As long as we’re talking Star Trek here, this is something I heard recently. It could serve as an explanation, but if so then it’s so overused in the game that it’s had the opposite intended effect.
Have you ever wondered why Worf gets his butt kicked so often in TNG? But he’s still always talked about as being a great warrior? Basically, the tl;dr of the whole thing is that Worf getting his butt kicked was supposed to signal to the audience that this thing, this baddie was super dangerous and strong in a “Holy crаp. This thing just kicked Worf’s аss. Watch out!” That’s about it. It was overused enough that it became almost something of a joke itself and similar to dead Orochi.
The Orochi are never introduced as a group of particularly powerful individuals. In fact, the game doesn’t even make any effort to introduce you to a living one. Chances are you’ll run into several dead ones before you ever see one who isn’t.
I dunno, my first experience with Orochi Personall has always been Blake and Radcliff and they’re very much alive. Clearly in over their heads but very much alive.
Still, it’s not like alive Orochi operatives are some sort of anomaly. Every zone minus South Africa has at least one. (Zones as in Solomon Island, Egypt, Transylvania and Kaidan. I don’t know for the specific playing field off the top of my head.)
But the Orochi were hyped up to be this nigh omnipotent force, though. They were supposed to be feared or at least respected enough that you didn’t tangle with them. Very early on, in Kingsmouth our faction handlers (or at least KG) really get on our аss for messing with their operations.
I never really remember the Mitsubachi lore, except that one line and how it intersects with my own theories, since I never really could be arsed to do the MFA/B grind, that’s why I forgot that that’s where it’s from.
“But he does know what happens to those imbued in the long run. He knows what happens after the sunset. After the sun-death. He remembers.”
That line stuck with me for so long, but I could never remember where it was from. Thanks!
Now, I haven’t read through this whole thread, but I largely thought that the dead Orochi were mostly the result of Lilith’s interference with Samael and the Prometheus Initiative. Sure you’ll get some people dead just by being in proximity with the Filth and all the bad that comes with it, but you learn as early as the Filth Amendment (Blue Mountain) that Samael suspects a saboteur. Then again with Lisa Hui. And then CotSG, until it finally culminates in the Breach encounter where Samael finds out.
It’s one thing to be incompetent – and Orochi is not – but active sabotage is another.
But that’s silly, you don’t send humans on suicide missions and hold your bees back! Bees are practically made for suicide missions!
The only limiting factor for how many times a Bee can screw up and die is how many anima shards they have on them, whereas when a human dies, you don’t get them back at all. You send your bees on suicide missions that are liable to get them killed several times over, and you send your human soldiers on missions that aren’t as dangerous but still need to be done.
I think there’s a question about just how many bees are available though.
So potentially, there aren’t a massive number of Mitsubachi - supported by the notion that “He had no more knowledge, no more head start, in regards to when this latest explosion of the imbued would occur”, which limits their use.
Instead, you recruit cannon fodder, and use them as a sort of litmus test. If the normal grunts are able to complete the mission, great. If they all get slaughtered, then that’s an indicator of a more serious situation and you send in the bees. I think our view of Orochi’s habit of wasting agents is skewed by the fact that the areas we’re sent to are the times when the midden has hit the windmill, which is also why our own factions have dispatched us there.
I think it’s a reflection of Samuel’s disconnection from the real world that he’s willing to waste resources in the way he does. It could also be influenced by the sheer amount of resources he has at his disposal - if you own billions then wasting a few thousand is inconsequential, if you only have a few thousand to begin with, then it’s a far more serious prospect.
As long as we are talking TV Tropes darxide, Worf getting his butt kicked every time is actually a trope too! It’s called the Worf Effect.
As for the thrust of the thread I agree with Nordavind, in that you have to do a bit of hammering and twisting to get the first line to tie into the second nicely. The failings of Orochi forces around the world doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Mitsubachi recruitment.
And the evidence in game doesn’t support that all the Orochi teams were sent out just to die pointlessly. See Samael working with you in Blue Mountain or berating people for failing him in City of the Sun God. Look at the Orochi studying the filth in Scorched Desert and BM - they were sent with plenty of equipment, knowledge and strict protocols in place for researching the filth. A lot of issues arose when researchers ignored protocols and did their own thing–the result being them getting infected by filth or getting overrun by the research subjects or the locals they’d been antagonizing, like what we see in SD, CotSG, or all of Transylvania. The Orochi in Kingsmouth actually achieved some of their goals, too–stop anyone from leaving, research the Draug, do the “men in black” coverup stuff, and intervene at the Polaris.
It is not strange that we see Orochi die either, the situations they are in are extrene. We see entire populations of people and supernatural beings succumbing to the Filth, or completely isolated because they are surrounded on all sides by enemies. Of course these situations also beg the question of how tough all these threats are. We see Norma Creed holding off the entire zombie invasion with nothing but an old shotgun and a bonfire. There is the rag-tag alliance of fairies and normal Romanians holding their own in a three-pronged ghoul, vampire and werewolf assault.
So, why do the Orochi have so many problems when facing the same foes? I would argue this is usually because their goals are different; the survivors just want to survive, and suceed. The Orochi have to sedate and cage mythical beings, collect and tag artifacts, and research the most virulent disease in the cosmos. As we see in the Tower the reason they have to do these things is sometimes stupid, either because their management is stupid (a guy wanted some 3rd age object to display on his desk!) or because their leaders are already infected (the result of just about every filth research project). That is to say, there are specific reasons why the Orochi grunts and lab techs are dead everywhere while some normal people are living.
It’s true, turn over a rock in the Secret World and underneath it you will more likely than not find the bloodied corpse of an Orochi footsoldier. The Orochi die in spectaular ways compared to the more hum-drum survival of some local peoples nearby them. I don’t buy that they were sent just to die, though; they all died for reasons, be that hubris, betrayal, poor management, or just overwhelming odds.
Samael:Did you ever wonder why my agents go in the field with slingshots? Because I have a huge armoury with tens of thousands of plasma assault rifles in my HQ!
Me:That… does not make any sense.
Samael:Sure it does.
Me:No, it does not. You’re setting your operations up to fail.
Samael:I do not! Because I have all the plasma assault rifles.
