What year is it in paragon? (Lore)

[Sakura Tenshi]

In another thread someone’s brought up that an important thing to agree on or at least find out is “what year is it in-universe?” And I wanted to hear from folks what they felt the year was in city of by this point?

 

Some people I know did timeskips even further along than the shutdown. So for their characters, it’s 2030, for others - myself included - treat it as current year. But I think that if we want to continue the greater story, it might actually be best to pick up where we left off; in paragon and the rogue isles it’s still the year 2012, statesman’s death is recent as is the end of the praetorian war, and Gravity Falls started airing back in June.

 

Part of why I feel this way is that it means the “coming storm” has not been twiddling it’s thumbs all these years, it also means that we don’t have to gloss over progress or changes which should have happened, and ultimately let’s the devteam exert a bit of control on the March of time in game. (Also, so many characters would be aged up otherwise). But that’s my thought on the matter and I want to hear yours.

[Haijinx]

Judging by the cars? 1980s?  70s?

 

Cell phones 1990's. 

 

Comic book time is weird. 

 

But in most comic verses its at least linear ... 

[Haijinx]

You can probably ignore the age thing though.  Comic Book characters only age at the speed of the plot.  And often at different rates from those in the same continuity from other titles.

 

I think that's a natural offshoot of the narrative limits of only 23 pages of mostly art a month to tell a story. 

[nihilii]

7 hours ago, Haijinx said:

Judging by the cars? 1980s?  70s?

 

Cell phones 1990's. 

 

Comic book time is weird. 

 

But in most comic verses its at least linear ... 

I find it easier to justify dated technology in the Paragon universe. Technology arises from need, so the (visible) existence of supers since the 1900s justifies a world that looks somewhat like ours but may be less or more advanced in different areas. A world with supers is likely less free than ours by nature, which reduces the serendipity behind many innovations (especially of the late 20th century/early 21th century).

[Harry_Canyon]

1 hour ago, nihilii said:

I find it easier to justify dated technology in the Paragon universe. Technology arises from need, so the (visible) existence of supers since the 1900s justifies a world that looks somewhat like ours but may be less or more advanced in different areas. A world with supers is likely less free than ours by nature, which reduces the serendipity behind many innovations (especially of the late 20th century/early 21th century).

Using "Watchmen" the series logic:  Due to some unrecorded/unknown/unmentioned as of yet event, technology was deemed a danger to society.  Say, Nemesis had a plan that involved broadcasting a brain-melting signal through the new flat-screen technology.  This plan succeeded in a small area, and though the typical murky cover-ups began, technology was seen as the catalyst here;  Cell phones never became "Smart", computer screens stayed CRT-ish, the internet did not take off like it did here in our world, Cars did not gain computers or become hybrids, etc...  The result is a world that is at the same time as our own, but one would notice the technology gap right away.

Edited February 8, 2020 by Harry_Canyon

[Clave Dark 5]

Archer time.  The in-game lore is taking place in Archer time.

[DR_Mechano]

The funny thing is the cellphones aren't even consistent. For example there's one cellphone emote where you're using the old brick not-a-nokia style cellphone (the one where you're talking) and then there's another cellphone emote which clearly has you playing on a smart phone (though I'm not sure if that was added by the original devs or the HC devs).

 

Originally we had a natural timeline progression from 1-50 but Going Rogue and Who Will Die sort of threw massive monkey wrenches into that plan. For example the Shining stars arc (as much as people detest it) clearly takes place well after any of the earlier mission arcs in that level range since the big reveal at the end sets it as going on just before the Praetorian War (probably just before Tinpex get going) and maybe just before Mariah Jenkins arc which is suppose to act as the lead in to that.

 

Because of the fact that the devs bucked the trend (and I appreciate them for doing this) and didn't increase the level cap with Going Rogue, it meant that it shattered the fairly linear progression of the time line from 1-50 which follows your increase in power from a street thug fighting rookie hero to a cosmic threat dealing with Justice League level hero.

 

There's also the problem, at least amongst RPers, about what happened during the shutdown. For some nothing happened and life continued on as normal, for others it meant 'something' happened to their original dimension and they've spent the last few years basically pulling a Quantum Leap between various dimension (which is what my namesake did) and for others it's a completely new existence for them and their 'old' version doesn't exist.

[Frostbiter]

It's the year 199X, obviously. 

