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Rs3 Lore That Hasn't Aged Well

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Darelzel

Darelzel

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The Mighty Fall

The overall premise of showing how the Bandosians move forward after the death of Bandos is a legit idea. It makes sense for the goblins, General Graador, the trolls, and Zanik to be involved, as all would have stakes in the future of the Bandosians, and each would have ideas for the future that might not be compatable with the others' ideas. The only problem is the execution.

The Mighty Fall is controversial among players for its treatment of Zanik, the sympathetic NPC hero of the cave goblin quests. In those quests, we helped her choose her own destiny and rooted for her to get a happy ending, and in The Chosen Commander, she did.

However, players were not pleased when she returned in The Mighty Fall. Not only was she given a graphical rework that was poorly received by most of the players, but the story also has her being sick and dying as a result of Bandos' death (apparently due to her still having a link to Bandos, despite smashing the Bandos pendant and no longer having his symbol on her forehead), and the player is given a nonsensical choice. 1. Spare Zanik, and allow her and a small group of followers to wander off into the wastes of Yu'Buisk, never to return, or 2. Kill Zanik.

Given how close friends we became with Zanik in the cave goblin quests - being her closest confidante, and the one to bring her back when she's possessed by the Bandos pendant - this choice makes about as much sense as Samwise being given the option to slit Frodo's throat before he boards the White Ship at the end of Return of the King. It seems forced, out of character, and illogical.

(continued next post)

02-Aug-2021 01:32:53

Darelzel

Darelzel

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Seeing how unpopular this was with the fans, Zanik returned in Nomad's Elegy, where we rescue her from the Bandosian afterlife (she's there because even if we spared her, the last bit of Bandos was still killing her like a cancer, and it did, killing itself in the process). So we get to team up with her again and at the end, the player and Zanik are able to have the satisfaction of saying they teamed up to defeat an evil god twice.

Zanik also received a much better received graphical rework, and at the end is given a much more pleasant choice. To either become the new host of Soul Wars or to found a new afterlife realm.

Either way, she returns properly as a part of the Council of Seren and as the guide to the Bandosian Archaelogy site, thus 'un-Hazeeling' her (if you don't know what 'un-Hazeeling' is, I'll explain in the next item).

One gets the impression that if the lore designers knew Zanik would still be needed for Archaelogy, The Mighty Fall wouldn't have had Zanik be sick, and would have instead had a different ending where Zanik leads a bunch of Bandosians who are actually curious enough about their history (and no longer afraid of a Big High War God who is now dead) to want to learn more. Had Archaeology been in the works then, The Mighty Fall would have instead ended with a setup for Zanik's role as the Archaelogy guide for the Warforge site.

And we wouldn't have had to deal with one of the worst 'choice' endings in RS history.

02-Aug-2021 01:36:36 - Last edited on 02-Aug-2021 01:39:09 by Darelzel

Darelzel

Darelzel

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Choices/plot branches

This leads to my next point. Having the player decide certain life or death outcomes in a quest is one that NEVER works out in the long run. It can ONLY work if said quest never, ever, has a sequel and the characters most directly affected never play a role in any future content. When a character's life actually depends on your choices, that's what Mod Jack and others call 'Hazeeling', after the choice in 'Hazeel Cult' where whether Hazeel gets revived or not depends on the choice you make during the quest.

Eventually, however, the character might be needed for later content, and no other character can fill that role. In that case, the character gets 'un-Hazeeled'. The earliest example of an 'Un-Hazeeling' happened with the leadup to 'While Guthix Sleeps' where Lucien gets the Staff of Armadyl anyway even if you sided with the Armadyleans in 'Temple of Ikov' (since the plot depended on Lucien getting the staff). Characters who have since been 'Un-Hazeeled' include Thaerisk, Zanik, and Hazeel himself (though they held off on that one up until 'Dishonour Among Thieves' when they couldn't get away with having other Mahjarrat substitute for him anymore). We can expect Veldaban to be 'un-Hazeeled' should the need to revisit Keldagrim politics in depth post 'Birthright of the Dwarves' drive future content.

So all in all, these choices provide the illusion of branching plots that really can't be done in a game like RS. It could be done in a single player video game for various consoles, but the nature of RS doesn't really allow for this sort of thing to have any long-term affect other than different lines of dialogue.

