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RareAcumen posted:Yeah, that's also a problem. A prophecy of greatness also suddenly comes along out of nowhere and welp, you were special all along as well! Hell, the talking sword thing is revealed in the game to be a rare but not super special trait, and said sword even uses the Chosen One narrative to manipulate its owner, so I'd say that probably counts. It's about an idiot who was in the right place at the right time, and his only connection to the events was "I could hear this sword."
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 15:43 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 10:04 |
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Darth Walrus posted:Dragonball is an interesting example because Goku is just Sun Wukong as a cute little kid (literally, in fact, because Son Goku is the Japanese name for Sun Wukong). So the protagonist’s inherent specialness is taken directly from a centuries-old story about the quest for enlightenment of a unique, miraculous, and possibly demonic being, but has itself influenced a generation of stories in the same genre. also Z confirms he was supposed to be a Iron giant type deal, but he got brain damage/fell on his head and he basicaly just became a super powerful kid. Arcsquad12 posted:"Inherently special" protagonists are the reason I play Imperial Guard. gently caress your super weapons me and my 500 trillion buddies have laser pointers and t shirts! this. also after playing a ton of vermintide 2. none of the Reikland 5(or 4) are super special, the one is mage but people like her are common enough.
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 15:57 |
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I'm curious, is there anything apart from maybe Dark Souls where the Chosen One prophecy is a red herring designed to trap and constrain the protagonist to a specific set of actions, whether in service to a nebulous Greater Good or outright evil?
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 16:14 |
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This is the reason why I always thought Han was more interesting as a character than Luke in Star Wars. He never had any heroic legacy to live up to, or mystical powers to rely on, but he acted like a hero anyway. I should also clarify that I don’t necessarily dislike special characters. Luke is fine, Superman is fine when he’s written well, etc. The real problem comes about when the writer portrays this as being some sort of natural order that shouldn’t be meddled with. The idea of earning power is either never considered (like in Harry Potter) or portrayed as somehow “lesser” or less moral compared to power gained by birth or luck (like in The Incredibles). CYBEReris posted:I'm curious, is there anything apart from maybe Dark Souls where the Chosen One prophecy is a red herring designed to trap and constrain the protagonist to a specific set of actions, whether in service to a nebulous Greater Good or outright evil? Bakeneko fucked around with this message at 16:24 on Aug 16, 2018 |
# ? Aug 16, 2018 16:14 |
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CYBEReris posted:I'm curious, is there anything apart from maybe Dark Souls where the Chosen One prophecy is a red herring designed to trap and constrain the protagonist to a specific set of actions, whether in service to a nebulous Greater Good or outright evil? The One being revealed as just another control mechanism by the machines makes the Neo both the chosen one, and basically a pawn in the long-term. He did reject the extra control mechanism the machines had to save Trinity, but that was more of a ~true love~ thing imo. Smith corrupting the Matrix enough for the machines to need Neo's help is the only reason there is peace at the end. If it wasn't for Smith the machines would have just killed Zion outright instead of the soft-reboot thing the machines used The One for, and then freed some humans on their own to restart the process. Honestly, while flawed as heck I did like the idea behind the whole "The one is just another control mechanic" thing, execution notwithstanding it is imo a better thing than "matrix inside a matrix" could have been. Edit: WTF the Matrix is almost 20 years old and the sequels over 15. Zedd fucked around with this message at 16:30 on Aug 16, 2018 |
# ? Aug 16, 2018 16:23 |
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Bakeneko posted:or portrayed as somehow “lesser” or less moral compared to power gained by birth or luck (like in The Incredibles). That's an...interesting interpretation. You kinda have to ignore whole chunks of the movie to come to that conclusion (e.g. putting supers through the machine-learning grinder, for example).
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 16:39 |
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CYBEReris posted:I'm curious, is there anything apart from maybe Dark Souls where the Chosen One prophecy is a red herring designed to trap and constrain the protagonist to a specific set of actions, whether in service to a nebulous Greater Good or outright evil? There are some Final Fantasies that deal with it
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 16:43 |
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TheMaestroso posted:That's an...interesting interpretation. You kinda have to ignore whole chunks of the movie to come to that conclusion (e.g. putting supers through the machine-learning grinder, for example).
