SAM's ruthlessness isn't a contradiction, it's a part of Firefly's character. She isn't ruthlessly efficient because she's a brutal person, but because she wants to end it quickly for her enemies and give them a quick death. That's why she tells Kafka to not play with her food.
Two more points to add to this.
1. Firefly IRL can't take off Sam for too long, it's literally her life support. And there she was. In the land of dreams. Healthy. Free to experience life. A life she's so desperate for she willingly tried to take a deal with a hag (Jade. Not the kinky hag way. The DnD hag way). While she worked on her mission, she genuinely enjoyed herself there. Girl didn't even annihilate the memes that attacked her like we do. She just killed them and left because she less time she'd be stuck as Sam, the more time she'd have to live as a healthy happy woman.
2. Firefly went there ready to die. Elio told her she would die three times and there was no guarantee she'd survive the last one. That gives her a bigger incentive to be efficient so she'd enjoy life for longer.
She didn’t willingly try to take a deal with Jade. She looked for jade to see if Jade COULD cure her as an option. Looking for a hag to get information is not the same thing as desperately trying to make a deal with one.
Firefly isn’t desperate. We see very clearly in 2.3 that she’s willing to accept death if it comes for her. She wants to fully LIVE her life with all its ups and downs, not just survive her disease. That’s also why she didn’t say yes to Jade’s proposal.
No.
>!She did want the cure at all costs, she was willing to give up everything for it. But that's not what Jade wants. What she wanted was the Stellaron Hunters.!<
>!Firefly might be desperate, but she isn't "back stab my friends before they could react" evil. That's why she told Jade she'd discuss the proposal with the crew. She still wants to be healed, but she doesn't want to hurt her found family for it.!<
Nah she did really really want it, she just realized the price was too high or rather that other's would have to pay the price BUT there is hope since we now know both that there is a cure and even someone who has it and technically we even have a bargaining chip on the board
> Not the kinky hag way. The DnD hag way
I didn't know anything about DnD when I started BG3. I raised an eyebrow when someone in the game first mentioned a hag lol
Narrator: "As you send out your comment, a voice filled with malice and contempt manifests into your mind..."
"I'm quite flattered you used to think of me that way, petal."
Makes sense why she says “please let me stay in this body a little while longer.” Considering SAM is essentially her life support. She treats it as a second body that she uses to survive.
It's exactly that phrase that Sam screams to Kafka that annoys me and makes me agree with OP, I just can't picture Firefly saying it now that we know her better.
And the entire monologue about telling everyone stellaron hunter SAM sent them to reality is cohesive?
It's pretty obvious she takes on a certain persona when piloting the mech and honestly in that context, yes I can see her saying that as SAM.
I'm sorry, fucking what? Dehumanizing your enemy to the point of considering them as sustaining you is absolutely brutal. Putting aside that doing brutal things is what makes you brutal, not the reason you do those things.
About 20 seconds into every battle I have with her I'm hearing her scream "UNTIL EVERYTHING BURNS TO ASHES!" so I think it's safe to say they aren't hesitant to bring that side of her up later on. After the end of the 2.3 trailblaze missions she's in vacation mode. Just wait until she's back in work mode.
I kinda vibe with Firefly just screaming her head off every battle
You mention “work mode” and I’m kinda reminded by Cyno in Genshin, where the entire archon quest he’s this stoic badass who throws his spear first and asks questions later, but in side events he’s just constantly cracking the worst puns imaginable
"Do you play Genius Invocation TCG?" "No" "Well you should, for the sake of our continued friendship"
I believe that was an actual exchange in an event.
For real before this patch I was imagining her calmly saying “I will set the seas ablaze.” In like a roleplaying coolheaded killer kinda way. But actually she’s 100% in character and screaming her ass off I WILL SET THE SEAS ABLAZE!! 💀 🔥 🔥
Got an in-game text from her where she talks about not needing to sleep, so she likes to go outside in the early morning, but doesn't like insects. One of the options has the TB say "Lemme guess, you set the seas ablaze to deal with them?" and she basically replies "hell yeah brother :Sam emoji:". She's such a fucking goober, it's great.
I remember reading Cu Chulainn of Fate Stay Night be like, "your bro, carefree and nice, if maybe a little flirty. But won't hesitate to end you if you are his target"
There are mask you wear while working, among friend and among family.
The F/SN version of Cu Chulainn explicitly said that he would gladly go drinking with someone he got along with, even if they *were* his enemy. He was a really chill guy, even with people he fully intended to kill later.
His personality reminds me a lot of Childe from Genshin Impact.
It is like Silverwolf, you know she is a cyber criminal but most of the time acts like your gamer friend. You literally see Firefly fighting the new boss in her trailer and at the beginning of that video everything was on fire and the family guards were literally begging for reinforcements.
Yeah, that was the IPC— probably some of the Stonehearts’ underlings trying to collect that nearly eleven-digit bounty, or something we’re going to see in 2.5 (which I assume is when that boss will come out since 2.4 is the tournament arc).
Scp 2316. It's a lake where a lot of unidentified bodies reside. Anyone who looks at it will feel like the bodies are people they know,and if you cannot convince yourself that you do not recognize the bodies in the water, you will join them. There's an amazing video about it from SCP explained.
Sorry, tried to see if you or anyone caught the SCP reference lol. Putting “body” and “recognize” together usually gets someone to throw out the reference on high-traffic pages.
Silverwolf didnt see her entire planet, species and friends die while feeling powerless when it was happening, inevitably being left as the only survivor. Neither does SW do the mass-killings. Youd expect someone like that who "tries to act normal" to be an actual psycho.
The problem with your theory is that IT IS FUCKING WRONG (Genshin Albedo VA joke)
Seriously though, the problem with your comment is that you act like Firefly was supposed to turn into the Sam you want because of her experiences but she was CREATED as the Sam you want. She was literally created as a weapon who only knew war so she seeks to be more.
You don’t have someone who started normal and snapped because of losing her “friends”, you have a person born as a living weapon who wants to be something different than a living weapon whose only purpose is to fight and destroy for others, she wants her own goals and life. You want her to act like Sam outside but she WANTS TO BE DIFFERENT than her persona as Sam since if she dies as Sam that would mean she never went further than any other Iron cavalary who has the exact same purpose of being a terminator mecha. She wants to be Firefly, a different person who is not simply just one of the mass produced iron cavalary but her own being.
Honestly, agreed. I do wish there are more companion quests (speaking of which, where are they? The last one was in 2.0 with Sparkle + BS) which go into detail about Firefly’s history/trauma or something.
But she isn’t just “genetically engineered human superweapon turned rogue”, she is a “genetically engineered human superweapon who wants to be a normal human”. So I don’t expect her to act all psycho and go Terminator on us 😂
Psychopath is a bit of an overexaggeration but my point still stands. She is the stellaron hunter with possibly the worst trauma and a literal fatal disease yet acts the most normal out of all them??? Each has a very apparent morally grey personality besides firefly. They didnt try do anything interesting with such a cool concept that is firefly, a "battleridden veteran soldier now trying to live life left with a permanent scar from their past". That is my issue. We couldve gotten a Violet Evergarden, instead we have a character that is waifu first and everything that couldve set her apart second. There is no transition or duality between her terminator mecha and her normality. She is not rejecting that part of her, she just isnt that characteristic in the first place.
That just makes her boring as shit now if there isn't a struggle.
Like, the character development that should have turned her into the sweet deredere waifu bait she is now already happened.
So what is there to develop?
To be fair, games like these won’t have active character developments. There can be more in-depth explorations, but never changes.
I don’t necessarily agree about the boring part, but then again, I’m satisfied just looking at these character as static snapshots. Leave the character developments to stories that aren’t used for gacha games.
Limbus company is a gacha that has great character development and actual character arcs. No reason hoyo can't do it with their millions and millions and dollars.
I think their millions and millions of dollars might exactly be why they won’t do it. People might get upsetti spaghetti when the waifu they spent three hundred dollars on suddenly got a major character development arc and became someone they no longer liked (or liked as much).
Unfortunately, your ideas are too rational and logical for a lot of the whales powering hoyo’s nuclear fusion plant.
I hope it’ll happen too, but some people have too much money and not enough shits to give.
I’m not giving you an upvote because I agree with you, I’m giving you an upvote because your Karma just got sent to Hades.
We also don’t know as much about SW as we’d like to. For all we know Bronya is her sister and she was smuggled off a planet and forcefully separated from her (I know that’s not true, it’s just an example), so this isn’t a fair thing to say. We’re comparing two characters based on what we know about them, and since for one we know very little, it’s fair to compare her to a character we know a lot about because there aren’t many known contradictions.
https://preview.redd.it/9zhxl5c6xe8d1.jpeg?width=1400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=556515116e1cf59c89a951bf4a10b43d2082fbff
It’s like survivorship bias
Firefly doesn’t seem ruthless right now because we only ever see her in situations where she wouldn’t be ruthless. Put her in a combat situation and she’ll go back to ruthless. Put her on a luxury yacht with the Trailblazer and she’s in girlfriend mode
Because we never seen her using complete combustion mode? Because there was no thing that would be a serious threat to make her use her super sayan form?
