The writing for Incursion (negative opinion)

So, I don't want to be all "omg ludonarrative dissonance!" However, here I am, and it is one of the points I will bring up. Well darn
The writing and logic for Incursion are preeeeetty bad. It's a good example of why you don't introduce time travel to a world or setting that was not established with it in mind, although there are other issues as well.
The writing's internal consistency, its consistency within the greater context of the rest of the game's writing, and its consistency within the scope of the actual Incursion gameplay are ... I would like to say "tenuous at best," but yeah, it's pretty shoddy and surprisingly nonsensical and terrible.


Here, I will give a number of examples, but there's certainly more.

Alva's dialogue almost immediately contradicts the actual mechanics. I believe it was after the first Incursion, that she tells us the ritual can't just be done whenever and wherever. If I recall correctly, her text is
"These rituals must be performed under certain conditions ... day of the weeks, stars aligned."
... And then you meet her again for another go within two minutes. And again. And again. Oh, is it that time of the week again already, Alva? That's weird, but okay, let's slay more of your ancestors without any personal consequences on your part!

Which leads us to the second point. Alva has Vaal blood, but is completely okay with - and complicit in - our repeated massacres of the Vaal. The morality of her having us commit genocide among her ancestors for her own personal gain is already one thing, but the temple shows that our actions in the past most certainly have a direct and observable impact on the present day, while she has no concerns whatsoever what effect the constant slaughter of her ancestors might have on her. And maaaaagically there is none.
Oh, and while she's all about us committing genocide, she's concerned when we leave the guy who performs human sacrifices alive.

There's a conceit going on where Alva needs time to figure out where Atzoatl is located in the present day. Which is fine, but that only works the first time. Every time after that is nonsensical. During the incursions, the main structure is already built and thus the location is already established. Which means it has to be in the same place. But no, every time Alva has to find the location of the present day temple again. And every time expresses surprise that of all places it's in the jungle, even though we've been there a dozen times by now.
As an aside, if she has no knowledge of where the temple is, how is she able to send us there 2000 years in the past? Over and over? With enough precision to even show us which room we'll be in?
(As an aside - speaking of that jungle area outside of the temple? It really drives home that everything inside is, in fact, overtuned compared to most of the game, since the outside is populated with old enemy types and they are nooooowhere near as tanky and dangerous as anything inside the temple.)

Alva is there to raid the freaking temple. But she never gets anything. Obviously, many players wouldn't want her to pick up their loot and keep it for herself. But there's never any indication that she gets rewarded in any way, even though that's why she's doing this.
You could have, say, a scenario where when you beat the Omnitect, apart from the loot it drops, it would open a vault with gold and whatnot that's of no use to the player, but Alva wants that and thanks you for helping you achieve her goal. Or the Omnitect breaking open and indeed being made of gold! And this being in the last room would also make it more believable that she will, for example, go back in through the remaining portals and take all the riches she wants after the player leaves (well, assuming the player decides to end their run right after defeating the Omnitect, anything else would make it more awkward unless there's a discernible exit somewhere in the Apex). But no, currently there's no acknowledgement that she ever gets anything at all, she's just a complete stooge and a complete numpty.

Also, it seems like GGG originally planned for the Temple of Atzoatl to have a time limit on it, as well. The Guardhouse and it's upgraded versions increase monster pack size in the Temple. After one of the upgrades, Alva comments on how there being more enemies is a good thing, as killing more Vaal results in more time for us in the Temple. So, two issues here:
1) As we now know, the temple is not timed, the Incursions are, and as far as I'm aware the bonuses from various temple rooms do not apply to the Incursions. So yes, this dialogue seem to hint that the temple itself was originally a timed venture - it makes no sense outside of this context.
2) It's ... strange that many rooms that make the eventual temple raid more difficult elicit concerned replies from Alva, as we'll need to deal with that stuff, but a greater number of enemies somehow doesn't worry her - in fact she believes this to be a good thing. It would have made sense in a world where the temple raid itself was indeed time-limited, but seems strange in world where it doesn't and things like traps and stronger enemies do concern her, but a greater horde of enemies somehow does not.

