Something I haven't thought of before....about Rhys.
I was brimming through Deviant art for some Tales stuff and I found this...
How To Ruin a Character in 5 Seconds
The guy who drew this artwork doesn't care much for Vault of the Traveler, calling the episode a complete disgrace to a lot of the characters. His argument is that Rhys never really went through a proper character arc and all the responsibility was taken from him just for Vaughn to clean it up afterwards. While he's somewhat right, I'm not sure he really understands what Rhy's character arc was about from the start, as I thought it was more of an underdog story where a complete nobody wants to rise up and and by the end he proves himself to be somewhat of a hero in stopping Jack and he has a chance to run his own company rather than a story about someone wanting to become a hero.
Apparently the argument from the artist is that Rhys doesn't really seem to care much to look for survivors or Vaughn because he pretty much killed a lot of Hyperion workers when destroying Helios and that makes him an asshole and while that's fair I don't agree in that Rhys was more so looking for refuge and getting back on his feet into hiding at the Atlas facility plus he thought Vaughn was dead at the time so it was more of Rhys probably not being very proactive, of course, he was in rough shape in fixing himself up.
Of course, the artist is a Rhys and Vaughn shipper from the looks of some of his artwork and I guess he just took major issue with how Rhys didn't seem to have a romantic connection to try and seek Vaughn out and I kind of see that a lot with Rhys and Vaughn shippers who found Rhys and Vaughn's relationship to be lacking in Episode 5. Plus, I think half of his issues with the characters and some of the writing was that it went into a direction he personally wasn't a fan of or didn't really find much depth in.
Thoughts?
Comments
Eh, Vaughn got a bear hug that ended in getting twirled around. That is like the most physical contact any character got that episode barring Sasha.
Also Vaughn was intentionally hiding the identity of his entire settlement to survive. And Sasha and Fiona assumed both he and Rhys were dead after a certain amount of unsuccessful searching.
I figured Rhys' whole arc was summed up by his plea inside the vault that there had to be a way to be the head of Atlas without being "the new warmonger." His character arc was designed to have some similarity with Jack's and then choose to trust and help people instead.
The one thing I did find odd was that Rhys took over Atlas and appeared to be making enough money to look the way he did, yet no one had heard Rhys was alive.
I don't even think Rhys really even got the company up and running again as I think he just took refuge and fixed himself up and stayed into hiding.
Which also makes me think: if it took Loaderbot a year to find everyone, why would anyone that knows Rhys expect him to be more dedicated and competent? :P
Sooo pretty much she's angry because the thing she wanted that was never going to happen in the first place didn't happen?
She wanted more Vaughn. And if you played Rhys and Fiona good it certainly does have the weird effect of eliminating him from a good chunk of ep3 and 4.
She also found it weird that there is a huge Helios camp built on the crash site that worships Rhys but that Rhys never found. I personally don't find it weird that Rhys was less competent at finding friends that were trying to hide than Loaderbot was. I do find it weird that Loaderbot slid past his unconscious body, grabbed a suit and kept on going.
I'm just going to smooth over the fact that they're a Rhys and Vaughn shipper since in game they're basically best friends. Brothers for life. So even if we did ignore the artist's shipping views, it still didn't make any sense as to why Rhys didn't look for Vaughn. (Unless he did, and just couldn't find him).
That's what I assumed. If it took Loaderbot a year to find them all, I don't expect Rhys to be more competent. I'm guessing there wasn't a clear "me too" when Sasha says they searched because of the determinant nature of that scene.
Regarding Vaughn... you're right, it was sort of weird that he just vanished for one and a half (really, closer to two full) episodes. As you said, if you played Fiona as a good guy and had her urge Athena to spare Cassius, then Vaughn does not actually make an appearance at all in episode 4, except for a brief phone call to Rhys, which can be as brief as "Rhys, are you there?" and Vaughn doesn't reappear until chapter 5 (out of 6) of the final episode. It's particularly unfortunate that this happens if, in your particular game, you have Rhys and Vaughn have a heart-to-heart chat in episode three, where Vaughn says he's worried that he'll be left on the curb, and you choose to have Rhys promise that won't happen. Almost immediately Vaughn is left on the curb while Team Awesome (and August) go on an adventure to Space in Episode 4. Poor Vaughn.
