I’m gonna keep this rant short because it probably wont get any attention, and i also dont want to cause drama bc this update is really good.
this post is specifically about skyhall, and its many flaws i felt throughout my time playing it. i wont complain about any major features or other regions/locations.
skyhall, despite how seemingly vital its said to be, seems incredibly underwhelming for what is was made out to be. I mean the nimbus sea is literally named after it, and yet it feels like a puddle the size of an ocean. there is VERY little content outside of the main story, which i kinda understand, but not really. theres a total of around 4 side quests i can think of off the top of my head, which is absurd considering cirrus island has about double that? not to mention the severe lack of item spawn rates up there. the nimbus wilds contains legit nothing except two grey one camps and three secrets, huh?
i wont deny that skyhall is probably one of the best story beats, and easily my favorite. but theres more to do at makrinaos, which is a side island compared to the focus of this sea. i dont understand it. maybe more stuff will be added in later updates, but i really was unhappy with how little time there is to spend at skyhall, considering how cool it is.
Skyhall manage to make me felt bad for Allanon but its so fricking short. I know we only stay there for a few days but like, at least let us spend those days meaningfully. We are envoy, not tourist, sure, but we literally befriend the prince. Like cant we go see he yap about painting or help him choose gift for his fiancé?
literally this. it would have been a great opportunity to get to know and bond with callahan, allanon, liara, and maybe even esmerelda before she gets turned into a quartermaster with no stats. skyhall is gigantic and utterly beautiful… but it feels like (at least to me) we don’t really explore too much of it during the main story
To be fair though, those screens usually only appear to skip through boring travel times or sleeping, otherwise those parts would sort of just be fluff that’s just there to pad out playtime/the story
(given how much time we spent in the skyhall portion, it would lwk end up with like half of the story being travel time )
though for the black screens where callahan escorts us back to the guest room, i think it would’ve been cool if we instead got to chat with him on the way there and see more of his thoughts of the current situation, and maybe let him yap more about allanon and liara and whatnot
Absolutely. I remember feeling that Skyhall was going to be a grand and huge adventure, but nope… it was very, very underutilized story wise and world building wise. Like I’m genuinely disappointed we never got to learn much from the Library. A place that could’ve been a great place to dump some info and perhaps the history of the game, but nope… it was behind Athena instead.
Not a Skyhall thing, but I felt some of the info we got from Athena’s journal could’ve just been put in the library and add depth to Skyhall tbh…
Another I want to add is how very underutilized the story makes use of the environment. As I get that Vetex wants us to have autonomy to explore all around, but the way the story was written all of a sudden makes us have to rush things up and left out all other side places that we could’ve explored and have more character interaction with.
skyhall is great but there was literally zero reason for us to be hit with the “later that day” bullshit rather than us going around the islands with allanon. Like, come on, it’s such an easy way to make us explore Skyhall:
Allanon, knowing that it’ll take us a few days before we get to actually meet the king, and knowing that public perception of seadwellers (such as his girlfriend) is very negative, asks us to go around with him and try helping the people of Skyhall with various things, to improve public perception
The player, having literally nothing to do, and considering that this might improve the chances of the king having a better opinion of us and being more willing to help, agrees, and we spend a bit of time going around Skyhall doing so.
During this, we could have a fucking tiny bit more setup for the guys that jump Allanon and his girl, like maybe have them watch us at the end of a few scenes, or be visible up on rooftops or something that unload if you try to get a little closer to then, so that way it’s not just some random mfs that stab two guys in 10 seconds and fuck off to eternity.
But no, we just have SEVERAL timeskips where we, the player, do jack shit except for sleeping in a diplomat’s room for hours and talk with Allanon for 3 minutes.
