As the Guinevere stand in I feel it is my duty to mess up the relationship of at least one couple. And I can’t mess it up if he’s dead.
Seriously though minus playthroughs where I am actively endeavoring to take down the kingdom I’ll probably save him just because.
Im talking about people who wanna romance Morrigan, otherwise ye most won’t care and will save or let him die either way. The romance with her is already delayed because of him, why would anyone who actually likes Morrigan go through a route where its even more delayed and makes her look like a total untrustworthy piece of shit besides those who don’t care and just wanna see drama. Not to mention a whole other route has to be written to take into account him alive cause Morrigans whole romance was about a grieving lover. Its genuinely baffling some people were up in arms about wanting to save a guy we have not one conversation with tbh.
I mean I do, she likes number 1 for me. Ultimately he didn’t do anything bad enough to deserve to be killed and seemed nice so if I’m not being conniving and evil I figured might as well.
When you say save do you mean like in the act of stopping the Chastity Knight or preventing that encounter from happening all together? Since that kinda changes things from an in character perspective.
Also potential ally because I can’t imagine almost being killed is good for relationships.
You’re ultimately gonna have to be conniving if you wanna get her to cheat on him with you.
I mean it doesn’t need to be cheating, just need to split them apart. Also cheating is way more dramatic than swooping in for the grieving anyway.
Cheating or splitting them apart, same thing really. Makes both of you look terrible imo and probably hurts him more than when he died lol.
Just played the game for the first time, and…whew. I was romancing Arthur initially, but when he killed Accolon, that soured me on him completely. There was also a scene where he completely disrespected my character’s beliefs, so…won’t be trying that ever again. It’s a shame divorce isn’t an option…
Arthur 'if you deny the cross, you get tossed" Pendragon
Seriously though even if those were two very souring moments overall nice otherwise, the religion thing they’re generally otherwise more considerate of, and the murder they regretted. So I’m in the “I can fix them” mode. Which obviously means I have to break 'em first.
Minus when I’m dating Morgan.
Hello, Author! I have a question about the code. While I was exploring the code, I noticed that you only set specific numbers without using “<” and “>” in certain scenes, such as the negotiation scene. Due to this, I am unable to obtain 40000 gold, as I need to reach a precise number to pass the stat check. I was hoping if it would be possible for you to make some modifications so that I could successfully pass those checks. However, if it is not feasible, that’s completely fine. Thank you for your assistance.
Oh wow, yeah I need to change that. I wrote that before you could have much higher stats. I will fix that, thank you.
Edit: Should be fixed now!
i caught a type early on in the story. when meeting arthur, there is text just above the choices. it should say, “Expecting you to say something, you say…” instead of the original (“Expecting you so something…”). i don’t know if this happens with elaine. meanwhile, I LOVE THIS STORY SM!!! one of my favourite interactive novels on the platform; i’m truly so happy to have found it while browsing through dashingdon. thanks again, can’t wait for the next chapter!
Thank you!
Hmm, well, perhaps once they leave the honeymoon stage of their relationship they naturally grow apart. They are teenagers when they meet and things do change as people discover themselves more.
This story…hm it’s not bad. Relationships you can develop are not bad and relationship with Arthur/Elaine could be cute but they are navie and needs someone besides Merlin to guide and help them grow, perhaps also keep them sane depending on this story goes. I don’t have major gripes about the story though I do wonder about the whole Accolon thing.
One thing I think would thing I do wonder about is that we fail to save Accolon physically like getting in-between the two and if we are unable to block or stop Arthur or Elaine from swinging their sword, like example getting a scar or perhaps major injury. The cost being us missing out on certain key event or more due to recovery. If one wants to save Accolon there should be a consequence for failing to save yourself or Accolon depending on your choice.
But that’s just my thoughts as it sounds like a lot to code or write in this case.
If you don’t marry Arthur/Elaine, you should be able to romance their wife.
Haha, while an interesting idea, I am afraid it is unlikely I will be implementing this.
I played through chapters 1-3 as a lesbian ill-pleased with her father’s educational disregard who rejected Arthur’s hand in marriage after meeting his beautiful sister. Throughout Chapters 1 and 2, I frequently (nearly constantly) felt the narration to be abrupt, perfunctory, repetitive, and nondescript. Choice of Games are “fuelled by the vast, unstoppable power of your imagination,” but text is meant to be the catalyst that sparks that imagination to life.
