Wintermoot

I'm curious whether people think it's worthwhile to have so much development time go into a one shot thing like story mode, compared to something with the replayability and depth of survival mode. I wasn't a fan of Story Mode at all, I found chapters 1 & 2 dull before the redux and somehow even more dull after. Chapter 3 was the worst yet. The writing is very poor. None of the characters are even attempting to be realistic except for the protagonists, for the entirety of chapter one in particular - the chapter when you'd be most expecting everything to still be nearly 'normal' - they all have silly names and silly over the top dialogue which feels completely out of place in such a grounded, semi-realistic game. Grey Mother felt cartoonish, the apocalypse happened about 8 hours ago and you're already calling yourself Grey Mother and talking like you're from Mad Max? Oh, apparently she did that even BEFORE things went south, that's even stranger. Perhaps I could at least borrow that gun of yours to fight off the wolves while I'm risking my life getting you some damn pearls? Methuselah was even worse, suddenly we're talking to some guy with a Biblical name talking like he's from a Cormac McCarthy novel, it just felt pretentious and credibility stretching even before he started magically teleporting around. And Molly is the worst yet, an actual serial killer who openly admits she'll kill the ex-husband you're looking for if she finds him. Your reaction? Yup, fair enough, good luck to you, I'll be off! Makes sense... Where are all the real people, the actual plausible survivors? Why is your character the only one who feels like they could exist in the real world? How much lead are they putting in the water supply on this island? But writing is subjective. Maybe you thought it was great, who knows, stranger things have happened. But from a purely gameplay perspective, the Story Mode doesn't seem to stand up. Everything is a fetch quest or an escort quest. Survival mode is about a gradual accumulation of skills, knowledge, equipment. Nothing feels like a waste of time, even if you just blunder out, get caught in a blizzard mid scavenge, hide in a cave trying to make a fire for half a day then stumble back on 10% condition - your character has at least improve their fire making skill. You will have mapped things out a little more. It all feels like it's contributing to a greater something. Story mode, there's none of that. The world ends when you complete the objectives, so why care about anything unrelated to those objectives? Why bother with side quests? Why bother with anything? The experience gets switched off in an hour or so. Story mode actually made me like the game as a whole less. It made me look at gameplay mechanics I'd really enjoyed as a dull grind. Once I'd seen the game from the perspective of "just rush from point A to point B" or "just amass X amount of food and wood", it took the magic away from it, even in survival mode. I'd genuinely be hesitate to recommend a game I've been recommending to people for years now, because if they play Wintermute first they're going to bounce off it hard and complain I wasted their money. It wasn't ALL terrible. I quite liked the scripted aurora bit, that was rather tense and beautiful. Fighting the bear was quite good, killing it rather sad. But my lord there's so much fat on the bones to get to the occasional good bit. Overall, even if story mode was 500% times better - are you really going to ever replay it, when it's basically a glorified tutorial? Even if the quality of the hours you sank into those grinds and fetch quests was improved, I can't see people wanting to repeat them. A good tutorial is still a tutorial. Survival mode is the heart and soul of the game, it has incredible replayability and a single save can be hundreds of hours. A quick glance at the Steam achievements shows how few people keep up with story mode. 20% for even finishing chapter one? So: is it worth it? Would people, if they had a say in the matter, rather development time was spent on refining the core experience rather than a one-off tutorial (the quality of that experience aside)?