148615-so-dominion-and-exiles-page-3

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I'd also like to chime in that I also understood your post the first time. Sure, you could have phrased it better but that's about it. Even if it wasn't understood by some, I think your message was very clear after you made multiple posts trying to explain your intent. So here's another person contributing to say that I understood you as well. ~hug~

Source. More specifically, see the History section, 4th paragraph, and last sentence. I'm sure this will get picked apart by someone saying I'm taking this quote out of context, but it makes me feel that the Dominion are justified in their war against the Granok specifically. Since they went out of their way to continue fighting them. As far as I know, the Exiles didn't keep instigating after the Brightland Rebellion so it was always silly to me that they kept pursuing them for hundreds of years. One hypothesis I came up with is that maybe the Granok are the reason the Dominion keep chasing the whole faction since they are allies. Mordesh is another reason because many of them are out for revenge as well after what happened to during the Grismara quarantine. And as I feared, new Lore releases end up trying to remove any possible justification as to why this whole war keeps going on by releasing info about Durek Stonebreaker. If you read the History section, 4th paragraph, you can turn this around and say something like "But they weren't instigating! They were protecting the weak against the Dominion!" How I feel about these two pieces of Lore was that doing good was just something that happened in their quest for vengeance. Intent matters to me so I still see this as being bad even if some good came out of it.

The Aurin helped the Exiles increase food production with the little resources the Exiles had available. It still wasn't enough but I like to think this was still an accomplishment. The Dominion could have wanted them for their agricultural expertise. Just like the Dominion uses Chua tech, I can see them applying their cultivation methods to the Empire in order to increase food production in all their territories. This would mean that they would have to spend less time harvesting other planets for resources which would overall save the Empire money. I also can't help but feel like maybe the Exiles chose to save the Aurin specifically for this specialty. I find it hard to believe that they never stopped at any other planets for hundreds of years and just happened to save the races that were either capable of helping them survive (Aurin) or helping them fight the Dominion (Granok and Mordesh). Especially since the Dominion supposedly has many colonies under their wings, like why not save those other helpless colonies as well? One could argue that the Aurin wouldn't join the Dominion because they weren't "nice" enough, but they seem to tolerate the Granok and Mordesh enough who have proven to be capable of being very mean sometimes. This thread kinda exploded the last time I visited so I couldn't respond to everything I wanted to. I'd like to give a shout out to PennesNoodle for a great suggestion of how to handle Arboria that would make the game more interesting.

Edited January 8, 2016 by Spider Bro Jenkins


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I think that you misunderstood my meaning: when I say I can't see the Aurin having any sort of status in the Dominion, what I mean is that my impression is that the Dominion views the Aurin largely in the terms of the following lines from Dredd Scott v, Sandford; That the authorities view all such persons, in the words of Chief Justice Roger Taney, as "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." In all seriousness, is there anything in the lore that would indicate the above statement is not a generally accurate depiction of the attitude of the Dominion towards other races, and especially the Aurin?

This gets into the point I make above, but expands on it: you're looking at this from inside the game, I'm looking at it from outside the game. One of the big problems that I think people fall prey to when they argue on behalf of the Dominion is they make a very technical argument, without realizing that not only is their argument technical, but that much of the information that tends to read against the Exiles is deep in the game, while the evidence against the Dominion is... heck, it's in the advertising. Again, it comes down to bad writing. Watch all of the videos and ask yourself, 'which of these is someone that I want to play when I get in game?' This is somewhat unfair, given that the only Dominion character other then Cap'n Stick-up-the-butt with any lines is... that Mechari chick? (I'm pretty sure it's not Axis, it's the Mechari from the... paths video, I want to say.) Then you get into the game, and think about the 4 videos that you get around, I want to say level 6-7. What used to correspond to about an hour into play. -Exiles (Aurin/Mordesh Starting zone): you're a hero, you've saved an ancient, wise sentient tree. The Dominion shows up to burn it, along with everything else. -Exiles (Human/Granok Starting zone): you've saved helpless crash survivors and are loading refugees onto an evacuation ship. The Dominion shows up to kill the crash survivors... and a pregnant woman. By comparison, -Dominion (Human/? starting zone): you're... an explorer? You've found the Elder Cube (or rather, Artemis Zin did, but you helped!), aaaand, it's gone. Artemis throws a fit and punches a camera. -Dominion (Drakken/? starting zone): you're a hero! You've defeated the Exile presence before they could get the Annihilator up and running, and you shuttle away... while listening to the psychotic laughter of Mondo Zax. There is interesting parallelism going on in the zones: in the Aurin/Artemis starters both, and important artifact full of great knowledge is lost to the players. But the circumstances of the loss are totally different: the destruction of the tree-thing is not only a loss of information, but the deliberate killing of a neutral third party. It's a completely overt and knowing act that is presented, again, with mocking Chua laughter. By contrast, the Elder Cube not only isn't permanently destroyed, but it's not at all clear from the in-game material that the Exiles that precipitated its loss had any idea what was going on, or intended to accomplish what they did. Similarly, it's interesting that both the Exile human zone and the Drakken zone feature a giant robot prominently. The difference, again, being that in the Exile zone the Dominion have used their technology (though not specifically that warbot) to kill unarmed survivors and the aforementioned pregnant woman. By contrast, in the Drakken zone the threat is both entirely imminent (the Exiles don't have the Annihilator up and running yet), and confined to military personnel. To the best of my recollection, there is no significant civilian presence in the Drakken zone; the Exiles' threat is entirely to the Dominion's military. Simply as a matter of emotional story telling, there is not parity between the two factions. What we end up with is a very clear set of emotional tones on the Exile side (desperation, hope, exhilaration), compared to a very muddled Dominion. Seriously, so much of the early Dominion material leaves me confused emotionally. it's like watching The Birth of a Nation: on the one hand you recognize that this is an amazing technical achievement and an incredibly important film. On the other hand, it is a work of supreme racist propaganda. What emotion is the player supposed to feel when their character is shuttling away from the Annihilator, and Mondo Zax is alternating between psychotic, screaming laughter and shouted admonishments that he needs... more explosions, more test subjects? Similarly, when the Elder Tree is killed, you've become invested in this thing as a character. You've talked to it (and it has a voice actor), you've helped it... and it dies to the sound of your enemy's laughter. That emotional context is completely missing from the encounter that Artemis (note, it's her on camera) and the Elder Cube. You've been talking with the Caretaker, not the Cube, and the Cube is very explicitly not harmed. Artemis' anger comes from frustration, not witnessing the death of another sentient creature. The more I think about all this, the less confident I am that Carbine can fix this, much less that they are going to try. That's one reason I mentioned adding a race from each side to the other; it's a cheap solution since there is a minimum of additional coding needed, I'm not at all confident that Carbine has the resources to change very much right now, and story and setting seem to be way down on their list of things to work on.


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I forgot about the Boulderback quest! There's also a quest in Deradune where you find the journal of Vezaar the Feral. Basically, this Draken has gone crazy and just lives in a cave hunting the creatures there. Aside from the non-sentient creatures, he also eats Moodies. I just figured this was one of those things that wasn't popular in Draken culture. The eating of non-sentients I could understand though. I figured I would have heard more about this in Deradune. Also, maybe Arwick wasn't lying? Dakkar could have just been saying that to scare the Aurin. If someone could provide me more examples, I could be persuaded to change my opinion. I'm always skeptical when I read about one side commenting about the other side because both sides spread Propaganda. The Boulderback quest gives it a possibly, I suppose, but it's not strong enough to sway me without more information.

Edited January 10, 2016 by Spider Bro Jenkins


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