Arcane Oddysey's story is kinda

Game Discussion
41

The story is good enough that it has me hooked, even though it’s definitely flawed when you compare it to off-site games and books. Still, I’m very excited to see where it goes. I’m hoping Revon returns to fight us with Cursebane and the Cloud Curse; those are some loose ends that need to be tied up.

Some of the flaws in particular:

  1. Lady Carina doesn’t do much to serve the narrative at all aside from making some players feel a tiny bit bad about what they did to Elius. I believe she shouldn’t have died in our first encounter with her. She had extreme emotional and narrative potential as the brother of Elius, many people are morbidly curious to learn more about what their dynamic was like, but it goes unused, which I think is very unfortunate. I think it would be better if she died after a rematch in later seas, probably when she’s learned a better fighting style than Basic Combat and picked up a few spirit weapons.
  2. Lack of closure, although I may just be expecting the loose ends to be tied up too early. Like what in the world happened to General Julian? It’s possible that this could be answered in the Nimbus Sea, but for some reason I’m doubtful. I really want to know if Morden killed him or not.
  3. Too much telling and not enough showing. The specific scenarios and scenes of the plot don’t seem to be made with bringing out the characters’ unique personalities in mind. Instead, we learn about them from journals that many super-casual players won’t even find. We know from the journals that Iris is extremely hot-headed and uses her special gift of Flare Magic to threaten people, and Morden is actually extremely caring and sentimental beneath his cold and quiet exterior. Neviro is super dedicated, independent and not afraid to do the hard work. But you wouldn’t have a firm grasp on these things if you only did the storyline, aside from Neviro’s work ethic being shown a bit by the fact he’s so willing to return to Ravenna and fix an entire falling and corrupt kingdom that he owes nothing to (quite a monstrous ordeal, I respect him for that).

Again, I love AO’s story overall, and the potential of it. These are just a couple of areas where it’s falling short. I can’t wait for what the Nimbus Sea brings!

14 Likes
42

the story gets a bit boring after doing it for like 15 times

43

I don’t think it is boring? I just said the story quests objectives are repetitive.

44

Nothing is impossible when you’re a gamer legend :sunglasses:

45

when the incompleted game is incompleted??? :scream:

4 Likes
46

repetitiveness can result in boredom :frpensive:

but repetitive in what way? Like I said before, how else do you think this should be executed in a way that doesn’t seem repetitive?

even at the story locks, there is enough stuff to do that isn’t bandit beating and a repetitive grind method is often even discouraged

47

I did mention it doesn’t need to ALWAYS be different or just not every 3 quests you need to do something else but at least have a little more quests that don’t require you to talk to a NPC after defeating some bad NPCs or a boss, something more unique than that y’know.

I never mentioned that so I don’t really know how to answer you

48

I was talking about the parts that people often complain about guh

How do you want to tell a story without telling it? The dialog is needed and the boss fights are a conclusion of that dialog. There are many hidden details like secrets and scattered notes. The story doesn’t only involve dialog and bandit beating, I think that much is already clear. If you think the current story is not satisfying enough then you really only are looking at a specific point in the game or are leaving some other parts completely out of the picture.

you don’t have to reply to everything

1 Like
49

Yeah but I feel like if I reply to everything I’ll make it clear enough for others

50

One of my main criticisms of the story outside of the level lock is how little to no interaction we had with the characters.

Sure we get to meet Iris and her grudge against Ravenna, but we never were more intrigued as to why we are so curious about her and Ravenna than what the game told us.

Sure we meet and know Morden, but we barely interact with him we know practically nothing about him or are invested in him.

Just as SpectreTheFox said, we mostly learn these characters from telling rather than showing.
As much as I hate the advice “Show don’t tell” there is a balance between when you need to show and telling, but AO currently sits in telling the story too much.

I’m not sure if Vetex intentionally did this, but one of the reasons why Edward Kenton is so liked is we get to adventure with him, we get to see him on the ship and his dialogue talking the rough waters, the beast under the ship, and quest about him being in GNavy mugshot after stealing his old equipment is a much more engaging than the main cast. It felt like we can feel his character rather than having to read walls of text just to understand them.

12 Likes
51

That’s why I’m hoping the Nimbus Sea’s story is longer and gives us more time with the characters we know. I think the way we don’t get to have that much interaction with them is simply because this is the first sea out of 6 and right now we’re just meeting them and discovering our real goal which is stopping the Order of Aesir. I’m hoping in the next sea we’ll have more interaction since we’re all together now in the same ship going to the same place with the same goal in mind.

1 Like
52

I also hope we get to learn about Order of Aesir more than “ooohh spooky evil secret elite controlling the war seas” and learn about the many of the High lord and Baron about their causes for such power that they will do anything no matter the cost.

An organization with such a selfish goal that seems to benefit only the High Lord doesn’t sound like a very sustainable organization, let alone 200 years even after being said defunct.

I would also like how they got their members, as for now the weaker folks we meet at Skycliff Island, we never really learn about them than they said they expect someone would come.

I theorize them to be more like the Templar Order from Assassin’s Creed, though honestly, the Templar Order is kinda in weird position with how Assassin’s Creed as a franchise right now.

