butt-monkey

Chaos Theory: Why TSW's Orochi have an uphill battle for respectability

by 

Justin Olivetti

12.23.2013

The other day I posted a Daily Grind here on the site that asked about NPC factions that are, in effect, a total joke. I used the example of the Orochi from The Secret World, which got one commenter's ire up. He said it was "insulting" that I was singling this out this organization, and I assume that I'm no longer on his Christmas card mailing list. Defensiveness aside, I think I have a pretty good case here that the Orochi are, well, almost laughable. Just about everywhere you go in the game, you encounter their corpses, burning vans, busted camps, crashed planes, and botched excavations. As a friend put it, they're like well-funded kids who go into a military zone with professionals and end up like you'd expect. I've been mocking them for months now, and I am far from alone. After a certain point, their grisly tableaus become a running joke that makes it really hard to take them seriously. But that's the question I want to grapple with today. If the upcoming Tokyo zones will be featuring the Orochi on their home turf, are they too far gone in terms of respectability in the eyes of players to change the narrative? We've seen them kicked up and down across the world, so I'm wondering if it's too late for the Orochi to put on big boy pants and be invited to the adult table.