Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Poll

Who's excited for Warrens' return?

me
- 8 (16%)
me
- 2 (4%)
me
- 5 (10%)
help i'm trapped in a poll i don't know why i'm here i'm so scared someone please help
- 29 (58%)
me
- 6 (12%)

Total Members Voted: 50


Pages: 1 ... 375 376 [377] 378 379 ... 1544

Author Topic: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome ???  (Read 3695636 times)

EmeraldWind

  • Bay Watcher
  • Hey there, dollface...
    • View Profile
Re: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome: Let's Get Al Back
« Reply #5640 on: June 05, 2013, 11:06:25 pm »

I think Emerald is right on this one. FFS confirmed that Illborn are beings without Soul Charge, which makes Willborn a subset of Illborn (since we know Yaos became Willborn by the same mechanism Illborn are created.) The biggest difference between Yaos and, say, Slog, is that he has his Soul Star.
Maybe. This would still raise a lot of questions, though.

For one thing, I don't think we understand what happened to Yaos well enough to say it's the same as Illborn creation. We know running out of soul charge looked like it was involved, but that's like saying it looked like running out of HP was involved with Riltia's transformation.

Quote
Yaos hits his final red number and runs out of Soul Charge.
I took this line as being particularly specific about why Yaos changed.

Also it was confirmed that Riltia's transform had less to do with her dying and more to do with someone tampering with her Soul Star. Check some of theory crafting on the subject of the Soul Stars and their owners. Especially, FFS's confirmation of the correct theory. Also see the Illborn theory as well.

Quote
For another, there's the whole "Two great souls destined to fight" or similar aspect. Was that a cause, effect, or neither of Yaos running out of charge, transforming, or being there at all? We're not sure.
Ciro was merely providing a warning. If Yaos consented to death and Ciro killed him prior to his transform there would have been no Spirit Duel. But once Yaos transformed a battle was simply inevitable.

Quote
Then there's the questions this raises about just what Soul Stars are and signify. This would seem to make them more significant than we thought, but we still don't know who gets one and why, or why they'd interact with a lack of soul charge to transform you into a horrible monster.
I thought for the most part we've known from the beginning that Soul Stars are very important and very significant. We've learned since then they they do not simply belong to someone, but are a part of them. See Slog's backstory. It mentions for a brief moment Slog saw his Soul Star before it was taken away. It heavily implies that a Soul Star is some kind of manifestation of the soul.

Soul Charge is mentioned several times. See the Sinful intermission and the Soul Charge tip. Soul Charge appears to be made up of emotions, feelings, and memories of the person. Illborn are creatures with no or less Soul Charge and we know that killing a non-Illborn will increase Soul Charge. It seems that without Soul Charge the Soul Star loses integrity. See Riltia's situation when Ciro restored her. Her Soul Star got messed up, but giving her Soul Charge put it back in working order. I imagine that Soul Stars are like variable in a computer program. If you subtract 1 from a variable at its lowest value, the result is the highest possible number for the variable. Stuff like this can bring about weirdness if the program doesn't expect it or handle it.

Quote
Finally, this raises the question of how Willborn come about normally. Yaos was an oddity, in that his Soul Star's powers and/or his intrusion into the Warrens seemed to sap soul charge. How would anyone else become a Willborn via this system? Just sort of not kill anything or have any life-changing experiences for a while and then go all Final Form in the middle of nowhere? Spend it all attempting alternate battle types and then turn into yet another alternate battle type?

It seems that being a Willborn has something to do with the Soul. We fight the Willborn inside its corrupted Soul because fighting the outside beast is impossible. If the Soul Stars are, in fact, Souls as it is implied then a Willborn does require the presence of a Soul Star.

Yaos's Soul Star seemed to have a deliberately devastating effect on him. Ciro seems to imply that the Warrens doesn't simply let people in. Yaos seems to confirm by saying it wasn't easy. Whereas Al and Wilford get in easily enough, but I think the implication that Wilford was an Illborn (the fact Illborn didn't attack him) might be showing us that Wilford didn't exactly make it through as easily as Al did.