02-Aug-2021 01:38:10

Darelzel

Darelzel

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Sliske's Endgame

This is the big payoff to the Sliske's contest storyline that began with 'Missing, Presumed Death' where Sliske is offering the Stone of Jas to the one who's best at killing (or at least seriously inconveniencing) the most gods. While there's a lot that works here (Kerapac using the mirror to destroy the Stone, Sliske continuing his plan from 'Kindred Spirits', the confrontation with Jas, and various character moments), there's some stuff that just doesn't work.

The big maze that forms the bulk of the quest is needlessly complex, and probably the most complex big puzzle since the infamous Mournings Ends II light puzzle. It is, however, at least livened up by run-ins with gods and their followers in the maze, but these run-ins change greatly depending on your timing and your choices. While the quest is replayable, only the truly dedicated lorehounds are willing to go through that huge complex puzzle just to see every different encounter and every different dialogue variation.

And then there's the controversial choice to have the Staff of Armadyl fall into the player character's hands out of nowhere in a cutscene, and the player in the cutscene stabbing Sliske with it. Thus depriving the player of agency in an action their character does. Granted, it's there as part of Sliske's plan to guarantee an afterlife for himself (or at least it's implied that is the case), but this was an over-the-top case of a cutscene forcing the player character to do something the player (who might have caught on to Sliske's plan) probably wouldn't if they were left to decide it for themselves. It could have been handled a bit better - such as the player character being momentarily stunned when the Staff of Armadyl shows up, and one of Sliske's minions giving Sliske a push to bring Sliske and the World Guardian close enough to get the desired results..

(continued next post)

02-Aug-2021 01:42:49

Darelzel

Darelzel

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Anyway, this is a tamer example than most of the items on my list. The quest still has a lot of fun moments, with lots of depth given to the gods, in addition to some laugh-out loud lines from Sliske trolling us. And Kerapac's destroying the Stone of Jas is an appropriately satisfying way of taking that particular magical MacGuffin off the table.

Still, Sliske's Endgame suffers from being a little too overly complex for its own good.

So, these are my picks for 2010-2020 RS content that hasn't aged well.

You can post now, if you have your picks for things I missed that haven't aged well, or other observations.

02-Aug-2021 01:45:26

Jaekob Caed
Apr Member 2011

Jaekob Caed

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I appreciate the amount of effort you put into this but I'd have to disagree. While it's true that there are some less-than-stellar bits of lore in the game, that's just a byproduct of the fact that it's all built upon twenty years of storytelling (which happens, no matter how good the IP is). Even so, I think that they've done a great job of smoothing out most of the issues in the lore. ~
Jaekob Caed
: Scribe, Scholar and Prince of the Kingdom of Heaven ~
The Jagex I once loved is dead... A THREAD

08-Aug-2021 13:46:42

Darelzel

Darelzel

Posts: 3,587 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Jaekob Caed said :
I appreciate the amount of effort you put into this but I'd have to disagree. While it's true that there are some less-than-stellar bits of lore in the game, that's just a byproduct of the fact that it's all built upon twenty years of storytelling (which happens, no matter how good the IP is). Even so, I think that they've done a great job of smoothing out most of the issues in the lore.

I'll agree that they have done a good job of smoothing out many of the issues. Though my point is there were some things that were only issues in the first place because they were making things up as they went along. There were some things they would have handled differently had they known how things would turn out later.

And yes, no matter how good the IP is, there will always be bits of its lore that don't hold up very well years later. Anyway, this was inspired by 'Stuff from the past decade that already hasn't aged well' list articles on various sites talking about various IPs, and I decided to apply that to RuneScape.

18-Aug-2021 18:07:58

Drex of War

Drex of War

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You have made some good points.

RS old school keeps lore in the 5th age making the Gods and their background mysterious, instead focusing on ordinary NPCs.

It feels like RS3 is trying to be too HP Love Craftaion

I remember in the early days when there were only 3 Gods and the community only had vague references of them, a name in passing for example. This allows the community to speculate on who these strange entities were based on these breadcrumbs.

05-Sep-2021 14:53:28

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