I felt this keenest when a fog appeared around the characters when they were on the road, sudden and unremarked. Was its accumulation gradual or instant? Did this fog seem a natural expression of British weather or a suspicious consequence of magical meddling? Did it feel cold? Misty? Heavy? Refreshing? Did it dim the sunlight, or catch and reflect the moon’s glow? Was it dense enough to obscure even the tops of the trees, or did the pines become diaphanous shadows only slightly out of focus? I’ll never know, because the text ignored any and all aspects of setting the scene beyond, “There’s fog now,” and my character had no way of asking even one of these questions. By no means do I expect even 30% of the example descriptions I gave to be featured in a single scene, but to neglect evoking imagery of the setting deprives yourself and the reader of an easy source of immersion, information, and character investment.
Details about how the environment affects your character’s perception of those around them can be used to tie in to the player’s emotions as well as the MC both in the moment and later in the story: “Sweat gleams on his brow the way it did when you first realized you loved him.” “The sunlight catches in her hair how it did the moment before it all went wrong.” “Their laughter rings through the halls, and it is sweeter than you remembered.” It doesn’t even have to be as direct as that; use a unique descriptor in a specific context during a scene where a character is ostensibly feeling a certain way, and that description becomes shorthand for illustrating that emotion in future. “She felt the urge to snarl as though her teeth were fangs,” and now “Her teeth felt like fangs,” is a short but evocative way of describing anger.
Another concern of mine is the way that every character talks the same way. I don’t expect Shakespearean conjugation out of a modern author, and I grant that young characters like Arthur/Elaine, Morgana, and even MC are given to speaking considerably less formally than their elders should in a casual setting, but even the middle-aged men in formal, tense, or otherwise serious discussion employ unsophisticated parlance. The most egregious example of this I experienced was in a scene with Merlin during the siege of Sorhaute when he told me that a potion’s purpose was to “freak people out,” though it was by no means the first or even the fifth time I felt this way.
While we’re on the subject of the siege, the entire sequence was over before I could blink. I don’t know if I hit a glitch that skipped scenes of battle, but the entire excursion may as well have been an off-screen fade-to-black for all the impact it had. My character revealed her father’s duplicity when asked about his loyalty, and so he went uninformed of and uninvolved in this conflict, thus making Camelot’s strategy of enduring the siege from behind Sorhaute’s walls an attractive one to Arthur/Elaine’s military men. (Nevermind the fact that the siege began at the start of autumn, and it’s impossible for farmers to harvest their fields before the crops overripen and rot with a besieging army camping within sight of the scarecrows, so Queen Urien is gonna have a dangerously lean winter for sheltering us; not Camelot’s problem, right?) My MC consented to (was informed of) her bodyguards fighting in the siege defense, and then the entire thing was over. I can’t even remember mention of the enemy’s attack, our defense, waiting for our allies, the enemy’s retreat, damage to the castle or countryside, nothing. Just “You wait out the siege. Siege over.”
I’ll admit that by the time the setting changed to Sorhaute, I was literally only continuing to read this story for Morgana. You did a good job on her characterization and dialogue, and I have a preexisting bias toward her because of portrayals I’ve seen of her in other works. When it was revealed that Queen Urien wished to marry Morgana, my MC and I felt territorial and protective–myself doubly so before remembering that Lancelot’s fae-related age acceleration meant Urien wasn’t automatically twice 16-year-old Morgana’s age. When Morgana said Urien knew they were just friends, my MC was reassured, and I felt a rising dread at the likely possibility that Morgana would do the same to us. When Accolon showed interest in her, my MC and I were jealous. When she accepted his flower, my MC was jealous, and I was suspicious. When the option–grayed out though it was–to question the nature of Morgana’s relationship with Accolon appeared, my MC was oblivious and I felt like a rube. If Accolon and Morgana were in a relationship prior to my character meeting her, it was never made apparent to me. I picked the single [Court] choice with her when it became available after refusing Arthur, and I prioritized spending time with her over all other options. If her heart belonged to another, or she would accept only friendship from my unwed MC, she made no mention of it during our conversations, and if my character had not made our romantic intentions apparent enough to be addressed, it was a failing of the singular [Court] option. Thus, it reads to me that Morgana threw my MC over for a guy she met five minutes ago, which hurt. Sore of heart, my MC and I stopped resisting the urge to choose rude options over tame ones for fear of damaging relationships; MC was too upset to bother couching her opinions in politeness and I was fed up with these characters–except Morgana, whom my MC and I could not fault for following her honest heart, even if it should lead to another.
