Others Corruption of Champions II [v0.7.45] [Savin/Salamander Studios]

[Tau_Iota]

I see that you're a truly cultured person too.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for all things beyond my mortal comprehension

 

[A Burning Conscience]

What can I say? I'm a sucker for all things beyond my mortal comprehension

At the end of the day, it's not about how they look, it's about the feeling of sticking your organs in places of unfathomable potential.

For extending the Kitsune theory further. I'd say that, as Keros says in that scene, the champ doesn't become a kitsune, it's just an imitation. He rips Champ's soul out to use later (if you are on the Kas romance and then tell her about it, she says she can see the "Reflection" of the soul) and he keeps the husk of the champ animated because the soul is still intact out there somewhere. So yes, champ is an imitation Kitsune, not the real deal, Keros is laughing his arse off because he's got what he wants and everyone else loses, Champ is on borrowed time till they're no longer needed at which point they will "Ascend to the heavens of the fox god," IE be eaten, and the corpse will collapse.
But glad you got some joy from that wild bit of nonsense of mine, I hope it makes the game mildly more tolerable.

 

[hauntedxdd]

Wow. I've been playing TITS/COC2 for a while now, without really gauging the communities reactions to some things. I've always been an on and off player. Color me pleasantly surprised when I stumble upon this thread and realize that a lot of people have the same gripes I do: writers having MASSIVE FUCKING EGOS. Seriously, I can't stand this shit.



I think the Shizuya incident in TITS made me go into a blind rage for several minutes, kinda ridiculous when you think about it considering it's just a porn game, but I was just so annoyed that something so godfuckingawful was added to the game.

 

[Daken9]

 

[Tau_Iota]

View attachment 1998999

Given Chief awoke a shell of his former franchise, the implication is that Brihaus should never release

Champ is on borrowed time till they're no longer needed at which point they will "Ascend to the heavens of the fox god," IE be eaten, and the corpse will collapse.

Ah sweet, cosmic horrors beyond my comprehension.

I don't know, given the subject matter of this game, I wish there would be some more serious situations aside from the whole Anakin Skywalker scene. Like... your game is about the end of the world after the world already ended. Older Fallouts juggled that grimness of its world while injecting humor so it isn't Nobledark. Sure the Overseer doesn't let you return after you give him the water chip, but if you have the bloody mess perk just explode his body

CoC2 presents you with all of these horrible, cosmic horrors. Demons. Breeding rooms and experimentations. Not just death, but the death of your immortal soul. And it never feels like anything but a lead-up to a punchline. Why does everything have to reflect the Marvel-style of everything being a joke? I loved Thanos because he wasn't fucking funny. He didn't pop in and have some quips, he did what he came to do. Meanwhile, everyone else is joking while the fate of the universe is at stake. Like why is the villain more concerned about the fate of the universe than our heroes?? That's how CoC2 feels, everyone thinks it's funni and horni. Like guys... we're ruled over by cosmic monsters that care not if a god damn demon corrupts us into shades of our former selves. We are nothing but ants to be quashed under the boots of an unforgiving world... Can we just talk about it?

I fail to understand how so many writers (it's not limited to CoC2) set up such an interesting god damn world and premise and then just lets it collapse in on itself.

tl;dr If your game is going to have serious situations and themes, do not treat the game like it's Serious Sam or Dick Kickem. Those games know what they are, parodies. This game wants to be taken seriously while simultaneously be treated like a parody

 

[benisfug]

Given Chief awoke a shell of his former franchise, the implication is that Brihaus should never release


Ah sweet, cosmic horrors beyond my comprehension.

I don't know, given the subject matter of this game, I wish there would be some more serious situations aside from the whole Anakin Skywalker scene. Like... your game is about the end of the world after the world already ended. Older Fallouts juggled that grimness of its world while injecting humor so it isn't Nobledark. Sure the Overseer doesn't let you return after you give him the water chip, but if you have the bloody mess perk just explode his body

CoC2 presents you with all of these horrible, cosmic horrors. Demons. Breeding rooms and experimentations. Not just death, but the death of your immortal soul. And it never feels like anything but a lead-up to a punchline. Why does everything have to reflect the Marvel-style of everything being a joke? I loved Thanos because he wasn't fucking funny. He didn't pop in and have some quips, he did what he came to do. Meanwhile, everyone else is joking while the fate of the universe is at stake. Like why is the villain more concerned about the fate of the universe than our heroes?? That's how CoC2 feels, everyone thinks it's funni and horni. Like guys... we're ruled over by cosmic monsters that care not if a god damn demon corrupts us into shades of our former selves. We are nothing but ants to be quashed under the boots of an unforgiving world... Can we just talk about it?

