Thoughts from a 8 year Fallen London Veteran. (Spoilers)

[Mr. Zone]

Ahoy Failbetter!

I've been playing Sunless Sea, Fallen London, and Sunless Skies since 2014 and pledged at the Cartographer level for Mask of the Rose. I've enjoyed exceptional tales, seen wonders and horrors at the far reaches of the earth and heavens, have both unmarked card decks, occasionally sport my Knife and Candle shirt, and estimate I'm a month away from the Paramount Presence accolade.

This is where things become difficult for me; Mask of the Rose writing doesn't feel like it fits the rest of the Fallen London universe.

I've been trying to figure out why that is and here are my current thoughts.

Overstated, under-delivered
Fallen London frequently understates dramatic or unusual events and the characters take it in their stride while the text implies many happenings should simply be regarded as common unremarkable occurrences. Mask of the Rose begins by exploring the Neath from the perspectives of newcomers which can be frustrating as the initial story has us investigating relatively normal human characters that practically drop Easter egg type references to all the genuinely interesting things the neath has to offer.

Perhaps an attempt is being made not to overwhelm newcomers but the lore drip feeding isn't the right balance. I love the unanswered questions, unexplained events, and speculative aspects of Fallen London and would say it's half of what drew me in.

Telling over showing
Talking mice, a basement tentacle, possibly the vake, nightmares blending with reality, and more are mentioned but the only big event we somewhat see is when we reflect on London being stolen by bats. In fact, the bats seemed to be the only living moving thing in the game world and I was outright excited by the few spontaneous bats in the background after meeting Mr. Pages. The main highlight of a visual novel over typical Fallen London is the VISUAL aspect and seeing so little is terribly disappointing.

Soap Opera Vibes
The way every character jumps into the frame and slides to the left when character X enters stage right feels organized like a puppet show. It's as though everyone stands around waiting to talk to someone else then gossip whereas other Failbetter games frequently imply that your entrance is lucky to be noticed while characters are struggling with more important matters like being eaten by plants or hiding the screaming cutlery.

This is largely in part to what a visual novel is but moments like the music triggering and Griz sliding left when Archie first appears feel jarringly unnatural. It's fine from a technical standpoint but stiff and awkward from an outsiders perspective.

Bland Characters
The intrigue and humor feel sparse. So much of the dialogue feels like it serves the purpose of getting us from point A to B that I'm left recalling nothing of what makes any of the characters personalities unique apart from Mr. Pages and his bountificatious vocabulocutions.

They all feel so safe which leaves me apathetic. I don't love or hate any of them. Their positive and negative traits need to shine through. Backstory and accent alone do not a character make.

It's not creepy, foreboding, or even campy
The world on whole feels subdued. The thick atmosphere of Sunless Skies or Sunless Sea isn't here because the rich soundscape and threat are missing. Something needed to pull me in and immerse me. The effects and artwork are good but the music, background noises, and writing could do so much more.

In Fallen London my current view is literally three eyeless skull cards and a silhouette of the shuttered palace with the words "OMNIS TRADVCTOR TRADITOR" which is incredibly bizarre, creepy, mysterious, and thought provoking.

Minimal player agency
My engagement with the game world involves choosing a few places to go each day and selecting a few dialogue boxes. It's hard to tell how much (if at all) my choices are affecting things, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in this case it's hard to tell how much progress I'm making towards any of my goals apart from the pennies I earned.

When the demo suddenly ended and the "conspiracy" board popped up I was very confused and when I clicked to try and change something, Mr. Pages told me I somehow did a poor job of putting the pieces together which I wasn't even aware had been happening.

The worst dialogue trees in gaming always involve going down a checklist of questions because it doesn't resemble natural conversation or take us by surprise. This may be the real problem I'm facing since the text in other Failbetter games is normally full of flavorful descriptions and choices while most of the text here is reading a back and forth that I have minimal choice in.

There's no present risk to... anything really. This may be a shortcoming of the demo not allowing the stories to fully unfold but my only motivation is what I think will cause the most interesting reactions rather than any fear of saying the wrong thing or making the wrong choice.

"The book was better than the movie"
Some of my problems with the demo may be in comparing a experiential version of the Fallen London world with the version I had created in my head.

Ultimately I will play and enjoy Mask of the Rose when it is released regardless of anything mentioned here. I want it to be the best it can be because the Fallen London universe is unlike anything else I've encountered and so far the demo has fallen shy of my high expectations.

My love to the whole Failbetter team, best of luck with everything!

[frank]

You raise some good points. I only played a bit of the demo (didn't realise I was going to lose progress when I quit), but it definitely struck me that the tone is all wrong. I think your analysis of why is pretty good.

TBH, I think setting a dating VN in the Fallen London universe is very tricky to pull off... FL writing is typically terse and mysterious, giving just enough detail to intrigue; a VN has you navigating through the minutiae of small talk--approaches that are completely at odds. Combining hot and cold gives you tepid and, unfortunately, I have to agree that what I played seemed very bland.

Originally posted by Mr. Zone:

Ultimately I will play and enjoy Mask of the Rose when it is released regardless of anything mentioned here. I want it to be the best it can be because the Fallen London universe is unlike anything else I've encountered and so far the demo has fallen shy of my high expectations.

