Sir.
We feel sorry for Iris not even 10 seconds after she attempts to murder us.
The way Morden words it, we should be weeping on the floor.
Since when was the last time any of us genuinely felt sorry for a fictional character?
we? who is we?
Read, child, read
Maybe we’d actually be sorry for a few characters if they weren’t just Hothead, Emo and Sidekick
not for a long while
actually ive been watching game of thrones recently, theon greyjoy probably
Surely not the playerbase of the game forum, that would be absurd!
Well with Vetex’s storywriting skills I kind of doubt the deuteragonists are going to be anything but that
And I guess Tucker remains Emergency Food Supplies
Not a single character has any emotional depth whatsoever. Every single character we kill just goes “Tsk. whatever dude…” like they just lost in a videogame.
The merchant ship captains’ lines though 
Those are very dark for some reason.
They say stuff like “Forget the loot, save yourselves, crew…” or “Whatever have we done to deserve this?” It makes me feel bad every time.
3 Likes
While the content of the lore could be argued as dark, most of the time it doesn’t feel that way. It could simply be me, however most of the “dark” events in the story don’t have any form of weight to them.
The Fracture feels less like a cataclysmic event that reshaped the world and more like a far-past event that didn’t take much progress from humanity. 80% of humanity is gone, yet only 100 years of progress lost? For such a horrible event, it is woefully irrelevant so far.
The Winterveil Extermination, while certainly a genocide, doesn’t feel like it matters. It’s lore-dumped onto us in the mines - something I’ve yet to see a single person read through. The only trace of Winterveil beyond this is Gloam Ruins and Neviro’s Journal, neither of which give much impact to the genocide itself. I cannot feel anything other than “oh hey, Nero is a horrible person”, no sympathy for Neviro or his people.
Port Mistral’s whole fiasco with the Keraxe also doesn’t feel as dark as it is. From the start of Nimbus, you’re told to go to Sameria. You don’t even know Port Mistral exists until you’re told to go there - well, unless you sail for a good 10 minutes to an island in the corner of the map. Once you’re actually there, with the entire place burning - there’s nothing you can do to save anyone. There isn’t anyone TO save. Even having a few civillians get killed in front of you by Keraxe before fighting them would be something to sell how bad of an event this was, however it just gets written off as “Keraxe did a war crime”, similar to Nero.
I’d also like to touch on characters - where are their personalities? Every boss we’ve killed has been totally fine and accepting of their death. Some have drawn-out chats with the player before they’re finished off, which doesn’t help them seem flat. There’s no self-preservation instinct in any of them, even someone like Elius who SHOULD. He only joined the order to follow in Carina’s footsteps, he should be pleading for his life to some amount. Instead he just lays there and accepts death.
Perhaps it’ll get better because we “breezed through the bronze sea”, however characters being so one-dimensional makes it tough to care for them. Morden, Iris, and Neviro could all be killed off and I bet half the player base wouldn’t care - they’d call them frauds. If you don’t humanize a character or make them half-way likeable, it won’t feel like anything if you kill them off. Give the player a connection to whatever event happens, don’t dump things through exposition.
TL;DR: Lore may be dark on paper, however it doesn’t feel like it.
(nonsensical rant go!)
2 Likes
This makes perfect sense, we’re literally being told somebody is evil instead of feeling it
we don’t really see anything dark directly other than Beringer’s torture but it’s greatly implied that there’s some messed up stuff happening
I mean the bronze sea’s story is literally magic hitler’s grandson joins fanatic magic cult and is generally a bad tyrant guy who executes his citizens but I don’t think Roblox would be up for portrayals of every single thing
That’s just rude 
We haven’t seen what either he or tech can really do yet
True, but with the way the story (and vetex) currently frames these actions, it doesn’t really seem to lean in the direction of dark and gruesome but rather just menacing and powerful. Kinda like in anime when villains blow up cities or planets, it’s used mostly to show how strong and evil the character is rather than indicate that the show is actually dark. I don’t expect AO to go in that direction either anyway since it’s a Roblox game
the lore can be dark though its offset by the game itself, being limited by roblox, + the overall feel of AO both game-wise and lore-wise
The Order has done some really bad things especially with human experimentation (though we dont know exactly what yet) but due to their presentation so far nothing can really be done with that
Nero genocided an entire kingdom (based on the in-game populations of kingdom islands itd be atleast 10,000+ people) though its treated like a feat he did instead of dark
The Dark Sea surrounds what remains of the world leaving civilizations near permanently separated from eachother. Though it’s not an active threat to anything as long as you don’t go into it, so that kind of holds it back in this (unless the Abyss Sea actually happens 
)
I think it has the potential to lean into being more dark but i dont think thats gonna happen… It’s neat to think of AO through that lens though especially for storytelling
i mean it get pretty dark when you discover secret at Makrinaos island
(I fucking shit my pants when i saw how dark the secrets lie at Makrinaos island)
And lore can get a bit dark especially during Fracture event
My mind immediately flashed to Genshin Impact when reading this(help)
cause they’re from ravenna (Rome (honorable))
if they were from somewhere else they might crash out
captain maria (pirate) (dishonorable) acts the same
