Was that part of the reason Arinthas helped Vitruvian out? Or are these suspicions something that have been slowly forming as they’ve traveled together?
How long have they known each other, anyway? How does the Arinthas that saved Vitruvian compare to the Magister we all know and love today?
Don’t know why you’re specifying nocturnal activities, Radjack seems to be the type who’s ready and willing any time of the-
OH. You mean vigilante stuff. Yeah, no, that’d be fun to find out.
You say awkward, I say jolly good fun.
I’d say the noble’s more locked in to an identity (in general…) than rebel MC, tbh, especially since Lady C’s setting herself up to be the helicopter mother from hell.
…I mean that Radjack and company seem like they’ll be just a bit more forgiving if you don’t exactly fill Flash’s shoes than the good Lady will if you don’t play the game her way, that’s all. She made you to fit a very precise mold, after all.
Y’know… for a noble MC who sees how corrupt the system is and decides to do their best to bring it down, this may be a rather…attractive way of doing so.
I think that from the middle of the game onwards, particularly if we’re romancing both the prince and the chevalier, subverting the hell out of that mold will not only be possible but will be near certain. That we’ll have to do a great many things subtly (at least at first) on the noble path doesn’t mean we can’t do them. Realising her goals for us also gives us a power-base of our own with friends and allies to boot and in my version it will get mr. Gray out of her service and on our side too and I think he is a big part of just why she’s so formidable.
The noble mc just has to be the best actor out of the bunch, out of pure necessity.
Certainly, but if I’m going to play the noble path I think my Flash would very much like to remain a noble, the system certainly needs reform though, but you can do that from the inside as well, in fact I have a suspicion we’ll have to as the current state of affairs cannot hold out much longer if Radjack and the Rebels are any indication. Of course if romancing the Chevalier I think Lord Flash will have the blinders taken off him concerning the true state of the realm sooner rather than later.
We can certainly be a noble “rebel” or reformer without having to be a part of Radjack’s rebellion.
This is such an interesting concept and very well written, unique lore and great characters. I genuinely felt empathy for the MC and absolutely adore the motley merry band of rogues vibe from the MC’s friends. The villains are well fleshed out as well and you did a good job on getting invested in the world without giving too much away at once. No matter which route you choose it seems there will be very interesting things going on, whether intrigue and high stakes or heartache & angst especially with the focus on story and characters it seems youre going for, rather than the ‘choose your own way to die’ adventure. I am a fan.
Sorry if this has already been addressed in the thread but I’m so excited to find out more and im wondering how much of the majority storyline is determined by the initial choice in the ballroom. And who is this special person with black hair and blue eyes who the MC struggles to remember? Have we already met them? It would fit Radjack most out of everyone we’ve met so far i think? but if so why are we unable to recall at that moment when it could back easily enough later? Or maybe this was some kind of foreshadowing for an important relationship in their past (or future) live(s) ?
I do have one suggestion… When taking the route of the girl love interest, it was fairly obvious that she and the MC were involved, but taking the male LI route i had to assume the boyfriend was Radjack? but it wasn’t very clear that they were together. Sure he had an extra scene and a few special lines (which were great!!) but nothing really to indicate outright that he was definitely MC’s significant other. In fact, replaying it I noticed many of the girl’s lines remained in the final scene in the Radjack RO playthru. which is fine, momo cares too! but a little confusing if Radjack doesn’t express the same amount of concern)
I know that in the Rebel side you will probably add different ways to react to your past life. Like reject it, or be sadly pursue it. But I think that maybe the mc might believe that there is no different from there past and now. That flash and (insert new name ) are both part of him.
By the way, after reading about the mc discovering how he got the nickname flash and seeing that he remembers how to do the magic trick. I can see the mc trying to get naked as much as he can so he can try to remember what happened in the past. But every one try’s to stop him.
That’s the thing, though. You act a part long enough, it’s extremely difficult to break character. Rebel MC can at least come in from the beginning-ish screeching “I’m NOT FLASH!”
You can, but then you’re simply remodeling the system… working with their tools to poke about their house, y’know? If you demolish it entirely, and place yourself (or a willing pawn, whatevs) at the head, then… it’s a bit more work to build from scratch, sure, but you’ve more room to shape things the way you want them shaped. And since the noble MC is gonna live a long time - barring any assassinations or accidents or so on- then they’ve got plenty of time to draw up their blueprints.
…s’not the only thing Lord Flash’ll have taken off him if you’ve anything to say about it, I reckon…
…a rebellion sans Radjack isn’t a rebellion at all…
Haha, you’re beginning to wise up to all my tricks I see.