I fail to understand how so many writers (it's not limited to CoC2) set up such an interesting god damn world and premise and then just lets it collapse in on itself.

tl;dr If your game is going to have serious situations and themes, do not treat the game like it's Serious Sam or Dick Kickem. Those games know what they are, parodies. This game wants to be taken seriously while simultaneously be treated like a parody

Everything in CoC2 feels like a joke because there are no real stakes. Corruption, the driving force of the plot, was botched on a conceptual level. Patreon being more strict is likely part of the reason but most of the writers simply don't have any interest in corruption at all. It's not the horrible force of evil it was in the first game that forced regular people into hiding or offering up sacrifices to demons.

 

[BigSaltDeluxe]

I'm looking for more excuses to not play this game, so can someone please explain to me more about this Kiyoko situation? I'm the type of player who skims the text and read the button prompts, btw.

("Situation" as in, what you mean by "hating what the champion stands for")

 

[A Burning Conscience]

I'm looking for more excuses to not play this game, so can someone please explain to me more about this Kiyoko situation? I'm the type of player who skims the text and read the button prompts, btw.

("Situation" as in, what you mean by "hating what the champion stands for")

So after you free Kiyoko from the orb, there are several scenes where either you invite her to events or she invites you to events. In all the scenes where you invite her she either says no, or she makes it clear she looks down on native culture and people (in the winter ball scene she deliberately tries to make you feel bad for taking her to something so unpleasant to her, saying that she's only there because you invited her.)
In going to kitsune events, she often abandons you to the scorn of the other kitsune characters, never speaks up in your defence, and in one case does the equivalent of sitting you at the kids table because you're "so low in station".
In short, save for the sex scenes with her which are the same as from the orb, in which she's madly in love with you, whenever you're out in public she treats you like a pet... a pet that just rolled in shit and embarrassed her in front of her friends.
Even shorter: Kiyoko is racist and is only with the champ because she can't get enough of his D

 

[ScholarOfTheFirstSin]

In all the scenes where you invite her she either says no, or she makes it clear she looks down on native culture and people (in the winter ball scene she deliberately tries to make you feel bad for taking her to something so unpleasant to her, saying that she's only there because you invited her.)

In going to kitsune events, she often abandons you to the scorn of the other kitsune characters, never speaks up in your defence, and in one case does the equivalent of sitting you at the kids table because you're "so low in station".

In short, save for the sex scenes with her which are the same as from the orb, in which she's madly in love with you, whenever you're out in public she treats you like a pet... a pet that just rolled in shit and embarrassed her in front of her friends.
Even shorter: Kiyoko is racist and is only with the champ because she can't get enough of his D

 

[ScholarOfTheFirstSin]

and is only with the champ because she can't get enough of his D

 

[BigSaltDeluxe]

Welp, sounds like someone's staying in that orb for-fucking-ever

 

[Kroenen12]

Also still itching for repeating scenes with Brienne's family. I still can't comprehend how it's taken so long to just conclude that side content already. Last I'd heard it's been written for months but they just don't want to program it in for whatever reason...

brihaus is a big project

 

[undyingrevenant]

So my take on this was more that the player character has potential for greatness but isn't there yet, like how an acorn can become a 45 meter tall tree that lives for a thousand years or maybe just get eaten by a squirrel. I don't think it's insane to say other characters are currently more powerful than the player character.

... Yeahhhhh they've already said the pcs normal just funky. His soul is "interesting" but not chosen one interesting, got radiation from a nuclear reactor interesting. The only character shown to actually have potential for a god killing anime arc is kas herself. The growth mentioned in the game is just it's soul getting more energy so kas can use it to (possibly) create a life. So if anything you're a delivery boy with a valuable package. Not courier 6 potential, but judging from the power of companions, average+. About as strong as the general of a hive, or possibly eventually a 9 tailed kitsune or whatever you sell your soul to.

