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Sixth Age - Criticisms

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Rondstat

Rondstat

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I've been thinking about what made the Dragonkin such an all-encompassing, overwhelming threat, a shadow of doom looming over all of Gielinor. That ending is a big part of what made RotM, and the 6th Age robbed us of this imminent plotline. With the SoJ destroyed, there's pretty much no chance of seeing our grand scale, futile resistance against the Kin.

A big part of it was how effortlessly they dispatched an enemy we'd spent the two most in depth, demanding quests in the game trying, and failing, to repel, even with the aid of the world's most powerful beings. While this creates shock and foreboding, it's not the sort of thing you can do every day without ruining the story.

Another big part was how shrouded they were in mystery, how we only discovered them in bits and pieces - a mural on a ruined world, some scant research by Movario (indicating that there was so little because no one actually lived to tell of them). No way to rectify that now, but I think my revisionist 6th Age does a little better.

A more specific incident, though, is the vision at the end of RotM, our dying allies, playing on our greatest fears and forcing us to relive our most horrible failures, subjecting us to disturbing tableaus we couldn't fully understand. This psychological aspect of the Kin's terror has gone completely unexplored since, and I think could restore some good old dread.

Here's a dumb way I'd slot it into my silly outline~
Hero's Welcome:
Adventurer and V assemble team of powerful wizards (Elriss, Finix, etc) to help lay the trap at Astral altar. Tarshak slaughters many, before entering our mind, putting us in strange plane surrounded by allies - including the WGS heroes, Thaerisk, Cres, and Guthix. Each says a single sentence and dies as we approach them - everyone we care for hurt by our acts, life is suffering, destined to grow decrepit and see more violence. Isn't it better to end suffering, threat of war, for all? We finally break free, trap succeeds.

13-Jan-2017 23:38:57

Rondstat

Rondstat

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So, Endgame replay was supposed to come mid-January, now we're at the end of March and it appears nowhere on the horizon. I know this is unrealistic, but I'm kind of hoping they're taking extra time to rewrite the story and have things make more sense.

Specifically, here is what I'd LOVE to see in an Endgame touch-up


-The Siphon. Sliske uses it throughout the fight, an unwieldable version goes into our inventory after, and disappears after our blackout with Relomia.

-More payoff for Sliske's sudden godhood and our inexplicable super saiyan mode - preferably in a way that reveals just WHAT we uncovered in Kindred

-Akrisae fights alongside the Barrows bros

-Clear indicators of which rooms rotate (and when), and the compass direction of the final room of each maze level

-Put Zamorak at the final contest for the Stone - maybe he makes deals with Armadyl and Saradomin, or backstabs them, cheats, anything. The most relevant plot point for Endgame from CoM is rendered meaningless with the multiple demon pacts - it NEEDS to be Zammy at the end.

-A greater emphasis on the Dragonkin. Include a maze cutscene that explains their progression and hints at their plans, and expand their destruction of the SoJ to explain WHY it happened (and link the event more explicitly to Hero's Welcome). Accomplishing something that was supposedly impossible for a non-Elder shouldn't be explained in a well-buried piece of post-quest dialogue.

-Remove the dialogue that implies that Sliske was Jas's agent or that they were working together - which makes zero sense. Make it more clear that she was awoken by the destruction of her 'agent' - the Catalyst.


Hoping for everything, expecting nothing. Actually, the most likely outcome is probably discarding replayability entirely.

25-Mar-2017 02:50:57 - Last edited on 25-Mar-2017 04:43:42 by Rondstat

Rifleavenger
May Member 2022

Rifleavenger

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While I can respect the effort you've put in Rondstat, I ultimately disagree that your rewrite would be for the best. It has superior consistency with pre-existing lore and it own internal themes, honestly it'd likely be better written. The problem is this:

Rondstat said :

In terms of gods/factions, though, my biggest disappointment has been that TWW, DoC, and WE1 all heralded a new god wars, a time of unceasing, daunting bloodshed directed by callous, distant immortals, that would destroy the lives of many, but leave no winner. The bucolic world we knew would soon become unrecognizable.

