After all these years since i've finished Enderal's story i had to write this. Of all the video games i've played in my whole life. None was so touching as Enderal. The storytelling and the characters are all so lively. The soundtrack is so beautiful to my ears. At some moments i even got emotional. Maybe i can relate. There is no better video game developer in this entire world than SureAI. My heartfelt thanks for creating such a masterpiece.
10.12.2018 11:33jehodon wrote: After all these years since i've finished Enderal's story i had to write this. Of all the video games i've played in my whole life. None was so touching as Enderal. The storytelling and the characters are all so lively. The soundtrack is so beautiful to my ears. At some moments i even got emotional. Maybe i can relate. There is no better video game developer in this entire world than SureAI. My heartfelt thanks for creating such a masterpiece.
I think one key to Enderal is the emphasis on immersion. During the years of development, immersion in the story was a very frequent topic in the forum here, discussing things that would impede immersion and those that would advance it. When the player becomes immersed in the character, he or she can empathize and feel that "touching" feeling. SureAI was very cognizant of that and worked very hard to achieve it.
I must add, however, that for me, the most touching video game moment ever, one that I still remember after 24 years, was Celes' opera aria in Final Fantasy VI (or III, in some countries).
I must add, however, that for me, the most touching video game moment ever, one that I still remember after 24 years, was Celes' opera aria in Final Fantasy VI (or III, in some countries).
11.12.2018 07:22badgesareus wrote: I must add, however, that for me, the most touching video game moment ever, one that I still remember after 24 years, was Celes' opera aria in Final Fantasy VI (or III, in some countries).
I still resent the fact that I invested a lot in her as a party member in the long run, only to have that cutscene defeat blow everything up for me at the time. Quite successful moment.
20.12.2018 16:34Ragnarok wrote:
Even more so than Aerith's death on 7?
21.12.2018 10:39Eledwen wrote:I've got to say, that moment was one I can't forget as well. I am also super salty that originally there was supposed a way to save her, but then they cut it from the game. I doubt they will change that for the remake, but hope dies last! ^^20.12.2018 16:34Ragnarok wrote:
Even more so than Aerith's death on 7?
As to them changing it now, well for me personally the remake doesn't count at all, so:
- Back in Ark, I lied to Erica about her mother’s untimely murder. Bandits, terrible, just terrible. Such a nice woman. Yes.
I feel like I used to be lying about these people’s gruesome deaths because I didn’t want to tell the poor NPCs what their significant others REALLY got up to, but either it’s been too long a break since the emotional punch of the story or I never cared that much about this quest, because honestly I’m just lying for convenience’s sake here.
Erica sounds fairly sad about her mom, but also notes she has no money to pay me. … Woman, I could have got turned into a painting!
Whatever. Who cares about money?
(Me, if I have to pay the highway robbery prices on Master Skillbooks around here. Good God.)
- Erica noted she’d have to pay somebody to bring her mother’s body back to Ark.
I wonder if they’ll notice the mummified corpses in her mom’s back room, where she’d stashed the Witch Hunter’s body after she stuck him in that painting. He got up and moving again after she died, but there were at least three other corpses back there that didn’t (thankfully).
- Well, I appear to have reached the point of no return, which the game is kind enough to tell me via pop-up window.
Checking my Journal, I appear to be 27/30 on ‘Knowledge about Enderal’ checks, 6/? On ‘books read about the Butcher of Ark’, 1/5 on ‘myths and monsters slain’, and one last quest about Old Soltyris out in the Powder Desert.
Well, that last one seemed do-able, but the minimap marker doesn’t appear to be working for it. I wandered around the Powder Desert for a bit, ending up in a fairly posh tomb called the Duneville Crypt.
Absolutely covered in ghostly undead with a Lord of the Lost Ones hiding in the back.
But I have to give it props for some nice statuary and nice lighting.
Not sure I've seen this one before. There's also more offerings in other alcoves with some kind of prayer up on the walls.
I'd have guessed the Lord was some devout Order Sublime when he was alive, but way out here in Duneville, land of the smugglers?
Weird.
And off to the side is a skeleton that didn't get up and start lusting for the flesh of the living, still buried with rotting grave goods; a red blanket with gold filigree and a big-ass sword. Presumably he had other goods with him, but... well. Duneville. Dude was clearly ransacked at some point.
- The statue at the entrance is actually covered in scaffolding, like they’re building or cleaning it or something. Not sure what that’s about.
It’s also got some fresh fruit placed as an offering. Which kind of makes sense, since we’re really close to Duneville, but at the same time, the very next room is covered in bloodthirsty undead. Who is keeping this place kept up, and why? Do the Dunevillers not know this crypt is home to the most undead this side of the Soul Bed, conscientiously keeping the front looking nice without ever looking downstairs at the ghostly menagerie? Do the regular votive offerings keep the blasted things calm?
A Lord of the Lost Ones can kill me in a hit or two, they could certainly murder the hell out of some Watchdogs.
As usual, the worldbuilding provides you with a cool thing with absolutely no explanation.
I own a bunch of solar walkway lights just like this for my backyard. Just because you’re a red-eyed wight with an axe doesn’t mean you don’t know how to accessorize your lair. Good on you, mate.
- The only map marker up for Soltyris is an odd bluish one, but what the hey, I’ll follow it. It takes me southeast of Duneville and out into the ocean, but I figure, there’s an island on the map, maybe that’s it?
Nice day for a swim, anyway.
- No, that is apparently that one tropical island with the cultists and their evil sea god Kor.
On the upside… yeeeessss…
I do get some extremely lategame revenge on that Desert Spider Queen that was such a bastard back in the day. So worth it.
- The map marker keeps pointing southeast, though…welp.
https://imgur.com/a/ziruc6D
I have made a mistake.
The Takeaway:
It was a looonnng swim back to the mainland.
Next time, I actually get back to work on this Let’s Play now that the holidays are over, and we get this endgame done.
I feel like I used to be lying about these people’s gruesome deaths because I didn’t want to tell the poor NPCs what their significant others REALLY got up to, but either it’s been too long a break since the emotional punch of the story or I never cared that much about this quest, because honestly I’m just lying for convenience’s sake here.
Erica sounds fairly sad about her mom, but also notes she has no money to pay me. … Woman, I could have got turned into a painting!
Whatever. Who cares about money?
(Me, if I have to pay the highway robbery prices on Master Skillbooks around here. Good God.)
- Erica noted she’d have to pay somebody to bring her mother’s body back to Ark.
I wonder if they’ll notice the mummified corpses in her mom’s back room, where she’d stashed the Witch Hunter’s body after she stuck him in that painting. He got up and moving again after she died, but there were at least three other corpses back there that didn’t (thankfully).
- Well, I appear to have reached the point of no return, which the game is kind enough to tell me via pop-up window.
Checking my Journal, I appear to be 27/30 on ‘Knowledge about Enderal’ checks, 6/? On ‘books read about the Butcher of Ark’, 1/5 on ‘myths and monsters slain’, and one last quest about Old Soltyris out in the Powder Desert.
Well, that last one seemed do-able, but the minimap marker doesn’t appear to be working for it. I wandered around the Powder Desert for a bit, ending up in a fairly posh tomb called the Duneville Crypt.
Absolutely covered in ghostly undead with a Lord of the Lost Ones hiding in the back.
But I have to give it props for some nice statuary and nice lighting.
Not sure I've seen this one before. There's also more offerings in other alcoves with some kind of prayer up on the walls.
I'd have guessed the Lord was some devout Order Sublime when he was alive, but way out here in Duneville, land of the smugglers?
Weird.
And off to the side is a skeleton that didn't get up and start lusting for the flesh of the living, still buried with rotting grave goods; a red blanket with gold filigree and a big-ass sword. Presumably he had other goods with him, but... well. Duneville. Dude was clearly ransacked at some point.
- The statue at the entrance is actually covered in scaffolding, like they’re building or cleaning it or something. Not sure what that’s about.
It’s also got some fresh fruit placed as an offering. Which kind of makes sense, since we’re really close to Duneville, but at the same time, the very next room is covered in bloodthirsty undead. Who is keeping this place kept up, and why? Do the Dunevillers not know this crypt is home to the most undead this side of the Soul Bed, conscientiously keeping the front looking nice without ever looking downstairs at the ghostly menagerie? Do the regular votive offerings keep the blasted things calm?
A Lord of the Lost Ones can kill me in a hit or two, they could certainly murder the hell out of some Watchdogs.
As usual, the worldbuilding provides you with a cool thing with absolutely no explanation.
I own a bunch of solar walkway lights just like this for my backyard. Just because you’re a red-eyed wight with an axe doesn’t mean you don’t know how to accessorize your lair. Good on you, mate.
- The only map marker up for Soltyris is an odd bluish one, but what the hey, I’ll follow it. It takes me southeast of Duneville and out into the ocean, but I figure, there’s an island on the map, maybe that’s it?
Nice day for a swim, anyway.
- No, that is apparently that one tropical island with the cultists and their evil sea god Kor.
On the upside… yeeeessss…
I do get some extremely lategame revenge on that Desert Spider Queen that was such a bastard back in the day. So worth it.
- The map marker keeps pointing southeast, though…welp.
https://imgur.com/a/ziruc6D
I have made a mistake.
The Takeaway:
It was a looonnng swim back to the mainland.
Next time, I actually get back to work on this Let’s Play now that the holidays are over, and we get this endgame done.
So apparently it took me around 20 days to make it back to land. Nevermind. Into the endgame we go!
- Well, first I happen to wander by a Keeper who tells me “I’ve heard some rumors about your favorite school of magic… Dangerous waters you’re treading in, be careful.”
That’s pretty rad. Like, somebody finally noticed I’ve been summoning monsters and ripping the souls out of people and stuff! Riiiight at the end. But good hustle anyway, you random Keeper.
I wonder if there are different lines for when you’re NOT mainlining Entropy magic. Like, “Oh, you seem to like fireballs. That’s cool I guess.” or “Why would you even pick Alteration magic, that was a terrible idea.”
- Anyhow, off we go to another meeting at the Big Table. It’s just down to Sha’Rim, Tealor Arantheal, Your Waifu (mine’s Jespar) and yourself. We’re not even sitting around the Big Table anymore, more clustered in a corner as we hold the briefing.
Points of interest:
1) Tealor says: ‘I suppose you already know that Vyn hasn’t always been like it is now. In the time of the Pyreans it was one big continent, which they called Pangora.’
And… no? Was I supposed to know that? That seems like a pretty huge thing to have tucked away in the cliffnotes somewhere, although to be fair you don’t often go up to people in real life and say, “So as you know, the continents used to be one big super-continent called Pangaea…”
2) The City of Floods has been found! It is, conveniently, directly under our feet, in the depths of the Undercity somewhere.
