SPOILER I'm not really feeling the Fruma story line.

No, I don't think he can be, actually, given that the very first thing you mention of Zhiraok is him letting a known resistance group, terrorist rebels, illegally move between districts because they're, and I quote, "doing part of his work for him". That's deceitful laziness, not dutiful overachieving. That is completely counter to his current character, and is a wafer-thin motivation to allow the actions he does compared to the ones he has in canon. His current character, as evidenced by all his different appearances, his discovery text, all that- is that this is the sort of thing he would never let happen. He's got his fingers in a ton of different pies, even if he's delegating- see Maripe mentioning that Zhiraok is very interested in seeing the hot springs restored, and, quote, "promised some great things if [Maripe] can clean this all up!" Things slip through the cracks, of course, as per the deal with Undersupply, but it is abundantly clear that that sort of thing weighs on him, and the reason things slip through the cracks is because he's got so much on his plate- to the point of having overseen two different districts for the last decade- which ALSO disappears in your rewrite. Again, quote- "You're the wildcard, and you're preserving plausible deniability by not being directly linked to anyone. Zhiraok knows better, of course, but this isn't his district."

Letting illegal actors do his work for him and perform such an action as moving between districts when that sort of thing is strictly forbidden- "Quit being obtuse, you know the consequences if you break the mandate, for both of us!!"- is completely out of character for him, and in itself has so many knock-on effects that on its own, it exhibits that his personality of "dutiful overachiever" in your version of the story is a smokescreen. It means almost all of his big moments can't happen.

Consider Soosu, who is now a completely different character who's got the drive to actually fight you instead of exhibiting a modicum of care for both you and Zhiraok after the festival, who Zhiraok is tangled up with due to him overseeing her region for her and his attempts to get her to pay closer attention to the region and improve herself on a personal basis. Would someone who only wants to LOOK busy be doing that? Probably not. He might still badger her about getting into gear, but it'd be to skive off his own workload rather than because he's worried about her.

Removing Elise from the equation also neuters his relationship to Syndra. That entire thing is unequivocally gone, because Syndra's motivations are now different, and that takes out a whole angle of intrigue from him. Removing Zhiraok's position as advisor to Soosu and secondary Sovereign of the Roughworks ALSO removes a reason for him to go after you at the end of Echoes of Change. Removing Zhiraok helping out at the dam strips away complexity from his character, strips away important realizations about where his allegiances really lay.

In the end, since Zhiraok is so tied up in so many things because of him being the overachiever he is in canon, changing things about the canon as you have, to use a flowery metaphor, pulls those strings taut and cuts him apart like garotte wire. It really does end up making him boiled down to "He doesn't like to do his job."

This isn't stated, sure. You never said those words explicitly, in that order, but when you read between the lines and examine the story critically, when you ask yourself "how does this changing affect the characters involved?" things really start to tumble apart really quickly, and that's what we're left with. Someone who may honestly want the player dead, but who doesn't like to do his job, where practically all the events which give him his complexity that makes people enjoy his character and look past the slightly goofy number-speak gimmick disappear and leave him as a prop.

I'd say more of what he ends up being like, but that really is it.

You go from his story being about being raised in a terrible environment, growing up believing whats basically fascist propaganda, and still coming out to help people because he is that devoted to both bringing honor back to his family name and to helping the people he rules over, but being ground down by the same uncaring system that produced him and slowly coming to reckon with the irresponsibility of the people he looks up to and the realization that the Queen only really cares about her people as a conceptual thing, that they exist for her to rule over and not to be helped, and breaking away from that system all while everything he has been told about why this system needs to exist is being proven correct by the player's destructive actions and realizing that maybe, just maybe, the entire system is wrong because it is the same people that are causing so much damage to that system are responsible for STOPPING even worse things from happening...

...to him not liking to do his job. A memorable couple of boss fights and a bit of expospeak in the form of math equations can only do so much when his character has been flattened to be paper thin.

You're saying that the player gets humbled, but it really isn't true when you look at other things. For instance, the Queen immediately giving up the game about realm beasts instead of talking past it to give the player the opportunity to tell her about the Eye and Parasite, at which point she changes her tune in the most idiotic possible manner, by asking for complete submission to her rule.

