Zhym

Now that is the kind of deep dive into the lore I've come to expect from @Darmian's AE arcs! Also: is it just me, or does Gwendolyn look a little like Paris Hilton?

The handling of personal narrative time versus game-world narrative time has always been pretty darn wibbly wobbly. It made a little more sense when the game was in active development, characters leveled more slowly, and changes to the lore came more frequently. Later issues did some cool things where personal actions appeared to change the game world—like Matthew Habashy's wife phasing in after Aaron Thiery's arc, or Fort Darwin before and after Lt. Harris's arc. But mostly, events appear to progress personally, not globally: the whole Praetorian storyline, from Tina Macintyre through the Magesterium Trial, appears to have no outside effect on the rest of the world at all. Same with the Dark Astoria arc. Every now and then, you'd get exceptions, like the partial Faultline rebuild, but those are exceptions. So it's weird that the original devs decided to have certain bits of lore—like, "oh no, Statesman's dead now"—happen in game-world time, not personal time. And it makes no damned sense. If you start a new character right now, that character starts in a world in which there used to be a hero named Statesman, but he's gone now. There's a statue in Kallisti Wharf. Statesman is only slightly more current than Atlas or Talos or any of the other heroes who came before. But at some point in the new character's career, they can run missions in which Statesman is somehow still around? And then gets killed? Makes no damned sense at all. Logically, WWD should only be available as a flashback mission. That mission could be structured so that there's no way to save Statesman (which would be lame),* but what would be cool is if there were a new Flashback arc that actually allowed players to change things. * Another of my many complaints with WWD is that your character is basically a bystander to the story. Very little you do in the arc actually matters.

I can't find it right now, but somewhere (maybe in a Lore AMA?) Positron claimed that there were no hard feelings and they totally didn't kill off Sister Psyche and Statesman just because they were Jack Emmert's characters. I think that's just making nice and refusing to air dirty laundry in public; the facts kind of speak for themselves IMO.

That’s kind of WWD in a nutshell, right there (I’m not a fan). Coming up with something that would make that arc make any sense at all is kind of genius. Now if you come up with an explanation for why Manticore couldn’t think of any non-lethal way of disabling Sister Psyche without killing her, you’ll be doing really well.

Okay. That’s friggin’ genius, that is.

This really is an excellent arc, deep in lore. It’s always great to see Apex in action, and it may be the only time I’ve encountered Darrin Wade (as villain or hero) that he didn’t just annoy me. I could use an explainer of what was going on with Wade, though. 🙂

Almost signature? ;)

Work?? Get your priorities straight! We need our TerroirNoir TV fix! The heck with work! ;)

Indeed! Woo hoo!

Works for me. I haven't been able to check in recently and thought for sure that I'd fallen behind on updating this. 🙂 Enjoy the holidays, everyone!

If Captain Nolan's arc doesn't work, there always Heather Townshend's "Burden of the Past" arc. If you've ever farmed it for incarnate components, you'll already have it down pat. It's all in DA, and while it's a little quicker to get around between missions if you have some form of vertical movement, it's far from crucial.

I just finished this, and bravo, @cranebump—very well done. It's a great story (although I don't think I understood half of it—my problem, not yours). And that last clue for the final mission? Prefect. It's a shame it's not possible in AE to make that a cut scene. Overall, I thought the level of polish was pretty good. I did notice several errors in the bios in the first mission, and a stray typo here and there. A few notes on the missions: Mission 1 Mission 2 Mission 3 Mission 4 Mission 5 Finally, there are a couple of typos in the souvenir text: Overall, a fine ending to the series. I'm looking forward to seeing @TerroirNoir2 taking Engineria through it.

Checking the Unofficial HC WIki, it looks like you're right.

This my new favorite character.

BTW, I noticed that last year's badge ("License to Chill") is awarding for logging in this year, so that's something at least.

If you can't defeat the spawns, that's one thing. But just leaving them to be someone else's problem is decidedly outside the spirit of the season. Unless you're a villain, in which case selfishness is totally in character.

I get that the HC team is on vacation, and [insert standard comment here about being grateful that the game is even around to play]. But the Winter Event login badge is an annual tradition going back to 2005. If there really isn’t going to be one his year, it feels a little bit like neglect.

So true...

The Winter Event seems to be live, but I don't see any new badge yet.

Good boys and girls clean up after opening presents. It's very naughty to run away without defeating the snow beasts! (The presents respawn more quickly if you defeat the snow beasts. So be a good citizen and clean up after yourself!)

Why isn't this stickied? Do the mods hate story-mode AE? It's the only reason I can see for this not to be stickied. :)

The only thing on HC that I think is truly dead is PvP. Redside isn't as busy as blue, but I've seen plenty of strike forces running on Excelsior. Gold is its own thing: it's more story and solo-focused and caps out at level 20 unless you're really dedicated to not crossing over. It doesn't need or really benefit from having lots of people. Same for AE story missions—most of those are better experienced solo, where you have time to read the clues, look at NPC Info boxes, and really dig into what the author laid down. Neither of these are "dead" as long as you feel like playing them.

I'm playing this mission now, and @TerroirNoir2 left out some some great NPC dialogue. Two sales involving Reformed Salesfreaks are hilarious.

The arc gets five stars from me if just for this.

I thought you hit Chimera right on the mark, personally.