Beta Feedback - Story

davflamerock · April 2021

First off, I just wanted to preface this feedback with: I really like this game. It’s a marriage of two games I grew up on and still love (Diablo and Magic), and as a longtime diehard Magic lore fan, the prospect of getting to run around in places like Benalia, Shiv, Innistrad, etc is just wonderful. It’s very clear to me that the devs know the source material and are fans as well! I’ve finished all of the storylines in all of the regions.

As much fun as I’m having with the game, though, I have to admit that the storytelling has fallen very short for me, and I consider it one of the game’s weakest elements.

Abstract: The story has the following strengths and weaknesses, but the weaknesses outweigh the strengths.

Strengths: Shiv’s story is clear, memorable, and resonant. Squee and Ral Zarek’s characterizations are strong. Getting to explore the regions of Dominaria, Zendikar, and Innistrad is fun.
Weaknesses: Most of the storylines are unclear at best and incomprehensible at worst. I don’t understand what almost any of the characters want or why they are doing what they are doing (or asking of me). Most of the dialogue is direct and objective-driven with little to no characterization. A couple of the characters don’t match or explicitly contradict existing Magic lore.
What I would like to see more of: I would like to see characters having personal motivations and pursuing those motivations. I would like to encounter NPCs that I want to help/protect/love and fight villains that I want to defeat/hate. I want more NPCs to have “get to know you” dialogue that’s optional and available in hub zones so they can be developed beyond just the missions they give the player.
What I need to see going forward: A reason for why the “mysterious planeswalker” exists. Currently she is a footnote in the story but is presented as if she IS the story.

Detailed feedback:

As excited as I am about getting to see legendary characters from Magic’s game and setting, so much of the dialogue is flat, brief, and objective-driven: “Go here, do this thing, talk to this person, kill some monsters.” There’s almost no explanation for a new player of who these characters are and almost all of them are one-note. Nissa is the stern druid who doesn’t want to know things, Thada Adel is the merfolk leader who disagrees with the other merfolk leader (Noyan Dar), there’s the villainous Benalish lord and the rebellious Benalish private, an angel and a lich knight, a crazy chancellor and an angry ghitu whose husband worked at Tolaria I guess?, and a swamp witch with some groveling assistants, etc

At the end of the day, I mostly came away from the character dialogue with no answers to the basic questions of “what does this character want and why?” Additionally, because the character dialogue is so directed at telling players what their objectives are that we get a lot of exposition and very little characterization—no quirks, no affectations, no styles of speech. Squee stands out to me as one of the better-written characters because his dialogue is SUPER quirky and he’ll do things like crack jokes, make references you aren’t supposed to understand, he has different moods at different times, he says things just to have fun...all of which makes him more memorable and more lovable.

Some of this could be fleshed out by adding inquiry trees to the NPCs that can be chatted up in hubs, which would give me a chance to get to know these characters outside of the context of mission objectives. But I think a lot of the mission dialogue would need to be improved as well, because I have a lot of unanswered questions from many of the storylines (Tazeem and Tolaria especially) and because the inter-mission talking objectives bounce me from NPC to NPC for seemingly no reason (Gavony especially).

davflamerock · April 2021

Some assorted specific notes, based on what I can remember (which is limited since I can’t go replay all of the dialogue prompts):

