Review: First Ward

I am a person that enjoys reading the storyline and following the lore of the game. I think its fairly interesting and if you are like me, First Ward will blow you away. I leveled a character that did *every* story arc in Praetoria (Had to shut off exp) just so I could make sure I got all sides of the story.

The Scenery

The zone of First Ward is awesome and leaves you wondering just from the visuals what exactly is going on. Its beautifully done from the flying giant monster (Seed of Hamidon... reminds me of Lavos from Chrono Trigger), to the torn up city, to where all the refugees and the D.U.S.T. lurk about.

Probably the coolest area, and the place I find the most creepy, is the Mother of Mercy Hospital. While you can't go inside, the music, sound effects, and overall feel has this eerie presence about it. It reminds me of something like Shutter Island.

The shadow paths are a neat touch using the phasing technology although I found them to kind of be useless. I like the concept of them, its just with a power like fly you don't need them (Let alone any travel power). Now if it allowed you to stay in the shadow world and find hidden NPCs, badges, or contacts that could be pretty cool.

The Storyline, bringing RPG back to MMO*RPG*

The storyline was nothing short of epic. At first I thought the storyline was a bit confusing and I was left wondering just what is going on. As you play through it connects everything very nicely. Seeing how I played all the Praetorian Arcs (Which I recommend), I instantly recognized all of the contacts you acquire during the storyline. I knew their history and I liked how you could choose an option stating when you met with them. The only complaint here is I wish you had more recognition for working with them. I did like the in game explanation of why one contact didn't fully remember you and thats because she was going insane.

Even the enemy groups tie back into the Praetorian Arcs which is fairly cool. Although the backstory isn't really explained so someone that hasn't done Praetoria may wonder just why a group of zombies has intelligence...

With the above aside, the storyline is simply amazing. It has plot twists, betrayals, questionable actions which do lead to the greater good, and it comes to a pretty nice conclusion. I thought it felt like an actual RPG and if you avoided spoilers it will leave you spinning from the plot twists. I am not going to post spoilers but lets just say who I thought was in charge of the chaos turned completely different.

For villains though, I could see them having complaints if they were to do the storyline. Although with the way its written, its similar to Rikti War Zone where its a threat that could destroy us all. I am not sure if they get something different; however, there are options throughout the storyline to gauge how your character reacts. For example, in one instance you can choose to say "I'm not here to kill you" while the other option is something like "I shall strike you down where you stand" to an NPC that has submitted to you. So there are options to make your motives or rather personality seem more villain or hero like.

Conclusion

I think more zones need to be like this. I actually felt like I saved an entire area from doom and I loved all the plot twists. The story wasn't linear where you know right at the start where its going to end. It felt more like a mystery with one clue leading to the next.

A warning about first ward on a team:

Did some first ward stuff on a team, and the story line is completly lost unless you are
the team leader that has the missions. I am pretty sure its much more complicated to get a story across to a whole team, but I think thats what the game needs to do in the future. Skipable or micro cut scenes and voice overs are probably the answer because the tutorial rocked.

At this point in time I would recommend that everybody solos first ward to get all the arcs and read all the text. Experiencing it on a team is actually pretty bad since there are so many talk to this guy type missions, and the rest of the team has no clue what you are talking about so we want to skip to the kill em alls.

How come there isn't a Like button for Ultimus' post?

The only motivation for Villains I can think of is they figure solving First Ward's issues will cause problems for Cole, who is the enemy of the Rogue isles as much as Paragon City.

What a bummer. I assumed since there were two different contacts that pop up for heroes vs. villains, it was more like Cimerora where there are two differently-aligned story arcs, too.

At least I know this now before I start sending my villain characters over to check out the content there.

3 of the 8 story arc contacts are characters from GR - all of the are from the Resistance.
There are also 3 Praetors from GR that are met on the story arcs, but none of them are really shown in a very positive light - and one of them has the evil dial turned up to 12