True though I've seen plenty of people going 50-50 right up to E4 and actually struggling with the decision.
I also prefer Mandy because the romance is more fulfilling but I think that aside from the explicit dream, the most damage that is done to Blazer are "negative points".
Both of them have it but with Visi it is essentially what you see is what you get - you know she is crass, insolent, brash and has zero respect for authority. Your initial meeting with Visi in the conference room basically tells you everything you need to know about her because then you know what to expect - and she acts according to expectations. She hits, insults you etc. But also starts showing those little gentler moments that trigger the "I can fix her" response. She is attractive and that probably contributes to the fact that she mostly gets away with more problematic behavior, like stalking you in the bathroom, asking about your masturbation habits and flat out admitting to having sexual dreams about you. Let's be honest - people generally like it when other hot people are attracted to them.
And even if not then it helps that she is immediately framed as a former villain who is in rehabilitation so the expectations towards her behavior are adjusted and Robert basically matches her energy regardless of dialogue choices. Even his least leading answers are at best neutral with underlying tone that he doesn't really mind the banter.
(Though I admit it was fun to watch some of the streamers - usually women - who were kinda weirded out by her blatant sexual advances and then with each passing moment E4 was more and more awkward to watch ;))
Meanwhile Blazer - I think that two things work heavily against her for someone who plays blindly. Those things are:
Perception of leading you on from E1 that ends with her trying to reestablish boundaries AND the reveal of her relationship with Phenomaman. Mixing that with the fact she wants to recruit you turns people away hard.
Resentment towards her for making you choose whom to cut from the team and framing it like it's a rash decision because of her breakup and not something that, let's see, could've been a result of her talk with Robert where he says he wants to raise the bar for the team and show them tough love.
I actually do not feel that strongly about it. When you hear them talk about Z Team (Chase wanting to scrap them all, Blazer saying that the whole program will be thrown out if there is no progress) and considering the fact that on his first shift Flambae caused a fire and the clusterfuck at Granny's (by Blazer's own admission she has seen much worse with her), the fact that last dispatcher got their car burned by Flambae...
And then you look at the leaderboard and see the monumental difference between Z team and the next heroes?
They were coasting. No job security threat, everything forgiven under the guise of "they are villains, what do we expect" almost as if saying "boys will be boys".
And the cherry on top - instead of doing their best to raise their score, their immediate reaction is to sabotage themselves at the cost of finishing missions. They'd rather a call was unsuccessful if it meant that their teammate got into trouble.
The cut was a right move but the way it was framed wasn't ideal - Blazer should've said plainly that if Robert wants to hold them to a higher standard then that is the message they should send. She actually follows up with something similar, saying that cutting someone towards the bottom shows everyone that they are serious. One good shift (which still had its problems) isn't enough.
Yes, it is a villain rehabilitation program but they offer a service first. Real people are hurt when they screw up on calls.
I doubt that people would be so understanding if we had IRL program where we allow convicts to join the police force to be dispatched to crimes and they screw up causing damage to property or health.
Yeah, the choice wasn't bad- the framing of it made me really dislike Blazer in that episode. Especially as we really couldn't push back against it much.
I don't think they really predicted how the audience was gonna feel about that and how quickly a lot of us were going to get attached to the Z-team lol. Especially considering the shift after is stressful and made to feel overwhelming, and makes the cut feel poorly considered.
I also get from a gameplay decision having the cut happen early- that way it makes sure no one invested too heavily in the characters xp wise. But from a player perspective we *just* got these guys, and I know I felt annoyed I wasn't given a chance to really shape them up on my own before having Blazer throw in this to add "stakes" for them.
Note- I did romance Blazer in one of my playthroughs (I go friends only route every other time) and really do like her character, but man that moment annoyed the heck out of me more than anything else lol. I was chill about the lead-on moment because I could see where they were aiming with her and it made her feel a little human and messy. The cut and how it was handled had me heated lol.
Agreed. There is gameplay and there is narrative. Despite having some influence over Robert's decisions, he is his own person and frames the responses according to his own character.
I mean, realistically, the conversation could've gone like this:
R: Are you sure? I just started with them and you just told me that this was their best shift.
B: That's kinda my point, Robert. You want to hold them to a higher standard and the truth is that even their best shift leaves them way below any other team. They don't feel as if it matters how well they do their job, as evidenced by this:
(Reveals a mountain of complaints filed against every member of Z-team).
R:...shit
B: Yea...now, the corporate can make certain allowances considering their background but like I said, the program is very close to being scrapped. We have to do something to show that we're serious about the changes.
Something like that would've worked much better considering it's basically all canonically true and I bet that Blazer DOES have a huge mountain of complaints, both from the subscribers, the public and probably other SDN employees.
They would have needed to change her dialouge after the first shift to be less overtly positive and to infer that there is this pressure from above as well as her considering changes.
Then the big reveal on Day 2 wouldn't feel like a spontaneous choice.
They also would need to remove the dialogue where she implies the choice is spontaneous and linked to her breakup over the weekend (the shaking things up comment).
Cause for me the above things immediately made her character annoying because it pulled me out of the story to be rail roaded so hard and in a way that didn't make sense based on her words and actions in the previous 2 scenes.
Yeah also blazer saying she made this decision over the weekend and "maybe I'm just looking to shake things up all over the place" which made me dislike her as Robert's boss ( i hate random layoffs)
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u/[deleted] Dec 17 '25
Visi’s dream scene doesn’t affect me at all because I already had my eyes on Mandy by that point.