
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Nov 26, 2020 12:36
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Incidentally, if you're on the Scarlet Chorus path through the whole game I believe all this never happens. Lethian's Crossing is a town you pop into, recruit Sirin, claim the Spire nearby, and then leave. Nerat has no particular interest in the place.
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Nov 26, 2020 13:05
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Actually, you only get to visit 3 of the 4 plot areas in act 2, unless you're on the Anarchist/Bleden Mark path. You were given the choice between Lethian's Crossing and an unexplored area and chose the latter, because you had already grabbed a spire and a party member from the former. There is a Scarlet Chorus plotline for this, and I have no idea what it is, because I made the same choice.
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Nov 26, 2020 13:24
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I am kinda mad about the endings that follow from only visiting some locations... You spend the game breaking the edicts through various means (usually lawyering loopholes), but if you pick the "right" choices, you leave one raging, and the endings goes "blah blah, it went on forever", even though the sane course of action would be to then double back and break the last edict as well.
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Nov 26, 2020 15:59
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Raetomonn sure is something. On my first playthrough, this was the moment where I thought in character that I must be the only sane, intelligent person in this entire back end of the world, and it was my job to clean the place up, and report back to Kyros once all local troublemakers and suicidal idiots have got their just desserts. Which brings up an interesting point - look at all the Archons sent here. Kyros doesn't mind any of them dropping dead - they are all either threats to him, tried to kill him in the past (Ashe, Sirin, Bleden Mark), generic traitors (Caern) or are becoming insane, hence unpredictable (Nerat). So why is Tunon here? Now, a charitable view may be that he's sent to oversee this mess as the only responsible leader, but if so, he's set up to fail, given that his fellow Archons are at odds from the start and he's not in a position to control them. Also, he pretty much parks himself in the first place Kyros' forces conquer, and never leaves it, instead busying himself with local squabbles. So maybe he's just as inconvenient to Kyros as the others. But if so, why? Is it his inane adherence to the letter of law, even when it results in inane decisions or obvious inefficiencies (tell a merchant to be a farmer etc.) - is he an embarassment in the way he applies law? Or is he a thorn in the side of Kyros and other archons who want to rule by their whims, rather than codified laws that apply to all?
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Nov 26, 2020 16:01
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12Apr1961 posted:Raetomonn sure is something. On my first playthrough, this was the moment where I thought in character that I must be the only sane, intelligent person in this entire back end of the world, and it was my job to clean the place up, and report back to Kyros once all local troublemakers and suicidal idiots have got their just desserts. Actually, Tunon and Bleden Mark are here to legally kill anyone inconvenient to the Overlord that's still alive at the end of the conquest by convicting them of the various crimes they've blatantly done.
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Nov 26, 2020 16:44
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EclecticTastes posted:Actually, Tunon and Bleden Mark are here to legally kill anyone inconvenient to the Overlord that's still alive at the end of the conquest by convicting them of the various crimes they've blatantly done. No, I think we were supposed to do that via edict back in Act 1. It just, kinda, didn't quite work.
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Nov 26, 2020 16:51
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Radio Free Kobold posted:No, I think we were supposed to do that via edict back in Act 1. It just, kinda, didn't quite work. There's a reason I put it under spoiler tags, and they're there as insurance. Kyros never has just one plan to eliminate problems, ultimately Tunon is not Plan A because killing an Archon off through a kangaroo court is rather blatant, at least to anyone powerful enough to have the luxury of questioning Kyros.
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Nov 26, 2020 17:02
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also, this is that Later bit i was talking about re: what the Banes are. Raetomonn is a moron, way, way out of his depth. He has parlayed what little power the system has given him into a big, dramatic power play, stealing something of significant power and humiliating someone who is his direct superior. The Law is going to loving crush him and the rag-tag bunch of morons he's gotten together for this, unless he finds some way to make it inconvenient. Any similarities to one C. Jones are to be ignored. And so he is going into the Oldwalls. the theory is floated by the game that the prohibition of going into the Oldwalls is to serve as a misdirection to keep people from the Spires. that is definitely one benefit! but the prohibition of exploring the Oldwalls serves another, much older and much more traditional bit of tyranny. "don't think about other ways of doing things, you little shits." Raetomonn is exactly the kind of idiot who storms off into the wilderness with a couple of his followers to 1. escape the judgement of the powers that be 2. try something new. representing that in a video game is a bit of a pain in the rear end. and so we add the Banes. the Banes are the hazards of trying to come up with your own system outside the current awful one. and they are some motherfuckers! nobody knows anything about them, by the explicit design of the current regime, and even if you do know something about them, that only makes them mildly less dangerous! most of the reason you build a civilization is so you DON'T have to deal with them on a regular basis! but every once in a while, some stupid rear end in a top hat has gotten in way over his head, thinks he's figured out a way to beat them, or both, and he heads into the Oldwalls with his loyal crew. most of the time, this results in Raetomonn. some of the time, this results in that one Forge-Bound who found something neat that the system says is forbidden. at least once, it resulted in Kyros.