53

I kind of expected the lack of dialogue or info about the Order since it’s literally supposed to be a secret and their members seem to be super loyal (except for the rookie Elius) for not telling us anything about the Order at all more than super basic information even at their death. We’ll probably eventually discover about it the more we defeat Order barons or high lords through the story, we’re also missing King Calvus’s second baron which many people suspect of being Lord Ulricus which I disagree. About the dude’s at Skycliff we’ll never see them again and I don’t think they’d really reveal their ideals for us.

54

I don’t think Ulricus is in the Order, though I do think he knows about the Order as he’s Calvus older cousin and their child involvement with the Order.

55

I’m guessing that all recruits are either:

  1. Megalomaniacs or pantomaths who joined the Order because they were promised to get a fair share of the immense power that comes with whatever they’re trying to awaken, or discover. Maybe the Order’s higher-ups have been continuously saying “We’re very close” for hundreds of years to keep its members hooked. Most people probably don’t last long enough to ever see if they were lied to or not, since the Order kills off anyone who doesn’t do their job well.
  2. Promising young individuals who were groomed into the Order from childhood and likely had no other options, exactly like King Calvus.
1 Like
56

Honestly my only real problem with the story is how the Order’s goal is phrased. “Furthering the power of magic at all costs,” is really clunky to read. It’s also the only way their goals are phrased, at least until Calvus when we learn their main goal of awakening some ancient power. I feel like throwing in some variation of that phrase like, obtaining magical power no matter what is somewhat more flowing.

The other problem I have with it is it’s super vague. Which does make sense they are highly secretive, but the way it’s said makes it seem like they want to make everyone’s magic more powerful. Which is a good or bad thing depending on how it’s done.

Tldr: The way the Order’s goals are written are really weirdly worded, and they’re a pet peev of mine in an otherwise great story.

3 Likes
57

uhm, hello ve’ex, i have come to the sight that the atlanteans are very interesting on their design, and i have been asking myself, are the heads of the mutated atlanteans based on the dunkleosteous or the blobfish?
image

image
image1024×586 108 KB

58

In my opinion, I wouldn’t even say the problem with the first 3 islands is that there aren’t many complex events to do anything with. It’s the fact that the story overall is very poorly paced and executed as well as having multiple stupid plot conveniences. The story really has a lot of potential, and I don’t feel like you did a lot of what you could’ve done with it all.

  1. there was no time taken to build up the reveal of characters, relationships between them, how the player interacts with the main party and why we even care about them in the first place.

Like for example, does Morden seem like a good friend to you? We’re expected to care about this guy that is supposedly our friend. We wake up with amnesia, no idea where we are or what happened and he just tells us to go Redwake and fucks off to who knows where until 2 chapters later where he once again appears for 5 minutes and then leaves. We are given no time to learn more about him, our own past, and adjust to the situation we are in. And that brings up another thing too! WHAT IS OUR MOTIVE? I assume the amnesia thing is supposed to serve as a way for the player to self insert their own person, but it kind of curses your own protagonist don’t you think? We wake up with no memory, our friend tells us to go somewhere and leaves us and now we’re on a journey to just go and fix peoples problems. Why? we are not given a reason at all. NOTHING HAPPENS to push the protagonist into even wanting to do this. We are pushed into all this conflict because we were asked to go somewhere. If you were trying to make the beginning feel like AA, you tried too hard and it just does not work. I do expect though that our past with the experiments and stuff will be touched on. It would’ve been nicer if we could adventure with him up until the stepstones where we then split up and he goes to Sailors Lodge while we go up to Cirrus

Onto Iris, def a step up. We spend a lot more time with her and I like the dynamic between her and Morden. However, the motive problem comes up here again. She is basically an environmental terrorist with an incredibly stupid idea. I think the whole thing about her melting Frostmill because they just happened to belong to Ravenna should’ve been done away with. I know the player is “supposed” to be pretty neutral but I just think this completely criminalizes her when she genuinely has been wronged by Ravenna. I feel it would make more sense if she attacked an island that had more apparent Ravenna presence. Frostmill doesn’t feel like its that important to Ravenna compared to an island like Shell. To be fair though I guess Shell Island is pretty far down south, but it just would’ve felt better than her melting Frostmill. Circling back to the motive thing I think we could all be much more sympathetic with the issues she’s been dealing with had she attacked something like the Ravenna camp on Shell Island. Melting an island full of innocents feels like too much.

