Not yet. They don’t know about its properties.
2 Likes
@Havenstone When the mc discusses the Xaos-lands with Horion, he mentions “one particular hillock where everything had transformed into something unpleasantly alchemical-smelling”. What was the material the “hillock” was transmuted into? (Metallic aether?)
I had in mind something sulfurous that could be used in vitriol production–not what you had in mind. 
That’s never produced by the Storms.
5 Likes
4 Likes
Thanks for the link, and go to the head of the class. This is enormously relevant and I think it’ll be very useful in our further discussions on this game.
2 Likes
First of all, I want to start by saying that this is my opinion, my conspiracy, allegedly, and that I don’t mean to be rude or mean.
Is this game worth your hard-earned coin? Mmmmm as of right now, no.
The grade that I give it is: 2.5/10
What didn’t I like?
-
Every few pages, I had to look up at a dictionary to look up words that I didn’t understand. (It was constant.)
-
The game is so big, and yet I feel like anything is hardly happening at all.
-
This one goes with the second one. I feel because of the size of the game, some playing styles were more developed, and others were put on the back burner, and they suffered because of it.
-
This one goes with the third one. I tried, I really did try playing the Peaceful but very Zealous/sociopathic Angel Religion combination, but I just could not get anywhere. The people end up with low morality, they all starve, some die, and almost everybody ends up rebelling. I feel like there are no events in the story for the peaceful route to be successful. All the events cater to the you better be violent and steal if you want a chance at survival. That is something that I don’t want to do.
-
I had to watch everybody and their mother rebel. I wanted to punish them, but I could not do anything. I mean, I wanted to rain fire and brimstone on them or have angels interfere to punish those who violated the no stealing law, but nothing happened. Nothing was offered to me. I just had to take those rebellions one after another.
-
I wanted to leave this as the final thing. Throughout the game, I was only allowed to like one person. I did not like that person what so ever in a romantic way. I was glad I had the option to like him just as a friend. However, I was disappointed that he was the only one that I could form a romance with (that I could see) because it closes other options that I would have liked to have.
For example, I would have liked to be the plaything of one of the noble’s sons/daughters. That is because it could’ve had the potential to develop into a romance that could have later make me question if I wanted to destroy/conquer the hegemony. While I was doing the whole rebelling thing, I wanted to battle my feelings of doing what’s right for the helots (setting them free) vs if I do something, that would mean I would have to hurt/kill the noble R.O. But I never got this because the game is so focused on we’re rebelling, and there is no room to question it. And because there is no other RO (outside of camp that I could see), so questioning whether I want to rebel or not just goes out the window.
It took me a long time to get to this and read it, and I’m sad that in the end I was disappointed.
I supposed that if I play the way the game wants me to play, then the grade would actually be a 4-5/10.
But as of right now, it for me is 2.5/10
4 Likes
That author deserved my hard earned money because of his hard work on an amazing complex game.
You are diminishing his work. You might not like the style or the story or whatever but you cant say it isnt worth its price. This game is an entire universe, so many different paths.
8 Likes
2 That’s just for the duration of the winter. And you have capabilities to do stuff even then (smuggling and whatnot).The rest of the game is pretty well paced.
4 Yes, getting by without making any enemies is rather difficult. You need to have a pretty good charisma.
6 I think Brenden as well as Suzanne(assuming you followed through on not causing lots of damage) who is very much a noble.
7 You lived in the woods for months as an enemy of the state. There is no way you could have had any relations with the servants of the hegemony.
4 Likes
Yes but that doesnt help, still, I am pushed to be violent and steal.
I don’t like em.
No, but it didn’t start out like that. We were working for the hegemony nobles for years I assume, during that time something could have happened. I mean we only met Brenden for 30 second before we where being pushed to crush on him. Anything could have been possible.
That is your opinion, and I respect it.
He did work hard and it really shows.
I am critiquing his work because I paid for it fair and square.
When games here start being free then i’ll abstain from answering that question.
If the sequel he is working on is good then i’ll change the answer. That is why I wrote until now,
And since we are not supposed to engage personally, i’m going to leave it at that.
3 Likes
Well you mostly hung out with your family at that point so no. And even if you did have something going on, there is absolutely no way it survived the winter. And if he/she actually decided to stick with the Hegemony after everything, they are obviously not a worthy RO.
Which is why going it without stealing is such an achievement which I feel is actually a nice touch. I don’t think rebellions are all that easy especially since your main donors are poor helots and yeomen farmers.
2 Likes
You succeeded! Thank you so much for taking the time to write the things that dissatisfied you–I really appreciate your thorough review.
For anyone who might be tempted to pile on in disagreement: I feel very respected personally by the way Notsofunny made their critique, and I hope we respond in a way that doesn’t discourage other critical lurkers from speaking up.
I’ll write more thoughts later.
10 Likes
To add positive advice: I’d say this is, by far, the best choice game available with a level of historical, ideological, and fantasy elements that are rarely seen and further, rarely done well. Yet write well you did.
5 Likes
Gosh dangit Havenstone, do you have to be so wholesome? It’s much more fun to dogpile on people with dissenting opinions 
On a different not, how do you plan on handling Breden’s relationship stat going forward? Will you continue using the bred_heart stat, or switch them to a _rel stat like Radmar and Elery have?
3 Likes
Right, my phone ate my earlier attempt at this, but here are my thoughts in response to @Notsofunny’s review. In part, I’ll just echo something I’ve said a couple of times upthread:
For example, I personally enjoy authors who make the most of the richness of language–like Gene Wolfe, or China Mieville, or Neal Stephenson–even when that means I have to crack a dictionary sometimes to follow what’s going on, or to appreciate their wordplay and reappropriation of archaic words. I know that style isn’t for everyone, that one person’s “richness of language” is another’s “needlessly uses long words when short ones would do.” That’s fine. We don’t all like the same things, and not everyone will like Rebels.
