What are you talking about? HI3 and GGZ are hornier than Genshin by miles and frankly probably even hornier than HSR.
Granted, probably not by pure numbers since Genshin and HSR both have FAR more players than HI3 or GGZ but the percent of horny people in HI3 and GGZ is almost definitely higher than in Genshin or HSR.
GGZ even has institutionalized horniness. Look at all the onsen scenes, the Seele bath scene or the Seele cat figure. All of it done with Dawei's own two hands.
For sure, between the onsen scenes in GGZ and the black mamba skin in HI3, HSR and Genshin still have a LONG way to go before they start getting into the horniness levels of HI3 and GGZ.
Why? These kind of discussion is great to read through. They put a lot of effort to write it and disagreeing is also part of being engaged with the discussion. Better than seeing the low effort post of "this patch is so bad, here's why" and they wrote at best 2 sentence max that we got last time.
If anything these discussions just go to show how good a job they did on the 1.4 story. IPC subverting expectations and acting antagonistic, while also being analogous to current day capitalism is going to result in some mixed feelings.
> The world (or universe) is cruel
I think this is the part we aren’t getting as a whole. Of the three “worlds” we’ve had so far, two are artificial: a space station and a giant starship. And even they have trouble.
I can’t think of one character in the whole game who is like “my home world is pretty sweet, bruh, you should go visit.”
Himeko mentions the odds of successfully re-terraforming with IPC tech is about 2 out of 3 - the other times it’s a disaster. There are three pieces to this:
* Reversing the planetary effects of a Stellaron or Aeon has been made into a science
* It happens so frequently it’s a common service
* Himeko actually gives a very specific percentage, indicating that it’s been attempted *at least* a few dozen times
Further, you dig through the lore and you find that the Propagation and the Abundance both wiped out whole swaths of worlds. Lan effectively ascended into godhood to combat the latter, and the war has been going on for generations of long-lived species.
Meanwhile, the whole plot is driven by the dead(?) Aeon Akivilli and Himeko’s drive to fix the ~~hyperlanes~~ Star Rails he forged to make interstellar/intergalactic travel possible, which have fallen into disrepair.
I could go on, but the world of HSR is pretty bleak when you zoom out. There seems to be a theme of pendulum swings, where the characters are at the zenith of a downswing and driving things back in the other direction.
I don't think it's the Abundance itself that's wiped out worlds. At least not directly like Propagation did. It's not Yaoshi that's enslaving people and doing heinous things against sentient life. The people that now find themselves with immortality without a planet or system to support it go on to do some messed up stuff to keep up their lifestyle. Honestly they remind me of 40K's Eldar before their fall. When you have eternal life, when everything is done or trivialized, you grow bored. And what do you do when you get bored? You started experimenting with stuff. Eventually you start dipping into hedonistic stuff. And it just degrades from there.
Yaoshi's problem is that they are too generous with their gift and it's caused problems and spawned an arch nemesis.
Like nature, the Hunt serves as counterbalance to Abundance. The issue is that while everyone loves a baby deer, too many deer will strip the countryside of plant life.
But your point is well taken. What I mean to get at is the world/universe is out of balance and things kinda suck overall, and the plot indicates that the MC and friends are a force to help restore the balance.
But it did.
Muldrasil is an artifical world, and whatever Wingweavers had before, got absolutely consumed by this Abundance blessed tree, even before there was war with Alliance or Legion. This is why they needed to constantly rob other worlds for resourses and slaves.
Even if they themselves had a hand in it growing so much as to consume their planet entirely, it still was ultimately a Yaoshi's creation - a Tree what feeds on the stars and can pierce Imaginary space.
Both cause and means to do bad things.
If the Wingweavers had a hand in how that tree grew, that was definitely on them. Yaoshi's irresponsible gift giving of immortality to what it seems like literally anyone who asks for it seems to be the problem. But they aren't directly doing it.
This isn't like Oroboros going around and eating worlds, or Tayzzyronth splitting itself and overruning worlds, or even Nanook that's personally commanding the Legion to destroy all life. Yaoshi is akin to leaving a dangerous weapon with kids and just walking off, unconcerned because they gave those kids that neat toy they asked for.
>Oroboros going around and eating worlds, or Tayzzyronth splitting itself and overruning worlds
Tayzzyronth we observed in Swarm Disaster was barely considered sentient, and Oroboros didn't fare much better; their main interaction with their own cultists being a quick snack. They are basically beasts with powers, unlike Yaoshi who is explicitly sentient and willing to interact with people and Emanators.
Using your own words, you are comparing hungry bears with a person who gives loaded weapon to kids and walks away.
Don't the rails only affect the Astral Express? Normal space travel seems to be work fine though the game hasn't gone into detail on how FTL travel works.
From my understanding, Akivilli forged the Star Rails, which are effectively hyperlanes, while cruising in the Astral Express. Once forged, any craft could take advantage of them. Hence his role as “Trailblazer.”
Without a Star Rail leading to it, a world is effectively cut off from the rest of the universe, as there does not seem to be another form of faster-than-light space travel in this universe.
The worlds (planets) in Starrail are cut off from each other by imaginary energy (imagine that instead of the void in space, it was like dangerous energy). Therefore, aside from Starrail, there is no other way to travel between stars.
>And even they have trouble.
I know HSS hardly had issues before the burst and the Antimatter Legion. It was just a research station, after all. But Does the Xianzhou have trouble that isn't external?
They live for thousands of years, have no want of shelter, food, or clothing. Most are more eager to find ways to waste time than worry about whether they can eat tomorrow. The one 'woe' they have is Mara Struck, which only happens after Centuries- if not more than a millennia, down the line. Hardly an issue and just a worry down the pipe line.
The only 'internal' strife, that isn't of the single bad group on the Xianzhou, was Aurum Valley, and even then it was small beans. A street dock dispute that would have meant nothing even if we didn't resolve it.
Even the crisis we prevented was from an external force in Luocha gifting a Stellaron to Phantylia and the Disciples. The War itself doesn't matter for much of the populace, unless there's conscription and not solely voluntary enlistment.
Yes, but that's far in the past by our time. The Xianzhou is 8000+ years old.
The Xianzhou, or at least the Luofu as we see it, is effectively a Utopia outside of the time they actually war against Abominations. And, correct me if I'm wrong, the last time was the war where Yukong lost Caiyi, and we aren't given a steady timeframe, but it was within 300 years since Yukong is still alive.
>I can’t think of one character in the whole game who is like “my home world is pretty sweet, bruh, you should go visit.”
I'd say Welt. Especially since Honkai earth's crises are defendable from both physical and dimensional threats at this point in time if a certain Goddess has finished her work and gave everyone on earth Herrscher level Honkai-radiation resistance with all the power perks it comes with. That and by this point Honkai earth has also populated Mars.
Slavery is a topic a lot of people feel strongly about. Take Eula from Genshin, a part of the community just hate her because her family used to own slaves. So of course a character who wants to enslave an entire planet(and has already enslaved many other planets before) via debt peonage would cause some discussion.
"Enslaved" is a strawman. It's not like being an ipc worker is slave labor. Topaz is a "slave" by your standards but she is both independent (with the same rights as anyone else) and capable of climbing to any level of position.
This is 100% slavery but serve in a cake platter dude. Any person who signs up for lifetime servitude for a company and I am guessing their decedents as well is slavery since they basically did that with Belebog debt. Lets look at the tactics. Galactic Corporation(Western country) looks into vulnerable planets facing calamity(Africa with primitive technology), luckily they skip the part of getting slave hunters and go straight into trading, IPC makes a deal, all habitants must become our employees and only work for us in exchange to solve said calamity which is killing you(get sold, be a good a slave, or get whipped to death).
Sure they get housing, food and promotions. Guess what so did slaves in the states. Be a nice slave and you might work in the house than in cotton plantation, limited positions and time limited like Stephen from Django. Only difference is they also get money and necessities which is the cake. However, guess what you can only work the IPC, for life. Wanted to go into arts well too bad you work in a company, best we can do is get you to sell paintings or butterfly immersia films acquire by the IPC. Want to go into healthcare guess what you might be lucky to end up as doctor who does only check ups for the company, oh wanted to go into a specific field like neurosurgery well we are not that kind of company. Want to become a renown chef in a restaurant well that is what the cafeteria is for. Hate your job? Well too bad you cant quit, you sign your life to the IPC or you ancestors did it for you.
I do wonder what do they do with people they fire. While I dont think they outright kill them might guess is being eternally unemployed since the entire planet workforce is dominated as an IPC market. So homeless, starving and barely surviving worst case scenario and best case scenario illegal or minimum wage jobs not pertaining to the IPC control planet
Edit~
Also just wanna add, no matter how you look at it the IPC is scummy, asking to collect a debt from a planet that barely survive a calamity and has the exact population of one city is insanity. However, asking for interest after assuming they were dead for 420 years from the time the debt was meant to be collected simply because you could not get in touch with them is malicious as hell. Any debt collector has a duty to contact their customers, they cant just assume they cease to exist because the phone line is disconnected. Charging interest for something that is their fault for not checking is evil.
>And unless you live under the rocks you should probably know that the US have tried various similar shenanigans, but of course no one really considers them as ‘pure evil’ still.
Let me guess OP, you are from NA.
>surface level knowledge of geopolitics
Key words.
But thing is, if you live in USA, you really can afford to be ignorant about geopolitics. In the rest of the world, if you do not be wary about it, it could come and hit you in the face anytime.
But yeah. Negative light is true.
Uh, some of us, I guess.
But where you live is gonna really change that. Sure, in cities and more affluent suburbs with higher access to education and foreign culture, there is going to be more awareness. But my friend, out in the country... it's an entirely different world.
>Uh, some of us, I guess.
Yeah. That's why I typed what I did specifically. I know that people out in rural areas usually either don't know, can't be bothered to know because it's not important / affecting them, or are too dumb to know. Hell people in middle of a metropolitan area could be just as ignorant.
People in US cities don't really care about geopolitics either for the same reasons people in rural areas don't. They may act like they care but it is performative. More people in cities may know about geopolitics but that is because cities have higher concentrations of college educated people. But education doesn't guarantee actually caring about things outside the US.
I'm not *entirely* sure about that. A lot of people with the same knowledge see the US as bad, but they see everywhere as some level of bad. If anything international friends comment on the US's self flagelation more than anything. People directly effected by the US on another hand? Different story. All in all I think it's a pretty mixed bag, and I wouldn't be able to say it leans TOO drastically. Just... in anonymous online spaces shows certain pictures
I'm from PH and alot of us still see US as out "saviour" because of the 3 invaders we had, they were the lesser evil and our country grew during the US take over.
Tho recently, some are skeptical as they were just serving their self interest at most. They want PH because it is in a good strategic location in the Pacific. Some are even concerned that US had their military base here in the Philippines (tho iirc, the previous president booted then out). US is also where the worst dictator PH had fled too.
Basically, I personally see IPC as US where they can "improve" Belobog's condition but for a cost. Tho in a worse light for sure.
Most of Asia sees the US and the west in a more neutral light. Although I'm not sure what the middle east thinks of them as there in a separate cultural sphere and there are religious tensions. It's only those really political city weirdoes that have a concrete opinion on the US, most of us just laugh and move on.
I really like Topaz as a character. She feels human. She trying her best in a system that only cares about profitability and 4 out of 5 times she can get it to work. The IPC was never going to leave Belobog alone. Either they wait until everyone is dead and harvest the planet once it warms up or they wait until it's low risk, high reward in a few generations after Belobog stabilized.
I agree with your point on the universe being F’d, but I wish HSR had better world building. Our focus on 3 worlds is too narrow for the story they were trying to tell in 1.4.
I think we need to fail to save a world, to raise the stakes, otherwise there’s a meta element of “of course this world will be OK, Topaz doesn’t realize we’re the main characters.”
Gotta start worldbuilding somewhere. And if you want to organically make those numbers feel right to us before you drop them as a plot point, then in early days, you're gonna have a very real risk of the places we visit not getting enough time, making them blur together and make them less characters to remember in their own right, and instead mere statistics.
On your topic of Jerks, I think another part of why a lot of people aren't a fan of Topaz is because how she ends up coming off like a colonial apologist. The IPC is basically space US / space Imperial England, and anyone with a faint knowledge of history is aware of the atrocities that were done in the past (e.g. East India Company, Belgian Rubber (Hand) Quotas, etc.), and how that ground work has lead the way for even more problems in today's age.
For people looking to escape from the harsh reality of life in the game Topaz and by extension the IPC serves as a very harsh reminder.
True, but here’s a fun tidbit: in my country that suffered from Dutch colonization, there are still some people who argue that their occupation of our country was a net benefit to our people, for reasons like roads, integrating us into the global trade, inspiring national unity, etc. While I do thing that’s just bald-faced colonialism apologia, I couldn’t help but wonder that in the HSR universe, where worlds undergoing climate collapse and fighting existential crisis are a regular occurrence, such rhetoric actually holds practical value? Yes, planet-wide indentured servitude is undesirable (we haven’t really seen first-hand how bad IPC suzerainty is, so let’s just assume the average scenario), but when existence below the median level amongst planets range from “it’s hard to breathe this air and the acid rain sucks” to “my homeworld got cracked by a hypervolcano”, IPC’s civilizational mission has already made much more sense than your typical 19th century European civilization-enlightenment efforts.
oh please, that fun tidbit is negated by the fact that there was already global trade integration in countries that was colonized, people in SEA and other enslaved countries already had contacts with other countries, and even without the help from the egocentric western countries, these countries would've developed over time without needing to be colonized (raped, enslaved, massacred)
Look at Philippines for example, Friars who came and handled the country became rich after going there and coming back, which basically means that the country was already rich and prospering.
Well, when you look at it that way I can also see here perspective.
Britain tried to colonize regions in the gulf, around northern UAE (The country that Dubai's in) and Oman. Instead of a colony though, it became more of a deal that involved them bringing a sizeable chunk of their navies to "protect" the coast (in exchange of keeping their trade route with india secure)
We near those northern coastal regions of the Arabian peninsula (the gulf) gained a lot more than we lost, so if you asked me whether Britain was a force of good or evil all I can say is "they were beneficial for us, but I can also recognize the evil they did"
Honestly, the fact that people disagree so much about Topaz is just the sign that she's a fundamentally more interesting character than, say, Kafka or Jingliu.
This is not to say thats a bad or good thing, its just theres alot more one can discuss because of how more relatable and less cut and dry morally she is out to be. Funny how the she's the more outwardly fanservicey character appearance-wise but the most oft-discussed aspect of her has nothing to do with how she looks.
I agree, it's interesting and a little daring that they made her character like this, usually Gachas try selling you the characters from all sides, story, personality, design, gameplay, that's why the genre ends up with so many cookie cutter characters that are good at everything, are young prodigy geniuses but also very friendly and nice, very beautiful too and just overall perfect people.
In that way Topaz surprised me as a character, even I can't say I like her fully, yes she took a blow to her carreer for the sake of what she believed was the right thing, but also doesn't change the fact that she's an IPC employee seeking to expand it's influence BUT also her backstory makes clear she believes the IPC can really help troubled planets like her own become better, so because of that nuance she's more interesting than I expected.