Now a minor potential problem I can see in the future is... if we fight Proxxy and she has her Soul Star... she could take a last ditch effort and smash it. If smashing a Soul Star has the same effect as the tampering on Riltia's (which is to say caused her Soul Charge to go down) then she might go One-Winged Angel on us. Even worse, if this theory about Willborn is correct she might be even worse.
Logged
We do not suffer from insanity. We enjoy every single bit of it.

Harbingerjm

  • Bay Watcher
  • [ENTROPY INTENSIFIES]
    • View Profile
Re: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome: Let's Get Al Back
« Reply #5641 on: June 05, 2013, 11:09:38 pm »

such as playing non-Siblings for a while (whatever that means),
Given the ability of our Soul Star, I seriously doubt that's all that uncommon, or important (whoever set up the cycles would have to be incredibly incompetent to miss that we would end up doing that).
For a while, not just switching over to make them do something or something. Also notable that Ciro is dead during that time.
Maybe not unheard of, but almost certainly notable.
The Soul Star stopped working for a while after each switch, so it's not unlikely that previous cycles would have stuck as someone else for a bit, and that this would have been planned for by whoever set up the cycles. As for whether he's dead or not, it might not be common but that it might happen is an easy logical inference given the abilities of the Soul Star and the fact that we apparently start each cycle with no idea what we're doing. As such, it too should have been accounted for when setting up the cycles.

I find this doubtful, but time will tell.
I certainly doubt its commonness.
I'm not trying to judge how common it is (that's hard to say without knowing how different previous iterations of us may have been, though the fact that it has been suggested Proxxy changes fairly often implies she would have problems learning from the experience if we do swipe her minions), just how important it actually is overall. Like I said before, anomalies are likely to happen every cycle, so simply that something might be an anomaly does not make it important. In this case, we should be able to gather more information soon.


And then not get wrecked. This isn't something they always do, otherwise they wouldn't have commented so much on it. Regardless, it bored new holes. That can't be good for structural stability...
Since we still don't know for sure what the Warrens even is, who knows the effects on stability, but if Proxxy felt fine sending a bomb after us in Underside that totally messed the place up, going so far as to damage the local life support, I doubt structural stability is too great a concern.

What makes you say that,
We've seen it happen, seen others comment on it, and possibly seen part of the process behind it.

and what makes you think that's a quality of the whole Warrens?
I don't, though it does seem likely that a fair amount of it is given the haphazard nature of the first floor and the fact that the second floor is confirmed to switch. However, nothing makes me think the Underside is actually part of the Warrens either, as opposed to something that formed around it naturally (and by naturally I mean due to damage, people trying to dig out, access tunnels and such being made, etc).
« Last Edit: June 05, 2013, 11:11:20 pm by Harbingerjm »
Logged
15:35   HugoLuman reads Harb his secret spaghetti recipe

hops

  • Bay Watcher
  • Secretary of Antifa
    • View Profile
Re: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome: Let's Get Al Back
« Reply #5642 on: June 05, 2013, 11:14:59 pm »

Wait, so why isn't Oric talking in rhymes any more? Or might that be a conversation between Spira and another "angel" now that Oric's characterization had been retconned?
Logged
she/her. (Pronouns vary over time.) The artist formerly known as Objective/Cinder.

One True Polycule with flame99 <3

Avatar by makowka

freeformschooler

  • Bay Watcher
  • Hi!
    • View Profile
Re: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome: Let's Get Al Back
« Reply #5643 on: June 05, 2013, 11:29:39 pm »

One final addendum to the open letter: sometimes there are long stretches of time when I just feel like everything I make comes out terrible. Usually this is around the same time as other stressful things, but not necessarily. If none of my games are updating much, you can almost definitely attribute it to this (as it's rare a day goes by when I don't try to update, but not as rare that one goes by without updates).