They're locked into "power fantasy bad, I hate power fantasies" real hard, even though the kind of power fantasy I'd assume they're talking about is if after the first kas encounter you become the hulk or some such and don't take no for an answer, instead of through hard work and determination becoming a legendary warrior/mage/archer/healer/Casanova. Whether it's through priceless relics, skills, deals or a multitude of things, it stops becoming power fantasy prevention and becomes blatant handicapping.

With their current design they throw stuff like your character sacrificing any number of things for power and asking "was it worth it" away, they throw away being a legendary hero, able to be the vanguard and protect your friends, partners, lovers and children from darkness, and instead of any of that, they fall directly into the abyssal sister trope of "I did it through the power of friendship, I couldn't do anything without my friends".

There's a vast gulf between "immortal" and "average Joe", and generally anything with a aj protagonist has them and/or their party eventually do ludicrous stuff after starting from the bottom, not somehow fight demons throughout a continent, slap their way through a whole tree of rats, survive a rat in nom mode, sell their soul and obtain godlike powers, debate a god (and win) to obtain the long lost ability to absorb and mimic countless powers, get multiple relics to save you from the brink of death, duel demons for the weapons of gods (and obtain them), but then also have consistent stuff like leofric punching you, the den treating you like garbage, saying long term there's no possibility of ever standing against a god or, by extension, a wraith, and the devs actively limit anything your PC can do like you go from 1st grade to 6th, but looping back to the 5th grade because they have a vendetta. Anything dumb they'd prevent from a unchecked power fantasy is meaningless when they do the opposite extreme.
QUOTE="MoneyMan181, post: 8816394, member: 1633013"]

You know if I'm being honest, isn't it deliberately harmful that TOBS writes Kitsunes this way while claiming they're based on Japanese culture? It's not indicative of how they act in the slightest and it could give people a negative/disturbing view of them.

They are soul suckers for sustenance that give sex in exchange(essentially making them whore bandits)
They are incredibly racist
All of them besides two are insufferable shitheads even disregarding the racism
They're doing the exact same thing Europeans did when colonizing the Americas.
Family dynamics are completely off of the Japanese norm.
Idk, just something I thought of. Why would you base your fictional race on a real one and then purposefully make them assholes? I can't tell if the dude idolizes the culture because he won't stop fucking trying to write about it or if he hates it because he writes it the way he does.

[/QUOTE]
That is the question, innit? Take kiyoko, she seems to be based on the "yamato nadeshiko" trope, the "ideal Japanese woman", but instead of being ride-or-die loyal or faithful she's what she is now. The den supposedly was based off tropes for a "weeb paradise", but you've got kohaku who fits the bill, and all the rest are pricks. It doesn't seem like something that focuses on the good but doesn't shy away from the bad of their culture, but something that focuses on the bad but sometimes chucks in something decent for a unknown reason.

 

[A Burning Conscience]

Snip

Very much so, they don't differentiate between a character having power handed to them, and power they've earned. The most satisfying "Power Fantasy" is one where you worked to become powerful. Imagine a corrupt playthrough where you do kill the gods, and to do so you empower or take over the cult and allow their evils to continue because they're the only ones researching into soul magic. Or a pure playthrough where you've essentially ended up killing everyone even vaguely corrupt, leaving devastation in your wake. Both are power fantasies in a sense, but they're both satisfying stories.

Their excuse for the special soul thing also makes no gods damned sense. Literally the explanation for it is that you got blasted with portal energy when Kas arrived. But... Kas opens portals later, so shouldn't she be able to replicate you? Also portals apparently exist and can randomly open in Savarra, so shouldn't there be some precedent for this? It's another plot hole that invites speculation.

 

[Heremus]

Their excuse for the special soul thing also makes no gods damned sense. Literally the explanation for it is that you got blasted with portal energy when Kas arrived. But... Kas opens portals later, so shouldn't she be able to replicate you? Also portals apparently exist and can randomly open in Savarra, so shouldn't there be some precedent for this? It's another plot hole that invites speculation.

Oh god damn it, did Calla get absorbed/fused into the Player Character with the portal shenanigans, making our soul interesting by Calla proxy? Thanks for making me question that possibility now, but I don't wanna make that bet.

