Jury might’ve had access on two fronts as both the son of the President, and also due to being apart of the Meek initiative. He had access to MeChips that granted him powers, which seems to be very exclusive, especially at the time. Also DaMeChip as brief of an appearance as she makes, works alongside to protect the Infini Regulator with Rexford in the Hero Project.
It’s not implausible.
Add to that the timeframe. This is when he shot Jenny, and thus probably on a massive guilt-trip. Regardless of how you treat Prodigal, the world knows you’re allied with her. Game should’ve provided more, but could see why a repentant Jury would try to help Prodigal at the time. Might’ve been wary, but could’ve been framed in a way that would’ve benefited the PC or help him get back at his father.
Also we both know Prodigal is pretty much a Mary Sue in regards to her powers. She can do anything with technology. She didn’t need to build her weaponry, it just appears. There seems to be some effort/thought into determining defenses and what not of the stuff she’s trying to dismantle or overtake, but her powers have a wide scope. There’s time-frames that can put this project during the novels, or even before. But doubt it’s beyond the scope of her abilities.
That’s not to say the story handled it well. Should’ve told us how Jury had access, why he did it for Prodigal, and a line from Prodigal of when they worked on it and why. Even if it was a ‘contingency’ plan for if things went awry in ‘The Prodigal’ or something.
Actually it’s after the battle. And it’s still an utterly ridiculous pice of crap. Cause LBR: remove chip, delete PG, get new chip. there is literally NOTHING stopping him from not just saying what she’s trying. Oh woe is he, she’s take away his powers. As said: get rid of her, get a new chip.
EDIT:
So, will VS3 even have a story? As much as god-mode-sue as PG is, there should be literally no obstacles at all. She’s too powerful, too everything (yet nothing positive) to work in any given story that requires some failures on the character’s side. Shut her down again? Why bring her in to begin with them. What was that trope called again? knock or Worf?
Ahhh. It was after? Shoot, I thought it was before, that would’ve been more plausible. That cuts off Jury’s access due to the attempted-murder/murder trial he’s about to face, the fall from fame and power due to President Victon’s defeat, and so on.
I mean…he might’ve not had the opportunity to get another MeChip full of powers, but I’m highly skeptical and doubtful of that; so. Yeah. Worse than I thought.
Would’ve worked better to just cut out the middle man and made Prodigal just upload it herself based on a ‘heart-monitor’ sort of shtick.
Edit: In regards to V3, I’m sure if they’re relevant, she’ll do something with tech. But I think she might find alien technology to be something difficult to hamper with due to it being something entirely else. But she was able to put up protocols against Infintum. But struggles to deal with Victon/Meek’s tech.
She MIGHT’VE gained a massive power-boost in her MeChip proliferation and spreading her subconscious across the country, perhaps world and accruing a massive slew of technological might and enhancing that with the Processor’s tech and being taken over.
But Prodigal is Prodigal. She’s a consistent character, imo, outside of being as powerful as the plot demands.
Replaying the trilogy, think she made plenty of chicken-references, and so on, and our interactions with Prodigal were limited to one brief convo outside the Splice Circle Gang, her moment at the reward show, and the final confrontation.
I think HeroFall fleshed her out; but you think it murdered her character when there was only so much to begin with.
I still don’t understand why the military of pretty much any nation didn’t try to shut down Magnuspiral (okay I get that it’s because we need to take down the bad guy but hear me out). So throughout the books we get told that anipowereds are discriminated against and treated like criminals (we only really see them as being actual criminals in the book but thats beside the point). I’m pretty sure that its common knowledge that the Infracircle are radical terrorists. So why does everybody just sit there like, “I’m fine with this, this seems okay to me.” I mean for the most part everybody just kind of seems fine with the people they supposedly hate just forming their own mini nation. Led by terrorists. It just kind of takes away the believability for me when the government doesn’t get involved in matters like this. I mean, I get the whole “Let the superheroes fight it out.” thing but you’d think that the government would be a bit more hesitant to send our old MC to deal with radical extremists after (potentially) sinking the Meeks ship. Plus it seems like something the government or military should handle, not a few heroes. It might also be a good case to show prejudice against anipowereds by showing how an occupation force treats them. But then again they are run by terrorists so… Anyways sorry kind of going off topic. Its just something that was bugging me for a while.
