Who's the Villain?

[BoyHowdy000]

Also, remember that natural strength is meaningless for determining power in a Sci-Fi setting like TiTS. All the writers need to do to make any character powerful is give them more powerful gear and/or mods that they could have acquired through basically an infinite number of means. This is why characters with vast amounts of social power like heads of major corporations or outer entities that go beyond human understandings of "power" are usually the real threats in these kinds of stories.

 

[Kokayi005]

If your cousin is weak and no real threat, how can it be that the rest of the REAL threats don't matter. If we control Steele, shouldn't we decide how we tackle the problems of the game. This reminds me of the end of Star Ocean Till the End of Time. When the cast find their creator who's telling them their program who've just become self-aware. But that didn't change the fact that they still had to do what he said and get back into the game so he could continue to make money. "Data should behave as such". Okay, the cousin is A VILLAIN. But the real problem is Xenogen and the UGC, in my opinion. I've arrived at that conclusion based on the text, the lore, what yall yourselves have written.

If it's all just window dressing for the world building, that's sad. Because it's WAY more interesting that a gender swapped Gary PokeMon ref as a villain. I don't understand how finding the last probe, beating her, and then being rich is OK when it's in a world full of known evils. This game is basically an erotic pick-a-path book. But I'm not allowed to pick the path to solve the problem. The big problem and only one I want to solve. I don't want the probes, I just don't want the cousin to steal them to get rich on what's not her's. I don't want to be a playboy/girl running around fucking everything. I want to save the universe from it's self.

 

[NotYouNorI]

@Kokayi005 Why does it always have to be a goddamn Save-the-World scenario? Why can't it just be a personal adventure for sex and your inheritance that is your dad's company set in a hedonistic space corporate future with dystopian undertones and some shadiness here and there, with no evil villain, just personal antagonists?

Rarely do commercially sold TFs alter your mind or give you taint.

There is nothing to suggest that TF nanomachines started out purely as a necessity or that they are there to brainwash the sheeple.

And stop projecting your Marxist ideas into the lore of the game involving New Texas and megacorps. :V

 

[Evil]

@Kokayi005 Okay, not to be harsh, but what you know about TiTS would fill the back of a stamp, what you don't know would fill a library.

When one of the main creators, as in one of the people who has built the game and has helped shaped it, tells you that there is no villain, then there is no fucking villain. (But there might be villain fucking, but thats a different discussion). To dismiss that kind of knowledge is just plain disrespectful, arrogant and likely to lead to a short time on the forum.

 

[Savin]

If your cousin is weak and no real threat, how can it be that the rest of the REAL threats don't matter.

Because the plot of the game is getting your inheritance. Your cousin is trying to stop you. The corporate board of Xenogen or w/e are just minding their business in the background. Some sidequests and adventures may make other characters temporary antagonists, but they aren't ever a major part of the story beyond their little side plotline (see: Black Void, Zheng Shi, etc.).

This game isn't about solving the galaxy's issues. It's about beating your dumb cousin to the probes and having lots of sex and adventure on the way.

 

[Kokayi005]

@Savin
I don't I have it in me to just play the game and focus on getting money and having sex and adventure while character tell me to my face that there are traffickers and slave trade and inhumane shit going on. That's just not who I am. If I had known nothing I do will change anything I wouldn't have even started the game.

@Evil
I'm not dismissing it. I'm saying that we can both be right. I'll concede that the cousin is the villain. But they're not the only ones. And to plop me in a game world with so many problems and you can't solve any of them. I just didn't know it was that kind of game. I came to this thinking of Mass Effect with more sex and no graphics. Not thinking "I'll just fap and ignore the NPCs suffering."

 

[Savin]

@Savin
I don't I have it in me to just play the game and focus on getting money and having sex and adventure while character tell me to my face that there are traffickers and slave trade and inhumane shit going on. That's just not who I am. If I had known nothing I do will change anything I wouldn't have even started the game.

You're one little yacht captain in a whole wide galaxy. Sometimes you can make some NPCs lives better on sidequests, but the galaxy's gonna still be a dystopic nightmare when you're done. You're not going to be knocking over every mega-corporation and restructuring the UGC and whatever else. Make some friends, help them out, run your company better than the others when you're done.

