Re: "Hitting Betweenford on the Head":
That could have had a lot of effects, from angering Betweenford ("Did you just hit me with your Soul Star?" "My what?") to destroying the Astral Influx ("Everyone knows Soul Stars are fragile!" "What are fragile?").
Considering that FFS felt the need to double-check if we really wanted to do that, I'd lean more towards the stranger, more story-relevant results. Getting Betweenford to murder us all could count, but I'm leaning more towards breaking it or switching to him or something bizarre like that.
Re: "Changes":
How about when Al brought us back to life? Or Riltia turning into an Illborn? Or recruiting an upper minion of a Sibling? Or Yaos?...
And when the people in charge are noting anomalies, something weird is going on...
Chief mentioned that Al makes something of a habit of reviving people; there's no particular reason to suspect Ciro couldn't be among them.
The voice mentioned Riltia would have "learned this trick in a few more levels anyway" or similar, and even if not, remember that it was done on purpose by (who we presume to be) one of the Siblings. Unless there was something absolutely and utterly bizarre about the circumstances under which she died, there's no reason to think her revival was any more peculiar.
When did we recruit the upper minion of a Sibling? You mean Al? Al appears to be something of a free agent even if he is in league with them. If you mean Riltia, again, the circumstances weren't bizarre, there's no reason to assume the effect was. Especially since, again, they then decided to rez her specifically because her part wasn't done yet. That doesn't sound like an anomaly to me.
Yaos is indeed an anomaly, but we haven't seen any causes or effects of that beyond being strange. We and presumably the Warrens are in pretty much identical shape to where we'd have been if he hadn't shown up.
Finally, "anomaly" does not mean "everything has gone to hell." Not finding any anomalies can count as an anomaly, for instance, because it's just bizarre that an experiment or survey or game would go completely smoothly and predictably. The Siblings talking about anomalies means they've found things they didn't expect or don't understand, not necessarily that the whole thing has gone off the rails in any appreciable sense.
People have entered the Warrens before, but their charge gets depleted. And they resume life as a husk of their former Selves.(unless hostile)
I think it is just a person who accepted their fate as an Illborn, so they became completely and entirely monstrous as a result.
Yaos accepted his fate to die when we told him. He Willingly accepted his fate.
Or perhaps, it is what happens when a person goes far into the negatives of Soul Charge, not only deactivating their soul, but corrupting it(not like Rilitia star corruption, hopefully)
As mentioned, I have serious issues with a theory that holds "giving up" or similar as the difference between a depressed villager and an arena-warping boss that can't even be battled from the outside.
What I mean is, if Al wasn't in the party he probably wouldn't even be around to switch to. Without his backup, Ciro might have the sense to not aggro the searchbots, or at least run away when they prove to be extremely powerful. I think the divergence is the fact that we switched perspective to Al and then died so we couldn't switch back, which lead to Al leaving the village with Cherish and Riltia (in most cycles, we probably just meet up with Riltia at the village) which then led to that whole bizniz outside the Greens.
Again though, what makes you say switching to Al was different in a practical sense, not just a narrative one? Mightn't everything have occurred exactly like it did, only we didn't see it and so just sort of skipped to the part where we woke back up in the Greens, Al there, Cherish and Riltia suspiciously missing?
Riltia dying and being manipulated into some superpowered Illborn, for starters. We know that was weird, we got a cutscene explaining so! As GWG said, I'm assuming that each cycle isn't identical, it just follows the same pattern, so when the people in charge note an anomaly severe enough to threaten the cycle, it's probably pretty damn weird.
I don't entirely recall the cutscene, but I do recall one of them mentioning that "No fear, another few levels and she'd have learned this trick on her own!" or similar. Plus, again, nothing about her death seemed massively strange, so it's hard to figure out why reviving her would be.
And again, "anomaly" doesn't mean "serious problem that's never happened before," it just means thing you weren't expecting or don't understand. Did they explicitly mention "threatening the cycle" somewhere?
If so, that'd raise the question of what they mean by "the cycle."
I think Emerald is right on this one. FFS confirmed that Illborn are beings without Soul Charge, which makes Willborn a subset of Illborn (since we know Yaos became Willborn by the same mechanism Illborn are created.) The biggest difference between Yaos and, say, Slog, is that he has his Soul Star.
Maybe. This would still raise a lot of questions, though.
For one thing, I don't think we understand what happened to Yaos well enough to say it's the same as Illborn creation. We know running out of soul charge looked like it was involved, but that's like saying it looked like running out of HP was involved with Riltia's transformation.
For another, there's the whole "Two great souls destined to fight" or similar aspect. Was that a cause, effect, or neither of Yaos running out of charge, transforming, or being there at all? We're not sure.
Then there's the questions this raises about just what Soul Stars are and signify. This would seem to make them more significant than we thought, but we still don't know who gets one and why, or why they'd interact with a lack of soul charge to transform you into a horrible monster.
Finally, this raises the question of how Willborn come about normally. Yaos was an oddity, in that his Soul Star's powers and/or his intrusion into the Warrens seemed to sap soul charge. How would anyone else become a Willborn via this system? Just sort of not kill anything or have any life-changing experiences for a while and then go all Final Form in the middle of nowhere? Spend it all attempting alternate battle types and then turn into yet another alternate battle type?
She was in the revival tube with us. I don't think anyone futzed with her body, but it wasn't there when we went back to shove Slog in there.
Do we know that for a fact? I recall a theory that we absorbed her blood and/or femininity, but not any actual clues as to where she went or why her resurrection failed. Do we even know for a fact that it failed, or just assuming based on Sibling Chatter and her lack of presence?
Except FFS already confirmed Yandere Riltia was Illborn, by reason of zero Soul Charge. That's why I'm on the "Willborn are a subset of Illborn" theory.
This reminds me of
another question.
We know that Illborn can acquire soul charge by stealing it from non-Illborn. What we don't know is what happens when they do so. Do they become non-Illborn, and if so just what connotations does that have? Do they just become more cheerful villagers or acid maggots that could dance battle if they really wanted to? We know they want to not be Illborn anymore, but I'm not sure we ever figured out conclusively why.
As a corollary to that, of course, what happens to Willborn when they regain some soul charge? Nothing? De-transformation? Final
final final form?
Consider Slog's backstory.
Perhaps we should be looking at WHEN they lose any soul/soul charge instead of HOW they lose it. Those who lose their soul on entry become Illborn, while those who keep their soul but run out of charge inside become Willborn- the latter being far more dangerous.
In other words, let's not let Al run out of charge.
Also a plausible theory, which implies that Yandere Riltia was not just Illborn, but Willborn.
Which is a problem, because FFS mentioned that she was Illborn and, aside from hideousness and size, bore no real resemblance to Yaos.
I guess we could have just oversouled Riltia back to normal whereas Yaos we had to invade the soul of to battle "normally," but that still raises the question of what exactly oversoul did or can do, and whether that was included when Ciro mentioned that you "can't fight them."
But considering the "Link System" that FFS proposed once, it seems possible there was something more going on. BTW we still haven't had any confirmation if that is going to be a thing or not.
i have so many aborted games that could be hooked up to that link system, it would be utterly silly and utterly, pitifully abusable
I have absolutely no idea what kind of a sick mind would create a new game just to link it to this one, and object to this unreasonable and slanderous insinuation about my intentions and motives.
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Topic: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome ??? (Read 3741765 times)