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Let's Play - Master of the Wind Episode 11 - To Leave or Not to Leave?

  • Volrath
  • 09/02/2016 12:51 AM
  • 1397 views

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NeverSilent
Got any Dexreth amulets?
6280
Welp, how did I miss this episode?! Sorry about that, I've been pretty distracted lately.

The decision to have the heroes finally leave Port Arianna in Arc III for the first time definitely caused a big shift in the way the game plays out, both gameplay- and storytelling-wise. But as a whole, I think it was a good shift, as by this point the relevance of the plot has gone beyond simple small town problems that can be tackled in the classic superhero manner. So I didn't mind seeing some more of the world after having been in the same limited environment for so long.
On the other hand, I do think that the importance of Port Arianna for both the main characters and as a driving point of the story tended to get a little lost after this moment. There's very few occasions where the heroes actually do anything remotely important in this place from Arc III on, which is strange considering it has been their homebase and area of operations for the entire first two chapters. I think the transition would have felt less extreme if there had been more instances later on where the characters return home and actually have to tackle new problems there, in order to bridge the gap between superhero story and classic RPG better.

Regarding Cade's backstory, it's actually one of the few instances where I only found the writing to be convincing much later in the game. Morias even says it himself: The way Cade tells his own story is rather melodramatic. And even though it is given more weight by the fact that his mother didn't die immediately after his father, Cade is still kind of an archetypal "conveniently orphaned" hero with a classic sad backstory. Only much later in the game, I found myself truly interested in his background, because before that it just felt kind of artificial to me.
There's one big exception, though, and it's in the "little things": The fact that Cade never received a real education, and the way he interacts with the world as a result of that, makes him much more fascinating as a character than most of the other information he tells about himself. I think that if you had waited a bit longer before revealing what actually happened to his family, and just worked with implications and indirect information for a longer time, the player's curiosity would have been peeked much more. Stoic, for example, only reveals his origin and life story bit by bit until Arc V, making him much more fascinating.

By the way, I remember the character "Spider" aka Morias from Clean Slate. But in the end, I thought it turns out he wasn't such a bad person after all, right? Is Morias just misinformed about his father, or is he especially bitter because he left the family?
Also, here's another question I've been wondering about: Does the long lifespan of elves influence the way others perceive and interact with them at all? After all, I can imagine that knowing there are people out there who can live for 1000 years must seem extremely frustrating and unfair to other species with shorter lifespans, such as humans. During his conversation with Morias, Shroud doesn't seem to mind finding out that as a human, he is doomed to die young compared to Morias, but many others would probably find this shocking. Yet, I don't recall this issue ever coming up again over the entire course of the game. Why is that?

Well, in the mood he was in, Cade probably didn't mind the thought of a short life but it's true it didn't really come up again later. I guess given the lack of elves in the main party and the fact that other meetings with them tend to be about pretty serious matters kept it from being addressed again in conversation. Not just them either, humans live shorter than any of the other races on Solest. Came up a little bit in World Remade and in general, it's cited as the reason humans gravitate towards necromancy despite being traditionally aligned with Arcadius.

Spider's betrayal of Guardia (even if he and Seth were right in the end) was tough on his reputation but you're right that Morias's description of him is very informed by him abandoning his family.

I've been distracted by various things (mostly old Might and Magic games, should never start those!) but I plan to have another one of these out soonish.
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