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ashkrik23
Member Posts: 10,809 Arc User
Finished it today. Best story in the game, and yet, so many more questions unanswered. I cannot wait for future episodes that reveal the secrets behind the endings.
Good work.
Good work.
King of Lions rawr! Protect the wildlife of the world. Check out my foundry series Perfection and Scars of the Pride. arcgames.com/en/forums#/discussion/1138650/ashkrik23s-foundry-missions
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Maje Sesson, the Kobali secret(s), the bugs... So many WONDERFUL twists.
Especially after the end of the Kobali arc, I kept expecting one more twist but that twist was, honestly the biggest (and it had me laughing).
I was half-waiting for a cutscene at the end where it turns out the Voyager crew we've seen are possessed or where we cut back to the Kobali stasis tubes and see a badly injured Khan in there.
Just going off the rhythm of the expansion, it feels almost like one more twist that would fit.
So many well-timed WTF moments, it just felt like this mission chain needed to end on a bigger one.
A small complaint though.
Well done, Cryptic.
The story isn't over yet. :P
I always thought that the portal in Vaadwaur drop pods looked familiar to the Iconian one, and then fighting Gaul, he did the attack that suspends my boffs into the air like the supposed Iconian did in the end of surface tension and they were coated in this white glow like the klingons were. So apparently the same being or kind of being was shape shifted as Gaul.
And then there was also the blue warp core explosions their ships have, definitely Iconian-lent technology, or by whoever is posing as the Iconians. Lots of interesting stuff!
There does seem to be a connection. Used subspace corridors. Victims of orbital bombardment by their enemies.
All in all, very happy and looking forward to the future releases.
I...wow.
That is all I have to say. I can't wait to play it again.
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Characters - well used
Voice Acting - good (even from the supporting cast)
Plot - Great (rich, meaningful, best we've seen so far.)
Side missions - remarkably well put together. (its an example of how other parts of a video game should feed back in to support the main arc, rather than filling it out with more branching/useless tangents which you generally see in every game that uses optional quests/missions.)
Combat - well put together, really makes the most of STO game mechanics (on normal.)
What I hope crpytic tries to avoid though with the next one season is becoming too melodramatic. The Vaadwuar introduced a certain tone/feel to the DQ that was quite a bit more intense than we've seen fighting cyborg dinosaurs and tripod aliens. That was appropriate (given the backstory and place of the Vaadwuar in the sto universe). However once we start getting into the big fight against the Iconians (which are essentially space wizards to the tragic space TRIBBLE of the Vaaduwar) I hope they have enough self-restraint to avoid full-on adopting the attitude of the last few seasons of DS9 (which played morose so hard it flipped over to maudlin.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
It's a neat moral decision knowing that it could blow up in your face either way, and you've got to take a gamble on if it'll work out. On one hand, you really need these maps and you don't exactly trust the Vaadwaur rebels at all, as it's clear that if the upper leadership wasn't infested with neural parasites, Eldax would probably be cheerfully still trying to kill you. Other hand, he is your ally and his fight weakens your current enemy and supporting him may help make him more open to a peace treaty later.
On my first playthrough, I let them go, as my heroic starship captain felt it was the moral thing to do. I'm really curious to see how the consequences of that choice play out. Even if it doesn't really matter or impact the course of the story, it gives us a feeling of agency, that we're The Captain and have to make the tough choices that Star Trek captains do.
I'd settle for the Kobali or Vaadwaur outfits.
It might be a little much to expect a Mass Effect style dramatic callback to this mission but it might be possible to see a new dialog option pop up in a future conversation with Eldax. But personally I think this mission is better off if the consequences remain ambiguous (as otherwise you're pretty much given an answer on which choice was "best" and that foresight is going to spoil all future replays of this mission.)
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
I would too, a shame they could have just been made unlockable for completing the kobali prime and main series respectively but I'd gladly pony up for C-store or *sigh* lobi store releases.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
Agreed. You don't know if this might come to bite you in the butt now or in twenty years or might turn out to have been, in the long run, the right choice. And Trek has always been about the weight of being Captain and having to make some very difficult choices.
"You bet I'm 'tired'! You bet! I'm tired of being responsible for two hundred and three lives and I'm tired of deciding which mission is too risky and which isn't and who's going on the landing party and who doesn't. And who lives... and who dies." - Christoper Pike, "The Cage"
That's what my Klingon said. Letting them go in exchange for an Underspace map was a bargain.
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Try reading the missions. In the very first patrol when you meet the benthans, at the end they will tell you about the Borg battle zone patrol mission.
Later you get a patrol to rescue kobali ships who were hit by vaadwar and each ship has wa different emergency. The choices you make determines how many you save from each ship.
In yet another you're spying and there's a good bit of dialog about the vaadwar plans.
In at least five your decisions determine who, or if, you fight (let hierarchy ship go, take malon prisoner, which apu, etc).
If you're finding the patrols boring then you're skipping the good bits.