Today I don't feel like updating Warrens just yet. Today... I feel like writing.

« Last Edit: June 05, 2013, 11:37:08 pm by freeformschooler »
Logged

monk12

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sorry, I AM a coyote
    • View Profile
Re: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome: Let's Get Al Back
« Reply #5644 on: June 05, 2013, 11:39:32 pm »

Quick! Musicians! The Ballad of Oric the Awesome!


FAKEEDIT: Aw damn Futuka beat me by quite a bit. Well, I didn't spend all that time in a rhyming dictionary to not post it!


Wait, so why isn't Oric talking in rhymes any more? Or might that be a conversation between Spira and another "angel" now that Oric's characterization had been retconned?

Yeah, the rhyming was supposedly Spira. It was mentioned in one of the "behind the scenes" updates, that's why Spira's head is designed the way it is- to look like the cutscene speaker.


DOUBLEFAKEEDIT: Interesting read, FFS. You have indeed hit on most of the peculiarities of the Suggestion Game genre, including the balance of story vs gameplay. Which is probably why Warrens has turned out so well, as you say :P

mastahcheese

  • Bay Watcher
  • Now with 20% less sanity and trans fat!
    • View Profile
Re: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome: Let's Get Al Back
« Reply #5645 on: June 06, 2013, 12:12:02 am »

The Gamification of Suggestion Games: Problem Sleuth Syndrome
I never really thought of this, but it's a reslly good point, and I do really like the way you made the Astral Influx work.
I've been working on Al for the fan game, and when I went back in the thread, for reference, I saw the moment when Ciro first switched to Al, and Riltia's icon was still on the menu, and it made me wonder. "What if we had hit her picture instead?"
Makes you wonder how different things would be.

Spoiler: On the Fan Game (click to show/hide)
Logged
Oh look, I have a steam account.
Might as well chalk it up to Pathos.
As this point we might as well invoke interpretive dance and call it a day.
The Derail Thread

Harbingerjm

  • Bay Watcher
  • [ENTROPY INTENSIFIES]
    • View Profile
Re: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome: Let's Get Al Back
« Reply #5646 on: June 06, 2013, 12:26:23 am »


That was awesome.
Logged
15:35   HugoLuman reads Harb his secret spaghetti recipe

mastahcheese

  • Bay Watcher
  • Now with 20% less sanity and trans fat!
    • View Profile
Re: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome: Let's Get Al Back
« Reply #5647 on: June 06, 2013, 12:33:50 am »

Logged
Oh look, I have a steam account.
Might as well chalk it up to Pathos.
As this point we might as well invoke interpretive dance and call it a day.
The Derail Thread

Mego

  • Bay Watcher
  • [PREFSTRING:MADNESS]
    • View Profile
Re: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome: Let's Get Al Back
« Reply #5648 on: June 06, 2013, 01:14:47 am »

Guitar backing track is written and is currently being converted from MIDI into actual audio. Then, my sweet golden pipes will finish the track.

That awkward moment when you realize you just sang a song into a microphone that's off.

I regret nothing.
« Last Edit: June 06, 2013, 01:47:49 am by Mego »
Logged

Darkmere

  • Bay Watcher
  • Exploding me won't bring back your honey.
    • View Profile
Re: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome: Let's Get Al Back
« Reply #5649 on: June 06, 2013, 01:47:46 am »

Lots and lots of interesting things about plot and mechanics and plot mechanics!

I'd never thought of things in quite that way before, but the perspective shed some light on things that I haven't been able to put into words before. So... consider this wtext a thank you for making me think, and also for making this game. I may not post often but I do keep up and enjoy it. (Oh and warning, I'll probably rant about Homestuck in here, too!)

Logged
And then, they will be weaponized. Like everything in this game, from kittens to babies, everything is a potential device of murder.
So if baseless speculation is all we have, we might as well treat it like fact.

