“This round, you’ve been tasked with baking a Traitor’s Sponge – a rumoured favourite of the Empress. Your ingredients are arrayed in front of you. The usual: flour, eggs, milk, butter… and a small ornate silver box. Inside is a fine, grey-brown powder. This must be… a traitor?”
Gazebos spring up in the centre of London. The smell of cake winds through the streets. The Lady Pockets, alongside her enigmatic butlers, is holding a baking competition – and you’ve been entered as a participant. Never mind that you didn’t apply. Never mind that your rivals are more suspicious than a mouldy macaron, or that nobody will tell you what you’re competing for. If you want answers, you’ll need to stay in the game – so get set and ready to bake.
Alright yeah, that’s definitely an ongoing trend. There’s a lot of ESes recently that feel like they’re 1. kind of giving you a quick summary of FL as it simultaneously showcases the narrative and 2. written in such a way that the character has only one meaningful response but all roads lead to it. I don’t like that. It makes me feel like I have less skin in the game, and in my opinion deprives FL of it’s greatest strength: Creating atmospheric, immersive, character-driven narratives. Contrast that to back when we had Seasons, and the narrative just threw you in the deep end without going “ah yes, these are the Neddy Men, rough-looking sorts who are the minions of Mr. Fires. Now, where did that baker go?” or “You can definitely trust me, me, the character you can trust, oh won’t you just cooperate with me to raise a stat to a certain level so you can unlock the good ending? My ending? Our ending, rather?”.
From a business point of view I can see the intent to make the ESes more accessible to newer players, but I just feel like that deprives them of a lot of the charm that got me into the game in the first place.
Anyway, if I can look past those glaring caveats I can at least say I enjoyed this one more than the last one. It’s no The Waltz that Moved the World, but it’s short, sweet and leaves no bad aftertaste. Like the custard I didn’t make.
I would pay a good amount of echoes to see a replay Mr Fires’ initial reaction to the scheme of Forsythe and Beats-a-Carpet when it was first proposed. Especially the look on their face.
I agree that this story doesn’t really go deep into character or narrative, but given I went and did it before a potentially stressful situation during my day I almost found I enjoyed the shortness and the sweetness. Perhaps if I was in a different state of mind I might’ve wanted more, but as it was the fact I could pretty much intuit what was happening and what the ultimate choice would be and how to accomplish my desired result, as well as the consequences, was a nice boost to confidence and mood.
I also like how given what you as the character do in the story, the flavour text does change ever so slightly, just from other Echoes I’ve seen, even if you pick the same ‘main’ choices. It’s little touches like that which make me appreciate the effort of creating an ES, shows a passion and attention to the world and the agency of the player, even if only in very tiny, inconsequential ways.
I also appreciated the fact you could effectively pause this ES between rounds, rather than being stuck having to see it through to the end, would be immensely helpful for anyone doing it during a busy or time sensitive period in the game where they’d need to get back to the rest of the world proper.
Yes, I really, really appreciated the option to return to the city. I hope all Exceptional Stories going forward will have this. Way too often have I been left at the end of a night with many actions but neither the time nor attention to continue the story, wasting all those actions.
Couldn’t agree more, but I admin that this breaks the narrative and sense of urgency of some ESs.
I too have this problem because I can’t remember the last time I played a full ES in one sitting. But, with old stories at least, the part where you can’t leave is clearly marked and it usually takes less than 40 AP. Enough to approximate the time you need, but it doesn’t enable you to play 1/2 and return later.
But, with old stories at least, the part where you can’t leave is clearly marked and it usually takes less than 40 AP. Enough to approximate the time you need, but it doesn’t enable you to play 1/2 and return later.