Techwright

That belt is magnificent!

Just saw episode 3 and...well...it finished. Two stories told sequentially, rather than flipping back and forth. Story 1: Story 2:

As to your first sentence in the spoiler: yes, absolutely. I'm right there with you. That said: Regarding the rest of your spoiler discussion...

I'll answer in the spoiler box:

Beat me to it. Just learned of it by happenstance, and, wow, what a trailer! This one is going to answer a lot of questions, some that have been burning for a while, most notably that of "green girl" in that trailer screenshot in the OP:

As a former art minor, the truth of this made me laugh.

The Mothership Raids. 30 minutes of "pew pew pew" while standing in a bowl. I've actually fallen asleep at my keyboard multiple times during it, and have long hoped for an overhaul that would introduce seemingly random elements that would shake things up a bit. I fare a little better when playing a tanking character, as that involves some risk going out on the edge to gather in new fodder for the bowl brigade.

Double episode drop this week. I understand why. Episode 10 was the first to never include a member of the Bad Batch, other than some name dropping and a photo reference. It was necessary, however, to both set the stage for what is to come and to provide some big answers to the full series. In addition, it offered one now-canonical insight into two of the major characters in all of Star Wars: Episode 11: Point of No Return may have been the finest episode of the full series. It rivaled season 7 of The Clone Wars. I especially liked...

I don't know how y'all have gotten Krea to deliver good results. I just tried two of my heroes and the results were utter rubbish, far worse than anything I have attempted before. There was a halfway decent simulated oil painting of one, but with so much variance in the design, it too was unusable.

When was the name release policy enacted for mid-range characters? 20+ and 30+ I know the Name Release Policy always had a plan to add these in, but last I'd known, they were content with the 30-day release for lower levels only. I ask because logging in this evening, I noticed two mid-level ranked characters I'd not utilized in the better part of a year that were both flagged for potential name release. No big deal to correct (though I can no longer break records for longest time since login). I mean, I've been logging into low level characters whose names I've reserved for future plans, so what's a couple more? But I am curious. Is this now active for all levels up through 49?

Master of Lord Recluse Strike Force. It's a badge and bragging rights for doing it the hard way: uphill both ways, in a snow storm, with players quitting and noobs clueless.

While doing a bit of historical research on the original game, I looked into the Wikipedia page on it and found this: As of January 2024, NCSoft has not moved to have servers based on this source code shut down. On January 4, 2024, NCSoft allegedly granted Homecoming Servers, LLC who operated the rogue server Homecoming: City of Heroes an official license to host the game. "Allegedly"?? Can we get someone to remove that word, and give proper documentation of the authenticity of it? ALSO... The page runs up through Issue 24, or rather, what it would have been. Now that Homecoming is official, might we get someone with some wiki talent to get a Homecoming page on Wikipedia, continue the Issues/Pages descriptions, and get a linked reference to it in the original game's page? Maybe a link to the Homecoming Wiki as well. There may come a day when we'll need to reference the history of this iteration, and you never know but that more fans of the original game will discover this one when referencing the original's page. Just a thought.

I suspect this was the case, a stylized Praetorian robot. I remember thinking so at the time the graphic was made public. I had to look up the details as a refresher. City of Heroes: Freedom kicked off with Issue 21: Convergence, which introduced the First Ward, so Gold Side was already long up and running, and there was a Praetorian element in play with the first expansion in CoH: Freedom. Makes sense it would be a Praetobot. (Yes, I just coined that.) (Refresher info comes from the City of Heroes page on Wikipedia.)

Sony Pictures Animation just released a free 7-minute long story tied to the two well-received Miles Morales animated movies. It is very different in tone from those two. I've not seen an official explanation of where this falls in their timeline, but it's likely between the two movies. A word of caution: if you're arachnophobic, you may have some trouble with this. From Sony's official comment accompanying the short: In the genre-bending thriller The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story, Miles Morales struggles to balance his responsibilities as a teenager, friend, and student while acting as Brooklyn’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. After a particularly challenging day living with these pressures, Miles experiences a panic attack that forces him to confront the manifestations of his anxiety and learn that reaching out for help can be just as brave an act as protecting his city from evil. They write a lot more explaining why they made this, so you may want to head over to the actual YouTube page to read the rest.

You didn't add that Lee actually was the villain in one of the Bond films, specifically The Man with the Golden Gun. The character was portrayed as an assassin so good that he was essentially the evil version of Bond. I'd love to hear the backstory on that. Did he get the role because he was Fleming's friend? And I love the story about Christopher Lee, that in preparing to film Saruman's death scene in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, he corrected Peter Jackson, who wanted Saruman to cry out when stabbed. Lee told him that a man stabbed through the lungs does not cry out, but instead gives out a slight gasping breath. He did not explain, except to note that he knew. Jackson changed the scene to follow Lee's advice.

Would the NPC not, uh, depopulate (?, forgot the gaming term for it) after a period of time since it's not the main AV?

If IMDB.com has the right of it, this series has but 10 episodes to season 1. The lowest any season of the previous show had was 13, and some had 17 and 19. They've definitely not left themselves much room to tell a major story.

Episode 3 dropped and, wow, this definitely wasn't for the 1997 cereal-eating Fox Kids crowd. This would have been nightmare fuel for kids back then, and there definitely were things that would not have passed the censors of the time. While I liked the episode overall, I couldn't shake the feeling they were rushing it, especially when...

The Freaks tipped him off, man, and he's no fool. He's laying low hoping vampires tire eventually.