I don’t understand the story of Tazeem, even having completed it. As a newcomer to the franchise, there’s no explanation of what the Roil is or why I should care, nor is there much explanation of who the NPCs are (even I, a lore veteran, had to go look up Noyan Dar because I didn’t know any of his lore and the game didn’t provide me with any). And as a lore veteran, I had no idea what Noyan Dar’s conflict with Thada Adel was even about: assuming this game is set during the reconstruction period after Battle for Zendikar and before Zendikar Rising, the Roil should be a natural phenomenon...so why is Thada Adel trying to “restart” it? And especially given that the Roil is an in-game mechanic that the player has to avoid (which is excellent environmental storytelling, btw)...it leaves me VERY confused as to what the merfolks’ objectives are or why I should be defeating them.
Nissa’s characterization comes across as wooden (pun intended lol). She’s very direct and cold/stern, simultaneously harsh in her delivery (this might have been the voice acting, which I didn’t care for) and blatantly ignorant about critical elements of the world she supposedly cherishes (specifically the mana towers). I didn’t see any of the shy, sensitive empath or of the self-empowered champion that I expect from a character as significant as Nissa. And if I didn’t know who Nissa is before playing, I wouldn’t know anything about her after Tazeem because we learn almost nothing about who she is, what she wants, why she’s willing to recruit us, etc from the game.
Similarly, the Thada Adel that appears in this game is not the Thada Adel from the TCG. At first I thought it was just me having a long-standing headcanon for my favorite merfolk thief, but then I checked in on Noyan Dar’s entry in the Art of Magic: Zendikar and learned that my instincts were correct: on page 162, the sidebar for Thada Adel, Acquisitor explicitly states that “Unlike Noyan Dar, Thada Adel remains more interested in ancient relics than in the burden of leadership.” So why is she broadcasting a call-to-arms to the merfolk of Tazeem? Why is she willing to give up an important relic to a mysterious planeswalker? Why does she even care about the Roil, let alone want to “restart” (weaponize?) it? If anything, the Thada Adel presented in this game feels like it should be Noyan Dar (who does lead merfolk and try to weaponize the Roil) and the Noyan Dar presented in this game should be Thada Adel (who just wants to find cool stuff and is only willing to get involved in merfolk politics because of the greater threat posed by Noyan Dar).
Ral Zarek comes across as a bit of a doofus in the beginning (largely because of how unnaturally campy the introduction cutscene dialogue is) but I love having him as a “tutorial guy” and he does the job well. His curiosity, specifically, characterizes him well and also establishes that the player is special in some way, which is something you want from this kind of game experience. I would encourage you to keep Ral Zarek on as a friendly voice for the player and as the bridge between in-game dialogue and out-of-game explanations.
The story that this game presents seems to be about me, a new planeswalker, hunting down a mysterious black-green planeswalker. But I don’t know who this Golgari villain is, nor am I given a reason to care. She appears, says something menacing, and then disappears, only to be seen occasionally and by accident. I’m not actively hunting her, and I also don’t have any sense of threat/urgency from her. I understand why you would want to obscure her plot initially so she can have a big reveal later, but frankly she feels very out of place in the story as it exists so far because the player character has no relationship with her.
If she is a threat that needs to be stopped, what is the threat?
If we pose a threat to her plans, why is she not trying to pursue/attack us?
If she’s only supposed to be a background element to the story, then why is she introduced first?
The fact that we “accidentally” encounter her at every region feels contrived, considering our lack of relationship with her. It feels like the story wants to be “we’re pursuing her to each of the five regions and are one step behind the whole way” which would explain why these five regions, and why she appears at each of them. But as it is, the story isn’t that.
Benalia’s story was fine because it had a clear and simple premise: drive back the invading undead. Unfortunately, it was almost entirely unmemorable past that, because I don’t remember any of the specific plot beats or who any of the characters (other than Josu Vess) were. It felt like I was only involved because the Benalish military needed my help and because Belzenlok’s Cabal are a fairly straightforward enemy to oppose. Josu was memorable thanks to his (appropriately) over-the-top campiness but even then, I still didn’t know why he was invading Benalia. As a Magic lore fan, *I* happen to know all the backstory about Belzenlok trying to take over the world, but I don’t remember a single instance of the word “Belzenlok” even being uttered in the game?
The Tolarian storyline felt very unfocused and its intended climax fell very flat. Khalila the Ghitu was presented as some kind of climactic final boss, but she’s only mentioned I think once before the final fight, and her relationship to the Society of Mishra is very heavily glossed over. There were a few really cool creative moments in this story (Social Artifice stood out) but they had no connective tissue between them, so it felt like I was being sent to protect the academy just for the sake of doing stuff and at the end there was a random fight with a lava monster lady.
Gavony struggled to have a story that made any sense because of how heavily it tried to force me to have a specific relationship with Nani Ula that I very much did not want, and because it suffered from having none of its missions be related to each other (similar to Tolaria). The first seemed to be an attempt to make Nani Ula into a meaningful boss encounter (which it did much better than Tolaria, even if her betrayal was obvious and I didn’t enjoy the process of being forced into serving her) while the second resulted in a lot of running back and forth between NPCs for no seemingly no reason. In Gavony more than any other region, the characters seem to barely have any relationship with one another and so being constantly told to “go talk to X next” is very immersion-breaking.
On the other hand, Gavony was full of really interesting NPCs who had nothing to do with the story. The priest who wanted to help the town despite Nani Ula’s dominance and the loss of Avacyn was interesting. Jostinia Markov, the vampire who wanted to live among humans, was really cool! But even her mission didn’t have anything to do with her and felt super forced. Frankly, I would rather she give zero missions and exist as a fun flavorful background character instead of giving her a mission she has no business giving—it made her character worse. (And if the writers believe that the mission is related to her character, then her mission dialogue needs to be improved and/or the way the player is directed to her needs to be improved because those two things definitely clashed with the “get to know you” dialogue I enjoyed.)