Regarding the Children of Helios... I was less concerned that Rhys was unaware of the cult that worshipped him than I was concerned that this cult was worshipping him in the first place. The Children of Helios are survivors of a disaster that Rhys caused... a disaster that claimed the lives of hundreds (and Jack indicates it is actually thousands) of lives. They all know it was Rhys's fault. Handsome Jack announced it to the entire station. The survivors all would have had friends, co-workers, possibly significant others, family, etc. on Helios who did not make it off alive, and it seems highly unlikely to me that their reaction would be to deem Rhys the Great Liberator.
Regarding Loaderbot... yes, that was weird. Loaderbot is angry about Gortys, sure... but Rhys obviously had no hand in that, since Loaderbot saw Fiona and Sasha take Gortys out, and Rhys was miles away at the time. So why would Loaderbot just abandon Rhys in the remains of Jack's office? And why, months later, when Loaderbot gets Rhys and Fiona together in his guise as the Stranger, is Loaderbot incredibly violent toward Rhys, but mostly just neutral/distant to Fiona, when it's actually Fiona who's responsible for the thing he's pissed about? That felt off to me. Depending on how you play Rhys, it's possible that he and Loaderbot have had a bad relationship. If you have Rhys force LB to self-destruct in episode 1, and never take the opportunity to apologize for it later on, it makes sense that LB might want to smack Rhys around some. But the problem is, LB (as the stranger) starts smacking Rhys around the moment he appears, in the prologue; he slams Rhys in the face with the butt of a shotgun, long before you've had a chance to establish how you're playing Rhys is, or what his relationship with LB is. Again, seems a bit odd to me, once all the pieces are in place.
That's the interesting thing... depending on how you play Rhys, he's going to have a very different character arc. All the things the artist was complaining about are only a problem IF you are playing Rhys as a good guy. If you're playing him as a Handsome Jack wannabe, only concerned with his own agenda and a quick rise to power, then it actually makes perfect sense that Rhys wouldn't bother to look for Vaughn, or care about how many people died because of his actions on Helios. By that point, Rhys was CEO of a corporation, which is what he'd always wanted. Why should he care about the details of how that came about? And, naturally, in that version of Rhys, he would have embraced running Atlas as a warmonger.
It gets a little wonkier if you're playing Rhys as a good guy. In that case, it does seem odd that he wouldn't try to find Vaughn, because by that point, in Rhys's mind, Vaughn is probably the only friend Rhys has left, since Rhys thinks Sasha and Fiona willingly abandoned him to die on Helios... he knows for certain that Yvette made a deal with Vasquez that was supposed to result in Rhys's death and a reward for Yvette, so even if you have Rhys choose to save Yvette, it's not like Rhys can really trust her fully again... Rhys saw Kroger gun LB down... all that Rhys has left is Vaughn, and you'd think he'd make some effort to find out if Vaughn was still alive. I agree with you that LB is probably more competent than Rhys when it comes to tracking people down, but there was no indication that Rhys was even trying.
I think a lot of the problem was time constraints. Episode 5 had no breathing room as it was, so some loose ends never got tied up, and those that did were tied up somewhat hastily in some cases. An extra episode (or season) would allow enough time to really get into the issue of whether or not Rhys feels the weight of his actions on Helios, and what (if anything) he plans to do to atone for it, etc.
I just kind of assumed that he did go looking.
Like... The first place Rhys went to after Helios crashed was the Chimera Dome where Cassius was hiding out (hence the "whole lotta fruit" line). Not the huge underground lab, or the secret facility beneath the death race, or any other of Pandora's countless Atlas facilities. He went to the last place he'd seen Vaughn.
I just thought he did go looking for him, couldn't find him and just hoped he was still out there.
No I thought he went to the facility in Old Haven, because if you go to pick up Cassius for your team it's revealed he's still living there in his lab and isn't a part of Rhys' Atlas. I guess it's maybe a joke that Atlas stocks a lot of fruit in their bases?
I assumed he did, but he couldn't find him. He is living on Pandora: The Murder Plant from Hell. And he's an incompetent tol string bean, who doesn't know how to track. Anyway, I loved Rhys' character, and didn't feel like he was ruined for a miner oversight. Sounds like someone didn't get their ship, so they've decided that the whole thing sucks because of it. But eh? To each their own.
Edit: I had to edit this, because it was so poorly written and it was driving me nuts.
