What’s your problem with the storyline?

Game Discussion
21

The best way I can describe it is by looking at how the Bronze Sea and Nimbus Sea storylines establish the danger of their enemy kingdoms.

The Nimbus Sea established Keraxe as a threat by having the main cast arrive at a decimated town, failing to save it, with a monolithic ship looming in the distance and the main cast being forced to flee as a torrent of enemy ships chases them.

The Bronze Sea established Ravenna as a threat by getting lore dumped in a prison about how Winterveil was wiped out.

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22

If i remember it right, this should be accurate

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23

agree on the separation part, we rarely ever see the group (or even just two people) in action together apart from the mini fight with iris and the pirates.

personally i think the story is somewhat still alright if you do a deep dive about how the entire ravenna-aesir story happened, i just think there are a lot of unfilled potholes. like dawg what happened to the ruby roger guy :skull:

at most i think we should at least have some npc dialogue update after a storyline. it would be a cool feature if there were traveller/merchant npcs that we could hear gossip from. at least we can get updates on things like ravenna’s future and frostmill after enizor’s departure

6 Likes
24

every 20 irl minutes is 1 ingame day so if you had a 3-hour long dsea expedition you would take 9 ingame days

25

really hoping on the personality expansions, because the way i see it they’re all equally as cold and serious. i understand for neviro and morden because they both lost important people, but iris is described by morden as “a ticking bomb” so i was hoping she’d have a more aggressive or spontaneous personality. we don’t know much about warren but he definitely displays calm and mature qualities, guess we can only find out when we see him more :v

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26

maybe it’s just me, but Nilah trusts us way too quickly.

Making us, who go by mercenaries, do diplomacy? Shouldn’t she entrust one of her generals who she’s known far longer than us go to Skyhall and place us in the battle instead?

The Ravenna king was mysteriously assassinated, and a bunch of REALLY strong mercenaries (one of which is in possession of a sea curse and a very powerful one at that) just appears so conveniently?

I get that we saved some of her men from Maria, but she trusts a group of really mysterious people with this task too quickly. We just met her. Then we get tossed to mistral only to sail back which honestly feels like a waste of time.

Speaking of Maria, the forest of mast plot really just feels like a plot device so that we are able to get an audience with Nilah. Maria doesn’t feel significant to the story and her presense is really underwhelming. She’s another “boss that appears with no prior mention only to get defeated by the mc”

also why doesn’t she sent the emissary we just saved to skyhall instead of us. Again, she probably knows them for longer and they seem more fitting than a bunch of “mercenaries”

edit: It could be that she does know and doesn’t want to make an enemy of us, but making us do diplomacy knowing we were involved in a killing of a monarch is a bit too much. god knows wtf would happening in skyhall, putting us in the frontlines would have been a safer bet since she knows we’re strong

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27

I feel like this only looks like the case because the story is unfinished. I think the Maria plot might turn out to be very relevant later on as there’s a huge war going on with the Corsairs that I dont think the main story will just dismiss. Captain Maria is the set up.

If it didnt happen, and it turns out the Corsairs were important later, people might complain that there was no build up for the MC to get involved lol

Otherwise, yeah, you have some good points there. A bunch of mercenaries literally allowed in the War Room is just…

28

lmfao maria was just there to stop us and mention the corsair country, she literally doesn’t expand on it and we just leave for sameria like what??? :sob:

29

I can definitely see this being a setup, but I can’t help but feel very underwhelmed about the whole situation.

She shows up, gets defeated, drops exposition, lives or dies depending on the player, will never see again till the payoff comes.

this happens A LOT with ao bosses. Shura shows up and disappears, hoping for payoff. Elius appears gets defeated spews exposition and lives or die by the player, still hoping for payoff. Argos, big man with big armor and big weapon, legendary warlord, gets 11 dialogue boxes (i counted from wiki) before dying. Argos has payoff, with his death throwing ravenna into a panic. But honestly that feels underwhelming because when we stepped foot into ravenna, we were fine. We were like tourists, we even had a casual chat with Revon.

Only until we got attacked by Carina and Julian did it feel like it was a payoff, but the thing is the moment just feels so quick. We, the audience, don’t feel the impact of his death.

Carina is also another “appear, defeated, exposition, die or bye”. Julian gets 2 appearances and we haven’t seen him since. unless he’s going to play a major part in the later parts of the story, he hasn’t shown it.

He could definitely play a part in the war (i have a prediction he’ll let it out to nilah we killed calvus if he finds her). but again, we have to wait for the payoff.

Iris is the exception to this rule of course, but we rarely get to see her in the story. She doesn’t do much to help us right now (and no, killing a bunch of guards in the hall doesn’t count. remove that part of the cutscene and the story will not change)

2 Likes
30

yeah same

also, AO is written more like a book than a story game

  • all worldbuilding we get is from pieces of loredoc an npcs that like, me and 5 other people pay attention to
31

This is why I’m scratching my head as to why we’re getting THREE other members in the group.

Juggling a 7 person team (or is it 6? Dunno if it includes the MC but my point still stands) and making them all have even just decently fleshed out personalities/interactions is hard enough in a narrative-focused medium like books, comics, or TV shows, but in a video game structured like AO? Downright impossible without making the game a cutscene simulator.

Like you said, we can already see that with how little we’ve talked to Morden and Iris (Neviro who?) and it doesn’t seem like that’ll change considering we’re splitting up again… Maybe we can all be wartime penpals and send letters to each other :skull:

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32

chekhov’s gun

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33

Yeah that doesn’t make any sense :sob:

Honestly I’m fine with him being a parody character of Gol d Rodger

I really wanna see them working as an actual team plus I wanna see morden flex his curse

We basically know them on a surface level which is why splitting up is so annoying like lemme get to know them damn

34

This pic I made quite a while as a shitpost will never stop being irrelevant

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35

Damn you called him out :joy:

36

I think the reason we’re splitting is just because there is so much ground to cover in the overarching story rn. One of the biggest reasons I think we’re splitting up in the Nimbus sea specifically is that the MC is gonna meet the rest of the main cast while he is alone and the rest of the current cast is doing their own thing and getting stronger. The cast also being apart from the MC allows their growth in story to spike when we meet them again rather than be gradual and seemingly come out of nowhere by just being with the MC which could be better or worse depending on what you want.

Also in lore we have spent a days sailing with each other and walking and being in the cities but obviously those parts get sped up to get to the actual story with what little time there is.

It’s like how in one piece they’re always a family but also always end up slit on the islands.

Overall I think we’re gonna be more of a package nearing the end of the nimbus sea and from then on still probably split off but have time with different characters to develop their personalities one at a time.

10 Likes
37

In my mind sending us as a diplomat is just a lore device to get us a glider and meet the next cast member, as well as get skyhall involved. the ONLY possible reason I can think of Nilah sending us to skyhall as a diplomat is because she truly believes it is a difficult task her diplomat to get all the way up to skyhall alone, and believes that skyhall will be really unaccepting of helping at all.

38

That’s not necessarily what a plothole is, that’s just an unresolved plot point of a side character that hasn’t been brought up for a few chapters

39

no i literally meant “unfilled potholes” not “plotholes” because this doesn’t affect the main story. but there is a lot of side information that we don’t know about or never got a clarification on, like revon’s so called death.

40

how did you literally state something that is literally just a plot point that hasnt been resolved yet :sob: