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FuturePastNow posted:I think another clue is that Gaius's body is just there on the floor when you leave the instance after beating up the Ultima Weapon. It doesn't fade away which is usually the sign that someone's dead instead of just KO'd I mean, they show him in the cutscene after lamenting his failure. "And so my conquest ends, Cid. In smoke and ashes..." Everything blows up around him, and that's the last we see/hear of him until the shadowhunter reappears.
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Mar 11, 2024 17:11
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I told Sanguinia this on Discord, but if this was a stream the chat would have exploded with "SUCH DEVASTATION" the second the Shadowhunter was revealed to be Gaius.
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Mar 11, 2024 19:32
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Mr. Nice! posted:I mean, they show him in the cutscene after lamenting his failure. The actual undeniable clue is that during one of the final cutscenes the camera pans back to the Praetorium and shows that his body has vanished AFTER they went to great pains to show you it was lying there.
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Mar 11, 2024 20:02
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Mr. Nice! posted:I mean, they show him in the cutscene after lamenting his failure. Yeah, it's part everyone forgets because it's in a cutscene that comes after what you would have seen in MSQ Roulette, but Gaius totally gets up after you leave and starts lamenting to himself like you said. The an explosion goes off and and he 'dies'.
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Mar 11, 2024 20:58
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SirPhoebos posted:I told Sanguinia this on Discord, but if this was a stream the chat would have exploded with "SUCH DEVASTATION" the second the Shadowhunter was revealed to be Gaius.
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Mar 11, 2024 21:33
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One thing I like about the parley scene is it's Lyse who asks the "right question" after all- Hien helps get there but it's another nice moment where she's allowed to be shrewd.
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Mar 12, 2024 07:46
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I think for Varis the main thing that makes him a villain is he's given up. He cannot conceive of beating the Ascians, the fact that his entire life, his nation, his family, everything he's ever been through has been the design of some ancient person who gleefully informs him that yeah the slaughter and deaths that took place when I "unfortunately" died? That was on purpose, to cause chaos. You can step up with fire in your belly all prepared to make a difference only to effectively learn that no, no you cannot. Not only can you not make a difference, you never could. But what's he gonna do? Fight his immortal grandfather? his undead son who's meat puppeting in the other direction? He's looked at the circumstances and determined that he cannot win. There's absolutely nothing he can do to change things, all he can do is cling to it and hey, maybe at the end of it all, things will be better and right. I mean there was a moment that was almost that for the Eorzean Alliance in ARR, when the Ultima Weapon first appeared and they were willing to bend the knee to survive. In their case they had the scions to bail them from that horrid mindset... but Varis is and was alone.
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Mar 13, 2024 02:52
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Onmi posted:I think for Varis the main thing that makes him a villain is he's given up. He cannot conceive of beating the Ascians, the fact that his entire life, his nation, his family, everything he's ever been through has been the design of some ancient person who gleefully informs him that yeah the slaughter and deaths that took place when I "unfortunately" died? That was on purpose, to cause chaos. You can step up with fire in your belly all prepared to make a difference only to effectively learn that no, no you cannot. Not only can you not make a difference, you never could. But what's he gonna do? Fight his immortal grandfather? his undead son who's meat puppeting in the other direction? He's looked at the circumstances and determined that he cannot win. There's absolutely nothing he can do to change things, all he can do is cling to it and hey, maybe at the end of it all, things will be better and right. i mean, he did try one last hail mary. maybe, just maybe, through words and reason he could outmaneuver grandpa and all the horrible slaughter he had planned. except whoops, guess who provided you with your words and reason, junior
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Mar 13, 2024 03:11
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The thing is, the WoL could totally save Garlemald. Ascians are nothing new and it's not like their plans are hard to unravel. With the assistance of the Garleans they could dismantle the empire and put them on a peaceful path which would derail the ascians plans. The problem is that Varies still believes in the Garlean philosophy and would never bend the knee.
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Mar 13, 2024 03:17
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Kwyndig posted:The thing is, the WoL could totally save Garlemald. Ascians are nothing new and it's not like their plans are hard to unravel. With the assistance of the Garleans they could dismantle the empire and put them on a peaceful path which would derail the ascians plans. you perhaps understand why Varis, the guy whose entire motivation is "the horrors of the civil war must not be repeated," might be reluctant to kick off an immediate, bloody, fractal civil war, and that's before you factor in that Gramps would have been able to twist that to his ends -immediately.-
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Mar 13, 2024 03:27
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:you perhaps understand why Varis, the guy whose entire motivation is "the horrors of the civil war must not be repeated," I really don't see where you get this from.
