@aegisaglow: Thanks for letting me know! She hasn’t appeared in my game yet but I’ll look forward to meeting her, at least.
@Siankan: Thanks for taking the time to answer me, I really appreciate it. The longer I played the more I felt that the take away from the game was ‘everyone and everything including the very fabric of the universe is venal, nothing can ever be made better and every attempt to improve things is doomed not only to fail but also probably to make things worse’. Which, yeah. Not a philosophy I agree with in any way & certainly not something I associated with Failbetter’s previous works. I don’t even like horror - what drew me to FL was the fun, the wonder, the mystery and the humour. My favourite stories were following Salt, getting the Noman tattoo, the Passion destiny, that sort of thing. It really doesn’t help that there’s so little humour or lightness in Skies, just a huge void full of Very Spooky Deadly Serious Things With Existential Tentacles. I think I’ve laughed once in 10+ hours of play.
Please forgive the lack of SPOILER tags for what follows - I’m on mobile & they don’t seem to work.
I’ve always helped the Tacketies - seeing more homesteads in the Reach was nice, but there isn’t much in the way of actual story there - I’d have loved it, for example, if reaching a certain threshold with your chosen faction triggered a story where you were asked to undertake a special mission to strike a decisive blow against your enemy (eg ‘take down Windward Executive, either by exposing his corruption to London or by blowing up his factory’) which in turn leads to the change in the Reach’s geography. I mean, I don’t need my captain to be the star of every story but it felt weird to be beloved just because I told the tacketies ‘the circus is cool, lustrum is cold’ a bunch of times.
Repairing the circus was nice but not particularly affecting, hopefully Titania will be more involved. I like the New Line in principle but so far there hasn’t been much actual story there either - I’ve only smuggled 3 people so far, so I’m hoping it will lead to something more. The Albion work world story was just relentlessly dreary & particularly rotten given that I’m their MP, but apparently can’t enact any laws to help them. Unions! They’re a thing!
I’ve only finished the Rat, Signalman & Driver officer stories so far - I’ve promoted the Devil but I’m assuming there’s more to come. I’m a bit disturbed that you can jettison the Conductor whenever but there’s no option to dump the Princess after you witness her set a bunch of people on fire (really not something I wanted to read, incidentally) but I’m glad to hear there’s a way to keep her from doing more harm.
Well, I own the game, so I’ll probably persist with it a bit longer, at least for long enough to see the last region. I think it’s probably going to be the end of my interest in FL-related things though, which is a bit sad.
edited by Màiread on 2/10/2019