Your story has this weird flipflopping thing going on that people have complained about in the past, including yourself- we defeated the Parasite, slew the Eye, yet a couple of orcs or random pirates can gang up on us and knock us out with minimal effort. Yet we get "defeated" by Soosu's golems because we can't slay them all, when you're complaining that the power boost we'd gotten in the past bunch of levels puts us well over what anyone else can hope, as evidenced by forcing Sui to use her very strongest attack on us to no effect. It's like you're halfway to realizing that if the player fights through every story-consequential moment there wouldn't be much of a story to have, but haven't quite reached that conclusion in the end so you still put them "losing" fights that by your own logic should be effortlessly winnable as a compromise. There's not that much of a power discrepancy between Echoes and Apotheosis on the player's end, thanks to the item power differential in Fruma being much lower than before, so the player SHOULD win against the Queen in Echoes, to use your own logic, without needing her to be lasered by the lighthouse.

You've only added more baffling "I should be able to win this!" moments to your story that you yourself complained about Wynn being full of previously, so... I don't think you examined your own story very clearly or coherently.

 

I think we need to separate what I changed from what I just didn’t restate. This is an outline, not a complete script. I don’t reproduce most of Zhiraok’s existing scenes because those parts of his arc are meant to remain intact. I can only write “this cutscene still happens” so many times.

As for what I did write, Syndra has presented herself as going far beyond her original assignment. As far as Zhiraok can tell, she has successfully quashed the resistance movement in Auburn Forest by reforming the Leaves themselves. Instead of just reporting their movements, she's redirected them into clearing dangers around the forest and handling miscellaneous work his overstretched administration hasn't had the time or resources to address. Dangerous cave? A squad handles it. Landslide? It's clear within a day. Repairs? Their blacksmith handles it personally and the soldiers just cart materials in and check on his progress from time to time.

Zhiraok doesn't believe he is allowing an active terrorist group to operate. He believes Syndra has converted one into a useful public-service force. He can officially report the resistance in his district as dismantled, with its former members now taking dangerous work directly off his plate: It's an overworked administrator's wet dream.

At the end of the Auburn Forest arc, Syndra offers to repeat that success in the neglected district. From Zhiraok’s perspective, she's proposing another rehabilitation effort, not asking permission for rebels to cross the border and continue an insurgency.

That said, I'm having trouble finding how Syndra was able to convince him to give her enough passports for the Leaves in the first place. Unless I'm misremembering horrifically, she's a mole for him. Asking for more than one is suspicious on its own. You say he wouldn't let a "a known resistance group, terrorist rebels, illegally move between districts"... but that's exactly what he does. And with "I trusted you, Syndra!" as his excuse. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something. Is she passing off the leaves as just the "strays" she's picked up, and then pretending to inform on imaginary resistance groups?

Moving on under the assumption your answer won't change the following:

I say that, and then I've apparently got to clarify the Zhiraok situation before I can tackle this.

Who's removing Elise from the equation? Why are Syndra's motivations different? You know others have asked about this in detail. They've gotten clarifications. If there's a specific question you'd like to ask, I'd like to hear it.

Hopefully this misunderstanding can be solved soon.

This part confuses me. Why is demanding submission an idiotic response from a totalitarian ruler? Learning that the player defeated the Eye and helped stop the Parasite doesn't just prove they'd be useful. It proves that an immensely powerful, completely independent actor has entered her province and refuses to recognize her authority.

“I slew twenty golems, and twenty more took their place” is exactly the kind of thing that stops the player from charging into a building. It hardly matters how easily each individual golem dies when they are replaced as quickly as the player destroys them. He can win every exchange and still fail to advance.

And I literally explain how the Queen is invincible in first encounter. Her mechanics make the fight impossible to win:

You get some hits on her.

As her health goes down, her resistances go up (You deal less damage).

At a threshold, she teleports up far into the sky, out of your reach.

From the sky, she hits you with devastating attacks that take you down in a single strike.

This continues until one of them finally connects, and you lose.

You win the second time around because they use the Weaver to strip her defenses, they deny her the sky and weaken her with a blast from the anti-air. Your items help insofar as you can mop her up slightly more easily, but the real difference was that you had a whole team behind you.

 

The way this is worded implies you think Fuhue is male, which she is not.

 

I feel like a fight where you're not intended to kill the boss/you are intended to die is bad design*
*This is the fine print, its okay in some limited circumstances. Namely, either if you can make an interesting mechanic out of you not literaly kiling the boss like old Garoth or Old Charon or Old Redbeard, or as something so "powerful" because its a haha funny meme like Yahya's final form. But with one where you're intended to be killd, than what's the point of the fight at all? It makes the queen seem more powerful than she is, given we are able to defeat her (with some effort), and ngl just seems like a sucky thing to do

 

I did indeed. Consider me corrected, and consider Rurie my first official "closest thing to male love interest" suggestion.