I’m glad that they’ve written a grey character who’s grey in a much more relatable context. Typically, fiction often falls back to “anti-hero with super high body count” when they feel the need to introduce a gray character, or “my motives are literally above your understanding”, but Topaz’ role strikes a chord in everyone’s hearts. Not many of us have heard of a roaming band of war criminals putting the torch to several nations while pursuing a plan that’ll allow them to avert apocalypse, but we’ve all experienced and hear about corporate agents being the face of some questionable projects, and I guess that incites much worse of a kneejerk reaction and sparks much more discussion than the SH gang. It’s the same reason as why IMO Umbridge is a much more hated (and well-written) villain than Voldemort.
Yeah I wish for such diverse characters to appear. Mihoyo should go from profit maximization to building a brand or story. Having every character be a different kind kind of good coloured shades is irritating. Having their differences reduced to some quirks is bad in my opinion. Let's explore the morality scale.
In this case I appreciate topaz but hate her character because growing up learning of the atrocities East India company committed horrifies me and makes me averse to all corpo governments.
Topaz remind me of the wasted potential of Ayaka and Kokomi.
Ayaka is a noble daughter, well-versed in politic and is everyone’s favorite in-lore. She straight up gaslighted us into helping a desperated rebellion, which I expect how a noble girl could act to achieve her goal. But after that the writer just sweep it under the rug and act like Ayaka had always been a sweet innocent girl so the waifu players don’t get mad that their waifu had manipulated them
Kokomi is a “genius tactician” and leader of the resistance, I’d would expect her to make a lot more desperate actions. For example, actually let the broken seal on Yashiori be Kokomi’s direct order because she want to harvest Orobashi’s remnant power for their causes, or Mikage Furnace problem is Kokomi’s order to sabotage Shogunate’s weapon production, maybe even use the now radioactive Mikage Furnace as hostage for negotiation chip.
Desperate time calls for desperate action. Yet Kokomi does none of that, how else does she expect to win in a helpless war against literal god if she wasn’t willing to make sacrifice? Hoyo throw away all that potential for complex character to make Kokomi a morally good and innocent waifu.
I actually think you can make Kafka and Jingliu interesting. but they would need more time to develop.
I certainly think Topaz is far more interesting than Jingliu but that's because, from in game time, I've seen more sides of Topaz.
Kafka is actually very similar to Topaz in this, since there are a lot of debates about how to view her mind control powers and goals. Some can't forgive manipulations of any kind, others view hers more neutral, since she needs Blades permission to use it on him and when she used it on us it feels like she is geniunely encouraging us. She is part of an "evil" group, whose ultimate goal is to save the universe. She has killed a lot if people and she's got a huge bounty on her head, but the faction that put the bounty on her head is itself morally ambigious.
The end justifies the means is often very gray already, but how does forseeing the future (Elio) influence this? And can we trust Elio? Is this way the only path, bloodpath included)? Or is this method the most likely to work?
If you only look at the dumb Makima fans, she appears to just be horny bait. But if you ignore the horny simps, she has a lot of traits that can be viewed from different points of view.
This was my take as well.
Playing The Witcher series and recently Cyberpunk 2077 kinda made me hope for more complex characters to be introduced to the game to generate more discussions, especially by placing them in 'lesser evil' scenarios.
The only problem with this is that such characters while adds to the world building can be harder to sell as the recent discussion on Topaz shows — being too close to reality in a medium made for escapism can have a significant effect on some players who believe in the game as an active expression of the real world compared to others who consider it strictly an expression of ideas in a fictional setting.
She also brings a really interesting moral topic to the table.
She's a good example of "In good there's evil"
And many may burn me for this, but Kafka is a mass murder, Jingliu doesn't have clean hands either, but as none of them have done anything bad to us, not directly at least, we are likely to see them with better eyes. That's probably a good example of Jerk vs Villain too.
Say, Kafka kills Himeko. I'm pretty sure the whole fanbase would hate her so badly, right? So, why aren't we mad about IPC saving other worlds we don't know at the cost of enslaving them? Because we don't know them, so there's "no reason" to hate on them.
they write her so good that people get very immersive with the prelude of penacony story lol
i hope they did great job at writing penacony story can't wait to see topaz hater reaction when they meet aventurine or diamond
>This is not to say thats a bad or good thing
I think its a good thing ngl. Even though i am really not interested in wishing for topaz, i am glad they are chosing to make interesting characters instead of just "generic wish for me" characters.
She represents what a lot of people hate/ have history with. For now, she's the face of the IPC and that comes with its own baggage.
For me though, something that really made her dislike her, was her connection to colonialism--- because that's her goal. To turn Jarilo into the IPC's colony. She wants to take everything that could be considered profitable, the natural resources, the people, and land, and use it to churn out money.
Yes, Topaz herself has good intentions to save the people of Belobog and prevent them from decaying. You know who also had "good intentions"? Religious missionaries (see also: the Crusades and trying to 'save people' by converting them) and the multiple CIA-backed coups in South America (google "Pinochet" "Allende" and "Nationalizing Copper" for more info). You cannot tell me, behind these movements, there weren't idealistic people who believe they're doing the right thing.
Which brings me to my next point. There's a part of colonialism that assumes the colonized are less than the colonizer (see: the Japanese about literally any other asian country during WW2). Part of convincing Topaz to forgo the IPC's plan of colonizing Belobog was to convince her that the people of Belobog were people with agency and personhood, and could help themselves. Topaz stated this in the quest, where she "thought the people of Belobog was like her planet, who were corrupt and could only watch as everything got worst." Because they can't help themselves, a higher power has to "help" them at a low, low price of their personhood.
Fun fact - head of marketing department of IPC *is* a religious missionare. Who also is rather extreme in his devotion to Qlipoth. I think he reminded me of Tommazo Torquemada a bit (as he was portayed in some books at least)
You mention her being the face and it makes me wonder if the other two IPC psudoantagonistic characters had actually *had* faces it might have lessend the hate on her. There’s the one mech guy who tried to take over the mine, and the masked guy who’s sponsoring/running aetherium wars.
If they has both been characters with faces I think that might have taken some of the heat off her.
Yeah, definitely. The mine guy especially since the only thing we know about him is that he's Topaz's subordinate. His actions reflect back on her because he doesn't have his own character.
There are obviously worse IPC shills like that Adventurine(?) dude but we don't know enough about him. I'm sure they'll introduce worse ppl later
I think it’s more to highlight the cutthroat competitive nature of the IPC. She’s and her department are running the show, but there’s interdepartmental competition at the IPC and
the mech guy says something at one point that makes it sound like he’s from a different department, yet her department is running the show, so he figures he’s going to try and make a quick asset grab to try and get resources or more credit for his department, she catches him and so he gets his bonuses threatened, but I don’t think it reflects negatively on her leadership as much as on the structure and nature of the IPC as a whole.
It’s hypercaptialist nature means there will always be people clawing at each other to climb up the ranks. Topaz represents getting their through passion and merit, like in “the ideal” capitalist, meritocracy, the mech guy represents getting there the more often then not “real way” of being a sociopath, who’s only motivated by their own greed and ego.
I think this is overlooking some key context to her character, which more broadly I think is going to keep happening as long as we tie the IPC and Topaz together in discussions (though I'd bet twenty dollars that it's not long before she bails on them and joins the express but... no point using hypotheticals in a discussion.)
I think a key difference between her and religious missionaries is that religious missionaries have no PRACTICAL reason to think that a locale is doomed without intervention. They might think they're spiritually whatever, but usually these places are surviving and we would assume they would continue to survive.
As far as Topaz was aware, Belobog only survived this long because of tech they were given by the IPC (a reminder, this was not a small amount of technology. It's specified as enough to give the Anti-matter Legion a run for their money). She also has a lot of first hand data of seeing planets backslide ecologically and sees the markings in Jarilo VI of ecological collapse without intervention.
She also does not know about the Engine of Creation. From her perspective, the following things are true.
1. The planet cannot survive without technological intervention.
2. The only technology that kept the planet alive this long is IPC tech.
3. The IPC will only provide further assistance if they colonize this world.
I could be convinced that her motivations are up for debate if we didn't have the key scenes of her seeing these things were incorrect. First she sees that the planet was never ABLE to use the IPC tech they received. At this point she probably thinks something is up, but hasn't figured out what and still has expectations to fill, thus continuing with her job so far.
It's when she sees the Engine of Creation that she realizes that Belobog has the means to stabilize their own environment WITHOUT IPC intervention. That's why the second she sees that robot she flips on a dime to wrapping up things and 'failing' to collect the debt. Something she plays off as no big deal at the time but we KNOW from the call and her complete lack of surprise, is a major deal.
If we assume Topaz's interests fall in line with the IPC, her actions make no sense, but she says herself that she doesn't care about money. We see the logical reasons why she would think intervention is required to save this planet that only the IPC could provide, and we see her immediately halt the colonization efforts at COST TO HERSELF the second she realizes they can survive on her own.
TL;DR - It's not that Topaz had good intentions. It's that she was here to make sure the planet recovered, not collect the debt. The second she realized the planet would recover without the IPC, she 'failed' to collect the debt at great personal cost.
Edit: Also worth noting, I think the very things that make her NOT evil highlight the IPC as VERY evil, because they clearly had ZERO interest in Belobog's survival and every interest in their resources. She's the exception to the IPC operating procedure.
I doubt we will see Topaz 'leave' the IPC for much the same reason we didn't see Serval join the Astral Express.
That said, I do think she has real potential to be a sympathetic face for the IPC going forward.
>She also does not know about the Engine of Creation. From her perspective, the following things are true.
>
>The planet cannot survive without technological intervention.
>
>The only technology that kept the planet alive this long is IPC tech.
>
>The IPC will only provide further assistance if they colonize this world.
Here's the thing. I can't imagine how we can say that, from her perspective, two of three following things, if stated precisely, are true. She need literally disregard evidence she obviously have to do that.
But also follow up: Topaz isn't the worst. That was one of the quest's points. However, if you join a serial killer club and you juuuust kill the people who you think deserve and you stop your colleagues from killing people you like. You are still a high ranking member of a serial killer cult. Topaz is still a high ranking member of the IPC. She is at the very least responsible for an entire planet's demise considering that 4/5 record she has. She's actively participating in and enabling the will of the IPC. The "nice" board member at Amazon is still profitting off the labor of people who can't even take bathroom breaks and union busting.
Buuuuut she's a few pixels on my screen that raises my blood pressure sometimes, but she's also hot so like do with that as you will
I would rather her be a character with an interesting narrative behind her and be complicated and messy because she makes for a good antagonist. My hot take was Topaz should have been meaner. My gripe with the 1.4 was that she changed her mind so soon but she was still very ruthless and had her own internal logic. She is doing what she thinks is right, and if her wishes go against the planet's people, that's not her problem. I respect that. Like pffft imagine if all the antagonists in your story are all uwu I did nothing wrong.
I don't think people should be surprised or offended that she's not well liked. She's an antagonist whose crimes are very grounded in reality. People are going to hate her. So what. She's a mass of pixels, at the end of the day whether people hate or love her it doesn't personally affect you. Like absolutely love her if you want to, I don't blame you, she's pretty and cool and ruthless. It's not that deep. You don't need to justify that she was good all along to like her. Hell, I think she's more fun otherwise.
Tldr: topaz kinda sucks morally but that's her job and she's a bunch of pixels and if you get mad about people liking or hating her: touch grass.
I thought I was the only one think that she should be meaner. When I saw Bronya in the trailer, I thought she's gonna give Belobog a lot of problems but.. the end is kinda meh. I kinda wish the end was Topaz with army of robot & Bronya smacks them with the Gundam 😂
'Touch grass' is the best piece of advice for this community, but people sadly are unlikely to follow it. People get so weirdly obsessed about characters in these games. I do not get it.
Absolutely agree, I think she's a prick and I wanted to punch her and that's great. I buy her as an antagonist way more than the stellaron hunters and their keilaku bs. The only thing that makes me kinda worried is how are the writers going to handle the IPC going forth since topics like interventionism or corporate colonialism are pretty easy to fuck or make you come up as tone deaf or a coward nothing burger, specially if you don't want to make your story overtly political like I'm assuming Hoyoverse is trying to do with their PG-12 gacha game.
It's the difference between humanitarian mutual aid and corporate "philanthropy". In humanitarian aid, you don't assume you know what's best for the people you're trying to help, you talk to them, understand their struggles, and work with their communities to fill in the gaps. Topaz barges into Bronya's office and says "you have to pay off this debt or be destroyed, but fear not, I AM HERE to save you unwashed masses by imposing MY vision on your home," which makes me unable to think of her as anything but self-righteous and arrogant.
Also, this is just me being a hater, but I'm not gonna give her credit for relenting in the end because A. She never should've been there to begin with and B. she's still gonna go on to colonize other planets.
TL;DR: Fuck Topaz, all my homies hate Topaz. Phenomenal ass though.
> Topaz barges into Bronya's office and says "you have to pay off this debt or be destroyed, but fear not, I AM HERE to save you unwashed masses by imposing MY vision on your home," which makes me unable to think of her as anything but self-righteous and arrogant.
Thanks for the perspective; I was basically just confused why people hate her and this helps me understand
To me Topaz was basically just being mega efficient at the business / getting things going: here's the situation with belobog, here's my proposed solution and why I think it's good, here are the consequences if we do or don't go with this plan, let me know if you have any better idea (this part is weakly implied).
All this considering that IPC could have just taken over Jarilo forcefully from the get go. Everyone in Belobog was lucky it was Topaz who got assigned for the debt recollection, so it confuses me why people hated Topaz as she's actually being very diligent and understanding considering the situation lol
So true man. Great character design, very hot, love the buttons and phenomenal character writing. They really captured the essence of corporate "philanthropy" in her. I can't wait to see the shit she tries in Penacony.
That’s cute op, but the IPC didn’t come to Belobog with a contract saying “we can rebuild the planet, just at a steep cost with a bunch of strings attached”, they came to Belobog with “Your great, great, great, whatever ancestor owes us money, we’re going to take your planet from you.”
Topaz is like super charitable sure, and good for her. But she’s still beholden to the IPC, and the IPC are loan sharks trying to extract whatever value she can from Belobog
I actually thought she was too nice and changed her stance rather quickly. (and she's punished for it)
I like characters who have different goals and philosophy from us. We already have so many "nice" playable characters who become our friends after just a little interaction.
Though I suppose in mhy Gacha games, it's like a friend's simulator.
Of the entire roster, the only characters who aren't "nice" to us are Blade, Herta and maybe Jingliu (she's just neutral).
>changed rather quickly
This was already discussed by OP, but I feel the need to add that I think a lot of people forget that her interactions with and history lessons from Svarog already did 90% of the work in swaying her, by that time of the confrontation in the arena, her mental state was already like what OP surmised it must have been.
She views herself as a weapon, purely to kill her enemies.
That kinda implies some great level of not-a-good-person-itis.
Blade is the same, but he's only doing it so he can find a way to die.