Tealor frames this as ‘It was always thought that the City of Floods was located somewhere in Qyra…’ which suggests that the Order leadership were planning to maybe charter a boat and make us travel to another continent to find the Numinos? I mean, I’d be fine, we’d probably just timeskip loading screen right to it, but that would have been super inconvenient for the characters in the story.
3) Endraleans believe that the Black Guardian is a demon that exists down in the depths of the Undercity, and you can hear his scream if you listen carefully.
Sha’Rim believes this to be wind whistling through the caverns, but how much do you want to bet I’m gonna have to kill an actual Black Guardian before this is all over?
- Tealor wants to leave immediately.
There’s this cute bit where Sha’Rim is like ‘Are you sure you don’t want to think this through-’ and Tealor just repeats, stone cold, ‘Ready your equipment. We’ll meet at the gate to the Undercity.’
- I’m sent to talk to Archmagister Lexil Merrayil like a gopher to pick up the Word of the Dead and some thing related to the Numinos. He’s not nearby where the quest marker takes me, and the novice there is like ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be back in a minute.’
And I immediately think, ‘Fuck’ and start summoning my swords. This character build is kind of weak to ambushes, and there’s basically no reason for this to happen if it’s not going to be Plot Relevant.
- The Novice seems to be a fan, and her voice is noticeably young and, well, cute.
She swiftly segues into telling her Tragic Backstory, where her parents and sister got butchered by Coarek and she arrived to watch them burn along with their house.
I feel like this would actually be more impactful if this was Elia, the named Novice from that tiny sidequest from back at the beginning. Especially since...
That’s right, crisp, fresh meat, just like Dream Dad always liked.
The High Ones proceed to speak through the poor girl, all ‘The Beacon won’t burn, it never will! Thousands have tried it before you, and they all failed!’ and ‘The Light will burn you, it will devour you until there’s nothing left!’
So I suppose all the dreams of fire and Dream Dad were a metaphor for the Light, which is apparently the Cleansing. Or possibly the High Ones.
It’s a little unclear, because the novice takes this opportunity to explode into bones and ectoplasm, the Beacon catches fire, and Lexil and I have to kill a few possessed Keepers.
Being set on fire apparently doesn't damage the Beacon significantly.
- There’s a nice feeling of uncertainty here.
Did the Sigil Stone stop protecting us, or did it never do so to begin with and we just deluded ourselves with thoughts of safety? Could the High Ones have reached out their hand and taken us at any time, refraining only from some alien amusement or sense of fair play?
Lexil is a good choice for this bit I think, above and beyond that he can check the Beacon and make sure they didn’t damage it too much. If this was Jespar he’d be taking a cavalier approach; if it was Tealor, he’d be speaking in his Reassuring Dad Voice. But Lexil is an intellectual, he seems like kind of a worrier, and he has this alto type of voice that comes across as an ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear’ sort of guy. He’s never been a party member, so I have no idea if he can even throw down if he has to.
- Oh, and the Nehrimese are in the city again. Lexil runs to the outlook and you can kind of see a reddish light like firelight in the dark clouds down below; presumably, the city is on fire.
It turns out the Truchessa betrayed everyone, took the Sigil Stone and a third of the Order’s Keepers down to Coarek and let him into the city in exchange for a promise not to harm anyone.
That worked out just about as well as you would expect, and she probably got hard murdered by him. She probably should have expected that when he crucified everyone he could catch outside of the city, but desperation can give people some weird ideas.
- I think we’re supposed to assume the Sigil Stone being gone is why the High Ones can possess us, although the way that worked was that Constantine and Lexil shattered the stone and gave us all a piece of it, so hypothetically we all still have our Sigil Stone chunks and should be safe as houses?
Maybe without the main Stone the little bits don’t work, or once Coarek got the Stone (or his High One masters did) he could somehow shut off its protection. Magical law of sympathy where something affecting the main Stone affects all the little ones, I don’t know.
Point is, anyone can get possessed at any time, probably. Lovely.
- There’s a Keeper bleeding out against the fountain who explained the whole Truchessa plot. Credit where it’s due, she is a fantastic voice actor. Not just the lines themselves, but the slow pauses… there’s something in her tone that really feels like she’s about to start choking on her own blood.
There’s a particularly cool line where she begs Tealor to forgive her, because she doesn’t want to die Pathless. Apparently Tealor is the local Fantasy Pope, and can absolve her of sins or excommunicate her at will.
Cool sprite, too.
I just wish this was Natara rather than a nameless Keeper, trying to account for herself before death claims her. Tealor’s pain would have been delicious. Having Disapproving Order Mom axed offscreen, as this Keeper suggests Coarek did, is kind of disappointing.
- There’s a big rousing speech from Tealor, how the three-dozen or so Keepers and Arcanists here have to hold the line while we descend into the bowels of the city to find the Numinos. He says up front that there is no winning endgame that gets us out of this alive. Killing Coarek’s delusional soldiers is pointless; the High Ones are all that matter. Once we light the Beacon and burn away the High Ones, Tealor intends to surrender. Coarek will probably kill us all, but Tealor considers this death to be meaningful, to be a sign. A sign of what or to whom, I’m not sure. To other faithful, or rebels against Coarek’s mad rationalist dogma?
Whatever the case, I’m kind of hoping we get to do it that way. Killing all the High Ones and then surrendering to Coarek after his masters are dead and any hope of ‘ascension’ pointless would be pretty amazing. Maybe his blood pressure would sky-rocket and we can make him stroke out from sheer rage.
I also really appreciate the Keeper helmet you can see on the right there. Did they get a design upgrade recently? I feel like I’d have noticed if they were rocking a Roman-esque laurel leaf design with snarling great cats on their pauldrons and the top of their helmets.
- Anyway, Tealor gets a rousing cheer, and everyone (left) is down for a heroic last stand.
Apparently there’s a secret way down into the Undercity we can take, too, since the city is full of enemy soldiers.
Back during the last Undercity riots the Order dug some tunnels to pump poison gas in and end the threat that way. Yikes. Score one for ruthless paranoia, I guess.
Well, there’s our route secured.
Let’s go digging into the depths, shall we?
The Takeaway:
Overall, very dramatic and almost cinematic chain of events, even if the logic connecting events is a little shaky. Why did handing over the Sigil Stone lose us the protection of the chunks we carry? Why would the High Ones possess a couple of us and then let the rest of us go? How did she get out to meet Coarek through Sha’Rim’s entropic barrier? How did she let Coarek in through the barrier? If there are thousands of Nehrimese like Tealor suggests and there’s no point in trying to throw them out of the city, how did we do that very thing like 3 days ago when they sailed into the harbor and started murdering everybody last time?
Possibly this will all make sense at some point. I mean, I could probably take ten minutes and come up with satisfactory (-ish) answers to all of them. Guess we’ll see!
Gonna try and get another update out shortly, since I’m off tomorrow; we’ll see how that goes, I guess.
- Well, first I happen to wander by a Keeper who tells me “I’ve heard some rumors about your favorite school of magic… Dangerous waters you’re treading in, be careful.”
That’s pretty rad. Like, somebody finally noticed I’ve been summoning monsters and ripping the souls out of people and stuff! Riiiight at the end. But good hustle anyway, you random Keeper.
I wonder if there are different lines for when you’re NOT mainlining Entropy magic. Like, “Oh, you seem to like fireballs. That’s cool I guess.” or “Why would you even pick Alteration magic, that was a terrible idea.”
- Anyhow, off we go to another meeting at the Big Table. It’s just down to Sha’Rim, Tealor Arantheal, Your Waifu (mine’s Jespar) and yourself. We’re not even sitting around the Big Table anymore, more clustered in a corner as we hold the briefing.
Points of interest:
1) Tealor says: ‘I suppose you already know that Vyn hasn’t always been like it is now. In the time of the Pyreans it was one big continent, which they called Pangora.’
And… no? Was I supposed to know that? That seems like a pretty huge thing to have tucked away in the cliffnotes somewhere, although to be fair you don’t often go up to people in real life and say, “So as you know, the continents used to be one big super-continent called Pangaea…”
2) The City of Floods has been found! It is, conveniently, directly under our feet, in the depths of the Undercity somewhere.
Tealor frames this as ‘It was always thought that the City of Floods was located somewhere in Qyra…’ which suggests that the Order leadership were planning to maybe charter a boat and make us travel to another continent to find the Numinos? I mean, I’d be fine, we’d probably just timeskip loading screen right to it, but that would have been super inconvenient for the characters in the story.
3) Endraleans believe that the Black Guardian is a demon that exists down in the depths of the Undercity, and you can hear his scream if you listen carefully.
Sha’Rim believes this to be wind whistling through the caverns, but how much do you want to bet I’m gonna have to kill an actual Black Guardian before this is all over?
- Tealor wants to leave immediately.
There’s this cute bit where Sha’Rim is like ‘Are you sure you don’t want to think this through-’ and Tealor just repeats, stone cold, ‘Ready your equipment. We’ll meet at the gate to the Undercity.’
- I’m sent to talk to Archmagister Lexil Merrayil like a gopher to pick up the Word of the Dead and some thing related to the Numinos. He’s not nearby where the quest marker takes me, and the novice there is like ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be back in a minute.’
And I immediately think, ‘Fuck’ and start summoning my swords. This character build is kind of weak to ambushes, and there’s basically no reason for this to happen if it’s not going to be Plot Relevant.
- The Novice seems to be a fan, and her voice is noticeably young and, well, cute.
She swiftly segues into telling her Tragic Backstory, where her parents and sister got butchered by Coarek and she arrived to watch them burn along with their house.
I feel like this would actually be more impactful if this was Elia, the named Novice from that tiny sidequest from back at the beginning. Especially since...
That’s right, crisp, fresh meat, just like Dream Dad always liked.
The High Ones proceed to speak through the poor girl, all ‘The Beacon won’t burn, it never will! Thousands have tried it before you, and they all failed!’ and ‘The Light will burn you, it will devour you until there’s nothing left!’
So I suppose all the dreams of fire and Dream Dad were a metaphor for the Light, which is apparently the Cleansing. Or possibly the High Ones.
It’s a little unclear, because the novice takes this opportunity to explode into bones and ectoplasm, the Beacon catches fire, and Lexil and I have to kill a few possessed Keepers.
Being set on fire apparently doesn't damage the Beacon significantly.
- There’s a nice feeling of uncertainty here.
Did the Sigil Stone stop protecting us, or did it never do so to begin with and we just deluded ourselves with thoughts of safety? Could the High Ones have reached out their hand and taken us at any time, refraining only from some alien amusement or sense of fair play?
