Clave_Dark_5

Nice idea for a contest and it's great of you to offer free art! In that spirit, here's a couple of shots of my favorite Bots/Dark MM, Watership Doom. So she's not really cute or cuddly, really... but she has a lot of fun 'tude. Hopefully she can still qualify.

http://i667.photobucket.com/albums/v...ershipDoom.jpg

Is it April 23rd yet?

Ok, reviewing your arc here, as promised. Anyone who might run this later might wish to avoid reading as it will contain spoilers.

I ran this on my namesake stalker - not much of a hero, but he's at 38th so it was a good fit, level-wise. I like to take a good look at costumes and stalkers are great for that.

Mission 1: Something I saw all through this arc first popped up on the clue when I rescued Anathocluos (I may have misspelled that due to poor handwriting in my notes). When someone's speaking to me directly, I like to see it in quotes. You covered yourself by labeling the clue "Ana... Speaks" (or something), and elsewhere you used color to differentiate between text and dialogue, but... I just like to see quotes. Take that for what it's worth.

I think the fact Ana (as I shall call him from here on out) and the weapon dealers are aliens wasn't fully enough addressed or spelled out from the get-go; at first I thought he was just a mutant or something. I felt some sort of line like "these guys don't look like they're from around here" (or something much better worded than that) would be helpful; I don't think that was really done until the debrief, by which point it seemed like a "well duh!' moment. Maybe his bio could read something like "Ana is an Oorian gas-trawler who's not of Earth..." Something like that.

Last bit from the debrief: the phrase "...what it's like to have your authority undermined", shouldn't that be "its"?

Overall this was nice and short and set everything up.

Mission 2: I found the level-drop down to 15th odd. This was the only mish I died in, so I'll blame that.

Once inside, I rescued Thenossus (again, spelling), then I find out he's an Oorian, which I presume means Ana is too. Again, might want to drop that into Ana's bio.

The humans in here confused me. Reading the bios, I gather they're kidnapped from Earth and pressed into the pirate service, right? I think this needs a little clarification, maybe some info from Ana somewhere. As all this is taking place inside his mind, you might have all their bios be direct quotes from Ana; I'm thinking of trying out just such a thing in a future arc. Doing so would be a good platform for the needed expository dialogue.

Interestingly, when Jackson stood on some 'trops one of the pirates dropped, he wouldn't follow me. I had no idea the game mechanics worked that way. It also pointed out to me that he didn't seem to have a 'lost line', "Hey Clave, where'd you go?" "Oh, there you are. C'mon, let's get moving!"

The clue for Seriela (spelling alert!) was pretty good - info and character color all in one clue.

Quick question, are the Pirate-Blasters Bot MMs without any of the pet powers, just the rifles, or were they ARs?

It seemed a little odd to have some rescues run for the door themselves while I had to escort Seriela myself, but that's no biggie.

Typo in the "Final Goodbyes" clue - "Buy you some time" was missing the B.

This mish seemed to drag a bit, what with the level shift (fewer powers for me to whomp people with) and the larger map (which was fitting never-the-less). Seeing as how it was a flashback as well, I think it derailed the 'real', main storyline about the weapon dealers, it threw the pacing off. Not a complete wreck by any means though, as long as you make sure we get back to it solidly later.

Mission 3: Davis (that was his name, right?) says something about wanting "to know where Ana is". Well, they could just get him a hotel room somewhere, maybe plunk him down in front of a TV at the station, no need to send him along with me to keep an eye on him. The fact he does come along itself is fine, I just think the given line of reasoning needs to be rethought.

Defeating Jackson went fine, no problems there. We stalkers are good at that.

The debrief mentions Ana getting broken up over "what he did to Miranda" - I must have missed something or this is a stray plot thread that got lost, I don't even know/remember who she is.

Mission 4: The intro drops me into the middle of a classic WTH moment, it was a nicely unexpected twist that really hooked me into finding out just what was going on. But I wasn't sure who was speaking to me, was it Davis again? Maybe the quotes thing I mentioned above would help here as well, and just a few words about "So-n-so starts acting strangely and says..." Yeah, something along those lines to help ground me in the fact I've lost my footing with reality; here I felt it popped up too suddenly without a reasonable amount of follow up explanation Perhaps it could be dropped into the debrief at the end of M2 where it really seemed to start. (I'm currently working on an arc that does this a lot so I'm one to speak, but I gather you'd like you're arc's story to be clear unlike mine, heh) A mission-entry pop-up might be a good place for something along those lines too; currently there isn't one.

