Keep in mind this post is about three new Living Story instances and nothing else.
I enjoyed this update quite a lot. To the point, even, that I’d rather get more Caithe’s backstory than continue the living one, but I guess there’s just gonna be one more instance showing her past, so I’m hoping it will be the best of them all.
I like young Falaoin’s voice acting. Caithe has been my favorite in terms of VA out of all Destiny’s Edge and she doesn’t disappoint here. I think Trahearne could still sound better, it’s not horrible, however. I always thought Marjory sounds too, from the lack of a better word, poetic, but here she’s alright. I’d like her to stay that way.
Now, to be more specific about instances:
The Newly Awakened
One thing I didn’t like was that all male secondborn sounded like Canach, who himself sounds quite grumpy and his voice in no way suited a sylvari that just awakened. Other than that, everything was very well done. Seeing Ceara brought a smile to my face, which doesn’t happen very often in this game.
Meeting the Asura
Ever since I played the Whispers Personal Story instance involving avoiding (I think) Seraph guards that had these rings representing their area of vision, I hoped for more of that, but better designed, because the original one was quite horrible if I remember correctly.
Starting from the good stuff:
- the introduction of stealth mechanics were well done. There’s even a failsafe when you try to take out the first guard from the front. Good job;
- being able to either stealth the instance or norn it;
- dying means resetting the current scenario instead of just randomly respawning somewhere near and THANK GRENTH for that. I actually failed my first attempt at getting to open the door to the boss area and I thought I was going to have to just kill enemies and try to stealth it next time I play it, but (luckily?) I got killed in the process and was very happy I could try stealthy approach again;
- brilliant Vorpp’s voice acting. I want him more. Much more.
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- I think there’s something preventing guards from turning around to look at you if you’re very close to finishing the knockout and that’s a very useful thing.
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Now the bad stuff:
- the golems’ AoE detection sometimes randomly decides it’s bigger than it looks, resulting in unfair detection of the player;
- Caithe knowing how to use asuran consoles. Any explanation on that? I don’t think they would design them the way so that every skritt is able to disable their defenses;
- having to learn all new skillset at once. Part of the instance should focus on slowly getting to know each skill, just like you introduce us to stealth mechanics. I think you placed the two guards at the beginning specifically to make us comfortable with the skills, but not only did it not work in my opinion, considering how small the area is and how many skills are leaps of some kind, leading to player’s fall, but also made the whole infiltration look a bit stupid;
- Falaoin’s “Wait, what?” sounded a bit out of place. Can’t exactly explain why;
- Everything exploded… What the hell was up with that?
Not sure how I feel about Taimi voicing golem messages. I’m assuming you just can’t/don’t want to reach the guy that voiced all other messages and that’s fine by me. It kinda reminds me of turrets from Portal. Also, Trahearne voicing an asura is much better this time. The guy at the Pact base sounds quite funny.
No Refuge
Good:
- this may sound silly, but: the fact you didn’t screw up the ambience by putting random enemies on the way. You could have made Giant Beetles and hyleks aggressive by default, yet you didn’t and I hope it was a conscious decision. It happened many many times in Personal and Living Story (best example being A Light in the Darkness);
- the bossfight is very good. The fact that you can reflect his projectiles makes the fight feel very dynamic, even though the projectiles themselves only deal something around 100 damage each and most of the time don’t do anything to the boss, because he’s invulnerable at that time;
- Falaoin’s “There she goes again!”. I like it because it shows Falaoin’s getting tired of chasing Wynn around;
Bad:
- Rox voicing Nekhii Burnthide. I’m not a fan of Rox at all and I think she doesn’t sound good as a centaur either. Can’t really think of a solution other than having the character be male;
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- The elite skill is overpowered against the boss, or anyone basically, but I have a feeling it’s supposed to be this way, just in case someone has trouble beating these instances.
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Remember that I pointed out only the things I felt were important to note, so if something’s not here, then it was most likely well done or I just forgot about it.
Cheers
(edited by Mathog.3157)