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Geneforge 5 - Background of the hero


vau0807
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There have been long arguments on the subject. Many characters from previous Geneforge games come up, most often previous protagonists and Monarch. No options are a perfect fit.

 

—Alorael, who gets the feeling that Jeff didn't have a specific history in mind. The protagonist is an amnesiac who never finds the truth. You can choose your own history, or decide that the protagonist was really an overpowered nobody, or just accept that the past is lost.

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  • 2 weeks later...

You can play as a servile in 5, right? Does that change anything about your "identity"? It seems difficult for it to be someone who may or may not have been a servile. Although there is someone in G1 who is convinced that the base material for serviles is human beings, so I suppose it is conceivable that some sort of weird shaping mishap turned you into a servile...

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There are some things that being a servile can rule out. You can't have been the PC of any other game besides Geneforge 4, for example. You can't have been Monarch. But no, none of the minimal information about your murky past available in the game changes.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't think any one past identity is a good match for all possible G5 PCs. You could argue that it's multiple choice and different G5 PCs were different previous PCs or NPCs. But it's still all left vague.

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I actually find it an interesting subversion of expectations. In so many stories, the amnesiac-protagonist-finds-identity plot is tired trope. In G5, Jeff pitches out expectations by giving an amnesiac protagonist with no actual backstory or discovery of old identity.

 

An interesting side effect of amnesia background is that it really makes easy to justify joining any faction. You truly start as a blank slate. In all the earlier Geneforge games, I always felt compelled stay with whatever affiliation my character began the game (shaper in G1/2/3, rebel in G4), unless I could rationalize some really profound or transformative experience that would sway the character to change worldview / side.

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I actually find it an interesting subversion of expectations. In so many stories, the amnesiac-protagonist-finds-identity plot is tired trope. In G5, Jeff pitches out expectations by giving an amnesiac protagonist with no actual backstory or discovery of old identity.

 

One man's interesting subversion is another man's frustrating loose end.

 

An interesting side effect of amnesia background is that it really makes easy to justify joining any faction. You truly start as a blank slate. In all the earlier Geneforge games, I always felt compelled stay with whatever affiliation my character began the game (shaper in G1/2/3, rebel in G4), unless I could rationalize some really profound or transformative experience that would sway the character to change worldview / side.

The Geneforge games are chock full of transformative experiences, and the G1 & G3 protagonists were barely Shapers at all, at least in terms of mentality.

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Ehh, I didn't say it was Great Storytelling ™. :D I just said it was an interesting subversion. ;) Overall, more backstory might have made for a better game. But that doesn't negate the interesting quality of the way Jeff did it.

 

Even the shaper apprentices you play in G1/2/3 have already undergone years of preparation / training just to get where they are in their training. That sounds like some kind of commitment to me.

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I'm only going to say that I'm currently playing G5 for the first time, and I was clearly disappointed when I visited that "witch" or fortuneteller at Dera reaches, only to hear her rambling shady, vague stuff about my Sorceress' background.

 

Not that I do not understand what Triumph is trying to say -I see the value for trying this-, but I must admit that I was expecting some little hint, something that pointed to a clear but vague direction about his/her identity.

 

Personally, I like to think that my sorceress is the amnesiac version of my G3 agent ^_^

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  • 2 weeks later...

