VOLRATH'S PROFILE

author=Fomar0153
We did get the text distorter working when anxious (or was it drunk) but it was too good.

I loved that thing and still would enjoy seeing it used somehow, but that will take additional brainstorming.

author=Solitayre
We start with a man about to commit suicide. My default assumption is to take this seriously (I hate when suicide is played for comedy, for instance.) and assume this guy is in a bad place. But then he heads on over to the local pub, everyone greets him by name and enjoys his company, he has a good time. It's a pretty upbeat scene! Then we're back to somber when we have the opening credits crawl while he staggers home drunk and really depressing music plays. I'm not sure what I'm exactly supposed to be feeling! Is it supposed to be sad or funny or I don't even know.

Hmm, well here's how I look at that whole intro - Eddie's despair is real and suicide is often on his mind. However, there's a part of him that does want to hold on and that's why it takes only the tiniest distraction (wings in that instance) to get him to back away from the ledge, metaphorically speaking. Eventually, the therapist will try and make him aware that he really does want to live and that's the part that he ought to embrace rather than keep returning to his usual patterns of misery. Obviously none of that is evident in the first scene, but this pattern of "Eddie is on the brink but then goes about his business instead" will repeat itself a few times during the game and then I hope the player will have a better idea of what's going on with him.

Eddie's in his element at a place like the bar, he enjoys chatting with people and genuinely would like to help when he can. That's probably what made him a good politician. But when he leaves and walks home, the only company he has is himself...and he obviously loathes himself. So that's my rationale for the grim tone of that bit. And as for his reasons for being depressed in the first place, that's kind of a chicken-and-egg question, isn't it? Did the unraveling of his political career (details will be forthcoming about that) cause the depression, or did he react so badly to that setback because of the depression? I think a lot of people with depression wonder about that sort of thing, I'll be candid and say I certainly do.

So even though I can do all this explaining, it's clear to me that the opening scene isn't working so well. We put out a much rougher demo on a smaller site a while back and people expressed basically the same confusion you did about the overall tone and "mood whiplash," as TV tropes might put it. I tweaked the scene a bit after that, but something about it still isn't communicating to people who aren't living in Eddie's head all the time like me and ArtBane. I don't want to get a point where I have to abandon subtext and flat-out tell the player how to feel about it, but I am having a hard time coming up with a good solution for making it work.

Basically, what I would like people to get from it is "Eddie talks big about suicide but is not fully committed to it if he can get distracted so easily from it by wings and beer." But having a character actually say that...well, then you get the "show, don't tell" problem.

Unfortunately, no. Most of the walkthroughs skew towards the earlier arcs. We'd love it if someone made one!

The game is very long and nobody's actually finished a walkthrough for the whole thing.

http://www.overcloud9.com/2009/11/01/master-of-the-wind-walkthrough/

There you can download one that was written for Arcs I-III. But if you do get stuck on something in the later parts of the game, feel free to ask for help here or on the MotW site. (www.solest.org)

Thanks for the review! I know you've followed the game for quite a long time and it's cool to see your final thoughts in detail. I enjoyed the paragraph about characters and their arguments - I think you can tell a lot about a person based on how they argue and I try to apply that to characterization in the fiction/games that I write. I don't like it to be a one-sided affair either, so even the characters who advocate something I might find completely devoid of logic (bigotry) hopefully don't come off as dumb.

The point about a "things to resolve" list hits a little close to home, I had this realization going into the last arc that there were still a lot of balls in the air, so to speak. For a while, we had considered a series of optional side-quests that could be done in any order, but then decided it would more satisfying to try and make each of these stories contribute (even if in a minor way) towards the finale. It's probably not the most graceful part of the game's writing, but hopefully it's better than the alternative of leaving a bunch of that stuff unresolved...