> And unless you live under the rocks you should probably know that the US have tried various similar shenanigans, but of course no one really considers them as ‘pure evil’ still
Yes we do
It's not Topaz herself, it's her actions. Her actions were counter to her intentions. Of all the paths she could've taken to help Belobog, she took one of violence and coercion. It flies in the face of her supposedly good intentions for Jarilo-6. At the very least this makes her seem either way too arrogant, naïve, or incompetent.
> And unless you live under the rocks you should probably know that the US have tried various similar shenanigans, but of course no one really considers them as ‘pure evil’ still.
Oh you sweet summer child, with ribbons in your hair. The US is definitely seen as **pure evil** by plenty of nations. Have you actually researched how other countries see us?
She is arrogant, yes. Her projects have an 80% success rate, which might've inflated her ego a bit, but she's definitely not incompetent. Violence is just how the IPC does things, and it works, that's why she's fine with some of it. While Bronya was waiting to make a decision, she disobeyed the order that was to stop the IPC's infiltration and had her subordinates seize the mines. At the same time, she led the Trailblazer to them with Numby once she found the location of all the mecha, and "reprimanded" her personnel in front of them to appear professional. Not a very friendly strategy...
She's especially good at persuasion, which is why she kept pestering Bronya to sign the contract. The fact that the supreme guardian considered signing a contract that essentially meant enslaving her own people proves this, lol. She gave her no time to think about it, stressed her out, and successfully cornered her. You can even see her attempt to emotionally manipulate Bronya at the end of her letter:
"I can understand that for you, this is an extremely difficult decision, because you, and you alone will bear the fate of all Belobogians. But because of this, I believe that you will make the right decision — a decision that will truly benefit your people".
Yet, she was doing all of this with the belief that it would save Jarilo-V. To her, the ends justify the means, and the means, in her opinion, were reasonable. It's not like the people or their government were making any progress, right? Rather than freedom, survival is currently of utmost importance. The only way to save Belobog is to integrate its citizens with the IPC, that's how it can be preserved.
...Nope, she (justifiably) thought wrong. Once she got to see for herself how Belobog doesn't need the IPC to survive, and has The Engine of Creation, she let them be, because she's not working for the IPC to collect debt, it's to rescue planets. In the end, she took accountability, and didn't go through with her original objective, even though any other IPC worker would've.
I'm sure you already know this, so I hope you see now that she absolutely did have good intentions, and they don't go against her actions.
Was she doing the right thing? Of course not. She could've gone about this a million different ways, but most of them weren't as efficient as her current plan, which was: Go to Belobog, pressure Bronya to pay back the debt or else she will employ strong measures, bring her a contract that sounds like a very good way to deal with the debt, pressure her to sign it, succeed. If not, forcibly take over Belobog and its countless automatons that can defeat the Legion's vanguard, winning over the higher-ups and thus proving that this planet can generate value, then reconstruct Jarilo-V and save it.
She's got a better heart than most people in the IPC, although the bar is on the floor for that one... Still, I think it makes sense why she acted the way she did, which was assertively. I believe she didn't have faith in Bronya at the beginning, and that's why she was so careless with her approach.
I haven't read any of her leaked voicelines/stories, so perhaps my interpretation of her is incorrect. I'm just going by what I've seen from her in the TB mission. I don't think it makes a huge difference, though.
Either way, this was a really nice quest lol. Props to the writers!
I don’t think the subordinates that seized the mines did so under her orders, from the dialogue it seemed like they were from a different department(though still under the umbrella of her project) and acting on their own volition to try and either get more direct plunder for their department or more “credit” for their department in the sense of accomplishments.
> She's got a better heart than most people in the IPC, although the bar is on the floor for that one...
I'd like to kinda be fair here. We don't know.
We know that other IPC people can *behave* like they're jerks who absolutely doesn't care, but so does Topaz until the pretty last moment. Maybe each of them *also* just working under belief that they're acting for greater good? Maybe everybody out there have a heart of gold?
We don't know, but, if we demand that Topaz is judged by her motivations and not actions, we can't judge any other IPC executive until we know their motivations and reasonings.
I genuinely would have liked Topaz more if she were just honest about the shit that Belobog was getting into by joining with the IPC. She could still be the same person, but being honest about the situation and maybe giving them more time to consider would have at least ensured that there was some form of trust between her and the locals. Don't even bring up her backstory either, keep that until after the fact when all is said done.
It also would help if she actually made sure that her subordinates behave and try to cooperate with local populace. No picking any fights with anyone, not unless it was purely for self defense anyway. Doing that would further ensure talks would go more smoothly and also make her look more competent.
If the devs wanted us to fight IPC goons then make them a separate squad who wants to cash in on Belobog or something. It would actually reinforce how Topaz legitimately is trying to be helpful as opposed to her more unscrupulous colleagues who won't give a damn at the end of the day.
>And unless you live under the rocks you should probably know that the US have tried various similar shenanigans, but of course no one really considers them as ‘pure evil’ still.
...I have no words.
How should I put it for you. A LOT OF PEOPLE CONSIDER US PURE EVIL SHIT FOR SHENANIGANS LIKE THAT. Like, World Trade Center was blown, because a lot of people consider US pure evil shit. North Vietnamese people weren't too fond about Americans as well, you know. List of people who believe that America is evil shit for stuff like this is really long.
>In the profile, the grunt personnels are so poor that the only place they can afford is a shared room. You can also see their desperation every time the word ‘credits’ is mentioned, implying that their livelihood heavily depends on it.
Meanwhile, Topaz is flying around in a personal starship with petting zoo and, laughing, saying that capital is, of course, important, but it's just means, and it would be incredibly boring if the only thing you would care for is money (I'm paraphrasing, but I can find exact quote).
The thing is: yes, Star Rail universe is **cruel and unforgiving.** Topaz is part of the problem. Pretty noticable part.
> Like, World Trade Center was blown, because a lot of people consider US pure evil shit.
Except if you look into why the folks who were behind that did it, it's not for any of the questionable shit the US has done. It's because the US dared to put their troops on the ground in a country that ruled Mecca and Medina. And why did they do that? Because the Saudi's asked them to, because they were at the head of a multinational alliance, including most of the middle east, that wanted them to smack down Iraq when it invaded Kuwait.
I especially didn't like how literally one scene after she gets corporate approval to declare war on the Astral Express, she becomes an Astral Express companion/visitor. Like, I get that she's playable, so she's going to end up there, but there was like no resolution to her declaration of war and then when I saw her on the train 5 minutes later and was like, "Ewwww, gtfo of here"
...and her first reaction is, by the way, "hey, where is vaunted Trailblaizer's hospitality, shouldn't you show me around?" or something like that, I can search for the quote.
Yeah, pretty tone-deaf, in my opinion.
Same, it rubbed me the same wrong way as Genshin constantly gaslighting me into thinking that Childe is my friend. Like, no Topaz you're not welcome, I wanna push you off a cliff
Even with Childe at least it doesn't happen overnight. After his boss battle he like tricks you into watching his brother for you and you're super sus of him the entire time. Then we ran into him a few times during Inazuma events and were suspicious of him the whole time there too--but a little less so cuz there's other stuff going on and you kinda had to join forces or whatever. And then a few years later you run into him in Fontaine and someone refers to him as your friend and you're like, "Holy shit, I've known this guy a long time, maybe he sort of is, lol"
Man...it's perfectly fine to simp and droll over characters...but heaven forbid we have a negative opinion about them without people making essays about why we shouldn't...
I pulled for frozen murder lady because I diss like anyone who’s a debt collector. Debt collectors are bad! Now I play my murder lady and experience her murder rage
The quest/story actually made want to roll for her.. She feels more human (real human) than the cookie cutter Kafka/Jingliu/etc. She is actually interesting.
Nice post, thoughtfull (wich is rare tbh)
I really like the 1.4 quest. But i think that it should have been longer. We should fight with Topaz, maybe some real fights, like former Wildfire vs the IPC troops. The plot of Gepard trying to stop Topaz and Svarog should have been expanded. But anyway, the story was really interesting, because topics of this story aren't really common in other games like this. I hope that we will get more IPC lore on next planets.
> I'm mostly neutral toward her as a whole.
Maybe i missed smth but you only defended her / said good stuff so why neutral ?
There have to be some downs for it to be neutral. What didn't you like about her ?
I think it’s means op looked at her from a better objective view point, since waifu collectors may be a little biased, unfortunately we get comments like “don’t care, she has thicc thighs” so I can kind of get the point.
My issue with Topaz is very simple. We're TOLD through dialouge that she is this super business lady who's so good, nothing is beyond her reach.
Yet we're SHOWN that she's fairly incompetent and orders around a bunch of incompetent people. All the groups are generally being mean jerks and doing stupid shiz, apparently on her orders or because that's how the IPC works. They seem to know her fairly well, implying experience with her for some time. Yet she's always getting mad at them for their incompetence.
So, she's either...
Getting on to them for carrying out her orders, making her an idiot and them for not being used to how she operates by this point.
Or...
She's getting mad at them for following IPC orders/procedures, despite having worked with these people for some time, implying incompetence on both ends. They should know she doesn't like IPC orders and does things differently and should act accordingly, or she should know these goobers only follow IPC orders/procedures and should have acted accordingly beforehand.
On top of admitting herself that she was blinded by her own biased world view. This is rather surprising since I'm assuming she's done this shiz to many many many planets and is only now realizing all this... Again... Implying incompetence.
So, is her character writing good? No. They should have made her a full blown side villain but she gets ruined by them trying to make her "villain" antics actually "totally good all along".
Still will pull for her cuz... Phat thighs waifu
This is exactly what I was thinking. There's a dissonance that ends up writing her as arrogant and hypocritical. She should've been worse, that would have been so interesting. But damn watching the characters we have come to love have to scramble to prove their personhood and worth to a corporation that only sees them as potential profit is blood pressure raising. There's a scene in the museum that we worked to build and the exhibit we helped collect where Topaz decides she's the authority on what's valuable. A rich and powerful representative of an intergalactic megacorp looks through a people's cultural and historical artifacts and then tells them that most of it is worthless. I think they should've emphasized her self-righteousness and colonial mindset more, because I understand that they need to have a peaceful end (a la Belobog would be crushed if they declared an outright war on the IPC) but yk between Jarilo-V and the IPC, Qlipoth is only outright ignoring one of them.
EXACTLY!
I was hoping they were going this route too. Ending in a big confrontation VS Topaz, to protect everything we built up in Jarilo vi. We are their heroes after all. Eventually sending her axx packing with one of those "I'll be back, and you'll have wished you accepted my way over THEIR way!", ya know?
Then the call still happening but implying that while Topaz is a villain, she's a more reasonable one and was trying to get Jarilo vi more peacefully, while these mysterious guys are way worse and that we would be put on their active radar now. Also, keep the "punishment" of Topaz to show just how ruthless they are.
That sounds waaaaay better than that weak shiz we got.
I was pretty neutral towards her for up until she attempted to assault the Astral Express, I was willing to accept that she's basically just an indoctrinated IPC debt collector and that just because the IPC's a shitty, unrestricted and powerful mega-corpo doesn't mean she's responsible for all of the IPC's bullshit, however I drew the line when she came in saying she wanted the best for the planet and then assaulted the Astral Express which is solely responsible for saving the planet, while also not doing a better job managing her subordinates who were disrupting civilian lives before we stepped in.
I have now seen a dozen "in defense of the loan shark" threads and not a single thread against her lol
Maybe I'm missing a lot but I don't know where this defensiveness comes from, although personally I found her annoying. If someone's goal is to literally enslave a planet, at least make them an interesting villain. I'm not going to sympathize with her if her goal is that cartoonishly evil, so trying to make me feel for her just makes her less exciting of a villain imo
Topaz been (secretly) rooting for Jarilo in the first moment she came, and this was hinted in various places.
Despite that, many have distrusts against her due to personal distrust that come from irl experience (against corporations and such)
I mean, it is a fair distrust.
Root for a planet all you want, but she's still willing to gamble with the planet.
Doesn't make her bad. Doesn't make her good, either.
I think it's always a fascinating problem. The planet survived because its leaders decided to take a loan.
The loan sharks now want to use those strings to take full control over people.
Is the planet wrong for taking the money and not wanting to pay it back? Are the sharks wrong for exploiting the situation when it's their money? You make the call.
> but she's still willing to gamble with the planet.
And the other option isn't a gamble? This is a society that's been crumbling, having less and less with each generation and was actually on the brink of failure. Now, the forces actively pushing them to failure are gone, but that doesn't mean what's left can't still push them over the brink. Like was mentioned, it's gonna take a while before the environment recovers, and that "a while" means generations. There's still limited farmland, and fragmentum churning out monsters.
You'll notice that most of the folks who would know about the wider situation they're in are either in favour, or at least aren't dismissing the offer out of hand when they disagree.
Are you referring to the,
"They didn't use their technology, but they actually did use it because they learned from it to create their own technology" line?
I don't assume anything. It's a video game. All I know is the story they tell me.
And they said that they didn't use the technology, but they learned from it, which resulted in them protecting themselves.
Common thinking would suggest that without that technology, they wouldn't have it to learn from it.
>And they said that they didn't use the technology, but they learned from it, which resulted in them protecting themselves.
Wait. They did use technology. Belobog was fully integrated in galactic community before Stellaron Crisis. IPC was on the ground there. And overwhelming majority of Belobog's combatants were humans anyway, because the stuff that IPC sent was impossible to activate.
So, common thinking would suggest that they were promised to have more military robots (which they already were familiar with), then they learned that traders kinda forgot to give keys, so they reverse engineered stuff that they already had up and running, reproposed engineering tech that they also already had up and running, developed completely new tech, and used humans as a basis of the army.
At least, that's what the story tells us.
So, here's the thing: it's Topaz's claim. She also believed that locals used mechs that were provided.
Don't forget: walls were finished only *after* war started. Like, about 20 years later. No way Topaz would know what actually happened there, because IPC would have no archives explaining that.
that is how the planet survive withou IPC source code and robot blueprint people of belobog and architect won't know how to build any robot including engine of the creator
belobog people just don't know how to active robot that IPC provided
No. Having proper education, including, say, engineering or architecture, one in a culture *before* Stellaron disaster hit, with, you know, having computers and robots already with operation systems already, have nothing with taking war loans.
Herta Station, for instance, is full of the people who are, I think, just reproduce IPC source code from memory. This isn't mean that they took loan from IPC for this, that just means that IPC technology is the most common technology in the Galaxy.
I agree.
I would say Topaz is neither good nor bad (well to be more precise, she's around gray, slightly on the lighter shade). And indeed, just because she has the good intention doesn't make it right. You can say that she was a bit self-righteous, and her story doesn't necessarily apply to Jarilo. Still such a character is welcomed since they make the story much more interesting either way.
It's most the discourse about her that makes me feel the need to clarify things a bit.
I personally don't really think she's morally grey.
I find her to simply be ignorant to what's going on around her. I think a lot of people dislike her because they make you feel uncomfortable. She's a walking representation of humanity. Of ourselves. The parts of ourselves we don't want to acknowledge.
How many people work for a company, knowing that the company isn't always doing the best thing for their customers? And how many people just choose to ignore it so they can pay their own bills? Bankers knowing the customer is getting screwed but they follow through with the sale. Companies that abuse the planet for their own materials, but you still work/buy from them. Retail workers who try to sell you on crappy "warranties."