Lexil is a good choice for this bit I think, above and beyond that he can check the Beacon and make sure they didn’t damage it too much. If this was Jespar he’d be taking a cavalier approach; if it was Tealor, he’d be speaking in his Reassuring Dad Voice. But Lexil is an intellectual, he seems like kind of a worrier, and he has this alto type of voice that comes across as an ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear’ sort of guy. He’s never been a party member, so I have no idea if he can even throw down if he has to.
- Oh, and the Nehrimese are in the city again. Lexil runs to the outlook and you can kind of see a reddish light like firelight in the dark clouds down below; presumably, the city is on fire.
It turns out the Truchessa betrayed everyone, took the Sigil Stone and a third of the Order’s Keepers down to Coarek and let him into the city in exchange for a promise not to harm anyone.
That worked out just about as well as you would expect, and she probably got hard murdered by him. She probably should have expected that when he crucified everyone he could catch outside of the city, but desperation can give people some weird ideas.
- I think we’re supposed to assume the Sigil Stone being gone is why the High Ones can possess us, although the way that worked was that Constantine and Lexil shattered the stone and gave us all a piece of it, so hypothetically we all still have our Sigil Stone chunks and should be safe as houses?
Maybe without the main Stone the little bits don’t work, or once Coarek got the Stone (or his High One masters did) he could somehow shut off its protection. Magical law of sympathy where something affecting the main Stone affects all the little ones, I don’t know.
Point is, anyone can get possessed at any time, probably. Lovely.
- There’s a Keeper bleeding out against the fountain who explained the whole Truchessa plot. Credit where it’s due, she is a fantastic voice actor. Not just the lines themselves, but the slow pauses… there’s something in her tone that really feels like she’s about to start choking on her own blood.
There’s a particularly cool line where she begs Tealor to forgive her, because she doesn’t want to die Pathless. Apparently Tealor is the local Fantasy Pope, and can absolve her of sins or excommunicate her at will.
Cool sprite, too.
I just wish this was Natara rather than a nameless Keeper, trying to account for herself before death claims her. Tealor’s pain would have been delicious. Having Disapproving Order Mom axed offscreen, as this Keeper suggests Coarek did, is kind of disappointing.
- There’s a big rousing speech from Tealor, how the three-dozen or so Keepers and Arcanists here have to hold the line while we descend into the bowels of the city to find the Numinos. He says up front that there is no winning endgame that gets us out of this alive. Killing Coarek’s delusional soldiers is pointless; the High Ones are all that matter. Once we light the Beacon and burn away the High Ones, Tealor intends to surrender. Coarek will probably kill us all, but Tealor considers this death to be meaningful, to be a sign. A sign of what or to whom, I’m not sure. To other faithful, or rebels against Coarek’s mad rationalist dogma?
Whatever the case, I’m kind of hoping we get to do it that way. Killing all the High Ones and then surrendering to Coarek after his masters are dead and any hope of ‘ascension’ pointless would be pretty amazing. Maybe his blood pressure would sky-rocket and we can make him stroke out from sheer rage.
I also really appreciate the Keeper helmet you can see on the right there. Did they get a design upgrade recently? I feel like I’d have noticed if they were rocking a Roman-esque laurel leaf design with snarling great cats on their pauldrons and the top of their helmets.
- Anyway, Tealor gets a rousing cheer, and everyone (left) is down for a heroic last stand.
Apparently there’s a secret way down into the Undercity we can take, too, since the city is full of enemy soldiers.
Back during the last Undercity riots the Order dug some tunnels to pump poison gas in and end the threat that way. Yikes. Score one for ruthless paranoia, I guess.
Well, there’s our route secured.
Let’s go digging into the depths, shall we?
The Takeaway:
Overall, very dramatic and almost cinematic chain of events, even if the logic connecting events is a little shaky. Why did handing over the Sigil Stone lose us the protection of the chunks we carry? Why would the High Ones possess a couple of us and then let the rest of us go? How did she get out to meet Coarek through Sha’Rim’s entropic barrier? How did she let Coarek in through the barrier? If there are thousands of Nehrimese like Tealor suggests and there’s no point in trying to throw them out of the city, how did we do that very thing like 3 days ago when they sailed into the harbor and started murdering everybody last time?
Possibly this will all make sense at some point. I mean, I could probably take ten minutes and come up with satisfactory (-ish) answers to all of them. Guess we’ll see!
Gonna try and get another update out shortly, since I’m off tomorrow; we’ll see how that goes, I guess.
- Just as a side note, it’s weird that the same old Keepers that have always taken up guard positions at doors or in the hallway leading to the Big Table are all ‘Leave this to us, but hurry’… yet are still guarding random doors. You’d think they’d be over there, holding the gates to the Sun Temple.
Who knows, I’m not some kind of expert in heroic last stands.
- There’s a brief aside with Jespar, who wants to know if I’m really down for Tealor’s glorious symbolic surrender.
Since there’s sadly no ‘But it would be funny watching Coarek’s face turn purple wouldn’t it’ option, I have to admit if there’s a way to duck out before the curtain call, I’m for it.
Hopefully Jespar isn’t going to try and cut a deal with Coarek or something, that never ends well.
- So down into the depths we go, finding something like a small three-way war between the possessed, plunderers out for a quick buck, and Coarek’s army.
Everyone has taken a level or three in badass when I wasn’t looking; even the rando plunderers are pretty hearty. Deathstorm’s self-damage tick is too high and its output too mediocre (albeit area-of-effect), so I have to leave that to Sha’Rim and wade in, swinging swords and popping potions.
It does a pretty good job of proving the wisdom of Tealor Arantheal not sending us all out for some last glorious sally like Commander What’s-Her-Face wanted; even fighting like 15 of these guys is pretty hard. Trying to fight a city full of them would be impossible.
- There’s also quite a few ghosts, wisps, and ghost-serpents here and there.
Life in the Undercity must be hard as hell. Not only are you probably suffering from flesh-maggots, not only is the orphanage run by Vatyr, but goddamn ghosts all up in your business.
Oh, and everything is on fire.
- There's this cool mini-cutscene on the way, with a Nehrimese soldier standing over a pair of Undercity dwellers with an axe. It's not just murder, though; it's like a religious debate, just with axes.
This guy came fucking prepared for this, okay? When the girl begs, 'We're a peaceful order!' he actually has his bible or chant of light or whatever the heck the local holy book is called, and he can quote it chapter and verse. All the parts where the Radiant Being Which Was Malphas decided to smite some heathens, you know, 'And thousands of lightning bolts crashed down onto the wretched city, destroying everything,' like that.
This small piece of dialogue is actually what I love about Enderal. Because look, make no mistake; this Nehrimese guy is wrong, because people who invade their neighbors and put them to the torch are never right.
But SureAI was confident enough in its players' intelligence to allow him to have a point. You can see where he's coming from; the average Path-abiding citizen is a good person (/occasionally hateful xenophobe), but the Order is a monolithic entity that rules much of the world, and that's a situation ripe for abuse. And the Light-born were apparently of the 'rain of fire' variety of conversion strategy, as you would do if you were some kind of near-omnipotent wizard-god-king.
The Nehrimese are murderous assholes, but widespread revolution doesn't just spring up without a cause. They got that way in response to systematic abuse from a strict caste system that allowed slavery and who knows what else under its rule.
This? This right here? This is my jam.
- I ding Level 58 on the way to Sha’Rim finding just the right rocky wall to entropy into dust to get access to the City of a Thousand Floods.
… How exactly did you know to do that, Sha’Rim? That map we got from the Star Fathers would have to be really specific.
Also, you know… I’m wondering about that name. City of a Thousand Floods. Why would you name your city that if I’m not going to have to be doing a lot of swimming and/or drowning?
Or some kind of Noah parallel, I dunno.
- Solid art (architecture) direction for the City of a Thousand Floods. SureAI doesn’t just throw a crumbling city at you when they can throw an overgrown crumbling city full of waterfalls at you instead.
The waterfalls kind of remind me of the building complex beneath the Living Temple; it makes me think this was just an architectural style for the Pyreans, rather than rising water levels or climate change during the 50,000 years in between their time and ours, or something.
The Pyreans just appreciate a good waterfall.
- Now that we’re in the Pyrean city proper, there’s rather a lot of Lost Ones down here, which the High Ones possess and fight us with.
I don’t think these are Pyreans, since those appear to have charcoaled into black carbon statues all over the place.
I wonder if these are the remains of adventurers and grave-robbers that have found their way to the Pyrean city only to meet their end, or if the High Ones have been secretly moving Lost Ones down here to use as a small army.
Either option presents pretty interesting follow-up questions: ‘How’ and ‘Why’, respectively.
- All the way down here, Tealor has been the pillar of strength. When the visions cause Sha’Rim to wonder if we’re still part of the Cycle (oh hey, by the way, the visions are back), he refutes him. Tealor is certain: We’re closer than any have come before to lighting the Beacon. We will succeed. The High Ones are running out of tricks, reduced to throwing possessed corpses at us.
- So of course, that’s when the High Ones show up to throw a trick at him. They tune up the video reel, all the carbonized Pyreans’ eyes light up (are they a power source? Is this the Pyrean High One speaking to us?) and it’s movie time.
Apparently, Young Tealor (with a glorious head of hair) was a bit of a dick. He had a kid with one of the Light-born (and boy, wouldn't that be a story all on its own), and rather than taking the child away himself as she asked, he refused to abandon his position and title and had one of her assistants raise the kid instead.
And didn't get smote for his arrogance. I wish I knew literally anything about this Light-born Indara. I don't think this is the one that managed Qyra, where Tealor accidentally a war...
This kid, of course, is the one (Narathzul?) who killed all the Light-born, including his mom I guess?
So the child Tealor refused to abandon his position for made his position superfluous by killing all Tealor’s gods (plus throwing him in jail for like 10 years).
- Tealor is… upset. ‘Swinging greatsword at phantom of younger self’ upset.
I wish there was time to talk to him about this, because holy cow would that be a conversation. Young Tealor is such a different person. Not all the way, Current Tealor is still pretty arrogant and high-handed at times and he would be an inflexible and implacable enemy. But these days he couldn't give a fuck about the office and his high position. A decade or two in prison really mellowed him out, and taught him more humility than the average Keeper. He takes the long view, but he's at least aware of the cogs that make up the grand design.
The High One clearly thinks this was the 'and that was when it all started to go wrong' moment, and I wish I knew if Tealor agreed. Given the way he just about bisected his younger self with a greatsword, I'm thinking he does.
- And then, having gotten the last laugh by dragging out Tealor’s dirty laundry, only then does the High One try to kill us all with red glowy phantoms. I mean, why just murder a guy when you can fuck with him and then kill him, amirite? I’m right.