And ship getting attacked by the vaadwaur ? I don't know, that's pretty much sum up half the patrols we have. And when it's not this case, we have the hierarchy potato guy leading you into a trap. At least 3 times.
That kind of ignores that it is possible for different folks to like and dislike different things. Just because somebody likes something or does not like something does not mean diddly squat with regard to another...they're free to like and dislike as they find themselves liking and disliking.
Personally, I didn't like the story...I just...didn't care. Not a Voyager fan, so there wasn't any of that kind of attachment to it that others might have had.
That being said though, I found the technical aspects of how the story was woven through everything in the Delta Quadrant (both in Space and on Ground) to have been superbly done up until the last mission. Everything but that, it really impressed how they had worked it all in together - it really stood out the effort they had made there, even if I didn't care about the story - could still give them mad props for the technical aspects. Which also gives me a reason to stick around, should they bring that caliber of storytelling to a future story that does interest. Yeah, I really was that impressed with how they handled that up until the last mission.
The last mission simply felt unfinished/rushed/whatever one might want to call it - toss in all the bugs people are being hit with in it as well, and yeah - it just reeks of being a casualty of a launch date that it wasn't ready for...which is kind of a shame - cause that's a reason not to stay, because it's what Cryptic constantly finds themselves up against - deadlines they can't meet.
But yeah, different folks like different things - so somebody not liking the story isn't doing anything wrong. They just don't like it. Hell, some folks may not even share my appreciation of the technical aspects of the storyweaving that were done...doesn't mean they're doing something wrong either. Different folks and all that...
Fair point and I agree. But I wasn't responding to someone saying they didn't like the story. Instead the person above had said then patrols were boring because you just kill everyone, its all pew pew.
Hence my ignoring (not blocking, just not responding to) the peeps so replied saying variations of "i dont like the choices". Whether or not one likes what the devs made is subjective. Objectively, there is more than pew pew in the patrols. 'Sall I was saying'.
Agreed. From that moment with Neelix onwards, i wanted more if only to give him a very slow, painful drawn out death for his actions.
Could just be that I took what they said differently...
Gaul was definitely a well developed character - consistent but not predictable. Wasn't cliche, campy, melodramatic or any of the things that can ruin a villain. They did an excellent job with a small amount of media...Gaul would have been the kind of villain that could carry a movie.
The mission in question is "Operation Cooperation Conspiracy", part of the "Better With Friends" patrol set, the one that takes place in the Xiokel system. Right off the bat, Ms. Romulan Spy lays out the deal-breaker (details omitted for spoilers, and arguably irrelevant): she wants you to help her lie to your "allies."
Hell no. I'm Starfleet. We don't do that. ("In the Pale Moonlight" being an obvious exception, but that was such a powerful and memorable episode because it went so completely against everything Starfleet and the Federation stands for, acknowledged that, and made that the central conflict. Here, it's simply brushed aside - see below.)
At exactly one point that follows, you get to say, "I won't lie." A few other times, you get the option of saying you don't like this. But whatever you choose, unless you actively quit and skip that entire patrol bundle, your objections are ultimately ignored and the mission proceeds as if you were a willing participant in this deception. At no point are you allowed to come clean with your allies and tell them the whole truth, or shut the whole thing down.
It's Divide et Impera all over again. The only difference this time is that you have a choice of useless protests as you slide down the rails.
I think the last mission really needed one more good plot twist. I think they overestimated (and underplayed) the surprise about Gaul. I think the mission needed a tag like the Kobali Zone. Or, looking to genre movies, like the Marvel "after the credits" scenes or the Joker card in Batman Begins. Something to really say, "Stick around, there's more down the road" beyond just a weird glowing console.
Also, the rewards felt oddly unthematic for a major arc wrap-up.
In general, I'd say replay rewards need to be looked at. If they had the means, I'd almost like some of the alternate story branches to offer alternate rewards. And along with replay rewards, that last mission just feels like it needs something thematic there. A Vaadwaur shuttle? Vaadwaur bridge officer? Full copy of the EMH program as a bridge officer?
Actually, since it seems like we parted ways with the Voyager crew there, I'd almost like to have seen a choice where each Voyager crew member has their own thematic reward they leave us.
Maybe a choice of Borg BO, EMH BO, Talaxian BO, Kobali BO, or a special Vulcan Psi-Master with telepathy. They could have even used the group "unique" approach to make it so that player can only have one active but it would be a great sign that they trust you, to have each of them offer you a protege of theirs for further training.
He really was great, wasn't he?
I like how they swerved on the cliches.
He invites us to dinner. Then his actions from there on, well... They're different from other villains in the game. And then when things go wrong during the infiltration assignment?
I love how he dealt with that. He seemed like a believable leader.
I think the storytelling has graduated to a point where I hope they use Dukat for the next expansion. I'm now convinced that Cryptic has the mastery of the storytelling tools to do him right.
Heck, I think Gaul was good in the episode but his portrayal here may have surpassed his television appearance.