Headscratchers / Brütal Legend

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Have You Seen My Tainted Coil HQ?

• Where is the Tainted Coil HQ located before they take over Bladehenge? Because the Ironheade is initially based in Bladehenge (then in the mountain camp, then simply on the road), Lionwhyte's collaborators are inside his palace, and Drowning Doom is at the Sea of Black Tears. I am tempted to name the Temple of Ormagöden, but if it were their primary base, you'd think that they would have noticed Ophelia's intrusion faster and shaped the place at least a little more to their liking. And Doviculus just seems to pop out of nowhere throughout the game, though you'd expect him to have palace like Lionwhyte to stage the Final Battle in...
  • He did have that castle type thing that grew out of the Sea of Black Tears for the final battle.
  • The castle thing struck me as one of Doviculus' ubermagics (like the one with 9001 abominations in Lionwhyte's palace), not anything permanent... Plus, the only time it was seen, the Coil already had a permanent base (Bladehenge).
  • Presumably the Coil live deep underground like their ancestors in the viewable Legends. I won't guess where that could be, but it's not any of the places we visit in the story mode. Fan speculation was that the long highway near Bladehenge that ends in a jump to nowhere was going to lead either to DLC or the Tainted Coil section of the game, but EA rushed the game out the door after buying the license.
  • Originally there was going to be a third continent that was the homeland of the Tainted Coil, but Double Fine was forced to remove it because it would have pushed back the game's release date even more (not to mention making it even more expensive to produce).

How dare you betray the bad guys by joining us!

• This troper might be alone, but he felt it's kind of odd about how Eddie abandons Ophelia after Doviculus kills Lars. He says, and I quote, "Your mission was to spy on them, not to join them." This line of dialogue would imply that IF Ophelia was working as Doviculus's spy (Not what he meant, of course. He was talking about Eddie's mom), then she isn't anymore as she has joined them. That's how this troper saw it after the cutscene, so I didn't quite get why Eddie was so quick to label Ophelia a traitor. I mean yeah, she was allegedly a traitor once, but she wasn't anymore by that point.
  • I also felt that scene was very much a Nice Job Breaking Her, Hero moment. But I figured Eddie is not as quick-witted with his head as he is smart with his hands, and he was very emotionally distressed by Lars' death, about whom he obviously cared a great deal (in a big bro way). So he wasn't exactly thinking at the time. And Doviculus was speaking to Succoria, whose identity was unclear and the most likely candidate seemed to be Ophelia rather than the guy from the future's dead mom.
  • Eddie's blatant overconfidence is lampshaded for laughs dozens of times, almost to the point where it can be said Eddie "assumes" a new personality, always acting on his supposed inside knowledge and prevailing most of the time. It actually makes a lot of sense from Eddie's point of view to believe Ophelia is working for the demons.
  • This is basically Eddie's Idiot Ball moment, as he not only fails to recognize Succoria as the name on his own shirt, but also doesn't make any connection between the demons and his own demon-powers that appear during stage battles. But, aside from that, the game does go out of its way to suggest that Ophelia is the traitor, with Lita's constant references to the Black Tears and Doviculus referring to Succoria twice while fondling Ophelia's dagger.
  • In fairness, he specifically says that he doesn't know what the shirt says in a conversation with Ophelia, and if she can read it Ophelia doesn't mention what it says to him.
  • What doesn't make any damn sense is that Eddie never even asks about Succoria. He promises Ophelia that absolutely nothing will make him stop trusting her, then, without even attempting to get an explanation, dumps her out of the car and abandons her. If nobody here was an idiot, this would have been resolved without the Drowned Ophelia sequence. Eddie doesn't even think to say anything about Succoria until the time to ask questions is pretty far past. Also nonsensical is that nobody ever questions why Eddie turns into a monster except Ophelia, who never explains her concern. This basically means that Ophelia got dumped based on the party's own mistakes (and nothing that Doviculus did, ironically - he knew damn well who Succoria was and had no idea they thought it was a different person) but Eddie gets a free pass when he's even more suspicious than Ophelia. Since both have the same record of risking their lives for the rebels, there's not really a reason to trust Eddie more than Ophelia except that the plot cannot continue without it.
  • The party does question why Eddie turned into a demon, and Ophelia answers that one of the priests over at the temple likely poisoned the blades that he was cut by. By believing that Eddie's case was accidental and him having no known background of betrayal or insanity with his family's like Ophelia does, the party probably had an easier time trusting him.
  • He does ask about Succoria...but this just makes Ophelia start acting weird. She never really explains herself, either. She could have avoided all this just by saying "Succoria was the former Big Bad, you're carrying her axe and you have her name on your shirt!"
  • The problem is that if she did explain that, Lita—who, if you talk to before one of the battles, claims to hate demons—and the rest of the group would have likely turned against him, and the group would have further crumbled apart. This isn't mere speculation, either; if you unlock one of the bound statues, you'll learn of how Eddie's father kept his mother a secret from him, too, implying that it's information that would lead to disastrous consequences if revealed.
  • That still doesn't explain why she didn't just explain to Eddie what was going on. They had ample time alone together and Eddie was obviously considered more trustworthy than Ophelia by the rest of the Bladehenge crew, so why didn't she just tell him, apart from the drama drummed up by the fact that the plot could have been completely avoided, and let him decide what to do with the knowledge? After all, even if she didn't know that Eddie was Succoria's son, he obviously didn't realize the significance of the name, or the axe, or the shirt, so what was the point of trying to hide it from Eddie in the first place?
  • At first, she was probably just confused herself: he's wearing Succoria's merch, he can wield her axe, but he looks human and clearly doesn't know anything about what's going on. When he changed into a demon form, she probably guessed right then what he must be, but she quickly blamed the Druids; she trusted Eddie, but she didn't think Lars and Lita would if they knew the full story. At that point, she seemed to have just been hoping she'd never have to deal with it at all, or at the very least she could wait until they've won the battle and everything's okay. She started to tell Eddie the truth after they'd escaped from Doviculus, but they were both emotionally wrecked and he didn't let her get any further than saying she was trying to protect him. That was admittedly dumb on his part, but he wasn't thinking clearly, and it didn't help that he and Ophelia were reading the conversation in entirely different ways; she didn't even realize until near the end of the game that he thought she was Succoria, which means she didn't understand at the time why Eddie was turning on her.
    • She pretty obviously made up the "demon poison" bit, since demon poison that can transform a human into a demon never comes up anywhere else and Bladehenge has been fighting those same enemies for ages now. Ophelia had enough in front of her to put two and two together (about what Eddie is, if not exactly who his parents were) and Eddie himself made no secret about how much he didn't know about the world. He didn't know who Succoria was, but it's still a feminine name and he had no reason to think Doviculus was referring to him and not Ophelia when he said it. She knows that. What else could Eddie have been thinking Succoria was, if not herself?