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Nov 26, 2020 18:09
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EclecticTastes posted:Verse's sidequest is half character development, half pivoting away from her previous one-note characterization. Previously, there was basically no depth to her, she was just the Scarlet Chorus' mission statement in its purest form, without Nerat's sadism and madness getting in the way. Her sidequest gave her more of a coherent personality and moral code of her own, outside the Scarlet Chorus, in a way that makes her an actually decent person to have in the party. Like, everyone else, for all their faults, are all by some definition decent people, but Verse's original portrayal, as you've pointed out, paints her as a violent psychopath. The DLC fixes that, since having a party member just be objectively a bad guy doesn't work in a game that runs on moral ambiguity. First, I don't see this sidequest as actually portraying Verse as secretly a decent person under all of her murderous psychopathic tendencies. She's just portrayed as too far gone for that, and they really needed to rewrite her character entirely for this to actually work (which they did do for a certain other character in late game). To go with your moral ambiguity, the moral dilemma of Original Verse isn't whether or not she's conflicted on whether people deserve to die, but whether you the player can justify using a murderous disloyal psychopath as your personal weapon to seize power, and are you willing to pay the price to keep this woman's loyalty? The game doesn't take that very far. Verse is easy to gain loyalty with by saying mean things and stabbing Scarlet Chorus members, unlike say keeping someone like Lavrentiy Beria happy where you have to let him kidnap women for his creepy sex dungeon (that really happened!). It's too little, too late and it's just not believable that this woman who has displayed all the traits of antisocial personality disorder somehow is able to make the genius level mental leap that Essa's loss is like her loss. This kind of thinking never reappears outside the sidequest chain and it's really jarring when it does. Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:Raetomonn is a moron, way, way out of his depth. He has parlayed what little power the system has given him into a big, dramatic power play, stealing something of significant power and humiliating someone who is his direct superior. The Law is going to loving crush him and the rag-tag bunch of morons he's gotten together for this, unless he finds some way to make it inconvenient. Any similarities to one C. Jones are to be ignored. This is an interesting comparison, but it's not quite true. Cleopatra made her move when she had the implicit backing of Tunon, who actually does - and used - the power to keep Ashe and Nerat off our backs. She took the reasonable gamble that Ashe and Nerat hated each other more than they hated her, and that paid off while also striking at a time when Kyros was mad enough at those two to order them both killed. Cleopatra was in the right place at the right time and took full advantage of that. Hell, Myothis even tells us that Kyros is holding back Mark so we can get a far shot, and we currently have the backing of both Mark and Tunon who have enough power to enable our adventures. Raetommon COULD use the civil war to carve out a little fiefdom if he was smart about it, but he's overreaching too far too fast. He's not smart enough to play the Archons against each other, he has no in to do so. There is no powerful foreign empire he can go to for support, it's all Kyros all the way down. The Bane are powerful but it's not clear whether he can control them, and he's not smart enough to realize they'd be more useful augmenting his forces rather than staging an attack on a town that hates him that he already lost two entire garrisons trying to hold. I love that interpretation of the Bane, to take it further, Raetommon could go around telling everyone about his cool new ideas about government, but he'd much rather invent an uber-tyranny he defends the town from. Basically Cleopatra inadvertently made her move the smart way and Raetommon did it in the stupidest way possible.