Furtuka

  • Bay Watcher
  • High Priest of Mecha
    • View Profile
Re: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome: Let's Get Al Back
« Reply #5650 on: June 06, 2013, 06:42:28 am »

Guitar backing track is written and is currently being converted from MIDI into actual audio. Then, my sweet golden pipes will finish the track.

That awkward moment when you realize you just sang a song into a microphone that's off.

I regret nothing.

It doesn't seem to be working for me.


Nevermind got it :D
« Last Edit: June 06, 2013, 06:47:47 am by Furtuka »
Logged
It's FEF, not FEOF

GreatWyrmGold

  • Bay Watcher
  • Sane, by the local standards.
    • View Profile
Re: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome: Let's Get Al Back
« Reply #5651 on: June 06, 2013, 06:43:38 am »

DL2 changed significantly between the last time we were there and now. The shop room had a door to the north, leading to vending machines. One of those vending machines ended up where we met Yaos (also apparently the way to Proxxy).
What makes you think this applies to all of the Warrens, let alone the Underside?
Or that it wasn't triggered by major destruction caused by a certain Illborn we all know and (thanks to being turned back) love?

Also, I just noticed this, but I suggest you quote this post and look at the filenames of those images.
That was mentioned before. By freeform, even. It was the original design for Oric.

Quote
Then there's the questions this raises about just what Soul Stars are and signify. This would seem to make them more significant than we thought, but we still don't know who gets one and why, or why they'd interact with a lack of soul charge to transform you into a horrible monster.
I thought for the most part we've known from the beginning that Soul Stars are very important and very significant. We've learned since then they they do not simply belong to someone, but are a part of them. See Slog's backstory. It mentions for a brief moment Slog saw his Soul Star before it was taken away. It heavily implies that a Soul Star is some kind of manifestation of the soul.
Surprisingly, that doesn't tell us very much. In part, I suppose, because we don't know what a "soul" is in the Warrensverse, but also because we don't know all that they do. In particular, what happens if they are destroyed or tampered with? We can only guess from Riltia.

Quote
Soul Charge is mentioned several times. See the Sinful intermission and the Soul Charge tip. Soul Charge appears to be made up of emotions, feelings, and memories of the person. Illborn are creatures with no or less Soul Charge and we know that killing a non-Illborn will increase Soul Charge. It seems that without Soul Charge the Soul Star loses integrity. See Riltia's situation when Ciro restored her. Her Soul Star got messed up, but giving her Soul Charge put it back in working order. I imagine that Soul Stars are like variable in a computer program. If you subtract 1 from a variable at its lowest value, the result is the highest possible number for the variable. Stuff like this can bring about weirdness if the program doesn't expect it or handle it.
I'd like to point out that we had more than Soul Charge available. We were in Oversoul, which to me seems to be, how did freeform put it, "something about narrative control". It lets us do things which make hardly any sense to move the plot in the direction we want it to, if my interpretation of it is correct.

Quote
It seems that being a Willborn has something to do with the Soul. We fight the Willborn inside its corrupted Soul because fighting the outside beast is impossible. If the Soul Stars are, in fact, Souls as it is implied then a Willborn does require the presence of a Soul Star.
Hm.
Illborn are bodies without a soul.
Are Willborn souls without a body?

Quote
Now a minor potential problem I can see in the future is... if we fight Proxxy and she has her Soul Star... she could take a last ditch effort and smash it. If smashing a Soul Star has the same effect as the tampering on Riltia's (which is to say caused her Soul Charge to go down) then she might go One-Winged Angel on us. Even worse, if this theory about Willborn is correct she might be even worse.
Or she could simply die, because she lost her soul. Remember, Riltia's soul star was tampered with, not smashed to itty bitty pieces.

