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(You've got a few typos here, do you want a PM listing them?)
Huh, Luke's only 16? Given how big a deal Aeyr made of it, I assumed he was much younger, like 13 or something. It seems a bit ironic for a 19yo to make a production of how someone only 3 years younger than him is a delicate baby in need of protection.
Oh dear, that's very ominous. Poor Mia.
It's neat that everyone gets a spiffy High Fantasy title, not just Aeyr. Are there other prophecies that reference them, or is this just a meta thing?
That's very interesting, since you seemed very insistent on a design philosophy of no healing spells in Soul Sunder and the prologue here. Initially I assumed Aeyr's abilities at the end of the prologue were temporary, like Arya's at the end of the childhood arc. I presume his enemies will be more difficult to compensate.
Huh, Luke's only 16? Given how big a deal Aeyr made of it, I assumed he was much younger, like 13 or something. It seems a bit ironic for a 19yo to make a production of how someone only 3 years younger than him is a delicate baby in need of protection.
The Unwilling Martyr
Oh dear, that's very ominous. Poor Mia.
It's neat that everyone gets a spiffy High Fantasy title, not just Aeyr. Are there other prophecies that reference them, or is this just a meta thing?
He can then use the Soulfire to heal an ally
That's very interesting, since you seemed very insistent on a design philosophy of no healing spells in Soul Sunder and the prologue here. Initially I assumed Aeyr's abilities at the end of the prologue were temporary, like Arya's at the end of the childhood arc. I presume his enemies will be more difficult to compensate.
Prayer of the Faithless
but ask her her age and you probably will get a "that's none of your business" look. It's got nothing to do with being seen as less desirable or whatever, it's just that: none of your business.
But would a man have the same reaction? If not, what accounts for the difference?
I mean, you're right that this isn't a terribly big deal -- most people don't even notice, as you've seen. I'm only nitpicking this because "never ask a lady her age" is a thing in our world. I'm a bit of a worldbuilding junkie and I've noticed that sometimes, authors include social norms and phrases from the real world simply because they're used to it and see it as normal -- without considering if it's something that makes sense in their constructed world. So when I see something like that, I don't know if it's telling me something about the world or simply telling me something about the author's own social norms. In this case it is pretty clear that the gist is simply "Amalie doesn't want to tell him", but it's interesting to me to know the wider social implications of her using that excuse in particular. (If we also saw a man use the exact same excuse it would be clear she was just referring to herself and not trying to say "only women are bothered by this", but a sample size of one does lead to ambiguities.)
Prayer of the Faithless
Amalie is actually quite sensitive about her age for reasons explained later, so she deflected Aeyr's question.
Her deflection is general, though -- she says it's disrespectful to ask of "any woman". (That also makes it unclear if this is a personal thing and she's using a socially acceptable excuse as a deflection or if this is a ~women are so mysterious and unreasonable~ thing -- from prior experience with your storytelling I know that's probably not your intention, but far too many artists play that straight, so it could confuse newcomers.) That's what's weird to me; while it's true that asking someone's age is a personal question they may not want to answer, I don't see why women would be singled out for that in an egalitarian society. They're singled out for it in ours, but that's for specific reasons that don't seem to exist in this world. A more gender-neutral admonishment like "ungracious to ask of anyone" or "ungracious to ask of your superior/elder" seems more fitting, given what we know of the setting.
Prayer of the Faithless
Woo, I finished! Technical stuff:
-Piercing Light description says "Damage enemies and removes Miasma Charge." For consistent verb tense, that should be "Damages"
-Amalie scene in power wing 1F: "I don't care about others as individuals, but I care enough that meaningless death for an uncaring King is enough to piss me off" -- sounds awkwardly worded to me, like too much information is being crammed in one sentence. I had to read it again a few times to really understand it.
-And what Amalie says afterwards seems to be pure thought, but there's nothing to imply she doesn't say it out loud? Confusing. Most games use parentheses or italics, etc., to distinguish thought and speech.
-If you highlight "Passive" on Amalie's skill menu, then use Q/W to switch to Aeyr, and then try to move the cursor, you get a NoMethodError crash (command line 74).
-The NPC in Honelleth who tells you to use attack items on casters seems to have some redundancy -- the first and third messages convey the same information (that casters have high SP and low HP).
-When meeting Luke, Mia says "t-thank you" -- formatting the stutter like that seems odd, since the first phoneme is "th" not "t".
-In the next cutscene: "His posture changed, as well; He shifted..." That "He" shouldn't be capitalized.
-Amalie is capable of being in both the item shop and inn at the same time, it seems? She also has the same "Enjoy your date, you two" message even after Mia leaves.
