Warhawke_80 wrote: »I'm enjoying the expansion... I look at it like this, there are a lot of older TSR (That's who owned D&D before WoTC) writers working on this game...so it's not going to be King Lear, it's going to be your Basic AD&D module...and that's cool.
.... and Before anyone brings up BG III that is some of the most cringiest dialog I have ever heard that game is flying off the shelves because of the "Private Scenes" not for the Nobel Laurette writing...which is creepy.....so...creepy
Frogmother wrote: »I'm quite at the beginning of the main story and did some sidequests, the writing is a lot better than blackwood or high isle. There is still room for improvement but I did not feel like an idiot while playing. something I cant say about the previous two addons.
Warhawke_80 wrote: »I'm enjoying the expansion... I look at it like this, there are a lot of older TSR (That's who owned D&D before WoTC) writers working on this game...so it's not going to be King Lear, it's going to be your Basic AD&D module...and that's cool.
.... and Before anyone brings up BG III that is some of the most cringiest dialog I have ever heard that game is flying off the shelves because of the "Private Scenes" not for the Nobel Laurette writing...which is creepy.....so...creepy
Er, no. That's not why BG3 is incredibly popular at all. Cool take, though.
I absolutely disagree. Necrom is the best content story wise ESO has ever had in my opinion. And I’ve done every single story content in ESO
MerguezMan wrote: »Necrom storyline (honest version)Hermaeus Mora chooses you as his "agent" because you have a plot armor that prevents any madness afflictions, and/or because all those hits you took to the head make you instantly forget what you just heard, which is rather nice for keeping secrets a secret.
Some random outcast daedra is not tied to any known realm and has no memory of his past except a weird dream he is having repeatedly. A wet dream with tentacles, involving Mora, Peiryite, and Vaermina. I won't judge other people's fantasies.
This daedra is pretty sure Mora stole some memories, and allies with Peiryite and Vaermina to get those memories back directly from Mora in his own realm.
After a full-on daedric invasion of the Telvanni Peninsula, the opening of 2 portals that lead directly to Apocrypha in the middle of Necrom city, and absolutely no reaction of any member of the Tribunal, you get to chase the outcast daedra in Apocrypha.
For some reason, the outcast daedra also has a plot armor, and cannot be seen by Mora.
Peiryite and Vaermina have indirectly corrupted the energies that bond Mora to his own realm, so he is somewhat on sick leave and is waiting for you to fix things. The stolen memories do exist in 3 hidden places of Apocrypha, Mora clearly tells you that each part of the memory unlocked is a threat to the future of existence: if your ennemies succeed, it's endgame.
You consistently fail your main mission of keeping the secret memories locked, 3 times in a row. Mora will tell you it's not the end, but might be the begginning of the end, which can still somewhat be avoided if you buy next year's chapter. It is still not clear at which point things will be messed up enough to definitely end things.
Vaermina tries to take advantage of the situation, but the outcast daedra has the memories he was seeking for, and helps you stop Vaermina before he completely destroys Apocrypha. So in the end you saved Apocrypha, but did not stop the threat to all that exist. You get congratulations at a party where you meet all the NPCs that gave you quests, no drinks or dancing allowed, they just stand in the same room, idle.
We finally have confirmation from Mora, that he made everyone forget another daedric prince existed. Ithelia has been erased from history, as Mora considered his ability to control fate was a too big threat for everything,
For some reason, Ithelia was not able to stop Mora, nor other daedric princes were able to prevent Mora erasing their memories, so we have hope we might again use the plot hole power to save the day.
In terms of writing quality, I'd put Necrom above Greymoor, Blackwood, and High Isle.
After put that way, I can’t help but change my opinion on the expansion.
SithisKhajitiiLamae wrote: »Poor Writing in video games dont bother me.
Im not reading a book.
Im playing a video game where the focus is the gameplay so I judge eso on that.
