Feeling let down with storyline.


ColdZero

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I'm very disappointed with the storyline. 

1.  The old lady places the rifle on the ground.  Why can't we pick it up like you'd do in a real life scenario. 

The game just feels really stupid with silly things you'd never do, are you trying to have the main character as a saint or something. 

The storyline is just week. Running around getting wood and food for a complete stranger, he must be a saint. 

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OK. Even tho Wintermute is not an RPG, I'll elaborate on why I partially disagree with OP.

There's this old RPG game that I absolutely love called Baldur's Gate. It's based on pen and paper D&D, so you have a bunch of choices to make early on about your character and the game does a good job of letting you express (roleplay) your character the way you're meant to. If you want to portray a just, stalwart paladin, by all means do it. Want to RP a chaotic evil sorcerer or a thief or anything in-between, you can do it. The quests do a great job of accomodating these options throughout the game, and ultimately it's up to the player to make the choices that feel right for whatever character s/he created. 

There's choice, there's consequence. As a virtuous man, you might pass on the thieves' guild quests - maybe even wipe them out -, but you're missing out on a lot of content (from thievery to assassination) and it's OK because you can revisit the game at a later date and try something different. Plus, there are too many great, hand-made well-written quests to bother doing all of them in one playthrough.

Most modern RPGs do it wrong these days (I'm looking at you Bethesda - Skyrim looks gorgeous, yes, but it's a horrible piece of stinking **** as an RPG). One game did it right for the most part, but it's somewhat restricted by its nature: The Witcher 3; you're forced into Geralt's shoes, and there's nothing wrong with it. As Geralt de Rivia, you're given a complete background, former love interests, friends, foes etc and your freedom of choice must make sense within a context that was not created by you, the player. There's cause, there's consequence, but there's also a back story and everything plays out accordingly. 

In The Long Dark, the story is much more streamlined. You're not given a complete background. Rather, you're given hints and glimpses of what happened to the protagonist and his wife in the past. In a sense, the game's story almost feels like an old Lucas Arts or Sierra adventure game. You're progressing the story in a linear fashion. The game does a good enough job of letting you know these two characters are average, good-hearted people. Their behavior makes them relatable to us, 'normal' people. Will is desperate to find his missing wife, but he shows concern for the well-being of both the Grey Mother and Jeremiah. You're not given an option to roleplay an evil Will because the game is designed to reward you with STORY progression, much like every other adventure game. You play it for the sake of progressing the character's story: to see what comes next. 

Honestly, I don't blame you for having expectations. Most "open world" sandboxes are RPGs (or at least pretend to be one), and The Long Dark is an open world, survival sandbox ADVENTURE game. In my opinion, it's a respectable adventure. The story is picking up pace now, and I'm hopeful for Episode 3. Hinterland should focus more on the STORY and less on MMO-ish fetch quests for static NPCs and everything else should fall into place nicely. 

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My main problem is you have no choice at all other than how go about collecting the wood or food or whatever else she wants. The other complaint is the devs have assumed we want to play a certain way. You don't even get a chance to even bargain with the women. 

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13 minutes ago, ColdZero said:

 The other complaint is the devs have assumed we want to play a certain way.

I think it's the other way around, you assumed the devs made the game in a certain way. Which in all fairness is understandable after watching the launch trailer, which implies an experience with a thick story. I am actually surprised myself about how few story elements there are and how much freedom we have inbetween the story triggers were nothing happens at all on the Story side.

But honestly? I am thankful it's this way. I would've probably hated it if Story was something completely different than my past 3 years experience with the Sandbox. So they have mainly bring-me quests, a Story that is easily jumped ahead and which makes only half-way sense anyway - I agree, why would I spend weeks walking through 3 maps and back for Jeremiah and kill him a freaking bear when I am in the urgent situation to find my "friend"?  Not to mention that I just safed his freaking life and he has the nerve to ask me for more? Ungrateful old beggar... And that MacKenzie sounds still very urgent during the few audio sequences does not help making the situation any more believable :D - but it at least still feels like The Long Dark.

So contrary what I and probably many others have feared, the Story Mode is not made for a completely new crowd but an attempt to enhance and enrich the gaming experience we Sandbox player love so much. And looking from that perspective I can forgive or simply ignore those imperfections mentioned above, I rather value that Wintermute brought us something that was missing for the past 3 years: context.