-In the battle against 2 archers + brawler, Mia triggered the bralwer's counter after the archers had fallen. The counterattack knocked her out... at which point the game gave me a NoMethodError (line 1021 in YEA Battle Command List) and crashed.
-There's no notification of Mia's Unbroken removal like there was with Aeyr.
-Cutscene in Luke's house: "...must be dispatched here to dispose it before..." Every other time I've seen that phrase in writing, it's been "dispose of it".
-Scene at the fork in the road on the return trip: Amalie capitalizes "kid" when referring to Luke
-Very minor nitpick, but if you try to enter the valley on the return trip through the woods, Amalie will give the same "Did I not just finish explaining..." message even though it's been a while since that point.
-"...that I would not wish upon my more hated enemies." Sounds a bit awkward, usually that phrase is "most hated".
-You can walk over the northernmost ooze rock in Mia's camp.
-Same for the oozing rock in the third screen of the monster-infested part of the valley.
-Trying to reenter the wide path after examining it will make Parker tell you something, but his portrait doesn't appear.
-Trying to return to the camp after Parker falls doesn't produce a "we can't go this way" message, you just can't go that way.
-When Amalie reached level 17, her Psyche was highlighted green even though it didn't increase.
-"You actually started fighting before even thinking about what you're doing?!" -- that should probably be "you were", for verb tense agreement.
-After the Vance fight, one of the knights' dialogue is presented in script format ("Knight: P-Paladin Vance...") instead of using a title.
-The game doesn't return to the title screen after the completion message?
Running commentary:
-Counteracting Amalie's high level with crippling passives is clever. It gets across that she's way more experienced without making her a gamebreaker.
-How do miasma vials have monetary value if they have no practical value? Can people research them, or are they just used as currency for the sake of it?
-Ooh, Miasma Charge is a much bigger deal now. That's also consistent with the state of the world getting worse. Neat.
-Counter Stance seems a little gamebreaking -- it's pretty easy for me to end battles with barely a scratch if I'm patient. I imagine that could change if magical attacks become more common, though.
-Oh, Mia's hair is dyed! I didn't think anything of it initially. I've watched too much anime.
-How did Luke fix the lock so quickly? :p
-I'm guessing Amalie can no longer communicate telephatically. Really interested to learn what her deal is.
-I really like that you're having characters react to killing people. The lack of that humanity is something that really bothered me in another RPG I played recently (A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky).
-Ooh, you write out "okay"! That pleases me. Writing it as "ok" is a pet peeve of mine.
-Aw, Mia does have a crush on Aeyr? As an aromantic person who really likes platonic male/female friendships that makes me a bit disappointed, but given how gritty this game is I'm sure the standard love interest plotline will get derailed.
-"That is not a very tactful or gracious question to ask of any woman." oh noooo Why would this be a thing in an egalitarian socety? This is an issue in our society because women are seen to have little value outside of their youth, beauty, and fertility, so old women are seen as less useful and asking a woman's age could potentially be forcing her to devalue herself. In a society where women are allowed to be fighters and enter men's professions, I'm having trouble seeing it as a women's issue specifically.
-Ooh now Aeyr's bringing up that Amalie could have talked to the manna! Good protagonist, paying attention to things.
-How is it so easy for her hair to hide that? Wouldn't it be blown aside during fighting and stuff?
-Oh no, Amalie got another negative passive? She's really becoming a punching bag.
-Wow, Concentration makes Mia really awesome. Most battles are ending in the first or second round.
-The tutorial section could use an explanation for what "Guard Break" means, it took me a while to figure it out.
-Mia gives Parker a TOURNIQUET? Doesn't that pretty much ensure the limb dies? That seems excessive! And if it was necessary at all, he'd have already bled out by now. A splint or sling seems more appropriate.
-Oh, so that's why they need to able to kill humans. Still not sure how they can afford such a luxury, but it makes more sense now.
That was a really intriguing and intense ending to the prologue! I'm a bit disappointed that Mia's was so much shorter, but it places her in an interesting situation that promises evolution and character growth. I'm really excited to see what happens next.
Yes, I suppose that's true. I did tend to settle into a holding pattern most of the time, but there are a lot of factors to consider. I do think battles are a bit too slow to start with since you need to wear down the enemy's stamina to do real damage, but both the protagonists have stamina-damaging moves to help with that. Lightning Moment ignoring stamina really greases the wheels, too.
-Piercing Light description says "Damage enemies and removes Miasma Charge." For consistent verb tense, that should be "Damages"
-Amalie scene in power wing 1F: "I don't care about others as individuals, but I care enough that meaningless death for an uncaring King is enough to piss me off" -- sounds awkwardly worded to me, like too much information is being crammed in one sentence. I had to read it again a few times to really understand it.