One of the announced potential outcomes of using the Altar of Corruption on a piece of equipment is that it can turn into a Shaper or Elder rare, which really makes no sense at all. I've brought this up before, so I'll just quote myself:
"When the Altar was constructed, the Shaper didn't exist, and the Elder was sealed by Starforge. Presumably, I don't think we know exactly when the latter happened, but it's probably been a good while.
In the current day, they're both roaming the realms of the Atlas. The Shaper doesn't seem like he has any intention to leave (can he even? Not sure). The Elder, we're fighting to, among other things, keep the Elder from entering our realm. While we eventually discover the Decay has managed to enter Valdo Caeserius's chamber in the Templar Laboratory, it has not spread beyond it - nor do we know exactly when this happened, it could have been only very shortly before we opened it.
I understand that you wanted outcomes that went beyond those of a Vaal Orb, but this particular one doesn't seem to fit within the context of the game's lore."
I will note that since Incursion was released I haven't come across this outcome at all, so perhaps it wasn't included in the final version? Which I'm happy with, but it was still a silly and nonsensical thing with no reason or explanation for it within the context of the game. *shrug*


These issues, and many others, are never addressed in a satisfactory way, and will probably at best be hand-waved with things along the lines of "magic" or "a wizard did it." In this case, perhaps a Vaal time wizard. Regardless, they are not and probably will not be addressed in a satisfying, reasonable, or logical way.

It's strange, because the writing for Incursion was done (presumably) with the mechanics and gameplay and whatnot in mind. It's not like when in Bestiary, you made it possible to capture dead beasts after release and then a lot of Einhar's dialogue (including the very first time you meet him) and the conceit of the menagerie suddenly made less to no sense. This stuff in Incursion is shaky to nonsensical from the get-go. And especially if Incursion is kept in some way - please don't do this -, the laughable writing will make it look, quite frankly, stupid, for the rest of the game's lifespan rather than just three months.
Inconsistencies can happen, but bad writing is another thing altogether. In terms of league writing, the worst has probably been Perandus. Immortal greedy dead guy tasking you with collecting coins to pay off his debt to his god of the underworld that's sustaining him was kinds goofy. Dark and somewhat interesting, yet kinda goofy. But "kinda goofy" is still leagues (haha) ahead of Incursion.

Aside from that this, for me, is probably the third-worst league in the history of the game, and probably the most boring one. There was a point during Abyss where I was more bored, but I wasn't practically falling asleep while playing during the first few days of the league. This league is exactly what I hate about the current state of the game, but at least it's not a technical trainwreck like Breach, and it has more to it than Abyss. But oh well, that stuff isn't really germane to the topic at hand.

Are you just complaining foor the sake of complaining?

The fuck dude.

I can easily address Alva's lines about the rituals being performed at certain times and locations: The devs preemptively wrote that dialogue in the event she is added to the core game. I get the feeling that if Incursion is added to the core (and I really hope it does), her spawn frequency will be significantly reduced.

As for how she speaks about Atzoatl every time you start the temple run, I'm making the assumption that she is also being affected by whatever corruption is allowing the temple to reset. She is stuck in some sort of temporal loop just like all of the Vaal involved in the temple, directly and indirectly, and I get the feeling the Omnitect might have something to do with it. She has some memory of the adventure, as shown by her suggesting you rebuild the temple as you see fit, but she's mostly trapped in some time-shifting hell that she's not aware of.

Well, I agree with some, but not all, of your critique.

As for the exact location, time etc. - this is, for me, an OK piece of story to justify the "one incursion per zone" mechanic - instead of her being able to let us do all 11 runs in a row from the same place. Generally, time is rarely realistic in ARPGs - the quests in every Act, for example, can be done in a few hours of real-time, but we're implied to spend at least a few days in each location, people getting used to us, stuff happening between quests and so on.

As for the Vaal blood - the way I see it, she's mostly "white", I mean, Oriathan, and just has soooome Vaal ancestry way back. Imagine a modern-Age conquest-and-slavery oriented European with some African or Asian guy in his line of ancestry way back - would that, on the average, make him more sympathetic towards those people when there's riches to be had? I think that's highly unlikely. She probably thinks the Vaal were terrible, cruel barbarians who at least left interesting riches - and her Vaal blood is only a good thing to her because it enables her to do Vaal magic and thus, you guessed it, get more riches. ;) At least, that's the way I understood her.

As for Alva's surprise at the location every time - I agree, that IS stupid. I don't see her as being caught in a time-loop - I think the devs were just lazy. :) I wholeheartedly support badgering them for adding one more line of text for entering the Temple every time after the first - or, if it's hard to chase down and pay the voice actress, just remove those lines altogether and nobody will suffer for it.

