Worst arcs that assume your character is an idiot?

[Snarky]

everything blueside

[El D]

On 8/10/2025 at 12:13 AM, Darmian said:

In game?  I'll need to ponder more beyond the ones already posted above, although Who Will Die?  has some terrible leaps of "logic" all across its several parts.  And the Valentine Red Widow event arc is not the best.  And it WAS worse!  HC after some careful scrutiny got it up to the level it currently is from where it had been before!  I don't think they could actually go further without simply scrapping it entirely and they're loath to do that to any legacy material.

 

The Red Widow arc might take the cake in this regard, not just from the sheer amount of assumptions it makes about the player character and deliberate, extreme levels of ignorance it forces upon them and the contacts, but from the context of when it was added to the game. Arbiter Hawk at least has a somewhat plausible set up for the arc via 'Fortunatas said it'd be good for Arachnos' but the pretense of Ms. Liberty resurrecting Recluse's former girlfriend he willingly left dead for decades because 'he'll care more about her than being a super villain' is mind-bendingly asinine. Even worse though is the fact that this arc was put in shortly after Statesman's death in Who Will Die? and was active when Sister Psyche died in the follow up SSA arc. Forget helping out the Phalanx, Libby's too busy recruiting randos in Pocket D for this nonsense rather than using literal resurrection magic for her own grandfather who just got murdered.

 

Which, really, feels like a solid intro to the fustercluck that is the writing in the Red Widow arc. The whole bit about the number of obols feels like an obnoxious 'look how clever I am!' from the author and the conceit of the player using their own blood and the recursive curse happening without any awareness from Libby, Hawk, or the player character is railroading stupidity to an incredible degree. The post-mission blurb about 'well I'm glad Red Widow didn't just kill you, maybe she was grateful?' is insulting and on that note there's Red Widow psychotically trying to murder Recluse - despite presumably knowing how powerful he is and knowing she'd never actually be able to do that much less get past his patrons - just so the arc can pull the 'if she dies you die, so now you have to care and keep going' thing. Then, any remaining moral compunctions be damned, the only option for the player character to resolve this is to literally warp the mind of the resurrected assassin so she's forced to be in love with Recluse. As if 'she might've loved him once, before Recluse left her for dead and moved on' somehow justifies that. No room for the player character's potential expertise or resources, no preparation from the contacts for 'if this doesn't work,' just 'here's this massive screw up that the plot required none of the characters involved thus far be able to avoid or have the slightest awareness of, now permanently brainwash this deadly assassin with a literal love potion because her presence might make the guy who inadvertently killed her and left her for dead less of a dick.'

 

It's a massive pile of horrifically bad decisions and awfully executed comic tropes wrapped in a 'because I said so!' bow. Before Homecoming rewrote bits of it the arc was even worse and I appreciate what HC did with what they had, but man, I'd actively excise this arc from the game's canon if I could.

[Darmian]

26 minutes ago, El D said:

 

The Red Widow arc might take the cake in this regard, not just from the sheer amount of assumptions it makes about the player character and deliberate, extreme levels of ignorance it forces upon them and the contacts, but from the context of when it was added to the game. Arbiter Hawk at least has a somewhat plausible set up for the arc via 'Fortunatas said it'd be good for Arachnos' but the pretense of Ms. Liberty resurrecting Recluse's former girlfriend he willingly left dead for decades because 'he'll care more about her than being a super villain' is mind-bendingly asinine. Even worse though is the fact that this arc was put in shortly after Statesman's death in Who Will Die? and was active when Sister Psyche died in the follow up SSA arc. Forget helping out the Phalanx, Libby's too busy recruiting randos in Pocket D for this nonsense rather than using literal resurrection magic for her own grandfather who just got murdered.