I know but centuries of “remodeling” will transform the system just as well and radically as beginning with great big shock will. Lord Flash not being one of the oppressed, even if he sympathizes with their plight, himself has less (personal) incentive to go for the “smash everything” option here and perhaps more to preserve at least the better parts of it depending on who his significant other(s) is/are.
Perhaps, but then that is the chief attraction of the Rebel path after all. The author does have to provide ample incentive to get us to play all the different paths.
That said I guess we’ll have to see how much and in what capacity Radjack crosses the noble path (even if we can not romance him while on it).
“King” Radjack though will definitely be reserved for the culmination of the Rebel path, if anything. Ha! if that really will be a possibility Flash can end up as the Royal Consort on both paths.
…y’know, I don’t think we were ever given a straight answer on this. Radjack makes the most sense to me, too, but it’s been pointed out that there are multiple characters who fit this description.
I’m thinking this may be one of those little roleplay things that the player gets to fill in the blanks on second and third and so on playthroughs, when we’ve been able to learn more about the characters and such.
Heh, I don’t know that people would necessarily be rushing to stop new Flash from living up to his namesake.
“You’re naked? Oh, dear, that is… that is the opposite of what I want to see right now.” stares a bit too long
Fair enough… Slow and steady works for your Lord Flash. Demolition is far more fun, I think, but fun shouldn’t always necessarily be a factor when it comes to matters such as this.
Honestly, I just want to see the look on Lady Calinas’ face when Radjack shows up to a ball - as an invited guest, no less, one accompanying her little puppet. Or would she even recognize him without the bandages?
Heh… Noble consort MC and rebel consort MC meet up and exchange notes. That would be a timeline jump I’d kill to see, I think.
“Hey Vitruvian, what do you think you were doing before the Fall?”
“Hmm… Working in a factory, I assume.”
I think Arinthas found the beginning of the mystery when he unearthed Vitruvian’s chamber (following a collection of clues and riddles left by an obscure religious cult that disappeared a couple of centuries prior). He needed Vitruvian for something, but he never leaves any mystery alone, so he’s been trying to piece the whole thing together for the past 60 years (that’s how long they’ve known each other, to follow up).
We love having you here, do take a seat and someone will fetch you a drink.
There are currently four people in the story who fit that precise description: Radjack, Mr Gray, Ser Farah and Radjack’s sister Navi (it isn’t necessarily likely to be her, but it’s entirely possible). As to why your memory was so fuzzy at that particular moment: You are very deeply drugged. Wish it were something more thematically important, but morphine plus boredom does not make for a mentally stimulating afternoon.
With those scenes I thought that out and out stating to the player that ‘this is totes your boyfriend/girlfriend! Check them out!’ might have seemed a little gauche on my part, so instead I opted to have a more subtle scene where you mention that you’d like to see your loved one and then ‘oh by the way, here’s a man shimmying up the drainpipe’ to intimate that this is that same man without outright saying so. This way I hope to preserve the emotional impact of a later confession, in which your former lover breaks their self-imposed silence and admits that the two of you were in wuv.
Good points all, though. I’ll definitely be rewriting all of it at some point, so keep your suggestions coming!
I’d scold you but I’m literally writing a scene where the MC wanders around the empty pub naked because it doesn’t occur to them to put clothes on…
Arinthas is… obsessive, I think that’s the word I’m looking for. He seems to have taken that giant leap beyond determined…
I don’t want to know what he’ll do if he doesn’t find the answers he’s looking for (for any of the mysteries he’s kept tucked away in his pocket) or if the answers end up being pieces of paper with something like “The secret is friendship” or “the key was inside of you all along” or something equally irrelevant written on 'em.
And…I can’t remember if this has been answered already, but how long has Arinthas known Ariadne?
Reason number sixty-nine The Myrmidon is basically a shoe-in for my personal selection for ‘best game of all time.’
So Ariadne as we know her now is about the same age as Flash was when they got Forged?
…I was going to go somewhere with this, but this thought thread slipped through my fingers. So I’ll go somewhere else completely.
I find it kind of funny that humanity lost a good chunk of its knowledge 'cause it digitized most of it, right? But then you have Vitruvian being smart and writing crap down. I… also don’t know where I’m going with this, something about the most basic methods being the best at times.
Yes, but rebuilding really isn’t and if you smash everything at the beginning rebuilding will take longer and be an altogether more involved process, so I think even the fun levels out in the end.