As for raiding... mixed opinion. I wouldn't mind if they added something to show her looting stuff, but since there's lots of gold, non-combat jewelry and everything else purely decorative lying around, I've always interpreted it as "we (the players) take the stuff we need 'cause we're the muscle without which Alva couldn't raid the Temple, Alva takes everything else". After all, there's riches lying around in many other fancy places in the game that we can't pick up, it's just decorative.

Shaper and Elder rares... I agree, makes no sense at all.

Wasn't Bestiary pre-Tencent?

Not quite related, I miss some humanizing side to the Vaal, which I hope will be introduced if they feature more prominently in some later expansion or more story-driven league. So far, it's just Atziri, Doryani and their crazy priests, which are legitimate key figures for the collapse of the Vaal civilization, but there must have been something good before that. We have a nice example of dual-perspective in the way the Karui are treated in the core game - yes, the Eternals viewed them as crude barbarians and the Oriathans still do, but we get to see some good things in Karui culture when we look from their point of view. If we saw only Kaom and the horrors he committed under Kitava's and Malachai's/the Beast's influence, they'd seem like cruel savages and nothing else - but we hear other voices and stories and see a rich and complex tribal culture. I'd like something like that for the Vaal.

I think the writing has gone steadily downhill since they added act 4. They had this cool concept of a mysterious power called the twist and then they added act 4 and and changed it all to “nightmare” and the “the beast” and dropped all the mystery.

With 3.0 they added all this god slaying crap which is just way out of theme with the original plot of being an exile trying to survive and get revenge on the authorities. I’m also not fond of what they’ve done with the character intros. The original character intros were far better than these boring dominus sentence passing intros.

They’ve messed up some of the character voice lines as well. Marauder was originally this brutal warrior. Now his voice overs sound like a tour guide, always explaining what each karui god is for after invoking it’s name. Why would a karui warrior who is talking to himself need to explain such things? It’s not even necessary for the player because you can infer it from the context.

But then I don’t play for the story or the atmosphere so in the end these things don’t change either my play or my support for the game. I just don’t get as excited now in the character creation screen and I cringe whenever my marauders enter city of sarn for the first time. I also ignore the story and box dialog but really I’d be doing that no matter how good the story was given how many characters I’ve leveled...

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Are you just complaining foor the sake of complaining?

The fuck dude.

Thank you for your meaningful and valuable contribution to the topic at hand, dino-dude.

"

Pizzarugi wrote:

I can easily address Alva's lines about the rituals being performed at certain times and locations: The devs preemptively wrote that dialogue in the event she is added to the core game. I get the feeling that if Incursion is added to the core (and I really hope it does), her spawn frequency will be significantly reduced.

Well, people thought Bestiary was a sure thing and 100% intended to go into the game permanently, so we can only hope that Incursion suffers the same fate as Bestiary, then.

Actually, and this is a bit outside of the scope of the topic, there's certainly a problem with the vaunted "third generation" challenge leagues - they're kind of intrusive to the point where integrating them with the core game is a big deal. It's not just "oh, there will be a Tormented Spirit or a Rogue Exile in some percentage of the areas."
Adding something like Bestiary or Incursion to the core game, especially if similar challenge leagues are going to be the norm, is going to provide a lot in terms of complexity creep. Which I don't mind on a personal level, but it's going to make the game more impenetrable to new players. Which I also don't particularly mind, but I imagine GGG certainly does.

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Pizzarugi wrote:

As for how she speaks about Atzoatl every time you start the temple run, I'm making the assumption that she is also being affected by whatever corruption is allowing the temple to reset. She is stuck in some sort of temporal loop just like all of the Vaal involved in the temple, directly and indirectly, and I get the feeling the Omnitect might have something to do with it. She has some memory of the adventure, as shown by her suggesting you rebuild the temple as you see fit, but she's mostly trapped in some time-shifting hell that she's not aware of.

While interesting, and I certainly would like there to be more to her, the problem is that there's almost nothing in the game to allude to such a grand and convoluted backstory. Especially as they have since replaced the line you're referring to >.>
The only thing that hints at something bigger going on is her introduction:
Thank the gods! You're no saint, I can see that. Though who am I to question what form divine providence comes in?
And it certainly seems grandiose to refer to someone who can help you on your treasure hunt in that way! Unless, you know, she's just really desperate for some freaking treasure. It does feel like GGG intended to go somewhere with her story but ended up never really executing on it?

