The only characters I’d put ahead of Wil for “most likely to get fanfic” are the actual vampires. Not even the CCP loves red flags more than fanficcers.
“Hunter: The Reckoning — A Time of Monsters” is out now! Topple the vampires from the streets below!
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Just finished my first playthrough, was fun! I feel like the end became a little confusing, probably because of all the different ways things could have gone differently based on choices.
It was strange how the cell sort of just fell apart after the mall event, not really explained why they got so depressed and useless? I mean sadness is fine, but sheer inactivity was strange.
I got a pretty good Unmaking ending where everyone lived. But one option that wasn’t available at all was contacting FIRSTLIGHT, Wil just shuts it down and you don’t have any way to really do it anyway? Can you contact or become part of FIRSTLIGHT or any other umbrella hunter group?
Yes, but getting Wil to tell you how means either winning his trust, or forcing his hand in some other way.
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So finished it last night and checked out two of the endings and I have an idea of the rest through some broad spoilers. Overall I liked it and it also makes me think/feel enough to write something longwinded which I don’t generally feel the need to do, so that too is an endorsement.
In terms of structure I do feel like the interludes are too dense, it’s resource management, time management, faction management, equipment management, levelling up and interpersonal relationship management all condensed into one ball. In-story this makes sense, you’re pressed for time, but meta-story wise (and that tension is gonna be a recurring topic in this post, stuff makes sense with the way the story is told, I’m just not sure if I like how it’s being told. The latter is ofc entirely subjective) I wish certain things were decoupled. Specifically, I wish the attribute increasing section wasn’t tied to the romancing section. I want to romance Royce but I don’t want to increase my physical stat, I’d rather increase my mental or social.
Then the branching. I get the appeal of replayability and choice having consequences but I’ve always hated feeling like I’m missing content. Overall I think there are three big branching choices: meet Mandy’s vampire hunters|meet Zheng’s vampire hunters, (there’s roughly 0% I can spell that I’m sorry lol), meet Lydia|meet thinbloods|avoid both (?), support hunters|support thinbloods|support Lydia (?). Can’t say much wrt the (?) since I didn’t pick them. Overall, wish there was less mutual exclusivity. It would be nice if my MC could at least meet all the relevant players so that they could make an informed decision on what they’re rejecting yah know?
One of the things I liked the most was that the game really did feel like an underdog story. Society’s most precarious rising up against vast unknowable forces (not capitalism but) shouldn’t feel easy and it never does. But one of the best parts of an underdog story is the turning of tables. Besides some zingers we can throw Lydia’s way (which were ~chef’s kiss~) I wish we could see some more of that. I did notice the author mentioned if the game does well there might be DLC and I definitely feel like one of the endings I got could expand on this.
But to get to the meat and potatoes. Ultimately, I left feeling like the ‘correct’ way of playing was a high trust, community/protection creed style MC. I don’t feel like my creed (Inquisitive because if there was a secret WoD why WOULDN’T you be an enormous little nerd about it) really did much or gave me much if any information, especially actionable information, I wouldn’t otherwise have gotten. You SHOULD trust who the story tells you to trust (humans) and you should NOT trust who the story tells you not to trust (vampires, of whatever variety). Playing by the Chinese vampire hunters rules gets you their support (or much closer to it) and the information you get from betraying their trust really isn’t worth it. Being nice to your neighbours probably plays a big role in getting you one of the better endings (gangboss). Betraying your fellow humans might still let you be gangboss but in that exact same position as the kind of injustice Roderick works himself into a mouth-foam over on the regular.
There’s a pretty overt underlying irony here. Zheng excoriates his former colleagues for their insularity and selective support along racial/cultural/past injustices, instead they should realize theirs is a shared struggle. At the same time the game rewards being selective and insular based off socio-economic class (and/or direct and immediate affiliation)/humanity status (a distinction without much of a difference in the game). So the issue doesn’t really seem to be insularity or the selectivity of aid/beneficence but rather the criteria of who that insular class applies to.
Obviously I’m aware of the political discourse going on and it’s entirely possible that that is precisely the intended point but… eh? Political philosophy is really not my AOS or even in my AOI and I can appreciate both the setup and the bitter irony of the thinbloods going on to seamlessly and with a sublime lack of self-awareness replicating the conditions of their subjugation on to my gangleader MC but I dunno… again, it feels like there is a clear ‘intended’ way to play to get the better endings. Someone mentioned Abercrombie and I definitely can see the parallels. Of course there the whole bloody revolution was all window-dressing to get curtail the influence of the evil money wizard (Bezos was it?). But I suppose the ultimate villain here was also capitalism so success?
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I usually roll with phys 1, ment 2, and soc 2 as well. It’s a pretty nice basic build, unless you want to go wailing on people lol
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For my next playthrough after I finish this one, I’ll try for a physical build, see how different the experience turns out to be.
