It’s been about a week since the update dropped! Hopefully most of you have had time to go through and read it by now (and for those that haven’t, don’t worry, you don’t have a deadline…yet).
For those that have played through the new content already, I am curious to hear your thoughts about a particular choice from Chapter II-3, specifically which companion to accompany to learn more about the Prometheans.
To my recollection, this is the first true instance of “route” branching I’ve employed—while this game tracks many (…many) variables and can sometimes alter events significantly depending on your choices (most obviously, whether you were a rebel or a knight in the past era), the game as a whole tends to play out pretty linearly. Thus, this is, I believe, the first time the player is asked to make a choice between entire sections of the story.
With this in mind, I am interested to know what people tended to favor! I suspect Valerie’s route will be more prevalent, for several reasons (one of which of course being that some people will actually be forced onto it), but am hoping that Cortez’s still generates a statistically relevant amount of interest. If you’ve played through Chapter II-3 to your satisfaction, please vote in the following poll:
Which companion did you accompany in Chapter II-3 to investigate the Prometheans?
Valerie, to attend the Promethean meeting itself
Cortez, to break into Camlila’s office
Wanted to accompany Cortez, but wasn’t allowed to
Played through twice to experience both
0voters
And for those comfortable offering verbal feedback
Some specific queries:
Did you feel good about the choice you made after making it (assuming it wasn’t made for you)? Did you feel like the information you learned was worthwhile/interesting to you as a reader?
If you only played through one, did you ever feel “out of the loop” from having not pursued the other route? Please keep in mind that the party as a whole has not really fully debriefed on the situation even as of the end of Chapter II, so certain information will naturally be restricted to one route or the other until a later date—my query is specifically about whether the events of the rest of the chapter made logical and narrative sense to you, given what you knew from the route you went through.
If you went through both, did you like one branch more than the other? (And which one and why, etc.)
Did you feel like each route (or the one you did, if you only did one) did a good job of showcasing the companion in question, and specifically their mentality with regards to the mission?
Will probably run the poll for about another week, so if you haven’t finished the update yet but still want to participate in this groundbreaking scientific study, I guess you have until then to do that. So now you sort of do have a deadline!
Me: “…Oh. That would be because I apparently never finished reading Chapter 2.”
Well, now I hit that choice, and was not allowed to go with Cortez. I’m thinking that had more to do with Valerie being useless than Cortez not wanting me to, though.
Hm, so right off the bat I’m seeing a lot of people trying to get into Cortez’s route and failing, and while this is intended behavior to an extent, it seems like it might be happening to a greater degree than anticipated. (Granted, from a scientific point of view, 19 people as of this post is a pretty small data sample, but I think it’s enough to go on for the purposes of this.)
Here's a tentative fix
While I stand by the requirements themselves—for the uninitiated, accompanying Cortez requires him to trust Valerie enough to leave her without supervision, which ironically and (perhaps counterintuitively to some) requires the MC to be cordial enough with Valerie that she doesn’t spiral emotionally—I’m looking through earlier files to see where the opportunities to increase Cortez’s opinion of Valerie are, and it occurs to me that they all seem to require the MC to actively talk Valerie up (or at least encourage Cortez to try to work together with her). While this is definitely an important part of increasing his trust in her, I don’t really want it to be the only factor.
With this in mind, I’ve decided to push a small, quick update to Chapter II-2 to add in another opportunity to “passively” increase the cortez_valerie variable, by creating an opportunity for Valerie to potentially offer some substantive input while discussing Camilla (right before the visit to Alan’s office). Getting this dialogue to trigger still requires Valerie to be in a relatively healthy mindset, so it still does require the player to avoid pushing her away too much, but it will not require them to actively persuade Cortez to work together with her.
And of course, it’s still just one opportunity to increase that variable, so it’s not guaranteed that seeing it will grant access to Cortez’s route. But I like to think it will at least help even out the results a little.
TLDR: there’s now an extra opportunity to increase the variable that you need to gain access to Cortez’s route, in Chapter II-2.
Obviously, in order for this to make a difference to you, you’d need to replay from a save from II-2 or earlier, so for many of you, it may not be worth it to go through the effort, particularly since it’s still not a guarantee by any means.
But if you do, and it does make a difference, I’d appreciate it if you could report as such, so I’ll get a better sense of if I’m on the right track or not.
Hm, for me the difficult part is caring about Valerie at all, so I don’t imagine it’ll change much for me, lol.
