Rift: Difference between revisions

[[File:Rift_7754.jpg|frame|Choose your side. Fight the invasions.]]

 

 

Oh, and all the armies of other-worldly monsters [[Evil Versus Evil|absolutely hate each other]] and will therefore slaughter each other on sight. So there's that.

 

 

Not to be confused with the tabletop game ''[[Rifts]].''

Character list is [[Rift/Characters|here]].

 

* [[A God Am I]]: Mild case, the reason the Kelari Elves split from the High Elf faction is due to a technical version of this. The High Elves are happy with being subservient to the Vigil....the Kelari believe they're equal to Gods. (Or, at least, that their relationship with petty deities should be one of negotiation rather than service.)

** Somewhat [[Subverted]] in that creating a single character gives you access to exactly 25% of all possible character configurations for a token fee. If you want to see and try everything, you only need four different characters, which is more than most [[MMORPG|MMORPGs]] can say.

* [[Ambiguously Brown]]: Ethian humans.

* [[Another Dimension]]: The planes, where each one of the six elements rules unrestrained. Closing portals that their inhabitants can get through is a core part of the game.

* [[Baleful Polymorph]]: Aside from the Dominator's Transmogrify spell, there's a quest in Silverwood. You know those Unusual Deer and Unusual Squirrels Critters you've been killing for the fun of it? {{spoiler|They're townfolk from Argent Glade a faerie polymorphed.}}

* [[The Beast Master]]: The Rangers and...{ahem}...[[Shaped Like Itself|Beastmasters]].

** Necromancers can use weak heals that sacrifice their own life to give to their allies. It's not all that effective, though, because a Cleric (other than the Cabalist and Shaman) or Chloromancer will always outdo you by a wide margin.

* [[The Caligula]]: The Shade (the event which allowed the dragons to invade again) was caused by one. Ironically, he was the ruler of the Mathosians, who are the leaders of the Guardians--i.e., the people who seal them up again, no questions asked.

* [[Combat Pragmatist]]: The Defiant play this to the hilt. In the Guardian starting area, for example, you learn that they blew up the bridge to Silverwood because they couldn't hold it through force of arms. To the Guardians, this is a horrifying breach of the code of honor, for the Defiant it's [[But for Me It Was Tuesday|Tuesday]].

** In another instance the general that is beating the Defiant on Freemarch mounts an attack over the bridge mentioned above. The Defiant immediately break out their anti-Ascended equipment and give it to the player to use it on him. For the Defiant, if you find yourself in a fair fight, something has gone terribly wrong.

* [[Dark Is Not Evil]]: Many classes utilize the Plane of Death, and they aren't any better or worse than anyone else. They're certainly creepier, though.

** More generally, the Defiant faction in general can be this. Yes, they include elves who do generally consider the means are justified by the ends, and humans willing to dabble in potentially Ward-breaching levels of magitech, but at the end of the day, they truly do want Regulos dead and Telara saved just as much as the Guardians. (Also, they probably include the most overwhelmingly honorable race in the game.)

* [[Eldritch Abomination]]: Every arch-dragon, but also most anything from the Plane of Water. So you can imagine what Akylios--the Water Dragon--[[Up to Eleven|is like]].

* [[Everything Trying to Kill You]]: As far as Greenscale's concerned, this is the ''only'' acceptable kind of world.

** For that matter, take care going AFK unless you're in a place like the depths of Meridian, the middle of a lake, or a mountaintop. Many a player has come back to the keyboard to find a surprise skeleton/golem/fairy/troll doing a victory dance on their graves - in the middle of a now-conquered town.

*** As a matter of fact the lakes aren't safe either, on the account of things [[Sea Monster|lurking]] in them too.

* [[Expy]]: The Eth are a nation of human desert-dwellers, despised by the other major human nation for being into [[Magitek]]. [[Final Fantasy X|Why does that sound familiar]]?

* [[The Fair Folk]]: D'aaaw, look at those cute faeries, aren't they swee[[Black Eyes of Evil|HOLY]] [[I'm a Humanitarian|SHI--!]]

* [[Fantastic Racism]]: While most of the faction conflict appears to be political and cultural, Alaric the Fanatic's reference to "planetouched abominations" in [[Bad Future|Terminus]] plays the trope straight.