Now onto Neviro…He really should’ve appeared more often. Neviro not having a bigger presence than he did kind of just made him a complete joke. There is just no reason to care about him until the super out of the blue lore drop out his identity. I REALLY think people would appreciate it if he was more present and had some evidence that he was The Prince of Winterveil leading up to the reveal. It would’ve been more impactful that way. Also kind of felt dumb that Calvus got a freebie shot on him and he DIDN’T DIE. You’d think that if Calvus could get so close to the Prince he has been so eager to kill so easily that he would MAKE SURE he actually died. Overall Neviro could be a good character he just does not have enough presence. I did really like his little diary thing too cause it def gave some very much needed background on him. Thank you for that. (those diaries really should be more obvious though, I doubt you actually want players to miss them)

(Side note: Warren is a really good character, very interesting and enjoyably mysterious)

One more little thing before I move on from the characters: Im sure you have heard this before but the build up to the big baddies like Argos and Calvus being absent SUCK! You should not keep any mention of important characters like this in the dark for so long. Im guessing it could be a product of not having all the characters and stuff planned out at the time but for future reference there needs to be npcs and whatnot talking about these important characters. You could’ve easily had mentions of Calvus and Argos in Frostmill, Palo Town, Sailors Lodge, and Shell Town. Introducing the “main” villain in the last section of your story is terrible :sob:

  1. The world is not presented well enough in the story and the game in general. It feels like its made to make lore enthusiasts squeal in delight, but I feel as if for new fans it’s just kinda meh. When you know the lore and characters behind many things you pick up on these details way more.

The world just doesn’t feel as alive as it should y’know? And no my reason for feeling this way is not because there are no walking npcs.

Like think about Redwake for a moment. The introduction section of the game. You could’ve introduced some little bits about Sameria and what its like. More about Redwake’s culture and whatnot could’ve been introduced, even outside of story. It wouldn’t matter it should just be there! Also think it would’ve been quite cool if you added a bit more to Chapter 1 and had us go to Shura with the Redwake Warriors, fight Shura when negotiations with him failed, and then get Sailboat and Redwake Warriors crew as a rewards. This would also be a more friendly approach to introducing new players to crews and other ships

Aside from that myself and many others have also been disappointed by the fact that not enough npcs just talk about random shit. Like just completely random like what they did or ate today or a trip they’ve recently been on or an item they lost. All npcs do is lore dump in your face, the world does not feel very alive. I wish there were more npcs to just talk to about random things, and that would then lead into them telling you about stuff going on in the world. The lore facts from npcs are interesting yes but they are just thrown at you without reason. There doesn’t need to be a reason for all of it of course but it would be appreciated if npcs were more natural and not just bricks that tell you the Wrath of the Gods has ended.

One big nitpick I have for this section is Elius telling us about Sea Curses. The way its brough up feels just awful and unnatural. We just beat this guy up and he strangely decides to lore dump sea curses on us. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for Elius’s mention of Sea Curses to spark interest in us and end up asking Warren about it? I think Warren explaining sea curses would’ve been a better approach. Nitpick tho I know.

Last little nitpick here: Palo Town is way too empty after its revamp :(( It feels so dead because of how little npcs there are and how big it is. Even just adding dialogueless npcs would help with immersion here.

  1. Pacing & a Plot Convenience.

This ties into the whole character thing. The pacing is absolutely awful, again we are given nearly no time to spend with the main cast and things just happen way too quickly. Chapter 1 is fine but it could def have some more added on to it. Chapter 2 is the only one I think is paced decently and its intriguing enough. Chapter 3 and 4 are the issue. Fort Talos is genuinely good if not for the fact that there was no build up to Argos existing beforehand but I won’t get into that again. The worst part about this is the Truth Serum bullshit. Please…why did this have to introduced…why couldn’t Beringer just have folded under the pressure and torture. You have set up the worst plot convenience ever because if you don’t ever use it again it was just a stupid pointless cheat card that will make everyone mad. Like why not use it in Ravenna? We were arrested for KILLING ARGOS. I feel like Ravenna would 100% have interrogated us, and they could’ve used Truth Serum on us for that. That would’ve been interesting cause maybe we could have heard some stuff about the past. And that could’ve been a way to see Calvus for the first time, taking part in the interrogation. It also just would’ve made the dungeon section a bit more palatable.

Continuing on with the pacing issue, Chapter 4 suffers so much because these characters were never mentioned beforehand and the plot moves so fast. We get there and in literally a day we get hunted down by Carina. Details about Carina, Revon, and Calvus, the problems in Tiberia just aren’t fleshed out and its missed potential. Imagine how cool it would’ve been to see Calvus returning from the dark sea too and whatnot. And Revon honestly just feels like a joke, I audibly laughed when he was spewing out his death threats. Us “betraying” him could’ve been very impactful if we had way way more than 1 interaction with him.

The rest of the story from here was okay, boring but okay. The setup for Nimbus sea is really good and interesting and im excited to see it. I REALLY wanna be hopeful for it because the war thing is incredibly intriguing. I think it would really benefit the game and the players if you went back through Bronze sea story and polished it a lot more. Moving to better parts of the story might feel like the obvious thing to do, but the beginning of the story is arguably the most important. If you don’t have people hooked (which majority are very much not interested with the story) by the beginning then people just aren’t gonna care much for the genuinely good parts. If the beginning is good then you have people more eager to keep playing through it and less people who complain about the story sucking.

hope this was written well enough. Im quite tired right now so sorry if some things are worded poorly.

thats all.

18 Likes
59

There aren’t any level gaps, just level up beforehand.
If there’s level gaps, that’s either because you’re weren’t prepared enough, not proactive, or just didn’t do what you’re supposed to do.

2 Likes
60

There is reason why people love Edward Kenton more than the main cast.

1 Like