tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post1798157064201370284..comments2024-03-28T10:18:05.213+00:00Comments on Inventory Full: I Go, I Come Back: Questing In New World And Why There Might Be More To It Than You Imagine.Bhagpusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-74239057076388891832021-10-12T18:42:32.153+01:002021-10-12T18:42:32.153+01:00That does make sense. It must have been hard enoug...That does make sense. It must have been hard enough reformating the entire game for a different audience and it's clear they kept a lot of the structure from the original concept. Adding a traditional epic You Are The Hero storyline might well have been just too awkward. Serendipity, I guess.Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-4131967063801990842021-10-12T17:40:57.261+01:002021-10-12T17:40:57.261+01:00That actually sounds plausible. Imagine that -- th...That actually sounds plausible. Imagine that -- that the mimetic storytelling, as you call it, is actually the result, not of an overarching design vision, but of a storytelling solution tacked on to a design that didn't really allow for it! Should we hope for another ad-hoc solution to open up the next phase Bhagpuss is already thinking of?Massacred Insecthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15729045838764671236noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-67725232547407367462021-10-12T14:48:45.391+01:002021-10-12T14:48:45.391+01:00Yes! Very much agree! I did the astrolabe quests r...Yes! Very much agree! I did the astrolabe quests recently, and also felt that it was opening a part of the story to me, not just sending me to fetch stuff. I find the environmental and, well, mimetic storytelling of New World to be really compelling. I kind of feel they might have fallen into this - after all, there was no PVE until suddenly there was, so a storytelling solution that didn't break existing systems had to be implemented. <br /><br />But here we are, with an MMO that genuinely feels like it's opening the story to me, unfolding it one zone at a time - not just giving me Chapter x in an infinite series of complicated but disconnected chapters.seanashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04838144101254951127noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-57498299121604890532021-10-12T11:39:47.457+01:002021-10-12T11:39:47.457+01:00That's a really interesting question. At first...That's a really interesting question. At first thought, I kind of would, to a degree. It refers back to the way I found the world to be at it's most immersive (and convincing) in the first alpha, when there was no quest content or written lore of any kind and very little physical evidence of the previous civilization. The lack of any real context or explanation for what man-made artefacts and settlements there were, or for their abandonment, couple with the very convincing representation of wilderness around them, made for a very eerie and unsettling experience... for a while.<br /><br />Eventually, though, imagination runs out with nothing fresh to feed on. You can only explore so many abandoned farms or virgin forests before they all start to look much like each other. The current version of New World does a much better job of seeding ideas for the willing mind to work on, while still leaving an awful lot unexplained. <br /><br />If the quests were similar to those in most mmorpgs, with much more self-contained, narrative-driven storylines, it would become less about what we, the players, can learn about the world and more about sitting back and letting the writers tell us what they've made up. Absolutely nothing wrong with that but it makes a nice change to see it done another way, for once.<br /><br />I do think, once again, it's an approach that can only take you so far, though. Eventually we'll have read all the lore and done all the quests and by then we'll either know what happened or we'll know we aren't going to know. At that point someone's going to have to pump in some more clues to prime the imagination-pump or actually give us some kind of conclusion that both satisfies but also opens up the next phase. If Amazon's writers and designers manage to pull that off we'll have one of the best virtual worlds we've seen for a long time but I think a lot of people thought much the same about the Secret World and look how that went. Then again, Amazon have a lot more resources than Funcom...Bhagpusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499162165023939880noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1510920011443550663.post-21595712522464209342021-10-12T10:50:37.980+01:002021-10-12T10:50:37.980+01:00Would you go so far as to say that the worldbuildi...Would you go so far as to say that the worldbuilding is served by the simplicity and the monotony of the quests? More so than it would be by a questing system that favored intricacy, originality and/or variety?Massacred Insecthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15729045838764671236noreply@blogger.com