Ancient Pyramid, Vaal Oversoul, Darkness

A few suggestions from a new player who just fished act 2.

- Give the player a hint about the end boss before they encounter it. The quest just said "adavance the pyramid" and then *bam* "Destroy the Vaal Oversoul". An entitiy which is completely unknown to the player up to this point.

- Give the player some explanation how the darkness and the Vaal Oversoul are linked, and why the darkness vanishes after destruktion of the Vaal Oversoul

Diablo II, Act 2 also had a darkness quest. There, one of the NPCs let the player know "I've studied the ... and I think the darkness is the work of claw vipers." So, even before the player reaches the viper temple they know that there will be claw vipers, and that they caused the darkness. Also, that the darkness likely vanishes if the the player hinders the claw vipers to continue their spell. Which promply happens when the altar is destroyed. And the PC has some speech to let the player know, that now the darknes is over, even if the player can't see it in the very moment because they are in the basement of a bulding at that time. (Analogous to PoE, inside the pyramid)

IMO this is better quest design, but just railroading the player, "find the pyramid, ascend the pyramid, destroy the oversoul", without further explanations of the why and how.

Nitpick 1: The darkness is referenced as "creature" in the lore pages, as if it was a being of its own. In the game the darkness seems to be an effect that the Vaal Oversoul creates, once the ancient seal is broken.

Nitpick 2: There is no hint nor explanation why this construct is called "Oversoul" and not just "Vaal Superconstruct" like other constructs the Vaal have left. Why soul, why oversoul, why darkness? A few more words in the NPC dialogs could improve the game experience a lot here.

I think both things were answered/hinted on game, although the second one was really subtle.

Since I missed the hints, how's the darkness linked with the oversoul? Later acts rather make me think that such darkness should be a side effect of the beasts existence.

GGG kind of went for the surprise setup here. Although you can kind of feel it coming especially with some of the dialogue.

There's quite a bit of lore on the Vaal. Their thaumaturge Doryani was ordered to sacrifice souls for Atziri to preserve her beauty. This all went well until a cataclysm happened while doing some kind of communion with the beast. It destroyed Vaal civilization. The Vaal that remained all felt plague to the undead curse. Similar to the fate Voll's army suffered along with the majority of Wraeclast.

If you read the notes in corrupted areas along with the in game dialogue you find out that the Vaal sacrificed their own people for gems. It was hinted that the ball contained it was linked to the Pyramid. My guess is that the Vaal Oversoul is just some kind of random construct that was the result of a lot of stored sacrifices.

I think the developers intentionally are not revealing a lot about it because it would possibly spoil future acts. An example is that Dominus his case got a lot more easy to explain with the addition of act 4, still not as in your face as any other game and more or less speculation. It is a design choice of GGG to present lore in this way that you have to go out and find it yourself instead of handing it to you. Whether that's a good design choice or not is up to your play style. It does suit a game where you're exiled on an island with no real information though.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/oversoul

If you add the whole communion thing, it's probably some kind of union between many fallen souls, probably all the Vaal civilization (that died in the cataclysm).

If I had to bet, that stone that unleashed darkness had a major purpose before, but ended abandoned.

Hi

Unleash the darkness!


cheers

I've always been under the impression that the oversoul(s) are just pure death machines meant to guard the vaal.

Building them up would imply a backstory that they really shouldn't have.