I can somewhat agree here, and I’ll try to explain where I relate and where I don’t. I also think this comes from Stormwright telling a different kind of story; more on that later.
We make choices throughout Uprising that in broad strokes define who our protagonist is. I could share a list of every single choice I make in a playthrough of the Prologue + Chapter 1, and you could understand what kind of rebel I’m making. And several of those choices have long-lasting mechanical consequences. This comes together in the winter of Chapter 2, the great filter, where essentially every choice you make – and every choice you don’t make – embodies the protagonist’s personal rebellion. The later chapters naturally shift more into action, having already defined our character, but the overarching decisions about how and what to engage (versus Hector’s veneurs and versus the Archon’s forces) do matter to the rebellion.
For most of Uprising, the gameplay and the character/rebellion-defining choices are one and the same. The chief exception is the Horion and Linos conversation – and, functionally, Stormwright plays the same role as that conversation, scaled up – where we are shown the wider world and left to think on it. But Horion & Linos does immediately transition into the choice to free/kidnap/kill them and to become a prophet.
Whereas Stormwright has several action scenes largely divorced from character/rebellion-defining choices and that are collinear with previous choices, mainly your choice of skill. The two sections that @Vrangel_RIP focused on in the initial post (navigating the Xaos-lands after the opening escape and the conflict with the Blood Raven) are the main cases, I’d agree. But I think this is more of a multiple replay situation. The actual text of these sections is strong, and it does exactly what it’s supposed to do: show firsthand the horrors of the Xaos-lands, and there are enough horrors that it would take a few playthroughs just to see most of it. But once we stop looking and only focus on mapping out a route, it just comes down to remembering a sequence of relatively safe choices (local tour guide says: watch out for the killer eels), or short of that just not bothering because all the choices lead to a similar enough conclusion anyway.
It’s easy for players to miss the roleplay in other sections, though. That comes from us knowing this is a game. It is somewhat gamey to gain trust and influence with the village/nomads/Irduin, but that actually is a political game and our underlying choice is to play. It doesn’t, and probably shouldn’t, feel good to play a depressed survivor who just wants to rest and compromise, even if it’s a realistic outcome from being stuck with no end in sight between a nightmare land where everything might kill you and a nightmare land where magic bloodhounds and the air force are waiting to kill you as soon as you enter. But we have the choice to do so. Just pushing through and continuing to play the role of a genius leader is a character-defining act that probably doesn’t make as significant of an impact because it’s the expected default of a “game”.
This, however, I think comes from Book 2 being fundamentally different from Book 1 as a story, and I think it’s very fair for someone to be dissatisfied by that, though I don’t know if that can be reconciled. Stormwright is very much a “private opinion choice” game in my view, and I think that’s the intent and the point, unlike Uprising, which is a game where your actions embody the rebellion.
Whereas before we had power in our home region, here we are mostly alone in an unfamiliar world. The journey is about contemplation and discovery: first, the interplaying freedom and horror of the Xaos-lands that is also reflected in Cerlota sharing the secret of Theurgy; and then the experience of just how vast and different the whole world is, which is also made manifest in Baldassare and the Hegemony’s efforts to tame and control that vastness.
I think the strongest narrative ideas through Stormwright so far are the stories of change framed by the game’s self-questioning. A bloodstained protagonist choosing a less violent path. A pacifist rebel breaking down over the cost. (These are bolstered by Tamran being a great foil to rebels of every kind) The self-discovery of questioning your gender identity. A prophet becoming more or less certain of their faith. Also you’ll find a lot more anti-merchant and somewhat more anti-yeomen sentiments post-Irduin.
And even for those who don’t change at all, it’s meaningful to hold onto those beliefs. It’s all part of why I’ve previously described the story as a coming-of-age.
So this does create a disconnect between the player and the character over multiple replays. That Theurgically-built bridge is like nothing our character has ever seen before; maybe the player read about it eleven times already and it’s already normal. Our protagonist forgets every reset; we can’t, so the best we can do is try to empathise. I don’t think that’s a problem, but it’s something that’ll happen when the weight of a moment also rests on the player learning new information. It’s just that I don’t think Uprising has much of this. I’d definitely argue that so far Stormwright is a lot less replayable than its prequel, but at the same time endless replayability is hardly the goal.
All worth thinking about regardless.
let me interact with more people 