Miss Information confuses me as a story-line element.
All of the other villains I understand that they could be in these strange places for strange reasons and that, like all other comics heros, never actually die or stay in prison long. But the scenario with Miss Information always starts out with her as the secretary and there are lots of comments in the flavor text. So while it make sense how other villains would be encountered multiple times, I can't understand how the heroes would keep coming up against them over and over.
It would seem that, despite finding out that she's an imposter of some sort, they continue to hire her over and over. Are they crazy? I suppose I would understand it if, once being revealed, she becomes a supervillain in her own right, but her deck's replayability doesn't really tell that story.
Perhaps her "condition" comes and goes, where sometimes she slips back into the time stream in which she is a loyal employee, but even then, I doubt they'd let her get near the important equipmant if they knew about mood swings like that.
Anyhow, I realize it's a game and that this was a player contribution, and I also think she's pretty fun to play against, but I was just trying to make sense of the story in my head. Any thoughts?
I can wrap my brain around how Missy functions in nearly any environment, but the part that gives me a problem is the idea of repeatedly fighting her with the same heroes and having them still not recognize her as a target until they find enough Clues. The best I can do is shift her non-target status from "perceived as an innocent" to "cannot be located". But this requires major reflavoring of several of her cards. She's definitely one of the villains that requires more squinting to make sense of...but then, she was a stretch goal, it's not too surprising that she'd be a bit further from the pale. If Baron Blade or Iron Legacy were making us scratch our heads like this, it would be more of a problem.
I wouldn't pay too much attention to the art and flavor text; these are just examples.
Because the storyline of the game focuses on a relatively narrow point of time? In the storyline, how often do you think they have run into Baron Blade? Dude needs to take time out to come up with his next harebrained idea and see it to its inevitable frustrating (for him) fruitition. Miss Information as the secretary until they figure it out is pretty much it. After that, there's no going back to being a secretary without some mental manipulation going on (Dark Visionary?), because either they wouldn't be able to trust her once they know, or she'd be paranoid waiting for one of them to remember.
Each of the battles likely only happens once (or a few times, in the case of mega-villains like Dawn), and each battle has an endpoint.
For Voss, the climax of the boss fight (since htey absolutely had to fight his minions...) is him getting shoved into somewhere by nightmist. He's not coming back. Its entirely reasonable to fight him several times and think that (in terms of the plot) he retreats on a dropship to the dark side so of the moon to come back with a fresh batch. Or you can think of it as being 1 massive battle that results in his defeat.
But the thing is, this is a multiverse. Each time we fight them ,it could represent an instance in (one of) the potential multiverses where our battle happens. This is especially true for Miss information, since she is a dimension-hopper in the first place. So its entirely reasonable (by the logic Sentinels establishes) that there is a core, canon universe where specific things happen- where each villain is fought by a specific group, at a specific time, in a specific place. But each time we set up a battle, it could represent a multiverse where our specific heroes fought the villains in our locations, at our times.
So each time you fight Miss Information, you are going up against a different iteration of her, in a different universe. and each time it is a fresh betrayal and a fresh reveal.
If you check through the flavor text and what not, you'll see its believed that Aminia Twain was their Secretary for over two decades in Real Time comic book lines (meaning in book time could be a LOT longer or even shorter, but either way 20 some years for readers to get to know and understand this character) before her betrayal and becoming of Miss Information.
While fighting her multiple times doesn't seem to make sense, you also have to recall that this game is actually telling an overarching story from Christopher in this universe. Miss Information is a part of that story
In the same way, Iron Legacy isn't fought multiple times. The Story of the Mulitverse has the timelines shatter, the heroes find out about Iron legacy, and go to defeat him / put the universe back together. The Dreamer doesn't fall into multiple coma's and start spitting out Projections - it happens once because of Visionary coming back in time and splitting the timelines.
We just get to fight the same battle a second time to experience it from a different set of heroes Point of View or try for a better/different outcome… hence… The Multiverse (Alternate dimension and split timelines)
I think the ideas of the multiple fights in different multiverses is probably the best argument for it. That makes a sort of sense. It's still not as palatably pleasing as the other villains, but it does make sense.
In the "canon timeline", the heroes only face Miss Information herself once, but all of the lead up diversions and traps she laid took place over a longer period of time. Certainly not her entire employment, but when she "turned" (as it were), there was a not-short amount of time in which she was sabotaging the heroes before she was found out.
That said, the "final confrontation" only takes place once... per timeline.
Really you are only limited by your imagination when it comes to figuring out a rational for your fight senarios. There truely isnt a right/wrong way to look at any given game from a narrative perspective. And I 101% dissagree with Envisioner that you need "major flavor restructuring" to make them work.
The second time I faced Miss Info, I imagined the heros knew full well who she was and knew she was up to something. So they still had to search for clues to uncover her plan and finaly catch up to her and hope to stop her. Each time you face her, depending on the environment/hero setup, you can create a storyline based around this senario and easily have it make a satisfying thematic experience.
These are great excersices in "abstract thought" which is a sorely underdeveloped muscle in our internet age.
I don't expect you to answer this, but I'll take a shot. Are there any timelines where she doesn't go rouge at all? Or is her turning a "fixed event" so to speak?
Yes, this is also a way that I look at things sometimes, like she is no longer their secretery, but she still has all of their information and she's using it from afar to get the heroes in trouble until they can lock her in place to have an actual show-down.
I just view it like we're re-visiting a classic encounter in a reboot of a comic book franchise. Seriously, how many times has the meeting of Lex Luthor and Superman been told over the years (many, I'm guessing), and that's just in the comics. Toss in the movies and TV, and you'll be seeing that same encounter over and over 'til you can't stands it no more.
Is that a fixed point though? It's strongly implied that that's only one possible future, and giant rat beasts and huge death-worms are pretty far from entropy...
Wasn't Amina's betrayal brought about by an invader from an alternate timeline co-opting her mind (very similar to Visionary)? If so, the betrayal can occur mutliple times, just as Jarvis has been mind controlled more than once, and Alfred was (pre-pre-crisis) also the sinister and super-powered Outsider. As such, she can be freed from her other self's influence but eventually succumbs again with each time the heroes, and Amina, beliving the problem is solved.
I thought the point wasn't that another mind invaded her body but that she was another version of herself, that in Universe 1 the Sentinels didn't save her and that something else happened that transplanted her to Universe Fighting Mongooses.