[Redlynne]

It's all a Dream™ ... or simply a Multi-User Shared Hallucination ...

[Sakura Tenshi]

I mean, on the note of the car, phone, and computer aesthetics, I kind of always just accepted it as a mix of two things:

1. This game might be played in 2020, but was originally developed back in 2001, prop assets might have been originally designed by a third party developer even earlier or just recycled from something older (remember: flatscreens kind of came into vogue in the latter half of the 2000's and early 2010s)

2. The newest technologies tend to have copyrights on their appearances. So trying to make a modern car (or a closer to early 2000's cellphone) without infringing on copyrights of modern car company just led to us getting automobiles that look like they're from the 70's or 80's.

Admittedly, they're meta-reasons and I REALLY wish they had gone through the new car designs they considered for Praetoria in the concept arts, but what can you do? More important stuff to develop. They did seem to get a little better about this as time went on, notice how the police cars seem significantly more modern and actually big enough to fit a person. (So, anyone want to volunteer modeling up new motor vehicles to submit to the devs? Bonus points if preexisting textures are used. I could really use a Camper RV for one of my characters.)

[Redlynne]

The cars are all nuclear powered.  That's why there's no gas stations in Paragon City ...

[Vanden]

3 hours ago, Frostbiter said:

It's the year 199X, obviously. 

199X was already 1X years ago when the game launched.

[merrypessimist]

According to Nemesis, it's the year 2013.

[Luminara]

There were numerous predictions that the world would end in 1999.  Paragon City has experienced several apocalyptic situations.

 

Prince indicated that the best parties would be in 1999 (and that we should revel as though that time had already arrived).  Party is a word interchangable with team.

 

Conclusion: it's 1999 in Paragon City.  Also, something something Freemasons something something Illuminati something something NWO something something Mender Silos something plot.

[Frostbiter]

2 hours ago, Vanden said:

199X was already 1X years ago when the game launched.

Thanks for attempting to explain away my Megaman joke. Do you do children's parties?

[DR_Mechano]

1 hour ago, Frostbiter said:

Thanks for attempting to explain away my Megaman joke. Do you do children's parties?

You see that was the problem you went with Megaman, when, you fool, you should have gone with Megaman X and it's 20XX time period! (or if you want to be REALLY far ahead Megaman Zero with it's 2XXX time...)

[MyriVerse]

My characters are in real time, regardless of what anyone else says.

[Redlynne]

19 minutes ago, MyriVerse said:

My characters are in real time, regardless of what anyone else says.

And mine are in imaginary time.

 

Well, at least there is symmetry ...  💫

[DR_Mechano]

The problem is it's less 'what year is it' and more 'what is the current point in time the games story is at?'

 

For example both the Lord Recluse SF and Miss Lib TF clearly take place before any of the Praetorian war is going on. However we don't know the timeline for when Who Will Die? SSA gets done since it's sort of timeline anachronistic as it doesn't feature or mention anything to do with the Praetorians either. So lets just say they're the baseline starting point. Then we've got the Shinning Stars arc which is clearly meant to be a lead in to the Praetorian War and maybe takes place before the current Maria Jenkins arc but then when does a Hero's hero take place? I mean it's still there in Ouroborus which means it did take place in the past which would make THAT the lead in to the Praetorian war since it represents the first 'attempt' by Tyrant to try and take out Statesman and...

 

The timeline is a COMPLETE mess when working these things out. We know the end point however. The last arcs to actually take place are Marchand and Mr G since they're the basic end points to the Praetorian war with the refugees being taken in by both sides. There's also the problem that you've got to work out what threads have been left hanging, which leads to:

1) Battle Maiden and Malta:

Basically this was the devs plot hook from the Dark Astoria arcs to give Malta an Incarnate boost and we'd need to see the outcome of this with a new and improved Malta.

 

2) The Council/5th Column war:

It's clear that both Requiem and the Center are planning to go at each other. I think the idea behind this was to let the two villain groups be more distinct from each other. Council would lose the wacky Nazi occult stuff like Warwolves and Vampyri (maybe the Mekmen would be replaced by Praetorian Clockwork?) but gain Nictus allies (since Arkhan has sided with the Center taking a lot of Nictus with her, as has Maestro) and new equipment in the form of stolen Praetorian technology. Meanwhile the 5th would keep the Warwolves and Vampyri (and probably the Mekmen). This would mean that a number of things would have to be changed. The Citadel TF would have to reset BACK to 5th Column (with the Council version in Ouro) as there were plans to rework all the TF Commander required ones I suspect this would have been done with a rework anyway (Posi was meant to be the first and the devs would have worked their way up, Synapse next and so on) and a few arcs would need to be tweaked.

