Three quick questions: have you played Samurai of Hyuga? Did you enjoy it? And if you have played it/enjoyed it, would you consider that a CYOA?
If you do, then couldn’t the same reasons you find HR to be unsatisfactory be applied to SoH? Devon himself has said at various points that SoH is meant more to be an interactive novel than a CYOA due to its linear storyline and a bunch of other points.
It could be because SoH has not (yet!) reached the acclaimed levels that HR has that SoH hasn’t been slapped with the same bashing that HR has received. Except that SoH2 was criticized for its “ineffective” choices.
In my opinion though, SoH is a CYOA and an IF. Just like HR. It might not have branching storylines, instead favoring a linear storyline, but it offers multiple choices and multiple mini-paths. In SoH3, we finally saw the “full” impact of choosing our Ronin’s Spirit Animal. It might be a purely aesthetic choice, but I personally felt the impact of the choice I made all the way from Book 1.
In a nutshell, both SoH and HR are CYOA and IFs from an objective standpoint. They might have linear storylines and multiple choices with small impacts, but they’re still there.
Does that mean I find them both enjoyable? No, I find SoH to be extremely more enjoyable than HR ever could be. In my opinion, SoH employs the linear storyline more masterfully than HR and its successors ever could, while simultaneously offering the players choices with consequences.
I wasn’t aware the criticism for HR included its apparent lack of suitability for the IF genre or CS engine. To this day I retain a thin nostalgic fondness for the trilogy as a product of high octane entertainment with moments of sincere tenderness. My disillusionment only surfaced with Redemption Season which has retroactively soured my taste for the Hero Project to some degree.
Maybe the problem was the hype behind the trilogy, it became very well known and overshadowed better written CoGs and HGs at the height of its popularity, sowing seeds of resentment among a selection of readers who became all too aware of the flaws and sought to discredit it as a CYOA when its game design began to age.
About a year has passed since I last replayed the original trilogy, having more or less completed it all a long time ago, there games with better replayability. Nonetheless I do believe HR warrants respect for being a fair and decent game of its time, increasing interest in IF thus contributing to its continued development and for at one point being a compelling superhero thriller and character drama.
Earlier @Havenstone and @MeltingPenguins briefly mentioned Heroes Rise being a wish fulfillment/power fantasy and this brought up something important for me. It isn’t a wish fulfillment / power fantasy at all as far as I’m concerned. At least not for the player… Unless your wish is to have cool powers but somehow be even more powerless than in real life.
The entirety of the first game, all of your choices barely matter, and you’re rail-roaded down one specific path no matter what you choose and not just because of bad writing, but because the antagonist was badly written to have inexplicably orchestrated everything that happened to you during that time period for the desperately cliched purpose of getting revenge on you for your parents accidentally killing her mom… because she can’t get to them… because they’ve been given life in prison by a corrupt politician for the aforementioned accidental death… which it later turns out didn’t even happen. Then in the clutch moment you beat the previously omnipotent and omniscient antagonist because of a deus ex machina, and the later games even invalidate one of the few choices you actually had in the game of killing that antagonist by making her a central character to the rest of the story… Heroes Rise isn’t a power fantasy. Not only are your choices literally meaningless within the actual context of the story, but it actively continuously and repeatedly just beats you down over and over for no apparent reason other than, I guess, “drama!”
Well, @Shoelip I’d say it’s wish fulfillment in the ‘author appeal’ sense.
Sergi loves his reality tv drama, 60+ domina-esq characters and being rich, superspecial and famous. HR is eality tv drama, 60+ domina-esq characters and being rich, superspecial and famous with superpowers, Versus is eality tv drama, 60+ domina-esq characters and being rich, superspecial and famous in space politics, his book is eality tv drama, 60+ domina-esq characters and being rich, superspecial and famous with gods reincarnated as housewives if i’ve been informed correctly.
This is also what I meant with he seems not to ever leave his comfort zone when writing…
Why not? Do you expect all villains to be Disney-like villains and just act evil for the hell of it? Having a justified cause or even a noble objective is one way to make a great villain.
Sometimes it’s not about what you want to accomplish but how you accomplish it. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” kind of scenario. Maybe Victon did start with good morals, maybe he started his campaign because he genuinely wanted what was best for the major population, but he did so by destroying three people’s lives and our MC has every right to revolt against it.
And, in my opinion, it was a shame Victon was later revealed to be corrupt and power hungry. I think it would have been much more interesting if he was actually acting for his country’s best interests, even if his methods were extreme. The MC would then have to rethink what kind of hero they actually were and what that meant.
I get your point, and you seemed like someone that really knows about laws, but I can honestly tell you I wouldn’t be interested in playing a game where you appealed for your parents’ freedom. I mean, it is still a game and a certain unrealism is necessary when you are in a superhero universe. I’d rather much blast my way through a prison than hire a team of lawyers .
I think it is very easy to criticize a product and mourn its potential after its completion. How is that saying? Hindsight is 20/20? It’s easy to build upon something, the hard thing to do is start its foundation.
It’s like those people that go to art galleries and claim they could have done it, and yet it was not them that created the piece.