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Running Dog = Roderick’s lapdog (follow Roderick in Act 3, don’t get caught, align yourself with him)
Bloodhound = Lydia’s lapdog (purposefully get caught in Act 3, align yourself with her)
Unmaking = Align with no one, most varied epilogue (fully dependent on your relations with other factions)
Retriever = Join the RCMP Special Ops (Work to gain Wil’s trust, he should propose FIRSTLIGHT as an option in Act 4)
Apex Predator = Succeed Jangles without outside help (Requires very high gang trust if affiliated, very high local trust if unaffiliated. Then do not align yourself with anyone — Jangles will announce you his successor, and Unmaking will be replaced with Apex Predator)
Until the aforementioned beta tester guide comes out, my No Stat playthrough sort of covers every ending, with the exception of some variations in Unmaking.
However, you will get a much better end-state since your character will probably have personal attributes, food/money, and health/willpower.
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I appreciate that the themes are coming through for people who’ve taken their time with this one.
ngl, when the first round of reviews came in without even really touching on them, I really did have a “???” moment.
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I think I found a bug.
During the 2nd Interlude, I decided to hang out with Fleur-de-lis. We got the choice of contacting the US Government or hacking the vampires phones. I went with the latter. I got all excited when Fleur-de-lis said we knew exactly where the meeting was going to be, we could pull up blueprints, etc, etc. Then when it came time to go to the Pacific Centre, there was absolutely no mention of the information we found. It was like we hadn’t even found the information. Honestly, it made me regret not contacting the US Government, because the vampire text choice seemed like a waste of a choice.
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You found a bug. I’m on it.
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FWIW I don’t think a game saying textually “trusting people and engaging in class solidarity is good for you and people like you” is a bad thing. The other routes are still valid to play of course, but the game having a stance is IMO better than it not trying to say anything at all.
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No, it’s not.
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Okay, I’ve finally gathered my thoughts on AToM enough to review it (albeit, only having completed one playthrough so far), so here it is. In my personal opinion, this is Cataphrak’s weakest work, for a variety of reasons that I’ll get into, but I’ll start with what I liked. I really enjoyed the willpower and desperation system, and I thought the way edges were implemented was super neat. It felt like stat based choices had real, tangible consequences, without being too punishing, and I really enjoyed trying to balance all my personal stats. Mechanically, it’s elegant and replayable, in my opinion.
Now, on to what I didn’t like. To begin,I thought the characters were flat and boring for the most part. They only seem to have one or two personality traits: Mandy is an activist from privileged background, Fleur de Lys is snarky and smart (unless she’s your RO, I do think there’s more depth to her then), Wilson is a troubled, abrasive alcoholic, and Zheng is a “wise” old dude with a troubled past. Additionally, I’d say 70-80% of the PC’s interactions, not only with the hunters, but with any character in general, consists of asking them a series of questions, with little opportunity for the PC to react or relate to what the characters say to them. As a result, both they and the PC feel less like fully realized and fleshed out characters, and more like Skyrim NPCs whose dialogue boxes you click through to get the most information.
Which brings me to next major issue, which is that almost every piece of dialogue either seems to be some form of exposition or some sort of “quippy” statement (ex; the comment about the rich white kids and dogs, Three-Eyes’ comment about staying out of Gastown to not get added to police brutality stats, Fleur-de-Lys’s comment about US crack smuggling). None of it feels authentic, because it feels like most of the characters speak with the same voice, whether they’re a privileged activist, an ex-military drug dealer, or a college dropout with an interest in tech and history. To be clear, I’m aware that all of these characters have different motivations and goals, but a lot of the times, interactions with the felt very same-y to me, because they were all making the same *sorts* of comments about the same types of people (ie the rich, the government, and the cops). The only exceptions to this that I can think of are Roderick, Wil, and Zheng.
Similarly, it feels like the game just kept hitting me over the head with how poor and marginalized the Downtown Eastside is, which makes sense in the first chapter, but at a certain point it just gets repetitive and boring. Like yes, I’ve been in this area for 3 chapters already, I don’t need to be reminded yet again of how poor the area is. And to be clear, my complaint isn’t with the description of the area as run-down/dirty/dangerous. It’s with the game’s incessant need to point out that this is a result of the government (and wider society’s) dislike for the poor, which is something the reader probably grasped the first time. In other words, my issue isn’t with the message, it’s with how it was conveyed.
This is also something that extends to the rest of the game. For example, during the Gastown section, it was repeated like 3 separate times that the only reason the cops hadn’t picked us up was because we were with people who looked rich, and if we weren’t, we’d be cooked. Like okay, I got it the first time, there was no need for it to be said on three separate occasions. It feels like the author doesn’t trust that the reader is smart enough to pick up on the very obvious connections he’s laying down, which was a feeling I had reinforced when Zheng essentially spelled out the entire theme of the game during his Faithful Creed interaction.