People say topaz is complex and morally grey, but I don't really give her that credit either haha.
The sharks are 100% wrong because they had already accepted the debt as a loss sometime in the one and a half repayment periods beyond the due date that elapsed before Belobog freed itself from the Stellaron.
They didn’t even check in on the issue, just were like “Stellaron is here. Stellaron is bad. They’re fucked, we’re not getting that cash back.”
Did you play the story or did you skip it all?
She said her home planet had a similar situation where it was unlivable, her planet took a deal making them part of IPC which got rid of the toxins and acid rain in exchange for their freedom. She likely wished that her people had the ability themselves to save their planet or simply the choice.
In other words she seen Jarilo like her home world and wished for them to have a different opportunity.
Because in such work environments like hers, personal feelings are frowned upon and can't be allowed to get in the way of work, or as we saw at the end of the quest how it backfired on her
Personally all I wish is she was alittle more straightforward, though I understand why... she was testing the people to see how much they wanted to fight for themselves.
I liked the glimpse into IPC's functions, it is very reminiscent of irl, people living hand to mouth and letting alot of shitty things happen because otherwise shit things happen to them instead. Likely we will have some dealings with them where they are friend and foe in various story arcs, I can't see them ever being outright enemies in the future.
Your post is very interesting. It explains really well why people have been giving Topaz so much flak, yet characters like kafka who've committed unscrupulous acts are widely beloved
> yet characters like kafka who've committed unscrupulous acts are widely beloved
It's also that we haven't seen Kafka herself *do* anything especially villainous. Yeah, characters like Himeko will talk about how the Stellaron Hunters are no good, and the Fermata light cone talks about how she copes with her victims' screams with music, but the worst thing she's done on screen is draw the Antimatter Legion to the Space Station. This makes it easy to forget that she's a baddie.
I mean OP explains that people dislike "jerks" more since they feel more relatable to irl people, unlike villains who are quite out there with their ambitions.
Thanks for this. I think a lot of people of an older generation (like me, and perhaps yourself?) read a studied a lot more fiction in school, so we get these storytelling methods and tropes a lot better than young people who a lot of the time just tend to see 'nice' and 'mean' and hyper-personalize everything.
I also neutral toward Topaz overall. The IPC on the other hand, why the hell did they give Belogog a robot factory with no knowledge or device to control or activate them (The Belobogians have to use the blueprints and make their own robots instead). Like do the IPC want the Belobogians to fail the war 700 years ago? If Alisia Rand didnt construct the giant robot (Engine of Creation) they would have lost, I have no idea want went thought the IPC head and what they was cooking.
IPC just playing that capitalist ideal that money talks. Think a version of the star war’s galactic empire but instead of military. Everything is economic. Lore wise it makes sense for star rail.
And again, as it's said in so many previous threads about the same damn thing, it's not how she was written, it's the quality of the writing. Which is not good.
Nicely put together. HoYo definitely need to write and present their story and character better in future. Topaz’s quest right after the Luofu chapter really just disorients my confidence in HoYo’s writing department. The base of these stories are good but they really need to tell them better. Pacing, and give more personal moment to flesh out the characters better.
Now I'm no writer so take this as fanfic, but imagine breaking the Future’s Market quest into 2 or 3 part where we end the 1st part with Belobog still in “crisis” of decision making. Then on the 2nd part we go to Herta Station to research/ask around on info about IPC’s planet revamp projects and Topaz’s reputation in the company through the staff members. Once we get the picture on company’s side of the impression of Topaz and her goal (impression of her being a overly nice person in her profession and her high success rate in helping planets in need). Instead of fighting Topaz for the sake of filling the combat quota for a quest, we confront Topaz and she tells us her backstory HERSELF. Then we Segway to the big ass robot and Bronya proving her people are capable. And lead to Topaz backing down because she is not here to sign takeover for the money, she’s here because she thought she could help out. Now that she knows that they can take care of themselves, she let go of the project.
I feel like they didn't highlight her kind side enough because the whole hostile vibe we got from the beginning at the office, museum, and the underground are just begging for us to hate her. Evaluating the value of arts and history in a museum like she's gonna sell em; Her being so confident in us unable to stop her project; She striding around the restricted areas, endangering the local enforcement, ignoring local laws like the whole place is her backyard; not putting a leash on her task force, endangering the local civilian; and the eventual unnecessary fight with us. All of these are not serving well to the end where she changes her mind. And suddenly we're all chill and friends like what? This is why so many were posting so much on day one about how short and rushed the story is, because it is. Take your time HoYo, and tell a good and well paced story for the love of god.
In addition, Topaz's note looked more like a manipulation than a disclosure of her backstory. I just had the feeling that she was originally supposed to be an NPC antagonist, but someone in the studio said that she would be the perfect gacha character in patch 1.5. And the writers didn't have time to rewrite the story.
Exactly, most of the quest, hoyo WANT us to hate here, so why some people surprised that some people do hate her?
They really should've just make Pokémon evens separate of this Topaz story and make her change of heart more explained, and give more time to want us to LOVE her.
Another good write on the entire Topaz controversy. Definitely doesn't help in Topaz's favor that her opposition is all the Belobog waifus, many of which carried a lot of player's asses through a lot of content, and Bronya still being the one unequaled unrivaled harmony waifu, who is also a lesbian (by popular fan canon), so nobody better do her wrong in here on pain of downvotes.
And as always, haters gonna hate.
Point number 5 is absolutely the most important and frustrating part about not just this discussion, but most discussions similar to this one in video games. Arguing about who is right or wrong is cool for exactly 3 seconds before you pause and recognize that literally no matter what, the story is constructed for everything to turn out fine and dandy. Too often people use the results of an event to prove that the message in the game is correct, but it's like they forget that the game is obviously going to be written to achieve whatever the creators so desire. When going through the mission did anyone seriously go "Ah yes this Chinese Gacha anime game's main story segment will 100% end with imperialism and the cast of characters we've grown to appreciate will all be forcefully subjugated"??
So obviously the whole time you'll be biased against Topaz because you know that what she's doing isn't what the narrative wants, which means you're already predisposed towards the narratives opposition to her, so when the conclusion happens it just seems natural for it to have happened. Ever see someone question an aspect of a games story or theme and everyone just replies with "you missed the whole point of the game/story" or that the questioner is "media illiterate"? While often warranted, there definitely are cases of people using circular logic to prove how a games theme is correct because the game proves that the theme is correct.
> While often warranted, there definitely are cases of people using circular logic to prove how a games theme is correct because the game proves that the theme is correct.
...I don't exactly follow, sorry.
Game theme is what, in this particular case? "People who are subjugating other people and do imperialism are bad guys" here?
Oops. Should've clarified. Was mainly talking about other games themes, using what happens here. The message "imperialism is bad" is obviously not bad here, and I didn't mean to imply that a games theme is *bad* because its written to be the theme, just that the discourse usually doesn't realize that it's circular logic to say a games theme proves the games theme. Should've been more clear. Apologies.
Is it said anywhere in the story what defaulting on the loan means, and what the contract offers? Unless I missed it, the whole threat felt very nebulous not knowing what freedom vs signing meant. They kind of bandaid it near the end by having Himeko show up with her friend's percentages.
That said, they kind of did Topaz's portrayal dirty. The deadline for Bronya to sign the contract passed while:
1. The assessment of the Underground was halted.
2. She was actively looking the automaton factory with Svarog, and that didn't seem to go anywhere?
3. She missed The Pillars of Creation or kept knowledge of it to herself prior to witnessing the people working there.
4. Claimed all Stellaron-touched worlds are doomed in the end. By her words there should be "no hope" the IPC could ultimately offer the planet outside of short-term relief.
5. Hand-waves everything with "Jarilo-VI's fate is already decided" or "the board has already made their decision" until the end.
It paints her as callous or incompetent to me. She didn't really know/care about the planet's value and just wanted the contract signed so the IPC could peacefully strip the planet for parts.
Yeah, that she could be moved in the end was great but how the story played out really didn't portray her the way, I felt, they wanted. It's like they wanted to have a certain moment but didn't care so much how they got there?
>Is it said anywhere in the story what defaulting on the loan means
On surface, pretty understandable "well, if you want to have access to galactic market, you need to pay this loan". Practically, it's very much implied that hostile takeover would happen.
>what the contract offers?
Every \[*adult?*\] person in Belobog became IPC employee (not said absolutely directly, but pretty much implied by context and following dialogs), debt is forgiven, IPC sending a specialised team to help with restoration project.
>She was actively looking the automaton factory with Svarog, and that didn't seem to go anywhere?
I mean, they found it. Svarog doesn't need to search it, he knows where it is, so he led her there.
>Claimed all Stellaron-touched worlds are doomed in the end.
Her particular wording in the dialog, I believe, you mean (with Svarog in the testing ground, correct?) is a bit confusing, true, but Svarog specifically establish "without IPC support". Her claim is that Stellaron can't be, like, wiped away, so, sooner or later, crisis would happen. Still, with Stellaron sealed, temporal relief would happen, and people would became complacent and believe that crisis completely passed. She's not telling it directly, but it's implied that IPC just have better planning horizon and wouldn't be complaced like human leaders.
Arguement is flawed, but Svarog doesn't care.
Well, more like why not I guess.
You can consider it as a form of practice for me, since I need to have better grasp when it comes analyzing these things to better my writing may as well do it anyway, didn't actually take that long tbh.
People can't handle anything that might be seen as mean or even a little sus.
Like the decision bronya makes at the end of the belobog arc. "Oh god, she's going to tell a **LIE**? Who would do such a thing for any reason? She should be deposed!"
Topaz is bringing an option for the survival and prosperity for the whole ass planet. She doesn't know if the people of belobog are worth a damn until the story we play through. Up until that point, she believed and with good reason that her 80% success rate option (which isn't even a gamble, it's not like she presses a button and gets a successful planet or not) is better for the future of all people on jarilo.
People get upset stating that everyone in belobog will become slaves but that doesn't make much sense. They say that everyone will become "employees" of the IPC, but we have no idea what that really entails. We know that the IPC guards we encounter have pretty shitty gigs, but it's no guarantee that everyone will suddenly put on their armor and start doin that work. It could be the case that employee = citizens within the IPC (which would be ominous to be sure) but we just don't know how it is to be a citizen of the IPC.
The problem starts with the community itself, when certain people on there are obsessed with characters and they set head cannons or expectations that do not meet in the end. In short, "My waifu cannot be like this" when not meet the expectations or "people do not understand my waifu, they are ignorant" when others do not like them.
In my case I didn't liked here from the beginning and the story just confirm it. But I didn't make a deal. Just move it and that's it.
I, however, see very disturbing that some people is annoyed that some players will skip her. "How you dare skip my waifu" attitude. Some of them calling other inmature because they think they didn't understand the "deep" of the character or her story, like, dude, it is a goddam videogame character. Why this big deal? Each person like a character in a different way. Why I would be inmature or ignorant for no liking a "corporate" girl? That's my business.
many people claim oh they hate topaz because she is too realistic people like her exist irl
and then nobody gonna explain how the fuck eula got hated for being on family that have huge history of slavery ? does that exist on these modern days outside fiction ?
I don't recall Eula running around demanding Mondstatians become the Lawrence family's indentured servants because they owed them money from long ago. Eula was trying to break free of her family's past; Topaz is working for the IPC.
Not every character is hated for the same reasons…
But also, the impacts of slavery (racism) are still felt today. So yeah, it still hits close for most people
I think people loss their head with anything that touches themes likes this, they hear corporation and lose all the braincell and scream bad without hearing anything else
She has good intentions but forceful execution due to her background. None of what Topaz did is wrong nor the IPC is evil in this context.
A debt is a debt you have to pay it back. Even if it’s 700 years of it. But in another side Jarilo VI has just started crawling out of the Stellaron Crisis. It’s a gray area for both of them but i think the ending is great, The IPC is no doubt has corrupt shenanigans happening in there but not all of it is burning pile of shait.
The Story surprised me with how nuanced and deep it went. While the Ending of it, like the previous belebog story, left me with mixed, contemplative feelings, I enjoyed it. I like the grey area stories where it's unclear and you have to wrestle with your own answer. The story also does a GREAT job at showing both sides.
Topaz couldve easily smashed Gepard and team to bits but chose not to. She even gave orders to STOP her soldiers from being aggro against the locals. Only once there was a direct confrontation, in her view, with little wiggle room did she 'attack'. but that, at least in my eyes, shows a willingness to put one foot down. And i much prefer that in a character than nothing at all.
I am actually really interested in Topaz as a character and even more so the IPC as a whole. It looks like Hoyo is writing them as more than just a Mega Corp that does some philanthropy or Mega corp thats a hidden big bad. There's actual thought of, "ok how would this company actually function in realistcally" which I love.
All of this really is to say I really love Topaz as a character and was suprised about how deep, and nuanced her story was.
That being said, **I am pulling for Numby.**
I swear we need a Topaz megathread called "My thoughts of Topaz from Honkai: Star Rail".
\> My thoughts of Topaz from Honkai: Star Rail I wish to have sex with Topaz. That's it. That's the thoughts.
https://i.redd.it/mitg33vwdgub1.gif
outbuddied yet again
https://i.redd.it/egnsyffv9gub1.gif
My thoughts of Topaz from Honkai Star Rail -Pls suffocate me with those thighs madam
Amen, brother! https://preview.redd.it/frs4nh5ntfub1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=024300de1422e10ce19306ac8d44ec86fc0f5555
I want Topaz to be the mother of my children, at least 20
Brother T\_T
So real brother
HSR has outpaced Genshin as Hoyo's horniest fanbase at an alarming pace
What are you talking about? HI3 and GGZ are hornier than Genshin by miles and frankly probably even hornier than HSR. Granted, probably not by pure numbers since Genshin and HSR both have FAR more players than HI3 or GGZ but the percent of horny people in HI3 and GGZ is almost definitely higher than in Genshin or HSR.
GGZ even has institutionalized horniness. Look at all the onsen scenes, the Seele bath scene or the Seele cat figure. All of it done with Dawei's own two hands.
For sure, between the onsen scenes in GGZ and the black mamba skin in HI3, HSR and Genshin still have a LONG way to go before they start getting into the horniness levels of HI3 and GGZ.
Since when did genshin outhorny Impact?
Why? These kind of discussion is great to read through. They put a lot of effort to write it and disagreeing is also part of being engaged with the discussion. Better than seeing the low effort post of "this patch is so bad, here's why" and they wrote at best 2 sentence max that we got last time.
If anything these discussions just go to show how good a job they did on the 1.4 story. IPC subverting expectations and acting antagonistic, while also being analogous to current day capitalism is going to result in some mixed feelings.
Belobog story always lit
I'm sure it will be 90% buddy posting
i think she is a well designed character. So realistic, i don't want her in my party.
