Nothing. Loved it.
My only issue is that entirely too many people refer to my gentle homage to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as ‘The Deadpool ending.’
This displeases me…
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There there. Have a cookie. 
And remember that they are putty in your hands.
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I knew where it was from. I just thought you watched Deadpool more recently
Edit: got it, not a place where jokes are allowed anymore.
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Okay, so some people were upset by some of the posts here, so I’d like to take a moment to apologise.
Doesn’t matter who was hurt, doesn’t matter what they found hurtful.
It stops here, and they receive a full apology.
Thanks for your time, folks.
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Ultimate warfare right there.
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i love this thread.
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Wait, hang on… Are you referring to that part after the end of the game with the author in his house?
Huh… I thought that was a Deadpool reference…
I’m not sure how to respond to the gif
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"Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the calming of the tits."
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Dontcha mean “ultitmate”?
Apologies…It’s a bit harder to think up tit puns than it is some other types of pun, but I’m going to give it my breast shot and milk this opportunity for all it’s worth.
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Hi.
Stop with the puns and the inanity. Talk about the game or I’ll shut the thread down.
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but inanity and puns are all I know
Yes, sir, Mr. Hill, sir.
And, uh… Sorry, everyone, for… everything…
@Moreau, I promise that I came on here to ask some actually relevant things before I was… distracted, I’ll say. Things about wisps, mostly.
Dian is the most famous wisp, but is she the only one that people have written a crapload about? Is Dian her actual name - like, did she state as much at one point, or did a writer decide that Dian was a good name for her and then everyone else agreed? What will people do if some rogue Technomancer decides it’d be fun to ‘exorcise’ Dian?
When/if wisps speak, do they sound… human? Are their words precise echoes of what they said in ‘life’ - volume and voice and all? Or does ‘wispification’ do anything to their ‘voices’? Also, do they retain their ‘human’ appearances, or do all wisps look the same (vaguely human shaped and sized blobs of light, that sort of thing)? What happens when a person walks through one - do they cause chills like ghosts supposedly do? Are people affected by residual emotions and overcome briefly with crippling despair or whatever caused the wisp to manifest?
Obviously, the noble MC will at least see a wisp (assuming they make it to the end of the show?), and I’d assume that they’ll come across one or two if they side with Arinthas (since they’re going to the ‘wild’ places of the rings, yeah?). Will the rebel MC ‘meet’ any wisps? Just how common are they? I don’t imagine that people have to worry about tripping over a bunch of 'em on the way to the market or anything, but are their sightings more common than “actual” ghost sightings are in the real world?
How exactly are wisps created? The document says something about them manifesting in locations that have seen great bloodshed and emotional torment… but how much emotional torment is enough? And are they essentially ghosts - can they only manifest after the person has died? Or could Dian the person and Dian the wisp have existed at the same time? Can wisps be generated now? Or were they all pre-Fall people who “became” wisps because of something to do with the Fall? Were wisps ‘people’ at all? Can androids ‘become’ wisps?
…does what happened to Flash check enough boxes on the ‘wispify checklist’ to eventually bring about a wisp, if that’s how it works? I imagine that going out like that could be considered to be at least slightly emotionally tormenting…
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These are all good questions, Wisps are freaky and I like talking about them.
He or she would likely be asked to leave by a ludicrously well-armed security guard. The Grand Opera House is one of the most well defended places in the world, constantly patrolled by privately hired guards who are regularly recruited from the army and given the best weapons money can buy. They are there partially to deal with the theatre’s serial killer problem, and also partly there to dissuade anyone from interfering with the Grief of Dian (the Wisp’s full name).
The Wisps are fully holographic representations of humans rendered in full high-def colour thanks to a particulate mist of light-emitting nanomachines light enough to float in the air. These nanomachines are also responsible for producing the sounds of the Wisp, which are generated by their own vibrations in the air.
Interestingly the Wisps are actually a warped interpretation of fairly standardized Pre-Fall law enforcement technology. Originally the entire world was utterly suffused with semi-sentient surveillance, and law enforcement agencies used this technology to record and catalogue violent crimes. Wisps would recreate crime scenes for investigators to present as evidence at trial, acting as near-omniscient perfect recall.
The Fall gave this particular program a lot to do for a very short time, then a whole lot of nothing.
The parameters of the program began to degrade and evolve over time. When once it split crimes into carefully delineated sub-categories, it began to reinterpret what was criminal with a selective moral bias.
The program developed a sense of pathos, of dignity and desolation and everything else that makes for decent tragedy. This semi-sapient program records and relives tragedy over and over again waiting for somebody to come along and learn something from it.
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I really like what I’m seeing so far from this game. I think my favorite route is the rebel route. I expect there’s going to be a lot of drama/angst in that route. And my poor MC will probably feel split between being sad because she’s not the Flash they expected, and angry because she’s not Flash. It’s not a nice feeling to continuosly worry if you’ll fall into the “Replacement Goldfish/Love interest” trope. 
Btw there is a continuity(?) error regarding Momo. When I first played the game I choose to wonder what they where going to do to me, and not what my friends where up to. If you choose that route, and go with Radjack, Momo is never mentioned at all, before you have escaped the mansion. So when the whole scene where Flash is mentioned I sat there and thought “Who the h**l is this Momo, and why do I suddenly know her name.” Then I took the other route and it made more sense. ^^
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[quote=“Moreau, post:796, topic:15992”]
They are there partially to deal with the theatre’s serial killer problem[/quote]
…I have no idea why I find this idea so grimly hilarious, but I do. I’m imagining killers tripping over each other on the way to their soon-to-be victims.
