Weekly Game Talk: Motrya

@battles: Sigh... I was praising the battles guys.
Darkmoor dungeon has great battles. It's got those thousands of downloads for a reason. Gimmicky isn't a bad thing.
Again, my only small complaint was that some of them are a bit long.

@Seperate Weekly Threads: I'm ok with this. Actually, if moogs, or some other could seperate this thread into 2 threads and place each thread in the review section after the end of the week, I think it would work perfectly.
Or, you could make me a mod and I could do it myself

I know JSH wants comments on Chapter 2, and not a reminder that I have or haven't actually played the game, so I have to apologize for being one of the offenders in this regard. I'm kind of in the same camp with the Wobbler in that I would love to play the game more seriously when it's finished, but am hesitant to return to it now if the story is as good as everyone is claiming. The problem with me is that I forget things very quickly, and if I have to play two chapters now and two next year, I won't remember much about the two I've played now. The flip-side of that is that I would like to give JSH some feedback on the game and I feel badly for not checking it out since the Heart of the OHR version. Maybe I can do a full review of it when it's finished next year.

What I did want to touch on is the intro discussion and the Lyte Snap discussion.

A guy at work and I were just talking about this matter of flashy intros to hook a reader (we were talking about books, not games), and the idea that it serves to mask an author's insecurity about his story. Specifically we were referring to the idea of playing an exciting scene in the future to get the reader's (or movie viewer's or game player's) attention and then telling the story that leads to that moment--a sign that the writer may not believe in his ability to hook a reader otherwise. We were talking about how stories that use that gimmick may not have the legs to stand on should they begin with the actual beginning. All of this would be in the author's mind, of course. The story could be great anyway. Feeding off of Giz's example, Star Wars was a great story, even if it did start with a slow tale about a moisture farmer and two droids. (It actually starts in space, but in regard to the main character, you get the idea.) But a flash-forward or epic flashback might be a sign that the author doesn't believe in his skill as an interesting story-starter, or, in some cases, an interesting storyteller.

This brings to mind another similar issue I've read about in some book or article about fiction (couldn't tell you which one). A similar fiction sin is to open a story with a balls-out action sequence, or something else similarly spectacular, and then following with a story that can never again reach that level of excitement. It's setting the reader up on a false trail, and while excitement may be swimming for a while, eventually the reader/viewer/player will figure out that the excitement is over, and then his or her interest will be lost. I think one of the advantages of starting a game out in a small village where nothing happens (and nothing major is talked about, except for rumors that the old homeless guy in the north is actually an adventurer who wandered in with amnesia, but who cares about him?) is that you can't go backwards from there. This is as boring as it will ever get. You have room to build on tension and excitement. As James will attest since he's read both versions, I've actually had to move the opening chapter of one of my manuscripts to the end (as a flashback) because it was the most action-packed part of the book, and it set up a false hook for the slower-paced nature of the remaining chapters, and the story is much better now for the move.

It may be too late for Motrya, but it's not too late for others who are still building new games to consider delaying the heavy flashbacks (or flash-forwards) if it's the most exciting part of the story. It's not wrong to have them, but it may be evidence that the rest of the story is slow or unexciting. Now, I don't think Motrya has a problem with being uninteresting. It has its fans for a reason. And JSH is a strong storyteller. But I agree that the game can be more interesting if it begins at its expected pace.

In regard to Lyte Snap, I don't have a problem with it. I'm one of the guilty party who has spent far more time on that than he has the rest of the game. Why? It's fun. Why would I turn down fun?

My philosophy on adventure games is this: Make it worth exploring. To me, giving me a cultural thing to immerse myself in is a good thing. It adds character to the game; it allows me to understand the characters and their world a little better; and it stops me from racing through an environment that the designers had spent a lot of time perfecting. The fact that you play it at the beginning of the game is a smart move. It actually stops the player from getting so distracted that he forgets the story--the story hasn't actually begun yet, so nothing is lost. Do I think it would've been nicer to spread it out a little? give minor characters throughout the chapters to pass a card along? Of course. It does get old quickly having to play the entire Lyte Snap experience before the final exam begins. But I don't think the game is worse for doing what it does. I'm glad we can play Lyte Snap in context of the game. Thank you, JSH, for thinking of me, the player, and considering that I might actually want to experience this world and not just simply race through it.

