Honestly, as someone with no vested interest in freeing the Immanent but a MUCH bigger contempt for the contrived morality choice between breaking the Shepherd’s faith and continuing the rites of the Illuminated? No seriously why should I be invested at all in this Starved superstition I literally just ran into, shortly after the Starved Men tried to annihilate London with sunlight, every moment the story was trying to portray the rites and beliefs surrounding the Hollow as some kind of momentous glory reminded me of Fallout 3 trying to tell the player that it was “destiny” to die walking into a room full of radiation for the sake of people with nothing but contempt for you, and even though you have mutant/robot friends who could do it safely.
I have decided I freed it because b-gger Vulgates, and b-gger the Illuminated. I hope he exceeds all their expectations.
Are qualities like regard of the dawnseeker and a dream of summer not displayed anywhere? Kinda screwed me up. Thought I must not have any of either, so I increased the wrong one.
I can’t say I understood this chapter fully, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I’m still not sure I made the right choices with regards to the Shepherd… it’s very cool to see him fused with the Immanent, and he seemed happy with the outcome, but I really hope some of my friend remains. I also am not really sure whether I’m on-board with the goals of the Immanent with regards to the Apocrypha and Vulgate, but I suppose we’ll have time to talk about that later.
The only thing that disappointed me slightly was that there wasn’t even a token Light Fingers reference when I was caring for the Moon-Miser. My literal child is one of them - surely that should affect something when I’m caring for one.
It pains me to say this, but after being subjected to a torrent of cryptic verbiage in Zenith, I no longer believe Firmament is salvageable. I just want to get it over with so we can move on to a new, more intelligible story—hopefully penned by a different writer.
I was wondering that as Firmament content progresses along, surely it’s only a matter of time before you encounter those Koloman Republic Surface denizens?
Remember, they arrived from the Cumean Canal to participate in the Sixth Coil Games.
I also believe that your choices throughout Firmament will affect your reputation the four accompanying NPCs: the Duchess, the Shepherd, the Smoking Pilot and Summer. Which should also culminate in some event or reward or vanity quality at the end. I’m reminded of picking between the three rivalling factions throughout the process of when constructing the Railway.
You know, it’s funny. I feel I agree with you in objective terms, but subjectively I’m enjoying the glimpses of High Wilderness politicking to have as negative a reaction. Don’t get me wrong, the story is absolutely a mess, it’s just that I’m more here for the sights than the story itself.
I’d just like to say, without judging anyone, that this reaction on the official forums is very surprising to me. I’ve been playing a while, seen a lot of ESes and seasonal events come and go, and I’ve seldom (I am suddenly reminded of Fading to a Coda, and a certain Growling Radical) seen a reaction this negative (granted, I wasn’t here for the election discussions that I hear got…heated). I’ve always thought I’m quite critical compared to most forumgoers here, so I was just surprised someone else disliked the thing of the moment more than me for once.
Beyond the “it’s overly cryptic/obtuse” complaint, which is true, I just don’t find the prose enjoyable to read, sentence by sentence. It takes itself very seriously, mostly lacking the element of comedy that is integral to FL’s DNA; on the other hand, the elevated diction and sometimes genuinely beautiful imagery and metaphors clash unpleasantly with clunky syntax and glaring typos and mispunctuations. It’s harder to paper over this stuff when you’re also trying to be Milton.
This installment does seem to have been somewhat more thoroughly copy-edited than previous chapters, but even if all the typos were fixed the author’s choices with regard to sentence structure, rhythm, and tone still continually rub me the wrong way.
The style reminds me very strongly of some of my least favourite ESes. I don’t think we know for sure which authors are responsible for the bulk of the writing in Firmament, do we? At the same time, I wouldn’t want things to devolve into a pile-on of any individual person, so maybe it’s better we don’t know for sure.
Can you elaborate what is especially cryptic about this story? I find it relatively clear for endgame content, especially for those who played SSkies and summer festival about pew pew lazor. And I don’t even played final parts of Light Fingers and Upwards, people with that knowledge are probably feel even more familiar with the Roof.
