Is Melinoe meant to be a good person? (dialog spoiler)

[Jonny]

So I just beat Chronos for the first time (yay). I'm going through her dialog with him, and she just said something that seems very out of place.

"Our family. And what do I care? I don't even know them"

This is in response to Chronos talking about how he's likely to start worsening his treatment of her captive family when he revives, as your punishment for killing him.

So.... she doesn't care at all if her family suffers/is mistreated/is tortured? This a) seems contrary to her entire character motivation so far and b) is not something a good person says, and I do assume the developers think she is meant to be a good character.

You might want to consider re-writing this.

[UNBREAKABLE]

Messaggio originale di gunjames724:

Could use a little touch up. Maybe an extra line or two from Homer or Mel herself with context clues for clearing up the disparity between her behaviour at the end, and her behaviour with Hades like 5 minutes prior.

I mean pretty much all of the story in the last act is missing still so we'll just have to wait in until 1.0.

[Drimon]

Messaggio originale di Jonny:

It's one thing to not be close to your family. It's another thing entirely to be actively uncaring that your actions will directly result in your family's suffering. Good people do not want to make their family suffer, regardless of how directly close they are. She should be angry about Chronos' threat, and make her hate him more. Showing indifference and uncaring is NOT a good character trait, and comes off extremely jarring in a game where the entire plot is revolving around the family as a whole. She certainly seems to show caring towards Hades when she finds him shackled, so why the sudden turn around here?

This is Just some boring Trash Good Hero with No flaws Story writing lol.

Its normal for a Person to Not care about a Family she dont knows.
Why should you care about your Mother/Father or who ever that wer Not there in your life ?
Makes the Main Char Not a Bad Person but the Familie was Just trash

[RdRStar]

none of you studied mythology in hs? they not the best fam. she's obv not close, and that's ok.

[Acatane]

Messaggio originale di Jonny:

So I just beat Chronos for the first time (yay). I'm going through her dialog with him, and she just said something that seems very out of place.

"Our family. And what do I care? I don't even know them"

This is in response to Chronos talking about how he's likely to start worsening his treatment of her captive family when he revives, as your punishment for killing him.

So.... she doesn't care at all if her family suffers/is mistreated/is tortured? This a) seems contrary to her entire character motivation so far and b) is not something a good person says, and I do assume the developers think she is meant to be a good character.

You might want to consider re-writing this.

Bluff.

[Bastycore]

Good and evil are pretty empty terms and depend on whose perspective you look at. Hitler would have called himself the good guy from his perspective. In greek mythology all the gods are "bad" from the human perspective.

[Jonny]

Messaggio originale di RdRStar:

none of you studied mythology in hs? they not the best fam. she's obv not close, and that's ok.

If this were a historically accurate portrayal of ancient greek Gods, then sure.
The is very clearly not caring to be rigidly accurate to Greek mythos. It's a video game in which you play the main hero character.
One of the very first things you can do when you play the game is interact with a picture of her family as she broods over it. The whole set up is that this is about her family and that she cares for them. You are there to kill Chronos, and ultimately save your family. This is why it's insanely jarring to, at the moment of basically succeeding in one of your primary goals, suddenly turn around and have her go "but I don't care about them so feel free to keep torturing them if you like". It makes no sense to the character and motives they themselves have established for M.

[Jonny]

Or to put it another way: if the writers had spent the earlier part of the game establishing that she has low morale standards, hates her family, and was only doing this because of her own bloodthirsty quest for power, it would make sense that she delivers a line that. I have no problem with an evil/selfish character, if that's how the character is supposed to be.

This is not what they have done. They have tried to build her up as a paragon. A good student to her teacher. A caring family member. A liked member of the god community (with game mechanics centred around becoming greater friends with each god). All are there to suggest you are a "good" person, fighting against "evil". Being blasé about her brother and others being tortured doesn't match. It was so badly out of place that I interrupted the cutscene to make a post about it.

Either change the dialog to something that fits her character, or add explanation to why she would say something so contradicting to her previously established traits.

[Ayk-]

So much unnecessary interpretation from a "protagonist trying to be tough and aloof towards antagonist" moment.

[Jonny]

Messaggio originale di Ayk-:

So much unnecessary interpretation from a "protagonist trying to be tough and aloof towards antagonist" moment.

That might be what they were going for. If so, it's a terrible way to do it.

[scram]

Messaggio originale di Jonny:

Messaggio originale di Ayk-:

So much unnecessary interpretation from a "protagonist trying to be tough and aloof towards antagonist" moment.

That might be what they were going for. If so, it's a terrible way to do it.