Heroes Rise is a universe on its own and I’m not claiming it is a deep, complex Tolkien-ish world but it was built from scratch by Sergi’s creativity. And that in itself is worth some credit. We explored the world throughout the three games and it was solid enough for the story to develop. It did its part.
I have to disagree here. I think Versus is actually a big improvement. I also think it is quite unfair to say an author, or anyone else really, does not care to improve their craft. How in the world would you know that? That’s just a baseless statement (and one you insist on making time and time again).
“Superpowered people as targets of prejudice and bigotry that mirror real world issues” is the same sort of mentality that went into the creation of the X-Men, which–while of course it does get some similar criticisms, “don’t give the bigots a reason to be bigoted” has been overall received positively. And something similar could be said about Zootopia–although admittedly in that context it’s a little more complex, as predators are both almost universally the ones in positions of power but also considered dangerous and untrustworthy (it’s a bit clumsy, but does overall have a positive message about books and covers and the like). My point being that this isn’t exactly unprecedented territory.
Keep in mind what you’re citing as evidence that a subset of humans ought to be locked up is a single line of text …
… which you’re interpreting into the worst possible scenario …
… when during my reading, it sounded more like “a combination of untrained/unprepared heroes who didn’t know how to properly use their powers and ended up overcompensating/overreacting and yes, some people who were abusing their power to do bad things.” I can’t speak for Sergi, but if I were writing something like this and I put a line like that in, I’d expect it to be interpreted as less “here we go, justification for every action against powered people for the rest of the series” and more “there’s a reason that Victon got away with this overextreme punishment, and your parents were victims of bad timing as much as anything else.” I think it’s worth noting that other than this one line, hero on villain brutality doesn’t really come up again? After that it’s mostly the way heroes themselves interact with one another and maybe the MC gets some opportunities to be cruel (I honestly don’t remember, I never took any options like that and my memory is hazy when it comes to things that were available that I didn’t do).
And like I said above, there’s some elements of “bigots will always find any excuses they can,” and, same as in Zootopia and X-Men, the audience is expected to recognize that a bad apple or two isn’t representative of the whole group, which doesn’t deserve to be demonized the way it is. It’s expected to be read with cultural context in mind
It’s a mystery I’ve been trying to figure out. I really want to know why people claim that sort of thing about Heroes Rise. No matter your feelings on Sergi’s work, there are a lot of people who claim that Heroes Rise is really good about making you feel like a superhero and that Your Choices Matter.
So, why?
The cynical part of me says it is because the game tells you so over and over and “cleverly” disguises things by having NPCs take the reins or otherwise no-sell your choices. Maybe it’s because a lot of people had HR as their introduction to IF and therefore couldn’t see the theatrics for what they were. Is it because it has some minor cosmetic changes – the color of your power and ‘theme song’ – that come up a lot? Is it because people only play through it once and see the choices and think there must be interesting branches behind the ones they don’t pick?
Did Sergi code some kind of bewitching sorcery into his game?
He would still have been a “hanging judge” though that does not necessarily imply corruption just somebody who most often goes for the harshest sentence possible for any given, but particularly severe or capital offenses under the law.
That said you could even have a tough on crime hanging judge indeed come across as trying to stand by what they believe in and acting for the common good.
Such a portrayal however would have made the most sense if at least one of the mc’s parents had actually been guilty, in which case the pardon at the end would have been appropriate.
However since we know that Victon was in fact corrupt and our mc’s parents innocent and moreover that Victon sentenced them while in personal possession of exculpatory knowledge that would make my mc had he had any sense at all absolutely livid at the pardon (and the ex-VP who issued it) since it is a) most often an affirmation of guilt, not innocence and b) allowed Victon to steal the mc’s parent’s fortune in the name of the US Government for his own reasons and that pardon voids any legal claims. Which makes it seem like his ex-VP is equally corrupt and only out to secure Jury’s inheritance and cover that state’s ass.
Well it is more about getting to the point where you can in fact successfully appeal for the parent’s freedom as judicial review of that nature can only be obtained if there is serious proof that the original verdict was in error and even then the state usually only allows it when there is sufficient pressure from the court of public opinion too, hence a use for the fame the mc must so desperately seek.
Yeah, but that is where real choices that make different play styles actually valid could have come in, you can storm the proverbial Bastille, while my mc would rather have had his army of lawyers. The point in both cases is getting to the point where the mc is wealthy/famous and/or powerful enough to be able to do those things.
In any case that cheap trick “pardon” at the end is far less satisfying then either of those options would have been.
SO in my fashion of keeping things short and sweet (much like myself )
Heroe Rise is a ‘corner stone’ of this site and the genre. Without it I doubt many of our promising authors would have found their way here. Nothing is perfect and objectively as it stands the series deserves respect as does the author.
In the sense of a traditional story it does everything a story should. Though fans tend to forget that in the end this is the author’s tale to tell despite the choices offered and those not. The reader is still a passenger rather than pilot. (You tell a taxi driver where you want to go, not how to get there.)
That said, its not a perfect story but it is still a good one.
