Lost Among the Ashes - spoilers

robertlabrie

This whole thread is a review of Lost Among the Ashes spoilers ahead

Just played through Lost Among the Ashes as a stage 1 vamp. Lots of great things here:

• The overall aesthetic of Ashbound Hall was good a mix of spooky and cold harbor
• Lots of trash to fight, some spawned adds
• The coagulants clustered around corpses was a nice touch
• The crater had some cool visuals of a towering castle, added a sense of foreboding

Mechanics

• Boss fight with The Elder was cool, lots of adds, not too hard but not done in 3 seconds either.
• I liked the puzzles for the locks just enough to stop you from pressing E,E,E,E,E but not tedious by resetting every time you made a mistake. Nice job here.
• The Elder did say she was created by molag bal and couldn't be killed by mortals - didn't seem to notice I was a vamp. Did this on Vamp on purpose to see how the NPCs would react.

Of the NPCs

• Azatha was cool, hope to encounter her again
• Liviano was whiny and annoying, cowering like a baby. His betrayal uninteresting, and Sirlionwe one-shot him making the whole thing perfunctory
• Ormard best death line ever "Your desperation will satisfy me. Go away"

Which brings us to

• Sirlionwe seemed bitter and derisive towards Terinvel (before we or she knew he'd betrayed them), just kind of petty and miserable
• Terinvel also very whiny and annoying, childish even with comments about discovering something before Sirlionwe

The pair of them were contemptible and uninteresting, in an otherwise engaging quest and dungeon. Compare to Raynor and Kireth who each have strengths and weaknesses, and equally annoy and respect one another. Or Stibbons and Laurent who are both hilariously clueless. The two from this quest just both came across as petty individuals.

Lastly, Terinvel, bitten by the elder, could have been an interesting opponent in some later DLC but instead Sirlionwe just one-shot him and shrugged it off as "oh well".

Overall not bad but please stop writing these whiny NPCs into the game I find myself detesting them instead of wanting to help them.

Syldras

It's an awesome location and could be a good quest, but I agree that especially Sirilonwe doesn't feel likeable at all. But most of all I dislike about this quest (it was even the one I liked least of the new zone because of that) that the player's agency is taken away - several times. Why do we get dialogue options where we can choose to spare a person, but then Sirilonwe kills the npc nonetheless?! Why give us a choice just to thwart it a second later?! It's frustrating, nothing else.

Aliyavana

one thing i like about sirlonwe is her attitude towards vampires likely hint her to being the same one that appears in tes 3

Arcturus

I enjoyed the quest, but every time I come across a vampire-centric storyline like this, I’m reminded of the gaping wound that was Greymoor and the blatant middle finger that was the vampire rework. Once again, we see NPCs using genuinely cool abilities and in some cases fully transforming, while players were left with nothing more than a Goliath reskin. It still uses your equipped weapon, which results in the character awkwardly sprinting around with an oversized staff or what looks like kitchen knives, paired with lazy, uninspired skills that are barely usable in most situations.

Playing through this quest gave me one of those moments where I genuinely wished I were still playing a vampire like I used to, able to transform into a proper Vampire Lord to stand toe-to-toe with the final boss.

Syldras

Aliyavana wrote: »

one thing i like about sirlonwe is her attitude towards vampires likely hint her to being the same one that appears in tes 3

TES3 Sirilonwe also has a quest in which you're tasked to kill her rival/competitor (who also happens to be a male Dunmer, by the way), so it's very possible that she's supposed to be the same person (or maybe it's just a nod to that older quest). Still doesn't make her likeable, though, and the player's agency is still ignored without us being able to react in any way to that.

Freelancer_ESO

I think with

Syldras wrote: »

It's an awesome location and could be a good quest, but I agree that especially Sirilonwe doesn't feel likeable at all. But most of all I dislike about this quest (it was even the one I liked least of the new zone because of that) that the player's agency is taken away - several times. Why do we get dialogue options where we can choose to spare a person, but then Sirilonwe kills the npc nonetheless?! Why give us a choice just to thwart it a second later?! It's frustrating, nothing else.

Personally, I find it more immersive if you can get overruled occasionally. You probably don't want the approach in the main quests much as some people just do them and just want to be the big epic hero but, I think for side quests it makes the world feel more alive if the npcs along with you have agency and don't always fully differ to your every whim.

Syldras

Freelancer_ESO wrote: »

Personally, I find it more immersive if you can get overruled occasionally. You probably don't want the approach in the main quests much as some people just do them and just want to be the big epic hero but, I think for side quests it makes the world feel more alive if the npcs along with you have agency and don't always fully differ to your every whim.

Is is realistic though that our character can't react in any way on our decision being disregarded? That's what bothers me. If an npc "ally" kills someone we just pardoned, we should be able to react on that. If I had been able to attack Sirilonwe in that situation and kill her, I'd been more okay with it (even if I still think it's a stupid ending; I'm generally not content with us needing to side with Sirilonwe when it's obvious between the lines that her main interest is getting rid of a competitor by murder, while at the same time playing the victim - I can't really see why my character should support her in that as soon as the situation becomes ever clearer).

I think I'd also be less critical if I hadn't gotten the feeling throughout the whole Solstice chapter that we regularly get dialogue choises that in the end doesn't make a difference at all. That's not what I expected from such a system.

emilyhyoyeon

I think I liked Sirilonwe because the character I did this quest with agreed with the choices she would make, as well as the fact that I'm kind of chill with that type of demeanor. Terinvel seemed off to me for the same reasons as OP.

It's funny because, while I didn't think this quest was as objectively well written as the Xor-Hist one for example, I liked it quite a bit overall.

But it wasn't until I saw what other people said about the choices in the quest that now make me kind of sad about it. For one: it's already sucky from the fact that the player's given choices that immediately don't matter, but two: it feels worse for me now knowing that the choices that fit my character well was kind of meaningless.