To be fair I think the look on her face when she sees the Prince with Flash on one arm and her trusty butler on the other may be less than pleased too as she’s got to realise she may have just lost her two most valuable pawns/assets.
That sounds about right, yeah. It’s in the right neighborhood, at the very least, if not ringing the right doorbell… Nope, yup, it’s about right.
So, then… Wait, Arinthas wants humanity to be great again… Hmmm…
edit: I’ve kind of figured out what I wanted to say…
It’s pretty… depressing, because we either (if Arinthas is right) stagnate and, likely, die a slow death as a species… or he opens up Pandora’s Box and humanity gets to meet the scary thing in the dark that drove them to hide in the first place.
“Humanity’s screwed” is where I was going, I think.
One of my favorite bits of Fallout 4 is the settlement (re)building, so… Agree to disagree.
Or… we’re playing right into her hands. 'tis a tangled web that spider mommy weaves…
But I think she’s come to lean a bit more heavily on mr. Gray’s capable shoulders than even she herself may have realized and may do so with Lord Flash as well whether she realizes this or not.
In any case she deliberately chose not to place Gray in a position of significant power because she fears losing control. of him.
Yep, agree to disagree, but to be fair my understanding is that Fallout 4 you’re building some small, frontier settlements, you’re not rebuilding a whole society. In this game I think it would be the equivalent of building and protecting a few more extra settlements on the outer ring.
…I think Mr. Gray’s in the position he’s in because it gives him much more freedom to do what Calinas might need him to than if he were higher on the totem pole… not necessarily that she fears losing control. It’s strategic - the upper crust are scrutinized heavily, servants are generally invisible.
I don’t know, I’d like to think that such a celebrated player of the grand game would be able to spot this sort of thing. And while pride clouding one’s vision and causing folks to fall is a recurring theme and all, Calinas seems the most likely to provide us with a subversion.
You’re essentially taking control of the remains of a militia and trying to (more or less) rebuild and protect the entirety of a what was once a more unified-ish society in the Commonwealth. How it plays out, though, you’re basically a glorified nanny… yeah. Actually…
Civilization would probably actually be more relevant here - or Sim City? I just have FO4 on the brain right now, ugh.
I definitely see what you mean, especially after replaying I agree that the relationship between MC and Radjack is obvious enough for us while still leaving our protagonist in the dark. & this way the reveal will be that much more dramatic to MC
It also kindof suggests to me that Radjack is so completely overconfident and sure of himself that it doesnt even occur to him that Flash was actually in danger of death; so while he definitely cared about saving them he didn’t realize it was enough of a big deal that he’d get all mushy about it until he realizes what actually happened Cue more angst! (Speaking of which, are we ever going to find out how long Flash spent in Calinas’ dungeons? Bc I guess this theory would work less well if Flash had been imprisoned for a long time lol, that would cause a little more concern…)
Reading a bit more on the thread and i have to say i am falling in love more and more with your setting and worldbuilding. The combination of magic and technology in a 1800s-ish theme, masquerades and midnight chases and rebels and rogues and scheming nobles. Gahh it just hits a bunch of my weak spots You have quite a lot of this universe sorted out, are you going to include an ingame codex for information on places/creatures/people etc?
Other thoughts and ramblings i had while replaying:
Why did Lady Calinas single out Flash to use for her scheme? Does she have any idea who theyre connected to? or that their friends would put up so much trouble to get them back? Or maybe that was part of a plan? To use Flash to draw out the infamous Burned Man and company, kill two birds with one stone? (probably unlikely, considering how well the nobles were prepared against their team of 3 but an interesting possibility anyway). I think something was mentioned on the thread suggesting that Flash was chosen primarily bc of their good looks & charm but Lady Calinas doesn’t seem to have ever seen them until the night of the prologue so how did she know this was the right candidate? At any rate I’d love to eventually get more details into how Flash was chosen and why.
In the dialogue for choosing your gender as female:
choice) “Yessir, this is the young lady that was brought up last week.”
“Very well, wait here with her while I speak to the Lady.”
Nitpicky but i think this would flow better if the female character wasn’t also referred to as “lady” here, maybe instead use “girl”? (or “lass”, if you want to be more consistent w the “lad” wording.) Although personally I might even consider turning it to “boy” and “girl” instead since those are more comparatively derogatory terms; This would also help emphasize the difference in rank between Flash and MC/Lady Calinas, who are referred to with noble titles, while Flash is just an urchin nobody to them ( )
Another thing I was thinking about is
Looking up at the skylight, you feel a momentary spark of recognition. You see a face, swaddled in bandages and peering down from the skylight.
