Second part Act 4 lore feels extremely rushed

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Maciek14 wrote:

I also can't believe it that nobody in Sarn gives you a pat on the back for killing Dominus! You've just killed the most notorious tyrant in that part of the land and it seems that none of the NPC in Sarn actually give a shit.

Not to mention there is no reward for killing Dominus. It's like "Oh you killed him? ALright, we move on with our fixed daily dialogues."


Love,
Bunny

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Taohn wrote:

The history is quite well established, but its dispersed among too many different sources to really come together. A lot of it comes in the Library in Act 3, but not all the environmental lore shows up at once, so the player only ever gets it in bits and pieces, often out of order.

Don't get my wrong, I love how it makes you search for the more obscure lore. I think the main narrative is completely understandable in Acts 1-3. It is only Act 4 that really starts to get confusing since the game basically hands you portals and big names and organ pieces without almost no sense of purpose beyond "do what the town NPCs told you."

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Taohn wrote:

(Somebody on reddit went to the trouble of compiling every piece of lore in the game; Act 3 is worth a read, though some of it seems to conflict with the comics)

Ah, very nice! Thanks for this. I re-read the books in Act 3 and I see how the start of Act 4 makes sense in Highgate and why Voll was in the region.

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Taohn wrote:

Also, about Voll, I agree it isn't well explained (you have to find the right tome in act 3 library). He was escorting (at the head of his army) Malachai, Dialla, and the Rapture device to Highgate to purge the empire of any and all impurities. Malachai played him for a fool, and the army caught the brunt of the cataclysm. He is dead. If you look closely he's a skeleton (and Oyun calls him the "Brittle Emperor".

Ah, I had forgotten he escorted the Rapture device to Highgate. So his presence makes sense...I guess I just hoped for more than him standing around doing nothing for hundreds of years. But really, Voll's quest is not bad at all compared to the Harvest disaster. That's the real downer of Act 4.

My *String of Dreams* Act 4 Renovation

I'd like to see Act 4 take you into the Mines, and then introduce the Rapture device with better dialogue. At this point you begin a *string of dreams*. This idea can be explained by Dialla with great lore about how the Eternal Empire citizens would corrupt dreams after enough gem usage or whatnot.

Basically the Rapture device would, true to its name, be a form of dream corruption that enthralls people. But only Malachai was clever/powerful enough to "tame" it, allowing him to join with the Beast. The other big names all were lost in the dreams, letting Malachai use their power.

At this point, the player goes on a *string of dreams*, having to fight the corruption to open the path to Malachai. This makes great sense lore-wise and is easy to understand.

Instead of two gimmicky gameshow portals (do you choose the left or right?), the game starts you with Kaom. (Plus starting with Kaom would solve the annoying party issue where half your group goes one portal, half goes the other.)

As the player goes from dream to dream using the Rapture device, things get progressively more insane. This is just ripe for creative exploitation, much like how Daresso's segment is already a bit crazy and super-fun.

After Kaom and Daresso, forgot the silly Harvest nonsense and simply make even Shavs, Maligaro, and Doedre have their own corrupted dream zones. Think of how amazing the fever-dreams of these huge names could be! (Think Act 3 Piety's zone but even more crazy with experiments and madness.)

And after each dream, have a Waypoint of course, linking each zone to the next.

After you go through all the corrupted dreams, then have more dialogue explaining how this relates to the Rapture device, which turns out to be a false salvation and actually empowers the Beast.

Now have the player go through the final "organic Beast" zones, without the organs or weird 3 boss alcoves. Have the player merely press onward to Malachai. This creates a sense of foreboding and single-focus as you prepare to face the ultimate boss. (Again, think Lunaris Temple buildup from palace to basement to twisted lair.)

This *string of dreams* is just an idea, but it fits so well with a "Rapture" device and with "Dream Corruption" as an Achievement. Plus it fleshes Act 4 out, giving it at least 3 new zones with visually interesting styles. And it creates a nice arc wherein you delve into a series of nightmares and finally come up for air only to delve into physical nightmare with the final Beast zones where Malachai's dream has spread to corrupt reality.