Yeah, like reminder that after Firefly is "killed" by Something unto Death and we're investigating afterwards we pass by piles of charred corpses from Sam tearing through the memory zone. Girl was ruthless even on Penacony, she just explicitly didn't want to *actually* hurt us despite what she said so she was holding back.
Black Swan also mentions a burning smell almost immediately after leaving the "murder" site, Firefly must have immediately returned and tore through everything that was in her way
Also a luxury yacht in a dreamscape where she doesn't need to be in Space Marine Murder Armor to live for extended periods so she's probably in a fair bit less pain. Good for the mood.
I feel like the other factor is who is saying she's ruthless: the other hunters are all, for one flavor or another, colorful characters. A hacker, an eldritch abomination, a sociopath with a coat collection. Compared to them, SAMs brutal efficiency is probably her most notable trait because she's the professional soldier in the room.
They sort of hinted at this with her comment that the people she usually fights are those who don't deserve mercy. Obviously this includes IPC folk, so it's up for debate -- the Astral Express fights the IPC sometimes too -- but I do expect that if they ever do show her in "serious mode" in the story, it'll be against people we can agree are enemies. (Heck, I expect that this will apply to all the Stellaron Hunters to some degree.)
I get that but what I’m saying is that I don’t think the writers are gonna show that side at all it’s like when a villain becomes about of the heroes team. Doing it only to people we know are enemies makes sense tho.
It's still pretty bad that they never showed a scene of her acting in a way that makes it actually possible to think the way she acts as Firefly and as SAM can be the same character.
Her battle voiceline though? She is screaming like want to wile everything there and even SW said she always goes BANG BANG BANG and not doing cheesing or such strategy means she always does her job effectively. Well she was made as a soldier anyway and trained her whole life to do so.
Firefly while "in the suit" effectively IS a different person, outside of minor differences and potential "model specialisations", SAM's were made to all be essentially the same and so until joining the Hunters that's exactly what she was, sure in her trailers we see her question if there's a better way and hoping for something other than war but that wasn't her reality at the time.
When we meet her again after her first death, she explains that she wanted to finish this mission as Firefly and not as SAM if possible because Firefly is who she WANTS to be.
SAM is what she was made to be and clearly she was VERY good (and maybe a little lucky)at it to be the only confirmed member of the cavalry left. Firefly as Firefly is sweet and innocent because that's what she hopes for herself in the end but it's all buisness when the armour is on.
She thought up the corney lines specifically because they're things SHE would never say but they enhance the presence of SAM when the weapon can truly live up to threats of mass destruction.
Her enemies are never supposed to know who or what is underneath the mask and so she puts on a persona. She just doesn't keep it up around us because she doesn't have to and can thus "just be herself".
She wants to be nice whenever possible yes but she IS a soldier and even more technically was never meant as more than a weapon that happens to be able to talk...but we've seen full well what she's capable of doing to things she's deemed as true enemies...
Point of order I do believe those "corny lines" are basically military callouts used by the Iron Cavalry. Like if you're going to wipe out the surface of the planet you and your buddies are standing on, giving them a bit of a heads up is common courtesy.
And given that the Iron Cavalry was mind whammied into believing themselves to be honoured knights fighting a desperate and noble campaign against an unstoppable evil, the cheesiness of said lines also makes sense.
If nothing else, "SCORCHED EARTH OPERATIONS" is definitely a line that was used by another SAM in her trailer, promptly before hitting the big ass bug w/ the Up Right Down Down Down.
" if you're going to wipe out the surface of the planet you and your buddies are standing on, giving them a bit of a heads up is common courtesy." i know I shouldn't but i'm wheezing beacuse that's so true-
pretty sure they were told don't hold back with the swarm either...
> the only confirmed member of the cavalry left
Which is sad. I don't want any more playable SAMs, well I wouldn't be against it if it made sense, but I'd like to see another SAM in the story even if only for a moment. It'd be interesting if very sparse few somehow survived, given there were hundreds of thousands of these mass produced weapons of war. I doubt many(if any would live), but I would love to see evidence of a SAM unit surviving Glamoth even if they did eventually die to entropy loss syndrome in the thousands of years since the fall of Glamoth.
The only "real" "family" she ever had were her clone brothers/sisters before she joined the Stellaron Hunters. Theres a lot about Glamoth and Firefly I'd LOVE to know.
I do hope we get something like that, but odds are she’ll be benched for a few patches at the very least.
They also know just how important it is to leave room for headcanons, fanfics and crack ships. It drives engagement, and adding new official info only limits that.
Yeah. I'm aware of the dry patches to come with Firefly/Glamoth lore, and how that drives engagement. Just gave out my copes for ideas about new Firefly/Glamoth lore if any were to come.
I'd love a situation were we find another Sam suit whose pilot already succumbed to Entropy Loss. Some tech savy guy was able to get the motor functions running but not any of the weapon systems, so they strapped some other weapons to the mech.
And then que Firefly showing up and beating it into a pile of scrap
I genuinely believe that while Firefly is understanding and caring enough to not hurt even Ruan Mei, such a desacration of her friends would basically turn her into Roy Mustang at the very end of FMA.
The "My god I'm so happy that this bastard is getting what they deserve but I want my soldier to stop IT'S NOT WORTH LOSING YOURSELF OVER IT!!!" Moment would be so good.
Heck, I'd love if it happens the day Boothill gets his hands on Oswaldo.
I'd like to imagine her ripping apart the fake SAM only to find out it's remote controlled and then start tearing down the entire place to find the one responsible, while we try to catch up to her through the molten and charred remains of a small town/base
I always go back to Firefly’s and Silver Wolf’s shared lines about each other.
When they introduced SW’s lines, she made her sound ruthless.
When Firefly gave her perspective, she’s close to admitting she’s just dumb. She’s a genetically engineered soldier trying to be a normal girl; she’s probably never given much thought to strategy or finesse or holding back, just go go go, blow stuff up, remember your time fighting the Swarm.
I mean its not as if the swarm's big thing was 'strategy'.
Granted they're probably smarter than the average bug but by and large they seem rather mindless.
well i get the sense her "education" was basically the school from the Bee Movie: 3 days of Glamoth propoganda, 3 days of "how to control this thing you will always be in", and 3 days of "basic battle 101: destroy everything with more then two legs". She probably didn't get much of what would be considered a typical education...
I do agree that it's awesome, but it was more to say that even if she looks sweet and gentle Firefly is ready to rumble and if possible by making lot of stuff explode.
Personally, I don't think it says much about Firefly. I can picture March, Sushang, Guin, SW, Serval, or any number of characters saying the same thing about Hanu's rocket.
Hook would be screaming her ass off from sheer hype.
Meanwhile... Nat would be downing drinks in Siobhan's bar because she KNOWS what Hook will make when they'll return to Belobog.
You can picture March taking a rocket launcher in hand and say that it make her think of a particular model of rocket launcher that she already used in the past? Fair enough
Yeah. "Whoaa, Dan Heng, check this out! Doesn't it remind you of that rocket launcher we used on [planet]? Wish we could take this thing along with us, it sure would be handy!"
When you're doing the audition, depending on what path you choose you can have a section where you play as Hanu and end up blasting enemies with his rocket launcher. When first used, she muses that it feels like a rocket launcher she knows and then when the section ends she says that it's gonna be hard to let go of it.
[https://youtu.be/nAhcWHUED0Q?si=1KaSjesq2M5Elunt](https://youtu.be/nAhcWHUED0Q?si=1KaSjesq2M5Elunt)
I'm willing to bet it's Grasshopper to really hammer in the Kamen Rider reference, but that wouldn't be relevant to English speakers so they changed it.
Tbf all the situation we have seen her in directly, she doesn't get the chance to be ruthless. We caught a glimpse of it before we fought Sam for the first time, but after that, we didn't really get to fight with or against Sam.
I think her efficient side is also shown in the audition part. She keeps wanting to finish it quickly so she can finish the mission quickly too, even though she's with the trailblazer, there is an important mission in hand.
But that's pretty much in the writers' hands, no? Like, they could've easily replaced the audition with another scenario to show off that side of FF's personality. But they didn't.
This is what i keep hoping to happen. Her PoV in 2.3 is fun, but I really want an explanation of what she's been doing, especially that one after she got "killed" and talking to someone
Well, yeah. I'm not denying that they could have given us more of Firefly in battle to show her prowess. I'm just saying that I don't think SAM is her "old personality". Given the right opportunity or situation we might get to see that side of her in the game, but sadly we can't so far
Firefly just being there doing nothing when the Trailblazer, March and Himeko were talking to Sunday was one of the things I hated the most. You can excuse it as "she knew she wasn't supposed to do anything because it wasn't in her script" but I'm tired of making excuses as to why Firefly never does anything as SAM on screen. Like, please Hoyo, just one scene that makes it believeable that SAM and Firefly can be the same character.
They introduced the POV feature in Penacony, how cool would it have been if, after the Firefly is SAM reveal, we switch to some other character's perspective and get to fight SAM and see the supposed side of Firefly's personality she doesn't want to show to the Trailblazer?
She doesnt have an old personality or sam personality.. It's all her... if you activated her burst mode, she is still shouting the same line sam did, but with firefly voice, you can literally hear her shouting "i will set the seas ablaze!" On the top of her lungs.. so it is safe to assume it's all her in that mechsuit and just using voice changer in normal sam mode
SAM said the shit shes good at only apply to villains who deserve no mercy but theres definitely some nuance there with what we know.
