Continuing from before, we are now in a subterrane locale peopled by alien creatures and rogue psy-ops agents, locked inside a decrepit tower, and a yet-unnamed entity resembling a plant of sorts proffers us a cup of tea. Perfectly normal situation. Typical of any friday night in MoonFall.
I decline the cup of tea; “Your loss,” says the entity, “it’s quite good.” Then, in a language I do not understand, it and Isutyr acknowledge each other; she as ‘one of the people’, and it as an ‘elder one’.
These mundane politenesses out of the way, I get to ask a couple of questions. “What are you?” being at the forefront of my mind, so too is it the first one to part my lips. “That,” answers this entity, “I shall not reveal just yet.” La! again with the mysteries laid atop mysteries. But fortunately Isutyr proves knowledgeable and provides a modicum of precision: “It is an elder changeling spirit. A ‘sien of vaul’. I have never seen one before.” To which the entity adds: “Nor will you see one again. I can feel it in the earth… that I am the last of my kind.”
Further into the conversation I learn this entity titles itself Caretaker and Goaler [sic], whose duty bids him keep watch over the valley. But said duty is now coming to its end with the forthcoming arrival of one ‘Princess of the Blood’. And my arrival, too, is fortuitous to such events; I, whom the Caretaker then calls the ‘Herald’.
As to my current questings:
Of course. But despite the Caretaker’s hospitality being limited, hospitality it remains nonetheless; and he proposes to help us… for a price. What price? The tower—his abode—is decrepit, ravaged by the creeping-forth of moss, with stones crumbling from the walls as if flakes of wizened skin sloughing off a leper. “If you can lend a hand,” says the Caretaker, “I’ll see about assisting you on your quest as well.”
(doesn’t that attitude, that proclivity for games, remind you guys of anyone? It sure did for me)
Now here is something I really like:
Yes! Finally! I’ve been waiting since the beginning of the game for this, and was starting to despair it would never surface. This, I think, is the way to go about stat checks; certainly it is my favorite. Present me with the options, and be clear as to what stat or skill or whatever gets checked, but do not tell me in advance if I’m going to pass the check.
Telling me in advance if I’m gonna succeed does a couple of things; one of which I do like, and one of which I do not personally mind one way or the other.
Firstly, the obvious: it robs me of any suspense. Will it work? Will it not? I already know. There’s no wondering, no risk-taking. Though this can potentially be wholly counteracted or partially mitigated by allowing bad outcomes to successes. For example:
– In order to discreetly gain access to some place, you are given the options of bribing a guard with 1000 credits, or seducing him;
– You turn the charm to eleven in order to seduce the guard, and your mission is a success;
– Out of your sight and hear, behind the scene, the guard—now deeply infatuated with you—keeps mentionning you over and over to everyone in his place of work;
– This catches the attention of his boss, your enemy, who after the fact discovers your incursion in his domain;
– Said boss, at some later point in the game, exacts his revenge by ambushing you (and you are obviously taken by surprise, as you thought you had escaped his radar).
Making the 1000 credits bribe the ‘best’ solution, as that would simply have made the guard allow you passage, without causing him to blab incessantly about your person. But this whole concept is a tricky trick to pull in a video game.
Secondly, it can help players into power-gaming the system. If my charisma of 7 has won me every charisma check so far, even some evidently difficult ones, why would I improve my charisma further still, when stat points—a rare commodity—will surely prove more beneficial invested elsewhere. This is not a problem for me as player, given I extremely rarely go the power-gaming route of things; when I play a roleplaying game, I actually roleplay and stats are a mean to do just that. So in the end, whether this aspect of the problem is an issue or a non-issue is dependent on the developer’s point of view. Do you, the dev, want to curtail attempts at power-gaming, for one reason or another? Hide the numbers required for stat checks. Do you not care? Display the numbers.
But moving on. As per the previous screenshot, I try to talk my way out of doing any work:
This, I simultaneously like and dislike, but it certainly doesn’t lower my opinion of Tyranicon in any way. How do you, the character, manage to persuade or begowk such a strange being, whose mind-workings are utterly alien? It is an exceedingly difficult thing to write convincingly without diminishing somewhat the alienness of that being—after all, if he can be reasoned with or tricked as would a human, is he really so different?
So you, the writer, take what I call the ‘italics way’. Surprising yourself, you managed to convince […] As a means to an end, it is what it is: simultaneously brutish and slick. I dislike it, because I always enjoy seeing someone attempt to actually write something convincing; but I also like it, plainly because it does what needs done.
And with that silver-tongued trick, I gain access to the second level of the tower:
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