I can almost guarantee that 95% (probably higher) of the players setting up TFs/SFs do not take the AV's bump up into account, nor even any other character for that matter. Most probably have a mental sticking point that sees all opponents as homogenously at whatever setting they choose. And that's the problem. It may be too much to ask but it would be nice if the game had a pop-up that revealed what the top tier characters for any TF/SF will be based on the setting chosen, before the TF/SF starts. So in the case of KHTF, if the lead sets to a +2 and hits the start button, the game will first display "AVs in this +2 instance will fight at +5. Do you wish to proceed? Yes/No, change setting". How soon can we have the components in stock at iCON?

I still hold out hope, futile though it may be, that they'll let the boil cool then recast the character of Kang, perhaps tightening their story in the process. They did it successfully with Hulk, and with Rhodey, it can be done again. Hugh has been phenomenal, but reality being what it is, it is time to pass the torch. Wolvie (Logan movie aside) is a slow ager, and Hugh is not. I've heard people pitch Daniel Radcliffe for the role, though I believe it is just fan wishes. Radcliffe is 5 ft 5 in. (1.651 meters) which is definitely moving in the right direction from Hugh's 6 ft 2 in. (1.88 meters), but just a bit taller than Wolverine's bantam 5 ft 3 inches (1.6 meters). Frankly, I wish all casting everywhere were done on the basis of who best inhabits the role, not on the basis of Who's Who. Some of the greatest actors rose to fame from being little known or completely unknown before being cast in a major role because they were the perfect choice. While I'll always enjoy seeing a favorite actor take on a new role, I really enjoy going into a movie knowing an unknown cast was used. It'd be like holding a pack of rookie sports cards: Who among these will demonstrate their worth and become the breakout star?

This is for MCU? Not an unrelated function like The New Mutants or X-Men '97? Assuming MCU...wow...they're this far along, past bringing X-men back to the fold and they don't have a plan? As to what I'd do, one of the defining factors of an epic is that the story starts in the middle. While we've not actually seen a live action X-men that started with purely the original team, and I'd love to see that, we don't really need to. It can be reference in wall photos and flashback bits. So, start in the middle, preferrably with an incoming character. Someone without insider knowledge to act as a surrogate for the audience's discoveries. I strongly suggest this be a character not yet seen in live action. The X-men mythos is huge as is their roster. It's time other characters got a chance to show. Jubilee would be a natural, stepping in for the "new kid" role that Rogue occupied in X1. Gambit would be an important one to consider. He's been seen before, in a shoddy interpretation in the forgettable Wolverine film, so we've never seen him proper, and at one time he was the second most popular X-men character besides Wolverine. Not sure if its still true, but he's likely the biggest name not to have a proper live screen appearance as an X-man (this is assuming he wasn't in Age of Apocalypse or the Dark Phoenix movies, the two of which I avoided after seeing the reviews). I also have a soft spot for Dazzler, probably due to the old coin-op game, and would love to see her given a proper due. However, I think Bishop is probably the one to kick off an epic in the middle. Start with a future firefight and Bishop diving through time to change things. This grabs the audience's attention and sets stakes high early on: can we change that terrible future? Discovering the steps to succeeding at that (not just a single act) will be a driving force behind the X-men story as battle-hardened Bishop tries to adapt to "quiet" in the decades before his firefight, while prodding the past to action. Complicating matters is that with each small change, he's less sure of the results and the next steps, so long as he's stuck in the past. Xavier recognizes Bishop's truth (how could a mind reader not) and decides the original members are not enough to fight the future. He begins recruiting the second team based on the fragments of information regarding others that Bishop's memories can offer. (This gets us past the obstacle of a living island being what forces a new team to emerge.) The memories of future selves being compelling, this will allow a team to coalesce from people he'd normally not recruit, such as Rogue and Gambit, due to their criminal pasts, and Wolverine, due to his violent nature and Weapon X past. Harder will be trying to convince old foes, namely Magneto but others too, to strive for a common cause without turning on humans due to future info, and thus creating the self-fulfilling nightmare scenario they're trying to avoid. Some may see reason, many will not, and their own agendas will act as a counter to the efforts to change the future. This played out through several movies (and likely Disney+ series) will be driving towards the X-men's version of Infinity War/Endgame, with each small change over time acting the equivalent of Dr. Strange surrendering the Time Stone in an effort to set the Avengers on the single path to victory. Yes, there'll be a war, but it might just be winnable. EDIT: Whatever X-men's Endgame ends like would set stage for the next saga. Possibilities: Infinity War introduced outer space to the Avengers (not Guardians of the Galaxy of course), so X-men's culmination movie might introduce the Dark Phoenix as a possible Deus Ex Machina, but that will be a siren call to the Shi'ar Empire. X-men's Endgame kills Xavier and awakens/draws the attention of Apocalypse, starting a new saga as an adaptation of the Age of Apocalypse (the comics arc, not the movie). Bishop's efforts did change the future, but replacing one of a robot ragnarok with a genetic war. Without Xavier, it will be Magneto who leads the fight, resulting in a darker, more violent effort to change the timeline once more. X-men's Endgame catches the attention of one Mr. Essex who will see the Summers family as the key to unlocking the next stage of mutant evolution resulting in an arc where Mr. Sinister is the threat and the Summers family faces potential disaster. I'd also add, if they bring Disney+ into this, it would be quite possible to bring other X groups to the public, such as X-Factor or X-calibur. Like Guardians joining Avengers, these groups would join the main X-men in the big showdown.

The name and general concepts predate the game substantially.

Ice is one of my favorite powers in game, so I'm all for an ice faction. I suggest one of the top leaders be named Cocytus, after Dante's 9th and lowest level of Inferno, the ice level of treachery.