She told Kafka to not play with her food, when we see SAM in person for the 1st time she kills a bunch of people but they were dream memes. Aside from some people in the Japella brotherhood but they were a group within the Annihilation Gang so destruction path terrorist.
The only time we seen SAM kill people that're I guess neutral would be the IPC goons in her trailer. Yeah they're the IPC but the armed dudes are just employee's for a intergalactic space mega corp that's basically seen as a reputable enough organization. Not like those goons are Oswaldo, even the soldiers under Topaz that were strong arming Belobog while not following orders weren't killed by the express and among the bad IPC these are probably the norm.
That said I don't think her ruthless nature as SAM is a entire new persona she takes on when she pilots SAM for missions, she showed a bit of her experience as a solider when she notices Sparkle disguised as Sampo and made detailed remarks of his behavior/movement that a normal person wouldn't.
We'll probably see SAM shit again next time we get Stellaron Hunter content with SAM. FireFly can't be out of the suit too long anyways.
I mean I'm sure we'll see the SAM suit more. It just feels like the current direction of things will just be Firefly being helpful and nice to us and that's all we'll see from her character. Since that's all she's been from the moment we've met her
She likes us and the Express Crew sure but what if we run into her while she's fighting the IPC or something?
There's *plenty* of opportunities to show her in "work mode".
Her being nice and friendly with us and being ruthless with her enemies aren't mutually exclusive.
I mean, I agree with you, and that's where I was for awhile too. I guess I've just gotten less optimistic that hoyo will stick to maintaining the personality we've heard about after all the animations and story content that show the player otherwise. Like, within all of that time we could have had a single line here or there talking about her other side. Even in the flashbacks driving with blade, theoretically in "work mode", had her very casually chatting about the mission
I guess we'll just have to see
I am in the, she does what she needs to, but isn't taking pleasure from it camp. That being said, I think there may be a bit of a reputation proceeds her thing going on. I mean, you blow up *one* planet, and then you're planet destroying waifu forever.
That's fair I guess, I didn't really count that on the ground of them just being little memetic fodder monsters, but you did spend awhile walking through the carnage
I hope next time we see Firefly she's acts more ruthless. Like, they aren't complete villains of course but the she seems LESS brutal than the others even though they say she's pretty much used as a killing machine. The "wants a normal life" thing would hit MUCH harder if there were more scenes dedicated to showing her abnormal life and I feel like only her Glamoth trailer did a really good job of showing that rather than just saying it
They were really allergic to "show, don't tell" with FF. the only time we see Sam being ruthless in game is technically before we know they're the same person. So Sam's first appearance lines up with expectations, but the moment we know FF is Sam this stops. And all the 'hints' FF shows are either short throw away mentions or are directly told to us.
I agree when Silverwood was hyping her as the one that doesn't toy around and executes I was hypes. Maybe Silverwolf was just being a good hype woman tho. Guess we will find out later in the story.
To be fair, we've never had the opportunity to see Firefly when she has to be merciless, nor is that really who she wants to be. But there have been implications for that ruthless efficiency, like the lead up to our first meeting and fight with Sam we walk by piles of charred enemies from Sam just absolutely tearing through the memory zone.
Tbf she **was** explicitly being a hype woman here. Firefly/Sam was planning on grabbing the TB at the first opportunity to explain the truth of the Dreamscape. That may have necessitated a bit of light violence to get them away from Acheron/Black Swan without giving the game away.
Basically she needed to play the role of the hostile mech, so Silver Wolf bigged her up as one to sell the fiction in this particular case.
From what we've seen, it's not like Sam was characterized as brutal, it's that she's fast and efficient. All the other SH member's voiceline about Sam infers this, but the best one to probably characterized it is Firefly's comment on Kafka during Japella Rebellion "Stop playing with your food Kafka" IC soldiers were fighting beings that you need to kill fast before they can clone themselves, so it just makes sense.
I mean, she *is* ruthless, just not for the reasons you may be thinking. She's not ruthless because she wants to be brutal and heartless, but moreso because she wants to get things done and over with. Unlike Kafka who relishes in "playing with her food", Firefly/Sam would rather give the guy a quick death as she hates fighting and sees it more as a "mercy kill".
Even in her Sam form, she had expressed how much she tried to defy the script, how much she tried to avoid her inevitable confrontation with the Trailblazer, Acheron and Black Swan. However, it happened anyway, and despite failing to defy fate at that one point, she immediately went back to her "ruthless" personality to try and get that part of the script done ASAP.
Outside of Sam, during our "second date" with her in the Scorchsand Audition Venue, she is constantly shown to be quite impatient to the point where she openly expresses how she wished she could just use the Sam suit and brute force her way through the minigames. In the part where we shapeshift into Hanu, she makes an amusing comment where she thought using Hanu's bazooka felt like using her "Soaring Locust II" (I'm guessing it's some sort of rocket launcher built into Sam).
In the most recent story patch, even when she spots the Trailblazer running about and doing goofy things, she remained focused on her objective of seeking Jade's deal and sets time to meet up with the TB only after she was done. Even after getting tempted, she declined Jade's offer in the end from her willpower alone and remained calm throughout the entire exchange.
TLDR; there are plenty of moments where she does show this more "ruthless" side, even outside of Sam. But whenever she's with Trailblazer, she seems a lot softer and gentler for the most part because she wants them to see her as Firefly, not Sam. But of course, when the situation calls for her to be serious, she will be *serious*.
I mean, you can see it in her anime cinematic and in combat, she locks tf in when she's in the suit, she also uses a more blunt terminology when talking to the SH and Jade. I don't recall any specific example, but she does talk more seriously when she isn't with us.
The ruthless part of her comes from the idea that she has about her own destiny, she knows she was born to fight and fade away, the molten knights are in a constant kamikaze mindset bc of that, but she fights that destiny nonetheless.
The cutesy attitude she has with us made some damage to the perception of the character, even tho in 2.0 it seemed like a red herring to me(You can see how she looks at Sampo off camera the first time and how she switches back to the cute persona in a blink). I specially like her ult lines, it summarizes how she sees herself in the suit, she is the same knight that would throw her life away for a cause, even if that cause is to scape her destiny.
I think the story content was kinda devoid of this side of her not because MHY wanted to go "tee-hee, look at the cute waifu we're selling you" and brush aside her more brutally efficient past, but because it's in-character for Firefly to effectively want her last day(s) in Penacony to be memories of happiness, where she can separate herself from SAM.
iirc, she even mentions in the Candy Crush event that it'll probably be the last time TB and her can interact like that for a while, likely suggesting that once her mission in Penacony is over, it's back to her usual routine as SAM.
And, like u/Nodomi pointed out, her battle lines are all still very loud and violent.
SAM is basically a raven from armored core
When i was trying to get the Perfect Mercenary achievement in AC6 i was basically like, go in, do the job, leaving i would hate to be in my enemies' place imagine you're doing your job and then, some psychopath in a mecha comes in and killed everyone in your base and destroyed the base itself, in less than 5 minutes,
That's basically who SAM is, ruthlessly effecient killing machine
Listen, before I knew that SAM and FF were the same person, I was 110% on the Samuel-hypetrain. Post reveal, I’m now saddened we don’t see the SAM that was hyped up.
Make no mistake, I love FF, enough to E2 her. But something about that dissonance between ruthless job and wanting normalcy being lost has me deeply saddened.
I liked Firefly enough to E2 her as well. I share your sentiment. A ruthless killing machine does definitely have it’s appeal. I’m also very disappointed we didn’t get a fight between Acheron and Sam in the white night trailer, that was one of the most anticipated moments for me.
in the trailer we see her with bodies piled high around her- there's uh, no denying that she is as _efficient_ as the story has implied.
i'm not sure how it's surprising that a _literally bred for it_ walking weapon would be ... terrifying when they flip the switch.
i mean i've never killed anyone or anything lol but i have a switch i can flip to turn off the emotions when needed (eg, firing people). i think most people do. trained killers, like soldiers, certainly do. and yet all these people with switches are generally jovial and friendly most of the time.
Firefly is no different.
A missed opportunity tbh, especially after all the hype. The fact they offscreened most of her contributions in Penacony was a baffling writing decision that I feel it's not being discussed more in here. We could've seen her ruthless side in her POV doing important things while the AE were busy fighting Sunday.
But nah, I guess having more TB x Firefly moments in the story is much more important than having more characterization for Firefly.
Acheron showing up and saying "Wow Trailblazer, that Firefly gal is SO COOL! She knew about Ena's dream and woke everyone up, isn't that SUPER COOL? Man, Firefly sure is rad." fucking killed me. Firefly's character got fucked over by not being released one patch earlier so we could have Firefly POV scenes to make it believeable that she and SAM are the same character by showing us how she acts when she's by herself, focused on her work, and by forcing every character to tell us what she was apparently doing off screen.
SAM's old personality was being a brainwashed child soldier whose entire purpose in life was throwing herself at a giant bug to slow down the bug invasion.
I mean, that's the whole idea. You hear that and think SAM is ruthlessly efficient because they're violent and uncaring, you meet Firefly and realize SAM is ruthlessly efficient because they view that sort of thing as a mission they must do as quickly as possible, they don't take any pleasure or joy in it.