So we start fighting our way up the stairs to the Pyrean temple in a pretty badass sequence. Most of the phantoms are swinging ghostly swords, but there are at least two lich-type guys (like the Darkhands) and a giant.
- And then, while we’re all congratulating ourselves on being stone-cold badasses who don’t give a fuck, the High Ones bring in their Heavy: a phantom dragon who spits very real fire.
The front façade of the temple collapses on us (the game takes away control to have the Prophetess look up as the giant cyclopean masonry blocks come crashing down), and then… darkness. Darkness and fire.
The Takeaway:
I’m really digging this segment so far. Going from secret passage to afire Undercity to the picturesque (if corpse-y) City of a Thousand Floods keeps things visually interesting, and each leg of the trip is only three or so vistas (fights or scenes or whatever) so it doesn’t feel like a slog.
The enemies look really cool, both the Lost Ones with the glowing eyes and the red smoke monsters.
They're still fleshing out their goddamn characters with unique, interesting character beats, even this late in the game. Hopefully Sha'Rim gets something next, because I can never read that guy.
But my favorite bit is probably that one little conversation between diametrically opposed viewpoints, irreconcialable differences settled with the axe. I'm not sure if SureAI has something concrete to say about all these themes they're throwing around, but even if they're just using them to flesh out their world, this is the good shit, fam.
Who knows, I’m not some kind of expert in heroic last stands.
- There’s a brief aside with Jespar, who wants to know if I’m really down for Tealor’s glorious symbolic surrender.
Since there’s sadly no ‘But it would be funny watching Coarek’s face turn purple wouldn’t it’ option, I have to admit if there’s a way to duck out before the curtain call, I’m for it.
Hopefully Jespar isn’t going to try and cut a deal with Coarek or something, that never ends well.
- So down into the depths we go, finding something like a small three-way war between the possessed, plunderers out for a quick buck, and Coarek’s army.
Everyone has taken a level or three in badass when I wasn’t looking; even the rando plunderers are pretty hearty. Deathstorm’s self-damage tick is too high and its output too mediocre (albeit area-of-effect), so I have to leave that to Sha’Rim and wade in, swinging swords and popping potions.
It does a pretty good job of proving the wisdom of Tealor Arantheal not sending us all out for some last glorious sally like Commander What’s-Her-Face wanted; even fighting like 15 of these guys is pretty hard. Trying to fight a city full of them would be impossible.
- There’s also quite a few ghosts, wisps, and ghost-serpents here and there.
Life in the Undercity must be hard as hell. Not only are you probably suffering from flesh-maggots, not only is the orphanage run by Vatyr, but goddamn ghosts all up in your business.
Oh, and everything is on fire.
- There's this cool mini-cutscene on the way, with a Nehrimese soldier standing over a pair of Undercity dwellers with an axe. It's not just murder, though; it's like a religious debate, just with axes.
This guy came fucking prepared for this, okay? When the girl begs, 'We're a peaceful order!' he actually has his bible or chant of light or whatever the heck the local holy book is called, and he can quote it chapter and verse. All the parts where the Radiant Being Which Was Malphas decided to smite some heathens, you know, 'And thousands of lightning bolts crashed down onto the wretched city, destroying everything,' like that.
This small piece of dialogue is actually what I love about Enderal. Because look, make no mistake; this Nehrimese guy is wrong, because people who invade their neighbors and put them to the torch are never right.
But SureAI was confident enough in its players' intelligence to allow him to have a point. You can see where he's coming from; the average Path-abiding citizen is a good person (/occasionally hateful xenophobe), but the Order is a monolithic entity that rules much of the world, and that's a situation ripe for abuse. And the Light-born were apparently of the 'rain of fire' variety of conversion strategy, as you would do if you were some kind of near-omnipotent wizard-god-king.
The Nehrimese are murderous assholes, but widespread revolution doesn't just spring up without a cause. They got that way in response to systematic abuse from a strict caste system that allowed slavery and who knows what else under its rule.
This? This right here? This is my jam.
- I ding Level 58 on the way to Sha’Rim finding just the right rocky wall to entropy into dust to get access to the City of a Thousand Floods.
… How exactly did you know to do that, Sha’Rim? That map we got from the Star Fathers would have to be really specific.
Also, you know… I’m wondering about that name. City of a Thousand Floods. Why would you name your city that if I’m not going to have to be doing a lot of swimming and/or drowning?
Or some kind of Noah parallel, I dunno.
- Solid art (architecture) direction for the City of a Thousand Floods. SureAI doesn’t just throw a crumbling city at you when they can throw an overgrown crumbling city full of waterfalls at you instead.
The waterfalls kind of remind me of the building complex beneath the Living Temple; it makes me think this was just an architectural style for the Pyreans, rather than rising water levels or climate change during the 50,000 years in between their time and ours, or something.
The Pyreans just appreciate a good waterfall.
- Now that we’re in the Pyrean city proper, there’s rather a lot of Lost Ones down here, which the High Ones possess and fight us with.
I don’t think these are Pyreans, since those appear to have charcoaled into black carbon statues all over the place.
I wonder if these are the remains of adventurers and grave-robbers that have found their way to the Pyrean city only to meet their end, or if the High Ones have been secretly moving Lost Ones down here to use as a small army.
Either option presents pretty interesting follow-up questions: ‘How’ and ‘Why’, respectively.
- All the way down here, Tealor has been the pillar of strength. When the visions cause Sha’Rim to wonder if we’re still part of the Cycle (oh hey, by the way, the visions are back), he refutes him. Tealor is certain: We’re closer than any have come before to lighting the Beacon. We will succeed. The High Ones are running out of tricks, reduced to throwing possessed corpses at us.
- So of course, that’s when the High Ones show up to throw a trick at him. They tune up the video reel, all the carbonized Pyreans’ eyes light up (are they a power source? Is this the Pyrean High One speaking to us?) and it’s movie time.
Apparently, Young Tealor (with a glorious head of hair) was a bit of a dick. He had a kid with one of the Light-born (and boy, wouldn't that be a story all on its own), and rather than taking the child away himself as she asked, he refused to abandon his position and title and had one of her assistants raise the kid instead.
And didn't get smote for his arrogance. I wish I knew literally anything about this Light-born Indara. I don't think this is the one that managed Qyra, where Tealor accidentally a war...
This kid, of course, is the one (Narathzul?) who killed all the Light-born, including his mom I guess?
So the child Tealor refused to abandon his position for made his position superfluous by killing all Tealor’s gods (plus throwing him in jail for like 10 years).
- Tealor is… upset. ‘Swinging greatsword at phantom of younger self’ upset.
I wish there was time to talk to him about this, because holy cow would that be a conversation. Young Tealor is such a different person. Not all the way, Current Tealor is still pretty arrogant and high-handed at times and he would be an inflexible and implacable enemy. But these days he couldn't give a fuck about the office and his high position. A decade or two in prison really mellowed him out, and taught him more humility than the average Keeper. He takes the long view, but he's at least aware of the cogs that make up the grand design.
The High One clearly thinks this was the 'and that was when it all started to go wrong' moment, and I wish I knew if Tealor agreed. Given the way he just about bisected his younger self with a greatsword, I'm thinking he does.
- And then, having gotten the last laugh by dragging out Tealor’s dirty laundry, only then does the High One try to kill us all with red glowy phantoms. I mean, why just murder a guy when you can fuck with him and then kill him, amirite? I’m right.
So we start fighting our way up the stairs to the Pyrean temple in a pretty badass sequence. Most of the phantoms are swinging ghostly swords, but there are at least two lich-type guys (like the Darkhands) and a giant.
- And then, while we’re all congratulating ourselves on being stone-cold badasses who don’t give a fuck, the High Ones bring in their Heavy: a phantom dragon who spits very real fire.
The front façade of the temple collapses on us (the game takes away control to have the Prophetess look up as the giant cyclopean masonry blocks come crashing down), and then… darkness. Darkness and fire.
The Takeaway:
I’m really digging this segment so far. Going from secret passage to afire Undercity to the picturesque (if corpse-y) City of a Thousand Floods keeps things visually interesting, and each leg of the trip is only three or so vistas (fights or scenes or whatever) so it doesn’t feel like a slog.
The enemies look really cool, both the Lost Ones with the glowing eyes and the red smoke monsters.
They're still fleshing out their goddamn characters with unique, interesting character beats, even this late in the game. Hopefully Sha'Rim gets something next, because I can never read that guy.
But my favorite bit is probably that one little conversation between diametrically opposed viewpoints, irreconcialable differences settled with the axe. I'm not sure if SureAI has something concrete to say about all these themes they're throwing around, but even if they're just using them to flesh out their world, this is the good shit, fam.
25.01.2019 07:19dyslexicfaser wrote: The Takeaway:
I’m really digging this segment so far. Going from secret passage to afire Undercity to the picturesque (if corpse-y) City of a Thousand Floods keeps things visually interesting, and each leg of the trip is only three or so vistas (fights or scenes or whatever) so it doesn’t feel like a slog.
The enemies look really cool, both the Lost Ones with the glowing eyes and the red smoke monsters.
They're still fleshing out their goddamn characters with unique, interesting character beats, even this late in the game. Hopefully Sha'Rim gets something next, because I can never read that guy.
But my favorite bit is probably that one little conversation between diametrically opposed viewpoints, irreconcialable differences settled with the axe. I'm not sure if SureAI has something concrete to say about all these themes they're throwing around, but even if they're just using them to flesh out their world, this is the good shit, fam.
Very interested on how you will take what follows.
- We wake up on the other side of a pile of rubble, Tealor, Sha’Rim and I. Their models are spattered with blood, looking pretty cool. Jespar is nowhere to be seen.
Tealor tries to soothe me that we’ll look for him on the way to the Pyrean Beacon, but I get the feeling it’s mostly a sop to my feelings. Tealor’s a rock; the only part he cares about is that we’re down one of our four-man party, I think.
I’m not sweating it, though. I’m pretty sure Jespar is on the same immortality train as Calia and I. I’d be pretty damn surprised if he died offscreen like a mook (poor Natara).
- The ruins are largely empty save for dozens of the carbon-black human figures, almost all looking or running forward in the same direction I’m going. It gives a weird feeling of being dragged forward to your destination, like you’re a salmon swimming in a school of fish.
Whoever on staff was responsible for cute skeleton placement is getting to flex his design muscles here, I bet.
For example, I appreciate the one guy who, when the world was ending, said ‘Fuck it, Imma have a seat.’
- The ruins are empty except for the black figures, one Conjured Guardian and approximately three Mad Rats. The ghost-like guardian, sure, no big deal. But what the hell have the rats been subsisting on down here all this time?