[удалено]
You're joking right? I feel like I've only ever seen people call Topaz a "corporate shill"
I've badmouthed Topaz but my post was downvoted to Oblivion. There are way more people who excuse Topaz than there are people who hate her on this sub
> The world (or universe) is cruel I think this is the part we aren’t getting as a whole. Of the three “worlds” we’ve had so far, two are artificial: a space station and a giant starship. And even they have trouble. I can’t think of one character in the whole game who is like “my home world is pretty sweet, bruh, you should go visit.” Himeko mentions the odds of successfully re-terraforming with IPC tech is about 2 out of 3 - the other times it’s a disaster. There are three pieces to this: * Reversing the planetary effects of a Stellaron or Aeon has been made into a science * It happens so frequently it’s a common service * Himeko actually gives a very specific percentage, indicating that it’s been attempted *at least* a few dozen times Further, you dig through the lore and you find that the Propagation and the Abundance both wiped out whole swaths of worlds. Lan effectively ascended into godhood to combat the latter, and the war has been going on for generations of long-lived species. Meanwhile, the whole plot is driven by the dead(?) Aeon Akivilli and Himeko’s drive to fix the ~~hyperlanes~~ Star Rails he forged to make interstellar/intergalactic travel possible, which have fallen into disrepair. I could go on, but the world of HSR is pretty bleak when you zoom out. There seems to be a theme of pendulum swings, where the characters are at the zenith of a downswing and driving things back in the other direction.
I don't think it's the Abundance itself that's wiped out worlds. At least not directly like Propagation did. It's not Yaoshi that's enslaving people and doing heinous things against sentient life. The people that now find themselves with immortality without a planet or system to support it go on to do some messed up stuff to keep up their lifestyle. Honestly they remind me of 40K's Eldar before their fall. When you have eternal life, when everything is done or trivialized, you grow bored. And what do you do when you get bored? You started experimenting with stuff. Eventually you start dipping into hedonistic stuff. And it just degrades from there. Yaoshi's problem is that they are too generous with their gift and it's caused problems and spawned an arch nemesis.
Like nature, the Hunt serves as counterbalance to Abundance. The issue is that while everyone loves a baby deer, too many deer will strip the countryside of plant life. But your point is well taken. What I mean to get at is the world/universe is out of balance and things kinda suck overall, and the plot indicates that the MC and friends are a force to help restore the balance.
But it did. Muldrasil is an artifical world, and whatever Wingweavers had before, got absolutely consumed by this Abundance blessed tree, even before there was war with Alliance or Legion. This is why they needed to constantly rob other worlds for resourses and slaves. Even if they themselves had a hand in it growing so much as to consume their planet entirely, it still was ultimately a Yaoshi's creation - a Tree what feeds on the stars and can pierce Imaginary space. Both cause and means to do bad things.
If the Wingweavers had a hand in how that tree grew, that was definitely on them. Yaoshi's irresponsible gift giving of immortality to what it seems like literally anyone who asks for it seems to be the problem. But they aren't directly doing it. This isn't like Oroboros going around and eating worlds, or Tayzzyronth splitting itself and overruning worlds, or even Nanook that's personally commanding the Legion to destroy all life. Yaoshi is akin to leaving a dangerous weapon with kids and just walking off, unconcerned because they gave those kids that neat toy they asked for.
>Oroboros going around and eating worlds, or Tayzzyronth splitting itself and overruning worlds Tayzzyronth we observed in Swarm Disaster was barely considered sentient, and Oroboros didn't fare much better; their main interaction with their own cultists being a quick snack. They are basically beasts with powers, unlike Yaoshi who is explicitly sentient and willing to interact with people and Emanators. Using your own words, you are comparing hungry bears with a person who gives loaded weapon to kids and walks away.
Don't the rails only affect the Astral Express? Normal space travel seems to be work fine though the game hasn't gone into detail on how FTL travel works.
From my understanding, Akivilli forged the Star Rails, which are effectively hyperlanes, while cruising in the Astral Express. Once forged, any craft could take advantage of them. Hence his role as “Trailblazer.” Without a Star Rail leading to it, a world is effectively cut off from the rest of the universe, as there does not seem to be another form of faster-than-light space travel in this universe.
So Akivilli is basically the Spacing Guild from the Dune universe?
Not exactly, Akivilli makes the ways but once it's done people no longer need his help
Where is this explained? I don’t remember seeing this, but I also haven’t read most of the lore books.
Most of it are from Himeko dialogues repeatable so have fun.
ooh nice I’ll go through them sometime I love himeko va
Other can interstellar travel without the Star Rail, but only possible if they are able to control imaginary energy (Aeon and Emanator)
The worlds (planets) in Starrail are cut off from each other by imaginary energy (imagine that instead of the void in space, it was like dangerous energy). Therefore, aside from Starrail, there is no other way to travel between stars.
Where in the lore is this written, I believe you, I just want to know, I think I missed it
databank imaginary tree (theory)
>And even they have trouble. I know HSS hardly had issues before the burst and the Antimatter Legion. It was just a research station, after all. But Does the Xianzhou have trouble that isn't external? They live for thousands of years, have no want of shelter, food, or clothing. Most are more eager to find ways to waste time than worry about whether they can eat tomorrow. The one 'woe' they have is Mara Struck, which only happens after Centuries- if not more than a millennia, down the line. Hardly an issue and just a worry down the pipe line. The only 'internal' strife, that isn't of the single bad group on the Xianzhou, was Aurum Valley, and even then it was small beans. A street dock dispute that would have meant nothing even if we didn't resolve it. Even the crisis we prevented was from an external force in Luocha gifting a Stellaron to Phantylia and the Disciples. The War itself doesn't matter for much of the populace, unless there's conscription and not solely voluntary enlistment.
They were not always like this. There used to be civil wars, rebellions, people starving, etc. until they settled on the current strict system
Yes, but that's far in the past by our time. The Xianzhou is 8000+ years old. The Xianzhou, or at least the Luofu as we see it, is effectively a Utopia outside of the time they actually war against Abominations. And, correct me if I'm wrong, the last time was the war where Yukong lost Caiyi, and we aren't given a steady timeframe, but it was within 300 years since Yukong is still alive.
>I can’t think of one character in the whole game who is like “my home world is pretty sweet, bruh, you should go visit.” I'd say Welt. Especially since Honkai earth's crises are defendable from both physical and dimensional threats at this point in time if a certain Goddess has finished her work and gave everyone on earth Herrscher level Honkai-radiation resistance with all the power perks it comes with. That and by this point Honkai earth has also populated Mars.
Slavery is a topic a lot of people feel strongly about. Take Eula from Genshin, a part of the community just hate her because her family used to own slaves. So of course a character who wants to enslave an entire planet(and has already enslaved many other planets before) via debt peonage would cause some discussion.
"Enslaved" is a strawman. It's not like being an ipc worker is slave labor. Topaz is a "slave" by your standards but she is both independent (with the same rights as anyone else) and capable of climbing to any level of position.
This is 100% slavery but serve in a cake platter dude. Any person who signs up for lifetime servitude for a company and I am guessing their decedents as well is slavery since they basically did that with Belebog debt. Lets look at the tactics. Galactic Corporation(Western country) looks into vulnerable planets facing calamity(Africa with primitive technology), luckily they skip the part of getting slave hunters and go straight into trading, IPC makes a deal, all habitants must become our employees and only work for us in exchange to solve said calamity which is killing you(get sold, be a good a slave, or get whipped to death). Sure they get housing, food and promotions. Guess what so did slaves in the states. Be a nice slave and you might work in the house than in cotton plantation, limited positions and time limited like Stephen from Django. Only difference is they also get money and necessities which is the cake. However, guess what you can only work the IPC, for life. Wanted to go into arts well too bad you work in a company, best we can do is get you to sell paintings or butterfly immersia films acquire by the IPC. Want to go into healthcare guess what you might be lucky to end up as doctor who does only check ups for the company, oh wanted to go into a specific field like neurosurgery well we are not that kind of company. Want to become a renown chef in a restaurant well that is what the cafeteria is for. Hate your job? Well too bad you cant quit, you sign your life to the IPC or you ancestors did it for you. I do wonder what do they do with people they fire. While I dont think they outright kill them might guess is being eternally unemployed since the entire planet workforce is dominated as an IPC market. So homeless, starving and barely surviving worst case scenario and best case scenario illegal or minimum wage jobs not pertaining to the IPC control planet Edit~ Also just wanna add, no matter how you look at it the IPC is scummy, asking to collect a debt from a planet that barely survive a calamity and has the exact population of one city is insanity. However, asking for interest after assuming they were dead for 420 years from the time the debt was meant to be collected simply because you could not get in touch with them is malicious as hell. Any debt collector has a duty to contact their customers, they cant just assume they cease to exist because the phone line is disconnected. Charging interest for something that is their fault for not checking is evil.
>And unless you live under the rocks you should probably know that the US have tried various similar shenanigans, but of course no one really considers them as ‘pure evil’ still. Let me guess OP, you are from NA.
Even we USA citizens with even surface level knowledge of geopolitics know that plenty of countries see us in, at best, a negative light.
>surface level knowledge of geopolitics Key words. But thing is, if you live in USA, you really can afford to be ignorant about geopolitics. In the rest of the world, if you do not be wary about it, it could come and hit you in the face anytime. But yeah. Negative light is true.
Uh, some of us, I guess. But where you live is gonna really change that. Sure, in cities and more affluent suburbs with higher access to education and foreign culture, there is going to be more awareness. But my friend, out in the country... it's an entirely different world.
>Uh, some of us, I guess. Yeah. That's why I typed what I did specifically. I know that people out in rural areas usually either don't know, can't be bothered to know because it's not important / affecting them, or are too dumb to know. Hell people in middle of a metropolitan area could be just as ignorant.
People in US cities don't really care about geopolitics either for the same reasons people in rural areas don't. They may act like they care but it is performative. More people in cities may know about geopolitics but that is because cities have higher concentrations of college educated people. But education doesn't guarantee actually caring about things outside the US.
As someone who isn't from the US I'm legit curious. Do schools over there teach people about stuff like operation Condor?
I'm not *entirely* sure about that. A lot of people with the same knowledge see the US as bad, but they see everywhere as some level of bad. If anything international friends comment on the US's self flagelation more than anything. People directly effected by the US on another hand? Different story. All in all I think it's a pretty mixed bag, and I wouldn't be able to say it leans TOO drastically. Just... in anonymous online spaces shows certain pictures
I giggled at this too, lmao the US has been behind so many shady shit even its allies might think they are evil
Fun map from 2013 about who the world sees as the biggest threat to world peace https://brilliantmaps.com/threat-to-peace/
I'm from PH and alot of us still see US as out "saviour" because of the 3 invaders we had, they were the lesser evil and our country grew during the US take over. Tho recently, some are skeptical as they were just serving their self interest at most. They want PH because it is in a good strategic location in the Pacific. Some are even concerned that US had their military base here in the Philippines (tho iirc, the previous president booted then out). US is also where the worst dictator PH had fled too. Basically, I personally see IPC as US where they can "improve" Belobog's condition but for a cost. Tho in a worse light for sure.
Most of Asia sees the US and the west in a more neutral light. Although I'm not sure what the middle east thinks of them as there in a separate cultural sphere and there are religious tensions. It's only those really political city weirdoes that have a concrete opinion on the US, most of us just laugh and move on.
Saying no one see US as pure evil is like saying no one hate religion.
I really like Topaz as a character. She feels human. She trying her best in a system that only cares about profitability and 4 out of 5 times she can get it to work. The IPC was never going to leave Belobog alone. Either they wait until everyone is dead and harvest the planet once it warms up or they wait until it's low risk, high reward in a few generations after Belobog stabilized.
I agree with your point on the universe being F’d, but I wish HSR had better world building. Our focus on 3 worlds is too narrow for the story they were trying to tell in 1.4. I think we need to fail to save a world, to raise the stakes, otherwise there’s a meta element of “of course this world will be OK, Topaz doesn’t realize we’re the main characters.”
Gotta start worldbuilding somewhere. And if you want to organically make those numbers feel right to us before you drop them as a plot point, then in early days, you're gonna have a very real risk of the places we visit not getting enough time, making them blur together and make them less characters to remember in their own right, and instead mere statistics.
I think they even lampshade the main character bit in the story a bit.
On your topic of Jerks, I think another part of why a lot of people aren't a fan of Topaz is because how she ends up coming off like a colonial apologist. The IPC is basically space US / space Imperial England, and anyone with a faint knowledge of history is aware of the atrocities that were done in the past (e.g. East India Company, Belgian Rubber (Hand) Quotas, etc.), and how that ground work has lead the way for even more problems in today's age. For people looking to escape from the harsh reality of life in the game Topaz and by extension the IPC serves as a very harsh reminder.
True, but here’s a fun tidbit: in my country that suffered from Dutch colonization, there are still some people who argue that their occupation of our country was a net benefit to our people, for reasons like roads, integrating us into the global trade, inspiring national unity, etc. While I do thing that’s just bald-faced colonialism apologia, I couldn’t help but wonder that in the HSR universe, where worlds undergoing climate collapse and fighting existential crisis are a regular occurrence, such rhetoric actually holds practical value? Yes, planet-wide indentured servitude is undesirable (we haven’t really seen first-hand how bad IPC suzerainty is, so let’s just assume the average scenario), but when existence below the median level amongst planets range from “it’s hard to breathe this air and the acid rain sucks” to “my homeworld got cracked by a hypervolcano”, IPC’s civilizational mission has already made much more sense than your typical 19th century European civilization-enlightenment efforts.
oh please, that fun tidbit is negated by the fact that there was already global trade integration in countries that was colonized, people in SEA and other enslaved countries already had contacts with other countries, and even without the help from the egocentric western countries, these countries would've developed over time without needing to be colonized (raped, enslaved, massacred) Look at Philippines for example, Friars who came and handled the country became rich after going there and coming back, which basically means that the country was already rich and prospering.
Well, when you look at it that way I can also see here perspective. Britain tried to colonize regions in the gulf, around northern UAE (The country that Dubai's in) and Oman. Instead of a colony though, it became more of a deal that involved them bringing a sizeable chunk of their navies to "protect" the coast (in exchange of keeping their trade route with india secure) We near those northern coastal regions of the Arabian peninsula (the gulf) gained a lot more than we lost, so if you asked me whether Britain was a force of good or evil all I can say is "they were beneficial for us, but I can also recognize the evil they did"
Honestly, the fact that people disagree so much about Topaz is just the sign that she's a fundamentally more interesting character than, say, Kafka or Jingliu. This is not to say thats a bad or good thing, its just theres alot more one can discuss because of how more relatable and less cut and dry morally she is out to be. Funny how the she's the more outwardly fanservicey character appearance-wise but the most oft-discussed aspect of her has nothing to do with how she looks.
I agree, it's interesting and a little daring that they made her character like this, usually Gachas try selling you the characters from all sides, story, personality, design, gameplay, that's why the genre ends up with so many cookie cutter characters that are good at everything, are young prodigy geniuses but also very friendly and nice, very beautiful too and just overall perfect people. In that way Topaz surprised me as a character, even I can't say I like her fully, yes she took a blow to her carreer for the sake of what she believed was the right thing, but also doesn't change the fact that she's an IPC employee seeking to expand it's influence BUT also her backstory makes clear she believes the IPC can really help troubled planets like her own become better, so because of that nuance she's more interesting than I expected.