This really feels like this guy's blowing things out of proportion
I don't see how this one arguable oversight (that I don't even really think is one in the first place) somehow ruins Rhys' character or does him some huge injustice
Nor how half of the things that happened in episode 5 apparently 'ruined' everyone but honestly, given how common that reaction is for just about everything in existence (ruined forever), I'm not all that surprised
Going through some of the other comments on his page, it seems to be someone that's kinda forgetting that this is chiefly a comedy game. Sure, it plays darker tropes at times, but even then, most of them have some comedic pay-off to them, or get subverted or whatever
This seems like someone who's forgetting that fact, and is trying to inject more complex and serious undertones into a series where they weren't really a selling point in the first place
Half of this shit never really crossed my mind when I was playing, and even now, these complaints are still pretty... uh, new to me?
Also, criticisms about Rhys being a selfish douchebag or getting off pretty easily with the destruction of Helios, and other things like that: correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't this Borderlands? You know, that game series where we play a rag-tag band of sociopaths/vault hunters that have no real qualms about slaughtering their way through Pandora, killing innocent and guilty people alike, and inciting all manners of questionable, ridiculous if not downright cruel violence to get some money and cool guns? The whole planet of Pandora is filled with a bunch of trigger-happy lunatics where being shot at is about as normal as a handshake, and trying to get a leg up on one another is commonplace, where practically no one has any qualms about killing other people if they get money/fame/glory/guns out of it. As far as I'm concerned, the story arc of "Jerk slowly develops into a much better person than he started out as" doesn't really exist in this universe. It's more of "Jerk slowly develops into a jerk... that kinda-sorta understands the values and virtues of friendship... sort of"
I can kinda see that. I don't think that Rhys was ruined and neither do i think episode 5 but you'd think the jump of him simply not caring is quite a big jump in his character to me.
Honestly, I didn't really see many (if any) hints of him not caring.
Rhys, from his perspective, saw Loader Bot get killed/destroyed, and probably assumed that whatever happened with Gortys didn't really work out. The last time he saw Fiona and Sasha, they had the final piece. He probably assumed Vallory got a hold of it or something in the end.
Since he believed that Fiona ditched him on Helios (until he heard the full story), that bridge was obviously burned. Fiona obviously wasn't too happy with Rhys either, and she has no real resources to track Rhys down. Unlike Rhys, she doesn't have any computer databases to search or anything.
Sasha would most likely be with Fiona, which would obviously complicate things. And maybe she also decided to ditch him. Or he thought she didn't really like him. I'll be honest, this one's a bit hard to explain.
It's implied he, at the very least, tried looking for Vaughn. He's super happy to see Vaughn again, gives him a giant bear hug, says "I thought I lost you!", and I'm pretty sure when Vaughn tells him that he tried finding them, it's possible for Rhys to mention that he tried to as well (might be remembering things wrong, but I swear there was a dialogue option that made him say something like that)
I doubt Rhys had the resources to track them, even if he had access to Atlas equipment. By this point, the company's basically dead, most of their tech is old, destroyed, or was stolen/taken by Hyperion, and with Helios gone, Hyperion's presence on Pandora is most likely gone for the time being as well. And without Helios/Hyperion, that means that Vaughn and the rest are more or less back to being nobodies (it's easy to forget, but these guys aren't that much more than the various NPCs you run into in the main games). There's probably not a lot of information to go on in order to find them, on top of the fact that they probably don't want to be found, since Vaughn's basically leading a bunch of clueless Hyperion suits that probably can't fight to save their lives.
Also, further in their defense, Rhys isn't a fighter. He admits as much. He doesn't have any safety nets besides the stun baton. He isn't really equipped to tromp around Pandora trying to find his friend. I mean, back in episode 1, simply trying to get directions nearly got them killed.
Independent of player choice, the trio state they are all in it together, and have decided Rhys has the best chance of pulling the other two with him. Both Yvette and Vaughn double cross Rhys when caught. Vaughn gets a chance to say he's sorry, but I still didn't tell him anything on my first playthrough out of concern for being sold for parts. Yvette can get salty depending on how Rhys talks to her, but I interpreted her actions as a GOT-esque ploy to avenge the boys and get Vasquez's position at the same time, which is probably the same kind of manager Rhys would have been assuming he didn't get airlocked.