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I think the writing has gone steadily downhill since they added act 4. They had this cool concept of a mysterious power called the twist and then they added act 4 and and changed it all to “nightmare” and the “the beast” and dropped all the mystery.

One thing that annoyed me in this regard was the Scion dialogue. Sure, a lot of people thought it was excessive and whatever else, but at least it felt like she had something going on. There was a story that we don't really get with the other characters, who mostly just drop one-liners. Especially when eventually Dialla refers to her as "Daughter of Nightmare" where with the other six she refers to the character by their class. And then they just entirely dropped that angle and made her another one-liner machine. I was curious where that was going, dangit, and then kind of like I just said about Alva, they seemed to just decide not to go anywhere with it.
I guess I just liked that at least with one class they tried something more interesting >.>
Kind of like Charan says - they tried something, then excised that and all that was left was something entirely uninteresting, and apparently couldn't find a middle ground they were happy with.

This post is just more nitpicking because Incursion is incredibly boring and makes zero sense.


Why is Atziri there, again? Is it just "omg a Vaal expansion, let's throw Atziri in there?" Yes, it was even suggested that it was the treasure house for Queen Atziri herself, so pretty much that? The problem (well, one of them) is that it's the same fight as always, same loot, etcetera, so there's no gameplay reason for her to be there. If it was a different version of Atziri, maybe there'd be something to it.
Now, her appearance in Atzoatl seems to just be filler, maybe to make some of the Temple-related challenges a bit harder. And she's in three places at once now, because why not! At least with map bosses, you pretend it's not the same entity by, for example, giving them a different name. Most of the time.
Basically, while it's pretty easy to just jam Atziri in there and make up a reason for it and I don't necessarily fault GGG for wanting to do that, the way it's handled is pretty lazy.


Why are there Perandus coins in the temple? I guess at least the chests don't bear the Perandus name, but that doesn't take away from the problem where Doryani's communion took place about four centuries before we ever hear anything about House Perandus. So unless the Perandus family was in a position to mint coinage before the Azmerians left the mountains ... yeah.

The heirloom chest in the Museum of Artifacts is similarly problematic - it contains a league-specific unique that can no longer drop under normal circumstances. While kinda cool as a concept, because of course only nine ways to get a Headhunter in a league without Zana's Nemesis mod is not nearly enough, the problem is that some of these items are in no way whatsoever accessible to Juatalotli, much less before his death. Since, you know, he died between 1500 and 2000 years before Voll, Daresso, Victario, and Shavronne were even born. And that's just the Onslaught and Anarchy uniques!

A similar argument could potentially be made for the Ezomyte Talismans, but since we don't really know how long the Ezomyte have been around and when the Talismans were made, I'll leave it at that.

Note: while the last three paragraphs are about loot - I will point out that these are about very specific instances of loot that GGG chose to put in the Temple of Atzoatl. Yes, you could have, say, Shavronne's Wrappings drop (since I mentioned her in those paragraphs), but I don't expect GGG to tailor all the random loot in the Temple to be period and lore appropriate.
However, if they specifically decide to add certain kinds of loot to the Temple loot that both shouldn't be there and cannot drop normally, such as the Perandus coins and the heirloom chest in the various forms of the Museum of Artifacts, that's a case of someone making a dumb decision that makes no sense and goes against the world GGG has created, and probably also a case of someone higher up okaying said dumb decision.


Why do the Vaal, always, have access to the very same maps that the player has access to? Oh, sure, we don't want players to progress through the Atlas too quickly! But it makes absolutely zero sense and, frankly, I was hoping for the map room to be actually interesting somehow? Originally I thought, maybe you get a guaranteed unique map at tier 3? Is that how people get the Perandus Manor map? Or can the map room drop maps that are of the current level or lower but that you haven't completed yet? You know, fill in some gaps, get that tier 4 map that refuses to drop. Of course, the map room is probably quite good at very high levels! But yeah, a little disappointed, because again, the Vaal only ever having access to tier 1 maps and the maps you completed is veeeeeeeerry silly.

What is up with the Vaal in the Temple of Atzoatl, but especially Matatl himself, being so oblivious to the traps in the Temple? Sure, the reason is that the monster AI was never made to take traps into account, so they blindly stumble into them, but it's really dumb. Especially when Matatl himself dies to them more often than not. And even if we want to use the excuse that they're probably undead and corrupted and whatnot, they've still managed not to get themselves shot in the eye by the dart traps or impaled on the spike traps in there for the past two millennia.