What do you think? I really want to play my version of Act 4! ;)

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Taohn wrote:

Can anyone see them ever again putting an empty level solely to create atmosphere (a la the blood trail leading to Brutus)? The grinders won't stand for useless space. Someone at GGG even tried to fill the Warden's Chambers with mobs. It took the community's most prolific supporter's influence to get it changed back.

It would be really interesting to see a Development Manifesto from GGG on lore/immersion/atmosphere. Tellingly, those subjects haven't merited one so far.

Hmm, this trend is unfortunate. I do lament them removing some of the isolated zones that made me feel like I was alone, exploring Wraeclast. Like removing the Coves...that zone was visually very interesting...they just need to remove the annoying tar enemies. It seems like a total waste of an interesting zone that made it feel like you were actually going on a round-a-bout trek to get inland. Oh well I guess.

Brumbek - your string of dreams is how I wish it had been implemented as well. The three organ bosses really feel half assed and just lumped in at the end. I currently find Torchoak Grove and Triskeriaki to be more memorable. The fact that their fight areas are even labeled as "Arenas" feels completely placeholdery - why are there arenas with wood panel floors in the beast's body?

It is really a let down after the two epic dreams we did get - Daresso's is my favorite part of the whole game now and Kaom's really came along after several iterations in the beta. I know what we did get took a long time to develop but I hate the feeling that they skimped or rushed it out. As is it feels like a waste of three relatively big lore characters. They could have just been gross organ themed monsters in organ themed rooms if the full harvest was going to be so small and simple in scope.

I think the problem is that Act 4 ties in with a part of the lore that we have very little information about - The cataclysm, and the origin of the virtue gems.

The story does need to be fleshed out. We know about the Gemling queen and Malachai, But why is Shavs and company there? Why did they become Malachai's minions?

Voll, which plays a major part in the story of Wraeclast, is treated as a sideboss with very little dignity.

The Cataclysm still goes unexplained, as well as the true purpose of the rapture device, and The Queen's hand in the Cataclysm (It's implied she had a direct influence on it).

We still have no idea what the gems are, why they are there, except we now know they somehow come from the beast.

We do not know however what the beast is, why it's there, or how it got there. We know Malachai is now part of the beast, but was that accidental or was it his plan?

Does the beast have any agenda of it's own? Is it sentient, or just there?

There's simply too much happening in act 4, and very little is explained.

Glad I have found this thread. A lot of my feelings have been summed up already.

When I played in CBT and Vaal was the final boss, what little of the lore we had made me literally salivate for more. I was hoping for books and novels and whatnot.

Act 3 partially answered this, but already there was that nagging feeling that they were just patching things together and adding some bandaid lore pieces in the previous zones to try and give the whole story some substance (Dominus being the most glaring exemple, but also some bits about Piety before that).

And now, Act 4 comes and out of nowhere tries to tie up the whole story in about 2-3 hours. Why did they decide we'd kill all the legends in what makes the shortest act to date? Kaom would have deserved his own expansion, I'd have gone a full act chasing after him and his 500 after we figured out why he abandoned his people.

Daresso, the very essence of desire, sees his whole story cleared in two ridiculous 5 minutes maps. What about Merveil's slow turn to madness? Whatever was this medallion that transformed her? What did Daresso do once he realized what he had done? We could have followed the whole story over several maps with the epic finish in the Grand Arena. Another huge wasted potential.

And the icing on the cake, the godless three... Thrown together in tiny little rooms and given less importance than the bandits from Act 2.

All in one, it feels really saddening, and disappointing. I am confident GGG will slowly fix the missing bits of Act 4, but still, tossing all those legends together, when they'd have deserved their very own act, is just wasted potential.

Really, really saddening.