 

[BoyHowdy000]

@null_blank
Even adults like happy endings. I don't require it, but after putting in a lot of hard work and growing attached to characters, I'd be sad if nothing got better.
I'm glad that you can do your own thing and enjoy freedom, but unless that freedom teaches by example, that's not helping. It's like how I was playing Bloodborne and was sad at the end when all it felt like you did was survive a nightmare and wake up. I just hope, if you can only help a few it at least uplifts the people and inspires them to do more than consume and fuck for the corporations benefit.

This is completely unrelated, but Bloodborne has 3 endings.

Spoiler

One where you submit to Gherman and he mercifully liberates you from the nightmare, allowing you to return to your previous life, healed of whatever ailment caused you to come to Yharnam for healing blood in the first place and blissfully ignorant of all the horrific events that transpired while you "slept," all while the hunt inevitably continues without you.

Another where you resist and defeat Gherman in battle, taking his position as the keeper of the Hunter's Dream. In which you resign yourself to an immortal life under the control of the Moon Presence; forced to instruct new hunters in Gherman's place until someone potentially does to you what you did to Gherman.

And the final one, in which you locate and consume all three hidden umbilical cords from infant Great Ones before the Moon Presence arrives after you defeat Gherman and you gain enough power to resist its attempt to control you and defeat it in the final boss battle of the game. After which, you are reborn as an infant Great One yourself and what happens next is a complete mystery. You MIGHT grow up to have enough power to fight the rest of the Great Ones and truly save humanity once and for all, but it's just as likely that you might completely loose sight of who you were before and just become another unimaginably powerful Great One that has no reason to spare a thought for humanity unless it wants to and just goes on to do its own thing. We can't know for sure with the information available to us at the moment.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm kinda obsessed with the Souls series lol

 

[Kokayi005]

@Savin
Fair enough. I guess I'm going to write down the names of all the characters who need help. Help them on each world. And kill my cousin first chance I get and call it a day. That's the best I can do. I respect your writing and the writing of the rest of the staff. Even with the tentacles putting ideas in your head when you bring them on your ship. As wrong as it is, at least it's well written. At least you can tell that the italic text is the brainwashing without hitting it over the readers head and being obvious. I just want to say, I have disagreements with choices made with the writing, but I still respect it--one writer to another.

@BoyHowdy000
None of those seem like good endings. One is hopeful. One is blissful ignorance. And one is status quo. SMH Why do people like ending things on such a downer? I could see if it was a cautionary tale to teach us something. But it just seems like a cosmic horror story about Victorian era people finding aliens and going mad because they aren't ready for that level of intelligence yet.

I never got more than 2 of the cords, so I beat the guy at the end and the game ends with the monster coming down and that's it.

Bloodborne was rough. I played that game, I needed help a few times, but I got thru it. But my god I hated constantly seeing people die that I was trying to help. My roommate at the time told me I was doing it wrong. There's no heroes. There's no saving anyone. Focus on yourself and survive and nothing else. After that, I was sad but I beat the game. I did it. Even though people, even in Gamestop, doubted I could. And that's what I'll do with TITS. I'll get thru it. But it's still tough to just ignore the stuff I'm reading about this assholes.

 

[null_blank]

The big bad of TiTS is Meadow Steele, Whore of Babylon with a vagina like the thing at the centre of Messier 87. The final showdown pits you against the legions of her children, a battle terrible in its futility since they are almost literally respawning. Your only hope is to try and launch contraceptive into her mouth like the trench run in Star Wars.

 

[Savin]

@Savin
But it just seems like a cosmic horror story about Victorian era people finding aliens and going mad because they aren't ready for that level of intelligence yet.

That is the entire point of Bloodborne, yeah. Read you some H. P. Lovecraft.

 

[Kokayi005]

Yeah I know, that's what my old roommate told me. Not my tastes. I know Cthulu is a metaphor for xenophobia and hatred and gaining knowledge but lacking control. But I'm more into solving problems, fixing stuff, not just say "it's all fucked up". Remember that scene with Pitt and Freeman in Se7en? I'm more hopeful. I want to get people to rise up and uplift them ("ye shall be as gods" but in a powerful compassionate way). I'm the guy watches a zombie movie hoping someone makes a cure.

 

[Evil]

That isn't at all what Cthulhu represents or any of Lovecraft's work for that matter, that's a discussion for another time.