Or maybe you just took it at face value. Other people here seem to understand her intentions with that line easily.

[Jonny]

Messaggio originale di scram:

Messaggio originale di Jonny:

That might be what they were going for. If so, it's a terrible way to do it.

Or maybe you just took it at face value. Other people here seem to understand her intentions with that line easily.

1) You're assuming her intention.
2) Even if I agree with that possibility, I've already clearly explained why there are much better ways to achieve that kind of intention without having your character deliver lines that are contrary to their character.

[scram]

Messaggio originale di Jonny:

Messaggio originale di scram:

Or maybe you just took it at face value. Other people here seem to understand her intentions with that line easily.

1) You're assuming her intention.
2) Even if I agree with that possibility, I've already clearly explained why there are much better ways to achieve that kind of intention without having your character deliver lines that are contrary to their character.

1) You're making an assumption too. One that has far heavier implications on her character and isn't supported by anything else she says or does in the story.
2) The line itself is sarcastic. It is only contradictory to her character if the line is taken literally, which is what you did.

[Jonny]

Messaggio originale di scram:

Messaggio originale di Jonny:

1) You're assuming her intention.
2) Even if I agree with that possibility, I've already clearly explained why there are much better ways to achieve that kind of intention without having your character deliver lines that are contrary to their character.

1) You're making an assumption too. One that has far heavier implications on her character and isn't supported by anything else she says or does in the story.
2) The line itself is sarcastic. It is only contradictory to her character if the line is taken literally, which is what you did.

I don't have a sound recording of the line to hand, but it didn't sound sarcastic. It sounded jaded and blasé. Hence my issue with it. Nothing is done to indicate she doesn't mean it literally, and if she means it literally, it's a character problem.

[paugus]

Messaggio originale di Jonny:

I don't have a sound recording of the line to hand, but it didn't sound sarcastic. It sounded jaded and blasé. Hence my issue with it. Nothing is done to indicate she doesn't mean it literally, and if she means it literally, it's a character problem.

Honestly this argument got cooked in the first two replies to this thread. It's totally feasible, in context of an eternal being threatening to torture your family, that you'd be like "Pff so what, I wouldn't even care if you did that" so he searches for other ways to hurt you besides, y'know, family-torture.

Also Greek gods were notorious bastards, and even the "good" ones did truly reprehensible things when viewed through human sensibilities.

[Dwarvin' Marvin]

Messaggio originale di scram:

Messaggio originale di Jonny:

That might be what they were going for. If so, it's a terrible way to do it.

Or maybe you just took it at face value. Other people here seem to understand her intentions with that line easily.

If it was perfectly clear, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place. It should be taken at face value, because none of the other dialogue in the game would suggest that Mel is that kind of person. She's clean, dutiful, and despises Cronos. I don't believe we see her lie, bluff, or be dishonest anywhere else in the game. She's dry. She doesn't poke fun like Zag did. The closest you could really compare is her not being totally truthful with Hecate and not snitching on Nemesis, but that would be a stretch imo. If the scene with Hades a couple floors prior didn't exist, it would be very easy to take her completely literally.

Messaggio originale di Jonny:

This is not what they have done. They have tried to build her up as a paragon. A good student to her teacher. A caring family member. A liked member of the god community (with game mechanics centred around becoming greater friends with each god). All are there to suggest you are a "good" person, fighting against "evil". Being blasé about her brother and others being tortured doesn't match. It was so badly out of place that I interrupted the cutscene to make a post about it.

It is out of character for her to act that way, but I don't agree with the reasons you gave for it.
On the contrary, it's pretty heavily implied that all that matters to her is her mission to kill Cronos. This isn't like Zag willfully clawing his way out of hell for some closure. Let's be real, Mel is basically a child soldier. The only family she's ever actually known is Hecate, and while Hecate is patient and forgiving with Mel, Mel was basically radicalised to solely despise Cronos from birth. She's dry and is meant to come off as prudish, she hasn't seen the world, and the amount of people in her immediate circle at the crossroads is limited. All she really knows is what Hecate and the witches taught her.
Anything that she does that you could consider "virtuous" is pretty much a consequence of Cronos' own wrongdoing. She only happens to be on the right side. If Cronos didn't overstep, Mel still probably would've been raised to do the same thing, and it would've been the story of a vendetta rather than her trying to take down a tyrant. It's only because he threatens Olympus and opened the human realm to the dregs of the underworld that what Mel is doing is portrayed as good.
She's liked by the gods because she's helping them. Everyone is acting out of self-interest. From a certain angle, you can even consider everything Hecate does for Mel to be out of obligation.