davflamerock · April 2021

Shiv had a solid story. There was a clear antagonist (Gavon Deniz) who appeared constantly throughout the storyline in different contexts: first as an arms dealer to the goblins, then as an NPC in town, then as someone trying to manipulate draconic politics, then as an intruder breaking into the mana rig, then as a foreign conqueror who would only be stopped by force. At every point in the story I understood that Gavon Deniz was here to oppress the peoples of Shiv and would eventually need to be stopped, once we outed him. (I’ll admit that I knew this would be a “white villain/red hero” story going into it based on the pattern set by the other regions, so it’s possible I was biased to easily understand what was going on.)
Additionally, the NPCs all worked towards the same story and it made sense why different NPCs would be giving me different missions at various times. Unlike the other regions (especially Gavony), I felt like I was on the same team as Squee, Adeliz, and Darigaaz because they were working together outside of my involvement. While I was helping Squee, Adeliz was off doing stuff and by the time I got back she was ready with my next mission (and vice-versa with Squee). We all worked towards the same goal and it also made sense why these characters would know each other and get along. At the end, I wanted to help Adeliz and Squee because they were characters I sympathized with, which I can’t really say about any of the NPCs in any of the other regions.
That said, I would add that I still don’t really know who Adeliz is as a character, and I want to. She was friendly/welcoming and had a good repor with Squee (who did have good characterization) but there was little Adeliz-specific characterization that endeared me to her, which feels shallow.
Squee’s characterization was strong. I was initially put off by his speech patterns—I’ve always hated the dialect of Dominarian goblins—but that fact is probably indicative of the fact that his dialect was executed accurately. Ultimately what endeared me to him is that he clearly had a personality that was distinct to Squee: he cracked jokes, he made references that he didn’t explain, he had different moods at different times...basically, it was clear that there was a full character there that I was seeing assorted bits of. He wasn’t one-note. That made him stand out among the cast, and it made me care about him the most (despite him having a dialect that irritates me!).

Separately from my feedback on the writing, I felt like most of the voice acting could be vastly improved, but that’s a separate issue that’s harder for me to give specific feedback on. (As a fiction editor and game designer my strengths are in the writing department more so than the acting department.) I’m not sure if this counts as story-specific feedback, but it felt like a huge let-down to me as a longtime Magic fan that so many spells don’t share names with existing Magic spells, even the ones that are really similar in concept. I feel like going through the spell catalog and naming each spell after an existing Magic card (or even just the vast majority, if 100% is unreasonable/impossible) would dramatically improve the enjoyment-factor of the game. I got so excited about the prospect of getting to summon a Flametongue Kavu, but “Lightpiercer Angel” means nothing to me.

If you wanted to follow up with any of my feedback, or get more in-depth feedback about specific characters/regions, feel free to contact me via email or on twitter. I intend to keep playing the game because it’s a lot of fun, but do I hope to see stronger storytelling going forward!

~Tyler

forthewinwin · April 2021

This is all fantastic feedback! Thanks so much for sharing it. As time goes on, I hope to reveal more of the stories involving those characters, and I'll keep this feedback in mind.

As a quick note, I have removed the email and twitter links from your post to protect your privacy. Please don't hesitate to reach back out if you have anymore feedback though!

ensignedwards · April 2021

Just want to add my voice and say I agree with pretty much all of this. Excellent feedback. Especially agree on wanting to see more of Adeliz, maybe just because she's one of the few characters I really enjoyed the voice acting for. She has a warmth to her that feels quite real.

militarymage · April 2021

+1 to all of the above.

With years of MMOs out there and played. I was very disappoint in the quests. Where the cool CGI cut scenes (ie Diablo), or group storylines like in (Star War the Old Republic online) or any other game? I know there are other important issues to fix right now but this to me was the biggest let down.

Squee was the best thing in all the quests. A+

The fact that we “accidentally” encounter her at every region feels contrived, considering our lack of relationship with her. It feels like the story wants to be “we’re pursuing her to each of the five regions and are one step behind the whole way” which would explain why these five regions, and why she appears at each of them. But as it is, the story isn’t that.

I agree 100% with OP on this. I was like what we are not chasing her now. Its felted like she was now just an after thought to the storyline.

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