I liked the garbled nature of the Phantasm's bios, and yet... for what you're after here, you could take that even further. Maybe their bios could be fragments of unrelated thoughts from Ana (or would that be 'me'?), memories, descriptive bits of dream imagery... really, the possibilities are endless.

Ah-ha, I fight my own Nightmare Projection! And what a handsome devil he is too! His spoken lines are nicely mysterious, but he still died instantly (again, we stalkers are good as such things). Looking back on those lines though, I'm not sure who he meant by 'she'... :P

Mission 5: Interesting set-up. Psi-cop Jones says the arc contact's name as "Davids", but it's Davis, isn't it? I really should have written it down.

Fighting and defeating the Nightmare Projection of Ana I dinged 39th, yay me! Reading his bio, I get the biggest twist of the story here (if I followed this rightly) - he was actually the villain all along and he killed Jackson's family, not the other way round, right?

And so all this has been... um, a bit confusing. Is Ana just wandering about, lost in his craziness; was it brought on by remorse over his killing Jackson's family? Was this all part of his plot and to what end? But I still liked this twist of the story a heck of a lot, I just think it needs a bit of post mortem explanation like "Davis greets you when you return, 'So Clave, seems like Ana was the killer all along who's mind broke when he faced the cruelty he was capable of, eh?'" or whatever was really going on (forgive me if I've mangled it). Also, did I discover for sure that Ana was the weapons dealer that Davis was after? Did I stop him from dealing more, if so? That story thread seems to have gotten lost, or at least I lost it.

In fact, the final debrief really sort of just stopped dead rather than wrapping things up (unless you're planning a direct sequel). A story needs a good wrap up to clear away any stray threads ("Later we caught Clave and he's doing a nickel in the Zig."), hidden-but-now-revealed secrets explained ("So, he came back to the bank because that lucky penny was the source of his power all along."), what happened to the fairy princes after she was rescued ("She married the dwarfs."), etc.
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So - I liked what I saw a heck of a lot, I think this arc has real potential, real solid potential. The story had a few layers, it had some twists and was more than just the usual 'go hunt kil skuls'.

As you're not going for a total 'mind-funk' story like Inception, just 'a story with elements that are at first confusing or that have explanations squirreled away for later', my advice for this arc is be darn sure that everything gets solidly explained. Make sure everything is very clear along the way or in hindsight - as I did in my arc 'A Wake For Dead 6' which you've played. That was the take-home message I got from reviews for my arc; I had to make it clear as freakin' glass when the shifts of perspective took place, who was speaking about what when, etc. If a big clue to something is hidden in only one spot, it's easy for players to miss it; the intro text ("Hi Clave, I have a job for you") and especially the debriefs are the best places to put stuff so people don't miss it. Most players in this game expect pretty direct follow-through on story like "'Go hunt kil skuls.' - (kil kil kil mission completed) - 'Good job kiling skuls.'" If you're going to change up that order, be sure they see it coming and get a good thorough follow up explanation and finish.

Man, longest post I ever made. Hope it helps, feel free to ask for clarification as I was rushing this and probably did a poor job of explaining myself.

Yeah, if they contribute to the damage, you get less (sometimes I do what I can to avoid 'picking them up' for this very reason). There may be a formula to figure it out exactly, but I don't know it if there is.

Which ever one I'm playing at the time, it's really to hard to choose.

I think this is an improvement, good work.

I think I'd have to go with CoT because I like the ghosts and how they do that scream when defeated. They're also pretty diverse visually - magical guys, glowing-eyed guys in hoods, minotaur-ish demons, ghosts and so on.

Oh, I liked that a lot, good choice of music too.

Eva may have a point about there not being quite so many WickerWork in it, as that group, not the pandas, won the contest for me (although truth be told I like the pandas better).

Even if you don't change it, I'm pretty happy with what you turned out, and I even think that's based on the video itself instead of just the "a video of my arc, awesome!" factor.

Thanks again for putting so much effort into these!