Also, not a fan of how the general progressive ideas in this were handled. Before I get more into that, I want to be clear that my issue is NOT with the game having progressive ideas or being political, it’s with the ways these ideas were handled and conveyed. I have no issue with politics in my games, and I genuinely agree with what a lot of the game was trying to say. To me, it seemed like a lot of characters in the game would take the opportunity to tell the PC (who they had just met, mind you) all about their personal and occupational struggles, with little reason to do so beyond the PC asking. The first scene with Dead Red left an especially bad taste in my mouth, because it felt like her whole purpose was to explain the plight of sex workers, without offering her any real characterization beyond the cliche “tough, disaffected sex worker who (tries) to look out for her girls.”
Basically, it felt like a lot of the marginalized characters in this were just vehicles for the author to make a point, because they were offered little characterization beyond either being cliches or reduced to their marginalized status (ie the sex worker with the kid or the 4 dudes that Mandy brought food to). They felt more like set dressing than actual characters, to me.
There some other stuff I didn’t fully get too, though those may have been coding errors. For example, there was the scene where Cory breaks into the PC’s room and the PC and Wil fight her off together. During that scene, Wil was referred to as an ex-Mountie, which threw me, because my PC hadn’t learned that about him yet, and it felt like a huge piece of info that was suddenly just dropped on me out of nowhere. Additionally, I don’t understand how the PC knows about the serial killer who tried to kill Dead Red and other girls, but doesn’t know about Victory Square, despite having lived in Vancouver for what is presumably a decent amount of time. It makes even less sense for my PC, who was from the suburbs, because they should absolutely know major landmarks in the nearest city.
Similarly, one of my major complaints with the game is that we have almost no opportunity to define the PC. It was absolutely bizarre to me that we were never offered the chance to commiserate with Mandy about possibly being a POC or with Fleur-de-Lys about possibly being queer, especially given how much this game focuses on marginalized groups. This isn’t something limited to the PC’s interactions with others either, it extends to the way the PC views the world around them and their internal dialogue. There were a number of times the PC would wonder or be confused about something someone said, when it was honestly pretty clear what the NPC was trying to get at (and I was playing a PC with pretty high mental). Again, it seemed like the PC was more a vehicle for the *player* to ask questions about the injustices of the world and society, and less like a fleshed out character with a logical understanding of the society they grew up in.
I apologize if this comes off as harsh, because I know a lot of people loved the game, but I wanted to throw my own two cents in.
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I can see how that can be true, especially if you delve into every conversation thread! I’ll admit that my experience was different, because I was given options to either ask questions, or move on if the topic felt repeated or if I knew about it already. For example, when first meeting Red Dead, I didn’t ask her about what she worked as or what her deal was, because I could infer it all very clearly, including her personality, just from the way she was talking about her workers. So because I was selective with what I asked, I actually felt that my PC was pretty perceptive and focused on actionable problem-solving over talking things out. I liked that. However I do see your point of view that perhaps the dialogue could’ve been more varied, focusing on more threads of discussion than just their outward-facing plights.
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I THINK this is more a case of him trying to simulate the fact that, if you’re in the MC’s position, these are not the sort of things that leave your mind, because you can’t afford them to.
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There’s nothing wrong with harsh feedback if it’s constructive and honest.
A lot of what I tried with A Time of Monsters was new to me. The focus on a present day setting, in someone else’s world, and a focus on character relationships and friendships which are supposed to deepen and develop over time are all things which I don’t have anywhere near as much practice in as I’d like.
Likewise, working in the “real world” meant that I had to paradoxically be a lot more careful with what to exposit and what not to. With the Infinite Sea, I explain everything, but explaining what a crosswalk is to someone who knows what a crosswalk is seems pretty redundant.
I’m sorry that a lot of what I was aiming for missed for you, but I hope you still had enough fun with it to justify the price tag.
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I think I found a bug:
In Interlude 1 + 2, the game checks to see if the protagonist has exactly zero health/willpower. This means that if the protagonist is in exceptionally bad shape with health/willpower below zero, they will be completely fine, and the game will not call the subroutine.
Additionally, although this is more of a nitpick, why doesn’t the protagonist get food + money set to 99 in the Apex Predator ending (even though the Running Dog ending does while we have access to the exact same resources)?
It slightly broke my immersion to check my stats during the epilogue and see that — despite my protagonist being the head of the street gangs of the Downtown Eastside, and having access to countless connections and resources — he was also apparently penniless and starving.
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What happens if you convince Wil of asking FIRSTLIGHT for help and then they aid you? Who are they and what’s the price for their aid?
FIRSTLIGHT is either a branch of the Second Inquisition, or close enough to that that it makes no difference. The price is that you (and the rest of the hunters) get forcefully conscripted to work for them in the epilogue.
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To be more accurate here, the ‘Second Inquisition’ isn’t real, it’s a vampiric term for the increase in hunter activity in the 21st Century. FIRSTLIGHT is an international coalition of intelligence agencies working alongside the Vatican’s Society of St. Leopold to hunt vampires. Think of it like Five Eyes, but for things that go bump in the night. Usually the actual ground teams are coopted from things like the RCMP or FBI (this was Wil’s involvement), directed by a properly read-in agent higher up.
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