Cool Succoria shirt! What do they play?

• Now that I think about, why does Eddie wear a T-shirt with Succoria's name on it? According to the last Artifact of Legend, Riggnarok never told him about his mother, which should probably include her name. Also, according to earlier Legends, Succoria never accomplished anything significant in the modern times and spent most of her remaining life in a cave, so she had little possibilities to have her name printed on non-custom T-shirts...
  • Wasn't that his dad's roadie shirt? Considering he was once Succoria's slave, it seems likely that he would have had a shirt with her name on it and wore it again proudly once they fell in love.
  • I always thought it was literally HER shirt.
  • With a build like Eddie's, you can't really wear a girl's T-shirt.
  • Maybe his mom had a similar build. She was a demon.
  • She doesn't look that large in the Legends.
  • I just figured that, as said, it's her merch, worn by Riggnarok as a disguise when he posed as one of her slaves to get close to her and then kept as a memento after she died. That'd explain why it fits Eddie so well: he has the same build as his father.
  • It's doubtful that Eddie wore the shirt without at all considering what was printed on it. Even if he found the shirt after his dad died and couldn't explain it, why wouldn't he do a quick Google search for the name? He probably assumed it was a band shirt (certainly looks like a metal band name and logo), but he's never attempted to track down the band his dad loved?
  • If you work with bands, black t-shirts with things printed on them just sort of happen to you. Having one you don't recognize isn't impossible. "Succoria? Did I load them into the Wiltern once?"
  • Maybe he did, didn't find anything and assumed they were very obscure. Not every band that ever existed has a webpage or wiki entry, especially ones that long pre-date the Internet.
  • What makes you think that Eddie knows what Google is? The Kabbage guy who texts constantly accuses him of never having entered the 21st century. Cars, lights, speakers, things that he shows skill with are all 20th century tech. Not many people were online in the 90s.
  • In a conversation with Ophelia at Bladehenge when she asks about his shirt, Eddie specifically says he has no idea what's written on it, just that he found it in his father's attic along with the belt buckle.
  • This might seem like a stupid thing to say, but did anyone ever notice that symbol on the shirt had letters in it? The only time we see it says Succoria is when the game changes the design's color scheme to make it obvious. Most of the time it looked simply like a cool design like a tribal tattoo. Only Doviculus knew what it actually was after all.
  • Certain metal bands, especially more extreme ones, tend to have logos on their merch with their names on it that are damn-near impossible to read, even if you know the band's name. Eddie's shirt could easily be an example/reference to this. Like, here's an example◊, with the first being the best example of the five. Here's the same picture, with the letters colored over◊. Yeah, metal bands can have merch with symbols with letters in it that can't be read easily. Doviculus knew what it was because he's seen it before, kind of like how some metal fans can't read the logo of a band's name, but will know the name of the band by remembering who's symbol it is.