I feel like "and then the player bench presses the Queen single-handed before the cutscene decides he loses" is a bad way to end the story.

There's a resistance, there's a magical Mc'guffin, there's an anti-air tower, and you're fighting a major god. The original story mostly has you be the muscle for the resistance almost by accident, what with them being scared to use you until the end. Here, you're a bull in a china shop that's stopped categorically, and you need help to win. The first fight sets up that you're out of your depth, and gives you a game plan for the second.

 

Therein lies the problem. The way you have changed the characters' motivations has made it so the scenes can not happen as they do in current canon.

This, once again, is not possible due to her changed motivations. I'll go into that in a bit, because...

You are.

Syndra's motivation, as stated, was that for a time she was up for a Sovereign position, but the crown believed her to be disloyal- that she would prioritize herself and her loved ones over the position. As such, they tried to force her to slay Elise- her lover- under the pretense of her being cursed, as a test. Syndra refused, and in doing so was relinquished from her position as a Wings guard, barely able to negotiate herself mere permanent banishment to the Auburn Forest instead of being jailed or executed.

You have removed their relationship. Explicitly said that she is just a 50-something woman who survived in the Roughworks, quote, "instead of Elise being Syndra's gay lover".

Do you not see how this could change the entirety of Syndra's motivations? If everything is still basically the same, in some way, then Syndra is still restricted to the Auburn Forest. Leaving is not possible for her, as mandated by the crown. In canon, Zhiraok is putting faith in her, as he explicitly spells out in the cutscene. "Your angle was so obvious, but I just kept overlooking it. Kept trusting you. Kept hoping you'd settle, you'd terminate this sequence. ...Your job was to infiltrate, not sum to the resistance!!... ...I cared about you, as a friend. A confidant. Did you? Or...was I just a convenient tool for you?...I might be able to keep you as part of the remainder if you turn yourself in."

How can that happen if Syndra's reason for being in the forest are different? How can any of the AFTERMATH of this happen? How can any of the events which foreshadow and lead up to this happen? You can't remove a foundational event and then expect everything else to function exactly the same as before, but you're acting like they can. Events lead into one another, and you're ignoring the fact that this rewrite changes so many fundamentals about the characters and their motivations that would prevent things from staying the same. That's why I said I had to read between the lines and ask myself "how does this changing affect the characters involved?" so many times. It isn't just Zhiraok that gets his character butchered like this, it's basically everyone. Zhiraok is just the one I have the most authority over, and thus the most knowledge of how exactly the problems occur to describe to you.

"Hm. These creatures I know vanishingly little about are claimed to have been destroyed by this rando. Assuming they are telling the truth and these are things to have been worried about, that means they are actively capable of destroying realm-influencing forces, such as myself. I should immediately demand their total and complete subservience, and there is zero possible way that an independent actor who has managed to escape the sight of my spy network up until now could possibly decide that this would be an inciting incident for me to be next on the chopping block."

The Queen is not an idiot, but this is a supremely idiotic decision for her to make. Even in the current meeting, she acts far more intelligently, talking past her points to gauge your reactions. Again, immediately tipping her hand as she does in this rewrite is an incredibly callous and dangerous call to make- consider this. If she were to tell you that information, and then she were to NOT pick you, that means she's given away a massive amount of information- that she is aware of the war of realms, that she can influence it herself, that she is looking TO influence it, and about six dozen other knock-on assumptions that can be made off that, to someone who is actively endeavoring to tip the scales themselves, or at least has the knowledge of the situation to be able to play at doing so. To have that happen to an absolute nobody would be a grievous lapse in operational security, and while the Queen is in fact the leader of a fascist government it's shown throughout the story that she is intelligent. That she knows how to reign herself in and keep her ego in check.

This ignores all of that and has her set up a predictable downfall through a mind-meltingly stupid lapse in judgment all so the player can flex their power.

Have you heard of "gameplay and story segregation"? Mechanics are different from story in a lot of instances. You don't ingame walk up to someone who's marveling at how you defeated a strong enemy and go "It's because I had +130% Water Spell Damage on my weapon!" You're trying to say both that there's story reasons for why you have to do it this way, while simultaneously complaining that you can literally stand still during boss fights and have them rake themselves to death upon you, and this isn't treated with the gravitas it deserves in the story.