And the next choice Flash wonders what their friends are up to (or not).
I feel this would flow a lot better if this line was taken out and replaced by more of a “looking up through the skylight and wondering if this is the last time you’ll see the stars” moment. That would work better with the timeline, as at this point it doesn’t seem Radjack is actually at the roof yet, and also bc the next choice has Flash wondering where their friends are, which wouldn’t really make sense if they’d just gotten a glimpse of the Burned Man. Unless you’re going for the drugged dreamlike haze angle where it’s made clear that Flash imagined the Burned Man up there on his way to a rescue but he wasn’t really there yet, and that’s what triggers the “where are my friends, I wish he/she was here…” And holy cow this just makes me even more sad, Flash never knows that rescue was so close, they felt completely alone and scared and abandoned during their last moments on earth im so sad now. (in all seriousness, kudos to you with how the writing gets u so attached to this Flash person barely knowing anything about them! I think it’s not just the strong writing in their POV but also because of the relationship with their friends, knowing that they care about each other and are so sure they’ll rescue them but being too late its just so tragic ahhh.)
I’m really interested in the backstory of the crew and the Burned Man alter-ego and looking forward to finding out more about our MC’s personality/life as Flash, and the possibilities for how different they may or may not be to MC. Is the personality/backstory of Flash always set in stone? Or maybe the beginning choice of fight/speak/silence affects their personality (feisty/diplomatic/stoic)?
On that note I’m also burning with curiosity at your hints of whether or not MC will ever be able to recall bits and pieces of Flash or retain their personality in any way, how this will affect themselves and their relationships and whether it would be a good or a bad thing for them.
I love all the different options to customize our MC while in the Forge, are these choices purely cosmetic or are they ever mentioned in the story other than in this one spot? With the “genetically augmented eyes” aspect, I realize that these are something Flash was born with, but the ingame text isn’t really clear on that, it makes it sound more like Flash got cosmetic eye surgery for funsies lol. So maybe add a sentence like ‘the genetically modified eyes of your ancestors which you were born with blablablah…”
Speaking of eyes i guess…
“ She is pretty, certainly. She has a fine figure and piercing eyes. ”
This is super nitpicky but I noticed that the androgyne and male lines for this flowed a lot smoother, compare this female line to
" He is handsome, certainly. He has a… a soldierly bearing, and strong eyes. "
“ Zhe is pretty, certainly. Zhe has that fine bone structure and regal bearing. Such charming eyes, too… ”
Nitpicking (sorry!!!) but compared to the other lines the fem line sounds kindof unnatural dialogue, maybe change it to something more along the lines of “ She is pretty, certainly. A fine figure… and such piercing eyes. "
I see now from previous replies that the 3 choices of paths in the ballroom are totally exclusive storylines. So what I’m wondering is if the Rebel path is the only way we get to have closure re: the original Flash and coming to terms with the identity of MC in relation to them? Or will the later mage/noble storylines also address it in some way? I sure hope so! Angst +100! I also really hope that Arinthas shows up to fulfill his threat in the Noble/Rebel storylines as well, and likewise, that it will be possible to get more information on the nature of the forge, this “user”, and answers about MC’s creation/existence outside of the Mage storyline, and of course, reprisal from Lady Calinas on the Rebel/Mage paths.
I’ve heard a bit about how the Thinker and the Consort specializations may affect the storylines, but haven’t heard much about the Warrior. I’m curious what opportunities we may be able to carry into the story with this skillset? I think I’ve narrowed down that I feel the Consort would best fit a Noble playthrough, the Thinker a Mage, and the Warrior a Rebel. But that’s just my take on what might possibly give the most straightforward use toward the goals/theme of each playthrough, hopefully tho there will be a lot of interesting combinations of personality & skills in all the different branches?
As for the battle scene of the Rebel branch, I thought it was actually done pretty well, choosing to play to your strengths getting better results, etc. It could be clearer which choice actually entails what stat and maybe making a stronger difference between the results, but other than that I would say it’s pretty good the way it is already. So maybe it could be an option to consider this simpler battle, it shows the basic mechanics of fighting without being overly complicated.
(sorry for the giant wall of text, and i understand if you wouldn’t want to backtrack to re-edit the prologue rather than working on new stuff
There should be a subtitle for this game that indicates just how much angst it contains/will induce. Or a warning at the beginning.