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 16:44 |
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CYBEReris posted:I'm curious, is there anything apart from maybe Dark Souls where the Chosen One prophecy is a red herring designed to trap and constrain the protagonist to a specific set of actions, whether in service to a nebulous Greater Good or outright evil? Last Scenario does this - the protagonist is a naive young idealist who desperately wants to be a hero, so when a mysterious robed woman shows up and tells him he's the descendant of a legendary hero; he doesn't think too hard about it. Turns out it's all bullshit.
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 16:48 |
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Arcsquad12 posted:"Inherently special" protagonists are the reason I play Imperial Guard. gently caress your super weapons me and my 500 trillion buddies have laser pointers and t shirts! Tired: Cato Sicarius of the Ultramarines Wired: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCMNWAJiz5Y EDIT: In hindsight, maybe I should have referenced Ollanius Pius Max Wilco fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Aug 16, 2018 |
# ? Aug 16, 2018 16:48 |
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Broke: Tomorrowland is about Galt's Gulch Woke: Tomorrowland is about a neoliberal think tank, the Center For American Progress but with robots
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 16:51 |
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Terrible Opinions posted:In isolation it's not a really big plot-point for the Incredibles, but in aggregate with the guy's other films it does make the Incredibles read much more uncomfortably. It makes the superhero serial killing bit come off as "of course this is how our lessers would cheat their way past us". The only other films of his I've seen are Ratatouille and The Iron Giant, so maybe I'm missing something there
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 16:59 |
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CYBEReris posted:I'm curious, is there anything apart from maybe Dark Souls where the Chosen One prophecy is a red herring designed to trap and constrain the protagonist to a specific set of actions, whether in service to a nebulous Greater Good or outright evil? as already mentioned, final fantasy games deal with this a fair bit (mostly because of the series' penchant for organised religion skepticism), final fantasy x revolves around that idea almost entirely
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 17:26 |
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I literally just replayed FFX so I really should have figured Yuna's pilgrimage would qualify. There's even the little detail where if you level her diligently she gets access to Holy, the WMD the prophet of the cyclical "prophecy" Yunalesca is weak to, beforehand, which gives her heightened resolve some gameplay weight.
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 17:41 |
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RareAcumen posted:Yeah, that's also a problem. A prophecy of greatness also suddenly comes along out of nowhere and welp, you were special all along as well! My favorite crashing dick-tripping failure of that subversion was loving Naruto. Hey look kids, no one gives a drat about this goofy outcast nobody, but with hard work and the help of your friends, you can achieve things no matter who you are! Oh wait, he was actually the scion of the world's most awesome bloodline. And infused with a magical bullshit monster that lets him basically do whatever. And this OTHER character that is actually non-special and trains his rear end off to be a martial artist? He's a punchline, never does anything. So, um, anybody can be special, as long as you're -really- special to start with!
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 18:08 |
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Naruto should've been about Rock Lee, the best boy.
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 18:34 |
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CYBEReris posted:I'm curious, is there anything apart from maybe Dark Souls where the Chosen One prophecy is a red herring designed to trap and constrain the protagonist to a specific set of actions, whether in service to a nebulous Greater Good or outright evil? IIRC, Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy goes there.
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 18:50 |
The only good thing to come out of Naruto was people getting incredibly mad that the only two (female) characters to openly express romantic interests got exactly what they wanted with minimal strings attached in the end.
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 18:54 |
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Max Wilco posted:Tired: Cato Sicarius of the Ultramarines Before or after Games Workshop retconned Pius into an immortal who fought at Verdun and was a close friend of the Emperor and Malcador?
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 19:10 |
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CYBEReris posted:I'm curious, is there anything apart from maybe Dark Souls where the Chosen One prophecy is a red herring designed to trap and constrain the protagonist to a specific set of actions, whether in service to a nebulous Greater Good or outright evil? Isn't that the idea in Morrowind?
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 19:15 |
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CYBEReris posted:I'm curious, is there anything apart from maybe Dark Souls where the Chosen One prophecy is a red herring designed to trap and constrain the protagonist to a specific set of actions, whether in service to a nebulous Greater Good or outright evil? TES3: Morrowind starts as a Chosen One Plot complete with an intro sequence that has the God of Prophecy telling you “Fear not, YOU have been Chosen.” As the game goes on the nature of the prophecy becomes a lot muddier, and a lot of people find out that it’s been mutated by the biases and aspirations of the people passing it down over the past few thousand years. Many of the qualifications of the Chosen One (such as being immortal and immune to disease) are traits you have to acquire, and the qualities that you had going into the game are so vague that they apply to thousands of individuals. You find out that there have been many incarnations of this particular Chosen One over the centuries, and that the God of Prophecy may just be churning through possible candidates until someone finally pulls it off. You can even say as much to the villain at the very end, telling him that you don’t believe in the prophecy and are doing this of your own accord. To back that up, you are able to legitimately complete the game in a way that almost entirely ignores the prophecy.