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Mar 13, 2024 04:36
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Like I argued a ways back: between the civil war to ascend to the throne and then losing two of their most important provinces in quick succession (and sparking off more revolts), Varis presumably doesn’t have the political capital back home to do literally anything except go on the warpath now. “Join me, or we shall crush your nations” is legitimately the most diplomatic he can get without seriously risking a second civil war with the factions that would see him as a weak groveler. As it turns out, “Be Strong, or I Will” as a societal ethos really boxes in their options for getting anything done.
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Mar 13, 2024 04:44
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I feel like if there's a lesson to be learned from Thordan is that people who collaborate with Ascians know more than they're letting on. It's not clear how many people know how compromised Varis is, but Gaius doesn't seem inclined to think the man is an Ascian servant. And for that matter Regula didn't either.
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Mar 13, 2024 05:03
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Craptacular! posted:I feel like if there's a lesson to be learned from Thordan is that people who collaborate with Ascians know more than they're letting on. It's not clear how many people know how compromised Varis is, but Gaius doesn't seem inclined to think the man is an Ascian servant. And for that matter Regula didn't either. In all fairness, it seems Varis has only just (Zenos being puppeted and grandpa coming back) been made privy to the Ascian Influence on Garlemald. There's no reason for Regula (who died before Zenos) or Gaius (who has been mia since ARR) to think Varis would do such a thing. Gaius also appears to have ended up as a political issue near the end of Solus life. Solus is the one who supported the Meteor project (and now we know why), which Gaius stood against. But Gaius position is in part because of Solus supporting him most his life until that point.
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Mar 13, 2024 05:06
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Varis didn't seem to be phased at all by Solus showing up, or by his dead son's return as a meat puppet. He certainly wasn't privy to the full details of the Ascians' true plan all along but I think he must have grown up with some level of awareness of the nature of his family.
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Mar 13, 2024 05:21
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Well, if Zenos was being worn by Elibius, then yes Varis was phased by that reveal.
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Mar 13, 2024 05:44
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grandalt posted:Well, if Zenos was being worn by Elibius, then yes Varis was phased by that reveal. Yeah he was pretty pissed about that, he probably knew it could happen (I imagine they got the info from Ivy who knew about what happened with Thancred). But he did not seem happy/accepting of the situation and had to be talked into going with it by Elidibus.
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Mar 13, 2024 05:48
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It's hard to read Varis's reactions in that cutscene in this light. On one hand, Zenos was probably his best weapon against the ascians, and his loss caused Varis to try to appeal to the PC. However, he also calls Zenos a monster, right after Elidibus talks about Zenos as a "valuable test subject", so he possibly thought his son was lost anyway the moment that resonant poo poo started. It's also worth nothing that even if Gaius had returned alive to Garlemald, he had been collaborating with Lahabrea, and in 1.0 Cid mocks Gaius as Solus's lapdog, so Varis probably would have had him 'eliminated' even if he had to publicly pin it on the number of losses they've been taking since the loss of their dreadnaught in Mor Dhona. The irony is that both Varis and Gaius want the same thing, one is just a bit more aware of how difficult the task is going to be. On the other hand, at least Gaius seems to have a more stable playbook than "let's kill billions and find out." Twin dooms, indeed. Craptacular! fucked around with this message at 08:49 on Mar 13, 2024 |
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Mar 13, 2024 08:45
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My personal take is that Varis at least knew that Solus was an Ascian by the the old man died, because that would explain why he spit on the coffin and why he started doing weirdo experiments to clone grandpa's corpse. Also, the final chapter is nearly ready. It may be among the finest work I've ever done for this LP but I need to take one last editing pass at it with fresh eyes to see if I can trim it down or if I need a small Epilogue post to discuss the post-credit scenes and my final thoughts on the expansion as a whole. Please look forward to it.
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Mar 13, 2024 09:53
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Eeeeeeeeee very excited.
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Mar 13, 2024 10:13
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All of this discussion about Solus and Varis just made me imagine Solus backseating Varis in how to commit war crimes and how when he was Varis' age, he was violating Geneva convention on way more continents.
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Mar 13, 2024 11:59
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Blueberry Pancakes posted:All of this discussion about Solus and Varis just made me imagine Solus backseating Varis in how to commit war crimes and how when he was Varis' age, he was violating Geneva convention on way more continents. Isn't this basically their discussion about Black Rose in a nutshell?
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Mar 13, 2024 12:03
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I think splitting things up is fine, there is a lot of stuff in this final stretch, especially if you add in your general thoughts about the expansion.
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Mar 13, 2024 12:34
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lines posted:Eeeeeeeeee very excited.