I like how this has turned from a discussion if whether HR is technically an actual IF game, to yet another discussion of whether it’s a good game or not.
Yeah, that’s why I think it was a shame Victon essentially became a greedy politician caricature.
If, like you said, at least one of our parents was guilty (or at least not completely without guilt) and Victon acted to make an example out of them instead of just plain framing them to his own gains the game would have been much more interesting.
Without such a black and white morality we could have explored the shades of grey.
Yes, you are right. But that route would have added quite the detour. I think we can all agree that HR is not the most branchy of games, so the option to take the legal route wouldn’t have quite fit the game’s tone.
But I do agree the option to have the MC at least try to free their parents through the legal way could have existed. Maybe by showing them writing a letter or something…
It was bound to happen . I was expecting it since the moment I read this thread’s title, honestly.
It could just be a difference in what you define a superhero as. Are you more like Booster Gold, who wants the media attention on him, or are you more like Superman, who does good because it’s right and not because he wants attention?
Edit: I think most people wanted to be Superman, rather than the Booster Gold role that you’re forced to play as. Based on what I’ve seen from their critiques of the game.
The choices matter thing is a matter of personal preference. And opinion. To you maybe it felt like your choices mattered, but to others it didn’t.
Like I mentioned the Spirit Animals of SoH3. Objectively, it’s a purely aesthetic choice. You get some different dialogue that you’re Ronin will shout and a different type of armor (ninja snake skin for Striped Snake or crocodile armor for the Crocodile). To me, that little choice had a big impact, (because it was such an achievement for our Ronin, and because I cared about my Ronin I found myself caring about that) but others maybe find it a choice that’s aesthetic without a lot of importance.
The problem with this analogy is that being Booster Gold is the key to being Superman. You can’t use your Infini-Powers for the best ending in the first game without sufficient Legend.
Why your social standing as a hero should be of consequence when it comes to using your powers to save people is an absolutely baffling choice. And when the choice is either “be forced to commit murder or possibly enable mass murder because you were focused on doing the right thing” and “be able to get a flawless ending because you were a glory hound”, that’s not really a choice. At the very least, the fact that your spirit animal makes a comeback at a critical point in the story is more controllable.
The legend points would have been cooler if they had been given and gotten applied like hero points and similar in some pen&paper systems.
Like, you get them fof doing something genuinely awesome and can then apply them for ultra-heroic feats.
Diabolical does something like that, iirc.
As they are the points are baffling.
And they can easily mess with the suspension of disbelief. Your points decrease for going on patrol, picking a wrong color and kicking the bucket (so is death a threat in this setting or not?) but you gain them for getting the color right, grovelling to the heroes and picking some (at that point) random villain to be a bigger threat than the guy you hated and who is out for your family.
And that’s just the first installment.
It’s very much subjective. I would just be very interested in someone outlining why they think the HR trilogy does it well. I’m the kind of person who can outline why I think certain things are good, or why I enjoy them, and I like other people being able to do the same. It’s the way you can best improve your own skills in both creating something and reading something.
No disrespect and No offense to you… but i found that argument is a little bit extreme , basically it was something where a vegetarian (No disrespect to vegetarians as well) is telling people that "_Not only the consumption of meat to gain protein is literally meaningless when we can gain the same nutrients from vegetables , but consumption of meat continuously and repeatedly just harm your body over and over again just for the reason of taste _…
I am not sure whether such example is accurately depict the extreme “assumption” of your opinion, and i hope i didn’t offended anyone, and i didn’t mean to disrespect vegetarians because i believe they have their own rights and beliefs … i hope it won’t turn into another big argument, my apology if it cause any discomfort among others…
But what i was trying to say was, these are “radical” assumption where one’s belief tend to disregard points and reasons of others … Even though i admit i favour several other Titles as compare to Hero Rise, but i think the choice(s) we made in Hero Rise do matter, and the writing is actually Good (instead of Bad), the antagonist was NOT badly written to have inexplicably orchestrated everything… in fact i think the plot cleverly depict the inconsistent vengeance mind of a supposedly Antagonist , maybe the so called “reason” for vengeance is actually an excuse for Prodigral’s longing for a friendship/companionship , and due to hatred , her mind is only resided by the image of the protagonist , so she was twisted into giving herself a reason to get close to the protagonist and maybe secretly protected the main character (with the reason of killing the protagonist herself later), without Prodigral clearing the way against Smyther …the protagonist may not even survive the encounter with the Splice Circle… i can think of such similar plot in “The Truman Show” or one episode from “The Twilight Zone”, where the Protagonist’s life is already scripted and manipulated by a third party…
As of why readers prefer a novel where our ego had to be continuously beat down over and over, i believe there is a logical reason for that… It was with the intention that we can remind ourselves to keep our foot on the ground , and the "Choices "we made may bring harm to others even though we gain some benefits of it… I don’t think that was a beat down, in fact it was self-reflecting … i guess many readers found comfort in the lesson of humble self-reflecting instead of power fantasy …
That’s a very good point. It makes as much sense as to why Superman didn’t save the civilians and instead used his laser vision in that one Injustice video game when Bane chucks speeding cars from a high way at him.
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