"Story Release" End of July? Continuing on the Path of Truth...

I was happy that the Path of Truth shows much more potential than the Path of Love. The dialogue is somewhat fuller, the conversations don't seem as disjointed, and most importantly, the narrative flows much better from initial hints to final resolution. There seem to be less, although still some quite important, loose ends in the story. With less time in development than the Path of Love, it was a welcome surprise.

However, I still have some major concerns about the Path of Truth as a story and as a quest. Is it ready for "story release"? I don't think so. I will provide detailed feedback in the R42 feedback forum. For now, here are the main reasons:

1) The whole quest is basically a walking simulator. Just follow the path from one person to another, one scene to another and the story unfolds. Your skills as an avatar are not needed.

Spoiler

Despite there being a simple key hunt and a maze in Artifice, there is really nothing to decide, or solve, or fight. Ultimately the way you view things doesn't matter. For example, it doesn't matter whether you tell Notus that Artifice is good or evil. And why does the avatar need to do this? Kiakis seems perfectly capable of walking the path and figuring things out himself.

2) But as a walking simulator, there are some artificial and unnecessary hoops.

Spoiler

You can bypass Jaanaford and Kiln and head to Xenos. But Notus won't talk to you until you get passage through Etceter. This is probably a holdover from an earlier quest design which is now ridiculous. Things like this are sure to get panned in reviews. There is a maze to get to Notus. Mazes can be fun to solve. But why is it there? It is after the slaughter room which makes it inefficient for transporting bone to the forge. Was it part of the original Hall design? Why is it before Boreus' throne room? Did he not want people to find him? And in the end, emblematic of everything, a final unnecessary hoop to go back and get Haephestus to open the exit.

3) Although it has potential, the resolution is anti-climatic.

Spoiler

I was very interested in meeting Boreus after having met Sequanna. I was motivated to free another Titan. So I appreciated very much the twist that he was dead. But it worked only because I did the Path of Love first.

However, it is frustrating that we find out nothing about what happened to him! This is key! The Titans were intelligent and powerful yet it seems like they get taken out far too easily. Can we get some more details about Boreus? His mark was on the bonesteel dagger... did he forge it himself? Human bone? Why? Why is he staring at his crown in death? How could he be overcome by a wayward band of elves? Unsatisfying.

4) Again, another character magically pops up at many points of the journey without traveling with you. His dialogue doesn't change substantially from one cameo to the next.

Spoiler

I realize this makes things easier to design. But having Kiakis pop in at every step along the way feels so amazingly artificial. He doesn't even tell you he's going ahead, he just decides to shadow you. Did he navigate the maze and the child trap too?

5) In this path, your inability to do anything with the knowledge you gain in the wider world is painful. One can only hope that this might get resolved in the final leg of the story. If you are going to set people up with something disturbing, don't give them zero options to react to it.

Spoiler

If you are virtuous, the next logical step would be to talk to the leader of the elves. You can't. Go back to Xenos and warn people. You can't. In Xenos, Notus has magically forgotten you and tells you again that you must go quickly to Artifice. And on and on. No better luck it you are evil. You can't use the bonesteel knowledge to your advantage.

6) After having completed 2 of 4 segments of the story, where are the ethical dilemmas that are supposed to give me pause? The choices that have consequences?

Spoiler

The child trap doesn't count. It can be stumbled over quite accidentally. It's not set up as a real choice.

7) There are still many bugs.

8) Again you have to be concerned about keyword triggering, taking your mind out of the story.

9) You gain nothing valuable other than XP and the normal simple loot from killing monsters. Not even an Artifice t-shirt souvenir.


With this post, again I am hoping that I will get proved wrong and the "story release" in July will be amazing. Other thoughts would be helpful. Am I crazy? Have your own perspective? See something I didn't?

 

+1

Thank you for such a well written and poignant post @Vyrin. This is my number one concern with the game. The story is very weak, uncompelling and really does nothing to draw the character into the lore of the game. I know they just hired someone to help Lum with this but I still don't see much of an improvement. The biggest drawback, which you mention, are the superfluous steps in each chain you have to take which can easily be skipped over. It's extremely confusing and just makes the game look campy. All of these things could be "ironed out" but certainly not by next month.

