Vic Raiden

This has nothing to do with AE content, but I support this otherwise. Maybe ask the moderators to move it either to the base suggestion thread or to a new thread altogether.

Contrary to what it may seem like, this is not dead. I'm just suffering from a writer's block and struggling to get the next chapter rolling despite theoretically having a clear idea of what I want to write.

All of this combined makes me long for a chance to see a realistically-scaled Paragon City...

I don't know, Paragon City's size AND layout actually do look reasonably big city-like to me, occasional questionable urban planning aside. Only real case of space compression I can name is probably Independence Port being only quarter the size it's supposed to be according to the city map.

The one psyker I have is a mutant because back when I was creating him, I assumed psychic powers were not normalized among humans and actually depended on the preseence of specific genes instead of just extensive training of natural potential.

Funnier still, oversized as IP is, it's still too small to properly fit in with the rest of Paragon City. Like, it's supposed to fit Terra Volta inside, but the isolated chunk that one's supposed to be in is only a quarter size of what it logically should be.

That's not a solution as much as it is sidestepping the problem.

To my recollection, Mercy doesn't even have a Vanguard outpost in it. The first one redside players can find is all the way ahead in Cap au Diable. As for other facilities: yeah, it's stupid how the usable/day-job-able arachnocopter landing pad is so far away from the starting area, all the way over on Fort Cerberus' balcony, while the tailor and Vault Reserve buildings are so far away from the central square and aren't even all that easy to recognize as what they're supposed to be. Atlas Park will probably forever remain an example of how to do a starting hub zone correctly.

Aye. I can't stop finding it weird how the arachnocopter on top of Fort Darwin can be used to quickly zip back to Mercy's gatehouse, while the exit 'copter can't be used to go back and is exclusively a mission door.

Sorry for raising the dead, but: I don't think creating an echo is really necessary given the appearance of Mercy Island as a whole has remained pretty much unchanged save for changing the placement of the respawn points and the starter contacts and that weird period where the dome atop the Arachnos HQ was replaced with a Lord Recluse statue. There's not even any Freedom Corps banners on the Longbow-held Fort Darwin. Now compare that to Atlas Park, which had seen much greater changes like entire buildings being swapped out for shinier and less blocky ones or the sheer fact there's now an Architect Entertainment building a Freedom Corps base in place of a cluster of low-rise tenements. And while I can somewhat excuse the presence of two Arachnos forts behind the Overbrook dam - let's face it, the zone was left isolated from the rest of the city long enough for building a fortress to be possible, plus the area behind the dam seems to kind of be on the outskirts of Paragon City - I have a much bigger problem with how Arachnos now somehow has a well-guarded foothold in western Atlas Park (i.e. the very center of the city) complete with a network of what totally isn't Rikti pylons. Which sure, goes away if you complete the post-i21 starter questline, but still raises many questions of HOW they were even able to set up such a big obvious outpost in such a risky area and still only be an entry-level threat? For Statesman's sake, the final boss of that questline is an Arbiter, normally an endgame-level boss unit, here nerfed into basically a recolored generic early-level Wolf Spider Huntsman! How is that even supposed to make Arachnos look like a serious threat!? Not helping matters is that the writing isn't entirely consistent on whether Arachnos should be treated as a terrorist organization, a crime syndicate or a whole legitimate foreign nation. The very existence of redside content frames it as the latter, which just raises the question of how they're able to get away with doing ANYTHING AT ALL on American soil without provoking a war. I just don't understand it at all, and I'd like to thank @Chris24601 for coming up with what I think is a pretty sensible idea of fixing it.

Re: Twinshot's questline I never really put much thought into the whole thing, but now that you brought it up, it does kind of make no sense. But what I'm more bothered by is two other things: - The presence of Praetorian Clockwork as main enemies in the second half. As far as I understand, the player character is supposed to have never seen anything like that before, and yet at no point are they ever explained in-character. Manticore just offhandedly calls them Praetorian machines and the player's only possible response sounds as if they immediately knew what's going on. - The whole finale, which just... Re: urban planning As a Pole, I'm considerably irked by certain stylistic choices across Paragon City, such as all roads being four-lanes or the only visible form of public transport (aside from buses which are at least supposed to exist) being maglev monorails instead of something more practical like trams or subways... or more importantly, the lack of any tangible transportation hubs that could lead to the wider world aside from the two harbors. For Statesman's sake, the official tourist map of Paragon has an airport marked near Boomtown's eastern wall, and yet there's not even ruins of one in the game proper! The other airport is listed as being between Skyway City and Talos Island, so out of player reach. No such thing as a railway station anywhere at all, though. Also, pleasant as Paragon looks from a distance, I just can't get myself to understand how skyscrapers could make such an overwhelming majority of buildings across the whole city.

Sharkhead Isle at sunset. Probably my best screenshot of the place, and setting all graphics settings to maximum sure does make a difference.

Cool and all, but that doesn't really help me determine the canonical "now". Also: where is the 5th Column's main base located? I find it weird how they don't have any visible overworld strongholds while the Council has several.

I think the small pod-elevators at both the main gate and dock entrance were at some point supposed to be bigger elevators, large enough to fit an average truck (which the ramps below are wide enough for, I think) or any reasonable amount of cargo. If that's not the case, then I'd want to ask the devs to make these doors bigger if that's even possible.

English is admittedly not my first language, and I can't quite notice the tense errors, but thanks. I'll fix it to the best of my ability. As for stilted dialogue: I envision Axel having a sort of Spock-like speech pattern, avoiding contractions and generally being ridiculously formal. He's a cyborg and he wants to stay distanced from his humanity.