Just noticed this in the east ending for Sunless Sea:
"Green-and-gold and glory. This is the last horizon; the one that tempted an emissary, a pawn of the fierce pale thing in darkness. But there is always another horizon. There is a Sunless Sky."
So clearly hints have been around for a bit eh?
edited by tbeaz161 on 10/12/2016
Yep. It’s usually mentioned indirectly as a sea more sunless.
Wasn’t that the lacre-vats under the Bazaar? Have I just been confused?
See, I thought that too! But, no, it turns out that the Sea More Sunless is the Liberation of Night, not the Sundered Sea.
A lesson I hope FB takes from Sunless Sea: Even though their strength is in the stories, you still spend 90% of the time with the rest of the game, so I think it’s really important the core gameplay stands on its own.
The new blog post talks about analyzing which game elements elements worked well and how to improve or replace the ones that didn’t.
I would add my own voice to those concerned about Sunless Skies invalidating Fallen London characters; eclipsing Fallen London, so to speak.
I am also concerned about Sunless Skies over-dispensing in making clear the mysteries of Fallen London relating to bats, space, and other planets; potentially eclipsing it in a second way, as Sunless Skies becomes a superior place to seek out answers and Fallen London becomes small-scale, with mysteries that had once been exclusive to it now laid bare in Skies.
I am thirdly concerned about Sunless Skies’ scale being so much greater than Fallen London’s that actions in Fallen London will feel minuscule and unimportant by comparison; what does this accomplishment or victory on the scale of Fallen London matter, when in Sunless Skies characters are doing things on the scale of the cosmos?
I suppose the correct way to go about this would be to find seven ways Sunless Skies could potentially eclipse Fallen London, but three will have to do.
I too am rather protective of my character and the world she is living in and don’t want it overshadowed or worse overruled by arbitrary canon. That said though, I think that Failbetter is more than aware of these potential problems, and will do all that they can to create an fantastic game full of riveting stories while preserving what is almost certainly their most popular and dedicated game, Fallen London.
I am especially sure of this since I recently read the blog post Alexis made about end-game and Destinies where he goes into that kind of things.
The second issue, of the mysteries of Fallen London being more readily accessible will probably be unavoidable. As the very existence of Judgments, the Great Chain etc. will almost certainly be highly relevant. That said I think that for by far the most part Sunless Sea did an excellent job of continuing tradition and keeping the mysteries there quite discreet, and even better add a lot of new ones independently; some of which have even started to become relevant in Fallen London as well, making the two games supplementing each other rather nicely.
I suppose that there is the risk of the scale of events being eclipsed now that we will be ‘running’ around in the High Wilderness. But to be fair, baring the potential events of the Destinies, Fallen London was never a game of grand schemes and epic consequences. It is a personal journey of discovery mystery etc, and not about shaping the world one way or the other. No choice we make in the game alter the state of the world in it self, all story-lines and Exceptional stories can be played or ignored without affection the presence or state of the various factions of London. The only event to date that have had some larger implications for London have been the recent election, and even here changes are so small that they barely impact the rest of the game. So any game that isn’t a focused journey in the same manner would be grander in scope.
Even Sunless Sea was already much bigger than Fallen London, and you could make large permanent changes to what happened in some ports, or even the entirety of the Neath (albeit often subtly) through enough Supremacy for one faction or the other.
While I can’t help but be guarded with the potential complications that Sunless Skies could bring, I am optimistic that the writers do know what they are doing and will create a game that will add to from the joy and excitement it is to play around in Fallen London, rather than ruin it.
This is an exciting development indeed. Perhaps it will serve as a supplement to Fallen London, or maybe as an unconquered wilderness that we must habituate and colonize. It would be especially cool if we could delegate a colony of some sort and interact with possible natives to test our diplomatic skill. Like Sunless Sea’s Zubmariner, perhaps there’s something above the Sunless Skies?..
I’m not worried about Sunless Sky replacing Fallen London.
I played Sunless Sea before I got into Fallen London. I remember initially finding most of the references to Fallen London’s mysteries to be equally baffling, marvelous, or menacing. It was actually a really cool experience, but it took a while to piece together what was going on. And certain references and mysteries, especially those involving the Masters and the Bazaar, remained utterly incomprehensible until I played Fallen London and got a sense of its street layout, social conflicts, and major personalities. When I did get into Fallen London these interconnections between Fallen London and Sunless Sea ended up enhancing both games, making the shared world feel larger and deeper.