such as playing non-Siblings for a while (whatever that means),
Given the ability of our Soul Star, I seriously doubt that's all that uncommon, or important (whoever set up the cycles would have to be incredibly incompetent to miss that we would end up doing that).
For a while, not just switching over to make them do something or something. Also notable that Ciro is dead during that time.
Maybe not unheard of, but almost certainly notable.
The Soul Star stopped working for a while after each switch, so it's not unlikely that previous cycles would have stuck as someone else for a bit, and that this would have been planned for by whoever set up the cycles. As for whether he's dead or not, it might not be common but that it might happen is an easy logical inference given the abilities of the Soul Star and the fact that we apparently start each cycle with no idea what we're doing. As such, it too should have been accounted for when setting up the cycles.
1. We spent a rather long time in Al's body; then, when it recharged, we switched to another non-Sibling person. That could easily be much longer than typical.
2. I fail to see how this is germane.

Quote
I find this doubtful, but time will tell.
I certainly doubt its commonness.
I'm not trying to judge how common it is (that's hard to say without knowing how different previous iterations of us may have been, though the fact that it has been suggested Proxxy changes fairly often implies she would have problems learning from the experience if we do swipe her minions), just how important it actually is overall. Like I said before, anomalies are likely to happen every cycle, so simply that something might be an anomaly does not make it important. In this case, we should be able to gather more information soon.
Never become a cyclical villain who relies on each cycle being the same to ensure that each ends in your victory. A change is an unpredictable thing; it causes more changes. Worse, they have causes, which might easily cause more changes in even less predictable fashions. Oric should be concerned about them.

Quote
And then not get wrecked. This isn't something they always do, otherwise they wouldn't have commented so much on it. Regardless, it bored new holes. That can't be good for structural stability...
Since we still don't know for sure what the Warrens even is, who knows the effects on stability, but if Proxxy felt fine sending a bomb after us in Underside that totally messed the place up, going so far as to damage the local life support, I doubt structural stability is too great a concern.
I'm guessing that there was a bit of unintended collateral damage there.

Quote
What makes you say that,
We've seen it happen, seen others comment on it, and possibly seen part of the process behind it.
Yeah, I had forgotten. Of course, there's a problem of if the monster was released because the dungeon level could repair, or if the dungeon level was repaired because a huge monster was released.

Quote
and what makes you think that's a quality of the whole Warrens?
I don't, though it does seem likely that a fair amount of it is given the haphazard nature of the first floor and the fact that the second floor is confirmed to switch. However, nothing makes me think the Underside is actually part of the Warrens either, as opposed to something that formed around it naturally (and by naturally I mean due to damage, people trying to dig out, access tunnels and such being made, etc).
The first level didn't change, the second might have been repaired, and then you admit that the Underside would probably not be part of it.
Nice.

I'm downloading the song to listen to later.
Logged
Sig
Are you a GM with players who haven't posted? TheDelinquent Players Help will have Bay12 give you an action!
[GreatWyrmGold] gets a little crown. May it forever be his mark of Cain; let no one argue pointless subjects with him lest they receive the same.

Harbingerjm

  • Bay Watcher
  • [ENTROPY INTENSIFIES]
    • View Profile
Re: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome: Let's Get Al Back
« Reply #5652 on: June 06, 2013, 07:16:02 am »

The Soul Star stopped working for a while after each switch, so it's not unlikely that previous cycles would have stuck as someone else for a bit, and that this would have been planned for by whoever set up the cycles. As for whether he's dead or not, it might not be common but that it might happen is an easy logical inference given the abilities of the Soul Star and the fact that we apparently start each cycle with no idea what we're doing. As such, it too should have been accounted for when setting up the cycles.
1. We spent a rather long time in Al's body; then, when it recharged, we switched to another non-Sibling person. That could easily be much longer than typical.
2. I fail to see how this is germane.
For the first, it doesn't really matter whether it's typical, the point is that it's an easily predictable possible effect of putting someone with our Soul Star through a number of cycles where they lose their acquired knowledge and apparently completely change personalities and sometimes gender, so whoever set up the cycles is fairly likely to have expected it. That then implies that it happening is not all that likely to cause "critical plot breach" or they would likely have put something in place to prevent it.