I guess SureAI just wanted to get us to flex our trigger finger now and then, to remind us during this cutscene-and-walking segment that we were playing a video game instead of a movie, but still. Why rats?
- The lighting is weirdly good, considering we're in the ruins underneath the Undercity which is underneath Ark. The purple braziers are a given (although I wonder where the crystal that has always plagued Pyrean ruins until now got to), but also there's a lot of light streaming down through cracks in the walls and ceiling.
I'm wondering how far the City of a Thousand Floods extends. Are we under Ark at all anymore?
- This close, it’s not just me getting the visions. Everyone does.
That’s inexplicable, but neat. Something something approaching the endgame, something something Cycle, something something the time-space dimensions are thin, I guess?
- So we wander on down to a Beacon, identical to ours save for the ravages of age. And Tealor tells me I need to induce myself into having a vision here, and somehow that’ll provide the connection to the High One for us to do our thing. I’m kind of just going along with things, now.
Also I feel like he’s maybe not 100% sure how being the Prophetess works, but that’s fair I guess. Neither do I.
So I wander around the room for a minute, point-and-click adventure style, clicking on discarded helmets and interesting bits of crystal that provoke bits and pieces of visions. Mostly just reiterating how eerily similar the Cycle is to the one that came before it. They had a Coarek, and a Natara who let him into the city, and a female voice who has more than a bit of a Tealor vibe to her.
And off we go! Tealor directs Sha’Rim to use the Word of the Dead, now that I’ve got the right Echo.
There is a scream, not endless, but fading in and out of existence, intercut by a woman weeping, or maybe laughing. A heartbeat begins to sound, slow at first, before getting louder and louder.
And then… well.
Kansas, it ain’t.
The High Ones are apparently weird red stuff all the way down. It is pretty interesting that we've taken on a similar ghostly red glow to the way the High Ones appear.
Also it sort of looks like Tealor has black hair again, like he reverted to a younger self, but I think that's just the weird lighting.
- Tealor orders Sha’Rim forward to try and collect the High One’s consciousness in the Word, but Sha’Rim has decided it’s time to get some character growth up ins.
The thrust of his question is: ‘Do you regret it?’
The thing with his son. I am suddenly reminded that Sha’Rim, as with all the other Nehrimese mages, was a follower of Narathzul first. And that Sha’Rim, as the last living member of that order, might have something to say about that at last. I can’t say he didn’t pick his moment, standing on the cusp of triumph or defeat for all Enderal and going ‘Now let’s talk about our feelings, Arantheal.’
Sha’Rim is of the opinion that that Arantheal doesn’t regret. That it was agitation at being reminded of his failures, not true regret or anger, that colored that exchange with the High One in front of the temple.
- That’s a pretty strong and subtle point about Tealor’s character.
Anger at the High Ones for throwing his failures in his face, absolutely. But regret… yeah, I think Sha’Rim’s right on that. Tealor feels like the kind of guy to regret a lot about everything that happened, but regret at the result, at the fallout his choices had, rather than regret at ever having made the choice in the first place.
For a guy who recognizes he’s made as many mistakes as he has, Tealor doesn’t tend to doubt himself much. Equal parts virtue and vice.
Okay, Sha’Rim, where are you going with this in the end? I feel like this is the prelude to a betrayal, but I’m not sure if there’s room for vengeance here, at the end of the world.
- Of course, turns out there’s always time for vengeance.
Sha’Rim was the one who hired those mercenaries to set fire to Lishari’s research, and then he killed her when she caught on. He’s been working against us from the start, and even before then.
Huh. The man’s a better actor than I thought, that’s for sure; he seemed genuinely distraught back then.
I thought this was about Narathzul, but it’s not: it’s about Tealor, and his fuck-up in Qyra that led to the civil war. Apparently, Sha’Rim was one of the very few survivors of that first purge, when the farmers were whipped into a rebellion and Young Tealor commanded them to be put down; his wife and daughter weren’t so lucky.
Why Sha’Rim brought his wife and daughter to an open revolt against the tyrannical god-kings, I have no idea. Presumably there’s at least a little more to this story than I’m getting.
The point is, Sha’Rim has been trying to sabotage Tealor all this time and has been mostly failing at it, Wile E. Coyote style, thanks to yours truly.
- Now this bit is clever. Tealor straight up asks why the hell Sha’Rim is doing this when Coarek would be killing Tealor within the day. Why kill the whole goddamn world just to kill a guy who’s going to die anyway?
Sha’Rim though… he thinks, doesn’t it taste sweetest this way?
Tealor wants to be a martyr. Tealor Arantheal, savior of the world. What a nice ring to it.
But, uh oh, look who’s here right at the very end to spoke his wheel at the cusp of his great triumph against the High Ones? Fucking Sha’Rim.
He could have exploded Arantheal in his sleep years ago if he just wanted to kill the man, probably. Sha’Rim is stupidly strong; he’s been holding off the Nehrimese invasion by himself for weeks.
But no, Sha’Rim doesn’t want Tealor to die. He wants him to hurt.
You kind of have to admire spite like that.
- So Sha’Rim does… something or other. Merges with the Numinos, or wakes it up, or… something. He vanishes in an explosion of energy, the red of the High Ones with a touch of the green lightning of Sha’Rim’s Entropy magic, and we get kicked back out into the waking world.
Sha'Rim's corpse on the right manages to look amazingly smug, somehow.
Oh, also, Sha’Rim is possessed by the High Ones. Just now? All this time? Hard to say.
What’s easy to see is that this High One is one of the sassy ones. Some High Ones just have such a good time fucking with the mortals. Lots of good sneers and smirks and such in the conversation ahead.
We must make this guy’s millennium.
- Arantheal reckons he’s not out of this race yet, though. See, we’re doomed. Sha’Rim won… up to a point. We have no Numinos, so we can’t aim the Beacon. What we can still do, though, is turn it on.
That’s going to basically nuke Enderal. But Tealor reckons that’s a risk he’s willing to take.
He believes – hopes – that there are other people out there like us. Somewhere, on some other continent-nation, there’s somebody who can figure this High One thing out.
He thinks there’s a reason the High Ones sent Coarek here, that if he gets to the Beacon he can somehow steer it into the ending he/the High Ones want, and birth a new High One. But if Coarek and the Beacon and everything else are wiped off the map, maybe the High Ones won’t be able to complete the Cleansing on their own, and we buy the rest of the world time to get its shit together.
- I’m feeling not so good about this course of action, of course, but I’m still mostly dead and Tealor has no time to drag me to the surface with him. He needs to get to the Beacon and activate it before Coarek punches through our guards up topside. It's a cause worth dying for, but Tealor is sounding just a little too eager, you know?
I have a couple of conversation options, the ‘Go on, Tealor, you can do it!’ or the ‘Are you fucking nuts?’ option, neither of which quite fit what I’m thinking. Which is that he's basing a lot of his reasoning on guesswork and hope, and he came up with this plan in about 30 seconds while being heckled by Sha'Rim's corpse. But Tealor doesn’t really care what I think, anyway. Tealor has a plan.
We? We are gonna be heroes, Tealor assures me.
All aboard the Martyr Express, I guess.
The Takeaway:
I do feel like this would have more punch if we knew more about Sha’Rim prior to this. If we'd previously talked about his family, or life in Qyra, or something that would make us go, ‘Ohhh’ in hindsight. Instead, most of his conversation options around the Sun Temple were questions about how various disciplines of magic works.
I mean if this was Archmage Lexil pulling this betrayal, I’d be feeling it more. But it’s still good stuff.
Tealor’s character pivot was even better. Because I still like him, even if it’s starting to look like we’re going to have to duke it out over the Beacon. The character traits that made him such an unflinching badass in the face of the Red Madness, the Reapers showing up and the end of the world are the same ones that are causing all his problems now.
... Well, not that I think Sha'Rim would have stopped his 15+ year revenge plot if Tealor had seemed more sensitive and regretful, but you never know.
That edge of martyrdom that was in Tealor's heroic speech up in the Temple has broken open and revealed itself to be just as much vice as virtue too. It’s kind of like a depressed person thinking suicidal thoughts about how the world would be better off without them. When you can’t see any other way out, then dying well doesn’t sound so bad. Maybe people will think well of you, afterwards. Is it a legacy thing, I wonder? Or is he so sure it’s the right thing that he's getting tunnel vision? Or is it just that in this floundering Order dedicated to a God-king that no longer exists, with all his old friends and lovers turned traitor or dead, you might as well go out with a bang, saving the world?
What a Hero, they’ll say of us after we die saving the world. Tealor almost can’t wait.
Tealor tries to soothe me that we’ll look for him on the way to the Pyrean Beacon, but I get the feeling it’s mostly a sop to my feelings. Tealor’s a rock; the only part he cares about is that we’re down one of our four-man party, I think.
I’m not sweating it, though. I’m pretty sure Jespar is on the same immortality train as Calia and I. I’d be pretty damn surprised if he died offscreen like a mook (poor Natara).
- The ruins are largely empty save for dozens of the carbon-black human figures, almost all looking or running forward in the same direction I’m going. It gives a weird feeling of being dragged forward to your destination, like you’re a salmon swimming in a school of fish.
Whoever on staff was responsible for cute skeleton placement is getting to flex his design muscles here, I bet.
For example, I appreciate the one guy who, when the world was ending, said ‘Fuck it, Imma have a seat.’
- The ruins are empty except for the black figures, one Conjured Guardian and approximately three Mad Rats. The ghost-like guardian, sure, no big deal. But what the hell have the rats been subsisting on down here all this time?
I guess SureAI just wanted to get us to flex our trigger finger now and then, to remind us during this cutscene-and-walking segment that we were playing a video game instead of a movie, but still. Why rats?
- The lighting is weirdly good, considering we're in the ruins underneath the Undercity which is underneath Ark. The purple braziers are a given (although I wonder where the crystal that has always plagued Pyrean ruins until now got to), but also there's a lot of light streaming down through cracks in the walls and ceiling.
I'm wondering how far the City of a Thousand Floods extends. Are we under Ark at all anymore?
- This close, it’s not just me getting the visions. Everyone does.
That’s inexplicable, but neat. Something something approaching the endgame, something something Cycle, something something the time-space dimensions are thin, I guess?
- So we wander on down to a Beacon, identical to ours save for the ravages of age. And Tealor tells me I need to induce myself into having a vision here, and somehow that’ll provide the connection to the High One for us to do our thing. I’m kind of just going along with things, now.
Also I feel like he’s maybe not 100% sure how being the Prophetess works, but that’s fair I guess. Neither do I.