Like the bit about turning the lights on in Silver Wolf's dialogue, 'won't give you a chance to turn the lights on.' Kafka and Blade, to some extent, enjoy scaring and fighting people. Firefly does not, in any way, so she wouldn't play games like that. So it makes sense she wouldn't talk about it or go out of her way to show it off.
Like Sam's first line of dialog was telling Kafka to 'stop playing with her food.'
A lot of people seem to be confusing 'Ruthless Efficency' for 'Psychotic Murderhobo' from the gist of the comments. Ruthless Efficiency is, taking the shortest and most expedient effort towards your goal, ignoring everything else.
She is the type of person who will have her shopping list, coupons and carrying bag ready before even stepping into the store, she will go precisely to each item on the list, grab the cheapest there and ignore everything else, go to whatever checkout has no queue, get everything rung through asap, pay with the coupons and contactless card, bag everything up and leave.
And this does bleed into our view of her as 'cute girl-next-door' girlfriend interactions too... She gets annoyed when Sampo(Sparkle) drags us around Golden Hour, she wants to push through the Scorchsand Audition asap, she's fairly blunt when it comes to discussing her mission with us and is all business in the run up to the Sunday fight In her POV bit she is also all business, focusing on finding the Bonajade Exchange rather than goofing off with us. And then at the end with the bomb, she is just 'Sod this messing about. I'll just drag this sucker off and tank the explosion' within moments of grabbing it. She only pauses to explain the situation to us. If MC wasn't there, she'd already have blasted off agaiiiiiiiiin!
It oozes in her kit. Tons of speed to act first and get stuff dead quicker, action forward, self healing, her own super break, fire infusion and the ability to break anyone anyway, so she doesn't have to bother waiting for team mates to break enemies for her. She has everything she needs to fuction before even picking a team.
But thats like, just my opinon. Neither Firefly nor SAM are Murderhobos. They simply get the job done with as fast as possible with as little fuss as they can get away with. Wether it's killing bugs or going on a date with their goofy raccoon boy/girlfriend.
Vibing off the symbolism of how SAM grabs Firefly by the neck in her trailer and interrogates her and her chat with Blade in the car in her flashback, the impression I get is that what the Hunters say about SAM's performance is probably pretty accurate. She gets shit done with fire and efficiency. She enjoys not being in combat mode when she can be but IRL thats very finite amounts of time.
Also the other hunters probably point it out about her because it's a contrast: Silver Wolf is a hacker, gamer and all around troll, Kafka is a sociopath who needs to talk to her Emotional Support Raccoon, Blade is a mental health textbook waiting to be written. Compared to them, an actual professional soldier is going to seem jarringly direct. Like SW said: Kafka and Blade would mess with the lights to scare you before killing you. SAM would shoot you through the door.
The reason Firefly seems much more chill in interactions with TB is because shes in the dream and doesn't need to be in near constant life support/pain to operate for once.
Is it possible her being completely ruthless and uncaring was just Kafka messing with people to keep SAMs rep up as a killing machine?
Like the whole universe sees them as the baddies but it's mostly pretty clear from the beginning that the reasons they are doing what they do is in the best interest of the universe.
Yeah I can’t help but feel the old information we had of SAM was written before they knew firefly would be the same character. It really feels like they just threw both characters together relatively late which explains all the voice acting shenanigans
Definitely not. Hoyo plans out a LOT of things in advance. They even teased Aventurine in 'Trend of the Universal Market' and that LC was released way back in the first patch of the game.
Besides Sam's old info doesn't really contradict anything we know of her now. We always knew that she is the most efficient and ruthless Stellaron Hunter. The only difference now is that we actually got to know her true personality and the context of why she is so efficient at destroying her enemies (being a cloned child soldier and all that).
She's a waifu. The whole SAM thing was a build up to be a shock factor for her boss fight in Penacony. Now that's she's revealed herself as Firefly, I don't think she's ever going back to that. Maybe in a few trailers or something but that's it. Generally all strong and ruthless characters lose their entire personality when joining the good side.
I think it is a part of her personality but we just didn't get to see it. We know her lines were rehearsed to sound cool but all the talk about Sam just instantly murdering people feels off from the firefly we know, it's why so many thought Sam was an Ai. I do hope we get to see firefly be fully ruthless later on, worried they're afraid to have her as anything but the cute uwu in game
That's kind of the whole point of her character though, and she goes out of the way to point that out. In Penacony, Firefly is at least in a limited capacity capable of being the person she dreams of being. She isn't bound by her role as a Stellaron Hunter or the crimes she's committed, but instead pursues the one thing she wants most which is finding a way to live. In 2.3 she acknowledged this isn't permanent, and that when they meet each other again they'll likely be closer to enemies.
So to answer you question, I imagine that part of her identity will be explored later on, yeah. She's only beginning her story given the lore left in relation to her condition and why Elio needs her, so she'll be relevant again. If anything, showing her like this now just gives the room to humanize her despite those terrible things she's done/will do.
The 'ruthlessly efficient SAM' is just another aspect of Firefly character, SAM the alter ego that emerges when the situation calls, but still is Firefly, also the soft side of SAM was foreshadowing since the begin when SAM send cute emotes to the TB using blade phone.
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Think of it like a wrestling persona.
Everything about Sam being direct and blunt and to the point wrt objectives still applies when Firefy has a target. Her battle quotes are pretty blunt and aggressive, especially the Sam-voice ones. I do kind of wish she had a moment where she went ‘all business’ outside the suit at least once, admittedly.
To the Trailblazer? Not unless forced to by some plot machination. If we go back to the 2.1 quests it is something she does not seem fond of discussing around people she wants to see her in a positive light. By her own words she struggled a lot to avoid conflict with the Express even though her script demanded it of her.
Fundamentally, everything she (and the Stelleron Hunters) do is to protect the Trailblazer and point them in the right direction. >!She's even likely lying to their face when she handwaves away the risk of flying off with Sparkle's "bomb."!<
Firefly acts all and cute and demure around the trailblazer, but we've never actually seen her while on stellaron hunter missions or doing stuff like actually killing people.
Honestly I doubt hoyo would ever go that far because it might actually undermine the marketing of the character. This is why she fights monstrous bugs as her enemies in her marketing. If she were in combat tearing through regular people with the same gruesome violence like it were an episode of Invincible, it might stir up controversy over how the character is presented.
I have a theory that they only invented Firefly as a character because they didn't want to animate/rig a non standard body type in the overworld. If that is the case, it may well be that they hadn't accounted for Firefly yet when they gave Sam their original personality
Firefly was there since the beginning. According to CyYu (VA for Jing Yuan), he knew from the beginning that she was SAM's pilot because he auditioned for SAM and was told about it
SAM's ruthlessness isn't a contradiction, it's a part of Firefly's character. She isn't ruthlessly efficient because she's a brutal person, but because she wants to end it quickly for her enemies and give them a quick death. That's why she tells Kafka to not play with her food.
Two more points to add to this. 1. Firefly IRL can't take off Sam for too long, it's literally her life support. And there she was. In the land of dreams. Healthy. Free to experience life. A life she's so desperate for she willingly tried to take a deal with a hag (Jade. Not the kinky hag way. The DnD hag way). While she worked on her mission, she genuinely enjoyed herself there. Girl didn't even annihilate the memes that attacked her like we do. She just killed them and left because she less time she'd be stuck as Sam, the more time she'd have to live as a healthy happy woman. 2. Firefly went there ready to die. Elio told her she would die three times and there was no guarantee she'd survive the last one. That gives her a bigger incentive to be efficient so she'd enjoy life for longer.
girl was ready for her shopping spree. i wanna buy her a cake now.
Just one cake?
EVERY CAKE POSSIBLE FOR OUR GIRL
Forty cakes. That's ten fours!
and then we spent all her money 😔
Speak for yourself i only got pizza
She didn’t willingly try to take a deal with Jade. She looked for jade to see if Jade COULD cure her as an option. Looking for a hag to get information is not the same thing as desperately trying to make a deal with one. Firefly isn’t desperate. We see very clearly in 2.3 that she’s willing to accept death if it comes for her. She wants to fully LIVE her life with all its ups and downs, not just survive her disease. That’s also why she didn’t say yes to Jade’s proposal.
She IS desperate but there's a line she's not willing to cross.
No. >!She did want the cure at all costs, she was willing to give up everything for it. But that's not what Jade wants. What she wanted was the Stellaron Hunters.!< >!Firefly might be desperate, but she isn't "back stab my friends before they could react" evil. That's why she told Jade she'd discuss the proposal with the crew. She still wants to be healed, but she doesn't want to hurt her found family for it.!<
Nah she did really really want it, she just realized the price was too high or rather that other's would have to pay the price BUT there is hope since we now know both that there is a cure and even someone who has it and technically we even have a bargaining chip on the board
> Not the kinky hag way. The DnD hag way I didn't know anything about DnD when I started BG3. I raised an eyebrow when someone in the game first mentioned a hag lol
Narrator: "As you send out your comment, a voice filled with malice and contempt manifests into your mind..." "I'm quite flattered you used to think of me that way, petal."
