Hey PW. Thanks so very much for the detailed review! Your points are all valid. The short version of my explanation is: I may have more story there than I'm capable of telling, at least through MA. EVERY mission clue and dialog box is filled with the maximum content, and I tried very hard to edit that down to fit in as much explanation and story as possible. Earlier versions had even more chopped out because I was getting feedback that people weren't bothering to read it, and the "conversational telepathy" (which is what I'm going to call this story mechanism) was an effort to get in more detail, after establishing that he's opened a telepathic link to your mind.
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I'm guessing that this story arc is all about this other hero, and not so much about me, which makes me a little uneasy. We'll see.
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I feel the opposite from you on this. I like stories about other characters, and riding along with them. I think it's risky for someone to try to tell stories about MY characters. It's a gripe I have about CoH's missions from the beginning. So many of the mission briefings assign my emotions and reactions to me. Hey, if I'm playing a soulless serial killer - I am *NOT* surprised at how bad the sewers smell!
But with that comment made, I do see your point. I will think about ways to make the player character more active in the goings on. Your comment later about being called SW's "flunky" is right on the mark.
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The briefing is very detailed about Silent Witness and his background; one minor quibble I have is that the writing style sounds more like spoken dialog to me.
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The unstated (because of space restrictions) goal of this technique was to show that this guy really liked to talk. Losing his voice was a big deal for him. Yes he can communicate through telepathy, but it's to one person at a time, and the method he's learned REALLY hurts the receiver.
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I immediately ran into several "Magic Ninja" who happened to be on fire. This struck me as being a little silly; but, I'm not sure yet whether this story is a comedy, drama or tragedy yet.
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In the great tradition of Asian theater, it's all three at once, often in the same scene. Or at least, that's the goal.
But I agree the concept of "Magic Ninja" isn't really used well. It's supposed to just be silly, and probably ends up just being ineffective.
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Doctor Ominous is in a faction called "Magic Practioners"; should probably be "Magic Practitioners".
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Argh! Typos! So... many... typos. Thank you, and I apologize for missing that.
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The new objective "Find Buddy Train and rescue him from the building" is awkwardly phrased; I suggest simply "Rescue Buddy Train".
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Wonderful suggestions all through this. I really appreciate them, agree with them, and I'll adopt them.
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Found Buddy and he can talk in this mission; maybe that is correct for this timeline, though.
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Correct. He's still a normal guy here. Though, he is on fire, and is being burned, but strangely, isn't dying.
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Did you mean to give Buddy Train a horribly scarred face and fire aura powers?
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Yep. Dude's on fire.
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Once I get Buddy to the door, he says "Ugh, this is..."
and falls down. Then he gets up and opens the door and runs out. Not sure if what he says is supposed to mean anything.
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This has aggravated me from the beginning. There's a wonderful "collapse" animation that fits the end of the mission perfectly, but he won't STAY COLLAPSED! If I tell the MA to play that animation and then do nothing, Buddy collapses dramatically, lays there for a few seconds (until the animation finishes), then stands back up and stares at you. So I added the "exit" command so that he at least leaves the mission. I think I'll just scrap all that and have him run out the door as soon as he gets there.
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This clue also says the fire disfigured him and made him unable to speak; Buddy was indeed disfigured in this mission, but he seemed to speak just fine. Seems inconsistent.
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He was still burning when he left. My original goal of the collapse animation was that he effectively "dies" at the end of that mission, and then (offscreen) Doctor Ominous does his stuff that restores Buddy's life, but does not finish draining the collected power. Again... space. I'm not sure at this point how to deal with this troubling plot problem. All the important stuff happens offscreen in this mission.
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You might want to add a clue saying that Doctor Ominous teleported away, or perhaps clarify the exit popup to say that Dr. Ominous teleported away.
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Great solution, thanks.
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Mission 2
Mission title: I think you should rephrase this; "Assist Silent Witness" instantly casts me the supporting character, and Silent Witness as the star. Maybe something more neutral like "Investigate the warehouse" or "Meet with retired supervillain" or something.