 

3) The Fate of Dominatrix:

Dominatrix is basically left up in the air. We know she probably survived MoT (Ice Mistral was in there for longer and she clearly survived) but we don't know what happened to her after that. Has she begun striking out on her own? Did she die in Praetoria (apparently not, she's not among those caught up in the final trial), is she currently under arrest? Nobody knows!

 

4) The Broken Back Alley Brawler:

There's mention in one arc where good old BABs is put in the hospital after the skulls leaders send a guy to 'break him'. Nothing much comes of this and is just sort of left hanging. I suspect that with Galaxy City gone he was a hero without a home and this would have been the excuse to write him out of the story for a while (especially once his dev counterpart was 'let go' after finishing Power Customization).

 

5) The Battalion:

This isn't so much left hanging as there were hints at it all over the place but it never really got bought in to fruition because of the sunset, we know what the overall plan was but nothing in the game really leaves the huge plot holes hanging.

[THEDarkTyger]

18 hours ago, nihilii said:

I find it easier to justify dated technology in the Paragon universe. Technology arises from need, so the (visible) existence of supers since the 1900s justifies a world that looks somewhat like ours but may be less or more advanced in different areas. A world with supers is likely less free than ours by nature, which reduces the serendipity behind many innovations (especially of the late 20th century/early 21th century).

My take wouldn't be less freedom, but needs that drive technology being more or less present in certain areas where the various powers wielded by supers cover them in different ways. Kind of like how you can have a fantasy civilization that has been around longer than humanity IRL and still seem mostly in medieval tech levels. Magic covers the needs that drove the innovations we have today in the real world.

[tidge]

2 hours ago, DR_Mechano said:

3) The Fate of Dominatrix:

Dominatrix is basically left up in the air. We know she probably survived MoT (Ice Mistral was in there for longer and she clearly survived) but we don't know what happened to her after that. Has she begun striking out on her own? Did she die in Praetoria (apparently not, she's not among those caught up in the final trial), is she currently under arrest? Nobody knows!

"Praetor Duncan's fate will be decided once she goes through the proper channels. "

[Big Lunk]

I just brush off any inconsistency with times and dates in RP with the headcanon that the existence of Ouroboros has caused a LOT of localised time anomalies centered around paragon city.

All answers are correct, because running the same arc 26 times back to back is bound to make something a bit wonky.

Don't know who the current president is? Why do we have 3 mayors? But you haven't voted in 20 years? Timelines gone a bit wonk.

Lost your parents in the rikti invasion, Took part in the galaxy City invasion last month, saw the rise of mott and preatoria fall, but you're only 15? Timelines gone a bit wonk. 

Buying a new TV and the guy in the shop is trying to sell you either a flat screen plasma wall mounted HD 3D TV, or a top of the range 32" CRT with TWO scart plugs? Timelines gone a bit wonk... Or you're in a pawn shop. 

 

The citizenry of paragon just don't like talking about it, because it's confusing and messy.

Poor old Phil the Rivetter has been working in steel canyon for 10 years, clocks in to work every day, he swears blind that they get closer to completing the spaceport every day, but he also isn't going to question a steady job for life. 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

I generally consider it 2013. I tend to consider any character with access to Ourobros to no longer be living a linear existence. When I rerun content I enjoy I just chalk it up to another mending. However it can vary based on character concept, RP partners, and in general is best left unspoken. Each of my characters has their own starting point, some have their ending point. I consider my namesake character to meet his fate by using his immortality to sate Mot and free the world from his endless hunger. As a time traveler and immortal an end is as far off as you want it to be.

[Midnight Blue Mage]

I feel like the intent was to represent 201X (while releasing in 2004)

[EmperorSteele]

In my Headcanon, the "Coming storm" happened: It was the shutdown. We're "living" in a fragmented shard of reality that somehow has escaped the Battalion's notice, or an alternate reality they haven't found yet. However, the odd thing about this reality is that it's stuck in a stage of stagnation. Time doesn't really flow, which is perhaps the result of "Last Thursdayism" or something similar.

Or something, idk.