-And what Amalie says afterwards seems to be pure thought, but there's nothing to imply she doesn't say it out loud? Confusing. Most games use parentheses or italics, etc., to distinguish thought and speech.
-If you highlight "Passive" on Amalie's skill menu, then use Q/W to switch to Aeyr, and then try to move the cursor, you get a NoMethodError crash (command line 74).
-The NPC in Honelleth who tells you to use attack items on casters seems to have some redundancy -- the first and third messages convey the same information (that casters have high SP and low HP).
-When meeting Luke, Mia says "t-thank you" -- formatting the stutter like that seems odd, since the first phoneme is "th" not "t".
-In the next cutscene: "His posture changed, as well; He shifted..." That "He" shouldn't be capitalized.
-Amalie is capable of being in both the item shop and inn at the same time, it seems? She also has the same "Enjoy your date, you two" message even after Mia leaves.
-In the battle against 2 archers + brawler, Mia triggered the bralwer's counter after the archers had fallen. The counterattack knocked her out... at which point the game gave me a NoMethodError (line 1021 in YEA Battle Command List) and crashed.
-There's no notification of Mia's Unbroken removal like there was with Aeyr.
-Cutscene in Luke's house: "...must be dispatched here to dispose it before..." Every other time I've seen that phrase in writing, it's been "dispose of it".
-Scene at the fork in the road on the return trip: Amalie capitalizes "kid" when referring to Luke
-Very minor nitpick, but if you try to enter the valley on the return trip through the woods, Amalie will give the same "Did I not just finish explaining..." message even though it's been a while since that point.
-"...that I would not wish upon my more hated enemies." Sounds a bit awkward, usually that phrase is "most hated".
-You can walk over the northernmost ooze rock in Mia's camp.
-Same for the oozing rock in the third screen of the monster-infested part of the valley.
-Trying to reenter the wide path after examining it will make Parker tell you something, but his portrait doesn't appear.
-Trying to return to the camp after Parker falls doesn't produce a "we can't go this way" message, you just can't go that way.
-When Amalie reached level 17, her Psyche was highlighted green even though it didn't increase.
-"You actually started fighting before even thinking about what you're doing?!" -- that should probably be "you were", for verb tense agreement.
-After the Vance fight, one of the knights' dialogue is presented in script format ("Knight: P-Paladin Vance...") instead of using a title.
-The game doesn't return to the title screen after the completion message?
Running commentary:
-Counteracting Amalie's high level with crippling passives is clever. It gets across that she's way more experienced without making her a gamebreaker.
-How do miasma vials have monetary value if they have no practical value? Can people research them, or are they just used as currency for the sake of it?
-Ooh, Miasma Charge is a much bigger deal now. That's also consistent with the state of the world getting worse. Neat.
-Counter Stance seems a little gamebreaking -- it's pretty easy for me to end battles with barely a scratch if I'm patient. I imagine that could change if magical attacks become more common, though.
-Oh, Mia's hair is dyed! I didn't think anything of it initially. I've watched too much anime.
-How did Luke fix the lock so quickly? :p
-I'm guessing Amalie can no longer communicate telephatically. Really interested to learn what her deal is.
-I really like that you're having characters react to killing people. The lack of that humanity is something that really bothered me in another RPG I played recently (A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky).
-Ooh, you write out "okay"! That pleases me. Writing it as "ok" is a pet peeve of mine.
-Aw, Mia does have a crush on Aeyr? As an aromantic person who really likes platonic male/female friendships that makes me a bit disappointed, but given how gritty this game is I'm sure the standard love interest plotline will get derailed.
-"That is not a very tactful or gracious question to ask of any woman." oh noooo Why would this be a thing in an egalitarian socety? This is an issue in our society because women are seen to have little value outside of their youth, beauty, and fertility, so old women are seen as less useful and asking a woman's age could potentially be forcing her to devalue herself. In a society where women are allowed to be fighters and enter men's professions, I'm having trouble seeing it as a women's issue specifically.
-Ooh now Aeyr's bringing up that Amalie could have talked to the manna! Good protagonist, paying attention to things.
-How is it so easy for her hair to hide that? Wouldn't it be blown aside during fighting and stuff?
-Oh no, Amalie got another negative passive? She's really becoming a punching bag.
-Wow, Concentration makes Mia really awesome. Most battles are ending in the first or second round.
-The tutorial section could use an explanation for what "Guard Break" means, it took me a while to figure it out.
-Mia gives Parker a TOURNIQUET? Doesn't that pretty much ensure the limb dies? That seems excessive! And if it was necessary at all, he'd have already bled out by now. A splint or sling seems more appropriate.
-Oh, so that's why they need to able to kill humans. Still not sure how they can afford such a luxury, but it makes more sense now.
