Christopher Odd (Lets Play)

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Hey guys, Christopher Odd here.

Christopher Odd is a Canadian, YouTube-based Let's Player and photographer who focuses on blind playthroughs of horror, sci-fi, and role-playing games, though he has covered many other types of games. As of November 2020, he has around 485,000 subscribers. Christopher tends to adopt the persona of the character he plays as, and tries to make the choices he thinks they would in any given situation.

Games Chris has Played

This gamer provides examples of:

Awesomeness Withdrawal: Happened to Christopher himself once he completed The Witcher 3. Having played through the entire trilogy, enjoying it every step of the way, and finding the series to be emotionally riveting, especially towards the end, he admitted to feeling sad once the realization hit him that it was all over.
Audience Participation: In his XCOM series. He used to be a moderator for Gray Lines gaming, where he headed the XCOM Role-play series. Even now, Viewers can send soldiers to his character pool website who they want to appear in the series.
- During Season 1 of XCOM 2, he made an offhand comment during a retaliation mission, saying "Somebody should write an obituary to their parents." And of course, commenters did so.
- This has since expanded to After Action Reports from soldiers either celebrating flawless missions, particularly if there were some close calls, expressing frustration at failed missions, mourning fallen comrades or in the event of their own death giving their pre-recorded last will.
Author Appeal: During his playthrough of Life Is Strange, he'll occasionally explain the camera equipment used in the game as well as some effects used in the photography.
Be Careful What You Wish For: WOTC Season 7: Complaining about having reached his capacity of people he could hire was a situation that was immediately remedied by a near Total Party Kill the next mission.
Big "NO!": He lets off an epic one during Bloodborne after Vicar Amelia kills him just before he can finish her off. It lasts for thirty solid seconds.
Big Damn Hero: They appear quite often in his XCOM Playthroughs, and they totally outperform pretty much everyone else in the campaign. Standouts include: Grelite the Sniper, Buck Buttridge the Psionic Support, and Jahana Locksley the Sharpshooter.
Book Ends: XCOM 2 (not Wot C) Season 4 begins and ends with a Total Party Kill.
Brief Accent Imitation: In his play through of We Happy Few, after the Maidenholm update, he begins the third episode by putting on a Received Pronunciation accent.
Buffy Speak: Refers to the Snarks from Half-Life as "shitty ladybugs."
- He also generally talks like this, as he forgets the proper terms for things pretty easily.
Catchphrase:
- "Super time" and "That's what she/he said".
- "Sleep..." when performing a stealth kill.
- "Set(ting) the vibe", which means to maximize one's immersion while playing or watching a game. This is best accomplished, according to Christopher, by doing so in the dark while wearing headphones on high volume.
Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey: Averted with WOTC Season 7's Boulanger 'Toaster' 42, SPARK Pioneer, Memetic Badass and, as the name suggests, very very French. Smashed most of the records that you would want to break; damage taken (he's the Tank), damage dealt, & kills (if the stars align he can set up to 20 people on fire in 1 sweep). Carried Flamethrowers, Riot Shields, teams....the entire campaign?
Curb-Stomp Battle: WOTC Season 7 Episode 72 Turgid Druid, on the receiving end. To elaborate, a Dark Event popped that would result in permanent loss of access to the Black Market if left unchecked. The only problem was this came right on the heels of the 'Kill The Chosen Assassin' mission, so his best were either Tired or Wounded (or needing repairs in Toaster's case) so was forced to send in (still reasonably experienced) 2nd tier units. The mission forewarned of Lost presence, but they weren't the problem. ADVENT & EXALT were there in force, and as it was VIP retrieval he couldn't call for evac when it was obvious the mission was a bust so was forced to fight his way out. Of all the enemy casualties he killed about 10, the rest falling to ADVENT. Most of the mission was just staying out the way, pinging ADVENT with Lost Lures, letting ADVENT kill The Lost and hope he didn't attract too much attention, which he inevitably did. Even a couple of computer crashes and forced reloads that rezzed a couple of his soldiers after being killed/bleeding-out-after-his-medic-was-killed-first-and-therefore-doomed didn't save them. Only one made it out, the Templar, but still successfully completed the mission, and he had to make a run for it and leave everyone else to their fate to achieve this. With all the equipment he lost when he asked himself "Was It All Worth It?" his initial thought was probably not and it would take an inordinate amount of Body Retrieval missions to recoup his losses.
- It did lead to a funny instsnce of Epic Fail though; an EXALT managed to kill herself through no effort of The Lost or himself; a carelessly thrown grenade blew out the roof she was standing on for fall damage, then killing a Lost Brute lead to self-poisoning that killed her the very next turn.
Epic Fail: Total Party Kills and lost campaigns are part and parcel of the X-COM series, but Odd's first attempt at Season 4 of XCOM 2 takes both to new levels. To wit, he takes a grand total of one turn in the opening mission before a series of Disaster Dominoes goes off that results in his whole team dying. Half of them at the hand of one of his own panicked soldiers.
Failed a Spot Check: Is occasionally guilty of not paying attention to obvious things such as story beats or game progression, though he's otherwise rather attentive and thoughtful about these things.
- In his LP of Alien: Isolation, he fails to realize until after the fact that Samuels is an android, despite characters casually stating it beforehand. He also spends almost all of the game not knowing how to fight the Working Joes despite having descriptions for the weapons and being hinted numerous times that fire won't work. This might have to do with him being too on edge throughout the game to focus properly.
