1 Response

1. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   Playing this arc on a 45ish spine/regen scrapper. Live comments follow!

   —

   It’d be nice for Det. Brogan to let on in the briefing that he knows where this Circle mage hides out. There’s an awful lot of Oranbega out there.

   “Kids” seems odd in the mouth of a Circle mage. Have him call them “brats” or possibly “youths”. “Someone absconded with the youths!” Yes, that’s about right.

   Aside from that, basically a newspaper mission in a fancy wrapper. Nothing in a stretch of Oranbega but me and my target. Hoping it steps up.

   And I’m introduced to someone I don’t know from some enemy group I don’t know…

   And Brogan knows him too. Great. I hate being out of the loop.

   —

   Whoa. I’m up against someone who took territory away from Arachnos right in the heart of their operations, with Mistresses crawling on the webs overhead coordinating several overlapping hiveminds of troops. Furthermore, I’d have to cut through an Arachnos cordon to get at them.

   What I’m saying here is: it’s not like space is at a premium on the nondescript chain of nondescript islands. There’s plenty of genuinely empty space that a villaingroup could legitimately set up in. Abandoned Arachnos or Longbow outposts, too.

   …and they have Arachnos GUARDS.

   Hmm. Some of the boss chatter is hinting at this being an Arachnos black ops thing — either that or they’re being heavily sarcastic.

   There’s a boss name in the navbar. Just a boss name. Not “defeat” or “arrest” or anything.

   Yes, named boss, I too would like to see the poison set in, and perhaps with the new patch we will get our wish. But then you would not have Mu Mastery.

   Ah, and that defeat is a trigger. A trigger that puts the new guy and his guards right on top of me. I’ll be thankful for small mercies, at least there’s no Rage.

   Hmm. I’m not sure I like where this is going.

   —

   Westin Phipps is basically built on a persona of being the only safe shelter for anybody in Grandville. Someone trying to take a swing at that won’t find it easy to topple, and it’s not like Phipps holds back from the villains he deals with on a regular basis.

   Actually sending a hero in their on a raid is going to need some crazy mad spin before anybody decides to trust him again, and for a man who lives on betrayal that seems disingenuous.

   Dude would probably just let loose with some sob story about how many people he had to beg on his knees to borrow the money from to ransom those poor dear children from their captors, and how was he to know that the people he placed them with had sinister intentions? He tries and he tries, but the world just conspires to make his life a misery!

   And of course he’d be glad to point any heroes to the dear little tykes’ eventual destinations, and not let on about the handful of calls he’s going to make after the hero hangs up.

   The guards are… a mix of Crey security (hirable), Knives of Artemis (hirable), Arachnos (understandable), and… Malta? Malta are a global paramilitary organization with their own agenda, not hired muscle.

   Huh. Four computers up front already? Must be a small map.

   …and the one that completes the mission is on the first floor.

   Phipps, the mercs/mental mastermind, is on the second. And up until I find him the mission is similarly a bunch of newspaper mission-style dead air.

   He says he has connections, yadda yadda, but what I also thought he had was enough smarts not to get into a stand-up fight with a hero in the first place.

   —

   Wow, the PPD are finding Rikti bases now? Someone should have told the Vanguard it was so easy. And they’re working with… some villain… for some reason. Hmm. Wonder what he promised them.

   I’m wondering how Brogan knew where the Rikti were, on entry. That smells of a setup, but I rather doubt that.

   If you give completion text to a plural objective it shows up after every one you conquer, so for example talking about how all the captives have been freed doesn’t work as that, since it shows up after every one.

   And the poor little tykes don’t feel well. Someone slipped a Shift into their colas, I’d bet.

   There’s also some mutagen. Which I destroy. But apparently keep the barrel around to recycle. It looks magical, which is rather unusual since the Rikti are generally caveman-level artifact crafters.

   Perhaps this is what that villain traded them for, in part?

   Nope, found a Rikti magus who confirms the serum is of Rikti creation to mutate magical beings, including these magically sensitive children.

   Uh.

   That seems like pretty much the most unnecessary risk to take, like, ever. If the Rikti Maguses want to test out serum, they have a neverending supply of the same people who turned into Rikti Maguses in the first place - magically active homeless people who got adopted into the Lost.

   And of course the little dears are going to make a full recovery, because that’s how mutagen works.

   The maps were largely appropriate — the Arachnos base map’s linear nature means you’re pretty much guaranteed to fight all the technically optional villains, and the odd positioning of the glowie in Haven House may just have been odd luck.

   But there were very few optional objectives or interesting mission features outside of the simple requirements, and the storyline has several holes.

   Posted on April 29th, 2009 at 3:05 pm