Golden Girl

There's also marketing, which can be added into the budget, or taken out, depending on what the studio wants to prove.
For example, with a massive flop like John Carter, Disney could hide its marketing budget under general Disney marketing, which would help hide just how much money it lost them.
Adding in marketing budgets to filming budgets can also help generate hype by using big numbers, especially if it can be pushed into a "most expensive" catagory.

It's even better when compared to how big it opened - it means that not only did a lot of people think it was worth a second viewing, but that word of mouth for it is also very good, bringing in first time viewers at the second weekend.

It's 4 people - that's a small team even in normal mission content

There's also the fact that someone who knew the game very well wouldn't need to ask questions - the whole stream would be silent - but with someone who doesn't know the game so well, they'll ask questions, and get answers from the devs.

The ears are a bit of a giveaway

Marty was a little bit after I13

He doesn't need to "play it up" - there's also a PPD rank of "Interrogator", so to become "Chief Interrogator" suggests that he was pretty good at his job - which is torturing people.

The way the Resistance is set up means that a lot of their members don't know who the others are, or what they're doing - and the tensions between the Wardens and the Crusaders makes it even harder to get a clear picture of who their friends are - Crazy Calvin didn't bother to tell Cleo that some of his men were going to try and blow up a hospital, and he also didn't bother telling her than the player was actually working deep undercover inside the dictatorship.
As a Warden, she's useful to Calvin for inaide info and spying, but as a Warden, she's also likely to disapprove of some of his more radical plans - which is shown by her reaction to discovering the hospital bomb plot - so he naturally levaes her out of the loop several times.

As far as Cleo knows, the player is just another loyalist stormtrooper, so she uses them to stop the hospital bombing, and then sends them into a trap to get rid of them - it's only afterwards that she realizes the player was really with the Resistance.

Going Rogue was designed at the same time as the Trials, and was 1-20 from the start - the Trial locations were already in the zones before the system even launched.

One thing that did seem to change from the original plan for Incarnate Trails was them being first announced as "zone events" - which seems like they had planned them to resemble the current 2 zone Trials with the Hamidon and the Mothership - which would explain things like the gun turrets at Lambda Sector, which don't really do much, but were quite possibly intented to eb the pylon-style triggers for the zone raid.
The sonic fence pylons around the BAF, and the bunkers on Keyes Island were also possible raid triggers in the original design.
My guess is that there were performance issues with tryign to have zone raids in the Praetorian zones, plus possible problems with working out the contribuition system for the rewards if someone moved in and out of the range of the raid - switching the raids to instanced maps would give the devs much more control over the players and the events of the Trials.

Anyone who has the job title "Chief Interrogator" in the security force of a dictatorship is not a good person

What about letting the hate build for half a decade so that it could explode in the fenzy of rage we saw in SSA1.5?

Protean handles more of the Praetorian content than Dr. Aeon - plus, Cleo doesn't die - unless the player is evil

The minimum will be 4 too, if they follow the set up of the Halloween Trial - no NPC fillers.

Maybe Galactic Fanfiction Online, the latest triumph from the EA MMO hit factory?

Any setting that involves alternative dimensions means this is going to happen often.

Protean recently confirmed that the Praetorian Infernal isn't dead, and is just doing his own thing right now.

And by "best friend", you mean "lover", right?

It never went away - they just hid their goatees behind pretty buildings

The headpiece is different, and he has wraps on his forearms and shins.

Prometheus' face does look a bit rubbery.

You mean like the Atlas and Mercy revamps in I21, and the DA revamp in I22?
There have been 2 Issues under the new Freedom title, and we've had 3 zone revamps so far - along with Independence Port being lined up for attention at the recent Player Summit, and hints from Positron and the devs that Kings Row is also very much on their revamp radar.

Jabba was also un-mind trickable