Faction identity

from Elemental Forums

The factions have zero resonance or interest to me right now.

Here's the extent of my current knowledge:

Empire, bright happy tree huggers. Kingdom, gloomy emo tree choppers.

Different ridiculous hairstyles, different monster friends... a few different buildings, and Death/Life magic. That's about it.

Faction to faction specific differences? Got me. Resoln are extra gloomy and Altar are noble goons I guess?

MoM/MoO/HoMM/AoW all used various sci fi and fantasy tropes to create instant recognition (and it worked). Elemental doesn't have that for me. Come to think of it, GC2 suffered from the same problem.

Fall from Heaven created resonance with a unique backstory and very, very distinct factions that had unique units, spells, mechanics, and identities tightly entwined with their gameplay - necessities for 'selling' a handmade world.

This is much more of a meta-issue than the far more pressing gameplay and technical issues with the beta, but I think it has more far-reaching consequences as far as immersing new players in the game. It affects the writing everywhere, and also quest design, faction specific technology, hero traits, spells, equipment, abilities, and so on.

I've read various descriptions on items, heroes, leaders, quests, and so on, and while the general quality of writing is better than WoM was by far, there's still not much in the game that's making me care about the pre-cataclysm N'ther'qirkians and their blood feud with the Balkinzixes (paraphrased).

The biggest impact the overall story of the Cataclysm has had on the game for me is: 1) Making me hate the amount of boring brown terrain in the game 2) Generating counter-intuitive mechanics like Imbue Champion 3) Making me fight a lot of really boring wildlife in the early game.

Even the civlopedia still has the absurd name of Homonnomnom.

Anyway, just musing. The gameplay/technical side is much more important, but I'd be curious to hear how many people are being 'pulled in' by the FE world as it stands now.

6,488 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I broad terms, I agree with you.

The first couple games have kept my interest, and I feel like there is enough good writing there to keep it from becoming stale right away, but I really do feel that there is not enough variety for it to not become stale quickly.

I too miss the sort of intense variety that FFH2 had. Compared to all the different factions in that game, which not only had completely different playstyles and tech trees, but also very different aesthetics, I feel like FE's two pretty-samish sides just won't be able to hold my attention in the long run, since my favorite thing about these games is exploring the different factions and their playstyles.

That said, I am having fun, a lot of fun in fact. Which is more than I could ever say about WoM. I'm just worried that unlike the games I come back to again and again, I may end up playing FE a handful of times and decide I've played all the ways there are to play and (virtually) shelve it.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Seems like they haven't been daring enough to ditch EWoM's original design entirely. Which, let's just say it, is precisely what should have been done, at least in this and a few other areas of the game. More races were needed, for a start. 

Anyway, there's room for more differentiation before release, a future expansion coming, and mods. It can actually turn out well even in this regard. 

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