At least in acts 1-3 we saw mentions of Voll, Kaom and all others, including mister OHKO. But now they're all dead. So, lorewise, act 5 will start from zero?
edit: also if the beast is the source of all gems than gems should stop working at all from a5 forward :)

I thought I was the only one who felt like Act 4 really dropped the ball on a coherent story line. Acts 1-3 really messed well together, like they were planned from the beginning. Act 4 to me felt like they made up a collect-a-thon because they had no other ideas for making you go after these bosses. Now they have pretty much concluded most of the hyped lore, I wonder what could be next for a possible Act 5.

Here are a few of my problems:

1. Act 2 you fight warring bandits and plunge the land into eternal night. Act 3 you fight against a man who uses exiles to become a god. Act 4 is about The Beast who someone will send the land into a the next Cataclysm. But why now? Why not 100 years ago? I have absolutely no idea. Malachai had hundreds of years to get this done as a evil spirit, so what is the rush?

2. The Beast is hyped as this abstract ultimate force of evil... which you never see or "fight." Killing its organs after a collect-a-thon just seems sad for a such a major story player. Apparently the Beast is a massive, lazy Jaba-The-Hutt laying in a mountain with no will of its own. Kind of a let down to be honest.

3. The non-final bosses don't really seem to care much about the Beast. Having no moving speeches about wanting to kill me or stop me from harming Malachai makes the bosses seem one dimensional. I love Daresso's and Koam's talks, it gives them a kind of reference to kill you. Sadly the other mini-bosses didn't get the same treatment.

4. Highgate in general just seems out of place. No one knows/talks about it except Lady Dialla prior to arriving which is kind of weird. For an entire town of people, you would think someone in Sarn would here about it. Also, the people of Highgate seem quite normal for living in a nightmare and being completely surrounded by undead demons.

5. After killing Dominus (who turns into a giant ant demon; no big deal), there really isn't any followup to make me want to go Highgate. The first time I played it in the beta, I actually had no idea what the point of Highgate was. The other acts have many hints of what is going to happen in the next act. They didn't put any layers into Act 3 about Highgate (unless you count the unmandatory book in the Library about Voll). That just isn't good enough for a story motivator.

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Repeats wrote:

I thought I was the only one who felt like Act 4 really dropped the ball on a coherent story line. Acts 1-3 really messed well together, like they were planned from the beginning. Act 4 to me felt like they made up a collect-a-thon because they had no other ideas for making you go after these bosses. Now they have pretty much concluded most of the hyped lore, I wonder what could be next for a possible Act 5.

Here are a few of my problems:

1. Act 2 you fight warring bandits and plunge the land into eternal night. Act 3 you fight against a man who uses exiles to become a god. Act 4 is about The Beast who someone will send the land into a the next Cataclysm. But why now? Why not 100 years ago? I have absolutely no idea. Malachai had hundreds of years to get this done as a evil spirit, so what is the rush?

2. The Beast is hyped as this abstract ultimate force of evil... which you never see or "fight." Killing its organs after a collect-a-thon just seems sad for a such a major story player. Apparently the Beast is a massive, lazy Jaba-The-Hutt laying in a mountain with no will of its own. Kind of a let down to be honest.

3. The non-final bosses don't really seem to care much about the Beast. Having no moving speeches about wanting to kill me or stop me from harming Malachai makes the bosses seem one dimensional. I love Daresso's and Koam's talks, it gives them a kind of reference to kill you. Sadly the other mini-bosses didn't get the same treatment.

4. Highgate in general just seems out of place. No one knows/talks about it except Lady Dialla prior to arriving which is kind of weird. For an entire town of people, you would think someone in Sarn would here about it. Also, the people of Highgate seem quite normal for living in a nightmare and being completely surrounded by undead demons.

5. After killing Dominus (who turns into a giant ant demon; no big deal), there really isn't any followup to make me want to go Highgate. The first time I played it in the beta, I actually had no idea what the point of Highgate was. The other acts have many hints of what is going to happen in the next act. They didn't put any layers into Act 3 about Highgate (unless you count the unmandatory book in the Library about Voll). That just isn't good enough for a story motivator.

