Rainbow Run And Other Stuff

I'm not doing a full 10 videos and posts for a rainbow run. It wouldn't really be that interesting. Instead, this is one post showing off a few things I either missed the first time around or that are unusual accommodation for rainbow run scenarios. First off...


... is that if you do Pyro 2 (Attacking Urghaz so Pyro can kidnap Trolls to make Firefists) followed by Persephone 3, there's an additional line of dialogue from Eldred where he infers the Firefists are Trolls post-experimentation. He also incorrectly claims Thestor was the one who oversaw that process, rather than Faestus. The wiki claims that at one point Thestor and Faestus had swapped roles, and this would fit with that, as it would be really easy to forget to double-check this one bit of dialogue that you can only see if you specifically do Pyro 2 and then Persephone 3. Given there's 24 other possible Mission 2->Mission 3 progressions that don't give this result...

The rest of the video is just so you can get an idea of what kind of advantages a rainbow run starts bringing to bear even this early in the game. I've got Stratos 1, Pyro 2, and Persephone 3; it's a pretty solid combination!

The next bit is...


... that back in Charnel 4 I missed the Boon village, and this shows that off plus it shows off what happens if you 'swear yourself to justice'. Plus lets me show off in later missions how amazing Animate Dead can be in a rainbow run. And since you can 'swear yourself to justice', it's only a Stratos-heavy route that has trouble managing a dip into Animate Dead.

It's... pretty cringe-worthy dialogue that doesn't feel at all in character to Eldred, honestly.

But hey, I've shown it off.

I've also shown off that you can do a fair amount of skipping in Sacrifice, plot-wise: you can't prematurely end cinematics, annoyingly, but the spacebar will terminate any ongoing plot-dialogue, even in a cinematic, and you can also cut loading screen dialogue short with the spacebar once the talking is over with.

Next on the itinerary is...


... Pyro 5, specifically turning right around from swearing ourself to justice to instantly betray James for Pyro. That's an option if you do Pyro 5, you just need to banish Buta. Pyro even gives you a Boon for doing so, making this the only mission in the game where there's two possible Boons. (Mutually-exclusive though they are) This incidentally adds salt to the wound of Persephone's assault on Dys only giving you a Boon if you betray Charnel; it shows that Shiny could have provided a Persephone-loyal Boon in that mission as well, with no possibility of theorizing that some kind of technical limitation meant a mission could only have 1 Boon coded overall.

Anyway, if you do jump ship to Pyro, Charlotte teleports to the Altar she always had without any explanation, bringing with her a surprisingly massive army also without explanation, and becomes your foe, with you being expected to banish her without losing the Dynamo. This isn't terribly difficult if you bothered to clear and take the Manalith by her Altar, generally speaking: you'll just teleport right next to her Altar and get started on Desecrating her in short order. The army can slow things down a bit, but whatever.

Next on our list is...


... that if you do a Pyro route and then jump ship to Stratos at the very end, you actually get Buta as an ally! After all, Pyro isn't dead yet.

Mind, he dies in very short order thanks to Pyro suffering critical existence failure off-screen, but it actually makes the early portion of the mission a lot easier, as he distracts Acheron, and if you're quick you can prevent Acheron from scooping up the souls when Buta does die and take them for yourself fairly readily. It's also just nice that the devs put in the effort to make this sensible. It also makes the assault on Dys unusually varied in possibilities, with four variants instead of the usual three.

As our last bit of showing stuff off...


... Rainbow goes up against Marduk and kicks him around pretty quickly. Not as quickly as the Persephone run did with Dragons and Charm, mind, but still quite swiftly even though that initial Volcano basically backfired.

More importantly, I show off what happens if you have Eldred elect to stay with Stratos. In keeping with the rest of the last half of the Stratos route, the story falls down on the job of explaining why Eldred would make this choice, with Eldred sort of... vaguely agreeing with Stratos for no reason. In what way were Stratos' deceptions 'necessary'? What does that mean? And Eldred claiming that Stratos' machinations did nothing but benefit Eldred is strangely cold for Eldred -keeping in mind I basically consider the Charnel version of Eldred to be the best-written version of Eldred- not to mention absurd on the face of it. Even more bizarrely, the story suddenly has Stratos babbling about there being no such thing as right and wrong; this is the god who seems to earnestly believe he's the only civilized god around. He may not care about what other people might call 'good' or 'evil', but he sure as heck has things he considers right and things he considers wrong. Enough so to doom most of the world to an apocalypse to make it less wrong!

It's a deeply dissatisfying ending. But hey, you can listen to the voice acting yourself if you like.

And at least it's not as bad as Persephone's ending.

I don't even know what Eldred is supposed to be doing at the end of that conversation, either.

Next time, I show off the Tutorial missions. There's juuuust enough narrative stuff in them to be worth showing off.

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