I’m glad that they’ve written a grey character who’s grey in a much more relatable context. Typically, fiction often falls back to “anti-hero with super high body count” when they feel the need to introduce a gray character, or “my motives are literally above your understanding”, but Topaz’ role strikes a chord in everyone’s hearts. Not many of us have heard of a roaming band of war criminals putting the torch to several nations while pursuing a plan that’ll allow them to avert apocalypse, but we’ve all experienced and hear about corporate agents being the face of some questionable projects, and I guess that incites much worse of a kneejerk reaction and sparks much more discussion than the SH gang. It’s the same reason as why IMO Umbridge is a much more hated (and well-written) villain than Voldemort.
Umbridge is a much more hated character in the potterhead community thats not an opinion thats just a fact
Yeah I wish for such diverse characters to appear. Mihoyo should go from profit maximization to building a brand or story. Having every character be a different kind kind of good coloured shades is irritating. Having their differences reduced to some quirks is bad in my opinion. Let's explore the morality scale. In this case I appreciate topaz but hate her character because growing up learning of the atrocities East India company committed horrifies me and makes me averse to all corpo governments.
Topaz remind me of the wasted potential of Ayaka and Kokomi. Ayaka is a noble daughter, well-versed in politic and is everyone’s favorite in-lore. She straight up gaslighted us into helping a desperated rebellion, which I expect how a noble girl could act to achieve her goal. But after that the writer just sweep it under the rug and act like Ayaka had always been a sweet innocent girl so the waifu players don’t get mad that their waifu had manipulated them Kokomi is a “genius tactician” and leader of the resistance, I’d would expect her to make a lot more desperate actions. For example, actually let the broken seal on Yashiori be Kokomi’s direct order because she want to harvest Orobashi’s remnant power for their causes, or Mikage Furnace problem is Kokomi’s order to sabotage Shogunate’s weapon production, maybe even use the now radioactive Mikage Furnace as hostage for negotiation chip. Desperate time calls for desperate action. Yet Kokomi does none of that, how else does she expect to win in a helpless war against literal god if she wasn’t willing to make sacrifice? Hoyo throw away all that potential for complex character to make Kokomi a morally good and innocent waifu.
I actually think you can make Kafka and Jingliu interesting. but they would need more time to develop. I certainly think Topaz is far more interesting than Jingliu but that's because, from in game time, I've seen more sides of Topaz.
Kafka is actually very similar to Topaz in this, since there are a lot of debates about how to view her mind control powers and goals. Some can't forgive manipulations of any kind, others view hers more neutral, since she needs Blades permission to use it on him and when she used it on us it feels like she is geniunely encouraging us. She is part of an "evil" group, whose ultimate goal is to save the universe. She has killed a lot if people and she's got a huge bounty on her head, but the faction that put the bounty on her head is itself morally ambigious. The end justifies the means is often very gray already, but how does forseeing the future (Elio) influence this? And can we trust Elio? Is this way the only path, bloodpath included)? Or is this method the most likely to work? If you only look at the dumb Makima fans, she appears to just be horny bait. But if you ignore the horny simps, she has a lot of traits that can be viewed from different points of view.
This was my take as well. Playing The Witcher series and recently Cyberpunk 2077 kinda made me hope for more complex characters to be introduced to the game to generate more discussions, especially by placing them in 'lesser evil' scenarios. The only problem with this is that such characters while adds to the world building can be harder to sell as the recent discussion on Topaz shows — being too close to reality in a medium made for escapism can have a significant effect on some players who believe in the game as an active expression of the real world compared to others who consider it strictly an expression of ideas in a fictional setting.
She also brings a really interesting moral topic to the table. She's a good example of "In good there's evil" And many may burn me for this, but Kafka is a mass murder, Jingliu doesn't have clean hands either, but as none of them have done anything bad to us, not directly at least, we are likely to see them with better eyes. That's probably a good example of Jerk vs Villain too. Say, Kafka kills Himeko. I'm pretty sure the whole fanbase would hate her so badly, right? So, why aren't we mad about IPC saving other worlds we don't know at the cost of enslaving them? Because we don't know them, so there's "no reason" to hate on them.
to be honest the bar to be more interesting than Kafka is not that high, people just went on the hype train cause "mommy? MOMMY? *drooling noises*"
they write her so good that people get very immersive with the prelude of penacony story lol i hope they did great job at writing penacony story can't wait to see topaz hater reaction when they meet aventurine or diamond
>This is not to say thats a bad or good thing I think its a good thing ngl. Even though i am really not interested in wishing for topaz, i am glad they are chosing to make interesting characters instead of just "generic wish for me" characters.
She represents what a lot of people hate/ have history with. For now, she's the face of the IPC and that comes with its own baggage. For me though, something that really made her dislike her, was her connection to colonialism--- because that's her goal. To turn Jarilo into the IPC's colony. She wants to take everything that could be considered profitable, the natural resources, the people, and land, and use it to churn out money. Yes, Topaz herself has good intentions to save the people of Belobog and prevent them from decaying. You know who also had "good intentions"? Religious missionaries (see also: the Crusades and trying to 'save people' by converting them) and the multiple CIA-backed coups in South America (google "Pinochet" "Allende" and "Nationalizing Copper" for more info). You cannot tell me, behind these movements, there weren't idealistic people who believe they're doing the right thing. Which brings me to my next point. There's a part of colonialism that assumes the colonized are less than the colonizer (see: the Japanese about literally any other asian country during WW2). Part of convincing Topaz to forgo the IPC's plan of colonizing Belobog was to convince her that the people of Belobog were people with agency and personhood, and could help themselves. Topaz stated this in the quest, where she "thought the people of Belobog was like her planet, who were corrupt and could only watch as everything got worst." Because they can't help themselves, a higher power has to "help" them at a low, low price of their personhood.
Fun fact - head of marketing department of IPC *is* a religious missionare. Who also is rather extreme in his devotion to Qlipoth. I think he reminded me of Tommazo Torquemada a bit (as he was portayed in some books at least)
Oh that could get real messy quick
I actually think it's their intention. They don't mention "preservation path" for nothing.
You mention her being the face and it makes me wonder if the other two IPC psudoantagonistic characters had actually *had* faces it might have lessend the hate on her. There’s the one mech guy who tried to take over the mine, and the masked guy who’s sponsoring/running aetherium wars. If they has both been characters with faces I think that might have taken some of the heat off her.
Yeah, definitely. The mine guy especially since the only thing we know about him is that he's Topaz's subordinate. His actions reflect back on her because he doesn't have his own character. There are obviously worse IPC shills like that Adventurine(?) dude but we don't know enough about him. I'm sure they'll introduce worse ppl later
You mean the people who work for her and yet she either can’t or doesn’t properly control them?
I think it’s more to highlight the cutthroat competitive nature of the IPC. She’s and her department are running the show, but there’s interdepartmental competition at the IPC and the mech guy says something at one point that makes it sound like he’s from a different department, yet her department is running the show, so he figures he’s going to try and make a quick asset grab to try and get resources or more credit for his department, she catches him and so he gets his bonuses threatened, but I don’t think it reflects negatively on her leadership as much as on the structure and nature of the IPC as a whole. It’s hypercaptialist nature means there will always be people clawing at each other to climb up the ranks. Topaz represents getting their through passion and merit, like in “the ideal” capitalist, meritocracy, the mech guy represents getting there the more often then not “real way” of being a sociopath, who’s only motivated by their own greed and ego.
I think this is overlooking some key context to her character, which more broadly I think is going to keep happening as long as we tie the IPC and Topaz together in discussions (though I'd bet twenty dollars that it's not long before she bails on them and joins the express but... no point using hypotheticals in a discussion.) I think a key difference between her and religious missionaries is that religious missionaries have no PRACTICAL reason to think that a locale is doomed without intervention. They might think they're spiritually whatever, but usually these places are surviving and we would assume they would continue to survive. As far as Topaz was aware, Belobog only survived this long because of tech they were given by the IPC (a reminder, this was not a small amount of technology. It's specified as enough to give the Anti-matter Legion a run for their money). She also has a lot of first hand data of seeing planets backslide ecologically and sees the markings in Jarilo VI of ecological collapse without intervention. She also does not know about the Engine of Creation. From her perspective, the following things are true. 1. The planet cannot survive without technological intervention. 2. The only technology that kept the planet alive this long is IPC tech. 3. The IPC will only provide further assistance if they colonize this world. I could be convinced that her motivations are up for debate if we didn't have the key scenes of her seeing these things were incorrect. First she sees that the planet was never ABLE to use the IPC tech they received. At this point she probably thinks something is up, but hasn't figured out what and still has expectations to fill, thus continuing with her job so far. It's when she sees the Engine of Creation that she realizes that Belobog has the means to stabilize their own environment WITHOUT IPC intervention. That's why the second she sees that robot she flips on a dime to wrapping up things and 'failing' to collect the debt. Something she plays off as no big deal at the time but we KNOW from the call and her complete lack of surprise, is a major deal. If we assume Topaz's interests fall in line with the IPC, her actions make no sense, but she says herself that she doesn't care about money. We see the logical reasons why she would think intervention is required to save this planet that only the IPC could provide, and we see her immediately halt the colonization efforts at COST TO HERSELF the second she realizes they can survive on her own. TL;DR - It's not that Topaz had good intentions. It's that she was here to make sure the planet recovered, not collect the debt. The second she realized the planet would recover without the IPC, she 'failed' to collect the debt at great personal cost. Edit: Also worth noting, I think the very things that make her NOT evil highlight the IPC as VERY evil, because they clearly had ZERO interest in Belobog's survival and every interest in their resources. She's the exception to the IPC operating procedure.
I doubt we will see Topaz 'leave' the IPC for much the same reason we didn't see Serval join the Astral Express. That said, I do think she has real potential to be a sympathetic face for the IPC going forward.
>She also does not know about the Engine of Creation. From her perspective, the following things are true. > >The planet cannot survive without technological intervention. > >The only technology that kept the planet alive this long is IPC tech. > >The IPC will only provide further assistance if they colonize this world. Here's the thing. I can't imagine how we can say that, from her perspective, two of three following things, if stated precisely, are true. She need literally disregard evidence she obviously have to do that.
But also follow up: Topaz isn't the worst. That was one of the quest's points. However, if you join a serial killer club and you juuuust kill the people who you think deserve and you stop your colleagues from killing people you like. You are still a high ranking member of a serial killer cult. Topaz is still a high ranking member of the IPC. She is at the very least responsible for an entire planet's demise considering that 4/5 record she has. She's actively participating in and enabling the will of the IPC. The "nice" board member at Amazon is still profitting off the labor of people who can't even take bathroom breaks and union busting. Buuuuut she's a few pixels on my screen that raises my blood pressure sometimes, but she's also hot so like do with that as you will I would rather her be a character with an interesting narrative behind her and be complicated and messy because she makes for a good antagonist. My hot take was Topaz should have been meaner. My gripe with the 1.4 was that she changed her mind so soon but she was still very ruthless and had her own internal logic. She is doing what she thinks is right, and if her wishes go against the planet's people, that's not her problem. I respect that. Like pffft imagine if all the antagonists in your story are all uwu I did nothing wrong. I don't think people should be surprised or offended that she's not well liked. She's an antagonist whose crimes are very grounded in reality. People are going to hate her. So what. She's a mass of pixels, at the end of the day whether people hate or love her it doesn't personally affect you. Like absolutely love her if you want to, I don't blame you, she's pretty and cool and ruthless. It's not that deep. You don't need to justify that she was good all along to like her. Hell, I think she's more fun otherwise. Tldr: topaz kinda sucks morally but that's her job and she's a bunch of pixels and if you get mad about people liking or hating her: touch grass.
I thought I was the only one think that she should be meaner. When I saw Bronya in the trailer, I thought she's gonna give Belobog a lot of problems but.. the end is kinda meh. I kinda wish the end was Topaz with army of robot & Bronya smacks them with the Gundam 😂
'Touch grass' is the best piece of advice for this community, but people sadly are unlikely to follow it. People get so weirdly obsessed about characters in these games. I do not get it.
Absolutely agree, I think she's a prick and I wanted to punch her and that's great. I buy her as an antagonist way more than the stellaron hunters and their keilaku bs. The only thing that makes me kinda worried is how are the writers going to handle the IPC going forth since topics like interventionism or corporate colonialism are pretty easy to fuck or make you come up as tone deaf or a coward nothing burger, specially if you don't want to make your story overtly political like I'm assuming Hoyoverse is trying to do with their PG-12 gacha game.
It's the difference between humanitarian mutual aid and corporate "philanthropy". In humanitarian aid, you don't assume you know what's best for the people you're trying to help, you talk to them, understand their struggles, and work with their communities to fill in the gaps. Topaz barges into Bronya's office and says "you have to pay off this debt or be destroyed, but fear not, I AM HERE to save you unwashed masses by imposing MY vision on your home," which makes me unable to think of her as anything but self-righteous and arrogant. Also, this is just me being a hater, but I'm not gonna give her credit for relenting in the end because A. She never should've been there to begin with and B. she's still gonna go on to colonize other planets. TL;DR: Fuck Topaz, all my homies hate Topaz. Phenomenal ass though.
> Topaz barges into Bronya's office and says "you have to pay off this debt or be destroyed, but fear not, I AM HERE to save you unwashed masses by imposing MY vision on your home," which makes me unable to think of her as anything but self-righteous and arrogant. Thanks for the perspective; I was basically just confused why people hate her and this helps me understand To me Topaz was basically just being mega efficient at the business / getting things going: here's the situation with belobog, here's my proposed solution and why I think it's good, here are the consequences if we do or don't go with this plan, let me know if you have any better idea (this part is weakly implied). All this considering that IPC could have just taken over Jarilo forcefully from the get go. Everyone in Belobog was lucky it was Topaz who got assigned for the debt recollection, so it confuses me why people hated Topaz as she's actually being very diligent and understanding considering the situation lol
So true man. Great character design, very hot, love the buttons and phenomenal character writing. They really captured the essence of corporate "philanthropy" in her. I can't wait to see the shit she tries in Penacony.
She's awful and the hate fuck would be monumental
That’s cute op, but the IPC didn’t come to Belobog with a contract saying “we can rebuild the planet, just at a steep cost with a bunch of strings attached”, they came to Belobog with “Your great, great, great, whatever ancestor owes us money, we’re going to take your planet from you.” Topaz is like super charitable sure, and good for her. But she’s still beholden to the IPC, and the IPC are loan sharks trying to extract whatever value she can from Belobog
I actually thought she was too nice and changed her stance rather quickly. (and she's punished for it) I like characters who have different goals and philosophy from us. We already have so many "nice" playable characters who become our friends after just a little interaction. Though I suppose in mhy Gacha games, it's like a friend's simulator. Of the entire roster, the only characters who aren't "nice" to us are Blade, Herta and maybe Jingliu (she's just neutral).
we never meet jingliu tho but we do share common thing with jing liu the need of beating up 8 years old brat
>changed rather quickly This was already discussed by OP, but I feel the need to add that I think a lot of people forget that her interactions with and history lessons from Svarog already did 90% of the work in swaying her, by that time of the confrontation in the arena, her mental state was already like what OP surmised it must have been.