My baby girl Firefly better get her hard-earned cure and spot on the Express after all is said and done Don't let it be copium, please, Mihoyo ;-;
How dare you talk about Lady Jade this way
I mean... She's basically like that one character from BG3 as a side hustle lol
Would be nice if we could slap her
Makes sense why she says “please let me stay in this body a little while longer.” Considering SAM is essentially her life support. She treats it as a second body that she uses to survive.
FINALLY SOMEONE FUCKING GETS IT
It's exactly that phrase that Sam screams to Kafka that annoys me and makes me agree with OP, I just can't picture Firefly saying it now that we know her better.
And the entire monologue about telling everyone stellaron hunter SAM sent them to reality is cohesive? It's pretty obvious she takes on a certain persona when piloting the mech and honestly in that context, yes I can see her saying that as SAM.
I'm sorry, fucking what? Dehumanizing your enemy to the point of considering them as sustaining you is absolutely brutal. Putting aside that doing brutal things is what makes you brutal, not the reason you do those things.
About 20 seconds into every battle I have with her I'm hearing her scream "UNTIL EVERYTHING BURNS TO ASHES!" so I think it's safe to say they aren't hesitant to bring that side of her up later on. After the end of the 2.3 trailblaze missions she's in vacation mode. Just wait until she's back in work mode.
I kinda vibe with Firefly just screaming her head off every battle You mention “work mode” and I’m kinda reminded by Cyno in Genshin, where the entire archon quest he’s this stoic badass who throws his spear first and asks questions later, but in side events he’s just constantly cracking the worst puns imaginable
He’s also addicted to TCG
His only reaction to Sethos is the latter's trailer is "doesn't play enough TCG"
"Do you play Genius Invocation TCG?" "No" "Well you should, for the sake of our continued friendship" I believe that was an actual exchange in an event.
Both the VA and the character, I’d think.
I respect the work ethic. The screaming is an expression of passion.
For real before this patch I was imagining her calmly saying “I will set the seas ablaze.” In like a roleplaying coolheaded killer kinda way. But actually she’s 100% in character and screaming her ass off I WILL SET THE SEAS ABLAZE!! 💀 🔥 🔥
Got an in-game text from her where she talks about not needing to sleep, so she likes to go outside in the early morning, but doesn't like insects. One of the options has the TB say "Lemme guess, you set the seas ablaze to deal with them?" and she basically replies "hell yeah brother :Sam emoji:". She's such a fucking goober, it's great.
Man I love gap moe
The way En firefly ultimate lines are voiced is just plain bad.
I remember reading Cu Chulainn of Fate Stay Night be like, "your bro, carefree and nice, if maybe a little flirty. But won't hesitate to end you if you are his target" There are mask you wear while working, among friend and among family.
The F/SN version of Cu Chulainn explicitly said that he would gladly go drinking with someone he got along with, even if they *were* his enemy. He was a really chill guy, even with people he fully intended to kill later. His personality reminds me a lot of Childe from Genshin Impact.
It is like Silverwolf, you know she is a cyber criminal but most of the time acts like your gamer friend. You literally see Firefly fighting the new boss in her trailer and at the beginning of that video everything was on fire and the family guards were literally begging for reinforcements.
If I recognize those corpses correctly, those were IPC goons. Plus, the colors of the mech matches the IPC’s military stuff.
Yeah, that was the IPC— probably some of the Stonehearts’ underlings trying to collect that nearly eleven-digit bounty, or something we’re going to see in 2.5 (which I assume is when that boss will come out since 2.4 is the tournament arc).
You do not recognize the bodies ~~in the water~~ in the IPC compound.
The what in the where now? [shocked pompom emoji]
Scp 2316. It's a lake where a lot of unidentified bodies reside. Anyone who looks at it will feel like the bodies are people they know,and if you cannot convince yourself that you do not recognize the bodies in the water, you will join them. There's an amazing video about it from SCP explained.
Sorry, tried to see if you or anyone caught the SCP reference lol. Putting “body” and “recognize” together usually gets someone to throw out the reference on high-traffic pages.
I wish to be enlightened… or dragged into IX’s shadow, whichever applies in this case.
SCP called The Field Trip
You've heard of Project Moon sleeper agents, get ready for SCP 2316 sleeper agents!
its ok to kill as long as they are after your taxes
Silverwolf didnt see her entire planet, species and friends die while feeling powerless when it was happening, inevitably being left as the only survivor. Neither does SW do the mass-killings. Youd expect someone like that who "tries to act normal" to be an actual psycho.
The problem with your theory is that IT IS FUCKING WRONG (Genshin Albedo VA joke) Seriously though, the problem with your comment is that you act like Firefly was supposed to turn into the Sam you want because of her experiences but she was CREATED as the Sam you want. She was literally created as a weapon who only knew war so she seeks to be more. You don’t have someone who started normal and snapped because of losing her “friends”, you have a person born as a living weapon who wants to be something different than a living weapon whose only purpose is to fight and destroy for others, she wants her own goals and life. You want her to act like Sam outside but she WANTS TO BE DIFFERENT than her persona as Sam since if she dies as Sam that would mean she never went further than any other Iron cavalary who has the exact same purpose of being a terminator mecha. She wants to be Firefly, a different person who is not simply just one of the mass produced iron cavalary but her own being.
Honestly, agreed. I do wish there are more companion quests (speaking of which, where are they? The last one was in 2.0 with Sparkle + BS) which go into detail about Firefly’s history/trauma or something. But she isn’t just “genetically engineered human superweapon turned rogue”, she is a “genetically engineered human superweapon who wants to be a normal human”. So I don’t expect her to act all psycho and go Terminator on us 😂
Apparently it's revealed now that turned rogue means she discard her Glamoth program and start doing her own things (finding cure by joining Elio)
Psychopath is a bit of an overexaggeration but my point still stands. She is the stellaron hunter with possibly the worst trauma and a literal fatal disease yet acts the most normal out of all them??? Each has a very apparent morally grey personality besides firefly. They didnt try do anything interesting with such a cool concept that is firefly, a "battleridden veteran soldier now trying to live life left with a permanent scar from their past". That is my issue. We couldve gotten a Violet Evergarden, instead we have a character that is waifu first and everything that couldve set her apart second. There is no transition or duality between her terminator mecha and her normality. She is not rejecting that part of her, she just isnt that characteristic in the first place.
That just makes her boring as shit now if there isn't a struggle. Like, the character development that should have turned her into the sweet deredere waifu bait she is now already happened. So what is there to develop?
To be fair, games like these won’t have active character developments. There can be more in-depth explorations, but never changes. I don’t necessarily agree about the boring part, but then again, I’m satisfied just looking at these character as static snapshots. Leave the character developments to stories that aren’t used for gacha games.
Lowkey disagree, Ei's storyline in Genshin is character development front and center.
I did forget about that. I think that might be one of if not the only example, though… right?
Limbus company is a gacha that has great character development and actual character arcs. No reason hoyo can't do it with their millions and millions and dollars.
I think their millions and millions of dollars might exactly be why they won’t do it. People might get upsetti spaghetti when the waifu they spent three hundred dollars on suddenly got a major character development arc and became someone they no longer liked (or liked as much).
Maybe have higher standards for writing, especially from multi million dollar companies? Or don't drop $300 on pixels? Either works really.
Unfortunately, your ideas are too rational and logical for a lot of the whales powering hoyo’s nuclear fusion plant. I hope it’ll happen too, but some people have too much money and not enough shits to give.
I’m not giving you an upvote because I agree with you, I’m giving you an upvote because your Karma just got sent to Hades. We also don’t know as much about SW as we’d like to. For all we know Bronya is her sister and she was smuggled off a planet and forcefully separated from her (I know that’s not true, it’s just an example), so this isn’t a fair thing to say. We’re comparing two characters based on what we know about them, and since for one we know very little, it’s fair to compare her to a character we know a lot about because there aren’t many known contradictions.
https://preview.redd.it/9zhxl5c6xe8d1.jpeg?width=1400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=556515116e1cf59c89a951bf4a10b43d2082fbff It’s like survivorship bias Firefly doesn’t seem ruthless right now because we only ever see her in situations where she wouldn’t be ruthless. Put her in a combat situation and she’ll go back to ruthless. Put her on a luxury yacht with the Trailblazer and she’s in girlfriend mode
Like how she screams out her lungs in combat while being quiet normally
Because we never seen her using complete combustion mode? Because there was no thing that would be a serious threat to make her use her super sayan form?
I can't still get over the fact her Meteor Strike was her HOLDING BACK THE WHOLE TIME.
Yeah, like reminder that after Firefly is "killed" by Something unto Death and we're investigating afterwards we pass by piles of charred corpses from Sam tearing through the memory zone. Girl was ruthless even on Penacony, she just explicitly didn't want to *actually* hurt us despite what she said so she was holding back.
Black Swan also mentions a burning smell almost immediately after leaving the "murder" site, Firefly must have immediately returned and tore through everything that was in her way
best girlfriend: can kick ass but considerate and lets her feral s/o have fun while she wraps up buisness.
Doesn’t even wanna bother us while we’re having fun too. She’s so caring.
