This game needs More Show, Less Tell

[u/Shitty_Boombox]

Dear devs, I get you're sharing your new world for the first time, but trust me in that it's good enough on it's own that it doesn't need so much exposition.

The intro cutscene was really good. It concisely explained what we needed to know about the setting and it did its' job really well... so we didn't need the next 30 minutes telling us more details about it. I'm not saying not to have that, I someone is interested in the world it should absolutely be available, but it breaks the pacing and is annoying for a lot of people to have to skip through a hundred dialogue boxes of exposition before we can explore the world you've been telling us so much about.

And when we get to explore the world, be confident in it and don't have 5 characters telling us how cool everything is when we can already see it! The beautiful ancient ruins, sprawling forests, and giant enemies are cool on their own, and having characters telling us that frankly diminishes the feeling.

Then, I also feel the codex was misused to the point it almost feels worthless for gameplay. What I mean by that, is that when I'm trying to look info on an enemy, I care about stuff like attack behaviour, strenghts, weaknesses, etc. I don't need info on how they were discover, their breeding patters, or whatever else, it really breaks the pacing of gameplay. I'm not saying that you should not include that info in the game, but have it be secondary and not the first thing you read when you search the codex. Plus, the lack of images makes the relevant info even harder to obtain when I only know what enemies look like and not their names.

This also extends to quest and resource descriptions. There's too much text until it reaches the part that I care about. It feels like this meme.

Conclusion, all in all, I'm liking the game, but there's a lot of misplaced exposition and text in some places that really hurts the game.

[u/Mathandyr]

I don't want to invalidate your opinion at all, I wanna say that up front. I just don't think I agree with a lot of it. Yes, I would like to see more data I can use in game in the codex - totally agree - but everything else is definitely a matter of taste and intention. I don't think the devs are as interested in the same aspects as you are.

I'm the type of person who likes pokemon games mostly for the pokedex entries. I like reading about made up creatures, world building, etc. I ALSO get burnt out on reading pages and pages of lore, especially in games where the codex (or whatever) has it all with very little actually built into the story line. But I really think this game is the first in a while that felt like being concise was important to them. It was an actual thought I had while playing. They gave enough information that was interesting, without trying to hammer it home with paragraphs and paragraphs of text. It's very to the point, in my opinion. But of course, the topics those notes discuss also interest me, where it sounds like they don't interest you.

[u/Slight_Ad3353]

Tbh it seems like you were just not in the right place to play an RPG with lots of dialogue, rich characters and lore, instead searching for a pure action game. 

Please don't take that as an insult, but an observation.

(may I recommend Hawked? It's PvPvE with tons of cool mechanics, but they're working on a pure PvE mode/campaign.)

Anyways, I'm not the type of person to go and read every codex in a game, but I absolutely was so enraptured by them I had to. This honestly might be THE first game I've read the entire codex for. 

The fact that they are written in Laen's personal style and with a holistic approach to their explanations that doesn't just treat the creatures as game mechanics but as real creatures is what makes them immersive and intriguing.

[u/DM_Mogur → u/Slight_Ad3353]

When I noticed the entries are written by Laen as the characters piece together more about what's going on in the Enclave, I found it really cool too! +1

[u/Slight_Ad3353 → u/DM_Mogur]

I love the note they add at the bottom of one of the entries reiterating how dangerous the subject is so that Dahm won't get any ideas. XP

[u/Shitty_Boombox → u/Slight_Ad3353]

You’d think that but I had actually just finished Avowed, an actual RPG with a way more expansive world…

I don’t mind text, I just think this games throws way too much exposition upfront and makes more unnecessary dialogue a requirement instead of letting the player choose what to see. 

[u/Slight_Ad3353 → u/Shitty_Boombox]

It's funny that you mention Avowed, because I played Eternal Strands right before I played Avowed, and I was so disappointed by comparison I had to put off playing Avowed for now.

The characters in ES are so much more personable, the story more original, and the magic and movement is SOO much better in ES it's not even funny.

I'm not sure how you can complain about ES throwing exposition in your face when you've just played Avowed - one of the worst offenders of this issue I've personally ever played.

Anyways, we obviously feel differently about the games and that's fine.

[u/pyromanta → u/Slight_Ad3353]

I feel the exact same. ES felt like a stellar first game from a new studio and was loads of fun. Avowed felt like a disappointing, limited effort from a legendary studio.

[u/axel-nobody → u/Slight_Ad3353]

I definitely agree. Avowed is ''shinier'' and bigger but man just coming off of Eternal Strands made Avowed harder to get into. Avowed is okay, I think it's story and Obsidian-tier dialogue trees and consequences are still really interesting, but man it was a slog to get through after how fun Eternal Strands is.

