Post by Ralynn in Eternum comments

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I agree on the casual violence. When the “nuke” went off I actually saw her as a villain because she destroyed an entire world (also fitting to have a villain speech). How is that better than aliens??? Particularly if you know npcs are people! The casual violence has me wondering if the mc is a villain .

The other weird is why the mc is world hopping as it seems likely to accrue more risk of actual death and no inventory access (and then how did nova have access to her gun?, was it like the gems? Can she then conjure in “real dimension “?) cool to have but it seems really weird. I was surprised nova and mc didn’t go back before starting the pirate adventure. I kinda feel like the mc has some brain damage or something to not care about that risk to him and people he theoretically cares about. There was mention of potential tracking, but my impression is that it’s still a game (so far) and why would you put your life on the line?

Those are my two main notes apart from another that was deleted.

atellia18 days ago (2 edits) (+1)

Well, if you're talking about the Andromeda thing with Annie and Luna, I don't agree for this particular point, as it was highly implied that the sector was evacuated and there was nobody else left on this planet (well, except a certain person looking for nests, as we learned later). If there was still people there, either players or NPC, they would certainly have been killed by Xenomorphs soon after anyway, so the spell didn't change anything. Was more something like “desperate situation” than “free violence” at this specific point.

For your second point, Orion explicitly said that Dione was bound to Nova just as the Gems were bounds to him at the time he was talking about them at the very beginning. But I agree it's weird that it's possible in Eternum with real bodies but not in “the real world”, I'm waiting to see how the story will deal with magic in the next chapters.

I also agree they should have go back to “the real world” before going to the ship (thought about it while playing), but that didn't look too weird they didn't, because it felt like an understandable combination between “need to hurry before the island disappear” (wouldn't have been that long, thought) and “too excited by the situation to think about what would normally be obvious”.

Ralynn17 days ago

Thanks for taking the time to reply and push back!

real world thought: complete evacuations would be tough and money is always a thing in a capitalist world. The time and resources to move a metric crap ton of people (npcs) is not small. We seem to be weaving in and out of it being a computer world to infect an alternate reality, but it appears there’s no way for a programmer to make npcs be gone. I would assume npcs would be left behind (money? They’re also npcs so why would they deviate?) AND the d assume that other alien killers would go to where the most aliens are (less problems as we know players don’t suffer harm). Without some sort of verification… that’s serious villain behavior from an alternate perspective. The lack of empathy or thought for others is concerning to me coupled with this rash of cold blooded killings (or missed love points so kill I must). Sure it’s a game, but it’s also a super realistic VR meaning it wouldn’t feel different than doing said actions in the real world. Except it’s also not a game, as we have been toldand if I were in that situation I’d be pausing to ponder the moral implications of the alternate reality/dimension and the life it contains and the death I caused

I know I think too much on things, but there’s some serious villain stuff going on if the MC were instead an adversary. lots of power, doesn’t care who dies to achieve goals

“They’d be dead anyway”. Fair point but interesting that the mc puts winning over helping or even asking the questions on if they could or should help before everyone dies. Makes me go hmmm

Gun being bound same as gems. Cool, I didn’t remember that, but that makes sense. So, if things are other realities and dimensions, that means the Mc is carrying in the real world as is nova. I expect we will see that at some point when the Mc figures that crap out and also pulls on their powers. Could be a while as the mc seems really slow in the cognitive realm.

I might have fun writing an essay about how the mc is delusional. If the story is from his point of view and his view is flawed… he could be thinking his ten minutes of happy time with the girls is amazing and they’re all, in reality, going “that’s it?” That could be a fun thought experiment.

Anyway, thanks again for taking time to explain. I do appreciate it.

atellia17 days ago

NP, you're welcome! :-)

I was assuming Ulysses has enough control over NPC to have them move without the real world difficulties. Probably partly due to Nova screaming about becoming a brainless one losing control of her own actions if she died at the beginning of the chapter. Anyway, I took the announcement about the zone no longer being under Praetorian watch when they arrived there as a way to say “there's no more people here, only Xenomorphs”, so I didn't thought about any potential human (either player or NPC) victim… until we talked about somebody later, but I saw him as an unlucky exception.

I'd say it has to be put in perspective with their reaction when learning about the incubator room at the end of the chapter: they ostensibly do worry about both players and NPC used by the Sultan and think that being infected by the Xenomorphs is far from a good think, so I'd say if there's a problem here, it's more about not thinking enough about the situation and possible drawbacks/backfires, which is also consistent with them being mostly teenagers.

(And this conversation suddenly reminds me about the “superheroes not being careful enough” trope.)

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