* [[Five Races]]: Played with. There are technically only four playable races; however, the Guardians and the Defiant each have their own distinct human and elven nationalities. Furthermore, nearly every race and subrace overlaps categories, and none are particularly Cute.

* [[Gambit Pileup]]: A big part of the reason why the Blood Storm's first raid failed. Infighting among the arch-dragons (particularly Regulos against all the other arch-dragons, who didn't appreciate [[Omnicidal Maniac|that his agenda auto-precluded all of theirs]]) divided and interdicted their efforts enough that the gods and mortals were able to seal them off.

* [[God Is Inept]]: This trope is why the Defiant are a group of [[Nay Theist]] [[Mad Scientist|mad scientists]]. As they looked at the Ward, the Gods attempt to protect Telara from the Blood Storm, and thought, "Really? This is your master plan, just slap a band-aid on the thing and call it good?" Seeing as how it took a single madman with [[Magitek]] all of two seconds to break it to bits it's hard to blame them.

* [[Greed]]: ''The'' schtick of the Golden Maw and their patron, Laethys the Earth Dragon. [[Gold Fever]] doesn't even ''begin'' to describe these people.

* [[Green Hill Zone]]: The Guardian starting zone, Silverwood. Admire the [[Ghibli Hills|pretty]] [[Scenery Porn|landscape]], but watch out for those goblins...and traitorous elves...and roving bands of homicidal fae...

* [[Grey and Gray Morality]]: This is what's going on with the enmity between the Guardians and Defiant. Guardians: genuinely believe the gods know what's best for Telara, but declare as infidel anybody who thinks otherwise (apparently including lesser deities). [[Knight Templar|Crusades are part of the package.]] Defiant: for the most part, dismissive of ''any'' possibility that the gods can do any more to save Telara (look at what happened to the Ward; if ''that'' was their best...), and so have decided to do it themselves. The problem is that (a) they're every bit as zealous against the Guardians as vice versa (Piety is only an obstacle to Telara's salvation! It deserves nothing but our wrath!), and (b) they don't seem to accept that a little more caution in their [[Mad Scientist|often-reckless research]] would actually ''improve'' the chances of saving Telara. The Guardians are too cautious, the Defiant not cautious enough.

* [[Healing Shiv]]: The Chloromancer features an interesting variation of this -- any [[Elemental Powers|life damage]] done by a Chloromancer will also [[Life Drain|heal their party members]].

** Likewise, the Justicar can heal themselves and their party members whenever they deal damage, and any life damage they deal has a good chance to grant charges that can be used to fuel their healing spells.

* [[Interface Screw]]: When your health gets low, your vision gets desaturated and sounds become more muted. [[Your Mileage May Vary]] as to whether this is a good way to draw a player's attention back to their own HP bar, or [[Critical Annoyance|an extra annoyance in an already stressful situation]].

* [[Large Ham]]: Cyril Kalmar, in the Guardian cutscene narrative, is a little bit ''too'' proud that '''[[Chewing the Scenery|you are a Guardian]]!'''

* [[Lost Technology]]: Subverted-the reason the Eth are still around is that they had more than enough to adapt to being desert nomads.

* [[Mechanical Horse]]: The various Eldritch Steeds available to Defiants.

* [[Most Definitely Not a Villain|Most Definitely Not A Deep One]]: {{spoiler|The inhabitants of Lakeshore in Freemarch.}}

* [[Musical Assassin]]: The Bard. They do damage by ''playing a song''.

* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]: Kira Thanos, master assassin of the Unseen. "Killer Thanatos"...[[Sarcasm Mode|yeah, that's not blatant at all]].

* [[Nay Theist]]: The Defiant are built around this, too. They're not exactly impressed with the obviously less-than-perfect way the gods tried to ward Telara against a repeat occurrence of the Blood Storm.

** It's implied in the Defiant starter zone that everything went to hell because the Guardians focus-fired on the Defiant first, which all but shut down any aid they could have given against the common enemy.

** Apparently, both Guardians and Defiants [[Rashomon Style|have different story lines built around the other faction being the ones screwing things up]]. In the Defiant story, king Aedraxis is never even mentioned doing what he did on the Guardian side. It is possible that the Defiant starting zone is the REAL end of the world that happens on the Guardian story line.