The lack of any sort of resolution to the amnesia plot was what put Geneforge 5 on the bottom of the pile in the list of my favorite Geneforge games. When you start out the game it seems to be one of the most important motivations for actually doing what people say. You get strung along for a long time and at the end of the road the whole plot point just seems to be a long red herring. Rather irritating IMO in that several faction members/leaders *hint* that they know you, but refuse to tell you anything. I was really hoping that my choice of a Rebel/Shaper would have some sort of impact on a hypothetical reveal. Were you a Rebel recruit? An experiment gone wrong? A lifecrafter who took one too many cannisters? Geneforge reject? A shaper who found a few of the canisters that the Rebels strew along the countryside to mess up the unfamiliar ala Geneforge 3? Someone who got their mind and body blasted by one of the shaping traps like in the last level of Geneforge 4?You never find out, and since you are already warped massively by shaping, the canister/geneforge mechanic has no impact on anything besides one dialogue. The problem with the 'blank slate' character design of Geneforge 5 is that there really isn't anything to fill it in. You don't know anything or anyone, you don't have friends, family, and organization whose well being you are invested in. Your ability to acquire some sort of mentor/companion figure is severely limited. You are used and abused by everyone around you and it never really felt to me like your character was allowed to become your own IMO. You remain a blank slate for the entirety of the game. I felt that In G5 you are kinda just a confused glowing hunchback pushed out the door by Rawal, whereas in the other Geneforges I felt that much more immediate connection for the events of the game to build off of (and were more effectively built off of)

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Strange. I had an opposite reaction. The other Geneforge PCs are nameless, faceless, and without friends, family, or attachments before the game begins. The Geneforge 5 PC is the same, really, but there's at least a reason for that (amnesia) and an open invitation to speculate. A PC given a second chance to turn against the Shaper oppressors, or to repent his reckless work as a lifecrafter, makes an interesting story whether it's official or not.

 

—Alorael, who has said before and maintains that he was actually most satisfied by the lack of an answer. It's a subversion of the expectations of the amnesiac PC. You don't learn your past. Your past does not determine who you are. You're an unknown quantity of unknown provenance and you make the most of it.

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The other Geneforge PCs are nameless, faceless, and without friends, family, or attachments before the game begins.

Not really true, at least not for Geneforge 2 and 3. In 2 you are quite attached to Shanti and in 3 you have Alwan, Greta and the rest of the school that you care about. Or at least that is what the game assumes.
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Not really true, at least not for Geneforge 2 and 3. In 2 you are quite attached to Shanti and in 3 you have Alwan, Greta and the rest of the school that you care about. Or at least that is what the game assumes.

Exactly. I felt a much more strong connection to my character in those games because you have a much more clear stake in what happens. (when playing the shaper path in G3, I recall a point where Litalia (might have ben Blaze) on no uncertain terms threatens you character's family on the mainland) It made my actions feel like they carried more weight IMO. I think geneforge 4 also works very well in this regard because even if the opening doesn't really give much for you to work with right off the bat, you work very closely with whatever side you choose to go with, and I think it works very well for making you feel invested with the factions. Geneforge 5 is in a peculiar place because it makes uncovering your background and dealing with amnesia a major plot point in the early game, which silently and suddenly peters out around the time you use the geneforge. I don't think this would be as much of a problem to me except that the game simultaneously makes such a big deal out of it, and then proceeds to relegate it to the 'D' plot. You can choose between shaper and rebel classes, but it doesn't affect anything, characters like Greta and Litalia will hint that they know you but never reveal any information to you. and at the farthest end of the continent, after fighting through mutant drakons and navigating a minefield you finally reach the person who supposedly can answer your questions only to get a more useless answers. Combined with the other main personal plot, the control tool, deflating in a similarly anticlimactic way, and the removal of one of the core character-defining choices in Geneforge games-the canister side effects, I think that the geneforge 5 protagonist is probably the least interesting to play for me-I found it highly disappointing how it was handled. Personally I think Spiderweb should have gone with another generic shaper/rebel recruit and have it take off from there, preferably with a sidekick or two like in G3, a mentor figure like Shanti, or a 'home base' sort of place to tie the character from like the academy in G3 or the citadel in G4. As for the question of identity of the G5 protagonist, Some dialogue seems to hint at your character being ex-rebel, which would seem to make sense, being all mutated by self shaping and all that. Personally I like to think that the character is *not* one of the protagonists from the previous games, because I would hate to think of some of my old protagonists messing themselves up with canisters/geneforge like the G5 protagonist seems to have done.

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