So yesterday with the Google+ folks (awesome gaming, by the by), the randomiser once gave us the Chairman (whom I've never fought before) operating in...the Ruins of Atlantis??? It felt rather silly to see a bunch of street hooligans, corrupt cops (who have no business being there to begin with, unless Rook City is directly ABOVE Atlantis...hmm...) and Fences walking around ancient ruins, only for the Kraken to immediately show up on the environment's first turn to keep eating poor random mooks. The Kraken turned out to be our biggest friend as he kept devouring all the minions the Organization could have fielded, and let the heroes wail on the Operative then the Chairman himself.
Do any of you try to place certain enemies in areas which would make sense for them to be? Or do you go full Silver Age style and have at it for the lulz? It just struck me as really, really weird, but in a fun way. (I'm not at all biased about the Kraken's help! :P)
Or do any of you come up with really weird justifications for them to be there if they do show up? Granted, certain villains just WORK with all of the environments...
I try to make justifications. Like for your example, I would imagine that there is some priceless artifact that the Chairman wants in the Ruins, so he brought his people there to help look for it. He brought the cops as added protection? Same with hired guns and muscle and stuff. Of course, it IS flimsy, but hey, comic books.
Maybe his immortality was starting to fade and he needed an artifact in Atlantis to continue keeping him alive, but he doesn't want to go in himself, and so he sends in the operative with all the resources he has at his disposal including the cops while he stays in Rook City and monitors their progress. As soon as his underbosses start dying or running away, that's when he realizes that he will need to take care of this himself. Unfortunately, the fighting in Atlantis with the Mystical Defenses, the Kraken, and the Hallway collapsing have caused the destruction of the artifact he had come for in the first place.
I'm a huge justification guy. I find Chairman and Plague Rat are the two I usually have to "strech" the most. Last time I fought the Chairman he was trying to expand his criminal empire by taking over Insula Primalis from Dawn
Yeah, I thought that The Chairman would be wierd in places other than Megalopolis and Rook City, but then I realized that he could have sent The Operative and some of his goons elsewhere to do shady-research stuff. Perhaps they found a time portal and went back in time to steal the 1883 gold, so he could eliminate a major portion of today's wealth, leaving him even richer. Or, he's looking for more ways to make his immortality, and is sending some people to research, thus putting him in conflict with the heros. Or, as Cmschex said, he's trying to take things from Dawn. All these justifications seem a bit odd, but then you have to remember that it's comics we're talking about.
It is funny to think of justifications for various Villians being in different environments. Some are much harder than others though. Such as where are all these lost children coming from in the Tomb of Anubis? Why is there even a priest handing out soup inside the Realm of Discord? Why is there an innocent bystander witnessing someone getting beaten in the Final Wasteland? Spite is one of my favorite ones to ponder about with all this, as he never seems to be short in supply of victoms where ever he goes. I sometimes wonder if he brings people along with him and releases them so he can hunt them. It's like the Most Dangerous Game.
With Plague Rat I tend to think someone unknowingly got infected and went somewhere and turned into a monster where ever that location happened to be... Or in Realm of Discord, Time Cataclysm, or Silver Gulch there was a portal that opened up and brought him there. As for the Final Wasteland I imagine he was trapped in a block of ice and was finally set free by an earthquake or something.
I often wondered why Mad Bomber Blade wanted to blow up the Mars Base instead of just activating th Self Destruct Sequence, but... someone pointed out to me that he was trying to pull the moon to the Earth so his plans doesn't seem to make too much since in the first place... He even tries pulling the moon to Mars... Or pulling the moon to the Realm of Discord... Wait a minute... Does that mean the Realm has a moon?
Oh the joys of living in a comic book Universe, everything that doesn't make sense still makes sense in some kind of weird way.
I originally thought that every villain had their own "native" environment (blade on the mars base-why drag the moon into the earth if you're on the earth too; citizens in insula primalis- clearly; omnitron in megalopolis- i think that's referenced, but so are the citizens; and voss in atlantis because weird but also because it makes sense for tempest and maybe he's hunting tempest)
Then the expansions torpedo'd my lovely synergies by not having as many environments.
Frankly, in both a game play and a storytelling sense, the environments mess with everything. It's awesome and frustrating all at once. (It's also the thing that keeps the game from being "follow these steps and you will beat the villain every time)
With Baron Blade, I like to just think of his Moon Crashing Into The Earth thingy as a generalized death ray of doom. Easier to, ah, adjust to the environment that way. Also, I think this was posted before, but wouldn't it be cool if say, it was in Insula Primalis, and Spite wasn't just murdering random citizens but, you know, Citizens?
Everyone besides Blade was stated to have a native environment in the base. Voss's first arrival is actually in Megalopolis, Omnitron was created on the Mars Base, and Dawn lives in Insula Primalis. So maybe Blade does have his beam set-up in Atlantis, who knows?
Rook City all the Rook City villians fit into the Rook City environments. Well besides Matriarch, I don't really see her in Pike.
Infernal Relics only has GloomWeaver for the Realm and Ennead for the Tomb. Apostate and Akash'Bhuta seem to have been environmentless.
Shattered Timelines I can see Iron Legacy and La Capitan being the Time Cataclysm, While Kismet has the Block. Sadly the Dreamer is now left without a home to call her own.
The Mini-Expansion villians are also left without their own environment. So sad indeed!
I always just imagined Akash coming from somewhere like Insula Primalis, then spreading from there to, well, everywhere. The whole Earth is her dominion, yes?
She does have some art with dinosaurs, and good synergy with all those tough Environment Targets. Dawn must be pissed.
What I really adore is Akash'Bhuta on Mars. She's the destructive spirit of the Earth... transported? It's like that terrible Final Fantasy movie. Also, Spite could concievably find victims almost anywhere except for The Pyramid of Anubis (those poor mummies) and The Final Wasteland. That last one really gets me, since humanity has died out long since. Maybe he's holding Eternal Haka's books hostage?
Mostly, though, the villains pretty versatile, and stories about Cosmic Omnitron trying to unmake the Realm of Chaos (and thereby end all sentient thought) for the Lord of Order which restored it, or Akash'Bhuta rising below Atlantis excite me much more, as a rule, than the villains staying in the most expected places for them.
Ironic
P.S. Also, I assume that whenever you fight Plague Rat, it's a different person who mutated into it.
All are good points! And quite honestly, I suppose if you get something TRULY ridiculous, you could chalk it up to that being one of the stranger adventures the Freedom Five had back in the 60's era of publishing...
Akash'Bhuta could be argued for Megalopolis or Rook City, because she could be coming to destroy the cities that she sees as a blight upon her earth.
And I'm one of those people who just cannot play the Chairman on anywhere else but Rook City. it just doesn't make too much sense, and it gives me a good excuse to keep Chairman as an incredible challenge. Chairman on Rook City just makes for such an incredible challenge, I can't help but to always play there.
La Capitan can basically go anywhere. But mainly Time Cataclysm.
I'm fine with Dreamer anywhere--if she can dream up monsters that come to life an attack us, wouldn't it make sense that she can dream up locations that appear to us?
On the one hand, I wanted to fight Akash'bhuta on Insula Primalis, and Citizen Dawn on the Wagner Mars Base ("Sunlight? STARLIGHT!"). On the other hand, I deliberately put Apostate in Rook City and Chairman in the Realm of Discord. Sometimes you just have to mix it up. I never do random though.
I mean, you've got Spite and the Chairman both in Rook City…