I suspect it’s the same for Exceptional Friends who haven’t played Sunless Sea. For them, the increasing number of Sunless Sea elements in Fallen London’s exceptional stories are no doubt as baffling or mysterious as the many FL references in Sunless Sea. For example, "what the hell is the Dawn Machine?!" seems to be a frequent reoccurring question whenever the New Sequence makes an appearance.
The same dynamic is very much in evidence with Sunless Sea and Sunless Sky. Sunless Sea has given us quite a few glimpses of the High Wilderness, with more being added in Zubmariner. As was the case with Sunless Sea’s glimpses of Fallen London, these images of the High Wilderness do more to raise questions than provide answers.
I’m pretty sure that the same will happen with Sunless Sky and Fallen London. Fallen London’s unique stories, particularly those surrounding the Bazaar, will remain it’s own, and to get the fullest sense of what is really going on you’re going to need to play all three games.
edited by Anne Auclair on 12/9/2016
Gosh darnit, I actually didn’t outright hate the Judgements for one.
So, the Judgement’s judgement has come, ironic innit? My take is on the anarchists, they want to plunge to world in darkness and what a better way of doing so than killing the ones who emit light?
The anarchists want to plunge the world (and universe, presumably) into lawlessness, so killing the Judgements is a requirement.
Possible but…
The end of the Season of Revolutions exceptional story, and Zubmariner in Sunless Sea reveals that the anarchists themselves are either working with or even simply the pawns of something much darker and grander in scope, what is apparently a dark Judgement, a massive black sun. From which it appears that the Revolutionaries powers to turn out light comes from, and even the Liberation of Night, or at least the plan to for it, is mentioned to be far more ancient than the Fifth City anarchist factions.
Gotta admit sunless skies seems not really alluring. I mean yes, the writing will be fantastic again, but it seems more like a cheap copy of sunless sea set in the skies, replacing ships with aircrafts.
I’d much rather have seen sunless sea in another form, expanded a lot more, adding some sort of multiplayer.
Fallen London is a fantastic setting for Roleplay and im still hoping Failbetter Games will explore that niche.
I’d like it if getting good officers was a bit more difficult this time around. In Sunless Sea one ends up rather quickly with a very reliable crew, all professionals in their fields, and the more unusual choices - the chronicler, the deviless - are just useless. I like the idea of a semi-qualified captain steering a ship/train of crewmen of questionable skill, making an actual engineer something the captain really learns to value. Limits to officers would also be nice, since it breaks my immersion somewhat to have a crew of one, supported by 10 officers who don’t eat or drink. More conflict/interaction between crew members would also be nice.
[quote=Yae]Gotta admit sunless skies seems not really alluring. I mean yes, the writing will be fantastic again,
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And that in and off itself will probably be enough for half of us to get the game. The wider mechanics are simple a tool driving that narrative along. Of course, it does not hurt the least if said mechanics are enjoyable as well.
[quote=Yae]but it seems more like a cheap copy of sunless sea set in the skies, replacing ships with aircrafts.
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Correction: replacing ships with trains ;)
Also, the general game mechanics will be the same, but that does not make it a ‘cheap copy’, simply a follow-up in the same genre, and I doubt it will be any cheaper than Sunless Sea.
As someone somewhere said in regards to Sunless Sea, when you spend 90% of the game travelling from one story to another, the gameplay indeed has to be good enough to keep the experience enjoyable. However, FBG seems to be very aware that the mechanics weren’t to everyone’s liking and are using what they learned last time to improve the experience (especially battles should be getting quite an overhaul.) This time, FBG already has Sunless Sea to use as a basis and to learn from, which is why i’m happy with the choice to do a sequel instead of something entirely new - so much work would go into just creating the new game mechanics and have them turn up who knows how well, instead of improving on a tried and tested mechanic.
On another subject, I’d love it if there was an option for more difficult navigation. The sense of feeling “lost” between the beacons of light was always rather dulled for me in SS after learning the map, because I always had a GPS system telling me where exactly I am. An option to turn off the arrow on the map maybe, or instead of a black map that turns blue where you’ve been, just a black map where locations appear as you discover them, so you get a general idea of which way you came to the new area, but no precise way of knowing where you are without using landmarks.
I apologise in advance since I feel like I might be spamming this thread with kooky ideas in the near future, but I’m getting rather excited as the KS draws near. Please tell me to stop when I start a post “Regarding my earlier suggestions 1, 5 and 17…”
If there is one wish of mine, it would be to include something that’s incredibly common in visual novels:
A mark as read function and a text log.
Question - what are the specs going to be?
I run an ancient and decrepit Mac, so knowing whether this will be PC-only is reasonably important.