So I wander around the room for a minute, point-and-click adventure style, clicking on discarded helmets and interesting bits of crystal that provoke bits and pieces of visions. Mostly just reiterating how eerily similar the Cycle is to the one that came before it. They had a Coarek, and a Natara who let him into the city, and a female voice who has more than a bit of a Tealor vibe to her.
And off we go! Tealor directs Sha’Rim to use the Word of the Dead, now that I’ve got the right Echo.
There is a scream, not endless, but fading in and out of existence, intercut by a woman weeping, or maybe laughing. A heartbeat begins to sound, slow at first, before getting louder and louder.
And then… well.
Kansas, it ain’t.
The High Ones are apparently weird red stuff all the way down. It is pretty interesting that we've taken on a similar ghostly red glow to the way the High Ones appear.
Also it sort of looks like Tealor has black hair again, like he reverted to a younger self, but I think that's just the weird lighting.
- Tealor orders Sha’Rim forward to try and collect the High One’s consciousness in the Word, but Sha’Rim has decided it’s time to get some character growth up ins.
The thrust of his question is: ‘Do you regret it?’
The thing with his son. I am suddenly reminded that Sha’Rim, as with all the other Nehrimese mages, was a follower of Narathzul first. And that Sha’Rim, as the last living member of that order, might have something to say about that at last. I can’t say he didn’t pick his moment, standing on the cusp of triumph or defeat for all Enderal and going ‘Now let’s talk about our feelings, Arantheal.’
Sha’Rim is of the opinion that that Arantheal doesn’t regret. That it was agitation at being reminded of his failures, not true regret or anger, that colored that exchange with the High One in front of the temple.
- That’s a pretty strong and subtle point about Tealor’s character.
Anger at the High Ones for throwing his failures in his face, absolutely. But regret… yeah, I think Sha’Rim’s right on that. Tealor feels like the kind of guy to regret a lot about everything that happened, but regret at the result, at the fallout his choices had, rather than regret at ever having made the choice in the first place.
For a guy who recognizes he’s made as many mistakes as he has, Tealor doesn’t tend to doubt himself much. Equal parts virtue and vice.
Okay, Sha’Rim, where are you going with this in the end? I feel like this is the prelude to a betrayal, but I’m not sure if there’s room for vengeance here, at the end of the world.
- Of course, turns out there’s always time for vengeance.
Sha’Rim was the one who hired those mercenaries to set fire to Lishari’s research, and then he killed her when she caught on. He’s been working against us from the start, and even before then.
Huh. The man’s a better actor than I thought, that’s for sure; he seemed genuinely distraught back then.
I thought this was about Narathzul, but it’s not: it’s about Tealor, and his fuck-up in Qyra that led to the civil war. Apparently, Sha’Rim was one of the very few survivors of that first purge, when the farmers were whipped into a rebellion and Young Tealor commanded them to be put down; his wife and daughter weren’t so lucky.
Why Sha’Rim brought his wife and daughter to an open revolt against the tyrannical god-kings, I have no idea. Presumably there’s at least a little more to this story than I’m getting.
The point is, Sha’Rim has been trying to sabotage Tealor all this time and has been mostly failing at it, Wile E. Coyote style, thanks to yours truly.
- Now this bit is clever. Tealor straight up asks why the hell Sha’Rim is doing this when Coarek would be killing Tealor within the day. Why kill the whole goddamn world just to kill a guy who’s going to die anyway?
Sha’Rim though… he thinks, doesn’t it taste sweetest this way?
Tealor wants to be a martyr. Tealor Arantheal, savior of the world. What a nice ring to it.
But, uh oh, look who’s here right at the very end to spoke his wheel at the cusp of his great triumph against the High Ones? Fucking Sha’Rim.
He could have exploded Arantheal in his sleep years ago if he just wanted to kill the man, probably. Sha’Rim is stupidly strong; he’s been holding off the Nehrimese invasion by himself for weeks.
But no, Sha’Rim doesn’t want Tealor to die. He wants him to hurt.
You kind of have to admire spite like that.
- So Sha’Rim does… something or other. Merges with the Numinos, or wakes it up, or… something. He vanishes in an explosion of energy, the red of the High Ones with a touch of the green lightning of Sha’Rim’s Entropy magic, and we get kicked back out into the waking world.
Sha'Rim's corpse on the right manages to look amazingly smug, somehow.
Oh, also, Sha’Rim is possessed by the High Ones. Just now? All this time? Hard to say.
What’s easy to see is that this High One is one of the sassy ones. Some High Ones just have such a good time fucking with the mortals. Lots of good sneers and smirks and such in the conversation ahead.
We must make this guy’s millennium.
- Arantheal reckons he’s not out of this race yet, though. See, we’re doomed. Sha’Rim won… up to a point. We have no Numinos, so we can’t aim the Beacon. What we can still do, though, is turn it on.
That’s going to basically nuke Enderal. But Tealor reckons that’s a risk he’s willing to take.
He believes – hopes – that there are other people out there like us. Somewhere, on some other continent-nation, there’s somebody who can figure this High One thing out.
He thinks there’s a reason the High Ones sent Coarek here, that if he gets to the Beacon he can somehow steer it into the ending he/the High Ones want, and birth a new High One. But if Coarek and the Beacon and everything else are wiped off the map, maybe the High Ones won’t be able to complete the Cleansing on their own, and we buy the rest of the world time to get its shit together.
- I’m feeling not so good about this course of action, of course, but I’m still mostly dead and Tealor has no time to drag me to the surface with him. He needs to get to the Beacon and activate it before Coarek punches through our guards up topside. It's a cause worth dying for, but Tealor is sounding just a little too eager, you know?
I have a couple of conversation options, the ‘Go on, Tealor, you can do it!’ or the ‘Are you fucking nuts?’ option, neither of which quite fit what I’m thinking. Which is that he's basing a lot of his reasoning on guesswork and hope, and he came up with this plan in about 30 seconds while being heckled by Sha'Rim's corpse. But Tealor doesn’t really care what I think, anyway. Tealor has a plan.
We? We are gonna be heroes, Tealor assures me.
All aboard the Martyr Express, I guess.
The Takeaway:
I do feel like this would have more punch if we knew more about Sha’Rim prior to this. If we'd previously talked about his family, or life in Qyra, or something that would make us go, ‘Ohhh’ in hindsight. Instead, most of his conversation options around the Sun Temple were questions about how various disciplines of magic works.
I mean if this was Archmage Lexil pulling this betrayal, I’d be feeling it more. But it’s still good stuff.
Tealor’s character pivot was even better. Because I still like him, even if it’s starting to look like we’re going to have to duke it out over the Beacon. The character traits that made him such an unflinching badass in the face of the Red Madness, the Reapers showing up and the end of the world are the same ones that are causing all his problems now.
... Well, not that I think Sha'Rim would have stopped his 15+ year revenge plot if Tealor had seemed more sensitive and regretful, but you never know.
That edge of martyrdom that was in Tealor's heroic speech up in the Temple has broken open and revealed itself to be just as much vice as virtue too. It’s kind of like a depressed person thinking suicidal thoughts about how the world would be better off without them. When you can’t see any other way out, then dying well doesn’t sound so bad. Maybe people will think well of you, afterwards. Is it a legacy thing, I wonder? Or is he so sure it’s the right thing that he's getting tunnel vision? Or is it just that in this floundering Order dedicated to a God-king that no longer exists, with all his old friends and lovers turned traitor or dead, you might as well go out with a bang, saving the world?
What a Hero, they’ll say of us after we die saving the world. Tealor almost can’t wait.
Just curious, do you plan to continue or amend your analysis after Forgotten Stories comes out, since apparently it will require a new game ab initio?
Your thoughts and characterisations are very spot-on, is all I will say. Very interesting reads, as always! Would love to see / read your take on the Forgotten Stories. 
06.02.2019 18:28badgesareus wrote: Just curious, do you plan to continue or amend your analysis after Forgotten Stories comes out, since apparently it will require a new game ab initio?
I'd probably want to take a break after I finish this, but when it comes out is gonna be the best time to play it alongside everybody...
Ah, so glad to see you've been updating again (I think I read through the entire thread months ago, hadn't seen the newer posts)! Great thread 
when it comes out is gonna be the best time to play it alongside everybody...
- When I jump back into it, the loading screen helpfully informs me that gamblers that win at the card table only take a portion of their winnings home with them.
SureAI is sure that anyone who loses at the gambling table is going to follow the winner home and beat them to death in an alley, and is warning them that they will only get part of their lost money back.
That’s kind of awesome.
But now, buckle in, children. We’ve got some heavy exposition to work through.
- So Tealor leaves and I fall over and presumably die again, only to wake up to the Veiled Woman doing her hoodoo.
She informs me that it all begins with dreams, which is clear as mud, but about par for the course with her.
She throws up a portal, and in the process of heading to it there’s some visions – well, auditory hallucinations – that make it pretty clear that last time with female Tealor is exactly the same as this time. They headed down here, they were betrayed, and female Tealor resolved to set off the Beacon without the Numinos.
Looks like we’re doomed, probably. Ah, well.
- At first I think the portal takes me to the surface, or perhaps to the Great White North, since it appears to be cold enough for snow.
- And in the depths of the earth I run into this.
And I thought Horst was a big fella.
- The giant centurion talks, too.
It’s a good thing his voice has something of the quality of melting chocolate – possibly the best voice talent in a game packed with it, or at least the most attractive voice – because this is a looooong conversation and you can’t skip any of it.
He’s kind of our Star Kid, to go back to the kinda unavoidable Mass Effect comparison. He’s here at the end to exposit all over the place and wrap up any loose threads.
Well, most loose threads. Still no word on what the hell the Aged Man was about.
- And he’s the Black Guardian. God damn it.
I wonder if he sometimes passes the time in between the endless aeons with mindless howling in the depths, or what. It kind of sounds like he was asleep, but then he also claims that with the “Eye” (his equivalent to my Echo, so he's also an Emissary I guess?) he can see all things on the surface and he certainly knows enough about what’s going on to have been watching all along. Well, he says it's more of a 'seeing schemes and feeling emotions' thing rather than sight, but whatever. Close enough for government work.
Back in the day, he was planning to hide from his cycle’s Cleansing and be a glorious golden god-king for the next, to protect them from the High Ones.
Basically, this is last cycle’s Yerai, or possibly their Pahtira? Well, not last cycle. Many, many, maaaany cycles ago, perhaps the very first cycle. So if it’s been 50,000 years since the Pyreans, and he claims there’s been 1,000 cycles... he’s been down here for in the ballpark of 50 million years.
How he’s not mad as a bag of clams by now, I have no idea.
- I can't remember, do normal centurions have the Guardian's bitchin' 3-4 inch long goat? It makes him look all old and distinguished and stuff.