That was a really intriguing and intense ending to the prologue! I'm a bit disappointed that Mia's was so much shorter, but it places her in an interesting situation that promises evolution and character growth. I'm really excited to see what happens next.
I think that this is because the battle system isn't really very complex, rather it has a lot of depth. Medium complexity/high depth is what I think describes it best.
Yes, I suppose that's true. I did tend to settle into a holding pattern most of the time, but there are a lot of factors to consider. I do think battles are a bit too slow to start with since you need to wear down the enemy's stamina to do real damage, but both the protagonists have stamina-damaging moves to help with that. Lightning Moment ignoring stamina really greases the wheels, too.
Prayer of the Faithless
Just main hand and offhand equipment. Your armor and Relics are stuck with you throughout the whole battle.
Ah yeah, I noticed that. I was thinking it'd be clever to only equip the medic handbook when using medkits and then immediately de-equip it, but I can't do that.
(The stat tooltips seem a bit weird, by the way -- Leather Overcoats seem to decrease SP by 2, but the tooltip says they have no effect. Is there an automatic penalty for medium armor? Also how does a book affect your stamina and armor???)
The purpose of the Proving is to, in gameplay terms, remove the Unbroken nerf from every person who participates in an attempt to "break them in" to the Knights. The idea behind it is to have a few super battle-hardened warriors rather than a bunch of newbies on the front lines. Better to have ten Spartans on your side than 15 guys swinging pointy sticks around.
How are they maintaining that if the world's going to crap, though? Raising someone to adulthood is a huge resource investment, and it sounds like they don't have a lot of resources if parts of the continent are becoming uninhabitable. And if the knights die in battle a lot too... eventually the population will be worn down to nothing. Is a 10% stat boost really worth a 25% reduction in your able-bodied adults every year? It just seems like there are more economical ways of doing that -- modern militaries make soldiers kill dogs, which is also effective. (It also just doesn't make sense to me that people would hold back against inhuman monsters -- in real life, that hesitance is because we really don't like killing other humans in specific. But if there aren't many human enemies I suppose there's no other way to convey it...)
Re: Soul Sunder
Wait, I thought Isaac's dad said the botched ritual resulted in both Alex and Arya becoming chosen ones? How does Arya have so much power over the miasma if she's not the chosen one?
Prayer of the Faithless
Finally got around to playing this! First, typos and other little things I noticed:
-Vanessa says "the King" in the opening scene. Titles such as "king" are only capitalized when they are used in place of or as part of a name. Similar logic should follow for fantasy species/creatures, but Tolkein muddied the waters there and everyone's followed suit since.
-Ferocity description: "Aeyr has always held a deep seated aggression..." Stacked adjectives always use a hyphen, so this should be "deep-seated".
-When Aeyr encounters the guy in the castle, the guy says "dear...old... Dad?" I'm pretty sure the "dear" should be capitalized, and the ellipses spacing should be made consistent.
-"The horror and disgust of killing a human had destroyed..." Seems like that should be "has"?
-Mia's scene in the common district: "...so grandmother can live happily..." 'Grandmother' should be capitalized.
-The description for Mail Breaker lacks a period.
-Servant at the inn: "Without it's Miasma burning powers..."
-In the library scene, Mia calls the book "Dark Lion's Roar?", with the question mark. That seems off.
-The leftmost NPC in the knowledge wing 2F quotes the last prophecy as "Fear the Revenant, the Vanguard of Ruin," -- pretty sure that last comma should be a period.
Running thoughts as I play through:
-Giving the opening scene the same music as the title screen is a nice touch. It always feels a little bit jarring when the title music cuts off, especially when it's this good.
-I like that the stat-up items explain exactly what the stats do. It's really nice to have that level of clarity and user-friendliness.
-Oh, you can change equipment mid-battle? That's really useful!
-The Unbroken effect is nicely creepy and unsettling. That's not something you usually think about in RPGs.
-A test that guarantees you kill a quarter of your applicants seems really wasteful, especially given that humanity seems to be dwindling here. How do they have the population and resources to throw away perfectly useful people like this? It doesn't even seem necessary as a "prove you can kill" thing, if they're just supposed to be fighting inhuman monsters.
-Oh wait, Aeyr's pointing that out! I like perceptive protagonists.
-I really love how much detail and characterization you're putting into the passive traits, and how some of them are negative.
-The introduction to text skipping was hilarious, if a bit fourth-wall-breaky.
-"The sealing of Purgatory, the Oracles losing their power of prophecy, and the emergence of the Fog all took place at the same time seventeen years ago." ...Interesting. So I guess that gives us a timeline in relation to Soul Sunder. It seems like Arya's powers should be really relevant to what's going on, but you say this one's self-contained so she must be off doing something else. Honestly that's probably for the best, Chosen Ones swooping in and saving everything usually make stories pretty boring!
