As I was checking Feedly late last night, though, I saw on MassivelyOP that there's a major content drop coming for Wuthering Waves, something I knew but had forgotten. Yesterday's post was, to a large extent, a stiff note to myself about dithering, telling me how I ought to focus more. I'm quite cross with myself for letting games I was happily enjoying only a short while ago get away from me, Wuthering Waves being chief among them.
Put simply, Wuthering Waves is too good to ignore. I'm all too aware that my tendency to gush and gosh-wow over every new game I play does none of them any favors; it has to lessen the impact of any recommendation I make, when it seems like I think everything is good. But Wuthering Waves really is good and I ought to play it more consistently than I do.
The last update was genuinely one of the best I've seen for any game I've played in quite a while. It had a lot of new content, more than I've so far been able to see for myself, and all of what I did try was excellent. Reportedly, the next update is even bigger and it looks very impressive from what I've seen and read so far.
I only have one real complaint about the game, which relates to a fundemental design decision. The reward structure isn't ideal. Pretty much a hundred per cent of the rewards for everything you ever do are consumables, most of them intended to help you upgrade your characters and weapons.
I'm sure that's very welcome to most players as they work on making their Resonators as powerful as they can be but since my only interest is keeping mine sufficiently powerful to progress through the storyline and since 90% of that content consists of talking or traveling, nearly all of the rewards I get just sit in my inventory, unused. I'd really like to get a cosmetic or a fluff pet once in while instead of another canister of magical goop that makes me 0.1% more awesome.
With that said, I suppose I ought to recognize that one of the reasons I'm not further along in the narrative than I am is because, while there isn't anything like as much combat as I'm used to in other games, there are still the obligatory Boss Fights now and then, barring the way to the next step of the story. My unwillingness to get involved in the necessary and expected process of upgrading my team is probably making those tougher than they need to be.
Although I haven't yet hit any hard skill barriers of the sort that made me stop playing Genshin Impact and made me give up on following the storyline in Noah's Heart, those experiences have made me wary of pushing too far ahead. I'll be returning to this theme in the Nightingale post, when I get around to writing it, so I'll just say that the reason I'm mentioning it here is that the new update appears to assume a certain amount of progress in the main storyline that I don't believe I have.
There are not one but two promos for the update, which goes by the intriguing and evocative name To The Shore's End. The action takes place in a new map called The Black Shores, a hitherto unknown island somewhere out in the ocean. As the description has it "After your journey across Mt. Firmament, all clues now point to a hidden island in the sea — the Black Shores."
Only I don't believe I've been to Mt. Firmament yet, let alone gone across it. I didn't even recognize the name when I saw it so I looked it up. It is nice to be able to do that. I'm used to playing games that don't always have all that much in the way of accurate, up-to-date information available so it's nice to play one that has a reasonable number of well-maintained sources for a change.
Mt. Firmament, it seems, is also an island, which explains how you can go "across" it. I was wondering. More specifically, it's "A secluded island situated in the southeastern ocean of Jinzhou territory. Cloaked in mist, it obscures its connection to the secular world.... Navigating its waters is treacherous due to the thick fog. To safely reach its shores, you'll need to wait for precise timing and the expertise of a "Wayfinder" "
I'm fairly certain I've never done that. It seems like something I'd remember.
The question, then, is whether the new area is going to be open to everyone or only to those who've already done whatever they were supposed to do in (Or on, I guess...) Mt. Firmament. And even if it is possible to get to The Black Shores without going over the mountain first, there's the little matter of levels to contend with. If the new content is aimed at players who've done all there is to do, it will most likely be tuned in the expectation that they'll be levelled and geared accordingly.
Of course, Wuthering Waves does offer the option to lower the level of the mobs in the world. It's a difficulty slider of a kind and I am already making use of it. Perhaps that's why I haven't been bothering so much with upgrades. When you can downgrade your opponents with a single key-press, why would you want to spend hours working on your gear just to get the same advantage?