- He’s shocked I’m here. Apparently, the Prophet always dies after the Emperor leaves her.
He knows of the Veiled Woman, but as far as he’s concerned she doesn’t even have a mind, so he has no idea why she would be helping out this time.
I really wish I could probe him for more information on the Veiled Woman, but along with the Aged Man she’s the other big hole in his block of exposition.
Anybody who can hold up a conversation like she did after Jespar bit the dust and during Calia’s backstory certainly isn’t mindless. But he talks about her, the brief amount he does, like a force of nature rather than a person.
I suppose it’s more realistic that even the giant robot that’s been watching everything all along can be wrong. It marks him as an unreliable narrator, and that you should at least take even his version of events with a grain of salt.
- The Prophetess seems weirdly shocked when the Black Guardian explains that she’s dead. Like… people told you you were dead, and you saw your own corpse. What did you think happened?
The actual news here is that the Black Guardian claims that the Emissaries are all dead people – which he calls Fleshless – that the High Ones turned into projections indistinguishable from other people. The Prophetess died in the ocean, obviously. Tealor died in prison. Coarek probably died during the rebellion or something. I wonder how many other Emissaries – and therefore undead – are kicking around? I never got a list or anything…
This doesn’t seem to be a ‘High One puppet’ situation, more of a ‘jumpstart the corpse and watch it go’ thing. They don't appear to control us from the inside out, it's more of a top-down kind of thing where they poke at us from above until we do what they want.
And this isn’t a Veiled Woman versus High One setting like I half expected, but rather the High Ones orchestrating both sides from the beginning.
- There's an actual cutscene right around here, except that my computer can only barely chug its way through it; I get audio but no video, and if I touch the keyboard during the cutscene Enderal crashes.
So it goes.
Skipping ahead...
- See, the Black Guardian has noticed that the High Ones don’t have any powers at all, besides kickstarting Emissaries and talking to people. Uh, and the Red Madness I guess. And raising the dead as Lost Ones, and there was that thing with Rynaeus where the High Ones portaled in an Oorbaya or something. And they’re behind the dreams, of course. And then just outside the temple, when they summoned like 20 wraiths and a ghost-dragon to bully us.
So really, that’s a lot of powers.
But they don’t have much in the way of physical powers. You’ll never see the High Ones throwing down, themselves. There will be no High One boss battle.
And they can’t start the Cleansing. The Beacon will either deliver salvation or doom, and it has to be activated by human hands. Tealor Arantheal works just as well as Coarek for their purposes. The second someone turns on the Beacon with all the Black Stones but no Numinos, the Cleansing begins and the world dies again.
The Black Guardian sees this whole thing, the High Ones and the Beacon and the Cleansing and so on, as a sort of trial from some ineffable higher power. Which, I guess? The rules for this thing with the Beacon and the High Ones feels too artificial to just be a natural part of the world. If the world reset every 50,000 years and the High Ones were just some aethereal parasites sponging off the process somehow, that’d be one thing. But the Beacon itself coming pre-built and the whole ‘save the world / destroy the world’ dichotomy feels too structured.
And a little bit rigged. This is some Mortal Kombat-style Earth Realm/Outworld tournament stuff, here. Except Shao Khan won 1,000 times to our 0. And our Raiden is completely inscrutable and possibly non-sentient.
- Which, by the way: Tealor was under the impression that turning on the Beacon was effectively a nuke, but the Black Guardian explains that what actually happens is a light begins to shine from the Beacon, the sky will open up in response, and everyone on the planet will begin to burn from the inside out.
Which is way more metal.
- We can’t ask about the Aged Man or the Veiled One, but we can ask about the Ancient Starlings, or the 'Yalam-Rashai' as they were known back in the day.
Although the Black Guardian cautions that their floating city is at the very outermost edge of what he can perceive, so he doesn’t know everything.
He knows that they survived their cycle in the same way he did; by refusing to play. He turned into a robot; they tore their city out of the ground and flung it into the sky, and protected it from the Cleansing, somehow.
For a time, their city was the light of civilization; the greatest and most enlightened and the most advanced humankind has ever been.
But then the societal rot set in and they started getting overpopulated, so they started setting strict birth limits and mind wiping and exiling anyone who committed crimes back down to the world below. As you do.
That’s where our Starlings come from, of course. Their drive to return to the stars is a kind of race memory of what they lost.
And the Black Guardian doesn’t know why the Ancient Starlings died, either. Way to blueball me right at the end of the story, man. The ending is the best part!
- Also, the Black Guardian’s plan is to put me back in the ball and send me up to the Starling City. The escape pods can do that, apparently; he has seen the Ancient Starlings use them that way.
So I think my headcanon of the Ancient Starlings hitting up Riverville on beer runs is true!
- So yeah, it looks like we’re coming to a binary choice. Let’s take it piece by piece, shall we?
- The Black Guardian’s recommendation is that I flee to the Star City, to survive and live an ageless and endless life until human life returns in the next cycle, and then guide them into being a better people, who will not fall prey to the machinations of the High Ones by dint of being morally superior.
This is a load of bollocks, frankly. I have zero faith that I could take the selfishness and greed out of a human civilization, no matter how many centuries I had to plan it out. Trying to create a world of nothing but altruism is a foolish dream.
On the upside, this means I would survive the Cleansing. I'm in favor of that.
On the downside, this means I would survive the Cleansing to live for 30,000+ years alone in a crumbling sky-city, alone except for occasionally murderous robots.
He says he’d contact me once I got there, so maybe I wouldn’t be totally forever-alone.
Except that he also finishes the conversation by requesting I throw this lever and kill him because he’s tired of an endless vigil with no hope of change.
I’m not sure if that’s a screw-up on SureAI’s part, or if the Black Guardian has gone a little screwy all alone down here for 50 million years after all. Could go either way.
- The other option is to run on up there and break the Beacon.
Tealor has activated the bloody thing, but it’ll still take a little while to start burning people from the inside out, and me one of the last of all.
I’d die. I think maybe Enderal would die too? Maybe just the city, since the Black Guardian is sure this plan would kill Coarek too. And he’s of the opinion that what humanity needs is a knowledgeable immortal looking down from on high to guide them more than a few previous years before the High Ones start whispering in the ears of Kileans or Qyrans or whoever, to swerve back around and take another crack at this Cleansing thing.
Of course, this is also the guy who tried to become the Enlightened Golden God-Robo, so of course he would think that.
Uh, but just going by my own personal experience here, yeah, this would probably spell doom for humanity too. There’s always going to be a Coarek out there willing to do horrible things for the promise of some vague ascension, or whatever other lever the High Ones need to use. That’s just humanity for you.
The High Ones are 1,000 to 0 on this plan working.
- Oh, but maybe I’m not going to have to worry about any of this, because when I flip the switch I start to get sucked into the robot and the Black Guardian wants my body. And not in the fun way.
Yeah, that’s a thing.
Today has just been one thing after another.
The Takeaway:
The simple fact that they needed some rando to show up and fill in the gaps in the plot all in one exposition dump is something of a hammer, writing-wise. Nothing’s perfect, though, and this joker is leagues above some other examples I could name from AAA titles.
This isn’t some villain expositing about his master plan; the Black Guardian is a victim of the cycle as much as I am. I don’t hate him, even as he tricked me into the robot. I’d do the same to him in a heartbeat. That’s just how humanity rolls. This ‘ha haaaa, now I will be the immortal god-king of humanity!’ nonsense at the 11th hour is just playing into the same themes this game has been working with for ages. This is Sigil Leader Jorek and Natara and Sha’Rim all over again.
Though he’s been present for many events in ‘history’ he’s still fallible. Because he’s fallible, it’s no big deal if he can’t answer the innumerable questions a player might want to ask and the writer can’t anticipate (‘What was up with that Living Temple, seriously’ or ‘But what about Natara tho’). Although he still does a better job of answering pertinent questions than Mass Effect’s Star Kid ever did.
And unlike Star Kid, we don’t have infinite power at our fingertips only to boil it down into simple choices; we might be a lich and a giant robot, but we have limited choices because we still only have the limited power of humans.
He was properly foreshadowed as a part of the world, too, which is pretty nice. I even said last week that I was probably going to end up having to fight a Black Guardian, and boy if it isn’t looking like that’s going to be true. I even kind of like that he’s a giant robot, because that’s established as a thing people can do in this setting. Yerai was maybe smarter than the Guardian, even, since he made a much smaller robot but at least that one has working legs. This isn’t really coming out of left field at all.
SureAI is sure that anyone who loses at the gambling table is going to follow the winner home and beat them to death in an alley, and is warning them that they will only get part of their lost money back.
That’s kind of awesome.
But now, buckle in, children. We’ve got some heavy exposition to work through.
- So Tealor leaves and I fall over and presumably die again, only to wake up to the Veiled Woman doing her hoodoo.
She informs me that it all begins with dreams, which is clear as mud, but about par for the course with her.
She throws up a portal, and in the process of heading to it there’s some visions – well, auditory hallucinations – that make it pretty clear that last time with female Tealor is exactly the same as this time. They headed down here, they were betrayed, and female Tealor resolved to set off the Beacon without the Numinos.
Looks like we’re doomed, probably. Ah, well.
- At first I think the portal takes me to the surface, or perhaps to the Great White North, since it appears to be cold enough for snow.
- And in the depths of the earth I run into this.
And I thought Horst was a big fella.
- The giant centurion talks, too.
It’s a good thing his voice has something of the quality of melting chocolate – possibly the best voice talent in a game packed with it, or at least the most attractive voice – because this is a looooong conversation and you can’t skip any of it.
He’s kind of our Star Kid, to go back to the kinda unavoidable Mass Effect comparison. He’s here at the end to exposit all over the place and wrap up any loose threads.
Well, most loose threads. Still no word on what the hell the Aged Man was about.
- And he’s the Black Guardian. God damn it.
I wonder if he sometimes passes the time in between the endless aeons with mindless howling in the depths, or what. It kind of sounds like he was asleep, but then he also claims that with the “Eye” (his equivalent to my Echo, so he's also an Emissary I guess?) he can see all things on the surface and he certainly knows enough about what’s going on to have been watching all along. Well, he says it's more of a 'seeing schemes and feeling emotions' thing rather than sight, but whatever. Close enough for government work.
Back in the day, he was planning to hide from his cycle’s Cleansing and be a glorious golden god-king for the next, to protect them from the High Ones.
Basically, this is last cycle’s Yerai, or possibly their Pahtira? Well, not last cycle. Many, many, maaaany cycles ago, perhaps the very first cycle. So if it’s been 50,000 years since the Pyreans, and he claims there’s been 1,000 cycles... he’s been down here for in the ballpark of 50 million years.
How he’s not mad as a bag of clams by now, I have no idea.