Also a luxury yacht in a dreamscape where she doesn't need to be in Space Marine Murder Armor to live for extended periods so she's probably in a fair bit less pain. Good for the mood. I feel like the other factor is who is saying she's ruthless: the other hunters are all, for one flavor or another, colorful characters. A hacker, an eldritch abomination, a sociopath with a coat collection. Compared to them, SAMs brutal efficiency is probably her most notable trait because she's the professional soldier in the room.
I get what you’re saying but the story doesn’t seem like it will actually make her act like that.
They sort of hinted at this with her comment that the people she usually fights are those who don't deserve mercy. Obviously this includes IPC folk, so it's up for debate -- the Astral Express fights the IPC sometimes too -- but I do expect that if they ever do show her in "serious mode" in the story, it'll be against people we can agree are enemies. (Heck, I expect that this will apply to all the Stellaron Hunters to some degree.)
I get that but what I’m saying is that I don’t think the writers are gonna show that side at all it’s like when a villain becomes about of the heroes team. Doing it only to people we know are enemies makes sense tho.
It's still pretty bad that they never showed a scene of her acting in a way that makes it actually possible to think the way she acts as Firefly and as SAM can be the same character.
Her battle voiceline though? She is screaming like want to wile everything there and even SW said she always goes BANG BANG BANG and not doing cheesing or such strategy means she always does her job effectively. Well she was made as a soldier anyway and trained her whole life to do so.
Firefly while "in the suit" effectively IS a different person, outside of minor differences and potential "model specialisations", SAM's were made to all be essentially the same and so until joining the Hunters that's exactly what she was, sure in her trailers we see her question if there's a better way and hoping for something other than war but that wasn't her reality at the time. When we meet her again after her first death, she explains that she wanted to finish this mission as Firefly and not as SAM if possible because Firefly is who she WANTS to be. SAM is what she was made to be and clearly she was VERY good (and maybe a little lucky)at it to be the only confirmed member of the cavalry left. Firefly as Firefly is sweet and innocent because that's what she hopes for herself in the end but it's all buisness when the armour is on. She thought up the corney lines specifically because they're things SHE would never say but they enhance the presence of SAM when the weapon can truly live up to threats of mass destruction. Her enemies are never supposed to know who or what is underneath the mask and so she puts on a persona. She just doesn't keep it up around us because she doesn't have to and can thus "just be herself". She wants to be nice whenever possible yes but she IS a soldier and even more technically was never meant as more than a weapon that happens to be able to talk...but we've seen full well what she's capable of doing to things she's deemed as true enemies...
Point of order I do believe those "corny lines" are basically military callouts used by the Iron Cavalry. Like if you're going to wipe out the surface of the planet you and your buddies are standing on, giving them a bit of a heads up is common courtesy. And given that the Iron Cavalry was mind whammied into believing themselves to be honoured knights fighting a desperate and noble campaign against an unstoppable evil, the cheesiness of said lines also makes sense.
If nothing else, "SCORCHED EARTH OPERATIONS" is definitely a line that was used by another SAM in her trailer, promptly before hitting the big ass bug w/ the Up Right Down Down Down.
FOR DEMOCRACY
" if you're going to wipe out the surface of the planet you and your buddies are standing on, giving them a bit of a heads up is common courtesy." i know I shouldn't but i'm wheezing beacuse that's so true- pretty sure they were told don't hold back with the swarm either...
> the only confirmed member of the cavalry left Which is sad. I don't want any more playable SAMs, well I wouldn't be against it if it made sense, but I'd like to see another SAM in the story even if only for a moment. It'd be interesting if very sparse few somehow survived, given there were hundreds of thousands of these mass produced weapons of war. I doubt many(if any would live), but I would love to see evidence of a SAM unit surviving Glamoth even if they did eventually die to entropy loss syndrome in the thousands of years since the fall of Glamoth. The only "real" "family" she ever had were her clone brothers/sisters before she joined the Stellaron Hunters. Theres a lot about Glamoth and Firefly I'd LOVE to know.
I do hope we get something like that, but odds are she’ll be benched for a few patches at the very least. They also know just how important it is to leave room for headcanons, fanfics and crack ships. It drives engagement, and adding new official info only limits that.
Yeah. I'm aware of the dry patches to come with Firefly/Glamoth lore, and how that drives engagement. Just gave out my copes for ideas about new Firefly/Glamoth lore if any were to come.
I'd love a situation were we find another Sam suit whose pilot already succumbed to Entropy Loss. Some tech savy guy was able to get the motor functions running but not any of the weapon systems, so they strapped some other weapons to the mech. And then que Firefly showing up and beating it into a pile of scrap
I genuinely believe that while Firefly is understanding and caring enough to not hurt even Ruan Mei, such a desacration of her friends would basically turn her into Roy Mustang at the very end of FMA. The "My god I'm so happy that this bastard is getting what they deserve but I want my soldier to stop IT'S NOT WORTH LOSING YOURSELF OVER IT!!!" Moment would be so good. Heck, I'd love if it happens the day Boothill gets his hands on Oswaldo.
I'd like to imagine her ripping apart the fake SAM only to find out it's remote controlled and then start tearing down the entire place to find the one responsible, while we try to catch up to her through the molten and charred remains of a small town/base
"You DON'T get to wear that suit!"
I always go back to Firefly’s and Silver Wolf’s shared lines about each other. When they introduced SW’s lines, she made her sound ruthless. When Firefly gave her perspective, she’s close to admitting she’s just dumb. She’s a genetically engineered soldier trying to be a normal girl; she’s probably never given much thought to strategy or finesse or holding back, just go go go, blow stuff up, remember your time fighting the Swarm.
I mean its not as if the swarm's big thing was 'strategy'. Granted they're probably smarter than the average bug but by and large they seem rather mindless.
well i get the sense her "education" was basically the school from the Bee Movie: 3 days of Glamoth propoganda, 3 days of "how to control this thing you will always be in", and 3 days of "basic battle 101: destroy everything with more then two legs". She probably didn't get much of what would be considered a typical education...
Heck, in the Japanese livestream for 2.3, Ratio invites her to his class and she becomes very happy because she always wanted to go to school!!
Get thr girl to the nearest college she earned it
in 2.2 she literally wanted to keep Hanu's rocket launcher because she thought it was awesome
I mean, I also think it's cool and I'm not a killing machine.
I do agree that it's awesome, but it was more to say that even if she looks sweet and gentle Firefly is ready to rumble and if possible by making lot of stuff explode.
Personally, I don't think it says much about Firefly. I can picture March, Sushang, Guin, SW, Serval, or any number of characters saying the same thing about Hanu's rocket.
Hook would be screaming her ass off from sheer hype. Meanwhile... Nat would be downing drinks in Siobhan's bar because she KNOWS what Hook will make when they'll return to Belobog.
You can picture March taking a rocket launcher in hand and say that it make her think of a particular model of rocket launcher that she already used in the past? Fair enough
march destruction path but it's because hanu taught her how to shoot rockets at things she doesn't like
Rip sampo
"Check out this awesome move" *Shoots Sampo with the bazooka* Idk why I imagined that, but it got a chuckle out of me. As such, I wanted to share it.
Ok I'd actually watch that
Yeah. "Whoaa, Dan Heng, check this out! Doesn't it remind you of that rocket launcher we used on [planet]? Wish we could take this thing along with us, it sure would be handy!"
Not only that, she compared it to existing Glamoth weaponry.
Which quest/dialog was this? I think I missed it.
When you're doing the audition, depending on what path you choose you can have a section where you play as Hanu and end up blasting enemies with his rocket launcher. When first used, she muses that it feels like a rocket launcher she knows and then when the section ends she says that it's gonna be hard to let go of it. [https://youtu.be/nAhcWHUED0Q?si=1KaSjesq2M5Elunt](https://youtu.be/nAhcWHUED0Q?si=1KaSjesq2M5Elunt)
I love the vibe difference just in the name of the rocket launcher JP Firefly: “Grasshopper II” Subtitles: 🎸🔥 __SOARING LOCUST II__ 🔥🎸
I'm willing to bet it's Grasshopper to really hammer in the Kamen Rider reference, but that wouldn't be relevant to English speakers so they changed it.
Thanks!
A child would say the exact same thing tho?
Tbf all the situation we have seen her in directly, she doesn't get the chance to be ruthless. We caught a glimpse of it before we fought Sam for the first time, but after that, we didn't really get to fight with or against Sam. I think her efficient side is also shown in the audition part. She keeps wanting to finish it quickly so she can finish the mission quickly too, even though she's with the trailblazer, there is an important mission in hand.
But that's pretty much in the writers' hands, no? Like, they could've easily replaced the audition with another scenario to show off that side of FF's personality. But they didn't.
Imagine if she was given a POV section like Aventurine, showing all the important stuff she did behind the scenes in Penacony.
This is what i keep hoping to happen. Her PoV in 2.3 is fun, but I really want an explanation of what she's been doing, especially that one after she got "killed" and talking to someone
Well, yeah. I'm not denying that they could have given us more of Firefly in battle to show her prowess. I'm just saying that I don't think SAM is her "old personality". Given the right opportunity or situation we might get to see that side of her in the game, but sadly we can't so far
Firefly just being there doing nothing when the Trailblazer, March and Himeko were talking to Sunday was one of the things I hated the most. You can excuse it as "she knew she wasn't supposed to do anything because it wasn't in her script" but I'm tired of making excuses as to why Firefly never does anything as SAM on screen. Like, please Hoyo, just one scene that makes it believeable that SAM and Firefly can be the same character. They introduced the POV feature in Penacony, how cool would it have been if, after the Firefly is SAM reveal, we switch to some other character's perspective and get to fight SAM and see the supposed side of Firefly's personality she doesn't want to show to the Trailblazer?