In that regard eso is a 9/10 for me.
As for the writing i have only done the original main quest line and necrom's so I will give my opinion on those two.
Main Quest:
Pros:
Molag Bal is the big bad which I wanted since skyrim.
Abnur Tharn is a great character and i love the voice acting.
Cons:
Lyris immediately calls us her friend after breaks us out of jail. Really weird.
Our allies except Abnur Tharn treats us like the second coming of Ahkatosh and it comes off as extremely creepy.
Didn't keep my interest beyond the soul magic skill line unlocks.
The premise of the quest hurt my roleplay extensively. How am i supposed to go explore Auridon and gather mats when the world is ending?
4/10
Necrom:
Pros:
It kept my interest and the characters where better than the original Five Companions because they all had vastly different personalities and didn't automatically treat me like an accomplished hero when all I did was get out of the character creator.
Premise helped my roleplay a lot. Now I can do anything in the game before the story because its fate.
Cons:
The 9 quests while interesting where to cluttered in dialogue.
Hermaeus Mora still talks slower than a melting glacier
The budding romance should have been fleshed out more.
10/10
SithisKhajitiiLamae wrote: »[Main Quest] Cons:
Lyris immediately calls us her friend after breaks us out of jail. Really weird.
Our allies except Abnur Tharn treats us like the second coming of Ahkatosh and it comes off as extremely creepy.
Didn't keep my interest beyond the soul magic skill line unlocks.
The premise of the quest hurt my roleplay extensively. How am i supposed to go explore Auridon and gather mats when the world is ending?
MerguezMan wrote: »In terms of writing quality, I'd put Necrom above Greymoor, Blackwood, and High Isle.After put that way, I can’t help but change my opinion on the expansion.
I could write an honest version of Greymoor, Blackwood and High isle storylines, and you'd see they're far behind the writing quality of the base game main story, Murkmire, or even Gold Coast.
All 3 chapters have almost the same issues:
- end of the world threat that is being totally ignored by the rest of the world, and especially by the most appropriate beings to deal with the matter and that should be concerned.
- super-potent powers that cannot be ignored when used but went totally forgotten until then, and that nobody will ever use again (remember ESO is a prequel, so ...).
- uni-directional characters that do questionable things but noone cares because they are on our side, and evil plans that go against their own interests because they are evil anyway.
Greymoor has one of the silliest villains I've seen in a while.
Blackwood hits hard nonsense with the counter-productive concept of "Ambitions".
High Isle is a totally demented version of how to manage peace negociations.
MerguezMan wrote: »In terms of writing quality, I'd put Necrom above Greymoor, Blackwood, and High Isle.After put that way, I can’t help but change my opinion on the expansion.
I could write an honest version of Greymoor, Blackwood and High isle storylines, and you'd see they're far behind the writing quality of the base game main story, Murkmire, or even Gold Coast.
All 3 chapters have almost the same issues:
- end of the world threat that is being totally ignored by the rest of the world, and especially by the most appropriate beings to deal with the matter and that should be concerned.
- super-potent powers that cannot be ignored when used but went totally forgotten until then, and that nobody will ever use again (remember ESO is a prequel, so ...).
- uni-directional characters that do questionable things but noone cares because they are on our side, and evil plans that go against their own interests because they are evil anyway.
Greymoor has one of the silliest villains I've seen in a while.
Blackwood hits hard nonsense with the counter-productive concept of "Ambitions".
High Isle is a totally demented version of how to manage peace negociations.
High Isle could've been something really cool. Visually and thematically, it's one of my favorites. Story wise, just fell flat. I'd honestly says it's the weakest story they've put out.
They had so many opportunities to come up with a captivating story, all the elements were there. The noble houses, the druid clans, the mixed race heritage of Bretons - but none of that was realized in any fascinating way for me. I find with this game, I like elements of most of its stories, I just don't like some of the delivery. High Isle especially suffered from some pacing problems and I feel like there were just too many ideas in the story. They were good ideas that didn't get time to breathe.