Fan-Preferred Couple: XCOM. The people who watch his streams often write in with Flavor Text short snippets written in-story by the characters in that season for Chris to begin an episode with (and given that Anyone Can Die, if such happens Chris will often use it to deliver their 'In The Event Of My Death' message). WOTC Season 6 saw Memetic Badass Marcus 'Tyrant' Kincaid discussing his thoughts on his growing crush on Ensemble Dark Horse Marie 'Gentle' Lebrun in those snippets and the fans approving of the pairing. Episode 31 reveals through Short Fuse's snippet that they did become an item, right before Chris' inability to pay attention to details meant he didn't realise his party wasn't concealed (despite Central saying as such right at the start), causing a Disaster Dominoes scenario that led to a Total Party Kill, Gentle included, apart from the one character rescued in role-play (Olivia 'Cuttlefish' Maynard) by another soldier later on. According to the Epilogue, Marcus never got over Marie's death, which in turn hurt Britney 'Kit-kat' Williams who had joined after Marie's death, had fallen for Marcus in the days since and had tried to help him move on.
Genius Ditz: Christopher is known for giving thoughtful explanations for his decisions in games, particularly those concerning strategy and tactics, even if he later turns out to be wrong. He's also known for missing very obvious things that cause him to die, have to backtrack, get stuck, or miss out on story, much to the chagrin of his viewers. To his credit, Christopher is fully aware of this, but they are mistakes that he keeps making and seemingly never learns from.
Genre Savvy: Christopher has played enough games that he can see some twists before they happen.
He Who Must Not Be Seen: Christopher himself in his gameplay videos, as he doesn't use a face cam, thus making him The Voice. Averted in his streams though.
Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: To the extent that when playing XCOM some of his contributors keep score on shots that his forces really should be landing but miss (and vice versa). Even though the team at large is guilty of this, some individuals are more guilty than others.
Meaningful Name: WOTC Season 6 Episode 31. Operation: Senseless Tears. Party is massively outnumbered and the mission format does not allow for a retreat, leading to a Total Party Kill. Several of Chris' go-to picks are amongst the dead, except for one rescued in role-play; see Total Party Kill trope for details. Ship Sinking for early Fan-Preferred Couple Gentle x Tyrant.
Nice Guy: Christopher will often base his decisions in a game by what he feels the moral thing to do is.
Overcrank: Happens a lot whenever Chris dies in a game. Sometimes used to replay a moment in the episode (usually an amusing death) as an outro.
Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: He doesn't seem to catch most of the references to Alien and Aliens in his Alien: Isolation playthrough, as he doesn't realize the significance of the Anesidora crew going to LV-426 and instead asks if it's a Prometheus reference, or the Plot Twist of Weyland-Yutani being partially responsible for the Sevastopol mess.
Precision F-Strike:
- After saving an autistic man from being horrifically tortured in Mass Effect 2, reads an email from the Illusive Man criticizing his actions. Cue the usually self-censored Odd laying one of these down.
- Drops a few of these along with some other cuss words in his playthrough of Alien: Isolation, understandably.
A Rare Sentence: Referring to the jump pads in Half-Life:
Christopher: These little alien sacs are really beneficial! That's a sentence I never thought I would say.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: His playthrough of Alien: Isolation gradually falls victim to this, with him being on on edge due to the game's infamous terrifying and intelligent Super Persistent Predators.
Squishy Wizard: At least in his LPs of Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Inquisition; Chris played a Vanguard!Shep and Mage!Inquisitor respectively. While he fares well with either class in the games' story modes, he dies a lot in the multiplayer for ME3, which later led to him experimenting with other classes. He even lampshades this trope during one of the multiplayer missions.
Chris: Man, I am so squish right now, it isn't even funny.
Tempting Fate: At one point during his playthrough of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, he asks if the flickering lights are a signal for something. (Which they sometimes are because they're reacting to the Compound X in the Manpigs, which means that there's probably one nearby.) Cue Manpig - and Christopher fleeing in terror.
- WOTC Season 6 Episode 31. The episode began with a snippet discussing Short Fuse interrupting Gentle and Tyrant enjoying each other's company, and Chris snarking about something bad happening to Gentle who was on the upcoming mission. Said mission was a Total Party Kill (apart from an exception in role-play revealed later; see that trope for details).
Title Drop: Christopher often titles his episodes after a quote from that particular segment, be it from the game itself or something he said.
Total Party Kill:
- Experiences one during his XCOM: Enemy Unknown series, and has experienced another in the second season of his XCOM 2 series.
- Experiences another in the very first episode of Season 4. He got one turn in before it happened.
  - Brick Joke: He TPKed Operation Leviathan too.
- Episode 31 of the sixth XCOM 2 series also saw his whole team get killed, including the VIP that he was trying to rescue and several fan-favorite characters.
  - Not Quite Dead: Narratively speaking Olivia "Cuttlefish" Maynard was rescued by another character that appeared later in the season, and continued to contribute through comments and in the epilogue video, despite the fact that we see her be marked by the game as KIA (XCOM assumes that unrescued soldiers in bleedout are killed). Mitigated because she was only only one who went into bleedout, the rest were killed outright. She keeps her survival a secret from XCOM so ADVENT don't figure it out as well.
Undercrank: Used to avoid wasting time when he dies and has to repeat a section or when he gets lost for extended periods. Sometimes used solely for comedic effect.
Video Game Caring Potential: Chris more often than not goes for the nice and moral options in the games he plays. Most notably, in his playthrough of Spec Ops: The Line, he does his damnedest to avoid using the white phosphorus, trying out whatever alternative solutions he can think of until it becomes clear there aren't any.
We Cannot Go On Without You: Gameplay wise why he lost WOTC Season 5's Operation Leviathan, as is the rule. Narrative wise the rest of the party killed the last Avatar (who was on its last legs anyway and only survived that long because The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard.) immediately after and blew the facility in a Taking You with Me.

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