And that part they got right, the big story around what has happend, what the Aurora means, the effect on Electricity and so on is very engaging and I want to know more about it. This translates into my Sandbox play aswell, I'll never see Trapper's Homestead or the Dam the same way I used to before but I wished there would've been more of that, more context, people and so on. Hopefully more places on the maps will be included in the Story of the next Episodes.

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Chill I haven't assumed anything really only that I would get a bit more out of the game I purchased as a kickstarter with improvements and like the rest of us having waiting for a very long time for the main story I find it lacking it the small things things such as not being able to climb a small fence or not having a wolf move from the outside if a fence for 16 hours  so overall can I see improvements in the actual game no I can't and am I getting the same enjoyment out of the story as I did the sandbox no I didn't, but we all have our own take from the game and what we wanted out of it and for me had I paid full price for this game I'd be very disappointed 

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Biggest failure in interactive storytelling: its all push; there is zero pull.

 

I think I was inspired to wonder exactly twice: I wondered if the old lady would accept newsprint for her wood box.  Then I wondered if when the bear was finally dead I would be allowed to harvest the arrows from its back.

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I am also disappointed, but OP's reasoning isn't the strongest. Some other, more serious weaknesses would be:

 

* The fact that the NPCs don't feel like real people, they feel like... Well, NPCs. At no point do you even begin to care for them.

* The fetch quests with no substance. I understand that they are sometimes necessary and even fun, and the quest to repair Jeremiah's rifle shows that even something as simple as "Go to this place and click on an item" can be fun if the journey is long, hard, and involves dramatic events - such as the aurora and the midnight run through a wolf-infested woods to get to a safe place. "Grab some mushrooms from the nearby woods", however, is exactly the opposite of that: It's a not-very-exciting journey to a place you already know, to grab some mundane item and get a cutscene as a reward. There is room for improvement, and the first step would be to make sure every quest  gives the player a certain feeling: Either anger, fear, sadness, excitement or plain happiness... That's why we play stories in games: To feel something. If a quest or mission just makes us moderately entertained and gives us no feelings of any sort, it's just busywork.

* Lack of proper pacing. "Get wood for me. Good, now get food. Good, now get..." just kills any urgency we could have had in seeking Astrid out. I don't need to constantly be on the move after her, but I do need a semi-constant stream of clues as to where she could or couldn't  be, otherwise I'm just gonna stop caring. 

 

Raph has defended the fetch quests in the past and I get his point - they make sense within this universe. It makes sense that you'd need to help the lady out if you want her help. But they could have been done better, with more drama - and by that I don't mean melodramatic cutscenes and dialogue, I mean actual drama: Scripted weather sequences (blizzard on your way back from a certain location, for instance), wolf packs attacking you (like in the maintenance shed), a scripted bear encounter, the discovery of a new, previously unseen location (maintenance shed comes to mind), an encounter with a potentially hostile survivor... Stuff like that. "Get 10000 calories of food for me" is not exactly very fun, even if it does make sense.

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I'm in town debating if I should stay there. My food is low and I really don't want to pander the old lady.  Can I move on without doing the quest and supply run, or will the game not let me?  If it won't let me, I'll probably play less of this Wintermute, or not finish it, and just play Sandbox Survivor.  I really hate linear games.

 

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@Dougie you can't move on without getting an item she possesses.  So you are stuck with at least a few more chores before you can forget her.

 

So, the (old) grey lady has(had) a 16-year-old daughter as recently as this past summer?  Or am I getting mixed messages...

The story continuity seems extremely stretched.

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On 8.8.2017 at 0:46 AM, ColdZero said:

1.  The old lady places the rifle on the ground.  Why can't we pick it up like you'd do in a real life scenario.

...

Running around getting wood and food for a complete stranger, he must be a saint. 

To 1st : Taking stuff from other people without their agreement is been called stealing, and its a crime.

To 2nd : I know nothing about saints on this earth. I heard about people who feel like saint, but act like beast. What Road do you want to walk? Anything what possible is also allowed?

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I've already pilliaged the town of food for my own use and have had to consume it....so where am I going to get around this linear nightmare.....crazy game designers always do this.  I'm not starting this disappointment over again...it'll be soley Survivor mode...

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