Then the focus shifted to gods, games, and missions, instead of communities, warfare, and tragedy. I think we should have had less gods, and more humanistic stories about the people affected - cos now gods are mundane, and it's easy to lose investment.

-more suffering. The world should be affected; gods and dragonkin running around should not be a good thing

I have no doubt this is what Jagex intended in the beginning of the 6th age. I have no doubt the way you would see it handled would be better than Jagex pulling "in this episode, SOMEBODY DIES!" unsatisfying deaths in the game.

But I also suspect why Jagex backed off; this story you've proposed is not Runescape. It's too dark, it reads like Warhammer: Gielinor. Compared to where it began, with a "story" and main character not out of place in a Monty Python sketch, Runescape already has a pretty bad case of cereberus syndrome. The plot you've sketched here would be a terminal case. Runescape actually has a pretty bright world which carries over into non-quest content; juxtaposing that (or forcing it to change in light of quests) would be crazy mood-whiplash. RS is also effectively a power fantasy. A dark, tragic plot that makes us feel small and helpless runs counter to that.

25-Mar-2017 06:18:53 - Last edited on 25-Mar-2017 06:37:01 by Rifleavenger

Rifleavenger
May Member 2022

Rifleavenger

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My other big issue is your handling of several characters, my biggest examples being Seren and Armadyl.

I am very glad that Seren is not written as you would have her, being essentially the stereotype of the hysterical woman and never being allowed any levity or happiness to give us reason to care for her suffering (though to a lesser extent this is a problem in the real game too with many characters). Having her be shocked upon her initial revival and actually leaving Priff is ok, but by endgame she shouldn't be openly mopey; there are more important things going on and she knows it.

As for Armadyl, your goal of making all the gods more alien and aloof breaks one of the few character arcs I really like in the main game, that Armadyl kind of wishes he wasn't a god. It also harms Armadyl's sincere faith in community and belief that mortals and gods can live together, the principles of his philosophy he hasn't comprised (yet?). At the very least his aloofness should be written as something he's guilty about ("sorry, I'd love to talk, but I don't have time..." etc.).

Honestly, that the gods are mundane isn't such a disappointment to me. What better way to drive home that most of them are just juiced up mortals? Sure, you can argue they shouldn't be after thousands of years of life, but it's very hard for humans to write from what is essentially an inhuman perspective so I don't blame Jagex for not attempting that. Especially given that these are characters we have to interact with at some point instead of unknowable Lovecraftian horrors. I do think that the elder gods, and maybe Zaros, should have felt a bit more alien though.

25-Mar-2017 06:35:40

Raleirosen

Raleirosen

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Rifleavenger said :
But I also suspect why Jagex backed off; this story you've proposed is not Runescape. It's too dark, it reads like Warhammer: Gielinor. Compared to where it began, with a "story" and main character not out of place in a Monty Python sketch, Runescape already has a pretty bad case of cereberus syndrome. The plot you've sketched here would be a terminal case. Runescape actually has a pretty bright world which carries over into non-quest content; juxtaposing that (or forcing it to change in light of quests) would be crazy mood-whiplash. RS is also effectively a power fantasy. A dark, tragic plot that makes us feel small and helpless runs counter to that. Weak criticisms here... for one, there is a fine line between Cerebus syndrome (unless I'm mistaken you keep misspelling it) and the extremes of grimdark. RuneScape is already a big game that juggles a lot of different tones and moods; having the Sixth Age be dark would not be a significant deviation by any stretch of the imagination. For example, I don't see a big difference in tone between the Myreque quest series (or even WGS and ROTM) and what Rondstat is suggesting. Also, power fantasies are weak storytelling and should be challenged at every available opportunity. Patrolling Lore FC almost makes you wish for a Great Revision.

25-Mar-2017 06:54:27

Summerleaf
Nov Member 2012

Summerleaf

Posts: 3,313 Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Rondstat said :
So, Endgame replay was supposed to come mid-January, now we're at the end of March and it appears nowhere on the horizon. I know this is unrealistic, but I'm kind of hoping they're taking extra time to rewrite the story and have things make more sense.