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Nov 26, 2020 20:34
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the best beria story was that stalin himself was afraid to let his own daughter near him
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Nov 26, 2020 20:46
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:First, I don't see this sidequest as actually portraying Verse as secretly a decent person under all of her murderous psychopathic tendencies. She's just portrayed as too far gone for that, and they really needed to rewrite her character entirely for this to actually work (which they did do for a certain other character in late game). To go with your moral ambiguity, the moral dilemma of Original Verse isn't whether or not she's conflicted on whether people deserve to die, but whether you the player can justify using a murderous disloyal psychopath as your personal weapon to seize power, and are you willing to pay the price to keep this woman's loyalty? The game doesn't take that very far. Verse is easy to gain loyalty with by saying mean things and stabbing Scarlet Chorus members, unlike say keeping someone like Lavrentiy Beria happy where you have to let him kidnap women for his creepy sex dungeon (that really happened!). It's too little, too late and it's just not believable that this woman who has displayed all the traits of antisocial personality disorder somehow is able to make the genius level mental leap that Essa's loss is like her loss. This kind of thinking never reappears outside the sidequest chain and it's really jarring when it does. Yeah that's what happens when a retcon is placed in the middle of a story, it can be jarring. Verse's original portrayal as "what every 80s-era UK-style punk tried desperately to pretend to be" has been replaced by the one from her sidequest, where she still believes in survival of the fittest, might makes right, blood washes blood, etc., but she now has standards regarding who she can justify killing, and a certain desire to remain something resembling a human being. And it hardly contradicts her characterization in most of the game, where her violent impulses are directed mainly at the pack of murderous assholes who've already made clear their hostility. She never suggests murdering random civilians or razing villages or anything like that. The majority of your interpretation of her character comes from a throwaway line about her apparently torturing livestock and a story where she talks about murdering a bird she resented. These are not real people, they're fictional characters, created by writers. Sometimes writers fail to properly interrogate the implications of what they've written (or to put it even more explicitly, I don't believe either of those bits are meant to be as significant to Verse's character as you think they are), and sometimes when the time comes to make DLC, they take it as an opportunity to adjust how they've characterized someone or otherwise massage the details of the setting, to better fit their creative vision. Originally, Verse lacked redeeming moral qualities. Then they were patched in with the DLC.
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Nov 26, 2020 22:39
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EclecticTastes posted:
I'd just like to point out that we have only her word about targeting the animals, and she has reason to lie. Given that the Scarlet Chorus is in a big game of one-upmanship as to who can be the most violent, she has cause to make poo poo up about how much of a little psychopath she was as a child. Make her sound tougher and less vulnerable. This is not the only point where she tries to deceive the Fatebinder: If you ask how she discovered her relation to Barik: she mentions that she found a letter from his father and recognized the handwriting as the same as letters her mother had from a lover. Verse claims to be illiterate even though she can both read Nerat's pictograms and could read enough of their father's letter to recognize the relation to Barik. It makes sense for canny operator to portray herself as an illiterate killer; and it makes sense to portray yourself as a hardened psychopath in an organization like the Scarlet Chorus.
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Nov 26, 2020 23:02
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Servetus posted:I'd just like to point out that we have only her word about targeting the animals, and she has reason to lie. Given that the Scarlet Chorus is in a big game of one-upmanship as to who can be the most violent, she has cause to make poo poo up about how much of a little psychopath she was as a child. Make her sound tougher and less vulnerable. This is not the only point where she tries to deceive the Fatebinder: If you ask how she discovered her relation to Barik: she mentions that she found a letter from his father and recognized the handwriting as the same as letters her mother had from a lover. Verse claims to be illiterate even though she can both read Nerat's pictograms and could read enough of their father's letter to recognize the relation to Barik. It makes sense for canny operator to portray herself as an illiterate killer; and it makes sense to portray yourself as a hardened psychopath in an organization like the Scarlet Chorus. This is...actually a really good point! I was going to write up an entire thing about how Verse shows the traits of the psychopath such as sexual obsession and a love of violence, but I hadn't considered that Verse was lying about animal mutilation because that's normally a batshit thing to lie about. I will keep an open mind about Verse going forward and we'll see how her quests play out.
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Nov 26, 2020 23:49
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Servetus posted:I'd just like to point out that we have only her word about targeting the animals, and she has reason to lie. Given that the Scarlet Chorus is in a big game of one-upmanship as to who can be the most violent, she has cause to make poo poo up about how much of a little psychopath she was as a child. Make her sound tougher and less vulnerable. This is not the only point where she tries to deceive the Fatebinder: If you ask how she discovered her relation to Barik: she mentions that she found a letter from his father and recognized the handwriting as the same as letters her mother had from a lover. Verse claims to be illiterate even though she can both read Nerat's pictograms and could read enough of their father's letter to recognize the relation to Barik. It makes sense for canny operator to portray herself as an illiterate killer; and it makes sense to portray yourself as a hardened psychopath in an organization like the Scarlet Chorus. poo poo, I hadn't considered that, that's a really great point. I'd say that her story about the bird she killed was probably true, but there was a motive there (not a great one, but, Verse is a bronze age angry teenager), and she even said feeding it to the mice "felt like justice", which shows a clear capacity for empathy (she understood that the mice, as prey, were fellow victims* of the lovely bird). *Yes, we know she wasn't much of a "victim" of this bird, but that was her perception of the situation.
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Nov 27, 2020 03:42
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That does make sense. If you got a reputation to uphold, and you don't want to wear everything on your sleeve, why not go with an illiterate killer? Then again it could also be a case of a different writer who did the quest and forgot about a particular trait the character does or doesn't have, like EvilKing suggested.