Similarly, pursuing a nonviolent path is intentionally tough, in some ways the more so the more consistently nonviolent you are (e.g. refraining from killing the Theurge who comes after you in the end will lead to your permanent scarring and survival by luck alone). That’s not because I think that’s the wrong path, or want to push readers towards violence and theft. I believe in nonviolence, which is why I wrote multiple nonviolent paths in the story.
But I also believe the path to success for a pacifist is generally a painful one, tending to involve some combination of rejection, suffering, getting the crap beaten out of you, crucifixion, and/or a bullet on a Memphis hotel balcony or New Delhi lawn. Nonviolence involves the willing acceptance of those kinds of sacrifice and pain; and especially if you’re a leader, it involves the acceptance of other people’s pain, not just your own.
That’s not a popular nor an easy path, especially in the early days of a movement. There’s a reason why consistently nonviolent rebellions are rarer than violent ones… and why even the ones we’re most likely to recognize as successful today were unpopular with lots of people at the time.
Finally, it’s fair enough to be dissatisfied at the dearth of romance options. Given more time and different priorities, I could have written more romances into Game 1 rather than holding them for subsequent games. As it is:
You may be right that I should have written more options to “rain fire and brimstone” on rebels who go against your will on the stealing thing, or at least make threats in that direction. I think that would have been a failure path, but I can see how it would have been satisfying to have the choice.
Your idea about being a Keriatou plaything with romances developing out of that is a fun one! Some of what you’re looking for will appear in later games, i.e. romances with nobles (including Calea) and doubts about the scope of your rebellion and its impact on people you love. We’ll see if you like it then (keep an eye out here to play the free betas, so you don’t have to throw good money after bad).
The MC’s ability seriously to question “whether I want to rebel or not” always needed to go out the window, though. There’s no way I could write a game set in this world where there’s a plot that has you entirely as a bystander to the rebellion–it would be so radically different that I’d never finish!
The protagonist is a rebel, by authorial fiat; as the series rolls on you may find yourself no longer the leader of a major faction, but you’ll never jump off the main plot threads into ones that are just about keeping your head down and surviving peaceably with the ones you love. If that’s not a railroad you’re happy to ride, that’s fair enough, but it’s the railroad this series is on.
Again, thanks for taking the time to share your critique; I regret that you didn’t enjoy the game.
I think there will continue to be a few different stats with Breden, doing different things. I may need to add those for some of the others, too.
19 Likes
The ultimate, dismal fate.
Which is why I’m glad my helot boy is definitely not a non-violent rebel. Poor kid has enough scars he doesn’t really like mar his body already.
4 Likes
It’s been a while since I’ve been posting on this thread, I’ve just been lurking here and there. But I just wanted to say that I think part of this critique comes from a problem unique to the medium. When you pick up a novel or play a video game and the story doesn’t align with what you’d do in a situation, or doesn’t detail your particular fantasy, you accept that it just wasn’t made for you. The problem (and the amazing thing!) with interactive stories is that it combines the interactivity of a video game with the intimacy and sense of immediacy of the visualization of reading a novel. In more ways than one you’re creating the story you’re playing through. You’re making choices that influence what happens next, but I think more importantly you’re creating your own images and interpretations of the world and the other characters. And so when particular options don’t exist or lead down shorter or less ideal paths than you’d like, I think it probably feels uniquely frustrating in a way that other interactive mediums wouldn’t. And it’s not really a fixable problem because no author can write for every play style. Just my two cents.
Edit: just wanted to add that I’m not trying to argue against criticisms of this game (even though I personally enjoyed it.) I still think it’s good to express options you wish existed.
10 Likes
That would be amazing, but I don’t like to be spoiled. I learned that the hard way with Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven. It was not a beta. I think it was a demo, and it had like 60-70% of the material on the forum for free. I was so upset when I bought it later and discovered that. I think that is the only negative review that I regret giving. But then he released the second part, and then I rolled everything back and gave a happy review.
Those are what dreams are made of, just because I don’t like to be the leader. If this does happen, I think it would be fun to turn into king petty. I’d make the new leader’s job as hard as possible by trying to go against everything he/she says.
Well I admit, the sequel is sounding good already lol.
I think the reason I want a romance with a (Keriatou) besides questioning myself about the rebellion is that at some point in the game, we are asked if we want to let our intentions be known. I opted to keep them to myself, but that is because in my mind, if they see the hegemony (Keriatou) as not worthy people or R.O because of the obvious (they kill, torture, enslave, and abuse their power, etc). What will they think of me, who on the inside, I just don’t care about anyone but myself, and I am secretly not better than them.
Truly, I don’t want to free the helots, and I don’t want to conquer the hegemony to ruble. What I want is what the king of the hegemony has. I want to enslave them all.
I want the satisfying irony of once you owned me, but now I own all of you.
In the end, I want people(helots and the nobles) to realize that they were not each other’s enemy. I want them to realize that I was the enemy and that they should have to work together to kill me instead.
That’s why I mostly want the romance with them specifically.
Even if none of that happens, I’m still buying the sequel. I sometimes think that some series when divided are not strong as standalone. But if you put the whole parts together, the series itself tends to be good. I’m hoping this will happen with yours.
3 Likes
@Havenstone doesn’t need white knights riding to his rescue every time someone criticizes his game. He’s the author, he can defend his own work.
Debating your differing opinions is fine. But ignore the (admittedly natural) impulse to jump down someone’s throat just because they didn’t like that thing that you like.
2 Likes
Idk if I had posted this before, but this song is Fucking perfect for the story!