Specifically, here is what I'd LOVE to see in an Endgame touch-up


-The Siphon. Sliske uses it throughout the fight, an unwieldable version goes into our inventory after, and disappears after our blackout with Relomia.


@Round, Raven posted a poll the other day about Sliske's model with the SoA on Twitter, so it's in production, just going slow to get everything in.

25-Mar-2017 06:58:14

Summerleaf
Nov Member 2012

Summerleaf

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Rondstat said :


-Akrisae fights alongside the Barrows bros

-Clear indicators of which rooms rotate (and when), and the compass direction of the final room of each maze level.

I believe he's also adding in Akrisae.

Replays are supposed to have a "fast mode" for the Maze.

25-Mar-2017 07:00:49 - Last edited on 25-Mar-2017 07:05:19 by Summerleaf

Raleirosen

Raleirosen

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Rifleavenger said :
I am very glad that Seren is not written as you would have her, being essentially the stereotype of the hysterical woman No. Rifleavenger said :
and never being allowed any levity or happiness to give us reason to care for her suffering (though to a lesser extent this is a problem in the real game too with many characters). Having her be shocked upon her initial revival and actually leaving Priff is ok, but by endgame she shouldn't be openly mopey; there are more important things going on and she knows it. I agree that Rondstat's suggestions are overkill, although his ultimate point was that her return was relatively anticlimactic in terms of character development.
Rifleavenger said :
Honestly, that the gods are mundane isn't such a disappointment to me. What better way to drive home that most of them are just juiced up mortals? Sure, you can argue they shouldn't be after thousands of years of life, but it's very hard for humans to write from what is essentially an inhuman perspective so I don't blame Jagex for not attempting that. Especially given that these are characters we have to interact with at some point instead of unknowable Lovecraftian horrors. I do think that the elder gods, and maybe Zaros, should have felt a bit more alien though. You're guilty of some colossal hyperbole here; there are several planes of horrifying non-Euclidean geometry between Rondstat's rewrites and Lovecraft. This isn't to mention that the gods being more aloof has no effect on their willingness to interact with the World Guardian, given his/her position, or even Jagex's ability to write them that way since aloofness is not an inhuman quality. Patrolling Lore FC almost makes you wish for a Great Revision.

25-Mar-2017 07:10:31 - Last edited on 25-Mar-2017 07:11:50 by Raleirosen

Rifleavenger
May Member 2022

Rifleavenger

Posts: 1,381 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Raleirosen said :
Weak criticisms here... for one, there is a fine line between Cerebus syndrome (unless I'm mistaken you keep misspelling it) and the extremes of grimdark. RuneScape is already a big game that juggles a lot of different tones and moods; having the Sixth Age be dark would not be a significant deviation by any stretch of the imagination.

Rondstat would have a setting with uncaring, thirsting gods that cannot appear to the player as anything except monsters (since by this script they'd have little interest to show us otherwise), completely torn by war, unyielding monsters even stronger than them, and unfathomable aliens that eat planets far stronger than all of them put together. It would also cover the entire planet, since it's an all consuming god war. Meanwhile silly penguin quests are still being released alongside this. That sounds less like Runescape and more like an extremely dark plot with tangential comic relief (I was going to compare it to Berserk, but you'd probably make the fair argument that's deep, deep down the dark hole).

Raleirosen said :
Power fantasies are weak storytelling and should be challenged at every available opportunity. Sure, but it's what a game where your character can master every single trade they set their hand to, no-sells some of the most powerful entities in the setting, and in-universe cannot die is . It's not becoming anything different anytime soon.

Especially since Jagex is devoted to not locking anyone out of content. If they really wanted there to be consequences for our actions, they'd need to drop that like a rock. Alternatively, they write a consistent personality for the World Guardian that fits the extremes of the early and later plot. They won't do either of those things.

I'd love if Runescape were more Kino's Journey than SAO, but you'd need to overhaul a lot of the game to get closer to the former than the latter.

25-Mar-2017 07:27:06 - Last edited on 25-Mar-2017 07:53:45 by Rifleavenger

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