To me the opposite rings true:
HR3 watered her down and flanderized her more than it fleshed her out and it only got worse in RS.
As said before: Sergi IS at his best when he’s writing characters as characters, and in the moments in HR3 when he doesn’t write her as if he has to fulfill a quota of crude no-go ‘jokes’, chicken-fetishization (she was not as obsessed with that in HR1) or reminders how cRaaAAzYyyyyY she is, she’s a pretty good character.
But these moments fell flat in RS and OS and now it’s only ‘loooook how craaaazzyyyy she is’
On the whole handling of the crisis:
Why the everloving f*ck are lyra and GG COORDINATING WORLDWIDE EFFORTS?! They are frigging tv show producers who if anything have proven that they have no bloody clue how to coordinate powers to the best actual effect.
I honestly don’t see Prodigal of HeroFall to be that different from the Prodigy. Your disconnection makes any work post-Prodigy have her appear flanderized.
But even in the Hero Project she was calling us ‘Chicken’. And yeah she has a ‘crazy’ exterior, but she does have the more down to earth moments.
She got so absurdly flanderized in that regard. In HR1 it was a mocking term of pseudo-endearment.
In HR3 and further… it’s technically her whole personality.
The Magnuspiral being ‘radical terrorist leaders’ was the worst element of Open Season. These terrorists could’ve made Magnuspiral as a gift of sorts, left it in capable hands, turned themselves in, gone on the run, or helped Magnuspiral but not led it [at least not directly, I could see them making a bid for power discretely]
Letting a known gang-leader, and a guy who committed mass-murder to power a weapon made to turn people into Ani-powers (City/Nation/World-scale I forget), lead the ‘new nation’ was stupid. And MC for all his feats is not ready to enter a global scale, or leadership over a city. There’s precedents of governing that they sorely lack.
I can see Lyra leading some of the world’s defenses tho. She’s the DPPR head, not JUST a show producer. She’s doing the whole Hero Project again to serve as an advertisement of equality and all that. I can see her having connections.
GG on the other hand got manipulated like fuck. And he’s pretty…like I’m just gonna say I hate GG?
He’s the worst written character in the entire series imo.
As for Lyra:
Again, she has proven to be entirely incompetent and ruthless, which… really, is a big nope.
Granted, lots of the shite in the story stems from the same problem:
Trying to have too many ‘amaaaaaazing plottwists’.
As an author one has to see if a plottwist, an events etc doesn’t actually take away from the story instead of adding to it.
YMMV of course, but if you look at the events and plottwists happening in OS… it comes across as a (soap-opera-) parody instead of anything else.
Well, terrorists gain power in real life all the time. And since anipowereds are pretty much portrayed as cartoon henchmen in the series I’m not surprised they would put the terrorist gang leader in charge. I honestly feel little to no sympathy for the anipowereds. I keep getting told how oppressed they are but all I see is them being thugs and criminals. It makes me kind of glad that the government in the story sees them for the threat they are and keeps a tight leash on them (no pun intended). It sounds mean but unless you show me, not tell me, a reason why I should sympathize with them, I won’t.
But being widely regarded as 'actually a good thing because oh look they want to ‘help’?
The game outright tells us that giving culic what he wants is a horribly-bad idea. Yet we have no choice. And hell, the ending is not much different whn we give him what he wants…
LBR: To move it back into the real world: The game is pretty much saying that everyone should support the IS because they promise ‘glory and freedom’ to muslims…
I think the series really could benefit from shelving characters. That’s not to say you shouldn’t bring some back, Galexa or Verdict were fun to catch up with. But I felt like Culic and Smyther, despite the lines about the InfraCircle in HeroFall really should’ve left in the Devoid. Like the Trilogy-MC wasn’t near their cages or something.