* [[Not Using the Zed Word]]: [[Our Zombies Are Different|Revenant-type undead humanoids]] are referred to as "lorn."

* [[Order Versus Chaos]]: Telara versus the planar invaders.

* [[Our Dragons Are Different]]: They're [[Eldritch Abomination|eldritch abominations]] for one thing...

* [[Our Elves Are Better]]: Or so they'd have you believe.

* [[Pure Is Not Good]]: Have fun convincing (for different reasons) the Guardians and Greenscale of this. You're not likely to get much of anywhere.

* [[Rashomon Style]]: The two different start zones rather hint at this.

* [[Save Point]]: A rare in-universe version of this. Orphiel's Failsafe is a time machine that allows Defiants to go back in time to when it was built... and ''only'' when it was built. {{spoiler|Once. It destroys the world in the process...}}

* [[Sexy Backless Outfit]]: Hel''lo'' Asha Catari (her back gets its own prominent load screen), and all the female NPCs in Sanctum...

** One of the early level [[Hyperactive Metabolism|drinks]] is called "[[Firefly|Mudder's Milk]]."

** And then, there's [[Discworld|Cohen Barbarus]] in Stonefield, and [[Order of the Stick|Elan Greenhilt]] in Sanctum.

** The quest "Worked to the Bone" involves retrieving a Control Gem with the [[Flavor Text]] of [[Jem|"This gem is truly outrageous."]]

* [[Stance System]]: The class system is very much this kind of situation. You can install up to five different stat builds (your spells/abilities are determined by how many points you put in which trees, regardless of ''where'' in each tree those points are), and can (almost?) freely shift between them as the situation demands. So yes, your cleric (using a developer interview as the example) can freely shift between single-target healing (Sentinel-centered), group healing (Warden), DPS (Cabalist or Shaman), and even ''off-tanking'' (Justicar) at the drop of a pin. Several pin drops in a row, apparently. In short, ''every'' character has five stances that you can design from the ground up.

* [[Throw Down the Bomblet]]: The Saboteur's specialty, with a dash of the [[Trap Master]] thrown in for good measure.

* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: Each faction gets a few bops on the head from this trope in their opposition's starting area. Defiant qualify for not only helping King Aedraxis break the Ward but also in continuing to fight the Guardians even when Regulos is about to devour everything. The Guardians on the other hand fit in Terminus when they are so hellbent on eliminating the Defiant that they lay siege to Meridian and take it whilst ''completely ignoring'' the rifts that are opening all over Telara. They go so far as to completely ignore Regulos as he enacts his plan to devour Telara in favor of killing Defiant and destroying their [[Magitek]].

* [[Time Paradox]]: The Defiant and Guardian starting areas may result in one of these... maybe.

* [[The Usual Adversaries]]: The two factions think of each other as just standing in the way and being totally annoying.

* [[Video Game Cruelty Potential]]: Killing helpless critters has a chance to make them drop a single tear, one artifact set involves collecting tears from all the critters in the game, collecting 20 squirrel tears gives you an achievement and a rather nice title.

** House Aelfwar is another example of this: a rogue Elven house led by the [[Visionary Villain]] Prince Hylas, who decided the best way to fight the strongest of the Dragons was to side with one of the weaker ones. So what if their homeland gets overrun by [[When Trees Attack|Life Plane monstrosities]]? [[Utopia Justifies the Means]], right?

* [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity]]: According to in-game books, those who manipulate the Plane of Death have a risk of going absolutely insane from megalomania and joining [[Big Bad|Regulos]]'s Endless Court in search of even more power. {{spoiler|Seen in-game when you have to save [[Rebellious Princess|Uriel Chuluun]] from the Endless Court (and herself).}}

* [[World of Silence]]: This is [[Blow You Away|Crucia's]] ultimate goal.

* [[You Cannot Grasp the True Form]]: "A sailor might see a shark feed, and say he has seen hunger, or through a shark’s black eyes he might understand hunger and go mad. This is the difference between the true nature of the Blood Storm, and the dragon forms they take upon Telara."

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game]]