- I can't remember, do normal centurions have the Guardian's bitchin' 3-4 inch long goat? It makes him look all old and distinguished and stuff.
- He’s shocked I’m here. Apparently, the Prophet always dies after the Emperor leaves her.
He knows of the Veiled Woman, but as far as he’s concerned she doesn’t even have a mind, so he has no idea why she would be helping out this time.
I really wish I could probe him for more information on the Veiled Woman, but along with the Aged Man she’s the other big hole in his block of exposition.
Anybody who can hold up a conversation like she did after Jespar bit the dust and during Calia’s backstory certainly isn’t mindless. But he talks about her, the brief amount he does, like a force of nature rather than a person.
I suppose it’s more realistic that even the giant robot that’s been watching everything all along can be wrong. It marks him as an unreliable narrator, and that you should at least take even his version of events with a grain of salt.
- The Prophetess seems weirdly shocked when the Black Guardian explains that she’s dead. Like… people told you you were dead, and you saw your own corpse. What did you think happened?
The actual news here is that the Black Guardian claims that the Emissaries are all dead people – which he calls Fleshless – that the High Ones turned into projections indistinguishable from other people. The Prophetess died in the ocean, obviously. Tealor died in prison. Coarek probably died during the rebellion or something. I wonder how many other Emissaries – and therefore undead – are kicking around? I never got a list or anything…
This doesn’t seem to be a ‘High One puppet’ situation, more of a ‘jumpstart the corpse and watch it go’ thing. They don't appear to control us from the inside out, it's more of a top-down kind of thing where they poke at us from above until we do what they want.
And this isn’t a Veiled Woman versus High One setting like I half expected, but rather the High Ones orchestrating both sides from the beginning.
- There's an actual cutscene right around here, except that my computer can only barely chug its way through it; I get audio but no video, and if I touch the keyboard during the cutscene Enderal crashes.
So it goes.
Skipping ahead...
- See, the Black Guardian has noticed that the High Ones don’t have any powers at all, besides kickstarting Emissaries and talking to people. Uh, and the Red Madness I guess. And raising the dead as Lost Ones, and there was that thing with Rynaeus where the High Ones portaled in an Oorbaya or something. And they’re behind the dreams, of course. And then just outside the temple, when they summoned like 20 wraiths and a ghost-dragon to bully us.
So really, that’s a lot of powers.
But they don’t have much in the way of physical powers. You’ll never see the High Ones throwing down, themselves. There will be no High One boss battle.
And they can’t start the Cleansing. The Beacon will either deliver salvation or doom, and it has to be activated by human hands. Tealor Arantheal works just as well as Coarek for their purposes. The second someone turns on the Beacon with all the Black Stones but no Numinos, the Cleansing begins and the world dies again.
The Black Guardian sees this whole thing, the High Ones and the Beacon and the Cleansing and so on, as a sort of trial from some ineffable higher power. Which, I guess? The rules for this thing with the Beacon and the High Ones feels too artificial to just be a natural part of the world. If the world reset every 50,000 years and the High Ones were just some aethereal parasites sponging off the process somehow, that’d be one thing. But the Beacon itself coming pre-built and the whole ‘save the world / destroy the world’ dichotomy feels too structured.
And a little bit rigged. This is some Mortal Kombat-style Earth Realm/Outworld tournament stuff, here. Except Shao Khan won 1,000 times to our 0. And our Raiden is completely inscrutable and possibly non-sentient.
- Which, by the way: Tealor was under the impression that turning on the Beacon was effectively a nuke, but the Black Guardian explains that what actually happens is a light begins to shine from the Beacon, the sky will open up in response, and everyone on the planet will begin to burn from the inside out.
Which is way more metal.
- We can’t ask about the Aged Man or the Veiled One, but we can ask about the Ancient Starlings, or the 'Yalam-Rashai' as they were known back in the day.
Although the Black Guardian cautions that their floating city is at the very outermost edge of what he can perceive, so he doesn’t know everything.
He knows that they survived their cycle in the same way he did; by refusing to play. He turned into a robot; they tore their city out of the ground and flung it into the sky, and protected it from the Cleansing, somehow.
For a time, their city was the light of civilization; the greatest and most enlightened and the most advanced humankind has ever been.
But then the societal rot set in and they started getting overpopulated, so they started setting strict birth limits and mind wiping and exiling anyone who committed crimes back down to the world below. As you do.
That’s where our Starlings come from, of course. Their drive to return to the stars is a kind of race memory of what they lost.
And the Black Guardian doesn’t know why the Ancient Starlings died, either. Way to blueball me right at the end of the story, man. The ending is the best part!
- Also, the Black Guardian’s plan is to put me back in the ball and send me up to the Starling City. The escape pods can do that, apparently; he has seen the Ancient Starlings use them that way.
So I think my headcanon of the Ancient Starlings hitting up Riverville on beer runs is true!
- So yeah, it looks like we’re coming to a binary choice. Let’s take it piece by piece, shall we?
- The Black Guardian’s recommendation is that I flee to the Star City, to survive and live an ageless and endless life until human life returns in the next cycle, and then guide them into being a better people, who will not fall prey to the machinations of the High Ones by dint of being morally superior.
This is a load of bollocks, frankly. I have zero faith that I could take the selfishness and greed out of a human civilization, no matter how many centuries I had to plan it out. Trying to create a world of nothing but altruism is a foolish dream.
On the upside, this means I would survive the Cleansing. I'm in favor of that.
On the downside, this means I would survive the Cleansing to live for 30,000+ years alone in a crumbling sky-city, alone except for occasionally murderous robots.
He says he’d contact me once I got there, so maybe I wouldn’t be totally forever-alone.
Except that he also finishes the conversation by requesting I throw this lever and kill him because he’s tired of an endless vigil with no hope of change.
I’m not sure if that’s a screw-up on SureAI’s part, or if the Black Guardian has gone a little screwy all alone down here for 50 million years after all. Could go either way.
- The other option is to run on up there and break the Beacon.
Tealor has activated the bloody thing, but it’ll still take a little while to start burning people from the inside out, and me one of the last of all.
I’d die. I think maybe Enderal would die too? Maybe just the city, since the Black Guardian is sure this plan would kill Coarek too. And he’s of the opinion that what humanity needs is a knowledgeable immortal looking down from on high to guide them more than a few previous years before the High Ones start whispering in the ears of Kileans or Qyrans or whoever, to swerve back around and take another crack at this Cleansing thing.
Of course, this is also the guy who tried to become the Enlightened Golden God-Robo, so of course he would think that.
Uh, but just going by my own personal experience here, yeah, this would probably spell doom for humanity too. There’s always going to be a Coarek out there willing to do horrible things for the promise of some vague ascension, or whatever other lever the High Ones need to use. That’s just humanity for you.
The High Ones are 1,000 to 0 on this plan working.
- Oh, but maybe I’m not going to have to worry about any of this, because when I flip the switch I start to get sucked into the robot and the Black Guardian wants my body. And not in the fun way.
Yeah, that’s a thing.
Today has just been one thing after another.
The Takeaway:
The simple fact that they needed some rando to show up and fill in the gaps in the plot all in one exposition dump is something of a hammer, writing-wise. Nothing’s perfect, though, and this joker is leagues above some other examples I could name from AAA titles.
This isn’t some villain expositing about his master plan; the Black Guardian is a victim of the cycle as much as I am. I don’t hate him, even as he tricked me into the robot. I’d do the same to him in a heartbeat. That’s just how humanity rolls. This ‘ha haaaa, now I will be the immortal god-king of humanity!’ nonsense at the 11th hour is just playing into the same themes this game has been working with for ages. This is Sigil Leader Jorek and Natara and Sha’Rim all over again.
Though he’s been present for many events in ‘history’ he’s still fallible. Because he’s fallible, it’s no big deal if he can’t answer the innumerable questions a player might want to ask and the writer can’t anticipate (‘What was up with that Living Temple, seriously’ or ‘But what about Natara tho’). Although he still does a better job of answering pertinent questions than Mass Effect’s Star Kid ever did.
And unlike Star Kid, we don’t have infinite power at our fingertips only to boil it down into simple choices; we might be a lich and a giant robot, but we have limited choices because we still only have the limited power of humans.
He was properly foreshadowed as a part of the world, too, which is pretty nice. I even said last week that I was probably going to end up having to fight a Black Guardian, and boy if it isn’t looking like that’s going to be true. I even kind of like that he’s a giant robot, because that’s established as a thing people can do in this setting. Yerai was maybe smarter than the Guardian, even, since he made a much smaller robot but at least that one has working legs. This isn’t really coming out of left field at all.
Last edited by dyslexicfaser on 12.02.2019 07:45, edited 1 time in total.
So after all the long hours to get to the Black Guardian, expecting all mysteries such as the veiled woman and the aged man to be revealed, basically you get "who's on first, what's on second." [anyone who doesn't get this, just google it.]
This is one thing that really annoyed me, as I tend to do multiple playthroughs. I listened to the whole 40 -minute speil the first time, but I didn't want to sit through it over and over again on successive playthroughs. Painful!
because this is a looooong conversation and you can’t skip any of it.
12.02.2019 07:38badgesareus wrote: So after all the long hours to get to the Black Guardian, expecting all mysteries such as the veiled woman and the aged man to be revealed, basically you get "who's on first, what's on second." [anyone who doesn't get this, just google it.]
This is one thing that really annoyed me, as I tend to do multiple playthroughs. I listened to the whole 40 -minute speil the first time, but I didn't want to sit through it over and over again on successive playthroughs. Painful!because this is a looooong conversation and you can’t skip any of it.
but this long conversation with the Black Guardian is one of my favorite and most awaited segments in a videogame, when I start a playthrough. One of the aspects I most enjoyed in Enderal's writing is the fact that every character exposes the story from their intended point of view, their agenda. Nobody tells the truth. The bards sing propaganda songs, Tealor only tells you what you need to know, and he wants you to know, to ensure you do what he wants and the Black Guardian tells you what he can "sense" limitedly and soothes you with answers you'd like to hear to make sure you press that switch, etc.So in that sense, it does not fall into the same trope as Star Kid.
And dyslexic: this conversation already unveiled who the aged man is
12.02.2019 09:23Ragnarok wrote: Call me whatever
So in that sense, it does not fall into the same trope as Star Kid.
I figure I'll come back and talk about the game as a whole once I'm done, that'll definitely include the ending.
And dyslexic: this conversation already unveiled who the aged man is
Is he supposed to be the asshole over-god who set up this trial thing to begin with?? He always struck me as a little too human for that, with his girlfriend stuck under glass and stuff. Just rez your waifu as a Fleshless if the High Ones work for you, man, jeez.
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