First impressions from an RPG fan

[Just Mordecai]

Hi there! This is a detailed first impressions review that I probably spent a good 90 minutes on writing. I only played the beginning dungeon and explored the first village, but I have a lot to say. I stopped playing there because I didn't enjoy playing the game in its current state, although I do see massive potential here and I’d really like to see it grow and succeed. I'm very much looking forward to playing it once it is released!

I've been playing the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games most of my life, they are my favorite games, and I've been a D&D game master for 3 years, creating my own campaign and world. Dissecting and understanding games in order to understand the fundamentals of what makes them fun and interesting is a sort of fixation of mine. Of course, take my words with a grain of salt, I just want to make it clear how passionate I am about RPGs and that I spend a lot of time thinking about them. My main issue with the game right now is how it is failing to immerse me into the world.

The foundation of my take on this game is as follows: If you're going to make a game with graphics like this, you will need to compensate with three main elements: Gameplay mechanics, sound design, and world-building. Of course, you could just add more graphical fidelity, but I understand that the chosen art style is intentional. Now, when it comes to these three elements, I'd say your strongest is the world-building. There's clearly a lot of effort put into creating an alien-feeling world, similar to that of Morrowind, most of which is revealed through conversation with NPCs. I'm especially impressed with the inclusion of a fictional language, but I would like to see an ability to hover over words spoken by NPCs in order to see a translation and perhaps some context. See Pillars of Eternity 2 for how it can be done.

As I entered the first village, the first thing I did was to walk into peoples' homes and steal all of their belongings. People saw me enter their homes and saw me exit a minute later. Did anyone call me out? Did anyone find it suspicious? Did anyone even realize that their money, books, potions, food and jewelry was gone? Did anyone notice me selling all of these stolen goods to the very traders that inhabit the same small village? No. People’s doors weren't even locked! I even stole all the offerings in the temple right in front of someone who was praying because they weren't tagged by the game as owned by someone. Same thing with a lot of the items laying around in stores! I could just take their stuff right in front of them because the game said it wasn't theft! This is a problem. Even if the idea of locking doors doesn't fit with the lore, there must be some system in place to create an obstacle for players that want to steal. Maybe make certain areas restricted, so people will tell you to leave, or to stay away from certain places. Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Gothic 3 had decent systems in place to combat this issue, I suggest you take inspiration from those games.

Walking into the tavern (if that's what it's called) I immediately lost all sense of immersion. Nobody was sitting at any of the tables, people were standing on objects in the corners, making their entire upper body clip through the building, nobody was cooking in the kitchen or working behind the counter, and everyone was just either standing in place or walking around inside the building, clearly without a single thought running through their heads. Very similar to Morrowind, I must say, but not in a good way. Please take more inspiration from Bethesda (post Oblivion) here and implement more interactivity for NPCs with their environment and give them schedules. You can also look at Red Dead Redemption 2, which also features highly detailed schedules for all NPCs that live in towns.

There was a quest I both started and completed essentially within the same conversation with a farmer, because the game skipped ahead an entire week. This was pretty immersion-breaking for me, I did not like this. What happened during that week? What did my character do during that time? Where did I lay my head down to rest? I don’t have a home! I would recommend you instead have the player come back after a week, or a few days maybe at max, to complete the quest. I would also recommend you add something interesting for the player to do in order to actually complete the quest, like having the player acquire something for the farmer and that the acquisition can be done in many ways. Always remember that quests in a game like this should allow for some creativity or freedom when it comes to how they are resolved, but that there should be no easy solutions. Being a genius in agriculture shouldn't mean I can just tell farmers how to grow their crops and get XP and gold, it should involve some activity for the player that is fun and interesting and that allows the player to interact with the world and its characters to some degree.

In terms of gameplay mechanics, I'd like to mention the combat. I made an assassin character and quickly discovered that I had no defensive maneuvers other than the movement keys. I couldn't block/parry and I couldn't dodge/dash. The fantasy of being an agile rogue was immediately crushed. I couldn’t even hold a torch in my left hand while holding my dagger in my right. I also found the use of throwing weapons a bit unwieldy, in a very physical sense. To use one, I have to press a hotkey, 1-9, but in doing so I have to let go of a movement key. If there was a button specifically for using throwing weapons that I could instead press with one of my thumbs, it would make for a much more comfortable experience, especially since there is no dodge function, making me rely solely on my movement to avoid taking damage.

Now, the sound design is decent, but could be improved. Firstly, just make the master volume knob be at 20 from the beginning. (Also, why is 20 the max number? Just go with 0-100???) Walking around in the village with rain pouring down should convey a certain mood that is VERY different to that of being in the dungeon. I don’t think it’s different enough, and I think the sound design is largely at fault here. First of all, some sounds are much too quiet. The rain was visually POURING, yet it sounded like a soft drizzle. It also broke at some point, making the rain audio loop be played twice at the same time. There was no audio of wind blowing, despite the grass clearly moving, unevenly I might add. Grass on the right side of the dirt path leading to the three-way crossing was moving probably twice as much as the grass on the left side. Speaking of audio that’s simply missing, there is no audio queue for landing after a jump, nor is there one for diving under water. There’s not even that hollow white noise you hear when your ears are submerged IRL. Being in the dungeon would've felt a lot more scary and claustraphobic if the was some omnipresent ambient noise, like in Skyrim and Oblivion.

When it comes to the visual presentation I’d say that there’s room for improvement in three ways. First, I’d like to see Valheim-esque visual effects to make the world look less flat. Or, perhaps look into shading techniques to help compensate for the lack of textures (see Breath of the Wild). Secondly, I think the game needs a serious improvement in performance. I have no idea why a game that looks like this is sometimes running at 60-70 FPS on an RTX 3070ti, 32GB of RAM and an i7 9700K on LOW settings at 1440p. The movement stuttering is also quite annoying. I saw that it was supposed to be fixed in an earlier update, but it’s very much present for me. I’m using a 165hz monitor, so that could be something to look into, I don’t know. I tried turning on V-sync, but that didn’t help. Thirdly, the characters in the game are so lifeless, they could really do with an overhaul, both in how they look and how they act. This ties in with the interactivity and scheduling I mentioned earlier for NPCs. Create more animations for shopkeepers especially so that they’re not standing there like mannequins, staring at you with their tiny eyes you can barely see (even on a 1440p monitor).

Lastly, prepare for a rant about gold. This is certainly a nitpick but I think about this every time I see it in a game. Please consider changing the currency to a COIN with a NAME instead of just calling it "GOLD". Dark Elves in Morrowind called them Drakes, Imperials in Cyrodiil call them Septims. In The Witcher lore we see like 10 different currencies. In Sweden, the currency is called Crowns! In real life, coins have pretty much always been made from alloys, such as electrum (an alloy of silver and gold). Coins serve as an excellent medium for world building too. Where are they minted? Who is producing them? Whose face is on them? What is the significance of the symbols seen on them? Are there older coins with other faces and symbols? Also, if a sword made from steel is worth, say, 300 gold coins... What does that say about the availability of gold as a natural resource? You could smelt those gold coins down and make like three gold bars worth 2000 USD each. None of that adds up!

That's all I had. I hope you actually read this and take my words into consideration. You have the potential for an incredible product here, and I would hate to see the first real attempt at a lower-budget Bethesda title fail.

Thanks :)

[joshcamas]

Thanks for your feedback!