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 19:19 |
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Arcsquad12 posted:Before or after Games Workshop retconned Pius into an immortal who fought at Verdun and was a close friend of the Emperor and Malcador? Uh, I dunno. Looking at my reference material, I'd say maybe before that retcon, but after if the alternative is the single Terminator/Adeptus Custodes. i am tim! posted:TES3: Morrowind starts as a Chosen One Plot complete with an intro sequence that has the God of Prophecy telling you Fear not, YOU have been Chosen. As the game goes on the nature of the prophecy becomes a lot muddier, and a lot of people find out that its been mutated by the biases and aspirations of the people passing it down over the past few thousand years. Many of the qualifications of the Chosen One (such as being immortal and immune to disease) are traits you have to acquire, and the qualities that you had going into the game are so vague that they apply to thousands of individuals. You find out that there have been many incarnations of this particular Chosen One over the centuries, and that the God of Prophecy may just be churning through possible candidates until someone finally pulls it off. One way I heard it described, in Morrowind, you have to work to become the Chosen One. TESIV: Oblivion also sort eschews the whole Chosen One plot in an interesting way, wherein the initial setup seems to paint you as the one to save Cyrodil. Through the course of the game, though, your character is more-so a steward to Martin Septim, who's the only one who has the ability to stop Mehrunes Dagon when it comes right down to it.
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 19:41 |
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I recall one of the Bard's Tale games was centred around a chosen one narrative... Only there were a bunch of chosen ones running around, all prophesied to defeat the great evil. Turns out the good guys were just telling every gullible idiot they could find that they were the chosen one, and just hoping one of them would get lucky enough to get the job done.
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 19:42 |
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Falstaff posted:I recall one of the Bard's Tale games was centred around a chosen one narrative... Only there were a bunch of chosen ones running around, all prophesied to defeat the great evil. Turns out the good guys were just telling every gullible idiot they could find that they were the chosen one, and just hoping one of them would get lucky enough to get the job done. Ohhh, it's baaad luck to be yooou A chosen one of many isn't newww When you think you're full of luck In the bullocks you'll get struck Oh, it's baaad luck to be you
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 19:51 |
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Falstaff posted:I recall one of the Bard's Tale games was centred around a chosen one narrative... Only there were a bunch of chosen ones running around, all prophesied to defeat the great evil. Turns out the good guys were just telling every gullible idiot they could find that they were the chosen one, and just hoping one of them would get lucky enough to get the job done. That was the 2004 one, it actually had a lot of really neat things, one of the endings have you elope with the big bad. My favourite twist on the prophecy is probably Arcanum where it starts you of with surviving a zeppelin crash which is interpreted as matching the prophecy of being a reincarnation of someone from a 1000 years ago, later you find out the he was an immortal elf and never actually died so the entire thing is bullshit. You do hit him up for some help because prophecy or not you have to save the world anyway. Hel fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Aug 16, 2018 |
# ? Aug 16, 2018 19:56 |
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Arcsquad12 posted:"Inherently special" protagonists are the reason I play Imperial Guard. gently caress your super weapons me and my 500 trillion buddies have laser pointers and t shirts! Same reason I usually play Human/Warrior/Fighter in most RPGs
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 20:08 |
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CYBEReris posted:I'm curious, is there anything apart from maybe Dark Souls where the Chosen One prophecy is a red herring designed to trap and constrain the protagonist to a specific set of actions, whether in service to a nebulous Greater Good or outright evil? Mortal Kombat: Deception. Kind of. Shujinko - arguably the biggest idiot in a whole multi-realm network of idiots - is tricked into collecting the magical thingimybobs for the Big Evil, while also kicking the poo poo out of Scorpion - the actual chosen one - in the process, thus dooming the world. He also does a whole bunch of evil poo poo along the way like offering up a whole village to evil invaders and stealing an important trinket in order to gain himself entry into someplace or other - loving over the dude who is supposed to recieve the thing. Shujinko is actually one of my fave characters because of all this! e: After some thought I should perhaps expand on how Shujinko is 'tricked'. The big evil takes on the form of a floating ball of light and just says: "You are the chosen one, now do this stuff that is obviously morally questionable and goes against all the stuff you've been taught so far." An' Shujinko just goes: "Seems legit." and goes along with it. He's a child when Onaga first appears to him and sticks by if for several lifetimes. He is a complete moron. KayTee fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Aug 16, 2018 |
