I'm genuinely missing some talk about the narrative. Sure, Alex's direction and mechanical content deserves the spotlight, but David's been busy this patch, too, and I'm of the opinion his work does deserve some praise as well. I've already voiced some of my opinions in the patch announcement thread, I'm going to dig deeper into individual storylines here:
The Shrines
What a lovely way to get introduced into the Church! I managed to get lucky and not only did my first visit to the Jangala shrine coincide with the protest event, I also nabbed a hitchhiker there on my way to Kumari Aru. All of the visits were memorable and together painted a pretty colorful picture of the Church, a "rainbow road" of sorts if the zealous pardon me. I honestly can't think of anything to improve, it's a neat and simple storyline for new players to pick up to get a good look at a major piece of the core worlds. The only piece it was missing was a peek at the dark side of the Church, which I hoped would be addressed in...
The Knight Errant
...and it turns out I was right. Sorta. There is no denying that the Path is the dark side of the Church, but I have seen more evidence of the two sides of the Ludd's coin mingling in the Gates storyline through the encounters with Cotton and his knave of Ludd. Admittedly Jethro turning out to have pee'd his pants off to Mazalot was a funny, but ultimately anticlimactic ending, painting him in an arguably unflattering light. I'd have preferred if he ended up being a genuinely resourceful and influential personality active in some kind of an underground action on Mazalot. Perhaps he would end up being an agent of his own that would grow sympathetic to the Luddic radicals, but guilesome enough to influence them towards a more subtle and effective solution to their oppression. Then we could actually make an interesting decision whether to fulfill Jaspis' quest and weaken the faithful of Mazalot in favor of returning one of Gilead's greatest offstage minds home. Or show sympathy to his cause and perhaps eventually see the fruits of such character's efforts come true. I mean, perhaps we could supply him with weapons (or contacts!) if we could do that with...
The Hood, the Boy and the Bot
..., err, I mean the Volturn Curate. And you might've just ended up puzzled what has the Volturn Padawan quest got to do with the previously mentioned questline. Nothing much except disappointment. I'm not going to write a rant about it again though, it's
here for those who are curious. The quest is a fun nod and I appreciate it, but I hope in future it does become an introduction to Sindria's own Chekhov's bot-man.
...Sorry for not coming up with a better joke. But hey! At least it sounds like Batman! The Sentinel Island
IN SPACE! Boy, is this joke getting old
Didn't arrive to this paragraph by a segue, but neither did I to Sentinel while playing. I mean I didn't encounter this one as fluidly as the other storylines. Which makes sense, the discovery of Sentinel's secret is meant to be sudden and shocking. And what a shocker it is! AI hardwired to Hegemony ships? I choose to read it less as an accident of necessity and more as another proof of Hegemony's hypocrisy. That said, I'm looking forward to see the repercussions of actually handing the PK to anyone in future patches. I'll be disappointed if it doesn't end up being abused by everyone possible. Power corrupts and so on...
The Usurpers
Speaking of power, the Usurpers questline is steaming, but somewhat undercooked. But that's the cons of tasting the early access for you. On the other hand, the ingredients are amazing! Hyder and Macario are intriguing characters and I would love to see them at each other's throats in the future. I was a bit underwhelmed by Caden coming off as a straight-up idiot, but I suppose that's to be expected of the head of Lion's Guard. I might pretend it to be a case of obfuscating stupidity and perhaps he'll get a chance to show that in future patches. If he doesn't end up dying in a shootout with me over a single double agent, like this time. Either way it looks like Askonia's set up to be a political or even a literal battleground for the four big factions and I can't wait for the theater to start ^^
All in all, I liked what you got, David. Good job! If you continue at this pace and manage to gently weave the storylines together then we're in for a proper space opera! And no opera would be complete without music, so shout-out to Stian for the new themes! Love the hint of the hyperspace theme in the League ones!
And what do
you think, fellow starfarers?