Though I am surprised that my fondness and respect are both lower for Cortez than Valerie. It made sense initially, since Cortez showed up so much later. But it feels like it has barely moved at all. Valerie’s fondness even dropped precipitously, and is still slightly higher.
Yes, I imagine most of the people who don’t like Valerie are, ironically, the most likely to be forced onto her route. Unfortunately, there’s not really any way around this that felt plausible to me, given Cortez’s attitude.
This “fix” is more for the people who have a decent relationship with Valerie, and failed to access Cortez’s route simply because they didn’t choose specific dialogue options encouraging Cortez to trust her more (which may not be every MC’s preferred method of showing support).
As for Cortez’s stats, it is definitely true that it’s difficult to get Cortez to like you, and there are not very many chances to increase his fondness so far, while Valerie is impressionable and her stats will increase or decrease much more often. Given time, it should be possible for the former to eclipse the latter, but so far he’s not really in the mood to build camaraderie.
I do think there are a number of chances to increase Cortez’s respect, though—I’ve gotten reports of totals in the 50s and 60s by the end of II-4.
The Promethean scene was well-developed, even if I did not want to initially go with Valerie.
My reasoning for wanting to go with Cortez was that 90%+ of the game’s face time has been with Valerie, so I wanted to get more time in with the other teammate.
My main concern is the consequences of
Telling the archmage that their sister was leading the terrorists and being as honest as I could with them.
I have a feeling, wrong, or right, that it is going to end up being very important that I establish trust and transparency with them.
ofc, with my normal luck, the archmage will end up being the evil mastermind at the end and i screw everyone over by being honest with them.
@CorvusWitchcraft i must admit its been a very long time since i last played the demo and i ive barely got into it just now and allready i can see the changes.
I am defintly going to half set some time aside to play through this properly
Exspecially based on what ive seen in the comments in the thread so want to say congratulations and well done.
While I didn’t understand what happened, I admit, it was very well handled, very naturally.
And while I wanted to go with Cortez, I like Valerie’s route and the action in it all the same.
I assumed it was because she’s a troublemaker or Cortez is being an ass (what’s new?), and of course my Knight was needed on that Prometheans’ meeting.
At one hand, it will be nice to make a choice in the future updates, on the other, it adds the replayability to the game. So, I’m okay either way.
Funny enough, I wanted to go with Cortez, but choose Valerie instead because I don’t trust her capability to do not rush into problems. Cortez may be a little too harsh with her, but she heavily needs a reality check.
But, think about it: If Valerie goes alone and gets herself killed, you die too, so you can be done with everything and finally have peace. So that’s a good thing.
Yeah, this is something I’ve become very conscious of, and while the nature of the MC’s bond to Valerie means she’s always going to have a lot of screentime compared to other companions, I definitely want to implement more choices (without restrictions) that allow the MC to spend more time with other teammates, without Valerie, in future chapters.
Luckily, Chapter III will have lower stakes than Chapter II in general, so I think that will be the perfect opportunity to start making that shift.
You’re certainly free to feel however you feel about Valerie—she’s a deeply flawed character, and not for everyone!—but just for the record, I still have no plans to ever implement a choice where the MC simply lets Valerie die as part of a suicide-by-proxy plot.
I wanted to get to know Cortez a lil more so i was a little torn between wanting to go with him or Valerie, but ultimately, i went with Valerie bcoz I… didn’t trust her very much. I completely trusted Cortez to do a good job with whatever he was doing. I mostly went with Valerie bcoz i think she needed my help the most, and i figured we would reconvene later and tell each other what happened anyways so I didn’t feel like I missed out. Cortez also seemed like he wouldn’t like company so naturally the odds were in Valerie’s favor. Ill go try his route now tho.
From Cortez’s route, anyone else thinking about the dossier files? Lots of useful information, probably foreshadow which stats will work best in fights against them. For example, fighting Chloe head-on with Force is probably a poor decision. It’s too bad from an RP perspective that I can’t use them for my primary run - as if I would strand Valerie with a bunch of magic supremacists.
Also, good on Valerie for taking care of Felix, especially right after a traumatic episode (though, it’s pretty horrendous for her already taxed mental health). Transmutation magic is tricky as is. Many things to speculate about her backstory from there, as well. It’s just too bad Valerie isn’t in a state where the MC can make her feel better, even healthier versions of her from well-managing her hidden stats.