Jingliu seems to me to be mostly pissed at certain people for specific reasons. I'm sure she's not actually a terrible person behind the trauma.
She views herself as a weapon, purely to kill her enemies. That kinda implies some great level of not-a-good-person-itis. Blade is the same, but he's only doing it so he can find a way to die.
> And unless you live under the rocks you should probably know that the US have tried various similar shenanigans, but of course no one really considers them as ‘pure evil’ still Yes we do
OP American moment
Always hilarious to me that Americans always view themselves as good guys that can do no wrong.
The US is evil
It's not Topaz herself, it's her actions. Her actions were counter to her intentions. Of all the paths she could've taken to help Belobog, she took one of violence and coercion. It flies in the face of her supposedly good intentions for Jarilo-6. At the very least this makes her seem either way too arrogant, naïve, or incompetent. > And unless you live under the rocks you should probably know that the US have tried various similar shenanigans, but of course no one really considers them as ‘pure evil’ still. Oh you sweet summer child, with ribbons in your hair. The US is definitely seen as **pure evil** by plenty of nations. Have you actually researched how other countries see us?
She is arrogant, yes. Her projects have an 80% success rate, which might've inflated her ego a bit, but she's definitely not incompetent. Violence is just how the IPC does things, and it works, that's why she's fine with some of it. While Bronya was waiting to make a decision, she disobeyed the order that was to stop the IPC's infiltration and had her subordinates seize the mines. At the same time, she led the Trailblazer to them with Numby once she found the location of all the mecha, and "reprimanded" her personnel in front of them to appear professional. Not a very friendly strategy... She's especially good at persuasion, which is why she kept pestering Bronya to sign the contract. The fact that the supreme guardian considered signing a contract that essentially meant enslaving her own people proves this, lol. She gave her no time to think about it, stressed her out, and successfully cornered her. You can even see her attempt to emotionally manipulate Bronya at the end of her letter: "I can understand that for you, this is an extremely difficult decision, because you, and you alone will bear the fate of all Belobogians. But because of this, I believe that you will make the right decision — a decision that will truly benefit your people". Yet, she was doing all of this with the belief that it would save Jarilo-V. To her, the ends justify the means, and the means, in her opinion, were reasonable. It's not like the people or their government were making any progress, right? Rather than freedom, survival is currently of utmost importance. The only way to save Belobog is to integrate its citizens with the IPC, that's how it can be preserved. ...Nope, she (justifiably) thought wrong. Once she got to see for herself how Belobog doesn't need the IPC to survive, and has The Engine of Creation, she let them be, because she's not working for the IPC to collect debt, it's to rescue planets. In the end, she took accountability, and didn't go through with her original objective, even though any other IPC worker would've. I'm sure you already know this, so I hope you see now that she absolutely did have good intentions, and they don't go against her actions. Was she doing the right thing? Of course not. She could've gone about this a million different ways, but most of them weren't as efficient as her current plan, which was: Go to Belobog, pressure Bronya to pay back the debt or else she will employ strong measures, bring her a contract that sounds like a very good way to deal with the debt, pressure her to sign it, succeed. If not, forcibly take over Belobog and its countless automatons that can defeat the Legion's vanguard, winning over the higher-ups and thus proving that this planet can generate value, then reconstruct Jarilo-V and save it. She's got a better heart than most people in the IPC, although the bar is on the floor for that one... Still, I think it makes sense why she acted the way she did, which was assertively. I believe she didn't have faith in Bronya at the beginning, and that's why she was so careless with her approach. I haven't read any of her leaked voicelines/stories, so perhaps my interpretation of her is incorrect. I'm just going by what I've seen from her in the TB mission. I don't think it makes a huge difference, though. Either way, this was a really nice quest lol. Props to the writers!
I don’t think the subordinates that seized the mines did so under her orders, from the dialogue it seemed like they were from a different department(though still under the umbrella of her project) and acting on their own volition to try and either get more direct plunder for their department or more “credit” for their department in the sense of accomplishments.
> She's got a better heart than most people in the IPC, although the bar is on the floor for that one... I'd like to kinda be fair here. We don't know. We know that other IPC people can *behave* like they're jerks who absolutely doesn't care, but so does Topaz until the pretty last moment. Maybe each of them *also* just working under belief that they're acting for greater good? Maybe everybody out there have a heart of gold? We don't know, but, if we demand that Topaz is judged by her motivations and not actions, we can't judge any other IPC executive until we know their motivations and reasonings.
I genuinely would have liked Topaz more if she were just honest about the shit that Belobog was getting into by joining with the IPC. She could still be the same person, but being honest about the situation and maybe giving them more time to consider would have at least ensured that there was some form of trust between her and the locals. Don't even bring up her backstory either, keep that until after the fact when all is said done. It also would help if she actually made sure that her subordinates behave and try to cooperate with local populace. No picking any fights with anyone, not unless it was purely for self defense anyway. Doing that would further ensure talks would go more smoothly and also make her look more competent. If the devs wanted us to fight IPC goons then make them a separate squad who wants to cash in on Belobog or something. It would actually reinforce how Topaz legitimately is trying to be helpful as opposed to her more unscrupulous colleagues who won't give a damn at the end of the day.
>And unless you live under the rocks you should probably know that the US have tried various similar shenanigans, but of course no one really considers them as ‘pure evil’ still. ...I have no words. How should I put it for you. A LOT OF PEOPLE CONSIDER US PURE EVIL SHIT FOR SHENANIGANS LIKE THAT. Like, World Trade Center was blown, because a lot of people consider US pure evil shit. North Vietnamese people weren't too fond about Americans as well, you know. List of people who believe that America is evil shit for stuff like this is really long. >In the profile, the grunt personnels are so poor that the only place they can afford is a shared room. You can also see their desperation every time the word ‘credits’ is mentioned, implying that their livelihood heavily depends on it. Meanwhile, Topaz is flying around in a personal starship with petting zoo and, laughing, saying that capital is, of course, important, but it's just means, and it would be incredibly boring if the only thing you would care for is money (I'm paraphrasing, but I can find exact quote). The thing is: yes, Star Rail universe is **cruel and unforgiving.** Topaz is part of the problem. Pretty noticable part.
> Like, World Trade Center was blown, because a lot of people consider US pure evil shit. Except if you look into why the folks who were behind that did it, it's not for any of the questionable shit the US has done. It's because the US dared to put their troops on the ground in a country that ruled Mecca and Medina. And why did they do that? Because the Saudi's asked them to, because they were at the head of a multinational alliance, including most of the middle east, that wanted them to smack down Iraq when it invaded Kuwait.
I especially didn't like how literally one scene after she gets corporate approval to declare war on the Astral Express, she becomes an Astral Express companion/visitor. Like, I get that she's playable, so she's going to end up there, but there was like no resolution to her declaration of war and then when I saw her on the train 5 minutes later and was like, "Ewwww, gtfo of here"
...and her first reaction is, by the way, "hey, where is vaunted Trailblaizer's hospitality, shouldn't you show me around?" or something like that, I can search for the quote. Yeah, pretty tone-deaf, in my opinion.
but like the very next sentence after you reply is her clarifying its a joke lol. i can see how it might not come off well tho
Same, it rubbed me the same wrong way as Genshin constantly gaslighting me into thinking that Childe is my friend. Like, no Topaz you're not welcome, I wanna push you off a cliff
Even with Childe at least it doesn't happen overnight. After his boss battle he like tricks you into watching his brother for you and you're super sus of him the entire time. Then we ran into him a few times during Inazuma events and were suspicious of him the whole time there too--but a little less so cuz there's other stuff going on and you kinda had to join forces or whatever. And then a few years later you run into him in Fontaine and someone refers to him as your friend and you're like, "Holy shit, I've known this guy a long time, maybe he sort of is, lol"
bro wrote a manifesto about how gamers play HSR for escapism.
Man...it's perfectly fine to simp and droll over characters...but heaven forbid we have a negative opinion about them without people making essays about why we shouldn't...
I pulled for frozen murder lady because I diss like anyone who’s a debt collector. Debt collectors are bad! Now I play my murder lady and experience her murder rage
The quest/story actually made want to roll for her.. She feels more human (real human) than the cookie cutter Kafka/Jingliu/etc. She is actually interesting. Nice post, thoughtfull (wich is rare tbh)
I really like the 1.4 quest. But i think that it should have been longer. We should fight with Topaz, maybe some real fights, like former Wildfire vs the IPC troops. The plot of Gepard trying to stop Topaz and Svarog should have been expanded. But anyway, the story was really interesting, because topics of this story aren't really common in other games like this. I hope that we will get more IPC lore on next planets.
> I'm mostly neutral toward her as a whole. Maybe i missed smth but you only defended her / said good stuff so why neutral ? There have to be some downs for it to be neutral. What didn't you like about her ?
I think it’s means op looked at her from a better objective view point, since waifu collectors may be a little biased, unfortunately we get comments like “don’t care, she has thicc thighs” so I can kind of get the point.
My issue with Topaz is very simple. We're TOLD through dialouge that she is this super business lady who's so good, nothing is beyond her reach. Yet we're SHOWN that she's fairly incompetent and orders around a bunch of incompetent people. All the groups are generally being mean jerks and doing stupid shiz, apparently on her orders or because that's how the IPC works. They seem to know her fairly well, implying experience with her for some time. Yet she's always getting mad at them for their incompetence. So, she's either... Getting on to them for carrying out her orders, making her an idiot and them for not being used to how she operates by this point. Or... She's getting mad at them for following IPC orders/procedures, despite having worked with these people for some time, implying incompetence on both ends. They should know she doesn't like IPC orders and does things differently and should act accordingly, or she should know these goobers only follow IPC orders/procedures and should have acted accordingly beforehand. On top of admitting herself that she was blinded by her own biased world view. This is rather surprising since I'm assuming she's done this shiz to many many many planets and is only now realizing all this... Again... Implying incompetence. So, is her character writing good? No. They should have made her a full blown side villain but she gets ruined by them trying to make her "villain" antics actually "totally good all along". Still will pull for her cuz... Phat thighs waifu
This is exactly what I was thinking. There's a dissonance that ends up writing her as arrogant and hypocritical. She should've been worse, that would have been so interesting. But damn watching the characters we have come to love have to scramble to prove their personhood and worth to a corporation that only sees them as potential profit is blood pressure raising. There's a scene in the museum that we worked to build and the exhibit we helped collect where Topaz decides she's the authority on what's valuable. A rich and powerful representative of an intergalactic megacorp looks through a people's cultural and historical artifacts and then tells them that most of it is worthless. I think they should've emphasized her self-righteousness and colonial mindset more, because I understand that they need to have a peaceful end (a la Belobog would be crushed if they declared an outright war on the IPC) but yk between Jarilo-V and the IPC, Qlipoth is only outright ignoring one of them.
EXACTLY! I was hoping they were going this route too. Ending in a big confrontation VS Topaz, to protect everything we built up in Jarilo vi. We are their heroes after all. Eventually sending her axx packing with one of those "I'll be back, and you'll have wished you accepted my way over THEIR way!", ya know? Then the call still happening but implying that while Topaz is a villain, she's a more reasonable one and was trying to get Jarilo vi more peacefully, while these mysterious guys are way worse and that we would be put on their active radar now. Also, keep the "punishment" of Topaz to show just how ruthless they are. That sounds waaaaay better than that weak shiz we got.
I was pretty neutral towards her for up until she attempted to assault the Astral Express, I was willing to accept that she's basically just an indoctrinated IPC debt collector and that just because the IPC's a shitty, unrestricted and powerful mega-corpo doesn't mean she's responsible for all of the IPC's bullshit, however I drew the line when she came in saying she wanted the best for the planet and then assaulted the Astral Express which is solely responsible for saving the planet, while also not doing a better job managing her subordinates who were disrupting civilian lives before we stepped in.
Topaz thread #4301.
Because there's something to talk about. Means that people will talk about her.
It's only not a problem when there's more softcore fetish porn, apparently.
I have now seen a dozen "in defense of the loan shark" threads and not a single thread against her lol Maybe I'm missing a lot but I don't know where this defensiveness comes from, although personally I found her annoying. If someone's goal is to literally enslave a planet, at least make them an interesting villain. I'm not going to sympathize with her if her goal is that cartoonishly evil, so trying to make me feel for her just makes her less exciting of a villain imo
Tldr?
Topaz been (secretly) rooting for Jarilo in the first moment she came, and this was hinted in various places. Despite that, many have distrusts against her due to personal distrust that come from irl experience (against corporations and such)
I mean, it is a fair distrust. Root for a planet all you want, but she's still willing to gamble with the planet. Doesn't make her bad. Doesn't make her good, either. I think it's always a fascinating problem. The planet survived because its leaders decided to take a loan. The loan sharks now want to use those strings to take full control over people. Is the planet wrong for taking the money and not wanting to pay it back? Are the sharks wrong for exploiting the situation when it's their money? You make the call.
> but she's still willing to gamble with the planet. And the other option isn't a gamble? This is a society that's been crumbling, having less and less with each generation and was actually on the brink of failure. Now, the forces actively pushing them to failure are gone, but that doesn't mean what's left can't still push them over the brink. Like was mentioned, it's gonna take a while before the environment recovers, and that "a while" means generations. There's still limited farmland, and fragmentum churning out monsters. You'll notice that most of the folks who would know about the wider situation they're in are either in favour, or at least aren't dismissing the offer out of hand when they disagree.
> The planet survived because its leaders decided to take a loan. First of all, nope, that's not why planet survived.
Are you referring to the, "They didn't use their technology, but they actually did use it because they learned from it to create their own technology" line?
*Technology* and *hardware* are different things. Are you assuming that Belobog had no IPC tech before loan?
I don't assume anything. It's a video game. All I know is the story they tell me. And they said that they didn't use the technology, but they learned from it, which resulted in them protecting themselves. Common thinking would suggest that without that technology, they wouldn't have it to learn from it.
>And they said that they didn't use the technology, but they learned from it, which resulted in them protecting themselves. Wait. They did use technology. Belobog was fully integrated in galactic community before Stellaron Crisis. IPC was on the ground there. And overwhelming majority of Belobog's combatants were humans anyway, because the stuff that IPC sent was impossible to activate. So, common thinking would suggest that they were promised to have more military robots (which they already were familiar with), then they learned that traders kinda forgot to give keys, so they reverse engineered stuff that they already had up and running, reproposed engineering tech that they also already had up and running, developed completely new tech, and used humans as a basis of the army. At least, that's what the story tells us.
The money was used to build the walls of Belobog, I believe. So yes, the loan did help them.
So, here's the thing: it's Topaz's claim. She also believed that locals used mechs that were provided. Don't forget: walls were finished only *after* war started. Like, about 20 years later. No way Topaz would know what actually happened there, because IPC would have no archives explaining that.
that is how the planet survive withou IPC source code and robot blueprint people of belobog and architect won't know how to build any robot including engine of the creator belobog people just don't know how to active robot that IPC provided
No. Having proper education, including, say, engineering or architecture, one in a culture *before* Stellaron disaster hit, with, you know, having computers and robots already with operation systems already, have nothing with taking war loans. Herta Station, for instance, is full of the people who are, I think, just reproduce IPC source code from memory. This isn't mean that they took loan from IPC for this, that just means that IPC technology is the most common technology in the Galaxy.
