Will the story ever be TOLD to us?

[BOXman]

Always wondered how the devs expect the player to learn about the story from each level.
Do they expect us to finish off all suspects and just roam the map looking for lore?
Or painstakingly connect dots and small pieces of text or items from multiple maps so we can have the full story?

This all sounds horribly unintuitive. I hope there will be plans to add actual storytelling to the game.

[Honnes G.]

There's not really a story in RoN in a traditional sense. In essence it's a few small connected events that are teased to lead somewhere at the very end of the game.

You find CP in one map, next map you find who's making the CP, next map you find who's commissioning the CP. The end.

You fight a cult of crazy women, if you look at the evidence required to report, you find out why they're nuts. The end.

You fight terrorists in a nightclub, you fight same terrorists in a hospital after the nightclub. The end.

You find clues to a human trafficking ring, you find human trafficking operation, is FISA involved somehow? Cue cliffhanger. The end, for real this time.

No characters change during the game, there's no growth, no conflicts of interest, no character motives, no backstories, and no monologing evil guy. Your character. Judge, is just a completely blank slate with no opinions or emotions, so it's more about how you personally react to things you see. Is there anything wrong about that? Not necessarily, but if you were looking for any of the aforementioned narrative beats, you won't find them except in a minute-long exchange at the very end.

p.s. I forgot an entire other mini-story: the politics bad one. You fight military veterans. Turns out they're not a big fan of the government. The government is pretty corrupt, allegedly. The end. But it's a little easier to empathize with than, say, the CP guys, so.

[Orsa Torsa]

yea i agree storytelling in the game is hard to understand however with the absurd amount of hours i have eventually grasped the reasoning for why each group does what they do either way now its just a kill em up for me now

[BOXman]

Still, I find it odd that they put so much effort into the environmental storytelling and not actually tell us the story. I saw a youtube video where they detailed the story of the vets. And it felt so asinine to hide it. Because I found it to be very interesting.

[NorthernLight]

The Briefing and the information on the tablet is more than enough lore for each mission if you are looking for story in this game and the amount of detail and backstory for each mission is actually really impressive!

Connect the dots yourself, head cannon in these games is what makes it even better. No one's trying to spoon feed you with an overarching connective tissue through the games narrative. Feels more of a mature sim the way it is.

Press the play button on the tablet, and listen to while you gear up. It is all voiced too, there's more than enough story.

[ureaditwrong]

Gee I hope not, because right now, the story feels deeper than it actually is. I once asked how Sins of the Father factored into the story thinking that the senator was somehow connected to the chomo ring or the veterans via hard to see evidence in a previous level, but people told me it was actually just a one off mission, which makes sense seeing as how the suspects are much different from the rest.

The entire story being explained would just be narrative blue balls.

[GOJIRA]

Originally posted by Honnes G.:

There's not really a story in RoN in a traditional sense. In essence it's a few small connected events that are teased to lead somewhere at the very end of the game.

You find CP in one map, next map you find who's making the CP, next map you find who's commissioning the CP. The end.

You fight a cult of crazy women, if you look at the evidence required to report, you find out why they're nuts. The end.

You fight terrorists in a nightclub, you fight same terrorists in a hospital after the nightclub. The end.

You find clues to a human trafficking ring, you find human trafficking operation, is FISA involved somehow? Cue cliffhanger. The end, for real this time.

No characters change during the game, there's no growth, no conflicts of interest, no character motives, no backstories, and no monologing evil guy. Your character. Judge, is just a completely blank slate with no opinions or emotions, so it's more about how you personally react to things you see. Is there anything wrong about that? Not necessarily, but if you were looking for any of the aforementioned narrative beats, you won't find them except in a minute-long exchange at the very end.

p.s. I forgot an entire other mini-story: the politics bad one. You fight military veterans. Turns out they're not a big fan of the government. The government is pretty corrupt, allegedly. The end. But it's a little easier to empathize with than, say, the CP guys, so.

Isn't there like an underlying (almost supernatural) - like storyline (tied with each story you just listed) that heavily involves YOU.

Like the hermit is someone YOU replaced, job-wise. Which involves brainwashing, illuminati, strings being pulled by your superiors and that you're also following in the footsteps of said hermit? -- Across the maps you play it seems like there was supposed to be a storyline about YOU as the player etc.

[Honnes G.]

Originally posted by GOJIRA:

1. Even if true (true as in not scrapped in early access which it may have been) none of this changes OP's feedback because none of this has any bearing on the game, at all and as the game currently stands has no significance outside of the Ridgeline level, similar to how none of the other stories have an impact off the maps they take place on.

2. If a deeper more traditional story was planned (not saying it was) they did an awful job of it. After a year hiatus of no updates, the story itself went absolutely nowhere. Career mode was, at best, severely overhyped, and pre-existing content was cut rather than worked on for the sake of "narrative continuity" and "realism." But how RoN tells its story today is the same as how it told the story in early access, just fancier, with the voiced 911 calls and the briefings which, as advertised, exposition dump the Six Ws of storytelling to you as to why the level is happening.
But as I mentioned before this still has no impact to Judge learning, feeling, changing or evolving as a character in any way except at the end where we squeeze in a minute-long conflict between two characters, one who's never spoken up before and one we've never seen known or heard from otherwise.

[Matiorasu_TTV]

You don't understand environmental storytelling. It's extremely easy to piece together what's going on using just the briefings and the level itself.

If you want to take a fine-tooth comb through this game, it's rewarding, and gives you more precise narrative drops that definitely serve the story, but none of them are absolutely mandatory to understand what's happening.

[Wolfenburg]

There is an evidence locker that has items from the missions that more or less tells any story there is to be told