-Ah nuts, I hoarded the stat boosters from the dream instead of using them and just realized I lost them forever. I typically wait until I get more party members so I can allocate stat boosters more fairly. It would probably be a good idea to add some hint that the items won't transfer into the real world, like Aeyr could say "the stuff I pick up here never becomes real" or something like that.
Well crap, now I have to restart to do that. Tomorrow, for the hour is late! But overall, I was really impressed by the opening. The game looks highly professional, and the SNES-style graphics set it apart from other VX games (which sometimes look a bit too sleek, especially when I've played a lot of them). I love how much stuff there is to explore and examine, too! The battle system looks more complicated than most RPG Maker games while still being pretty easy to understand. I like that SP affects defense; that adds an extra layer of consideration to blowing all of it on powerful skills. Seems like it might make disincentivize heavy armor too much, though -- the armor boost can be cancelled out by the stamina drop, but stamina is more useful since it's a skill pool.
Edit: Oh whoops, should I have posted this to the blog post?
Also, bug: if you interact with the Aeyr lookalike in the prologue castle from the south, the game hangs afterwards. Also also, soft resetting seems to give me that stack error bug.
-Vanessa says "the King" in the opening scene. Titles such as "king" are only capitalized when they are used in place of or as part of a name. Similar logic should follow for fantasy species/creatures, but Tolkein muddied the waters there and everyone's followed suit since.
-Ferocity description: "Aeyr has always held a deep seated aggression..." Stacked adjectives always use a hyphen, so this should be "deep-seated".
-When Aeyr encounters the guy in the castle, the guy says "dear...old... Dad?" I'm pretty sure the "dear" should be capitalized, and the ellipses spacing should be made consistent.
-"The horror and disgust of killing a human had destroyed..." Seems like that should be "has"?
-Mia's scene in the common district: "...so grandmother can live happily..." 'Grandmother' should be capitalized.
-The description for Mail Breaker lacks a period.
-Servant at the inn: "Without it's Miasma burning powers..."
-In the library scene, Mia calls the book "Dark Lion's Roar?", with the question mark. That seems off.
-The leftmost NPC in the knowledge wing 2F quotes the last prophecy as "Fear the Revenant, the Vanguard of Ruin," -- pretty sure that last comma should be a period.
Running thoughts as I play through:
-Giving the opening scene the same music as the title screen is a nice touch. It always feels a little bit jarring when the title music cuts off, especially when it's this good.
-I like that the stat-up items explain exactly what the stats do. It's really nice to have that level of clarity and user-friendliness.
-Oh, you can change equipment mid-battle? That's really useful!
-The Unbroken effect is nicely creepy and unsettling. That's not something you usually think about in RPGs.
-A test that guarantees you kill a quarter of your applicants seems really wasteful, especially given that humanity seems to be dwindling here. How do they have the population and resources to throw away perfectly useful people like this? It doesn't even seem necessary as a "prove you can kill" thing, if they're just supposed to be fighting inhuman monsters.
-Oh wait, Aeyr's pointing that out! I like perceptive protagonists.
-I really love how much detail and characterization you're putting into the passive traits, and how some of them are negative.
-The introduction to text skipping was hilarious, if a bit fourth-wall-breaky.
-"The sealing of Purgatory, the Oracles losing their power of prophecy, and the emergence of the Fog all took place at the same time seventeen years ago." ...Interesting. So I guess that gives us a timeline in relation to Soul Sunder. It seems like Arya's powers should be really relevant to what's going on, but you say this one's self-contained so she must be off doing something else. Honestly that's probably for the best, Chosen Ones swooping in and saving everything usually make stories pretty boring!
-Ah nuts, I hoarded the stat boosters from the dream instead of using them and just realized I lost them forever. I typically wait until I get more party members so I can allocate stat boosters more fairly. It would probably be a good idea to add some hint that the items won't transfer into the real world, like Aeyr could say "the stuff I pick up here never becomes real" or something like that.
Well crap, now I have to restart to do that. Tomorrow, for the hour is late! But overall, I was really impressed by the opening. The game looks highly professional, and the SNES-style graphics set it apart from other VX games (which sometimes look a bit too sleek, especially when I've played a lot of them). I love how much stuff there is to explore and examine, too! The battle system looks more complicated than most RPG Maker games while still being pretty easy to understand. I like that SP affects defense; that adds an extra layer of consideration to blowing all of it on powerful skills. Seems like it might make disincentivize heavy armor too much, though -- the armor boost can be cancelled out by the stamina drop, but stamina is more useful since it's a skill pool.
Edit: Oh whoops, should I have posted this to the blog post?
