Can’t speak for the COG version, I did read the demo of the book version a while back and they turned up in that as not being completely accepted by society either. So they are part of the universe the COG was set in. (I think from memory the character that turned up had been a corportate body guard at one point but the creation of humans like him was now illegal).
I don’t remember there being anything related to Frankenstein in the game unless it’s a subtle reference that I somehow missed. From my understanding the anthropomorphic animals In this story were engineered from the original animals, giving them sentience and human characteristics regarding their bodies. I also remember it being mentioned somewhere in the story that most Morey species couldn’t even have children because they actually were from different species and in the rare cases it did happen for a female to get pregnant the child would be an infertile hybrid of the parents’ species.
Ex: If you’re a wolf Morey you aren’t a human that was somehow combined with a wolf, you’re a wolf with an anthropomorphic body and sentience.
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Thank god someone said what I was thinking.
Also, the very first sentence of this game is a bad pun. 10/10
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I’d suggest reading the series before judging this. The one by the same writer.
I got them through interlibrary loan years ago (I returned them of course).
Anyone already buying probably doesn’t need to read the books to understand this. I could be wrong. I haven’t bought it to look.
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Okay, so I just replayed the demo, and I could’ve sworn that it was shorter before. Is it being edited while it’s on sale?
Anyway, so I just now noticed that the scene with Detective Toomey openly links “pink” to hairlessness. Facepalm.
Still, my other concern stands: it’s a bit awkward to use species divides when satirizing racial divides.
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In my opinion there are two things that CoG games have been doing lately that they really need to clamp down on:
First, choices that don’t matter, as you pointed out. Unlike some of their best work, it felt like ultimately my choices still funneled me down to a set ending.
Second, opaque “win or lose” checks-- Games like the Hero series and Deathless (and most of the “choice of” series really) make it VERY clear what is adding to what stats and what stats a check will use, and there’s never win-lose check that doesn’t have an option for every playstyle. In Morey I’m on #5 attempting to get the right stats not to die horribly.
Third, tied to the above strongly, hard stat checks late-game. The “Life of” series is terrible for this, “oh you didn’t get 90+ in five different stats, one-page generic bad ending for you!” Compare that to like Choice of Robots, or again the Hero series where all the plot threads are wrapped up neatly and there’s a real sense of reward no matter what choices you made. You feel like you MADE this person (or represented yourself) well and saw how things played out from the big things to the little relationship choices.
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I don’t particularly agree with this.
While the first two points I could see everyone universally agreeing on, this one just kind of falls flat. There are people out there who enjoy mini maxing and that kind of stuff. They too feel like that they made this person and saw how things played out. They feel a sense of accomplishment when they go to that one extremely hard stat check and watch their character pass it flawlessly.
And then there’s this part:
What were you expecting?
Anyone with basic observation skills would’ve went into the Stats Screen and instantly recognize that this game would be very heavily stat based.
At least with The Lost Heir, these kind of criticisms made sense, because The Lost Heir was mainly advertising itself as a story.
Your critique is fair, but what I expected was that I’d still get an epilogue even if I didn’t get all my relationships perfect or two contradictory stats (both persuasion and intimidation, for instance). Like other CoG games I assumed that there was an advantage to being consistent with one social option, being charming whenever possible, or intimidating whenever possible. For that to work until it’s time to either get a good ending or a single “but I never did…” paragraph feels like they’re not playing quite fair with me.
I expected to still wrap up plot arcs and relationships, even if I didn’t pass a surprise series of god-level checks (90+ using fairmath)
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I think this is tied to the rushed and truncated nature of the story. If we were able to experience the richness of the starting intro and beginning of this fascinating world in the ending as well, then our enjoyment of the game would be consistent and fulfilling from beginning to end.
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I never saw “pink” as anything more than a purely fantastic slur, but then I’m rather light on the skin scale myself. Likewise, I didn’t see any stereotyping in the animal choices (I kinda wanted there to be a Russian tiger option because for some reason I’ve always liked Siberian tigers, but different countries made different kinds of animal soldier and I didn’t read anything into it).
The metaphor is more heavy-handed than Congresswolf*, but I think it fits the noir schtick appropriately, and I think too much subtlety would have ruined a lot of the impact. The intent is to provide a very raw (dare I say feral) tone to the storytelling, and to allow your PC to express a disdain for the dominant human culture - which is going to include a bit of possible racism on the PC’s part, simply by the nature of drawing us-and-them lines**. You see this in such things as the nudity question, and how underworlder moreys are expected to solve their problems through violence. I didn’t quite like how the player character was ultimately forced to help defend a rally for peace, but that was constrained by the nature of the scenario - allowing the player to play an unashamed religious terrorist might be a li’l much.
