This post will surely contain some spoilers, just so you know.
I finally completed what I feel was a great one-captain run of Sunless Skies. I discovered every port, ate some crew, communed with a fluke, went half-mad, clawed my way back from the verge of death after spending a year looking out at the Avid Horizon, dated a devil & looked inside some surprisingly rewarding rat-owned strongboxes. Through it all I wrote my song of the sky (a beautifully written quest in itself) & upon finally finishing was excited both at my own success & at the prospect of starting a new character, to explore this world over again & make different choices, chart different courses.
Then I did. It took about three minutes to die.
Not because of any hostility or loss. I started with a full bank and a gleaming devil-made locomotive. Not because I got lost either, as nothing had moved & the entire map was already revealed. My death was a far more depressing & insidious one.
The death of excitement.
The excitement of bringing a captain up from nearly nothing & making them something of note. The excitement of setting off into the hungry, empty sky & finding those scattered ports, forging paths & finding the best routes. The excitement of fighting for survival with a random tackety scout or fleeing a scrive-spinster.
With how much of my previous captain’s life & possessions & chart were carried over, I didn’t have to do any of these things. But… these things make up the entirety of the non-text portion of the game! Sunless Sea’s legacies gave you hard choices to make on what portions of stats & equipment you could carry over, tied mechanical & monetary carry-overs to in-character actions with the house & your heirlooms. You got a little better, a little more experienced, a little quicker to start with every character in a lineage. Now it seems I complete an ambition & just keep… everything. Except the thrill, uncertainty & exploration that draws me to the game in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong, Sunless Skies is shaping up to be an incredible game. I thoroughly enjoyed my playthrough. But with Sunless Seas I enjoyed the next twenty playthroughs after that as well, & I find it pretty disappointing that I don’t seem to have the chance to experience that now. It seems, quite literally, all-or-nothing - keep everything & have a rather hollow experience or lose everything by making an entirely new character & lose any of the achievements & unlocked deeds of my previous captain.
Am I reading this right? Am I the only one who feels this? Is the system of inheritance working as intended, or was this some bug? it seems so at odds with the spirit of exploring the unknown that the game is built on.