If I have anything to add to this conversation given my lack of time with the game, it's this: Don't just give us Lyte Snap; give us culture, recipes, local songs, whatever keeps us grounded in your world a little longer. You've already got the story in mind and the fans in place. Milk it for all its worth.

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Place Obligatory Signature Here

CHAPTER TWO SPOILERS AHOY

I agree with James about the swamp. The tiles definitely need work. But more importantly, I agree with him that the challenge level is awesome there if you're in the right frame of mind, it's a battle for survival and an escape kind of situation you don't see very often in RPGs. It could possibly be frustrating though, if you didn't know you could come back to poke around, if you thought you needed to fight every battle and get every item to get out, etc.

The Toxic Scroll bug did make things way harder, and I think that's a problem with Chapter 2 in general: Almost all the battles expect you to use some form of poison. Early in the chapter, IE: The swamp it's just hard to succeed without it. Later on in the desert, and especially the temple there seem to be battles where poison is literally your only option and for me, at least, it turned those battles into a kind of waiting game rather than an intense conflict between two groups. The tank is another example of the kind of big-boss that's kind of an anti-climax when the game seems to want you to poison it and then stay alive for twenty minutes.

Story-wise I think Chapter 2 had better pacing than the first Chapter, though we possibly got a little too indulgent with some of the NPCs and jokes. There's some parts that are a little convenient, they just happened to be in the swamp where there was a lyte ghost, just happened to land in the town where someone had found a scroll, the goons just happened to leave medkits for them, just happened that Icebird was okay. I do like the party dynamic of Murlor and Dayang by themselves and I hope we'll get to explore that more.

I would imagine the temple is going to be very divisive. I think splitting up the party and facing the different challenges is cool and gives some good character development, but I can see how it might be bordering a little on tedium and where it's a lot of battles in a very short space without a whole lot of scenery or plot development to space it out.

I feel like we should've had some kind of external shot of the temple. The travelling montages do a decent job of establishing a sense of distance, but some kind of... "Here's the temple, we're getting off our mounts and taking a look around" might've helped place that scene a little better. Especially later on when they go to where Lashaundra's parents (conveniently) are it feels a little... disconnected somehow. Maybe an external shot would've been good there too. Not that I could've pulled it off.

Speaking of Lashaundra's parents, I loved drawing them. All the walkabouts were a lot of fun to design and then implement in the existing style. The maptiles were a lot harder and as people have noted, I didn't do as good a job on them. I'm sorry for that. I had kind of hoped people would violently object to my graphics and then I could finish the whole thing in pure spite mode. I wasn't expecting any kind of understanding and definitely not the comments we've gotten from outside the community. Newbie left a lot to live up to, I'm trying my best and I appreciate all the support, advice, praise and especially the complaints that I've received. Complaints I know what to do with.

And without turning it into too much of a jack-off fest, I really enjoy the music. The soundtrack dudes did a great job and I think having so many unique tracks helps to make scenes and battles stick out in your memory.

I was able to play some more this week, and I finally got to the place where the party gets split up.

I was totally stumped on the Jupiter vs Dayang battle for a while, and was almost about to give up in despair when I remembered about the rubber boots.

I got through Icebird's battles without too much pain. I was worried about the Bacchus Golem, because I did not have any way to carry one of every possible type of elemental attack, but when I focused on first killing the wisps that were weak the the forlums I knew, and saving the others for last, it was possible.

Managing Lytes is a real challenge in chapter 2, and I have felt it strongly so far in the temple.

Actually, my first try was a few days ago, and I started with Murlor, and actually did give up in frustration-- but I am now seeing the avlue of doing the other paths first, because now by the time I get to Murlor's path, I will have a few extra Lyteros in my inventory.