1 this was more of the fault of you and lady dalia the gemling queen. for you see the beast was sealed by the maraketh for 100 years because their hero (the one whose spirit you save in the mines) failed to find a way to slay it. so she sealed it behind that barrier that is in front of the mines in town when your first get there. there also seems to be mention of the beast having sleep cycles or that there are periods in history where it is artificially woken up . this is how the vaal died i think atziri woke it up.

dalia mentions that the beast is slowly waking which could imply this barrier would fail at some point soon anyway.

dalia also wants revenge on malachai. she is even up front with this, she wants you to go into the beast and kill malachai, not save the world . kill malachai. you could say killing the beast and saving the world are .. secondary objectives.


2 the beast is waking up ,not awake , the whole point of why you go into it now is to kill it before it wakes up and you have a boss fight you cant win and the world ends. if you listen to piety you would know that the beast lures the dreaming minds of powerful figures into itself which are then forever damned to be its servants.

this is why we get to see all these long dead figures. they are not the real ones. the real ones died , but their dreams are slaves to the beast and the beast has the power to manifest dreams. thaumaturgy in this game is the manifestation of dreams. this is why in act 2 malachai instructs maligaro to master conscious dreaming or risk unleashing something horrific.

3 the other bosses probably dont realize that they are slaves to the beast. going back to what malachai said to maligaro , master conscious dreaming. malachai was the only one of the bosses you see in the game that was alive at the moment of the cataclysm.

doedre and maligaro were burned at the stake
shavron was killed by brutus
and neither voll, kaom or daresso are accomplished thaumaturgists.

it makes perfect sense that they are unknowning puppets. these are after all manifestations of dreams, not real people and only malachai had the means and the skill to be conscious of the nightmare.

4 high gate was the mining town used by the eternal empire to extract virtue gems. and there was probably a similar town for the vaal before they got annihilated. the maraketh moved in probably before or after the cataclysm to seal the mountain.

5 yeah that is one thing they botched

Act 4 Harvest Major Zone Improvement Idea:

I just had another brilliant (ha!) idea to massively improve the Harvest zone. Instead of just going into three boring cordoned off boss rooms, the zone starts to change architecture as you get closer to each boss. For instance, as you approach Shav, the Beast/Flesh walls and tileset merge with a Cathedral/Lab befitting Shav's lore. The closer you get, the less Flesh and more Lab architecture is shown, culminating in the boss fight taking place a fully "dream lab" room, perhaps even with her rebuilding another Brutus on a table somewhere for aesthetics.

This solution addresses the biggest problem many of us have with the current 3 Harvest bosses: it makes no sense why they are just standing around these barren flesh circle rooms. In the game currently, Shav gets three weird bookcases placed around the walls, which is the most lame attempt at context I can imagine. So my solution is a much bigger zone with all three bosses getting these merged tileset areas, each representing their nature and life's work.

This fits so well with the "dreaming nightmare" theme the game talks about, how the Beast draws strong figures in to draw on their power, while keeping them under the delusion that they are fulfilling their destinies.

Plus from an art perspective, imagine how fun it would be to see these twisted/merged zones where you go from the Flesh walls of the Beast to illusionary labs and experiments.

This change would at least add great visual flair and make those bosses seem much less arbitrary.

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Repeats wrote:

1. Act 2 you fight warring bandits and plunge the land into eternal night. Act 3 you fight against a man who uses exiles to become a god. Act 4 is about The Beast who someone will send the land into a the next Cataclysm. But why now? Why not 100 years ago? I have absolutely no idea. Malachai had hundreds of years to get this done as a evil spirit, so what is the rush?

I'm sure the answer is somewhere in The Evil Overlord List.
Edit: about "its because the beast awakens" - yeah, and it begins its awakening just when we are dropped on the beach of Wraeclast. It is so "convenient" it looks half-baked. Me too didn't see any reason to go to act 4. Also, aqueduct leading to the top of tower (that's in the clouds, for a minute)? wut?