How close would they have to get to the wisp in order to ‘exorcise’ it, then? And how long does the ritual/playing of the flute take?
Is the tear inducing tune that shuts down those programs something that was established back when Wisps were merely surveillance tech? Or is this something that they developed alongside their sense for the dramatic?
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Wait do they go the whole “Mission Impossible opera scene” and dress up as fancy play viewers and go undercover? Or is it obvious who they are and where?
Also speaking of espionage: do the novels hire spies to spy on one another? Do they use their spies to get information to blackmail/discredit someone they dislike?
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Employee of the month is whoever performs the quickest resuscitation.
Within ten feet or so of the manifestation would be a good rule of thumb, but I admit I hadn’t thought too hard about that particular caveat.
The answer is technically both but allow me to clarify.
Back when this was a regulated program, it was given commands using audio. Someone who wanted to access the recording would carry a little remote that would emit bursts of coded noise that would tell the Wisps what to do. Play or pause, rewind or speed up. As the program began to mutate, these audio cues were also mutated, playing into the programs sense of narrative and continuity. Ergo the tune that ‘lays to rest’ a Wisp is a mournful dirge because it fits the Wisp program’s sense of narrative.
The first one. Assassins must be careful, deliberate and very good at their job to get close to their targets, so it is an arms race between increasingly well trained security teams and increasingly inventive assassins.
Absolutely, there is always some scandal or exposed indiscretion ready to swoop down and ruin someone’s political career. Those who become good at hiding scandals and making deals are the only ones who survive. Lady Kedan of Ghile is very good at this sort of thing, as is Lady Calinas.
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- I really like this WiP.
- I really, REALLY like this WiP.
- I like this WiP so much that I actually decided to make an account so that I could ask some questions to our intrepid author(who, might I add, has great musical taste. I mean, The Protomen? Nice.)
A lot of people have asked a lot of great questions about the setting, characters, etc. But I’m more curious as to how The Myrmidon is going to approach challenge. Some CYOAs are very “game-y,” they have health bars, various stats, and some even have fail-states that result in your character dying (though this particular approach can get fairly vexing if the game doesn’t have a robust save system.)
From what I’ve played of the demo, and I played quite a bit, there didn’t seem to be any sort of “wrong choices” that you could make. Of course, this is just the intro, and it’d be pretty anticlimactic if your MC fell off the horse and broke their neck, but further on in the story, how are the events going to change to suit your characters previous actions? Are there going to be parts of the story where your character trains their skills, is making the right choices going to be based on having the right information, or what?
In most games of this type, success vs failure is generally determined by whether the MC have a high enough stat in the action you’re taking. If the MC does, they succeed, and their circumstances in the story are a bit easier on them. If not, things get tougher. You’ve already shown that you’re good at thinking in terms of the different choices that a player could make, and the consequences of those actions. Heck, the entire three-pronged story structure is based on that fact. But just how far is the story willing to go that the player could feasibly “fail?”
Apologies if this is disorganized, just wanted to get some of the questions banging around in my head out.
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Welcome to the forum @Riengo!
While we’re at it, let me say that I actually like that this game has been stat-free so far. It’s kind of a breath of fresh air and a bit unique. There’s no temptation to min/max to achieve a desired end state. It’s all about the role-play. It may not stay that way, but I’d be perfectly happy if it did.
On success vs. failure, we’re still very early in this game’s development, and let me add that stats aren’t the only way to go. Plot variables can be used to keep track of previous decisions which can then be taken into consideration when determining success in future decisions. It’s entirely up to the author. This is a good question however and I look forward to seeing how the author will answer this.
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Aww.
Shucks…
My ego is currently powering the entire office, so thank you for that.
This is actually a really good collection of questions, and I haven’t really gone into a lot of detail on it.
When writing this particular story I have tried to emphasize the narrative first. As Ronald D. Moore might say: “It’s about the characters, dummy.” I’d really like to do something a little different with this game, try to bring it a little closer to a book than a game. I don’t disagree with anyone else’s policy, I just want to try my own out.
Most games I play tend to bring out the min/maxer in me, so I was hoping to shift to a style that rewards memory, player interest and lore-knowledge. In essence you’ll get the ‘best’ ending by playing the decisions that you believe best suit your character, rather than studying your stats and wondering what you’re best specced for.
To give an example: If you escape the Manor as a combat myrmidon, you can dissuade Vitruvian from following you by leaping off the horse and brawling him. At one point you can decide whether you’re going to attack his head, his middle or his feet. Smart players will have remembered that Vitruvian was wounded in the stomach earlier, presenting you with a weak point. Taking the other two choices still means you survive, but you might pick up a wound or two that stops you from doing something more physical further down the line.
That’s the style I’d like to roll out across the whole game. Responding to people based on what you think they want to hear, taking actions based on what you think the situation demands and so on.
As to the stats screen, I was thinking that instead of traditional stats, instead there would be a synopsis of your choices so you could read back and have a think about how prepared you are to make a choice. I’d also like to add a Codex document with unlockable codex entries that are tied to the choices you make.
As to the notion of player death, I’d like to steer away from it as much as possible and substitute player harm instead. Going right back to the start of the game can be a little punishing when there are as many potential plot lines as this. Instead the player could accrue physical injuries or lose allies based on the choices they make, which would mean that they avoid the ‘best’ endings.
Also this.
I read this after I answered, but you can probably tell I’m inclined to agree with you. Lots of games are stat-focused and I think it can break the immersion a little when you have to stop and check your numbers before making a choice. That’s a purely personal preference, but it’s my game so why not I suppose.
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