Agent : I am confused

I am confused…not sure did anyone ask this before but are they the same person?

Type 1
jayesh
warla

Type 2
dax
liam
maxwell

Type 3
astrid
margot
sarah
siobhan
terry

Type 4
cveta
wu

Type 5
christina
faction

Type 6
carlos
martin

Type 7
ibrahim
thomas

Type 8
aleksey
alessandro
calum

note : Thanks to Merihem who realised Jayesh and Warla look the same which then I went to look at those pictures from the agent spreadsheet.

5 Likes

It’s most likely intentional reuse of art assets to minimize the amount of artist work it takes to put one together. Head-cannoning that there’s only one person who can somehow do three things at once (there’s precedent) and the dossiers are actually just adding to a growing stockpile of wigs, makeup and other accessories is an entertaining option though. Faction Recruit is working hard on that Oscar nomination.

4 Likes

FC once again displaying the masterful art of asset reuse. Don’t have an issue with it.

2 Likes

Once you have 24 agents, a new mission opens up called ‘Guess Who’.

“Does your person wear glasses?”

7 Likes

Yes, that mustache is clearly fake. Reminds me of this guy.

Na, the Type 6 guy is clearly Randy, he’s awesome.

Edit: My mistake, his ID says he is Colonel Lando Calrissiano - although his Portuguese could do with some work.

That’s because the agent network is happening inside the head of your character. Sending Amir to find cats for Madame Roget. Does it even make sense otherwise?

3 Likes

Well, it does fit the overall ‘cheap browser game with expensive boosters’ vibe I’m getting from the agent system :unamused:

To be fair though, STO’s doff system for example is better and worse at the same time. It does have more actually different portraits, but it recycles those unaltered like nobody’s business.

Wouldn’t be much of an issue if a) the agent system overall felt better and b) this hadn’t just caused a rising sense of dread that every other black guy in South Africa will look like ‘Ellis Hill’.

3 Likes

in the world where they send level 1 recruit to deal (and mess up) with an Excalibur, sure, why not.

1 Like

8 types of head, what do you want (do we have that many in character creator)? :slight_smile:

Have you noticed that there is only one type of beard? :stuck_out_tongue:

If it matters… yeah looks slightly inappropriate since it’s just 2D picture (had it been 3D characters it would be more understandable).

But it’s strange. Masters of reuse to me are South Park creators. Despite all their characters have the same exact head each of them is very distinctive character and you don’t “notice” the similarity until their heads are shaved and you can’t tell them apart at all :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes

They could’ve used a few skin color variations. It’s not just the faces either, a few of them share the same clothing or hairstyles.

But this doesn’t bother me. They’ve done worse, I’m still a bit mad about the icon for the Empowerment Weekend…

And yeah, they could’ve done what other games did with similar systems and used player faces, but they would’ve ran out pretty quickly.

1 Like

One is classic faction incompetence that occurs many times over the story, the other is inconsistent writing. That would be my why.

The agent system is actually entirely fake. Agents are actors hired by your faction to send messages and make you feel like you’re becoming more important, then send along low level rewards that no one else needed and were available for this program. Actors are reused because your faction doesn’t respect your intelligence and thinks even if you notice, you won’t figure out what’s going on and will continue interacting with the system.

This system is part of a performance improvement plan set in place by your handler because your faction is concerned about your loyalty and low level of activity. Your handler is also monitoring how often you pick actor agents for “missions” that aren’t from your faction to see if you are beyond salvaging.

10 Likes

I’ve been pondering the storyline/lore ramifications of both some of the missions I’ve seen and the fact we can recruit characters from the game–but that’s overthinking it. I’m going with your explanation from now on.

1 Like

That makes more sense than anything else ever said about the agent system. They probably recruit these actors by pretending this is a mystery version of The Apprentice that can win them a lead role in the upcoming pre-sequel reboot of X-Files.

1 Like

The artwork in general is lacking for agents and not just because they’re cookie cutter templates used to play a game of paper dolls.

I was hoping the current agent pics were just placeholders and would eventually be a bit more unique looking to fit their diverse personality. Could be worse though, right?

The whole agent system feels like a bare technology release waiting for some big content drop…

Maybe the human agents are permutations of a small set of faces, hairstyles, hats, and head accessories because they’re going to get 3D models at some point, and that’s how their models will work, just like ours. Didn’t they show one in the last dev stream? Sure, they could have at least used a few more skin tones and face modifiers, but at least they didn’t show anything below the neck and reveal that they also have the same two body shapes as us.

1 Like

My understanding from the devstream was that the person shown was an NPC (in South Africa?) who would give us missions. He was named after one of the agents, but otherwise there seemed to be no connection with the agent system.