Oro's always had the ability to kill Hazo and run away consequence free (alertness 36 remember?) Biosealing or no. For years. The bioseal is immaterial to whether or not Oro can kill us and escape scot-free. If Hazo hadn't accepted the bioseal, the same exact outcome could have happened, on this exact same chapter, but with a knife instead! (or whatever bs Oro S-rank attack) That's the problem with introducing a pycho overpowered players into a quest. We (the playerbase) never got any real cards to play if Oro suddenly decided to one day want us dead. Hazo's been alive at Oro's pleasure for years now. Maybe the QMs say runecrafting or whatever, tipped the scales behind the scene and led to Oro killing us today. But it doesn't really matter! It's been baked into the cake for years! The QMs placed a malevolent S-rank god in our presence. It's always been the case that if Oro decides Hazo's dead, he's dead! We were basically forced to accept that Oro wasn't gonna one-shot kill us, as we were never given any real alternative.
A year later, Oro decides to wake up and kill us, yadda, yadda. Sure whateves. But that doesn't change that fact? Like you put a S-rank villian next to us with no outs. Saying, "Ha, ha you guys died" a year later down the road doesn't really do much. (in the fun department) It's just sorta bad game design. And the QMs sorta acknowledge they don't want to do that. That's why in this chapter we're provided the whole rational on the "Reasons Why The Biosealing Wasn't Actually A Forced Decision" and everything we could have done differently. But if the QMs zoom out a little, you have to ask if we (the playerbase) were ever given any real alternative to NOT working in close contact with Oro in this quest and still winning? I would say the answer is a pretty easy no. Do you disagree?
@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped
First, we want to say that we think that taking the bioseal was a reasonable option that the players had available at the time, given the information they had. It's a risk-reward tradeoff, and this was optimal along some axes (e.g. minimizing odds of being discovered by Hidan while setting up at the rift).
That said, we disagree that Orochimaru would have been able to kill Hazou trivially without the bioseal. Prior to taking the bioseal, Hazou was reasonably paranoid around Orochimaru -- meeting only with shadow clones, keeping the Prime body away and well equipped. It would have imposed costs to keep this up for the remainder of the arc, but we don't currently think it would have been impossible. That is -- we don't think the Alertness/Athletics in the 30s meant Hazou was always going to die, since his narrative precautions can trump Orochimaru's stats.
(Aside: yes, Orochimaru could have killed Hazou without the bioseal given the specific events of the chapter, where Hazou Prime and Orochimaru were alone in the woods. With the bioseal, Hazou already couldn't survive, so we elected to at least write a more dramatic and compelling chapter. See:
The specific details of the encounter are immaterial. Once the killswitch had been implanted, even interacting with the world exclusively through shadow clones would only have delayed the inevitable until the killswitch popped, or Hazō's next bioseal upkeep appointment, or equivalent. [...] We thought it better not to prolong the situation and instead face it head-on.
In an alternate, no-bioseal universe, we wouldn't have fiat declared "Hazou Prime is going into the woods with Orochimaru" because Hazou would not be dead-but-for-the-timer)
Could Orochimaru have maybe found non-biosealed!Hazou's location and killed him? Possibly, yes. But it would be uncertain, and if Orochimaru failed, Hazou would be infinitely more paranoid and Orochimaru might never have gotten a good opportunity again. Instead, Orochimaru would continue waiting for a good opportunity. He might have killed Hazou at a later date, since without planting a bioseal and playing his hand, Orochimaru could continue to butter up Hazou, and Hazou might eventually let down his guard and interact with Orochimaru in a way that isn't mediated by miles of distance and shadow clones. However, that outcome wouldn't be certain, and would be left up to a series of player decisions, meaning there would be opportunities to decide to stay away forever, or somehow convince Orochimaru that Hazou was safe, or to arrange Orochimaru's death, or...