You can't have it both ways. Either the player's mechanics allow them to no-diff everything, as you complain doesn't happen and proclaim this rectifies, or you have story reasons why an unwinnable fight is unwinnable, and you're trying to have both.

Seems pretty clear to me there's very little productive to be gained from continuing to talk about this, as the only things you've acquiesced to are extremely minor details.

 

Perfect, then your idea is fundamentally flawed. I feel like you having a cutscene only fight is weird, thus either you defeat the queen, or she defeats you. For the latter, as I said that's bad game design. For the former, it's fine, so long as you can make a good story out of that, one that overarchingly ends in the defeat of the Steel, and flushing the player into the Mistwoods. I would assume Her Majesty would get bored, and leave you before the guards come or something

 

Right. So the issue is that you’re responding to one isolated phrase while ignoring both the surrounding paragraph and the subsequent clarification, then moving forward as if I removed Elise and Syndra’s relationship entirely. The original post literally says:

And if that was somehow too vague of an outline for you, that was eventually followed up with:

So yeah. I'm not being coy with what I'm saying here. Hopefully this fixes the misunderstanding.

The entire meeting with her is structured like a roundabout way of asking for help:

• Her Majesty: And still, here you stand. It intrigues me. What is so special about you? What strength has led you here?
• Her Majesty: But no matter. Answers will come with time... should you be selected. I can tell you have a question. Speak it.
  • So why us? Why recruits?
• Her Majesty: Hm. A blank slate... to be able to see the outside world, for all its splendor and all its faults, to witness firsthand the deep rooted seeds of its inevitable destruction... there is value to that.
• Her Majesty: You have seen it, haven't you? Forces beyond any of us vie for control of our world, caring not for what destruction they instill.
• Her Majesty: And it truly is a beautiful world, isn't it? To think, it could be destroyed, taken for their ceaseless war which holds no meaning, no purpose

Never mind the rewrite, my first reaction when I saw that line was "Oh, so you need help killing the Dark. Yeah, I can do that. Can't be any harder than The Eye."

The player literally got the opportunity to ask a follow-up question/respond, and it was wasted on "I know how you make recruits. Harumph I say! >:( "

By responding to what seems to be an ask for help, you naturally reveal that you've already done this. It's bizarre that you choose to ignore this to be upset about how recruits are made. She can't not tell me the information because the task at hand is obvious. The only thing you'd be wrong about is the scope of the operation, since her idea is to even the scales, not strike down anything in particular.

She can’t take that implication back after laying all of this out. She's already told me what she fears, explained why she sent recruits into the outside world, and recalled the strongest ones for selection. At that point, “You need help dealing with the Light and Dark” isn't sensitive information I forced her to reveal. It's the obvious conclusion of the conversation she started.

If you want to characterize her as taking that seriously enough to reconsider her long-term plan of forming a team of Sovereigns, or choosing Tasim over the player, so be it. But we're not even writing at that level yet because we've ignored the obvious response to her preamble.

Also, we're not an "absolute nobody" even by her own measure. We're literally "Wynn's best", and One of the final two candidates to her selection. In this alternate timeline, we literally admit to killing Dernic abominations singlehanded.

 

No. Maybe she does want Saphanis to die, if she does she also wants Orphion to. From what she was talking about it seemed less like killing the DB and more like tipping the scales back towards balance (given that light is still weakened from the parasite)

Is it harder to kill a lizard than the lizard's detached tail. Yes. Now imagine you're not a human but some sort of beetle that lizards eat or something. You aren't realm beast killing strong. To kill Anathema (imma go ahead and assume the end of Apotheosis is canon), you need four people. All four of them have decent magic. Three of them are cursed, and of the cursed one also has a blessing and scion-ship, and another is pretty strong and a 'mana-weaver' which isn't defined but is noted to be old and probably powerful.

 

Yes. At the end of the quest we hear the whole story. I'm saying that the first meeting with her sounds like it's setting up for "Help me kill the Dark". Nobody else finds Orphion to be a threat, but plenty find Saphanis to be one.

The end of the story has you going into the castle with Tasim and Sui. Tasim is Tasim, so not much help there, and Sui is powerful but inexperienced enough that she can be caught off guard and killed.

Maybe the writers expect them to feel roughly on par with you in strength, but the only one you experience in direct combat is Tasim, you canonically beat him, and in my own experience, he's literally harmless. I know builds can't be canonical, but aside from a fight, how else am I supposed to tell how strong he is when he's only just now shown up in the story again?

 

I'm sure Saphanis finds Orphion a threat.