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A fantastic solution, going back to your first comment about involving the player more directly.
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I found a "Weak Silent Witness". Strangely, this version can talk; I think this is a continuity error.
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Trying to save time and space, I was hoping to imply that the telepathic link that he opened during the mission briefing was still open. Or perhaps he went ahead and opened a new one when you got there. One thing I need to verify in these missions is that all his "dialog" is supposed to be to the player. The NPCs should not hear him, and he shouldn't be talking to them. Except in the first mission, of course, where Buddy can still talk because he's on fire, but not quite burned up yet.
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After destroying the altar I got a clue called "Power Transference Altars?" which refers to "The strange altars". But there was only one, so not sure why this is plural.
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It appears I have some clues left ofter from early versions when there were multiple altars. I'll fix.
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Weak Silent Witness is still weak after destroying the altar. Also, if I ditch him, then come back to him, he says "Let's find and destroy that altar" even though it's already been destroyed.
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Also left over from earlier struggles with the MA system's mission objective placement. I'm considering not even having the thing spawn until you find him, but then there's the risk of having to back-track through the map to find something that WASN'T THERE when you walked through earlier.
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Debriefing: I'm a little uneasy at how Silent Witness talks about "recovering his power", considering we've learned that "his power" is actually stolen from the souls of his dead friends. I almost wonder if he's better off letting it go.
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Good. This is a question I want you to ask.
No, I won't provide the answer.
I suppose Silent Witness feels that since this madness has happened. It is better that HE have these powers than a villain. In the longer explanation for this whole arc, the original idea is that he wanted to try to prevent this from happening at all, but finds that it can't be stopped. Like I said earlier, this might be a story that the MA is capable of telling, but I might not be capable of telling by using the MA.
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Mission 4
Briefing: So now Silent Witness wants to beat up Madame Cynthia, who a lot of his power has been transferred to. I'm not sure why defeating her would actually get his power back, though; I mean, it took a magical ritual to siphon the power away from him and into Cynthia in the first place, right? So shouldn't it require a ritual to move the power back, too? Possible plot problem.
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Yep, this ritual would take place after "defeating" Madame Cynthia, in the great CoH tradition of "defeating" someone, and then they sit down with you and help you do what you wanted.
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I found Cynthia and she instantly became an ally; it seems odd that Silent Witness would allow this, since I think Silent Witness wants to take his powers back from her.
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Having gotten there and found that Dr. O has usurped control of the Carnies from her, and is beginning to take HER power, this is supposed to be a "The enemy of my (more powerful) enemy is my friend" moment.
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Madame Cynthia summons 3 generic Illusionists as pets, which is really confusing when fighting other Carnies. Consider changing Cynthia to be one of the non-pet-summoning bosses.
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The confusion in that final battle is something I really liked.
Particularly on a large team there can be carnies confusing other carnies, causing them to switch sides back and forth. But if it really doesn't work, I might change that.
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Also near the end of the mission it is strongly implied that Doctor Ominous now has all of Silent Witness's power; this seems to contradict the earlier missions which said that Madame Cynthia had intercepted them before they got to Doctor Ominous. The most likely explanation is that after Doctor Ominous took over, he somehow stole the power from Madame Cynthia, but this is never explicitly stated anywhere. Should probably have some clues or dialog to that effect.
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This is what has happened, but you're right, it's not made clear enough. I'll have to rework this some to try to fit in that information.
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After going back in time in mission 1, the rest of the arc seems to semi-forget that Silent Witness actually sent you back in time to do stuff. This was kinda jarring and felt like a series of continuity errors. Time travel IS tricky and confusing, so if this was all some weird side effect of time travel, you should make it more clear what happened.
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What I was going for is that after going back in mission 1, you end up not changing the outcome of things at all. However, having done that, when you return, there is NOW a memory of a hero who probably was you who was at the scene. Although the outcome of the whole mess ended up being the same.
Like I said, this might be more than I can get across coherently. Thank you again, PW, for the great review and the great suggestions. I'll see what I can do to tighten things up.