Also, bug: if you interact with the Aeyr lookalike in the prologue castle from the south, the game hangs afterwards. Also also, soft resetting seems to give me that stack error bug.
Imaginary Friends
Finished with Ending 3. Struggled for a bit with the safe puzzle, but after learning it's determined by a choice you make at the start of the game... not worth it. I drew a picture of a girl when I should have drawn a boy before I knew what either the boy or girl represented, therefore no Best End for me? That seems unfair.
There wasn't a lot of thematic consistency throughout this. The dollhouse area was nicely creepy, but I don't see what it had to do with anything. Why does the hat doll fall apart and attack you? Does the boy doll represent anyone? Why is there a random severed head I can't do anything with? What does the tea party and envious doll have to do with anything? It feels like you're just ticking off a cliche box there. Likewise, I don't get what's up with the candy in the house -- so Hailey has an abusive mom/dad that we never learn anything about? Or she feels guilty about disobeying her parents? Okay??? What's the point of that? It never goes anywhere.
Likewise, I'm not clear on what red cap boy is getting out of this.
Why does he keep trying to kill Hailey, by locking her in the tree or just straight-up killing her when she's invisible? I presume he's responsible for the whole magic spirit journey in the first place, so I also take it he's trying to kill her from all the lethal hazards. If he's her imaginary friend, won't killing her kill him too? Why is he doing this? And why does he try to kill Oliver? Isn't that killing himself? Maybe the other endings shed more light on this but I really don't get it.
The ending conversation with Alex also felt really wooden and stilted, but if it's all taking place in Hailey's head that makes some sense.
It's weird to me that the hook to make you get the best ending seems to be helping Oliver, though? Letting go of imaginary friends seems like an important part of growing up, so I don't understand why it's good for Hailey to cling to him. Is she secretly, like, a wizard, and her mind turned Oliver into a real person? I don't get it. I assumed the two friends in the story were actually the other way around, that Hailey abandoned a real friend for the sake of an imaginary one and now he was going all psycho ghost on her, just because if he's the one who's not real I don't understand why I'm supposed to care about him.
There were also some text errors throughout -- nothing major, but mom/dad weren't capitalized when used as names, some commas got dropped, and some messages didn't end with punctuation. Portraits also seemed inconsistent.
There wasn't a lot of thematic consistency throughout this. The dollhouse area was nicely creepy, but I don't see what it had to do with anything. Why does the hat doll fall apart and attack you? Does the boy doll represent anyone? Why is there a random severed head I can't do anything with? What does the tea party and envious doll have to do with anything? It feels like you're just ticking off a cliche box there. Likewise, I don't get what's up with the candy in the house -- so Hailey has an abusive mom/dad that we never learn anything about? Or she feels guilty about disobeying her parents? Okay??? What's the point of that? It never goes anywhere.
Likewise, I'm not clear on what red cap boy is getting out of this.
Why does he keep trying to kill Hailey, by locking her in the tree or just straight-up killing her when she's invisible? I presume he's responsible for the whole magic spirit journey in the first place, so I also take it he's trying to kill her from all the lethal hazards. If he's her imaginary friend, won't killing her kill him too? Why is he doing this? And why does he try to kill Oliver? Isn't that killing himself? Maybe the other endings shed more light on this but I really don't get it.
The ending conversation with Alex also felt really wooden and stilted, but if it's all taking place in Hailey's head that makes some sense.
It's weird to me that the hook to make you get the best ending seems to be helping Oliver, though? Letting go of imaginary friends seems like an important part of growing up, so I don't understand why it's good for Hailey to cling to him. Is she secretly, like, a wizard, and her mind turned Oliver into a real person? I don't get it. I assumed the two friends in the story were actually the other way around, that Hailey abandoned a real friend for the sake of an imaginary one and now he was going all psycho ghost on her, just because if he's the one who's not real I don't understand why I'm supposed to care about him.
There were also some text errors throughout -- nothing major, but mom/dad weren't capitalized when used as names, some commas got dropped, and some messages didn't end with punctuation. Portraits also seemed inconsistent.
I Miss the Sunrise Review
the best part was all the flavor stuff, as is often the case in (the better end of) vidyagame writing
This is true -- as with The Reconstruction, the technical writing was often quite good -- but I consider that more flash than substance.
but still, "no substance"...
I genuinely hope I am wrong about this. If you found engaging literary themes in this worth discussing that I missed, I would love to hear it. Those existed in The Reconstruction and The Drop, even if they were a little hackneyed -- I still believe that Havan is the most chilling and effective analysis of player and hero behavior this side of Undertale's Chara. But I don't see IMTS making any point that hasn't been made before in countless other science fiction cliches.
