QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ Mar 6 2014, 03:44 PM)
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I was interested in the question of if you could exterminate the dragons would you? My instinctive reaction would be "yes", but then the next question that comes up is how is this different from the instinctive human urge to destroy that which is not fully understood or controllable? Not bad in terms of philosophical reflection for a video game.
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I dunno. There's something to be said for instinct, particularly survival. Dragons in SR treat humanity like cattle. If cows were somehow able to rise up against humanity, would we really be surprised at their wanting to exterminate all of us out of fear and self preservation?
Here's the clincher for me. The dragons don't have to exploit humanity - they choose to.
Humans who eat cows are in a similar boat, but with a few major differences. Firstly, we have to eat something - if not cows, then pigs, or plants, or whatever you prefer. Sadly, up to a certain point logistics trump morality - eatting cows is problematic, but we're willing to accept the practice within certain parameters because doing otherwise would be really, really difficult. Of course, the major ethical concern isn't the consumption of cow flesh, it's the treatment of the animals prior to that - a concern we struggle with, and far too often fail to address adequately, but one that could be met without hindering our ability to subsist on hamburger.
Now, if cows suddenly became capable of speaking out against our actions, things would change. If they had the capacity to recognize their situation and to communicate their feelings on the matter to us, we would have a very different sort of moral quandary. We would have to choose what to do next, and morally we would be compelled to cease our exploitation of the bovine species in light of such developments.
The trouble for the Dragons is that they know that humanity recognizes their own situation, and humanity has communicated their feelings on the matter to them, yet they persist in their exploitation. They willfully choose to exploit humanity regardless of the suffering they cause and the lives they destroy.
Worse still, it isn't even a matter of survival for them - they don't feed upon humans, they simply toy with them like sadistic puppeteers, using them as pawns to further their own agendas and fuel their internal bickering. If Lofwyr has to kill a million people to get a leg up on one of the other great dragons, he'll do it in a heartbeat so long as it doesn't hurt his own interests. He isn't doing it to have enough to eat, he's doing it because he wants to be the big shot dragon ruling the roost, just like the rest.
So when you ask me, would I kill the dragons? The only reason I say no is because I know the Horrors are waiting out there somewhere, and like it or not humanity needs the dragons to keep them at bay.
...of course, I wouldn't let Herr Brackhaus hear me say that...
QUOTE (DrZaius @ Mar 10 2014, 12:18 PM)
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Plot: Probably Glory.
Effectiveness: Eiger by a mile.
I ran with Glory, Eiger, and Dietrich throughout the whole game for the most part (my guy was a Decker named DOS BOOT). Dietrich was really good at... casting Haste on Eiger so she could shoot more fools. Glory was mediocre with her pistol, and tended to get into trouble when she was clawing people, but her Biotech saved my keister a number of times.
I actually had the exact opposite experience.
Glory's backstory was too "broken bird" for me and strangely predictable, while I found Eiger to be realistic and relateable, if not all that much harder to read. It also helped that the interplay between Eiger and the player character felt more meaningful, trying to keep the team running smoothly despite her active dislike of the PC.
As for effectiveness, maybe it was just the dice gods or gremlins, but Eiger couldn't hit the broad side of a barn for me. She'd have solid hit percentages and she'd just miss
over and over and over. Meanwhile, Glory was just reliable through and through - she'd miss every so often, especially with the Savalette, but she always seemed to come through at just the critical moment where I needed a kill because Eiger took four 95% shots in a row and whiffed every last one of them.
~Umi