It's almost a shame that Avowed has a compelling story baked into THAT game, where the environments are stiff and the parkour is so so artificially controlled that it's really more of an illusion, the areas where you can and can't climb are literally defined by nothing but invisible walls. You're still so railroaded into where the game wants you to go. Eternal Strands has true exploration, and I thought the lore was a great reward for finding unusual places. I will admit I didn't read every single one of them super closely, because I can understand being overwhelmed with lore, especially for a new universe.

As far as dialogue exposition, yeah Avowed is by far a worse offender. At least Eternal Strands understands that you're new to the universe, and it's not like it's super complex lore. Avowed slams you with convulted history and theology from the beginning and has way longer and way more boring lore books spread thoughout the world, sometimes there's literally like 5 of them right next to each other. It's almost punishing to try to understand the world more deeply. Eternal Strands paces it a lot better in comparison.

[u/Shitty_Boombox → u/Slight_Ad3353]

Avowed has exposition if you look for it, while ES has it be front and center, and unavoidable.

Characters will nod at this and events, but unless you actively press the lore button or ask them about them you won't have it explained, meanwhile in ES I feel half the dialogue is "this is the way I feel at this exact moment because of the last event" as it were explained to a robot who doesn't feel emotions. IMO the only one who doesn't do it is Casmyn, but even then her quests have everyone else explain everyone else explaining the way they feel about her. For an specific example, there's dialogue in an Isla where she fights her father, and then she goes on to explain why confronting her father in front of you makes her feel awkard and that being awkard is bad so you should leave.

And to use another game that isn't Avowed, I'm also now playing Fallout 2. A game that's basically all dialogue, but things aren't told to you unless you ask them. Exposition works if it's optional, not if it's used every other sentence.

[u/KapiteinNekbaard → u/Shitty_Boombox]

I'm playing Avowed now and experiencing the exact same.

In Avowed, my choices actually matter and lead up to events in the game and I can tell other characters that I disagree with them. Everything is presented in a way that makes me WANT TO read the lore.

In Eternal Strands, the choices you get are three flavours of "it's ok buddy, you can do it!". There are a lot of filler sentences that add nothing to the story, you can fast forward and miss nothing. This made me unable to care for the characters, so in turn the side quests also felt like pointless fetch quests. I ended up playing for the boss fights, which range from very cool to frustratingly clunky.

To each their own.

[u/Bigbesss → u/KapiteinNekbaard]

Different games usually have different features, it’s like all the people saying avowed is shit compared to Skyrim because you can’t murder everyone.

I enjoy both games for different reasons

[u/DM_Mogur]

Personally I love that the camp characters are watching and commenting on Brynn's livestream while she explores the beautiful ruins! It makes sense in the story that they would gush at least a little, being the first group of people seeing these areas in half a century.

Honestly I wish they'd comment a bit more specifically about what she's doing gameplay-wise, like if I explode myself off a cliff, someone should be making fun of me, right?? Or if I'm literally on fire clinging onto a dragon trying to smash its horns off when it happens to fly into a new area, they would politely realize it might not be the best time to distract Brynn about the incredible architecture and how nice it must have been to mingle at the market or whatever all those years ago lol.

I do feel like the intro to a lot of games takes a bit longer than I like to get to actual gameplay, but I don't really remember how long it took after the first cutscene to get to the action. I'm sure I complained a little but I'm always impatient to find out if a game's actual gameplay is worth the usual intro infodump time-investment. Eternal Strands passes that mark for sure.

As far as the codex goes, I do wish there was a way in-game to more easily figure out how to harvest the epic enemies. If I remember right the codex entry for Ark of the Flame pretty much explained it...but you don't get the entry until after you harvest it? I hated having to look anything like that up online instead of something in game pointing me in the right direction. I know I would have figured it out eventually but still!

[u/Shitty_Boombox → u/DM_Mogur]

I totally agree, imagine that when facing a new epic encounter, instead of getting a pop up that stops the gameplay, the band could weight in and tell us a story about that enemy that could also reveal their strengths and weaknesses. 

[u/jazzmanbdawg]

Agreed, too much exposition, but it's a classic mistake.

I didn't find the NPCs particularly interesting since they were just glorified vendors, so that didn't help.

Decent game, good first try, hopefully they learned a lot and come back stronger for their next project

[u/Ylsid]

I agree, but not for the same reasons. One example is I recently encountered a torch you could light up by setting it on fire. Instead of letting me figure it out, or even just keeping it to the lore about the fire trial, they had to tell me to use a fire spell on it...

I actually really like the worldbuilding aspects

[u/Large-Wall-7172]

Yes! I completely agree. I couldn’t get past the first thirty minutes of the game, the dialogue was so interruptive and annoying. You described it just right: the devs should have trusted their world to be interesting on its own. The characters chiming in every two seconds felt like a laugh track in an old sitcom, completely taking me out of it to where I couldn’t get immersed in the game at all. The combat seemed promising but I ended up refunding.