Overlady: Attack of the Minions (Thread II)

[SwiftRosenthal]

Yup, the story said it was literally this. If it wasn't Evil magical assassins killing off family, it was crusader Good killing off their Evil counterparts.

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I read it as something closer to "Evil royal believes they're the Good one, then kills off or otherwise neutralizes 'Evil' counterpart." The actual scene with Isabella trying so hard to justify herself as Good only seemed to reinforce this.

 

[Candesce]

Not really. We've seen, what, three so far? Dani, Kirche and Don Marikos. And Dani mentioned that the last evil half-sibling to try to kill him was female.

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And possibly Izah'belya, as well.

 

[Aleph]

As pointed out, the current generation of princesses have... issues.

 

[mdkcde]

First off I met Blitzhart von Zerbst not Kirche. Sorry if that caused any un-dew confusion.
Anyway why is Louise the story hero, and not just the protagonist? Well lets look at what she done from atop the 4th wall.
Louise slays routinely homicidal man eating monster
She routinely depopulates the local goblin presses
She rescued a princess from un-lawful captivity, and has the stated goal helping put said princess back on her lawful throne
She brought a corrupt nodelman who was embezzling tax revenue to Justice
She disarmed a magical nuclear bomb

Meanwhile we have more less confirmations that Blitzhart is some combination of a repast, murder, and thief.

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I think that's the joke (?). For all his douchebaggery Blitzhart always does more good than evil on the world(?)

 

[Red Sectoid]

First off I met Blitzhart von Zerbst not Kirche. Sorry if that caused any un-dew confusion.
Anyway why is Louise the story hero, and not just the protagonist? Well lets look at what she done from atop the 4th wall.
Louise slays routinely homicidal man eating monster
She routinely depopulates the local goblin presses
She rescued a princess from un-lawful captivity, and has the stated goal helping put said princess back on her lawful throne
She brought a corrupt nodelman who was embezzling tax revenue to Justice
She disarmed a magical nuclear bomb

Meanwhile we have more less confirmations that Blitzhart is some combination of a repast, murder, and thief.

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Was someone questioning that? I just scroll down. That's always been the point to Overlord in that since Gentleman Overlord was canon the Overlord was always less evil than the heroes i.e.)Hobbit Guy/Mindfucked Elf/Goldo/Paladin Guy/Jewel/Empire

Really only Kahn/The Wizard didn't really do anything too bad Kahn was an idiot in love and we never met the real Wizard

 

[JumperPrime]

First off I met Blitzhart von Zerbst not Kirche. Sorry if that caused any un-dew confusion.
Anyway why is Louise the story hero, and not just the protagonist? Well lets look at what she done from atop the 4th wall.
Louise slays routinely homicidal man eating monster
She routinely depopulates the local goblin presses
She rescued a princess from un-lawful captivity, and has the stated goal helping put said princess back on her lawful throne
She brought a corrupt nodelman who was embezzling tax revenue to Justice
She disarmed a magical nuclear bomb

Meanwhile we have more less confirmations that Blitzhart is some combination of a repast, murder, and thief.

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Magical nuclear bomb? When did that happen? Did I miss a chapter?

 

[Entropy Judge]

Also, it's not 'disarmed' yet, unless I missed something. Fragments should still be missing, and it's just that it's no longer in the "Don't do anything at all to it" stage.

 

[EarthScorpion]

I don't know if its been stated before but am I the only one who noticed that the "Good" von Zerbst children are predominantly female while the "Evil" von Zerbst are predominantly male?

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There is something of a selection bias here. You know, with the whole "one of the reasons Kirche's family life is fucked up is that there are no legitimate sons, so all the biological daughters are being raised as male", and the whole "only Blitzhart's evil bastards go and try to kill Kirche, and they're a normal 50-50 ratio".

In that one case, she's trying to ACT like one of the good ones (probably genre savvy to avoid righteous crusadering?). But from the earlier paragraph, she's not the norm.

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You guys are so harsh! Can't Isabella genuinely want to reform and be a good person?

... with all the effectiveness of Azula trying to be a Disney Princess.

(Being Good is haaaaard. Good people aren't meant to have traitors and their entire family murdered, for all that it returns their extensive duchy on the north coast to the Crown and you know damn well that they're lying when they promise they won't deal with the Reconquista any more. So since you're now the Good one, you get to do what the Gallians have deliberately set up in their "Evil, Good, we're all Gallian" programme and tell your evil cousin to not murder the entire family for you, which means - because she's the Evil one - she'll go out and do it)

 

[EarthScorpion]

I didn't really like how the Overlord series set you up to fight other evil people/empires.