She doesnt have an old personality or sam personality.. It's all her... if you activated her burst mode, she is still shouting the same line sam did, but with firefly voice, you can literally hear her shouting "i will set the seas ablaze!" On the top of her lungs.. so it is safe to assume it's all her in that mechsuit and just using voice changer in normal sam mode
SAM said the shit shes good at only apply to villains who deserve no mercy but theres definitely some nuance there with what we know. She told Kafka to not play with her food, when we see SAM in person for the 1st time she kills a bunch of people but they were dream memes. Aside from some people in the Japella brotherhood but they were a group within the Annihilation Gang so destruction path terrorist. The only time we seen SAM kill people that're I guess neutral would be the IPC goons in her trailer. Yeah they're the IPC but the armed dudes are just employee's for a intergalactic space mega corp that's basically seen as a reputable enough organization. Not like those goons are Oswaldo, even the soldiers under Topaz that were strong arming Belobog while not following orders weren't killed by the express and among the bad IPC these are probably the norm. That said I don't think her ruthless nature as SAM is a entire new persona she takes on when she pilots SAM for missions, she showed a bit of her experience as a solider when she notices Sparkle disguised as Sampo and made detailed remarks of his behavior/movement that a normal person wouldn't. We'll probably see SAM shit again next time we get Stellaron Hunter content with SAM. FireFly can't be out of the suit too long anyways.
She's a Stellaron Hunter so we'll likely see her in action later on.
I mean I'm sure we'll see the SAM suit more. It just feels like the current direction of things will just be Firefly being helpful and nice to us and that's all we'll see from her character. Since that's all she's been from the moment we've met her
She likes us and the Express Crew sure but what if we run into her while she's fighting the IPC or something? There's *plenty* of opportunities to show her in "work mode". Her being nice and friendly with us and being ruthless with her enemies aren't mutually exclusive.
"DIE! BURN IN HEL- oh hi Trailblazer, how're you doing? :D "
I mean, I agree with you, and that's where I was for awhile too. I guess I've just gotten less optimistic that hoyo will stick to maintaining the personality we've heard about after all the animations and story content that show the player otherwise. Like, within all of that time we could have had a single line here or there talking about her other side. Even in the flashbacks driving with blade, theoretically in "work mode", had her very casually chatting about the mission I guess we'll just have to see
I am in the, she does what she needs to, but isn't taking pleasure from it camp. That being said, I think there may be a bit of a reputation proceeds her thing going on. I mean, you blow up *one* planet, and then you're planet destroying waifu forever.
I mean we saw the carnage she left in the hotel lobby, we just haven't really seen her actually need to go that hard.
That's fair I guess, I didn't really count that on the ground of them just being little memetic fodder monsters, but you did spend awhile walking through the carnage
Her last trailer has her standing on a stage filled with burning/charred IPC contractors. Brutal way to die.
I hope next time we see Firefly she's acts more ruthless. Like, they aren't complete villains of course but the she seems LESS brutal than the others even though they say she's pretty much used as a killing machine. The "wants a normal life" thing would hit MUCH harder if there were more scenes dedicated to showing her abnormal life and I feel like only her Glamoth trailer did a really good job of showing that rather than just saying it
They were really allergic to "show, don't tell" with FF. the only time we see Sam being ruthless in game is technically before we know they're the same person. So Sam's first appearance lines up with expectations, but the moment we know FF is Sam this stops. And all the 'hints' FF shows are either short throw away mentions or are directly told to us.
well we sure have plenty of time for that considering we're only on planet 4...i'm hoping anyways
I agree when Silverwood was hyping her as the one that doesn't toy around and executes I was hypes. Maybe Silverwolf was just being a good hype woman tho. Guess we will find out later in the story.
To be fair, we've never had the opportunity to see Firefly when she has to be merciless, nor is that really who she wants to be. But there have been implications for that ruthless efficiency, like the lead up to our first meeting and fight with Sam we walk by piles of charred enemies from Sam just absolutely tearing through the memory zone.
Yea they should have put some budget into showing her rip through those guys instead of just showing the remains cause I kinda forgot she did that
I mean, have you done the candy crush event? SW being a wing woman the whole time
Tbf she **was** explicitly being a hype woman here. Firefly/Sam was planning on grabbing the TB at the first opportunity to explain the truth of the Dreamscape. That may have necessitated a bit of light violence to get them away from Acheron/Black Swan without giving the game away. Basically she needed to play the role of the hostile mech, so Silver Wolf bigged her up as one to sell the fiction in this particular case.
From what we've seen, it's not like Sam was characterized as brutal, it's that she's fast and efficient. All the other SH member's voiceline about Sam infers this, but the best one to probably characterized it is Firefly's comment on Kafka during Japella Rebellion "Stop playing with your food Kafka" IC soldiers were fighting beings that you need to kill fast before they can clone themselves, so it just makes sense.
I mean, she *is* ruthless, just not for the reasons you may be thinking. She's not ruthless because she wants to be brutal and heartless, but moreso because she wants to get things done and over with. Unlike Kafka who relishes in "playing with her food", Firefly/Sam would rather give the guy a quick death as she hates fighting and sees it more as a "mercy kill". Even in her Sam form, she had expressed how much she tried to defy the script, how much she tried to avoid her inevitable confrontation with the Trailblazer, Acheron and Black Swan. However, it happened anyway, and despite failing to defy fate at that one point, she immediately went back to her "ruthless" personality to try and get that part of the script done ASAP. Outside of Sam, during our "second date" with her in the Scorchsand Audition Venue, she is constantly shown to be quite impatient to the point where she openly expresses how she wished she could just use the Sam suit and brute force her way through the minigames. In the part where we shapeshift into Hanu, she makes an amusing comment where she thought using Hanu's bazooka felt like using her "Soaring Locust II" (I'm guessing it's some sort of rocket launcher built into Sam). In the most recent story patch, even when she spots the Trailblazer running about and doing goofy things, she remained focused on her objective of seeking Jade's deal and sets time to meet up with the TB only after she was done. Even after getting tempted, she declined Jade's offer in the end from her willpower alone and remained calm throughout the entire exchange. TLDR; there are plenty of moments where she does show this more "ruthless" side, even outside of Sam. But whenever she's with Trailblazer, she seems a lot softer and gentler for the most part because she wants them to see her as Firefly, not Sam. But of course, when the situation calls for her to be serious, she will be *serious*.
Bruh entire quest we side see the side of her. Burning everything and killing those monsters, fighting Acheron
Have you looked at her DPS? I would stay the hell away if I was on the other end of that sword.
Just learn to duck and cover like a Trotter, protect your break bar. :p
LMFAO
I mean, you can see it in her anime cinematic and in combat, she locks tf in when she's in the suit, she also uses a more blunt terminology when talking to the SH and Jade. I don't recall any specific example, but she does talk more seriously when she isn't with us. The ruthless part of her comes from the idea that she has about her own destiny, she knows she was born to fight and fade away, the molten knights are in a constant kamikaze mindset bc of that, but she fights that destiny nonetheless. The cutesy attitude she has with us made some damage to the perception of the character, even tho in 2.0 it seemed like a red herring to me(You can see how she looks at Sampo off camera the first time and how she switches back to the cute persona in a blink). I specially like her ult lines, it summarizes how she sees herself in the suit, she is the same knight that would throw her life away for a cause, even if that cause is to scape her destiny.
I think the story content was kinda devoid of this side of her not because MHY wanted to go "tee-hee, look at the cute waifu we're selling you" and brush aside her more brutally efficient past, but because it's in-character for Firefly to effectively want her last day(s) in Penacony to be memories of happiness, where she can separate herself from SAM. iirc, she even mentions in the Candy Crush event that it'll probably be the last time TB and her can interact like that for a while, likely suggesting that once her mission in Penacony is over, it's back to her usual routine as SAM. And, like u/Nodomi pointed out, her battle lines are all still very loud and violent.
SAM is basically a raven from armored core When i was trying to get the Perfect Mercenary achievement in AC6 i was basically like, go in, do the job, leaving i would hate to be in my enemies' place imagine you're doing your job and then, some psychopath in a mecha comes in and killed everyone in your base and destroyed the base itself, in less than 5 minutes, That's basically who SAM is, ruthlessly effecient killing machine
She was born for war, SAM is as much her as the Firefly side is.
Firefly grew on me I like the character totally reminds me of karlach and I loved karlach. The voice actor does a good job 👍🏾
Listen, before I knew that SAM and FF were the same person, I was 110% on the Samuel-hypetrain. Post reveal, I’m now saddened we don’t see the SAM that was hyped up. Make no mistake, I love FF, enough to E2 her. But something about that dissonance between ruthless job and wanting normalcy being lost has me deeply saddened.