I find this doubtful, but time will tell.
I certainly doubt its commonness.
I'm not trying to judge how common it is (that's hard to say without knowing how different previous iterations of us may have been, though the fact that it has been suggested Proxxy changes fairly often implies she would have problems learning from the experience if we do swipe her minions), just how important it actually is overall. Like I said before, anomalies are likely to happen every cycle, so simply that something might be an anomaly does not make it important. In this case, we should be able to gather more information soon.
Never become a cyclical villain who relies on each cycle being the same to ensure that each ends in your victory. A change is an unpredictable thing; it causes more changes. Worse, they have causes, which might easily cause more changes in even less predictable fashions. Oric should be concerned about them.
...Each cycle being the same? Even Cain, stuck in a prison somewhere in the dungeon, knows that things change significantly each cycle even just in the nature and experience of the characters involved, let alone how they interact. The point is that some changes are more important than others, and we don't know or even have much reason to suspect that this change is particularly important, though if it is we may well begin getting clues soon.

and what makes you think that's a quality of the whole Warrens?
I don't, though it does seem likely that a fair amount of it is given the haphazard nature of the first floor and the fact that the second floor is confirmed to switch. However, nothing makes me think the Underside is actually part of the Warrens either, as opposed to something that formed around it naturally (and by naturally I mean due to damage, people trying to dig out, access tunnels and such being made, etc).
The first level didn't change, the second might have been repaired, and then you admit that the Underside would probably not be part of it.
Nice.
The first level didn't change while we were inside it, no, but the largely varied rooms suggests it was at least partially randomly generated, given the fact that other locations appear to have themes.
Of course, it's possible that that was the first level's theme, but hey. The fact that the second completely changed itself around, and based on information given does so periodically, is really more to the point, since it suggests that either the people in charge of the Warrens are capable of mass structural changes, or the dungeon itself can do so. Either way, it suggests the thing is pretty damn sturdy.
As for admitting the Underside would not be part of it, I said that it might not even be an original part of the Warrens themselves, so I'm not sure how you got "the Warrens might be destroyed" out of it.
Logged
15:35   HugoLuman reads Harb his secret spaghetti recipe

Nivim

  • Bay Watcher
  • Has the asylum forgotten? Are they still the same?
    • View Profile
Re: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome: Let's Get Al Back
« Reply #5653 on: June 06, 2013, 11:35:16 am »

You guys sound like your having that problem where you keep making theories without the information supply to keep them steady. This part is especially amusing:
Quote
It seems that being a Willborn has something to do with the Soul. We fight the Willborn inside its corrupted Soul because fighting the outside beast is impossible. If the Soul Stars are, in fact, Souls as it is implied then a Willborn does require the presence of a Soul Star.
Hm.
Illborn are bodies without a soul.
Are Willborn souls without a body?
...just to pick the worst example. Take a breather and a dream?
Logged
Imagine a cool peice of sky-blue and milk-white marble about 3cm by 2cm and by 0.5cm, containing a tiny 2mm malacolite crystal. Now imagine the miles of metamorphic rock it's embedded in that no pick or chisel will ever touch. Then, imagine that those miles will melt back into their mantle long before any telescope even refracts an image of their planet. The watchers will be so excited to have that image too.

Toaster

  • Bay Watcher
  • Appliance
    • View Profile
Re: (ISG) The Warrens of Oric the Awesome: Let's Get Al Back
« Reply #5654 on: June 06, 2013, 12:22:59 pm »

Logged
HMR stands for Hazardous Materials Requisition, not Horrible Massive Ruination, though I can understand how one could get confused.
God help us if we have to agree on pizza toppings at some point. There will be no survivors.
Pages: 1 ... 375 376 [377] 378 379 ... 1544