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Nov 27, 2020 03:48
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I'm enjoying all this speculation by people who have played the game (I haven't) for the moment it feels like you're all doing the writers' work instead of them, reading deeply into small details and obscure interactions. it's fun and engaging but in the back of my mind I keep asking myself if maybe you aren't giving the writers more credit than is due I assume that this is all guesswork and that it's heavily influenced by each poster's views, but still I'd be happy to find out at the end of the game that there really was some deeper thought put into the characters and the setting
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Nov 27, 2020 08:39
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I would say we ask rope kid to give us some answers, but 1) I haven't seen rope kid around on SA in a while 2) Given his work on PoE, I don't think he was involved in Tyranny
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Nov 27, 2020 10:05
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necroid posted:I'm enjoying all this speculation by people who have played the game (I haven't) One of the nice things about Death Of The Author is that it cuts both ways -- if you want to find clever and insightful interpretations of a work that the author might not have been aware of, that's just as legitimate as criticising a work for containing prejudices that were accepted truth in the author's time.
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Nov 27, 2020 13:25
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Whybird posted:One of the nice things about Death Of The Author is that it cuts both ways -- if you want to find clever and insightful interpretations of a work that the author might not have been aware of, that's just as legitimate as criticising a work for containing prejudices that were accepted truth in the author's time. yeah absolutely I'm not going to dispute that, but what interests me here specifically is the meaning that the writers wanted to convey all this speculation made me curious, can't wait to see the end of this lp
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Nov 27, 2020 14:10
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Xarn posted:I would say we ask rope kid to give us some answers, but He posts in the PoE thread but I'm not sure if he's active anywhere else. I think you are right though in that Tyranny wasn't his project so I don't know how much he'd have to say about it.
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Nov 27, 2020 18:01
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Whybird posted:One of the nice things about Death Of The Author is that it cuts both ways -- if you want to find clever and insightful interpretations of a work that the author might not have been aware of, that's just as legitimate as criticising a work for containing prejudices that were accepted truth in the author's time. This is very much what I'm running with. The official dev explanation for why we're in the Bronze Age is because the developers wanted to have combat be up close and personal (just awkwardly ignore things like slingers and archers) and so Kyros can mass-produce iron weapons to conquer. My interpretation is that the Bronze Age is closest to Hobbes' war of all against all, and the developers want to show that the 20th century authoritarianism Kyros embodies is worse than Hobbes' state of nature. This will be a bonus update once I finish Leviathan. rope kid, if you're out there I'd love your input! Re, writer's intent, I honestly think a lot of the DLC was due to reddit complaints but we'll get there! I'm also planning at least one more run so we can do things like talk to Ashe and Nerat and do Tunon's investigation (which has some legitimately good poo poo).
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Nov 27, 2020 20:09
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The bronze age actually had a large number of large states doing major large army combat, the battle of Kadesh for example, around the Mediterranean, where I actually know a few things, there were several states that recognized each other as Great, and the Great Kings fought each other and married off children in each other's dynasties and fought each other some more and tended to get cagey when, for example, another state tried to reach to their status, such as the Mycenaeans for example. And then the Bronze Age Collapse happened and that makes getting more info a pain in the rear end.
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Nov 27, 2020 20:20
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Xarn posted:I would say we ask rope kid to give us some answers, but
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Nov 30, 2020 23:56
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rope kid posted:I did not work on Tyranny outside of my role as the studio design director, which just involved me playing the game and giving my feedback. Sorry. Well, what was your feedback then?
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Dec 1, 2020 00:29
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SIGSEGV posted:The bronze age actually had a large number of large states doing major large army combat, the battle of Kadesh for example, around the Mediterranean, where I actually know a few things, there were several states that recognized each other as Great, and the Great Kings fought each other and married off children in each other's dynasties and fought each other some more and tended to get cagey when, for example, another state tried to reach to their status, such as the Mycenaeans for example. Actual bronze age empires had to deal with long distance logistics, making it near impossible to transport enough violence to overwhelm a distant rival empire on their home turf. They also had bronze age communications, making it difficult to govern empires once they are too big. But Kyros has the power of magic and edicts on his/her side. Kyros can get quick messages and reports to and from distant governors/satraps/archons. Kyros can personally respond to a single rebellious archon even if they are far away. And Kyros can sent easily supplied fatebinders with edicts when his/her armies fail. It makes sense that this empire is so much bigger than an actual bronze age empire.
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Dec 1, 2020 01:48
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It's true that their logistics were limited, but it certainly was enough for Egypt and the Hittites to gently caress up each other / marry each other / gently caress each other all over the the Syria / Palestine / Sinai region for generations. Similarly, we have Neo Assyrians who just started using iron weapons en masse and they were able to dominate quite effectively a large portion of the Middle East. At the technology level we are discussing, it seems less a matter of technology and more a matter of organization.
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Dec 1, 2020 02:01
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