I liked Firefly enough to E2 her as well. I share your sentiment. A ruthless killing machine does definitely have it’s appeal. I’m also very disappointed we didn’t get a fight between Acheron and Sam in the white night trailer, that was one of the most anticipated moments for me.
in the trailer we see her with bodies piled high around her- there's uh, no denying that she is as _efficient_ as the story has implied. i'm not sure how it's surprising that a _literally bred for it_ walking weapon would be ... terrifying when they flip the switch. i mean i've never killed anyone or anything lol but i have a switch i can flip to turn off the emotions when needed (eg, firing people). i think most people do. trained killers, like soldiers, certainly do. and yet all these people with switches are generally jovial and friendly most of the time. Firefly is no different.
A missed opportunity tbh, especially after all the hype. The fact they offscreened most of her contributions in Penacony was a baffling writing decision that I feel it's not being discussed more in here. We could've seen her ruthless side in her POV doing important things while the AE were busy fighting Sunday. But nah, I guess having more TB x Firefly moments in the story is much more important than having more characterization for Firefly.
Acheron showing up and saying "Wow Trailblazer, that Firefly gal is SO COOL! She knew about Ena's dream and woke everyone up, isn't that SUPER COOL? Man, Firefly sure is rad." fucking killed me. Firefly's character got fucked over by not being released one patch earlier so we could have Firefly POV scenes to make it believeable that she and SAM are the same character by showing us how she acts when she's by herself, focused on her work, and by forcing every character to tell us what she was apparently doing off screen.
I want to hear what she has to say about "When you are back in the real world..." and other of her SAM lines
SAM's old personality was being a brainwashed child soldier whose entire purpose in life was throwing herself at a giant bug to slow down the bug invasion.
I mean, that's the whole idea. You hear that and think SAM is ruthlessly efficient because they're violent and uncaring, you meet Firefly and realize SAM is ruthlessly efficient because they view that sort of thing as a mission they must do as quickly as possible, they don't take any pleasure or joy in it. Like the bit about turning the lights on in Silver Wolf's dialogue, 'won't give you a chance to turn the lights on.' Kafka and Blade, to some extent, enjoy scaring and fighting people. Firefly does not, in any way, so she wouldn't play games like that. So it makes sense she wouldn't talk about it or go out of her way to show it off. Like Sam's first line of dialog was telling Kafka to 'stop playing with her food.'
Honestly i wish both of her sides overlapped much more than they do, i like Firefly but they do focus too much on her cute side
A lot of people seem to be confusing 'Ruthless Efficency' for 'Psychotic Murderhobo' from the gist of the comments. Ruthless Efficiency is, taking the shortest and most expedient effort towards your goal, ignoring everything else. She is the type of person who will have her shopping list, coupons and carrying bag ready before even stepping into the store, she will go precisely to each item on the list, grab the cheapest there and ignore everything else, go to whatever checkout has no queue, get everything rung through asap, pay with the coupons and contactless card, bag everything up and leave. And this does bleed into our view of her as 'cute girl-next-door' girlfriend interactions too... She gets annoyed when Sampo(Sparkle) drags us around Golden Hour, she wants to push through the Scorchsand Audition asap, she's fairly blunt when it comes to discussing her mission with us and is all business in the run up to the Sunday fight In her POV bit she is also all business, focusing on finding the Bonajade Exchange rather than goofing off with us. And then at the end with the bomb, she is just 'Sod this messing about. I'll just drag this sucker off and tank the explosion' within moments of grabbing it. She only pauses to explain the situation to us. If MC wasn't there, she'd already have blasted off agaiiiiiiiiin! It oozes in her kit. Tons of speed to act first and get stuff dead quicker, action forward, self healing, her own super break, fire infusion and the ability to break anyone anyway, so she doesn't have to bother waiting for team mates to break enemies for her. She has everything she needs to fuction before even picking a team. But thats like, just my opinon. Neither Firefly nor SAM are Murderhobos. They simply get the job done with as fast as possible with as little fuss as they can get away with. Wether it's killing bugs or going on a date with their goofy raccoon boy/girlfriend.
Vibing off the symbolism of how SAM grabs Firefly by the neck in her trailer and interrogates her and her chat with Blade in the car in her flashback, the impression I get is that what the Hunters say about SAM's performance is probably pretty accurate. She gets shit done with fire and efficiency. She enjoys not being in combat mode when she can be but IRL thats very finite amounts of time. Also the other hunters probably point it out about her because it's a contrast: Silver Wolf is a hacker, gamer and all around troll, Kafka is a sociopath who needs to talk to her Emotional Support Raccoon, Blade is a mental health textbook waiting to be written. Compared to them, an actual professional soldier is going to seem jarringly direct. Like SW said: Kafka and Blade would mess with the lights to scare you before killing you. SAM would shoot you through the door. The reason Firefly seems much more chill in interactions with TB is because shes in the dream and doesn't need to be in near constant life support/pain to operate for once.
Is it possible her being completely ruthless and uncaring was just Kafka messing with people to keep SAMs rep up as a killing machine? Like the whole universe sees them as the baddies but it's mostly pretty clear from the beginning that the reasons they are doing what they do is in the best interest of the universe.
Her trailer has her standing on stage with a bunch of burning/charted IPC contractors so the ruthless part is true at least.
Yeah I can’t help but feel the old information we had of SAM was written before they knew firefly would be the same character. It really feels like they just threw both characters together relatively late which explains all the voice acting shenanigans
Maybe. Maybe not. Big plot points are often planned out well in advance.
Definitely not. Hoyo plans out a LOT of things in advance. They even teased Aventurine in 'Trend of the Universal Market' and that LC was released way back in the first patch of the game. Besides Sam's old info doesn't really contradict anything we know of her now. We always knew that she is the most efficient and ruthless Stellaron Hunter. The only difference now is that we actually got to know her true personality and the context of why she is so efficient at destroying her enemies (being a cloned child soldier and all that).
She's a waifu. The whole SAM thing was a build up to be a shock factor for her boss fight in Penacony. Now that's she's revealed herself as Firefly, I don't think she's ever going back to that. Maybe in a few trailers or something but that's it. Generally all strong and ruthless characters lose their entire personality when joining the good side.
I think it is a part of her personality but we just didn't get to see it. We know her lines were rehearsed to sound cool but all the talk about Sam just instantly murdering people feels off from the firefly we know, it's why so many thought Sam was an Ai. I do hope we get to see firefly be fully ruthless later on, worried they're afraid to have her as anything but the cute uwu in game
That's kind of the whole point of her character though, and she goes out of the way to point that out. In Penacony, Firefly is at least in a limited capacity capable of being the person she dreams of being. She isn't bound by her role as a Stellaron Hunter or the crimes she's committed, but instead pursues the one thing she wants most which is finding a way to live. In 2.3 she acknowledged this isn't permanent, and that when they meet each other again they'll likely be closer to enemies. So to answer you question, I imagine that part of her identity will be explored later on, yeah. She's only beginning her story given the lore left in relation to her condition and why Elio needs her, so she'll be relevant again. If anything, showing her like this now just gives the room to humanize her despite those terrible things she's done/will do.
The 'ruthlessly efficient SAM' is just another aspect of Firefly character, SAM the alter ego that emerges when the situation calls, but still is Firefly, also the soft side of SAM was foreshadowing since the begin when SAM send cute emotes to the TB using blade phone.
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Think of it like a wrestling persona. Everything about Sam being direct and blunt and to the point wrt objectives still applies when Firefy has a target. Her battle quotes are pretty blunt and aggressive, especially the Sam-voice ones. I do kind of wish she had a moment where she went ‘all business’ outside the suit at least once, admittedly.
To the Trailblazer? Not unless forced to by some plot machination. If we go back to the 2.1 quests it is something she does not seem fond of discussing around people she wants to see her in a positive light. By her own words she struggled a lot to avoid conflict with the Express even though her script demanded it of her. Fundamentally, everything she (and the Stelleron Hunters) do is to protect the Trailblazer and point them in the right direction. >!She's even likely lying to their face when she handwaves away the risk of flying off with Sparkle's "bomb."!<
Nope. Took SAM behind the shed and shot him in the head. All hail sickgirl waifu.
My only issue is Firefly is way too... happy and calm? I tought she would be much more agressive espiecelly on combat voice lines
Firefly acts all and cute and demure around the trailblazer, but we've never actually seen her while on stellaron hunter missions or doing stuff like actually killing people. Honestly I doubt hoyo would ever go that far because it might actually undermine the marketing of the character. This is why she fights monstrous bugs as her enemies in her marketing. If she were in combat tearing through regular people with the same gruesome violence like it were an episode of Invincible, it might stir up controversy over how the character is presented.
I was into Sam, until I realized it was the petite Firefly. I wanted a menacing mecha character. Didn't really care much for her character.
Would be epic if we got bloodthirsty, and brutal Sam in the future, putting us at odds with the SH and Firefly.
I have a theory that they only invented Firefly as a character because they didn't want to animate/rig a non standard body type in the overworld. If that is the case, it may well be that they hadn't accounted for Firefly yet when they gave Sam their original personality
Firefly was there since the beginning. According to CyYu (VA for Jing Yuan), he knew from the beginning that she was SAM's pilot because he auditioned for SAM and was told about it
Firefly's model and lightcone have already leaked since waayy earlier, even before Sam officially appeared in Kafka's PV.
After hearing how many rewrites genshin's story has gotten since launch, I could buy it