# ? Aug 16, 2018 21:58 |
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i am tim! posted:TES3: Morrowind starts as a Chosen One Plot complete with an intro sequence that has the God of Prophecy telling you “Fear not, YOU have been Chosen.” As the game goes on the nature of the prophecy becomes a lot muddier, and a lot of people find out that it’s been mutated by the biases and aspirations of the people passing it down over the past few thousand years. Many of the qualifications of the Chosen One (such as being immortal and immune to disease) are traits you have to acquire, and the qualities that you had going into the game are so vague that they apply to thousands of individuals. You find out that there have been many incarnations of this particular Chosen One over the centuries, and that the God of Prophecy may just be churning through possible candidates until someone finally pulls it off. drat, i miss when elder scrolls games had deeper writing. that being said, i like watching people debate factions and poo poo. the correct answer is empire. Max Wilco posted:Uh, I dunno. Looking at my reference material, I'd say maybe before that retcon, but after if the alternative is the single Terminator/Adeptus Custodes. i always liked when he was just some "lucky" soldier who manages to make it through cosmic hell and tries to rescue his liege. its like sadder version of Samwise gamgee.
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# ? Aug 16, 2018 22:12 |
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KayTee posted:Mortal Kombat: Deception. Kind of. I'm not sure which I find funnier: that Midway named the Konquest story mode player character 'Shujinko' (which is Japanese for 'protagonist'), or that they named two male character Reiko and Hotaru, which are (at least to my knowledge) names mainly intended for girls. Max Wilco fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Aug 17, 2018 |
# ? Aug 16, 2018 23:59 |
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Max Wilco posted:I'm not sure which I find funnier: that Midway named the Konquest story mode player character 'Shujinko' (which is Japanese for 'protagonist'), or that they named two male character Reiko and Hotaru, which are (at least to my knowledge) names mainly intended for girls. Not a game example, but my favorite subversion is in the old Dark Sun novels for AD&D: The Chosen One thing is a (putting in spoilers despite it being rather early and overt in the book) desperate lie invented on the fly by a sly priest to throw some wights off of his trail, and when they go visit said 'Chosen One' (just a kid of two of the side characters, named after the last dwarven king), suddenly heroes and villains start buying into it and things get wacky. My favorite part is when the drat Dragon is holding the wonderkid in his claw and casualy batting aside everything the heroes throw at him to save the Chosen One and the two basically look at each other and go "This is kinda dumb and makes no sense."
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# ? Aug 17, 2018 00:46 |
Puppy Time posted:Also a lot of Terry Pratchett's books. Sam Vimes is the greatest hero, because he's not a hero. Sephyr posted:My favorite crashing dick-tripping failure of that subversion was loving Naruto. The first half of naruto was pretty decent. I liked how it showed the main characters actually training to get good and there was character growth and all. Then the second half happened and everything was about magical ninja blood lines, special eyes and video gamey elemental weaknesses and it sucked.
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# ? Aug 17, 2018 01:16 |
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Nuebot posted:Then the second half happened and everything was about magical ninja blood lines, special eyes and video gamey elemental weaknesses and it sucked. Everything to do with all the Uchiha poo poo was the absolute worst.
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# ? Aug 17, 2018 02:03 |
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i am tim! posted:TES3: Morrowind starts as a Chosen One Plot complete with an intro sequence that has the God of Prophecy telling you “Fear not, YOU have been Chosen.” As the game goes on the nature of the prophecy becomes a lot muddier, and a lot of people find out that it’s been mutated by the biases and aspirations of the people passing it down over the past few thousand years. Many of the qualifications of the Chosen One (such as being immortal and immune to disease) are traits you have to acquire, and the qualities that you had going into the game are so vague that they apply to thousands of individuals. You find out that there have been many incarnations of this particular Chosen One over the centuries, and that the God of Prophecy may just be churning through possible candidates until someone finally pulls it off. More importantly, your character only fulfills that prophesy because becoming the chosen one is a condition of their parole.
