Formorian War
originally posted on Reddit
The trouble with Liam Parker’s Formorian War begins with the title.
Irish mythology tells of a malevolent race of giants and raiders called the Fomóire, a name which alludes to their underworldly origins. There’s a manuscript in Oxford’s Bodleian Library that traces their ancestry back to the biblical Noah. Some scholars believe they originated as personifications of nature’s chaos, with their warlike ways influenced by true accounts of Viking raids. In English, they are called Fomorians.
Not FoRmorians.
I don’t know if Parker was confused on this point, or if he changed the name deliberately. I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I’m not sure I can, because it just gets messier from there.
The worldbuilding? This world isn’t so much built as stitched together from old rags. The mythology is Irish, the character and place names are borrowed from English history and Arthurian lore, and the entire story plays out with feudal holdings and territorial gains and losses clearly marked on a map … of France.
The premise is strictly by-the-numbers medieval fantasy: you are the heir of one of three noble families that control portions of what used to be the kingdom of Albion, the others being the Saxons and the Tudors. When a prophecy heralds the return of the once-vanquished Formorians, you are chosen by a fairy-blessed sword as the defender of the realm.
When the Formorians attack, you prepare to meet them in battle by traveling around the realm building alliances, accompanied by your fellow nobles Morganna Saxon and Dagonet Tudor. That’s Chapter 2, which I’m pretty sure is longer than the other four chapters combined. The actual war seems to consist of a single battle that lasts around 15 minutes. After that there’s a big to-do about choosing a new ruler for Albion (surprise surprise, it’s you!).
There are very few meaningful choices along the way, and very little narrative branching, aside from a few early dead ends. The writing is too lazy even to qualify as bad. At best, Parker has no sense of character or pacing or narrative tension; at worst, he forgets punctuation exists. There are multiple major coding errors.
Along with building alliances in Chapter 2, it’s possible to start a romantic relationship with Dagonet or Morganna. If your character is a Lord, you can romance Morganna; if you’re playing as a Lady, you can romance Dagonet. I could respect Parker’s decision to make the PC heterosexual, but for two things. First of all, if you romance Morganna, you get to read several mildly explicit sex scenes: in one, “her hand moves up and down” in your private area, she “makes her way downwards” and you reciprocate, and finally she climbs on top of you and you “cup her breasts” as things finally fade to black. If you romance Dagonet, however, you’re told at this point that you “spend the night in Dagonets [sic] tent embracing the man you love.” That’s it. That’s the entire scene. Then, at the end of the chapter, you and your partner are overnight guests in another character’s small house, which doesn’t stop your partner grabbing your thigh with lustful intent - whereupon the homeowner asks if she can join in. Same-sex action is *hot*, doncha know, as long as it’s girl-on-girl and there’s a dude around to enjoy it. Honestly, I would have had a lot more respect for Parker if he’d just written the game as a straight man’s fantasy.
There’s a lot more I could say about Formorian War, but I believe I’ve made my point, so I’ll leave you with a final anecdote that sums up this game perhaps better than any other. In Chapter 5, black snow begins falling for some reason that doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the events of the first four chapters. Simultaneously, people start dying immediately after drinking water. And it turns out the two things are actually connected, and the PC - the one chosen by the magic fairy sword to defeat the Formorians and unite the realm - has to have someone explain to them that (spoiler alert!) the poison is getting into the water supply when the snow melts.
That’s Formorian War.