I don’t like two things about this story:
Companions. I still have no idea why the hell they are here except as plot device. I never chose for them to accompany me and I don’t see why I can’t fire them, Or fire at them.
There is not much of gameplay. Yeah, stories are fine, but usually 2 days after release it’s over. Can we get some long term goals please? Maybe some vanity hardcore achievements?
“Expect the full fourth chapter of Firmament to launch in January; in November, we’re planning a smaller addition to existing Roof areas, without a full story chapter. More details on the exact shape of this to come.”
I don’t think the everyday roof stuff is the part that is considered overly cryptic. The locations have clear distinguishable themes and each represent interesting different facettes of the roof. The things that I recon are supposably overly cryptic are everything Vulgate (starting from Hallows Throat), Naples in a Whale, the High Sanctum. And it’s not about the core concepts of what’s told, but about how it’s told (at least for me). I got a better grasp on the high sancta from sneaking into it, than from experiencing the story there. I have not played Sunless Skies, but if it’s required reading, I think the delivery failed. It just shouldn’t be.
I get what you mean and I see it. And I am fine with it. They are part of the plot, we are the protagonist in. I didn’t care for the Youthful Naturalist and I don’t think many players thought becoming a railway magnate was their characters prime goal, but they are serviceable shuttles to move the player through the story. I think the Companions here work fine for that as well. And there are some cute vignettes that really connected with me (and my character). I do feel we lack a Chewbacca and it’s unclear which of the Last Duchesses retainers is R2D2 and which is C3PO, though.
Yeah. I did not experience the railway on release, but the new stations were hot back then, right?
I did experience Evolution on release and the lack of things to do was more pronounced then in my opinion. There are things to do in Firmament, there just aren’t things to do them for. Sure, we can efficiently grind hundreds of thousands Stuivers, but what for? You got a point. I do enjoy my weekly sneak into the High Sancta. And I recently started doing Ecdysis again, though that system needs some defrustrating… But we miss long term targets to aim for.
Railway progress was interwined with final chapters for Ambitions, addition of Parabola, stat Gains story lines, advanced stats introduction, bone market and other new systems. Also half-vanity grinds like Poet-Laureate, Twilit Smuggler, etc. With pretty optimized playstyle I had like 1/3 of the time to progress, 2/3 for free roam / vanity grinds. Nowaydays we have one chapter in 3-4 months, maybe some new content in festivals, so it’s say 6 days in each 3 months. So the stream of free content winded down nearly 5 times compared to 10th anniversary.
Maybe they are working on next game. Hopefully not date-sim again.
Speaking of future games-I know FB generally doesn’t like to double-dip in a specific setting, but I’d kill to see Skies’ setting expanded some more. Whether through a sequel set in Ambition: Truth’s future, or just as a Seven Against Nidah-style DLC to the base game.
I just want more eldritch celestial Great Game shenanigans, dammit.
I wouldn’t say anything was particularly “cryptic.” All the cosmic stuff made sense to me, even if I don’t always make the connection to any specific lore figures that might be alluded to.
Sometimes, however, I found it a little unclear on what was literally being described. The prose is sometimes too impressionistic where it should be descriptive.
I still don’t understand what was happening or what I did. That’s very frustrating. I’m also annoyed that it seems I lied to the Shepard about the fate of the misers.
It feels like something monstrously evil was going on, but I can’t tell by whom, and worse, if I contributed to it. That alone makes me wish I could go back and not free the damn thing.
I was so frustrated that I just wanted it to be over with. I think that led to a mistake.
Does sneaking into the High Sancta result in loss of dangerous? Just checking because I need to avoid this. (It is a spoiler to explain why, but those who know will, um, know…)
No stat loss that I’ve seen, the only consequence is somewhat annoying Menace cards that follow you around to a lot of places. Time your entry close to Time the Healer.