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# ? Aug 17, 2018 02:32 |
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KayTee posted:Mortal Kombat: Deception. Kind of. And they did another great take on it with Mortal Kombat IX, a condensed retelling of the first three games in which Raiden is so obsessed with the idea of guiding a chosen hero to fulfill a prophecy that he is complicit in countless needless deaths, including those of most of the actual heroes, two of which were his "chosen ones," and very nearly dooms all of Earthrealm, because his "prophecy" was in fact not cryptic bullshit but being told exactly what to do (which was, essentially, nothing at all) and he went about reinterpreting it in the dumbest way possible. For bonus points, the prophecy actually comes from his future self, so he bought into the "mystic teacher" trope so much that he assumed he would always speak in cryptic riddles as well. He gaslighted himself, entirely on accident. It's great. Oh, and he kills one of the "chosen" himself because he actually calls him out on his bullshit.
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# ? Aug 17, 2018 02:33 |
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SkeletonHero posted:And they did another great take on it with Mortal Kombat IX, a condensed retelling of the first three games in which Raiden is so obsessed with the idea of guiding a chosen hero to fulfill a prophecy that he is complicit in countless needless deaths, including those of most of the actual heroes, two of which were his "chosen ones," and very nearly dooms all of Earthrealm, because his "prophecy" was in fact not cryptic bullshit but being told exactly what to do (which was, essentially, nothing at all) and he went about reinterpreting it in the dumbest way possible. For bonus points, the prophecy actually comes from his future self, so he bought into the "mystic teacher" trope so much that he assumed he would always speak in cryptic riddles as well. He gaslighted himself, entirely on accident. It's great. Thing is, I think the whole 'he must win' only applies at the end when Shao Kahn has invaded Earth. Prior to that, I think Outworld winning would still have panned out poorly. Really, the issue is more that future-Raiden sent back the message, 'he must win', and that's not enough for anyone to go on. Either that was the only thing he could manage to communicate, he didn't think it through, or it was actually meant to be ploy to trick his past-self into creating another timeline where everything introduced from MK4 and onward would be erased. Future-Raiden was like, "We can't let Hsu Hao and Li Mei make it into the reboot. I must avert this." Also, I realize Raiden is yet another name blunder. Max Wilco fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Aug 17, 2018 |
# ? Aug 17, 2018 03:21 |
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Noah Caldwell-Gervais put out another huge video reviewing No Man’s Sky, this time in its latest, post-patch incarnation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0LJdhXr7L0
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# ? Aug 17, 2018 06:50 |
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Bakeneko posted:I should also clarify that I don’t necessarily dislike special characters. Luke is fine, Superman is fine when he’s written well, etc. The real problem comes about when the writer portrays this as being some sort of natural order that shouldn’t be meddled with. The idea of earning power is either never considered (like in Harry Potter) or portrayed as somehow “lesser” or less moral compared to power gained by birth or luck (like in The Incredibles). I'm no big fan of Harry Potter either, but one sort of interesting aspect I remember (I don't know if this was intentional or not) is that in one of the books, it's said that the prophecy didn't explicitly say the Harry was the one to stop Voldemort. It was something along the lines of a child born on a certain day, and while Harry was born on that day, so was Neville Longbottom. I guess what I find interesting about that is that Neville is shown as a auxiliary or comic-relief character for most of the series, but at the same time, he seems to have more of a story arc and development than Harry does. In the last book, Harry squares off with Voldemort at the end, but it's Neville who destroys the last Horcrux. I dunno, maybe that's common knowledge, but I thought it was an interesting idea.
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# ? Aug 17, 2018 10:32 |
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Max Wilco posted:I'm no big fan of Harry Potter either, but one sort of interesting aspect I remember (I don't know if this was intentional or not) is that in one of the books, it's said that the prophecy didn't explicitly say the Harry was the one to stop Voldemort. It was something along the lines of a child born on a certain day, and while Harry was born on that day, so was Neville Longbottom. I'm generally a fan of the ambiguous chosen, and other similar uses of the idea.
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# ? Aug 17, 2018 10:38 |
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Neville being a potential hero isn't even a fan theory. It's straight up raised by Harry in the 5th book, in the exact same chapter where the prophecy is first mentioned.
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# ? Aug 17, 2018 10:40 |
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Crono Trigger is the most destiny free game I think. Everyone in the party aside from Crono or Ayla is important in some way.
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# ? Aug 17, 2018 10:49 |