Maybe you’re already planning some of these things. Probably you are.
1) Cutscenes
It’s currently very easy to ignore the story. I played through three times before I had more than a glimmer of what was going on and what was at stake. I’m looking forward to cutscenes that provide that up-front narrative immersion to draw me into the story world, and then, after passing significant stages, bringing me back again. Say what you will of the Diablo franchise, but they do cutscenes, immersion, and clear stakes pretty well.
2) More NPCs with character development
This is coming along, but it’s still easy to ignore. It would be great to meet an NPC early on who will matter right up to the final fight, and whose relationship with the player-character changes in some way, like starting out a friend and ending up an enemy, vice versa, or something more subtle than that!
3) Player choice
I’m not looking for a radically different game format, but just a small decision or three that will somehow affect the game world as well as the final fight. A great example is the bandit quest in POE.
Thanks for all the hard work you are doing! I’m ridiculously addicted to this beta.
There is actually some of this, Grael for instance. He isn’t someone you meet early on though but starts out as a friend and ally then you have to kill him later. I agree that it would be nice to see more of that though.
For sure. Alric and Yulia are also interesting. Just looking for more, and yeah that early connection. Otherwise it feels like the player-character is an isolated protagonist without a lot of personal stakes.
Sounds like we will be getting voice acting at some point. That will help too!
Some thoughts from a writer and member of a publishing comitee…
I agree with all your points, but I’d like to bring a precision. Cutscenes won’t really make you understand the story. They will help you understand key moments and, step by step, have a better global view. What will really help you understand the story is… paying attention. If the player does not try to engage in the story, they will never understand it. Players need something that grabs them by the hand and whispers “come with me, you’ll be amazed”. This can be enhanced by a cutscene, but the opening has a major role to play. By “the opening”, I mean the first narrative elements that are not a cutscene.
We need a background. Something is already present in the game, but very little. NPCs that are of no use, except showing that there is a day to day life in several locations. That the Outcasts encampment is not just three ladies and a crossroads. That Heoborea is full of children. And so on. Some NPCs related to the story, but some that are not, and are only there to show the places are real.
For the player choice, yes, and that would confirm it is a “role playing” game. Now we don’t make story-changing choices, we’re mainly following orders/instructions and slaying monsters. Being sometimes able to make a choice helps us immerge even more in the game, the world and the story.
The MoF System is just a cool way for the devs to utilize this whole timetravel/alternative timeline thing and implement stuff that is just cool, while not needing to make it consistent with the main story.
So I would not call throwing random stuff at the player, that is not connected to the main story “character development”
And that is a brilliant idea.
EHG is tied to the main idea, but not to all elements of the campaign. They could create alternate smaller campaigns, with that.
Yes! Mini-stories that add to the world rather than the main plotline. I’m really enjoying the echo webs, but at the end of the day, they are still just a grind.
This can be said of most ARPGs, because the emphasis is more on the “A” and not so much the “RP”. In my experience, story and narrative in an ARPG are more as a backdrop that gives flavor to your mass murder of monsters. It’s the plate and presentation, not the actual food. The food is killing armies of monsters and getting powerful items. I think what you’re looking for is something that makes more sense to look for in a traditional RPG than from an ARPG.
I’d also argue that Diablo is actually a strong argument against the point you’re trying to make with it. Diablo 1 and 2 were both pretty minimalist in storytelling and they’re also the stories that the majority of people seem to love and remember the most from the franchise. It had a story and a world and cutscenes, but there was nearly zero character development and the cutscenes were memorable but also very short and far between. Diablo 3, on the other hand, put story a lot more front and center (some might even say they practically hammered you over the head with it), and as I remember it many players were decidedly not happy about that execution.
I’m not sure how that’s a great example. It’s just picking a stat bonus and it doesn’t affect the game world in any noticeable way.
Had similar thoughts about the game and its storyline/background plot etc… but I have held off drawing any opinions on it purely because of the fact that so much of the game content is/has been missing.
I was/am pretty excited by the possibilities of the story and the world of the game but until its more complete, I have felt that its been more like a collection of short stories held together loosely… Almost like a TV serial where there are episodic stories with a single multi episode thread in the background… Lots of loose ends and unexplained backstory and speculation…
Am hoping that with the new content coming, things will eventually coalesce into something more cohesive.
what i was speaking of was this:
the entire game from start to present (except for the one incident with yulia) we are presented with a linear time travel story, that being that the “present” is something which follows our character, the time traveler.
because of this, there should never be a “future” past our character until we, well, make it (or reach that point) i.e. the future should be subject to our choices/ free will, what have you.
but then for one shining moment of plot hole, yulia arrives and presents us with information from our own personal future, something which shouldn’t exist, which means the entire story breaks as it tries to shift from a linear plotline to the infamous “bootstrap (aka self-fulfilling prophecy) paradox” where we must now always become the version of us that interacted with Yulia in the way she recalled it to us (which we then proceed to literally do) OR in an alternative to this dead horse timeline we aren’t actually time travelling at all, and are instead entering multiple universes that started at different times, and thus are at different points, in which case there are a near infinite number of “us” doing the traveling, many of the “us” are already dead, we are incapable of changing anything from any universe that is already fallen to the void, empire, gods, or what have you, and basically we’re cosmic narcissists looking for the one timeline that makes us happy, and screw the thousand to millions of timelines we personally passed through that are now pre-destined to end in suffering and death.
TL;DR, so long as Yulia presents us with information from our future or a different universe version of us, the story either only has one way to end, or is completely weightless since we’ve already doomed far more timelines than whichever one we land on to “save”, should that even occur.
I see what you mean.
It’s an old thing that has been a problem in many issues (books, shows, movies, …). A kind of “your future is my past”.
Authors often solve it with suspension of disbelief (source: Suspension of disbelief - Wikipedia) which is a rather poorly acceptable explanation, but can work. It’s a matter of consent and abuse (intellectually speaking, of course). That can make a whole story become either brilliant or ridiculous, depending on how it is packed. That’s what we’re still to see in Last Epoch.
Considering how the rest of the story is, I guess they will be on the right side. But I’m pretty sure we’ll have all sorted out this way and not with a purely rational and 100% explainable thing, you’re right.
In all honesty, from a player perspective that has been playing ARPGs and MMOs for over 15 years, i don’t care. All stories seem to be some shade of “bad thing/person doing bad stuff, stop it”. Naturally, it’s imperative to have some motive behind what is happening, but for me all the motives end up being the same in these kinds of games.
The only thing that truly engages me in the game is character design (spells, attacks, passives), map design, boss design, boss fight and farming. All else doesn’t really interests me.
Considering an extreme position, would you still be interested with not story?
I mean, just the “endgame” activities, with well designed spells, attacks, passives, monsters, maps, bosses, farming, etc… everything except a campaign and a story?
Just curious…
Personally, i would. Granted, those aspects would need to be interesting, but the “why” for me is just dull.
Take for example my most liked design from Path of Exile: Delirium. The monsters were challenging, enemy spells were hard to see (but it was fixed, thank god), the content introduced for it was really well made, the atmosphere was superb, and there was little to no story behind it.
We knew the protagonist (?) of the league was bad, or at least insane, but i didn’t care, i could say it was one of the best leagues they ever made.
The theme of the expansion was insanity, opression, madness, and i think the trailer showcased it really well, so did the gameplay.