Giving this game's plot+setting 2.5 out of 5 Asimovs or GregEgans seems defensible, while it clearly deserves 4.5 out of 5 VideogameSciFi.
I disagree with that. Even leaving aside the plot (which is often the focus of RPGs), the gameplay just wasn't engaging to me. The bonus boss is the only battle that doesn't end in a blink of an eye (and therefore allows you to use the battle mechanics to their fullest potential) and it's just... boring. Attack, attack, attack, retreat, attack, attack, attack, for a good half-hour or so. The battle system is trapped between a rock and a hard place -- the damage formulas make battles end far too quickly for the mechanics to actually come into play (Zone of Control was almost never a factor for me, for instance), but even if that was fixed more reasonable battles still would have no depth. The Reconstruction let you strategize, set up buffs, disable opponents, stuff like that. Even the attack skills were very varied in what they could do. This all resulted in battles that were legitimately exciting and engaging -- they were drawn-out, but that was accompanied by changes in circumstance that required you to change your tactics over time. That's not the case here, sadly.
I was very close to giving this 3/5, but all the little things added up to tip it over the edge.
Also, you kind of mix the game falling short of its potential and it saying something you don't like, which are both reasons for not enjoying it, but which should not be presented as arguments for each other.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. It's more that, while flailing around for something to engage with, I saw the ending as the one thing with anything approaching literary depth, and so I analyzed that, and disagreed with the conclusions I found. That's two strikes against the game -- it had very little to say, and what it did say I disagreed with.
I Miss the Sunrise Review
Aw, that's a shame about How Far, especially given how much buildup it had. Maybe it is best for you to move on to bigger and better things though. TTL's apocalypse narrative sounds like it might be covering similar ground, which interests me.
I'm surprised to discover that Tez was actually intended to be the ultimate final boss. I thought we were intended to read him as sympathetic throughout the games, which led to some frustration at how selfish and cowardly he was -- but if he was intended to become a villain eventually, that actually does make sense. I still think it could have been a lot clearer in IMTS, but that does make me a lot more charitable to the narrative.
Shame that it has a "the magic goes away" ending, though, that trope always makes me sad. The interaction of magic and science always struck me as the most interesting and creative point in this series, so it's a shame it sounds like it was never going to be explored thoroughly.
Whatever was the deal with Moke and the greater shra, though?
(How many of my wild crackpot theories were accurate, by the way?)
@NeverSilent: Do millions of years really pass between episodes? I never got that impression. Not much time seems to pass between episodes 1, 2, and 3; the only time we're told that a major timeskip occurs is between 3 and 4, and there's payoff to the claim, as things are very different from how they were before.
That is exactly the problem. An episodic format would be acceptable if each episode was a truly self-contained story... but they aren't, because nothing is ever resolved. The story feels indecisive as to whether it wants to be a grand overarching epic or a series of disparate vignettes. I actually think each episode contains an interesting idea and I might even like them a great deal if they were expanded into full stories (and didn't lean so heavily on cliches)... but they're never allowed to reach their full potential. Each one contains setup, and action, but never resolution. They tap out just as I'm starting to get engaged. Episode 4 is the worst offender -- despite having the most action and stuff actually happening, it crams two plots into the same space, which obviously results in it not having enough time to do justice to either.
They also step on each others' toes far too much. It's not just the circumstances that change wildly between episodes, but the tone and narrative themes. A post-apocalyptic setting cannot coexist with the plots of episodes 2, 3, and 4, which revolve around very powerful organizations at their full strength acting on very high-minded goals. They're magically completely unaffected by the Shine due to plot fiat, which makes no sense, narratively. If the inciting event doesn't matter, you don't have a consistent story. And as I mention in the in-depth posts, Typelog and EROS, and their respective sins, come from two different worlds, so pitting them against each other and asking deep questions about which one is worse is just really confusing.
Simply bringing up philosophical topics isn't enough to carry a story, at least not one of this length. At some point something needs to happen; a point needs to be made. This happens in one episode, but it would have been better if it had happened in all of them, if they were really intended to be discussing completely different topics.
Ah, but that's just it -- we didn't. Show, don't tell. I honestly thought pre-Shine society sounded pretty nice, my first time through.
But -- that idea is itself a nihilistic cliche. I don't think it's inevitable that utopian societies will inevitably fall to decadence and ennui. And honestly, telling that to me, an (almost) engineer, is really dispiriting and hurtful. I worked myself up into a good rant here, but basically, it's not just the ending that bothered me, but a combination of things that made me read the ending in a worse light than I might have otherwise. Media (sci-fi in particular) as a whole is really, really anti-intellectual and anti-science, and this "technology will only make us unhappy so stop trying to make the world a better place" narrative is really tiring to me. I see myself in Neff, in Ral, and in the Progenitor -- but all the story does for them is to trample over their dreams, tell them they're wrong and/or evil for trying, and kill them. Stories that do that are just as much bullies as the people who beat us up and take our lunch money -- but worse, because they discourage adults who are in the position to make real change. There's wisdom in being Zen about things, but "nothing matters, stop trying and commit softcore or actual suicide" takes it way too far, in my opinion.
