Let me ask you all a question.
What’s the difference between deepwoken and AOs islands?
Size? Yeah no shit. Deepwoken obviously beats AO islands in size that’s a no brainer. I’m talking about a different part.
When you look at an island from AO you can get the theme and design fast. It’s easy to remember and easy to travel around. And while some islands in AO contradict the combat due to being too small they are still very easy to comprehend and traverse.
Now with deepwoken. It barely feels like you’re on an island no matter which one you go to.
Everything feels so hidden. Like there’s mysteries everywhere. When you travel to erisia for example you’re met with a gate to a forest. When you travel far enough you’ll find an abandoned ancient city. Then you’ll find a cave full of monsters. Then through all of it you’ll find a fucking laboratory
See where I’m getting at?
What im trying to explain here is that the difference between AO and DW islands is that.
AO focuses on keeping hidden parts of the map extremely well hidden and not too outlandish.
DW focuses on doing something that places DW above AO in Island quality. That being. You can easily get lost on the island.
So what I wanna know is will AO ever have an island that can get extremely high while not appearing to be, have extremely unique areas for the island that you wouldn’t expect to see, and allow you to get lost in it and constantly question where the Kentucky fried fuck you are?
No vetex worshippers. I’m not saying DW is better than AO. I’m saying DW has more complex islands than AO and YOU CANT DENY THIS. “B-b-b-but we haven’t even se” Shut the fuck up
I’d say no, because AO follows a linear story while Deepwoken doesn’t which is why it’s able to add places that feel unique within a completely normal looking island.
From my short experience of AA and playing wom, the story seemed to just be follow a straight path without much divergence in the unique places in each island or place. You probably won’t be finding a secret labatory with a crazed madman unless the story points you in that direction.
But (before you snobby assholes say it) Yeah, I haven’t play AO so it is totally cool if I’m wrong idc i’m just giving my opinion fuck you.
Imagine if this game goes full God of War and has this absolutely massive area just for world building and a couple sidequests with literally 0 direct attachment to the main story.
I feel like it should be a secondary/tertiary focus on AO.
Story and gameplays good but good graphics can easily convince people to play your game.
Yknow what they say. “Grab them by the eyes”
from what i’m getting u want the exploration feeling of dw to come into ao and i gurantee u ur gonna feel like that at somepoint when u see the world and especially the seas beyond and what have you.
it’s kinda unfair to compare islands in terms of importance, gameplay and lore wise since they’re important in their own right. let alone compare the two games as they’re going for different directions entirely.
yeah u can get the general gist of an island by looking at it in ao but the same applies to dw ontop of being easy to traverse through outside of sailing around the entire thing, like hive, etris, erisia.
hive is tall and wide meaning it’s more mountainous combined with the desert and the giant gate. automatically u know and feel like exploring both sides to see what the hell is behind it and find a way to do so. u eventually figure out it’s the right side of the island when facing the gate upon entering the place and find out aratel and the green place.
erisia is forest like while also being very tall as well meaning that it’s also mountainous like hive but as a forest this time and leans more to the right. hence u’ll wanna go to the right like everyone virtually did other than maybe going left to see the small area over there.
song is painfully straight forward as u can explore the islands on the left side of it anytime anyhow. but with the island on the right the very obvious choice is up and u get that it’s going to be very rocky from it’s appearence being mostly stone.
minitysyra follows the same idea like erisia just snow this time and that u go up like songseeker. to then find the cultists and valley of heros and find the dangers within them.
none of this is a bad thing and is a good thing really, but it’s more to point out that dw follows the same route as well like ao in terms of getting the gist of a place and theme of smth
ik u mentioned not to go the “but we haven’t seen it” argument but it still applies here, we can’t know how islands feel like in ao vs how they feel like in dw. they can be as u say or very much not.
for dw islands barely feeling like islands i’d say the opposite as i constantly get the feeling like i’m on an island. its likely due in part of what u and others including myself commonly think what islands are like.
we mostly think of the small pacific islands that u see like the small wilderness islands, small island nations, atols, etc. this also stems from map sizes in games as well which don’t really help with cause u think of the the small tiny islands like in gpo and bandit beater games and what not.
which then causes u to forget places like england, new zealand, madagascar, hawaii, etc. are still islands that can straight up look like ur inside a continent but feel like an island nonetheless
this is in part cause of seeing the place for the first time, hell the bronze sea is hella mysterious and hidden like from what we can see as we haven’t explored it yet. yet when exploring everything is pretty on the islands things are pretty on the nose. the only reason why we can’t know more is that they aren’t on the islands or places to let us know more.
with dw it’s been intended that u’d find out about the place by just simply exploring and we do. we just miss the bits in pieces that aren’t in the game and where arch answers some of them too cause of this intended reason.
this also lands into the “but we haven’t seen it yet” arguement when ur trying to compare the two. comparing the games is dumb in of itself and the fact one’s released and actually have played vs one u’ve only seen pictures and videos of.
as for ao keeping hidden parts extremely well hidden and outlandish, it’ll probably follow the same line as dw. u can find out the mystery of the area if u just look and probably on the noze about it too
getting lost on an island doesn’t necessarily make it instantly of higher quality ,and as mentioned before is a given that u’ll get lost cause u don’t know the place.
being lost doesn’t really constitute the feeling of what u, me and many others like experiencing that gives exploration feeling. seeing something for the first time, the unknown, the potential or apparent difficulty, the uniqueness of the place, etc. is what gives that feeling. going around in circles doesn’t really do much and only puts u in an annoyed moot mood.
depends as for having extremely unique areas for an island/place that u wouldn’t expect to see is a possible given as u can make it as such.
for example u could have a place like frost mill but then have a giant rainforest of a cave inside the island an the ice while still able to receive light cause of the ice and remain temperate.
or u could have an entire ocean sky island archipeligo like in the ground but be in the sky and think from the bottom and surrounding edges it’s just some really large mountinous sky island
for getting lost in places it depends if that kind of lvl of exploration is and wanted to be seen which idm nor anyone will. as long it’s fun and induces the unknown exploration of everything still again and again i see no reason to not have it be a possibility
I feel like AO’s exploration is going to be more based around finding islands than exploring them, from what we’ve seen most islands are pretty open and lack verticality so i doubt that theres much to find. (The only exception to this is probably going to be Frostmill since it has a mine system and the actual town area seems to be just a small part of it.)
Deepwoken focuses more on actually exploring islands since you cant really tell whats on them from a distance because of the fog. Erisia has a few entrances but the main gate one only shows you part of the weird garden area with the seeker and a cliff face, you actually have to explore the island to see 90% of it. Hive does this by putting the whole thing on a mountain that you cant scale (legitimately) without using one of the nearby statue islands, which gives a decent view of Starswept, but only shows a small part of the whole thing.
I honestly much prefer what Deepwoken does because exploring on foot opens up a lot of opportunities that exploring by boat doesnt have. AO would probably benefit more from having island design similar to deep, so islands can be more of their own separate adventure instead of just a short pit stop to finish a quest or something.
