Based on the movie thread.
Playing Knights of the Old Republic II and then Fable back to back one month made me think of this one. Kreia from KOTOR II is the same person as Theresa in the Fable series. Not just the same voice actress, but back in medieval times she influenced fate as Theresa and when hundreds of years passed by she continued doing the same as Kreia…forever meddling and interfering.
This is just a personal musing. How about yours?
I think Princess Peach (neé Toadstool) actually prefers the company of Bowser. She keeps getting “kidnapped” because Mario is a possessive jerk, and Bowser makes her feel safe and secure in his heavily-defended castle.
Oblivion: Brother Martin wasn’t Uriel Septim’s illegitimate son at all, just some orphan that the Blades were using as a backup heir. The Dragonblood flows through more people than we think.
World of Warcraft: During the Northrend campaign, Thrall secretly hoped that both the Hand of Vengeance and the Warsong Offensive would suffer heavy casualties in the course of defeating the Scourge.
With no way to replenish their numbers, the Forsaken wouldn’t have the manpower to be a major player anymore; maybe they could keep the Scarlet Crusade and Gilneas in check, but they wouldn’t really be able to go far afield with their trouble-making. This probably would have been the case if Sylvanas hadn’t secured the services of valkyr in Northrend.
If most of the Warsong Clan had died in Northrend, they might (eventually) lose influence within the Horde just by sheer lack of numbers. Proportionally, the orcs would be more Frostwolf and less Warsong i.e. they’d be a bit less impulsive and more receptive the prospect of peace with the Alliance. Warsong casualties weren’t very high, though, and the prestige earned in the war increased their influence.
The G-Man in the Half-Life universe is responsible for the Resonance Cascade, the Xen Invasion, and ultimately the Combine Invasion of Earth.
It’s pretty clear that the G-Man’s employers want to take down the Combine. They were looking of the ideal race to manipulate into that. The second to last race they tried were the Vortigaunts. However, while the Vortigaunts were powerful, they lacked creativity and adaptability. Instead of taking down the Combine, they became their most useful slaves. The G-Man’s employers turned to humanity. While not as strong as other species, humanity could adapt. They sent the Xen crystals to Earth with the G-Man being the courier as a test for humanity being their next shining hope. Being that humans were weaker than most species the Combine had already conquered, the thinking was that either the humans would win due to their adaptability, or the Combine would just destroy them outright viewing them as not worth enslaving. Either way, the G-Man’s employers had little to lose.
However, they never counted on some humans actually allying with the Combine. This allowed the combine to infiltrate human society fully, and become humanities de facto rulers. Humans were the first species to have members willingly become slaves to the combine, rather than having to be full out conquered and assimilated as every species before.
So they brought Gordon Freeman back to restore the balance. The G-Man pulled him out of stasis in the beginning of HL2 to clean up the mess that his employers had made. But at the end of HL2, it’s implied that the G-Man has his own designs on Freeman. I think he realized his employers screwed things up, and he’s going to leverage that screw-up for his own personal aims. Of course, the Vortigaunts threw a wrench into his plans.
The events of HL1 were no mistake by humanity. It was a calculated gamble by an unknown organization to take down their greatest enemy the Combine. That organization probably wants nothing more than to enslave other races themselves, but currently the Combine has the upper hand. But all the major players have shown that they underestimate humanity, except for possibly the G-Man. His hands are tied somewhat by his employers, but he’s molding his own soldier in Gordon Freeman. The G-Man plans to take down his own employers after they take down the Combine.
However, he made one major mistake which becomes clear to him in HL2: Episode 1. Gordon’s allies are far more loyal to Gordon than anyone ever expected. The G-Man is at his core a bureaucrat. Nothing is personal; it’s all just business. He doesn’t grasp that for Gordon and his allies, it’s both.