Honestly, I'd like a game where you're just an irredeemable monster ruining the goodness of the world. Just for the novelty of it.

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And this attitude is why most of the Overlord fanfics out there are unadulterated dross. Because masses of adolescent boys go "I'm evil woo! Let's get a really big harem using mind control! And then kill things in incredibly gory and sadistic ways because I'm evil woo!". From this shit input, you get shit output.

Overlady rejects those dumb adolescent wish fulfilment things, and has Louise being mildly evil [1] to worse people, as part of an overreaching comedy narrative which gets all serious whenever I feel like making a point [2]. Because, let's be honest here. Most people with any taste whatsoever don't really want to read a story about people being irredeemably awful. Flirting with taboos and never doing anything truly terrible is much more tolerable than anything really bad.

That's why Louise kicking the annoying-yet-immortal Jester in the face down into a pit filled with zombies from which he will escape in a day or two is hilarious, and Louise punting a baby down a hole into a rapepit filled with rapezombies would be the kind of thing you'd need to be a Ctech developer to write.

[1] The Diet Coke of Evil.

[2] It does amuse me in a slightly depressing way that Overlady is, despite being a parody and genre pastiche with Good and Evil being in-universe things, one of the more thoughtful stories out there when it comes to questions of morality, as well as things like feminism and gender politics.

 

[Nolrai]

Jesus fuck, people really can't deal with moral ambiguity, can they?

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I don't see anyone 'not dealing with' it. Just people talking about it...which is kind of the point of threads.

 

[earthboy]

[1] The Diet Coke of Evil.

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So ... double Evil?

 

[Chaosmark]

So ... double Evil?

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Half the evil, double the morals.

 

[EarthScorpion]

So ... double Evil?

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Eet eez une reference, non?

 

[Nolrai]

And this attitude is why most of the Overlord fanfics out there are unadulterated dross. Because masses of adolescent boys go "I'm evil woo! Let's get a really big harem using mind control! And then kill things in incredibly gory and sadistic ways because I'm evil woo!". From this shit input, you get shit output.

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I like playing the bad guys in Video games. Well I would if I liked Video games. Though more the alien Zerg like evil, not 'build a harem' evil.

Not all of us who like that sort of thing are stupid teens with half developed morality.

I mean Noir (the anime) the main characters are unrepentant killers-for-hire, and its still a enjoyable story, though sort of low tension.

But I am not really disagreeing with your point, just adding nuance.

 

[Faraway-R]

I didn't really like how the Overlord series set you up to fight other evil people/empires.

Honestly, I'd like a game where you're just an irredeemable monster ruining the goodness of the world. Just for the novelty of it.

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Seriously, people have no appreciation for classics. Dungeon Keeper. Dungeon Keeper 2. And fanfic "Dungeon Keeper Ami" as a proper way of fleshing out the world (even if this particular fic is do-gooder-centric).

Why, when you see an evil god collecting vast amounts of slaves to be sacrificed, including small children, and see that his priests use "cutting eyes out with cursed weapons that inflict wounds that cannot be healed" as a cheap and easy containment method... You get your dose of evil.

 

[Entropy Judge]

Maybe some sort of Trial by Combat to prove that he's suitable to be the heir to the von Zerbst line? Or maybe he just wanted revenge and didn't really care what happened after that.

 

[Nolrai]

On second thought, that overconfidence is probly fairly common, on both sides of the good/evil divide.

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In the real world this was selected for because getting rich could mean you had _a lot_ of children. In this universe its probobly that the Mystic Forces of Good/Evil really don't care about their vessels.

 

[EarthScorpion]

Yes, I would like to play Vetinari Simulator as much as the next guy, but that's kind of edging away from the thread topic.

More related, I wonder what Marikos was thinking, I mean, getting Blitzhart angry at you by killing his heir is all fine and good, but then you're up against and angry Blitzhart with nothing but a magical artifact and a bloodline.

On second thought, that overconfidence is probly fairly common, on both sides of the good/evil divide.

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Well, you know, you could just read the thing I introduced him with, back in 5-3;

"Don Marikos, the Masked Bandit."

"Murderer, thief and vigilante, the Masked Bandit is on a quest for revenge against widely loathed figure of Good Blizhart von Zerbst. The Iberian's flaming hair burns as hot as his fury, and his wicked fire magic has burned down entire villages to try to lure his nemesis to him. Rumours say that he is now turning his focus to eliminating the things in the world Blitzhart most cares about, starting with his shocking destruction of the man's statue in the Plaza of Heroes in Roma itself."