In all seriousness, both those mfs suck, just because orphion looks like a cute dog who wants kibble he is still bad.

As pissed as I am at my brother-in-arms, I shan't accept slander of his name! Also though sui may lack some experience with her magic, I still think she'd be hella useful in any such fight. At least you aren't hating on my man, Zeph

 

Who knows, maybe Saphanis also looks like a cute dog (probably not, I’m banking on them looking reptilian)

 

I've kinda imagined DB like a clawed giant or a cyclops with three eyes

 

Haven't caught up with the whole thread, sorry. Way too many replies.

Do you think the player would ally with The Queen, given how she makes recruits?

If you're incapacitated, wouldn't she just finish you off? I mean if she wants you dead she would kill you, no?

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Doesn't this already work with the current version of the story? I totally felt this way a bit with the current story. Me: "The Queen thinks I'm one amongst hundreds? I'll show her!"

 

Ally? No. The starting premise of this is that she, being the Absolute Monarch and canonical Beast of War, would demand your subservience as her Sovereign, and you would flatly refuse because:

A) Fuck you.

B) I do what I want.

C) Fuck you.

But venture off to fight a world-ending abomination? This is your bread and butter, and I'd like to think that after the shit you canonically have to see to even start this quest, you'd take your position as representative of Ragni seriously and offer to fight back against the Darkness. For whatever reason, you at least like the king of Ragni enough not to have his requests trigger that little "I do what I want" itch the player has.

Literally in the process of this. The idea is that you decide you're not about to sit around and wait for the second one to finish you off and just escape instead. Maybe with help, or maybe they can figure out how to do the mobility loops for all the classes in the cutscene (but probably really with help from Sui or something). The first one is already supposed to have been a finisher, you're just built different. Only barely, though.

That's the nicest thing anyone's said about my posts this whole thread.

 

Its kind of funny that in the original post they say

and yet when everyone explains why its dumb they're suddenly incredibly defensive about all of it.

 

Man, what a thread.
Just to leave my two cents here, tour guide makes some good points, especially abt how the dialogue choices make us seem we care a lot for Tasim and our hesitancy to tell him Aeldar's death, even though we haven't seen him in god knows how long along with all the shit we've been doing in Gavel and Silent Expanse that make our problems with Tasim look like nothing. Apart from that, I don't think the story should really change that much, but if anything I would make Soosu secretly resentful towards the Queen for refusing to remove her blessing and less apathetic.

I was thinking of something like when the Queen comes for Soosu after she restrains Zhiraok, Soosu gives a little monologue about how she's inspired by the resistance's hope, optimism and freedom, qualities she's been chasing after ascension, before turning on the Queen and saying that nullifying their agreement was the worst mistake she could have made, as either way, she has nothing to lose, before encasing herself in dirt and rock, turning the nearby surrounds into a crater as she fucking turns into the canyon colossus while everyone else watches in utter disbelief. Just as we think a battle of the ages is gonna happen, the Queen says that this spectacle has gone on for far too long as it is, before completely destroying it with magic, and dragging a bruised and bitter Soosu out of the rubble, just to drive in the magnitude of her majesty's power.

 

The real funny thing is people have started to talk about the actual post instead of the imaginary version in their heads, yet you're sitting around posturing after the train's left the station.

I think explaining the bit where the Queen going back on their agreement explicitly is a bit on the nose. It's pretty obvious if you actually look at the situation in terms of Keys to Power. Also, she makes golems. I don't know that she turns into them. So making a big one to fight for her would probably make more sense than her encasing herself to pilot one.

 

Yeah I know, really funny that people started talking about the original posts and not their imaginations in the...*checks notes*... second reply.

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Arguably Soosu isnt't an important key to power. Keys often offer things like wealth, soldiers, resources. Sure the roughworks provides resources, but not Soosu herself. I fact, Soosu kinda avoids roughworks life and stays locked in her Sovereign mansion. Sure she's useful for inventing things but... others could easily take her place. She doesn't really feel like a key to power, she feels more like a worker for the government that just so happens to have some governmental power. If the queen wanted more resources, she could fire Soosu or take over the roughworks. Nothing would change because Soosu isn't a key.

 

As if there's anything better to do? This entire thread is an overripe fruit; it's well past the point of rotting and there's really no use in trying to make anything with it anymore. You're clearly very obstinate (perhaps admirably, to an extent) so what's the purpose of trying to explain to you why these ideas are bad? Anyone who does at this point is either just amusing themselves with arguing or wants to get their two cents in without actually expecting a meaningful reply.