Personally love the story, but not a fan of some parts of the dialogue itself.
These two are the ones that irk me the most, I don’t mind it being a bit corny, but it’s spoken so out of place and kind of forced.
From what I understand, AO MC is not meant to be projected on, kinda like Kris from Deltarune, so you can’t have your AO MC be a ruthless villain without it clashing with the story as to why he’s helping random people like Iris, but some of the dialogue sometimes carries heavy anime protagonist vibes, and not the good kind.
I know in the story the AO MC is meant to be a savant, so regardless of what build you’re going, you KNOW how to use magic in lore. I’m more of a fan of show don’t tell, and there’s a bunch of exposition that could be done through visuals or experience than text.
I don’t mind THESE because it’s specifically Morden talking about HIS experiences, trying to re-tell everything to you, so it makes sense in-universe why he says that. But his first lines feel extremely weird, it’s like if it was a synopsis for the game instead of someone talking to you.
It’s only tad bits of dialogue that don’t feel natural in the game, as for the story I’m really enjoying it, I understand splitting up and know that we’ve had little buddy-buddy moments since Morden is too busy trying to recover from deep injuries, Iris taking care of him, Neviro leaving and us awakening. We go to Sameria to be intercepted, and basically have to rush everywhere since it’s a shaky place full of fighting until we eventually make it post Port Mistral and we split up.
So yeah, my only gripe with the story would be so that some dialogues actually sound like people interacting instead of trying to tell a story through people interacting.
It’s kinda like the difference between
“Jamie, I heard there’s going to be a big party at Sam’s house this Saturday. It’s supposed to be the event of the year with lots of people, great music, and amazing food.”
“Yes, I heard that too, Alex. I think it’s going to be an incredible night where everyone will have a fantastic time. I can’t wait to see all our friends and enjoy the evening.”
And
“Hey Jamie, you going to Sam’s party on Saturday?”
“Yeah, heard it’s gonna be huge. You in?”
“Definitely. Everyone’s talking about it. Should be fun!”
My two cents are that, since Morden just found out about your amnesia, he brings up the matter more… uncertain. He asks “Do you at least remember how to use magic?”, I feel like the other part sounds extremely unnatural and there’s no way to bring it up normally. I think that should be more… implied and shown, not told by a character. Hell, it may even work as a little tutorial for people to know that they need to select the magic and cast stuff (quite useless if you’re aiming for intuitive gameplay, but still would make sense in-verse, and you can leave some of the instructions in the quest tab, making people actually use it to check what they’re trying to do), and after you M1 or press Q, Morden goes like “Okay, that’s a relief, magic is a significant advantage for us to have”.
This way it could tie-in the dialogue, explain a little bit about gameplay and be a natural interaction in-verse. It could be applied to more exposition dialogues, like Elius’.
I feel like you can take this out.
Because he says that like a second AFTER he talks about Beringer and Sea Curses. MC doesn’t even react or say anything, so it’s not like Elius has a reason to go “Shit, I talked too much” out of the blue. You can change it to a threat or something like “As for you, this is where your story ends, you made your last mistake following me here”.
After battle and having him at your mercy, now you question him about what he meant and NOW he goes “Fuck, I actually said too much there”, which then you ask about more details, he gives them AND then you can bring up the tangent of you asking about Curses, and that if he explains it to you, you’d let him live. Which now makes sense as to why:
1- He’d tell you everything. In the story he does this because “The Order doesn’t give second chances”, yet he wants to be left alone to his injuries in peace. So it’s either he wants to die bleeding out or plan to save himself and hide from the order as implied by Carina, either way it doesn’t make sense for him to want to be left alone to his injuries but say that he’s going to die anyway by the Order, and therefore no reason for us to have a choice on sparing or killing.
2- Sparing and Killing is an option, he would be asking for spare in exchange for information, and after him telling you everything, THEN you would be given the option to spare and kill. You’ve got everything you wanted out of him, so it’s either honor your word and let him live, or go fully ruthless and killing him despite him telling you everything.
In my opinion, him giving this much exposition in an attempt to live makes more sense than “I’ll tell you, I’m dead anyways, but let me to my injuries after this”. And make the exposition fit the narrative rather than just feel like you HAD to explain Sea Curses someway in the story, and this was the chance for a dying guy to explain it like a powerpoint presentation. In one he explains because he doesn’t care about secrecy anymore, in the other he explains because he thinks you’ll spare him after that, so tell me which one is more likely to go in-depth about topics that he’s trying to make sure you understand and as many details as he knows.
The rest of the story related to this point should go pretty much the same with more reason, Carina either says that his brother is a coward (as he spilled the beans to try and live) and that he’s hiding somewhere (surviving his injuries and you sparing him), or that you killed him which pretty much gives the same dialogue as of now. And more reason as to why Ruthless kills anyone even if they comply like Captain Maria.