 

Which, really, feels like a solid intro to the fustercluck that is the writing in the Red Widow arc. The whole bit about the number of obols feels like an obnoxious 'look how clever I am!' from the author and the conceit of the player using their own blood and the recursive curse happening without any awareness from Libby, Hawk, or the player character is railroading stupidity to an incredible degree. The post-mission blurb about 'well I'm glad Red Widow didn't just kill you, maybe she was grateful?' is insulting and on that note there's Red Widow psychotically trying to murder Recluse - despite presumably knowing how powerful he is and knowing she'd never actually be able to do that much less get past his patrons - just so the arc can pull the 'if she dies you die, so now you have to care and keep going' thing. Then, any remaining moral compunctions be damned, the only option for the player character to resolve this is to literally warp the mind of the resurrected assassin so she's forced to be in love with Recluse. As if 'she might've loved him once, before Recluse left her for dead and moved on' somehow justifies that. No room for the player character's potential expertise or resources, no preparation from the contacts for 'if this doesn't work,' just 'here's this massive screw up that the plot required none of the characters involved thus far be able to avoid or have the slightest awareness of, now permanently brainwash this deadly assassin with a literal love potion because her presence might make the guy who inadvertently killed her and left her for dead less of a dick.'

 

It's a massive pile of horrifically bad decisions and awfully executed comic tropes wrapped in a 'because I said so!' bow. Before Homecoming rewrote bits of it the arc was even worse and I appreciate what HC did with what they had, but man, I'd actively excise this arc from the game's canon if I could.

Weirdly I'm not angry with the original writer. No one sets out to write a bad story but sometimes ambition far outweighs talent and/or experience.  I'm more annoyed with the testers/gatekeepers who let it through in that form.  It's a case of "you had one job" springs to mind.  Then again, did they even have staff for that at that point?  No matter, I'm sure plenty of actual players would have been happy to test it and throw that fish back.

 

Given the option of badges already being in the game and Red Widow appearing in scenes after this arc, I for one would prefer an entirely new arc to detail her resurrection and let the current one (patched as it is by HC) sit in the Ouro as an oddity.  There's plenty of better things hiding in the Ouro after all such as Sister Psyche's TF, the OG Calvin Scott TF, OG Positron TF, the OG LRSF, so it would be in esteemed company.

[El D]

52 minutes ago, Darmian said:

Weirdly I'm not angry with the original writer. No one sets out to write a bad story but sometimes ambition far outweighs talent and/or experience.  I'm more annoyed with the testers/gatekeepers who let it through in that form.  It's a case of "you had one job" springs to mind.  Then again, did they even have staff for that at that point?  No matter, I'm sure plenty of actual players would have been happy to test it and throw that fish back.

 

Given the option of badges already being in the game and Red Widow appearing in scenes after this arc, I for one would prefer an entirely new arc to detail her resurrection and let the current one (patched as it is by HC) sit in the Ouro as an oddity.  There's plenty of better things hiding in the Ouro after all such as Sister Psyche's TF, the OG Calvin Scott TF, OG Positron TF, the OG LRSF, so it would be in esteemed company.

 

That's a very good point and I'd be all for it. Even better if the redone version is shifted forward in the timeline. The idea of a Redux Red Widow arc being canon post-Praetorian War and years after the SSAs makes the general concept work a lot better. Despite maintaining control over the Isles Arachnos has stagnated and the world has moved on after Statesman's death, forming a context where Libby's attempt becomes deliberate rather than desperate. Now, she's had both time and motivation to investigate methods to resurrect others - perhaps having tried and failed for Statesman - and uses that for the best avenue she can think of via following his idea of redeeming Recluse, but doing so her own way. Revise the ritual used and nix the Cupid's bow angle, ideally in favor of Red Widow actually wanting to be with Recluse but perhaps having mellowed out in the afterlife, and there's a solid story there. Hell, have Red Widow be part of planning it herself, cooperating with Libby via 'speak with dead' magic or tech or whatever. Give Red Widow her own initiative in this, rather than just relegating her to being a literal plot device.

 

The real layup here is nixing Arbiter Hawk as the opposing contact and making Justin Sinclair the counterpart. He still follows a parallel story arc (having been spying on Libby's progress and doing his own) but his goal is to resurrect Sister Psyche. Everyone gets their redhead psychic girlfriend back and this way both arcs can actually be canon.