Speaking of which, it's interesting how the Vaal constructing the Temple of Atzoatl get to the point where literally nothing gets done without the player's interference. The most fascinating being the connecting hallways. A number are in place once the player embarks on their first Incursion, and then nothing else ever gets connected unless the player opens a hallway with a Stone of Passage.

So how does this work when, for example, Alva sends the player into a room that currently is unconnected? How did the architects and the workforce even get in there?
Actually, the more interesting question is what happens when the player ends up in one of these rooms, eradicates the Vaal in there, including one of the architects, but for whatever reason, does not open any of the hallways. Somehow, with neither manpower nor materials, the remaining architect still manages to upgrade the room - quite an impressive feat! Even more impressive is if Alva later sends the player to that same room and it's still unconnected, because somehow, without any access to the room other than temporal displacement, a new contingent of Vaal and a new architect have managed to get inside. And again, if the player goes on a slaughter, including killing an architect, but doesn't open any doors, again magically the room will be changed and potentially even re-purposed without access to a workforce or resources. And after the eleventh and final Incursion, they still don't manage to arrange for another functional hallway between then and the Communion.
The excuse had better not be that the Stone of Passage is personal and while the player only has access through the hallways they unlocked, the Vaal have access to the entire complex, because, you know, then all the Vaal in the complex need a Stone of Passage. Which is consumed on use. For every single hallway they have reason to pass through. Oh, also doesn't explain the hallways that are already open before the first Incursion. Yeah, the hallway thing is kind of dumb.

And of course, the architects. Oh boy. What is this crazy system of architectural rivalry the Vaal employ where they send two different architects with opposing goals for every project? Who literally never get any work done because they are locked in an eternal staring contest until one of them dies to outside forces? And then another architect is dispatched so that the architect that is now finally actually getting shit done is once again tied up in another meaningless feud? I can only imagine the thought process.
"Verily, I, Xipocado, am performing the very important task of creating a suitable throne room for our beloved ruler, Queen Atziri! But lo! Tis my rival, Tacati, who thinks it is a good idea to litter the temple with poisonous plants that will kill us! And perhaps intruders (no they won't lol)! I must stop immediately, halt all progress on my Queen's quarters, and wait around until one of us dies to natural causes or a time-travelling genocidal maniac - whichever comes first! I'm sure my Queen understands and respects my plight."


I can't wait for these newly announced rooms that will be added. I expect to be blown away by how perfectly they fit into the well-crafted world of Wraeclast and it's lore, and for Alva's dialogue to be as phenomenal as it always is.

... Actually, typing that made me wonder: do you have voice acting for these rooms? As in, has Alva's dialogue for them already been recorded before launch? Or did you get Alva's voice actress in the studio again for that?
Because I've been rather frustrated by GGG releasing unfinished content since Atlas of Worlds. And the former would imply that, you know, it's potentially content that was unfinished at launch and you're only able to deliver now. And that would be very unfortunate, since you told us that the development team worked completely normal hours and was able to release a league that was extensively tested, relatively bug-free and without a lot of pre-launch stress :(

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Velari wrote:

... Actually, typing that made me wonder: do you have voice acting for these rooms? As in, has Alva's dialogue for them already been recorded before launch? Or did you get Alva's voice actress in the studio again for that?

Isn't that the same actress as Zana 2.0? It irked me a lot at the start of this league that the familiar Zana voice was coming out of another character. A few times I've managed to find them right next to each other saying their trigger greeting together - pretty hilarious, I must say.

On the other hand, maybe they are sisters?! That would solve the issue with how all this is related to the Shaper/Elder/Atlas business.

Alva definitely sounds familiar, yes :P


So, I haven't played since the patch hit last night, but I'll just point out the following: according to GGG's news post about the new rooms, the Strongbox room can contain "various unique Strongboxes." Most of the unique strongboxes that are not tied to specific maps (say Oba's and the Hall of Grandmasters), however, are themed around specific characters and groups that did not exist at the time of the construction of the Temple of Atzoatl, such as Koam, the Perandus family, Deshret, Weylam, and the various Warbands. If those appear in the Strongbox room, I'd be really curious as to how Zantipi got his hands on them.

Also, I didn't figure the Vaal to be the type to make use of the pillory.