Seriously though just stop, because you're so far behind people are about to lap you.

TiTS isn't a game that sets out to solve the woes of the galaxy. Its about an heir out to earn their inheritance and to outrace their cousin. You might fix the problems of a handful of people, but that's pretty much questing to get to sex. No matter what you do, no matter how much money you earn, at the end of the day, Steele will get their fortune and join the corporate elite, probably with a large harem joining them. That's the story. This isn't the story of a farm boy slaying the dragon, it isn't the story of a young maiden escaping the witch, its the story of a horny 19 year old fucking their way through a Planet Rush.

 

[Kokayi005]

Do you think that's a better story? Fucking their way thru the Planet Rush and not changing anything?

 

[Evil]

Yes, because their goal isn't to change the galaxy, its to claim their inheritance. Steele has their quest, that is their story.

 

[_Swish]

That is the entire point of Bloodborne, yeah. Read you some H. P. Lovecraft.

Savin is exactly right. Expanding on that, a cyberpunk setting and cosmic horror are really more similar than you think. The only difference with cyberpunk is that the incomprehensible monster you can't hope to fight or even wound isn't an alien horror, but human nature itself.

On that topic, I've actually been writing a character that's based on explicitly acknowledging the absolutely horrible and exploitative nature of the setting, with a desire to start tearing apart the system that feeds into it. Now, seeing as he's both not the main character and in a genre that specifically revolves around the idea that your attempts to make large scale changes are futile, he's not going to get that far, but it's worth exploring.

 

[Kokayi005]

@Evil
Yeah. I'm just gonna go ahead and finish the game. I misunderstood what I was getting into when I started it.
If that's all this is then maybe COC2 will be better for me since you're chasing down a more powerful more intelligent villain.
I hope that game's ending has more of that kind of payoff I'm looking for.

 

[Alabaster Chimes]

Too Bad the Game isnt even Half-Way done!!!

 

[BoyHowdy000]

Do you think that's a better story? Fucking their way thru the Planet Rush and not changing anything?

Not "better," different. TiTS is telling its own story in its own way. You can't take two completely different genres and try to directly compare them like that. You can critically examine the execution all day long, certainly, and I don't think anyone here will try to tell you that TiTS is high art, but to try to quantifiably define whether a fairy tale ending is better than "realistic fiction" (please correct me if there's a better name for this. I feel like there definitely is but I can't remember it) is just absurd.

Personally, I greatly prefer TiTS' more "realistic" way of doing things because I think it would be infuriatingly cliche if the game turned into an edgy young adult novel and forced my custom character into the role of the young protagonist that has to overthrow the corrupt government because they can see though all the lies and bullshit that have everyone else fooled, but just because I prefer a different form of storytelling doesn't make it objectively "better." A lot of people loved the Hunger Games and its clones, and I don't think there's any problem with that whatsoever.

Edit: massive fucking air quotes around "realistic" considering this is...you know...TiTS

 

[Xynissen]

I mean, I’d argue that depending on choices you’re making changes that may not matter long term or galaxy-wide, sure. But if someone were to go ask Victoria Morrow how she feels about you and Anno, what then? Or maybe one of Shekka’s eggs, or a zil from Quinn’s village if you opt to help them get a tentative peace with Esbeth?

You don’t have to save the universe to be a lifesaver, and we’ve had the option to literally do that.

 

[Savin]

If that's all this is then maybe COC2 will be better for me

It absolutely won't be.

 

[_Swish]

Yeah, regardless of what you manage to do in CoC2, society still got pushed back to the fucking bronze age long before the demonic antagonist showed up. Unless there's an option to seduce the god of knowledge so well that she reveals the scientific method to every man, woman, and child on the planet to enable rapid open-ended progress, you ain't getting that back.

 

[Kokayi005]

@Xynissen
I see what you're saying. Localized helpfulness. Not universal helpfulness. That's more what you can do instead of being the people's hero. I get it. I just thought when you're given the option of "nice Steele" that you would go down a different path and be able to make meaningful change and the betterment of the people. I thought only the bad or sneaky Steele options were the only looking out for themselves. But I guess it's just control dialogue options not the paths you can take. I've said before I have my own thing going that I write. So it's fine. I accept it. I'll just move thru the game as far as I can go, look over what I've done and then delete my file.