And you're right, I will never understand how the peace negotiations thing made any sense either. Like these people are at war with each other and now they're stuck in a room chatting like old friends on a Saturday morning sitcom. How did they get to that point?
Agreed, on Greymoor. It's only saving grace is Antiquities. Markarth was at least some redemption to that story arc, and it had some good side quests too.
Blackwood is only mildly better than High Isle and Greymoor. Again, really strong elements. I liked the ideas of the longhouse emperors and the promise of evil bargains and falling empires. Cool stuff. I liked the idea of the ambitions. I really like BDV and Dread Cellar too. Fargrave was a promising setting too. But then we get Eveli. We get the totally obvious daedra that betrays the Ambitions. Some of that I could live with. For me, Blackwood really fell apart at the ending.
Necrotech_Master wrote: »the original story made a lot more sense when the tutorial was the wailing prison, and you slowly built up the quests (since it only gave them to you every 10 levels) because at the end of each quest they are like "we need time to find where we need to go" and it is much more jarring story wise that you are contacted when you walk 50 ft from the harborage that the next step is ready
once they changed the tutorial, and giving out the harborage quests immediately, it doesnt have the same impact it used to
Warhawke_80 wrote: »
YstradClud wrote: »Warhawke_80 wrote: »
Orsinium is still my favourite main story plot by far as well.
I really do hope that ZOS doesn't take High Isle's lack of popularity as an indication that they should go back to end-of-the-world storylines. Personally, I'm so tired of every questline being about something that could end Nirn, especially when this game is SUPPOSEDLY meant to take place within a single year.
I much prefer storylines that are more locally focused and character-driven. I think to this day my favourite questline is the Thieves Guild questline. Wrothgar was also pretty good, but there's something about the TG story that sold me on it. Dark Brotherhood was also pretty good.
I've not yet played High Isle (want to finish a couple other zones before getting started on it), but when the promotion material said it was about the Alliance War and NOT an end of the world crisis I nearly danced with joy. The Alliance War is a huge conflict ripe for engaging stories, as well as endless political intrigue a-la Game of Thrones). You don't need the world to be ending to make an engaging story/questline, you just need good writing.
High Isle started off cool, but didn't end well.
https://youtu.be/XaI-EOVpDvo?si=2uz5IK0591TgJf3bYstradClud wrote: »High Isle started off cool, but didn't end well.
The ending was nothing that I expected and actually made me take a break from the game for a while but the build up and release was very good imo. You only have to look at the views on the cinematics to see how many people were taking an interest in game. Three million views for the announcement trailer and five million views for the release trailer.https://youtu.be/XaI-EOVpDvo?si=2uz5IK0591TgJf3b
Warhawke_80 wrote: »Warhawke_80 wrote: »I'm enjoying the expansion... I look at it like this, there are a lot of older TSR (That's who owned D&D before WoTC) writers working on this game...so it's not going to be King Lear, it's going to be your Basic AD&D module...and that's cool.
.... and Before anyone brings up BG III that is some of the most cringiest dialog I have ever heard that game is flying off the shelves because of the "Private Scenes" not for the Nobel Laurette writing...which is creepy.....so...creepy
Er, no. That's not why BG3 is incredibly popular at all. Cool take, though.
/*Looks at all the news articles and YouTubes videos
Necrotech_Master wrote: »
the original story made a lot more sense when the tutorial was the wailing prison, and you slowly built up the quests (since it only gave them to you every 10 levels) because at the end of each quest they are like "we need time to find where we need to go" and it is much more jarring story wise that you are contacted when you walk 50 ft from the harborage that the next step is ready
initially when you started the game, you started with your soul being stolen by molag bal, and your main goal in the game was to get it back
once they changed the tutorial, and giving out the harborage quests immediately, it doesnt have the same impact it used to