Weellll... not
everything. You can leave
some things alive, at the end. The very end. Doesn't make much of a difference gameplay wise, but the option's there. And it is, at least, fairly well reasoned
why you're actually murdering everything that moves. There's some hefty fluff reasons why less aggressive options aren't really available, which is at least something.
I
will say I was pretty disappointed when they didn't let you
Go through the farportal. I wanted to tango with that allied army, snipers and all.
Somewhat unfortunately, it didn't let me go full murder mode when I actually
wanted to
Also somewhat unfortunately, I don't really get to blame halflings for everything that went to hell in the embers campaign. For once, they weren't the primary culprit
E: I will say, I actually kinda' liked how everything tied together, once the whole thing was laid out. Somewhat surprisingly tightly constructed series of events. Plotwise everything is significantly more interconnected than the main campaign was, and almost all of the zones fit tightly into the narrative. Thinking on it in retrospect, it's actually pretty well done. Kinda' pulp steampunk/lovecraftian, but still. There's not much branching or alternate options, but it's pretty solid regardless, imo.
E2: Honestly, my mind keeps coming back to it and sorta' boggling at how
stark the difference in the writing/zone lore/etc. is between embers and the rest, now that y'all've got me thinking about it. Like, maj'eyal campaign most of the zones are largely self-contained, there's not really much connection between them and when there is it's
mostly fairly weak. In embers, pretty much
every zone (I'd say bar maybe two, the forest and the infinite dungeon entrance) is connected to at
least one other zone very strongly via lore (and in at least one case via gameplay), and they ultimately all spiderweb their way back to the final zone and the campaign's last act. The lore bits explain boss motivations, character motivations, why you're doing several things, generally sets the stage up where the player is actually acting fairly sensibly given the situation they're involved in and why they're largely forced to, as opposed to the very murderhobo ethos of the rest of the game... it's honestly what I'd call actually pretty damn good for video game plot and setting writing. Perhaps bit linear and light on
direct character conversation/interaction, but I don't actually think the campaign suffers for it.
It's... y'know, it's almost like System Shock 2's log data, or something fairly similar in implementation. It's a pretty strong showing, if y'ask me. I wouldn't say the texty bits detract from the experience, in the least, and definitely adds to it if you're paying even minimal attention. Compared to the original where you can mostly just ignore the text and you'll miss barely anything directly related to what you're actually doing (it's much more setting/world exploration than narrative/plot), the difference is pretty close to night and day.
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Topic: Tome 4: Tales of Maj'Eyal (Read 468190 times)