Especially if Rhys chose Hyperion, I would expect him to give up on Sasha and Fiona, but I personally have this mental image of Vaughn trying to radio/locate Rhys and finding the discarded hardware in the wreckage and assuming the worst. Meanwhile, if Vaughn's deception worked, little psychos in bandit camps aren't uncommon (though ones that collect handsome jack statues and rename them Rhys probably aren't)
At least if you trusted Jack you get that heart to heart. If you trust Fiona Vaughn spends most of the episode paralyzed and unable to talk, followed by being permanently left behind.
I figured they had to go with the cult, because the alternative would have been very very dark. No, it doesn't really make sense.
As far as Loaderbot goes, I don't know why they didn't just animate that scene without Rhys. If Rhys had already stumbled off at that point, that would explain why Loaderbot wasn't sure of Rhys' level of involvement and why Rhys wasn't rescued from an unstable flaming wreckage. As it is, there is a mention of needing parts to survive, but finishing it with a 'and by the time i was repaired you were gone' would have helped.
stranger reveal
Hmm. Even though i see the artist problem mainly because i know how salty and aggresive a shipper can be, i also see that this artist didn't understood something. Something no one can change about Rhys.
Rhys had happened through a lot of physical and emotional damage.
You see, a lot of players still dont get why did Rhys didnt just run to Vaughn. (for the Gayperion shippers, the first thing to do) or why was Rhys looking like he did not cared for him. But lets talk about what happened okay?
First, Rhys did not had the time to do so just after Helios crashed in Pandora. He obviously took all the responsability for either letting Jack upload himself to Helios or letting Jack forcefully do it without his consent. So, he, instead of just being: "Oh, so i was a tool all along to Jack and now he's everywhere in Helios, i may just simply leave the station and go to another planet." what he does is try to kill Jack one way or another, and eventually he understood that the only way to do so is destroying Helios. So, after Helios crashed and believing Fiona and Sasha betrayed him, what he did was finish the job. He wouldn't just walk away and say: "Welp, Jack is still alive im just gonna go."
So, why would Rhys didnt just after dealing with Jack, leave and search for Vaughn?
Well for starters he just had his dreams of being president of hyperion completely crushed, his "hero" tried to stuff an endoskeleton in his body, he saw his co-workers die horribly in space, he believed a friend and a potential love interest just betrayed him and left him to die within Helios, he just crashed into a murderous planet, Jack tried to kill him even though that would had killed him too, he mutilated himself just to get rid of Jack, he was badly bleeding and in serious pain and most importantly, he didn't knew where Vaughn was and if he was even alive....and yet, shippers are angry he didnt just run to Vaughn at that moment?
Rhys has been through a lot of pain, he's a survivor. But what people lack to understand is that not everyone can survive those levels of abuse, and the ones that can, dont always heal the same way. Healing from abuse can take years, its not that Rhys just moved on with his life and forgot about everyone, the game made it seem like Rhys was in serious isolation (maybe forced isolation? After all he had to carry the weight of knowing that in just one day he became a mass murderer, so he could have isolated himself as punishement) he could have been with depression, loneliness and even who knows? Maybe he could have get his shoulder infected in his way to Old Haven or the Chimera Dome. So its just not, "moving on" and being a jackass by ignoring his friend.
He's a survivor, and opening the wound that the whole Vault Key deal started just to explain his motived takes a lot of courage, you can see thats is difficult to rhys to explain his reasoning behind his actions to Fiona in ep3 where he doesnt answers to some of Fiona's questions and he simply stays silent. Thats also why i believe the silence part after he finishes his story in ep5 is not because Fiona and LB didnt knew what to say, but more of a respectful "i can see this is hurting you and i have respect for you for dealing with that" kinda silence.
Now after that, there comes Vaughn the bandit king and how does Rhys reacts to knowing his best friend is alive?
Extremely happy.
So happy the first thing he does is hug him and tell him he missed him too much. If Rhys just moved on and stopped caring for him he would have said sonething like: "meh i thought you died." and dont do something.
I see that this shipper has a problem believing rhys didnt care for anyone after Jack, but i believe its the contrary in fact what happens actually.He DOES care for him, but his mental barriers stopped him for opening a wound by finding him. Also, we dont know how much time passes for Vaughn to get to Helios and search for Rhys, an how much time it took Rhys to patch himself up and do high tech new cybernetics from scratch.
Sounds like bitter grapes to me.