I imagine there's a reason. I expect I'll run into some sort of skill or gear wall in time. For now, though, everything feels about right so I'm not keen to mess with it.
I am very keen indeed, however, to see the new island, which looks stunning in the trailers, and to discover what stories it holds. It's not all that easy to explain just why I find the storytelling in Wuthering Waves so satisfying but I very much do. I was positively excited when I realised there was more to come, even though I haven't finished what's already there.
Watching the trailer did make me think about just why it might be that I've enjoyed the stories so much. It isn't because they're exceptionally well-written. They're not. The translation, while occasionally patchy, is generally well above average but I'd say the prose and dialog are at best only slightly above par for an online RPG.
It certainly isn't because there's anything special or even unusual about the central narrative, etiher. It's a typical post-disaster tale of devastation and reconstruction. I must have played literally dozens of games now that use the same basic premise. Again, it's well-enough delivered but it's hardly ground-breaking
No, what I think is most likely the reason for my sustained interest and enjoyment is the consistent focus on the day-to-day lives of the characters. There's a really huge amount of what I'd have to call slice-of-life storytelling. Some of that revolves around behavior that could broadly be categorized as adventure but even then it's often more about having to put yourself into dangerous situations for down-to-earth reasons than setting out to have adventures for the sake of it.
The adventurous characters we meet are mostly scientists or soldiers with quite believable jobs to do or projects to complete and the things the player character ends up helping them with tend to have as much to do with setting up camp and getting the equipment working as fighting monsters.
A lot more of the side stories - and a good deal of the central narrative, too - are more concerned with personal relationships and social responsibility. There are numerous recurring characters and crossovers and a great deal of discussion of expectations, duty, friendship and maintaining a work-life balance. At times, the whole thing feels more like an anime series I'm watching than a video game I'm playing and that, I think, is why the storytelling works so well.
Of course, if you came to press buttons and kill monsters, you can do that non-stop, too. I imagine a lot of people do. Maybe if I'd done a bit more of it myself, I'd be feeling more prepared for what's coming next.
Excited as I am to see everything in the update, what has me the most hyped is the news that we're getting a Companion Story for my favorite Resonator, Encore. I'm not sure how many of the Resonators have their own storylines as yet - presumably not all that many if we're only getting one for Encore now - but the couple I've done have been very engaging, so I have high hopes for this one.
The best thing about it is that it takes place in whatever dimension Encore summons her "Woolies" from. I can't say I'd spent any time considering where the mischevious, violent, anarchic cuddly toys she pulls out of nowhere actually come from but now the idea's been put into my head I really want to know.
There are two new Resonators in the update, both of whom look very intriguing.
One is an ethereal young woman called The Shorekeeper, the other
another childlike troublemaker, seemingly cut from the same cloth as Encore.
She goes by the somewhat amusing name of Youhu. Well, it made me
smile.
By my count, that will make twenty-one Resonators so far. Without logging in, I can't remember exactly how many I have but I think it's less than half of them. I probably ought to do something about that, too, but since you can only have three Resonators on your team at any one time, I'm not entirely clear on what the incentive would be. I'd have enough to make seven teams and to keep them all relevant to the content I'd be doing, I'd have to upgrade and gear the lot, which seems like it could be a full-time job.
... oh... I see how the reward structure works now! Silly me!
Anyway, I won't go through the entire contents of the update, which lands in six days time on 29 September. It's all in the videos above and at the website here. I'll just tabulate what's in it to give an idea just how extensive it's likely to be:
- New map, with two exporable areas above (The Black Shores.) and below ground (Tethys Deep.) .
- Two new Resonators - The Shorekeeper and Youhu
- Two new weapons - Stellar Symphony and Deep Sky
- New chapter in the Main Quest
- New Companion Story - (Encore)
-
Seven (!) new Events including combat, collection, parkour and
exploration.
- New Echoes (Either two or three - I'm not quite sure.)
- A new game mechanic (Portals)
- A new mini-game involving old game cartridges (!?).
I should probably have put that list at the start of the post.
Oh, well. Too late now!
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