Soundtrack Choice

• They have Dethklok on the soundtrack, why was the song "Murmaider" chosen instead of "Go Into The Water" for a battle on the shore of the Sea of Black Tears? Why not Nathan Explosion beckoning the player to abandon their land empire and die in the depths of the sea? Did mermaid murder win because Rule of Funny?
  • If I'm recalling correctly, "Murmaider" is more well-known than "Go Into The Water" when it comes to Dethklok songs, so that might have something to do with this.
  • Sadly Murmaider 2 wasn't out at the time either thart would of been better.
• Another odd choice; there are some Manowar tracks included, but not ''The Gods Made Heavy Metal". What makes it odd is that if you don't know better the lyrics could easily be mistaken as having been specifically written for the setting (as an Ironheade religious song specifically).

Why Just A Roadie?

• So how come Eddie was perfectly ok with just being a Roadie? He's got the talent and skill to be a real star of Metal, but instead he just prefers to prop other people up, even those that don't deserve it. What's up with that?
  • Some people don't want to be in the spotlight. Eddie is probably one of those people. Also it's possible that, while he is a talented player in his own right, he might not be able to come up with his own music scores or songs.

The Bleeding Death's Iron Maiden.

• So The Tainted Coil's Uber unit, the Bleeding Death, is stuffed into a coffin that's not only way too small to hold it, but also lined with spikes. Um, why? All this does it make it start to bleed to death, hence the name, and refuse to take orders. Why not use a bigger coffin that doesn't have spikes? Why go out of your way to cripple your best weapon? I mean I get that an Iron Maiden reference would be pretty much mandatory for a game like this, but surely they could've found a more logical way to shoehorn it in? Maybe have a mission requiring you to rescue Lars from one?
  • The Tainted Coil also have a self mutilation gimmick, in case you can't tell by looking. Enraging their super unit by injuring it before letting it die off is very in character for them.

So the First Ones considered themselves ugly. Umm... compared to what, exactly?

• This aspect of the Creation Myth kinda runs on Mars Needs Women-type logic when you think about it. Sure we would consider them ugly if the illustrations are anything to go by, but they're a completely different species. The various First One standards of beauty would be based on First Ones, not on humans, and if anything they'd probably find us ugly. I suppose it'd be possible that they worshipped Aetulia as the ultimate source of their sustenance so strongly that they developed a Complex around a desire to look like her, but the myth explicitly states that they aren't psychologically capable of that sort of thing. Really, the only way this would work is if they didn't originally look like that, but even then their standards of beauty would've adapted after the change as the generations went by. Heck, now that I think about it, how would they even know what they looked like? The Earth didn't even have a sun before Ormagoden showed up, so how did they even evolve eyes?
  • The legend narration mentions they looked so hideous, they couldn't stand to look at themselves. I've never smelled a rotting body before and have no idea what it smells like, but if I smelled it without knowing it was a corpse I'd still think it was an unpleasant smell—if something looks hideous to one person, it'll probably hurt the eyes of another as well. As for the eyes thing...idk, it's a creation myth.

Why does the 'upgrade' path of Call of the Wild feel like it downgrades so hard?

• So, for the first 4, it's all good and well, go from the porcupine that does it's real damage when it's killed, to the battle stag, then we drop the damage in favor of superspeed (the hogs I'm fairly certain are faster than any other unit, including your own vehicle) then they drop the speed in favor of massive damage... then thing start to get screwy... we backstep to the fast but alright unit again, then we massively upgrade our summon to have a spammable ranged attack... after that we get birds, dropping the double team ability, then follow up by getting it back, but it's only directly underfoot, and then we downgrade once more as it becomes massively slow, attached to a massive lumbering beast who has trouble pathing to enemies on it's own anyways...

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