(also, yus, another rambler. high five)
I disagree on this point, personally. It isn’t nobles discussing young Flash - it’s servants speaking to other servants. They’d be at the very least a bit more respectful about people in the same-ish social class. And the faux-poet in me feels that replacing ‘lady’ with a single syllable word would screw up rhythm, but that’s… uber-nitpicky sound nonsense. (Also, 90% of my posts on this thread have been nitpicky, and nobody’s kicked me out yet. Nitpicky is good. It’s fun)
I would view it a different way. Humanity isn’t necessarily ‘screwed’, it’s just going through an awkward phase. The pre-Fall Humans expanded and expanded into every corner they could fit, pulling holes in the Universe whenever they wanted to build an extension and yeah, they got pretty badly burned for doing that.
However, despite all the apocalyptic events that have endeavoured to scour Humanity from the face of creation, we’re still here.
This story is the beginning of the Comeback, when the Humans return to rediscover their former greatness and then exceed it, reaching transcendental heights but still humbled by their past experiences.
That’s how you could look at it. That’s certainly how Arinthas sees it.
Yeah, Radjack’s not exactly a long-term sort of guy…
I will try to go over how long Flash spend in the dungeons in the first two chapters of the Rebel path, as soon as I can get it ship-shape that is…
Interestingly yes, I’m planning to have an unlockable Codex in the Stats page that unlocks different pieces of Lore information depending on the choices you make in the game itself, thereby encouraging people to make a few more attempts.
Also, thank you for the compliment. Would you believe this is one of the smaller worldbuilding experiments I’ve ever conducted?
At the moment, the story’s motivation is: I need someone pretty who won’t be missed. Round someone up.
However that may change as later chapters go up, I don’t like to write off any plot-point that has the potential to add complexity to the story (as you’re no doubt finding out…)
That’s a very good point, that phrase doesn’t flow as well as the other two. I’m going to look over that scene later and make a few small changes.
Oops, I did it again. I played with your hearts…
There will be a series of choices throughout the game that establish your MC’s tone and personality, similar to Bioware’s Dragon Age series where if you used the sarcastic answer a few times, your character’s general conversational tone would become more sarcastic.
Yeah, you’ll have to decide whether your character wants to embrace the similarities and move closer to their deceased forebear, or whether they rebel against it and attempt to establish their own persona. Either way, there will be angst…
At the moment these choices are purely cosmetic, as the unique abilities your gene-mods would otherwise provide may well have been swept away by the Forge, leaving only the colours and shapes.
However, that could all change.
You are once again quite right, I’m going to add that to my notes, great observation.
Never apologise. You are among kindred spirits here.
The Rebel path will be about your relationship with Flash, the Noble path will be about your relationship with yourself, and the Mage path will be about your relationship with Humanity.
…in a nutshell.
There will definitely be a lot of variation between the skill-sets, but I’d like to move away from the notion of the Warrior archetype being a big, dumb bruiser. I’d like him/her/zher to be a lateral thinker, using their abilities to alter the situation delicately rather than charging in whirling their fists around like water-wheels.
Some of those scenes I like and some of them I find far too simple, lacking any real sense of danger or failure for picking the wrong choice. I’ll go back and re-examine them in greater detail when I can get my head around how I want those scenes to play out.
Once again, I do not accept your apology because you are being delightful. Also, the re-draft is the most important and underappreciated skill in writing, and I hope to cultivate it eventually, so you’re helping me enormously by pointing things like this out.
The rest is mostly given over to elaborate and saucy puns. This one’s a keeper.
Sooo… this is the cautiously optimistic kind of angst-ridden sci-fi epic.
I’m feeling a bit foolish and teenager-y for that bit of fatalism back there… but also warm and fuzzy.
I’d say I aim to please, but my accuracy stat is abysmally low.
edit: Oh, shoot, I wanted to ask about this…
The codex is going to be written as though it’s being presented in-universe, correct? What’s the in-game explanation for how the MC “accesses” this information, if it’s going to play out like that?
Cue more angst! (Speaking of which, are we ever going to find out how long Flash spent in Calinas’ dungeons? Bc I guess this theory would work less well if Flash had been imprisoned for a long time lol, that would cause a little more concern…)
You have quite a lot of this universe sorted out, are you going to include an ingame codex for information on places/creatures/people etc?
but an interesting possibility anyway). I think something was mentioned on the thread suggesting that Flash was chosen primarily bc of their good looks & charm but Lady Calinas doesn’t seem to have ever seen them until the night of the prologue so how did she know this was the right candidate? At any rate I’d love to eventually get more details into how Flash was chosen and why.
)