So I didn’t have a problem with the racial undertones. Of course, I’m probably not the one who gets to speak first on identity issues.
*Let me give a shout-out to Congresswolf, by the way, and recommend that you all go play it if you haven’t done so. One of the best things about Congresswolf’s storytelling is how the lycanthropy issue has applicability without being a clear allegory; in layman’s terms, it lets you choose your own metaphor. Moreytown doesn’t do this; it goes for an in-your-face racial metaphor and makes no bones about it.
**As a Criminal Justice student, one of the comparisons I immediately drew was to how African-American communities see the police and the court system, and even the law itself - there’s a sense that the laws are made by old white guys for old white guys, and that things like drug laws do not represent the values of the community that they’re enforced upon.
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This. So much This. If it’s not being overly conscious of being PC, its just the rushed endings. Several stories would work so well if only they were fleshed out more. I’ve actually read through a few of the older CoGs like Choice of the Deathless, and it was still going on by the time I was expecting it to finish. That is how long a CoG should be.
Honestly, at this point, it costs as much as a novel. It’s length should be at the very least half that.
#sorry for the rant
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Only complaint I have is that it the game feels too short.
Whoa, mate. I liked the ‘Life Of’ games too, and I do find min-maxing satisfying at times, but there’s no need to get personal. We’re all friends here.
Could you give an example, @Personaddict07? I’m genuinely curious here–I haven’t played too many of the newer CoGs outside of the demo, so I wouldn’t know about any extra efforts to be PC.
How was it personal? I just stated that it was pretty obvious that the games were heavily stat based.
At the end of the day, it’s his opinions. Why would I get mad over them?
Ah. You’d said “anyone with basic observational skills” would recognize that the game was stat-based, so I assumed you were implying @Seraphian didn’t have any. Clearly I misunderstood. Sorry.
Getting mad over other peoples’ opinions is what the Internet is for.
The newest addition to Heroes Rise, Project Redemption I think was very guilty of this. Thankfully, the level of PC-ness has been toned down by the time the second Versus came out (it was still there however), but I was really bummed at Project Redemption’s story being overshadowed by being PC.
I actually did not draw a political vibe from Moreytown. Since I’m not from the USA, I probably didn’t relate to it as well. Neither from Congresswolf (to be fair though, Congresswolf felt very flat to me. A very interesting premise executed blandly)
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It’s alright. It’s yet another reminder that I need to word my posts more carefully.
Touchè
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Congresswolf is a very American take on politics, obviously - and a pre-Trump take on the subject. Might be why it seemed flat - before 2016, we didn’t have the, ah, character of some other countries’ politicians.
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Maybe it’s nostalgia goggles but I don’t remember the series stopping to explain things quite as much as this “new addition”. Just letting us readers add things up from aside comments like how their kind gets some really messed up arthritis.
I think Swann is rather inexperienced with interactivity too.
I wanted to give my two cents, as I am one of the people who really liked the story, mostly because:
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As stated multiple times, the term “Pinks” used in the story to describe humans focused more on the fact that they are hairless or have no fur, rather than skin color. What I really like about the term usage is how obviously inaccurate the term used was, because we all know that most humans have body hair, and that humans come in multiple skin colors (mentioned by the MC at one point). The usage of the term Pinks described the morey’s general feeling on humans: they don’t like humans, so they don’t want to try to understand them. Hence. the usage of the catch-all term, even though it is obviously inaccurate.
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I like how realistic the ending was, despite it being a bit rushed. Even if you managed the rally successfully, they still mentioned that the effect on morey-human relationship were almost non-existent. Changes like this does not occur in just one lifetime,. After all, Moreys were created by humans via genetic engineering, so from the get-go the consensus were that Moreys and Humans were not on equal standing, as the relationship is more like creators vs the created.
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The relationships with the ROs were very good. I really like how that the romance with the human reporter was handled. The constant mentioning of how taboo the relationship may have annoyed a lot of people, but I felt it needed to be said because of how unprecedented it was at the time. The hesitation displayed by the reporter made them so much more believable, and it made the whole union with the MC seemed so much more significant.
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