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Mar 13, 2024 12:37
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Sanguinia posted:
Throw wide the gates. Let eon become instant.
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Mar 13, 2024 12:47
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Lord_Magmar posted:Isn't this basically their discussion about Black Rose in a nutshell? Huh. You know, you might be right.
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Mar 13, 2024 13:03
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Sanguinia posted:Also, the final chapter is nearly ready. It may be among the finest work I've ever done for this LP but I need to take one last editing pass at it with fresh eyes to see if I can trim it down or if I need a small Epilogue post to discuss the post-credit scenes and my final thoughts on the expansion as a whole. Please look forward to it. We need a combination of the  and  smileys.
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Mar 13, 2024 14:28
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Sanguinia posted:My personal take is that Varis at least knew that Solus was an Ascian by the the old man died, because that would explain why he spit on the coffin and why he started doing weirdo experiments to clone grandpa's corpse. GilliamYaeger fucked around with this message at 14:36 on Mar 13, 2024 |
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Mar 13, 2024 14:33
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GilliamYaeger posted:Varis knowing about the Ascians also means that the Resonance project takes on a whole new meaning, since he would have been very aware of how the Ascians used the Echo. If he, say, captured an Ascian like Elidibus or his grandfather and hooked them up to the Echo-copying machine...Well. He'd have an actually practical use for those Solus clones, wouldn't he? Capturing an Ascian and hooking them up to the SOUL EXTRACTION machine seems like the kind of plan that would sound very cool to Varis, but an outside observer could tell right away that it's doomed to failure. I guess it kinda worked that way for Thordan, under a different set of circumstances. But we all know how well that turned out for him in the end.
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Mar 13, 2024 15:16
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Infected posted:I think splitting things up is fine, there is a lot of stuff in this final stretch, especially if you add in your general thoughts about the expansion. Yeah, same, you've already been pushing the limits of a single post, and Ghimlyt through to post-credits on 4.5 is a whole loving lot. I wouldn't mind if it ends up being two posts you post simultaneously, as a lot of this LP has helped put a lot more of what I played into perspective or highlighted angles I glossed over.
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Mar 13, 2024 15:18
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Monathin posted:Yeah, same, you've already been pushing the limits of a single post, and Ghimlyt through to post-credits on 4.5 is a whole loving lot. I wouldn't mind if it ends up being two posts you post simultaneously, as a lot of this LP has helped put a lot more of what I played into perspective or highlighted angles I glossed over. This is pretty much the same thought I had. Splitting it into 2 back-to-back posts is a great idea. You basically get double the character count to say what you need/want, and no stress of hitting the limit and having to trim things.
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Mar 13, 2024 17:25
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I think there's another angle to Varis being kinda trapped. They weren't alone in that throne room. A bunch of guards were present for Elidibus and Solus' spiels. The garlean elite, at least in the palace seem to be somewhat in on the secret. It's an open question how much of the very top of the Garlean hierarchy would even follow Varis if he moved against ghost Solus. Like his personal guard and maybe some legates and other powerful people could be taking Ascian marching orders directly.
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Mar 13, 2024 17:45
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Lord_Magmar posted:Isn't this basically their discussion about Black Rose in a nutshell? And then Varis goes "What was that?" and Solus goes "Nothing, nothing, don't worry about it." Solus is definitely a thespian, he plays to the balconies even when he's saying the quiet part.
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Mar 13, 2024 17:46
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Sanguinia posted:Also, the final chapter is nearly ready. It may be among the finest work I've ever done for this LP but I need to take one last editing pass at it with fresh eyes to see if I can trim it down or if I need a small Epilogue post to discuss the post-credit scenes and my final thoughts on the expansion as a whole. Please look forward to it. 
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Mar 13, 2024 17:50
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i'm pleasing looking forwarding to it
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Mar 13, 2024 18:11
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Kerrzhe posted:i'm pleasing looking forwarding to it
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Mar 13, 2024 18:12
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Yeah count me as another waiting eagerly for the update. If it slams into two posts, that's more then fine!
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Mar 13, 2024 19:21
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Kerrzhe posted:i'm pleasing looking forwarding to it Me very much also, please and thankyou, yes yes. Also, two posts would be just fine, in case there's any doubt. Ghimlyt and the aftermath... It's a lot, as has already been noted.
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Mar 13, 2024 19:41
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Me getting ready for Sanguinia's next update: 
Mordiceius fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Mar 13, 2024 |
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Mar 13, 2024 19:45
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Sanguinia posted:It may be among the finest work I've ever done for this LP ... Finest work so far.
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Mar 13, 2024 19:49
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