I'm surprised to discover that Tez was actually intended to be the ultimate final boss. I thought we were intended to read him as sympathetic throughout the games, which led to some frustration at how selfish and cowardly he was -- but if he was intended to become a villain eventually, that actually does make sense. I still think it could have been a lot clearer in IMTS, but that does make me a lot more charitable to the narrative.
Shame that it has a "the magic goes away" ending, though, that trope always makes me sad. The interaction of magic and science always struck me as the most interesting and creative point in this series, so it's a shame it sounds like it was never going to be explored thoroughly.
Whatever was the deal with Moke and the greater shra, though?
(How many of my wild crackpot theories were accurate, by the way?)
@NeverSilent: Do millions of years really pass between episodes? I never got that impression. Not much time seems to pass between episodes 1, 2, and 3; the only time we're told that a major timeskip occurs is between 3 and 4, and there's payoff to the claim, as things are very different from how they were before.
they seemed to be exploring (not resolving, mind you) different philosophical concepts
That is exactly the problem. An episodic format would be acceptable if each episode was a truly self-contained story... but they aren't, because nothing is ever resolved. The story feels indecisive as to whether it wants to be a grand overarching epic or a series of disparate vignettes. I actually think each episode contains an interesting idea and I might even like them a great deal if they were expanded into full stories (and didn't lean so heavily on cliches)... but they're never allowed to reach their full potential. Each one contains setup, and action, but never resolution. They tap out just as I'm starting to get engaged. Episode 4 is the worst offender -- despite having the most action and stuff actually happening, it crams two plots into the same space, which obviously results in it not having enough time to do justice to either.
They also step on each others' toes far too much. It's not just the circumstances that change wildly between episodes, but the tone and narrative themes. A post-apocalyptic setting cannot coexist with the plots of episodes 2, 3, and 4, which revolve around very powerful organizations at their full strength acting on very high-minded goals. They're magically completely unaffected by the Shine due to plot fiat, which makes no sense, narratively. If the inciting event doesn't matter, you don't have a consistent story. And as I mention in the in-depth posts, Typelog and EROS, and their respective sins, come from two different worlds, so pitting them against each other and asking deep questions about which one is worse is just really confusing.
Simply bringing up philosophical topics isn't enough to carry a story, at least not one of this length. At some point something needs to happen; a point needs to be made. This happens in one episode, but it would have been better if it had happened in all of them, if they were really intended to be discussing completely different topics.
You've already seen what they did with it when they presumably had it
Ah, but that's just it -- we didn't. Show, don't tell. I honestly thought pre-Shine society sounded pretty nice, my first time through.
But -- that idea is itself a nihilistic cliche. I don't think it's inevitable that utopian societies will inevitably fall to decadence and ennui. And honestly, telling that to me, an (almost) engineer, is really dispiriting and hurtful. I worked myself up into a good rant here, but basically, it's not just the ending that bothered me, but a combination of things that made me read the ending in a worse light than I might have otherwise. Media (sci-fi in particular) as a whole is really, really anti-intellectual and anti-science, and this "technology will only make us unhappy so stop trying to make the world a better place" narrative is really tiring to me. I see myself in Neff, in Ral, and in the Progenitor -- but all the story does for them is to trample over their dreams, tell them they're wrong and/or evil for trying, and kill them. Stories that do that are just as much bullies as the people who beat us up and take our lunch money -- but worse, because they discourage adults who are in the position to make real change. There's wisdom in being Zen about things, but "nothing matters, stop trying and commit softcore or actual suicide" takes it way too far, in my opinion.
I Miss the Sunrise Review
But... there's a sequel! Which means that life goes on! ... And there's magic, which reverses entropy by its very existence...
Yes, it's possible we will be going Good End after all. I did bring this up in the original post: since this is an incomplete story, I can't be certain my reading is correct. Maybe the moral is going to be that the Progenitor was just going about it the wrong way and it is totally fine to want to save the world! I'd still have issues with that but it would be a lot less creepy. But because the plot is nothing but sequel hooks, it's kind of hard to know what the ultimate resolution will be.
Edit: Also reversing entropy (if latent energy can even do that) wouldn't actually help here; you're thinking of the Big Freeze (which scientists believe is the more likely outcome). The Big Crunch is caused by the gravity of all matter overwhelming the expansion force of the universe. But I'm sure magic could find a way to eradicate tons of matter too. /nitpick
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