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[Winged One]

He worked his way all the way down the list to Kirche? I suppose it was going to happen eventually.

 

[Guile]

Well, while I agree with you that pretty much all of the executions of that attitude are terrible, the attitude in of itself isn't bad. Mostly because the executions all involve harems and rapepits and the like, while true 'I want to be in charge, and I will take it' irredeemable evil just isn't done unless the people you are taking from are even worse. I, for one, would also like to see a game where you are evil, fighting good, played absolutely straight, doing evil without hesitation or remorse, but only when it advances your overall goals, and occasionally for your own petty amusement.

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Basically, we want to play the Dragon Emperor of Cathay.

The 'morality meter' would be how committed to Evil Optimization you are. Low Optimization involves actions like killing your incompetent translators (and sending their severed heads to your paramour) or assassinating bad play directors. High Optimization is when you feed your dragons with the bodies of the dead, bonemeal-style.

 

[Faraway-R]

Basically, we want to play the Dragon Emperor of Cathay.

The 'morality meter' would be how committed to Evil Optimization you are. Low Optimization involves actions like killing your incompetent translators (and sending their severed heads to your paramour) or assassinating bad play directors. High Optimization is when you feed your dragons with the bodies of the dead, bonemeal-style.

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I would say that removing said incompetent translator from your employ was inevitable. It is High Optimization to fire him and hire someone who actually translated things properly to foreign dignitaries. You do not need to make enemies just because your translator is suboptimally heavy-handed with his minor power trips of being in your employ.

Question is, was sending his head to the dignitaries he offended more optimal, than finding a grueling job he can't mess up (and he can, he's translating, and double-checking is suboptimal when you can assign whoever would double-check to translate in the first place).

 

[EarthScorpion]

He worked his way all the way down the list to Kirche? I suppose it was going to happen eventually.

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Hey. Blitzhart cares a great deal about Kirche. She's his eldest legitimate child, his protege, and his heir, who's living up to most of his standards despite an unfortunate birth defect - and who is, among other things, a famous hero in her own right who has been publicly thanked by reigning monarchs.

She'll make a fine Markgraf when he finally gets bored of this world and goes off to chase after attractive female angels.

 

[arsdraconis]

I love how the idea of Blitzhart dying by the cause of his enemies' action isn't even considered as a possibility.

 

[Sojiko]

That's the joke.

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Yes, and I get the joke. The problem is that when I started playing Overlord I wanted to play, well, an overlord. Instead I got a hero who uses expandable summons. Seriously the Minions aren't minions, they're magical constructs that are perfectly expandable (thus removing any possible moral ambiguity to using them like cannon fodder). Being evil was part of it (so that I'd get to do something different from all those games where I fought evil tyrants and corrupted governments...), but it was mostly being the overlord that appealed to me. Conquering and subduing areas, using strategy and ruthlessness to obtain dominion over other. Having the chance to flew my intellect in new directions thanks to the total lack of scruples that allows a proper Overlord to work his subjects to the bones and then to the death.

Instead I got a straightforward fighting game with summon control.

I think it was a great game. Funny, original (yes, even despite not offering the originality I wanted I still got more than in most games), well paced, pretty ... There's a lot to like. I'm just disappointed that I can't think of a game where you get to play a proper Overlord more recent than Dungeon Keeper. That game promised something I had been awaiting for years only to deliver something markedly different.



And that's one of the things I really like about this story. Louise isn't an adventurer in a spooky armor. She's an Evil Overlord (with two capital letters). Her Minions have an actual personality so sacrificing them feels like killing real people (especially since they're not created from magic but converted from living creatures). She has real plans. Ruthlessness and indiscriminate violence are some of her main tools. She acquires resources and expand her influence to gain more strength.

This is probably the main reason I like this so much. So thank you Earthscorpion for writing something so engaging on so many levels (because while I enjoy watching intelligent protagonists use their resources in interesting ways, the humor is also a big reason I always jump on new chapters as soon as I find them).

 

[Beyogi]

I think it was a great game. Funny, original (yes, even despite not offering the originality I wanted I still got more than in most games), well paced, pretty ... There's a lot to like. I'm just disappointed that I can't think of a game where you get to play a proper Overlord more recent than Dungeon Keeper. That game promised something I had been awaiting for years only to deliver something markedly different.

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Well, the only other game I can think about where you can pull that kind of stuff is Black & White...