@Savin
Wow. Okay. Well I'm only level 3 in that. Probably should just quit that one instead of finishing it then.

@BoyHowdy000
I don't like Hunger Games but I do like that the story doesn't just let shit stay shitty with people not helping one another. I respect that.

@_Swish
All the best with what you're writing. It's tough but I hope you pull it off.

 

[BoyHowdy000]

I'm kicking myself because I completely missed out on the opportunity to call TiTS the "Dark Souls of smut games"

 

[ScarletteKnight]

You seem to be drastically misunderstanding many, many stories. You definitely play Bloodborne wrong, and not getting into Dark Souls as "someone who looks deeper" is basically contradiction.

Not every story is about saving the world. Not every game is gonna be the epic power fantasy you're looking for. Sometimes it's just about life being a struggle, you getting by, and hopefully helping people and having fun on the way. You can't save everyone, problems aren't magically fixed because you killed one man, there are still real issues to deal with.

In Persona 5 you fight the embodiment of humanity's collective dark subconscious, and even then things aren't just perfect all of a sudden. People will still do bad things, and accidents still happen, but you did the best you could with what you had.

 

[Kokayi005]

I got it.
I know that it already. I'm not looking for "and they lived happily ever after".
I just though the option to do major good would be there, since the foreshadowing with the evil corporations seems to be brought up a lot over and over again even in the beginning of the game.
If I was just looking for "fuck everything and nothing changes" I'd just go watch porn/hentai. But since this was a pick-a-path book, mixed with DnD, and game RPG stuff, I thought there was more going on like the ones I've play.
My mistake.

 

[_Swish]

I'm kicking myself because I completely missed out on the opportunity to call TiTS the "Dark Souls of smut games"

>Drop to 0 HP
>Screen reads "YOU GOT FUCKED IN THE ASS" as it fades to black.

 

[ScarletteKnight]

I got it.
I know that it already. I'm not looking for "and they lived happily ever after".
I just though the option to do major good would be there, since the foreshadowing with the evil corporations seems to be brought up a lot over and over again even in the beginning of the game.
If I was just looking for "fuck everything and nothing changes" I'd just go watch porn/hentai. But since this was a pick-a-path book, mixed with DnD, and game RPG stuff, I thought there was more going on like the ones I've play.
My mistake.

But you don't seem to get that "save the world" does not equate to "more going on". The megacorps being evil isn't foreshadowing, it's placing you in the setting; it's just the reality people live with in this world. Really, the "beat villain, everything is fine now" is lazy writing, if you're gonna save the world you should get into the infrastructure of the government and economy and using resources to help people. Sometimes it works, like in a lot of Final Fantasy games, but sometimes it doesn't, also like some Final Fantasy games. And sometimes everyone dies anyway, like some Final Fantasy games.

 

[Kokayi005]

Again. I know. This ain't my first rodeo. I did a whole thread HERE on this site about lazy writing.
I'm saying the option isn't even there. None. No chance to do any real lasting good. If there's a path to infiltrate the UGC or Xenogen and change them from the inside out to be more humane and compassionate, I'd take that path.
But the writers don't seem to want any semblance of major universal change. That's is what I lament.
My play style is to solve the problem. Not just the small problems. The big over-arching problems. But now I have to make peace with the fact that that will never happen ever.

 

[BoyHowdy000]

You seem to be drastically misunderstanding many, many stories. You definitely play Bloodborne wrong, and not getting into Dark Souls as "someone who looks deeper" is basically contradiction.

I just really want to point out that there is no "wrong" way to play a game. The conclusions that Kokayi came to about Bloodborne and Lovecraftian horror in general are heavily flawed, but no one HAS to be a lore buff to play the game. That kind of attitude is one I see often in the Souls community and, although I respect your intentions with this comment and agree with the rest of it, I'd like to try to shut that specific part down as quickly as possible. Bloodborne may not have been the ideal game for him based on his tastes and it certainly wasn't exactly the wisest choice for him to try to critically analyze it without fully understanding what he was talking about, but it's completely within his rights to play it and any other game any way he wants. Problems only arise when players get ahead of themselves and start making demands that games be made to suit their specific desires, like the hilarious "Sekiro needs an easy mode" articles or Kokayi's own criticisms of TiTS' plot, not through the mere act of playing the games themselves.