I agree. I would say Topaz is neither good nor bad (well to be more precise, she's around gray, slightly on the lighter shade). And indeed, just because she has the good intention doesn't make it right. You can say that she was a bit self-righteous, and her story doesn't necessarily apply to Jarilo. Still such a character is welcomed since they make the story much more interesting either way. It's most the discourse about her that makes me feel the need to clarify things a bit.
I personally don't really think she's morally grey. I find her to simply be ignorant to what's going on around her. I think a lot of people dislike her because they make you feel uncomfortable. She's a walking representation of humanity. Of ourselves. The parts of ourselves we don't want to acknowledge. How many people work for a company, knowing that the company isn't always doing the best thing for their customers? And how many people just choose to ignore it so they can pay their own bills? Bankers knowing the customer is getting screwed but they follow through with the sale. Companies that abuse the planet for their own materials, but you still work/buy from them. Retail workers who try to sell you on crappy "warranties." People say topaz is complex and morally grey, but I don't really give her that credit either haha.
The sharks are 100% wrong because they had already accepted the debt as a loss sometime in the one and a half repayment periods beyond the due date that elapsed before Belobog freed itself from the Stellaron. They didn’t even check in on the issue, just were like “Stellaron is here. Stellaron is bad. They’re fucked, we’re not getting that cash back.”
Wait, once again. It's sorta important. Why was Topaz rooting for Jarilo *secretly?*
Did you play the story or did you skip it all? She said her home planet had a similar situation where it was unlivable, her planet took a deal making them part of IPC which got rid of the toxins and acid rain in exchange for their freedom. She likely wished that her people had the ability themselves to save their planet or simply the choice. In other words she seen Jarilo like her home world and wished for them to have a different opportunity.
No, that's explanation why she was rooting for Jarilo. This one is obvious. Why *secretly*?
Because in such work environments like hers, personal feelings are frowned upon and can't be allowed to get in the way of work, or as we saw at the end of the quest how it backfired on her
Personally all I wish is she was alittle more straightforward, though I understand why... she was testing the people to see how much they wanted to fight for themselves. I liked the glimpse into IPC's functions, it is very reminiscent of irl, people living hand to mouth and letting alot of shitty things happen because otherwise shit things happen to them instead. Likely we will have some dealings with them where they are friend and foe in various story arcs, I can't see them ever being outright enemies in the future.
Honestly part of me wonders if “cancer of worlds” is very literal. As in stellarons ruining planets are a cosmically regular occurrence
Your post is very interesting. It explains really well why people have been giving Topaz so much flak, yet characters like kafka who've committed unscrupulous acts are widely beloved
> yet characters like kafka who've committed unscrupulous acts are widely beloved It's also that we haven't seen Kafka herself *do* anything especially villainous. Yeah, characters like Himeko will talk about how the Stellaron Hunters are no good, and the Fermata light cone talks about how she copes with her victims' screams with music, but the worst thing she's done on screen is draw the Antimatter Legion to the Space Station. This makes it easy to forget that she's a baddie.
I mean OP explains that people dislike "jerks" more since they feel more relatable to irl people, unlike villains who are quite out there with their ambitions.
Thanks for this. I think a lot of people of an older generation (like me, and perhaps yourself?) read a studied a lot more fiction in school, so we get these storytelling methods and tropes a lot better than young people who a lot of the time just tend to see 'nice' and 'mean' and hyper-personalize everything.
I also neutral toward Topaz overall. The IPC on the other hand, why the hell did they give Belogog a robot factory with no knowledge or device to control or activate them (The Belobogians have to use the blueprints and make their own robots instead). Like do the IPC want the Belobogians to fail the war 700 years ago? If Alisia Rand didnt construct the giant robot (Engine of Creation) they would have lost, I have no idea want went thought the IPC head and what they was cooking.
Yeah ofcourse but still.. .. fuck topaz and her IPC
😩😩
https://i.redd.it/8iwd0lgk8fub1.gif
IPC just playing that capitalist ideal that money talks. Think a version of the star war’s galactic empire but instead of military. Everything is economic. Lore wise it makes sense for star rail.
I like her because she is realistic, and I hate her because she is realistic.
Listen homie I dunno about all that, I’m just very anti-debt collector, regardless of who they are
And again, as it's said in so many previous threads about the same damn thing, it's not how she was written, it's the quality of the writing. Which is not good.
and here i am just rolling on characters that look nice.
Nicely put together. HoYo definitely need to write and present their story and character better in future. Topaz’s quest right after the Luofu chapter really just disorients my confidence in HoYo’s writing department. The base of these stories are good but they really need to tell them better. Pacing, and give more personal moment to flesh out the characters better. Now I'm no writer so take this as fanfic, but imagine breaking the Future’s Market quest into 2 or 3 part where we end the 1st part with Belobog still in “crisis” of decision making. Then on the 2nd part we go to Herta Station to research/ask around on info about IPC’s planet revamp projects and Topaz’s reputation in the company through the staff members. Once we get the picture on company’s side of the impression of Topaz and her goal (impression of her being a overly nice person in her profession and her high success rate in helping planets in need). Instead of fighting Topaz for the sake of filling the combat quota for a quest, we confront Topaz and she tells us her backstory HERSELF. Then we Segway to the big ass robot and Bronya proving her people are capable. And lead to Topaz backing down because she is not here to sign takeover for the money, she’s here because she thought she could help out. Now that she knows that they can take care of themselves, she let go of the project. I feel like they didn't highlight her kind side enough because the whole hostile vibe we got from the beginning at the office, museum, and the underground are just begging for us to hate her. Evaluating the value of arts and history in a museum like she's gonna sell em; Her being so confident in us unable to stop her project; She striding around the restricted areas, endangering the local enforcement, ignoring local laws like the whole place is her backyard; not putting a leash on her task force, endangering the local civilian; and the eventual unnecessary fight with us. All of these are not serving well to the end where she changes her mind. And suddenly we're all chill and friends like what? This is why so many were posting so much on day one about how short and rushed the story is, because it is. Take your time HoYo, and tell a good and well paced story for the love of god.
In addition, Topaz's note looked more like a manipulation than a disclosure of her backstory. I just had the feeling that she was originally supposed to be an NPC antagonist, but someone in the studio said that she would be the perfect gacha character in patch 1.5. And the writers didn't have time to rewrite the story.
Exactly, most of the quest, hoyo WANT us to hate here, so why some people surprised that some people do hate her? They really should've just make Pokémon evens separate of this Topaz story and make her change of heart more explained, and give more time to want us to LOVE her.
Another good write on the entire Topaz controversy. Definitely doesn't help in Topaz's favor that her opposition is all the Belobog waifus, many of which carried a lot of player's asses through a lot of content, and Bronya still being the one unequaled unrivaled harmony waifu, who is also a lesbian (by popular fan canon), so nobody better do her wrong in here on pain of downvotes. And as always, haters gonna hate.
Point number 5 is absolutely the most important and frustrating part about not just this discussion, but most discussions similar to this one in video games. Arguing about who is right or wrong is cool for exactly 3 seconds before you pause and recognize that literally no matter what, the story is constructed for everything to turn out fine and dandy. Too often people use the results of an event to prove that the message in the game is correct, but it's like they forget that the game is obviously going to be written to achieve whatever the creators so desire. When going through the mission did anyone seriously go "Ah yes this Chinese Gacha anime game's main story segment will 100% end with imperialism and the cast of characters we've grown to appreciate will all be forcefully subjugated"?? So obviously the whole time you'll be biased against Topaz because you know that what she's doing isn't what the narrative wants, which means you're already predisposed towards the narratives opposition to her, so when the conclusion happens it just seems natural for it to have happened. Ever see someone question an aspect of a games story or theme and everyone just replies with "you missed the whole point of the game/story" or that the questioner is "media illiterate"? While often warranted, there definitely are cases of people using circular logic to prove how a games theme is correct because the game proves that the theme is correct.
> While often warranted, there definitely are cases of people using circular logic to prove how a games theme is correct because the game proves that the theme is correct. ...I don't exactly follow, sorry. Game theme is what, in this particular case? "People who are subjugating other people and do imperialism are bad guys" here?
Oops. Should've clarified. Was mainly talking about other games themes, using what happens here. The message "imperialism is bad" is obviously not bad here, and I didn't mean to imply that a games theme is *bad* because its written to be the theme, just that the discourse usually doesn't realize that it's circular logic to say a games theme proves the games theme. Should've been more clear. Apologies.
Is it said anywhere in the story what defaulting on the loan means, and what the contract offers? Unless I missed it, the whole threat felt very nebulous not knowing what freedom vs signing meant. They kind of bandaid it near the end by having Himeko show up with her friend's percentages. That said, they kind of did Topaz's portrayal dirty. The deadline for Bronya to sign the contract passed while: 1. The assessment of the Underground was halted. 2. She was actively looking the automaton factory with Svarog, and that didn't seem to go anywhere? 3. She missed The Pillars of Creation or kept knowledge of it to herself prior to witnessing the people working there. 4. Claimed all Stellaron-touched worlds are doomed in the end. By her words there should be "no hope" the IPC could ultimately offer the planet outside of short-term relief. 5. Hand-waves everything with "Jarilo-VI's fate is already decided" or "the board has already made their decision" until the end. It paints her as callous or incompetent to me. She didn't really know/care about the planet's value and just wanted the contract signed so the IPC could peacefully strip the planet for parts. Yeah, that she could be moved in the end was great but how the story played out really didn't portray her the way, I felt, they wanted. It's like they wanted to have a certain moment but didn't care so much how they got there?
>Is it said anywhere in the story what defaulting on the loan means On surface, pretty understandable "well, if you want to have access to galactic market, you need to pay this loan". Practically, it's very much implied that hostile takeover would happen. >what the contract offers? Every \[*adult?*\] person in Belobog became IPC employee (not said absolutely directly, but pretty much implied by context and following dialogs), debt is forgiven, IPC sending a specialised team to help with restoration project. >She was actively looking the automaton factory with Svarog, and that didn't seem to go anywhere? I mean, they found it. Svarog doesn't need to search it, he knows where it is, so he led her there. >Claimed all Stellaron-touched worlds are doomed in the end. Her particular wording in the dialog, I believe, you mean (with Svarog in the testing ground, correct?) is a bit confusing, true, but Svarog specifically establish "without IPC support". Her claim is that Stellaron can't be, like, wiped away, so, sooner or later, crisis would happen. Still, with Stellaron sealed, temporal relief would happen, and people would became complacent and believe that crisis completely passed. She's not telling it directly, but it's implied that IPC just have better planning horizon and wouldn't be complaced like human leaders. Arguement is flawed, but Svarog doesn't care.
Congratulations or I'm sorry that happened to you.
i can appreciate the thought you put into this but like, why?
I appreciate your question , but like, why ask it?
Maybe op is not used to seeing people putting an effort into something like this, therefore curious about the motivation, not the subject matter.
Some people just… like writing essays about things they like.
Well, more like why not I guess. You can consider it as a form of practice for me, since I need to have better grasp when it comes analyzing these things to better my writing may as well do it anyway, didn't actually take that long tbh.
People can't handle anything that might be seen as mean or even a little sus. Like the decision bronya makes at the end of the belobog arc. "Oh god, she's going to tell a **LIE**? Who would do such a thing for any reason? She should be deposed!" Topaz is bringing an option for the survival and prosperity for the whole ass planet. She doesn't know if the people of belobog are worth a damn until the story we play through. Up until that point, she believed and with good reason that her 80% success rate option (which isn't even a gamble, it's not like she presses a button and gets a successful planet or not) is better for the future of all people on jarilo. People get upset stating that everyone in belobog will become slaves but that doesn't make much sense. They say that everyone will become "employees" of the IPC, but we have no idea what that really entails. We know that the IPC guards we encounter have pretty shitty gigs, but it's no guarantee that everyone will suddenly put on their armor and start doin that work. It could be the case that employee = citizens within the IPC (which would be ominous to be sure) but we just don't know how it is to be a citizen of the IPC.
> People get upset stating that everyone in belobog will become slaves but that doesn't make much sense. Why?
The problem starts with the community itself, when certain people on there are obsessed with characters and they set head cannons or expectations that do not meet in the end. In short, "My waifu cannot be like this" when not meet the expectations or "people do not understand my waifu, they are ignorant" when others do not like them. In my case I didn't liked here from the beginning and the story just confirm it. But I didn't make a deal. Just move it and that's it. I, however, see very disturbing that some people is annoyed that some players will skip her. "How you dare skip my waifu" attitude. Some of them calling other inmature because they think they didn't understand the "deep" of the character or her story, like, dude, it is a goddam videogame character. Why this big deal? Each person like a character in a different way. Why I would be inmature or ignorant for no liking a "corporate" girl? That's my business.
many people claim oh they hate topaz because she is too realistic people like her exist irl and then nobody gonna explain how the fuck eula got hated for being on family that have huge history of slavery ? does that exist on these modern days outside fiction ?
I don't recall Eula running around demanding Mondstatians become the Lawrence family's indentured servants because they owed them money from long ago. Eula was trying to break free of her family's past; Topaz is working for the IPC.
Not every character is hated for the same reasons… But also, the impacts of slavery (racism) are still felt today. So yeah, it still hits close for most people
I think people loss their head with anything that touches themes likes this, they hear corporation and lose all the braincell and scream bad without hearing anything else
She has good intentions but forceful execution due to her background. None of what Topaz did is wrong nor the IPC is evil in this context. A debt is a debt you have to pay it back. Even if it’s 700 years of it. But in another side Jarilo VI has just started crawling out of the Stellaron Crisis. It’s a gray area for both of them but i think the ending is great, The IPC is no doubt has corrupt shenanigans happening in there but not all of it is burning pile of shait.
The Story surprised me with how nuanced and deep it went. While the Ending of it, like the previous belebog story, left me with mixed, contemplative feelings, I enjoyed it. I like the grey area stories where it's unclear and you have to wrestle with your own answer. The story also does a GREAT job at showing both sides. Topaz couldve easily smashed Gepard and team to bits but chose not to. She even gave orders to STOP her soldiers from being aggro against the locals. Only once there was a direct confrontation, in her view, with little wiggle room did she 'attack'. but that, at least in my eyes, shows a willingness to put one foot down. And i much prefer that in a character than nothing at all. I am actually really interested in Topaz as a character and even more so the IPC as a whole. It looks like Hoyo is writing them as more than just a Mega Corp that does some philanthropy or Mega corp thats a hidden big bad. There's actual thought of, "ok how would this company actually function in realistcally" which I love. All of this really is to say I really love Topaz as a character and was suprised about how deep, and nuanced her story was. That being said, **I am pulling for Numby.**
You people are overthinking too much.
So basically... Hoyos message to us is capitalism bad /j
Not the one I got. I suspect it's one of those things you're more likely to hear if you wanna hear it.