Instead, introducing a new ensemble of characters, and giving us the chance to learn/feel about them, or even making a new order that wasn’t just some the remnants of TWO criminal/terrorist cells.
And you’re not wrong. We kept getting fed this diatribe of ‘Ani-Powereds are repressed and forced to do bad things!’ that falls flat on it’s face when we never see the bad things happening, and just get a loooot of villains.
And don’t get me wrong; terrorists do gain power in real life. I just thought it was in a massive contrast to the plot’s themes. A good chunk of choices presented to you try to make you look like a role model for Ani-Powered people, but your choices end up placing the worst of Ani-Powered representation in the limelight.
It’s just borderline goofy the amount of conflicting messages we get in all the stories. Things like
anipowereds are just oppressed minorities not criminals but lets only show them as criminals. Or that Culic is evil and his plans are bad but we’re going to make you side with him because his plans actually good. And that LGBT and women’s rights have to be fought for in a world without any forms of discrimination towards LGBT people or women. I just don’t really understand what the author was trying to do. Why make activists for rights you already have? Or make the bad guy the person you’re supposed to sympathize with? It’s all very confusing.
I mean this is just me. Besides Heela, [questionably MC/The Menagerie], JK, Transfer, Velocityl, and questionably Cray, what other Ani-Powered individuals were actually not some terrorist/strike/gang member at some point?
Foxbat, Scoundrel, Sheathe, The Hound, Holli, the Primals [Which is like 4-6 members], The Scales, the Cloven, Culic, Speedy, Tarseiro so on?
Heela didn’t get fleshed out, JK’s cool, MC falls flat because propaganda machine for the writer, Transfer’s pretty nice, Velocityl’s circumstances are a bit different but alright, and Cray…well uh. Fought on the side of said terrorists willingly.
And Sergi keeps trying to sell ‘Ani-Powers need more sympathy’ when examples run thin. The best examples are Culic’s brutalizing in Hero Project, and the Uber-proxy driving off.
I suppose. It’s really a shame though. I was a big fan of the original trilogy and could definitely see the potential in this new series. Playing as an anipowered was so cool. Maybe now I could see how they were being oppressed and it could really open up my eyes to their perspective. But frankly I was just disappointed. Like I said in the other topic, I really think my disappointment stems from just how much I liked the original trilogy and how much potential I saw in the new series. If I didn’t like his stories I wouldn’t be disappointed. I’d just move on and forget about it immediately. But its because I liked the series so much that I care enough to be disappointed. And knowing that Open Season is what the series ends on honestly just makes me sad.
Also I think Sergi’s entire message, which is kinda highlighted via the proxy in Miss Boss and The Bear is ‘Everyone faces a form of persecution for their identity and we should fight against that because it’s harmful to the people.’
Also he gave one very finite line about his setting about overcoming sexism, racism, etc. But I don’t think a century would provide that, suspension set aside for a moment. He didn’t stick with his guns either, and there’s still loads of that outdated prejudice and so on.
And the Powered Community at large seems so freaking conflicted.
Energy-wielders hate Fliers, Animalistics hate other Animalistics, Natural Powereds hate other Natural Powereds, Morpho, Disembodied, and Animalistics are repressed, people hate Gene Hazards that dabble in contrasting powers, people are afraid of Infini Powers and the threat they pose to the world, the Meek hate ALL Powered people, there are Powered people via MeChips and people who biological gain power due to the impact of MeChips.
It’s like jeeze; does anybody like ANYBODY?
‘You can fly? And use energy shields?! YOU MONSTER!’
And for a world supposedly ‘beyond’ those initial hurdles, having so many conflicts in the community like that feels like a forced stand-in for the issues he’s locked himself out of.
just look at that ‘slur’:
There’s no consistence if it’s against all genetically powered peeps or ‘just’ those with more than one power.
Also, the way things are written, ‘attractive’ powereds are the most privileged group in the nation if not world.
Anyways sorry kind of going off topic. Its just something that was bugging me for a while.