I stopped reading, at this point, and honestly would not have continued if I had not learned from this thread that Accolon would die in the near future l. That spoiler about Morgana’s route in the introduction finally made sense.
My MC stood between Arthur and Accolon when the king made to attack Morgana’s blameless beau–in hopes MC might spare her the pain of his loss–and I was secretly relieved that Arthur’s guards restrained MC while he murdered Accolon in defiance of my choice, anyway.
When given the choice between influencing Morgana to forgive or castigate Arthur for his crime, I chose to say nothing, despite believing my character sufficiently Deceptive to pass the checks on the former options. It felt wrong to tell Morgana how she is allowed to feel about loss, and neither option seemed nuanced enough for me to ignore her right to grieve undisturbed. I want her to have the peace that comes with truly forgiving wrongs done against her, but to dismiss Arthur’s cruel theft of Accolon’s life and the damage it has done Morgana as easily forgiven is unconscionable. I want Morgana to know that the betrayal, rage, and sorrow she might feel about Accolon’s death at Arthur’s hands is justified and echoed in my own breast, but I do not want to condemn her to a hollow life of unceasing wrath and ruin in pursuit of her vengeance. You must have done a good job writing Morgana if you’ve got me waxing this poetic; collating my thoughts on her has calmed my more vitriolic complaints.
I played to the end of the demo, and then I restarted the game with God Mode enabled to see how my last run had been affected by stat failures, skipping any scene that did not require input. Though I noticed a marked improvement in the writing of Chapter Three compared to Chapter One, I still stopped reading very shortly to pen this wordy complaint upon being confronted with the first sword-training scene in Camelot.
screenshot eaten by forum
He beat me effortlessly when I had Godmode stats. I understand that this was written with a Sword 1 skill level in mind, but that’s no excuse. If the scene were described properly, we could take this as an indication of Kay’s prodigious skill, or the difference made by access to regular training. Is our character impressed by this? Jealous? Inspired? Insulted? Wildly attracted? We’ll never know, because the text gives us nothing but Kay being a dismissive Camelot chauvinist, and we have no option to tell him so.
The options when getting to know characters seem more like a checklist of dialogue arbitrarily added to choice boxes rather than ways to inform our character’s relationship with the narrative and others–some of which is nonsensical, tonally inappropriate, or just plain weird. I refused to ask Morgana if she was a Christian–apropos of nothing!–in a kingdom ruled by an obviously Christian family member, because the only reason to ask such a thing in those circumstances is if I expected her not to be, and not being Christian in a medieval kingdom ruled by one has never been a safe thing to reveal to a stranger.
(Me: posts wall of criticism, refuses to elaborate, leaves)
In fairness, she says, “Oh gods, no” when you first meet her, and your father even comments on it.
This is an oversight, I will have to write alternate text for those with high skill levels.
Thank you for such detailed feedback!
The worst part about the accolon diversion is right after he dies you can kiss her and she’s into it
And then immediately keeps pining over accolon while doing romantic stuff with you
The whole accolon thing I feel detracts from the path because you have to wait for the [boyfriend_dead=true] tag to even begin the romance and then immediately take advantage of her vulnerable emotional state
It would’ve worked better if instead of immediately falling for some dummy with a rose she would be resistant because of her budding feelings for the MC. Which still leads to A/E misreading the situation because accolon is spending his time trying to be worthy of her and she’s too afraid of hurting him to shoot him down entirely. Then culminates with A/E killing accolon while Morgana now feels guilt for leading him on and getting him killed and making her anger against A/E more justified because she could go “I didn’t even like him in that fashion but I was too afraid to be definitive and now he’s dead.”
Bing bang boom, Morgana is now hardened and less afraid of letting her feelings be known, conflict with A/E is now entered, and MC still gets to play the spider in the shadows manipulating her.