 

[A Burning Conscience]

Oh god damn it, did Calla get absorbed/fused into the Player Character with the portal shenanigans, making our soul interesting by Calla proxy? Thanks for making me question that possibility now, but I don't wanna make that bet.

You're welcome
Also, I like your theory, it's far more likely than mine and it's actually something I could see them doing (seeing as it would again make a Savin character the spotlight).
My head cannon was that another god(-like being) from Mareth jumped through and bonded with you, like Taoth hiding himself in Urta or whatever. I knew it made no sense, but hey, got to explain how we seem to be as big a force of corruption in the world as Kas (if we take corruption to be lewdness, seeing as everywhere we tread in this "Serious, realistic bronze age world" is full of turbo-sluts).

 

[Deleted member 1660801]

The problem isn't the kitsune being Xenophobic. Having that kind of stuff in a story is fine if handled correctly but TOBS doesn't handle it well. It's largely inconsistent and hypocritical, you drag your ass through a forest where you will most likely be attacked by kitsune (who will attack and try to rape you if you don't fuck them) and other shit. Just to get to the place you need to be to free your "wife" just to be attacked by more kitsune. Then finally you free your wife and she deadass looks you in the face and tells you don't belong here because you are not a kitsune. This is so uncharacteristic of Kiyoko, she has been nothing but welcoming and kind to the player so for her to act like this is just nothing but lazy writing.

Also, the barbarian comment doesn't work considering the kitsune are invading the land and raping people who don't agree to their terms.

I hate jumping on hate bandwagons but if your story has more and more plot holes something is up.

 

[A Burning Conscience]

EDIT EXPLANATION: Kroenen12 found a quote from TOBS trying to justify the racism from his characters, it did not look good. Unfortunately the janitors cleaned it up, which makes sense as it was more about TOBS the person and less COC2 the abomination.

View attachment 1999425

Not surprising sentiment coming from that mouth. Completely missing the point of what Racism is, why we understand it as a moral wrong, history in any fucking sense, and misrepresenting real authors to prop up his weak arguments. Pratchett's quote is about how there is no "Racism on Discworld", and then gave a blatent example of Racism to show it does exist, it's just about species instead of skin-colour. And then Jingo is a book all about mundane human on human racism.

The Quote in full:
“Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because—what with trolls and dwarfs and so on—speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.”

― Terry Pratchett,


Gods, fucking, damn the man! Don't drag a good, dead man's name down to justify your own ACTUAL racism.
Half the fucking "Guards" books deal with the fact that Sam Vimes himself is a bit racist, it's just he's racist against everyone and trying to get better about it. Srg. Colon is an out and out racist against everyone, and it's used in the books for plot.
Just, gods...

 

[Shiro15]

The problem isn't the kitsune being Xenophobic. Having that kind of stuff in a story is fine if handled correctly but TOBS doesn't handle it well. It's largely inconsistent and hypocritical, you drag your ass through a forest where you will most likely be attacked by kitsune (who will attack and try to rape you if you don't fuck them) and other shit. Just to get to the place you need to be to free your "wife" just to be attacked by more kitsune. Then finally you free your wife and she deadass looks you in the face and tells you don't belong here because you are not a kitsune. This is so uncharacteristic of Kiyoko, she has been nothing but welcoming and kind to the player so for her to act like this is just nothing but lazy writing.

Also, the barbarian comment doesn't work considering the kitsune are invading the land and raping people who don't agree to their terms.

I hate jumping on hate bandwagons but if your story has more and more plot holes something is up.

The Kiyoko turning into a massive bitch post freedom also bothered me. I've said it in past post, but the idea of getting more interactions with her and Kinu was one of my main reason for getting invested in this game. They seemed like the only content (even if the choices were binary) that gave you some ability to interact with them. I never cared about the pregnancy content, as other people have said it just a number. It has no meaning. I'd say the Kitsune content is the most disappointing content in this game. And sadly the only girls I like in this game now are Brienne and Atugia.

 

[MissBlackthorne]

Isn't TOBS from SEA? They just seem to fetishize the idea of japan (and more so tropes) more than anything, while probably having cultural bias also leak in.