If I had my way, which I don't, I would try and focus as many resources as possible on integrating the three paths into a compelling, multiple ending (predicated on your virtue choices) story. It is, as you said, simply a walking adventure with a few battles mixed in. *yawn*

 

Didn't they already have two people that were supposed to be on board for this?

Kind of implies it was already there to use... *SNIP* (removed unnecessary snark-TA)

 

Here's a question for you, @Vyrin:

How many hours did you spend on playing through these two paths?

 

Love was 6 hours. I did part of it with a group, so a little slower, and then wasn't ready for the final fight, which took me a few tries.
Truth was 4.5 hours.

 

So... the question is now: Is the Courage storyline and anything else that counts as "main storyline" going to make up the remaining 29.5+ hours?

Things that make you go hmmmmm....

 

Since I've completed half, I would assume the main quest line is about 20 hours.

Might have to stretch the definition to say that "side quests" are a part of the "main quest line". I have no means of estimating how many hours they take in sum.

 

Perhaps I am interpreting it a little strictly here, but I am of the impression that the "Path of" story lines are what could be considered "main quest line". Which means that, even with a little stumbling on your part while completing the run-throughs you have, we are falling far short of the stated goal.

Don't get me wrong, I'll play it all day just to play (IF I could... *grumbles*), but the story is the largest part of what attracted me to this project, and it is thus the most jagged pill to swallow out of the bunch that this is not up to their stated standards.

 

About what adv level were you for the final fight? Thanks!

 

75... however, I am not great at combat. All the mobs were green to me, but there were simply too many to fight at once. Had to work with the doorway/hall to pick them off one by one.

 

Me either . I wonder what a new player's experience will be if they can get there after only 20 hours or so of game play.

 

My guess would be that they would realize that they need to work to get stronger before they can continue the quest, all of which seems reasonable to me....

 

To be honest, as part of 'troubleshooting' my problems with being able to play Shroud, I purchased the Diablo III battle chest (because DIII uses DX 11, unlike it's sister-product, Starcraft II), and have played that for maybe 18 hours, beating the main storyline and moving partway into the expansion act. Thus, don't think it would come as a huge disappointment to most, especially with everything else that can be done after the story is 'done'.

 

Well, just speaking for myself, if I was playing a game primarily for the story and reached a point where the game basically told me, 'you cannot continue until you go grind for a month', I might be inclined to stop at that point. The longer you have to put a book down, the harder it is to get reabsorbed back into the story.

 

Yeah, the time isn't such an issue; I'm just concerned a new player will be 25 levels or so shy of being able to fight the mobs in the main story areas.

 

Got it... I had misread what you posted. Yes, I'm right there with you. The complete disconnect between story progression and character progression is a huge problem, as far as players who are interested in the story portion will be concerned.

Consider this:

In whichever MMO mode you wish to use, it won't be AS bad, since you will be free to do other things, and so can give your own meaning to the grinding you need to do in order to progress along the paths.

In Offline mode, this is a brick wall. Yes, you are still as free to do those other things as in the other modes, but you aren't playing Offline mode to play with housing, or craft, or pvp... are you? And as a result, players who buy into this just to play through the story will feel they are getting the short end of the stick compared to others.

 

I submitted a bug about this. It is allegedly "being looked into".

 

Yes, agreed.

I would only add that I did find the ending conversations of the paths to be interesting, and cause for reflection. Unfortunately, there wasn't much along the way that really pulled me in.

Also- I'm still waiting to complete the Truth path, though I saw the spoilers during the telethon. I can't even talk to Notus in Xenos. It just says "Elf Official" or something like that, and clicking on him does absolutely nothing.

Is this a bug, or did I miss something along the way?

 

That has to be a bug... I'm hoping you did it a while back and it's been fixed since then. I encountered no hitches with triggering Notus other than having to jump through the hoop of talking to the captain in Etceter.

 

well, they have 6 weeks until the "july" window is past.

is 6 weeks enough?