Remember you're under no obligation to like this game, even if you like the team! Judge it on its merits, and hold their feet to the fire if they mess it up (just my opinion, ofc).

[hanchan]

Oh I'd much prefer it if all of our feet stayed out of any fires, if it's all the same. :)

Thank you for your very considered feedback!

It does sound a bit like this one isn't for you. The genre of the game, intimate perspective, setting just after the fall when the full weirdness of the Neath wasn't totally exposed, and cast of characters all don't seem to have grabbed you, which is a real shame!

It just isn't going to deliver on the same feeling of threat as the Sunless games do, by design, but perhaps the murder mystery investigation that happens in the later game will pique your interest.

Not to be contrary, but I wonder if you'd enjoy it more if you picked it up again and made wildly different choices. Then you'd see how wonderfully reactive all of the conversation options are, and you'd see different sides to the characters and references to bigger Fallen London things, too. Did you meet the Devils? The Landaus? Ferret? You might find them fun.

I should also mention that this is a truncated version of Act One, which will be a few days longer in the final game, and also that census-taking is only your occupation initially, so the list of census questions won't be your base means of interacting with everyone as the game progresses and you find out more about your fellow citizens.

I do hope you'll still give the finished game a go, either way; there is plenty of excitement there for you as a veteran player. :)

[Mr. Zone]

Originally posted by frank:

(didn't realise I was going to lose progress when I quit)

FL writing is typically terse and mysterious, giving just enough detail to intrigue; a VN has you navigating through the minutiae of small talk--approaches that are completely at odds. Combining hot and cold gives you tepid

Remember you're under no obligation to like this game, even if you like the team! Judge it on its merits, and hold their feet to the fire if they mess it up (just my opinion, ofc).

I also lost progress and had to start over. I was a little excited to see what playing with a different background and having a different approach would do and found myself struggling to care or get immersed which is when I started trying to dig into "why".

You put that very well, I entirely agree.

Part of why I love the team is because they respond to criticism well. I'm the nuisance that got the thread started which contributed to them overhauling the Sunless Sea combat: https://steamcommunity.com/app/304650/discussions/0/45350245278931259/

I won't be holding back this time either.

[Gen Chernyahovskiy]

I thought I'd add to this feedback thread rather than start my own, seeing how this one raises a lot of good points by a person probably a good bit more qualified to discuss whether the game fits the universe - I'd like to add a few more, though. For context, out of all the Failbetter stuff I've only ever played a little bit of "Sunless Sea" on a Free Weekend (I've also played a little bit of "Cultist Simulator", but that's neither here nor there). Generally my impression of these games is that they're rather bad as games, so I'd personally typically rather google for their writing than play them, but they do have some of the most brilliant writing out there. Seriously, "The Arcade of Sighs: Here the solemn bandaged merchants trade old cold coins for brighter things" to me is possibly the most beautiful sentence in the English language, between the imagery and the phonetic composition ("old cold coins" - what assonance!). Or "it skips and leaps like a dragonfly" - as a native speaker of a language with no short/long vowel distinction, this one gives me particular joy to say, it's just so well-composed. Or the... storylet (? not sure of the terminology) about Lorn Flukes, where each sentence contains strictly three words, and the overall picture is deeply evocative of the cosmic horror aspect of the Flukes.... (I wish I hadn't lost some browser bookmarks to profiles that had recorded some of these storylets - googling for them now seems to have become next to impossible, for some reason). Some phrases have just become a part of my day-to-day thinking: when I'm a bit lost where to go, I'll very likely think: "Labyrinthine twists and turns... and cold black terror", even if it's otherwise a bright sunny day out. :D Or something like: "But the view outside your window isn't right. The moon shines on a flooded desert". (Unrelated, but I believe all that foreshadowing was kind of dropped in the actual game? Do you actually ever travel on a dirigible to a flooded desert?..)

I'm telling all this basically to indicate where I'm coming from as regards the game: love stories, branches based on items worn, fun characters - all well and good, but it's the writing that is the definitive thing for me in this universe. (I also love the metaphysics of it, it has some of the strongest/most interesting metaphysics outside of the "Dark Souls" series and "Turgor", but I get that this is supposed to be a more grounded, newbie-friendly story). And I don't think this game has had anything similar at all to what I was looking for. I guess "[the hearts'] resistance to the tooth" by Mr Pages is close-ish in its evocativeness, but still no cigar, and not playing with the phonetics in that brilliant way. I get that a higher proportion of direct speech makes painting with broad strokes more difficult, but I guess I had hoped for more eloquence and philosophical musings from our interlocutors. You'd think someone like Theophilus would be a goldmine for that, but even with him you just end up having a very sober, grounded conversation, disappointingly (Also, I was a bit upset when his art didn't change to look up when the text kept saying how he was looking up). With that said, I think the story gives an appropriate justification to the decidedly un-Victorian mores the universe sometimes has had without quite justifying it as much; I loved Mr Pages (guessed him from the first census question); and I found Griz ("She wears trousers to work and comes home at all hours" is among the better bits of writing too) and the Landaus very enjoyable, so I don't think the writing is bad - it just falls far short of the ridiculously high standard this universe is associated with in my mind.

I hated Ferret though, on multiple accounts at once. The b****** also responds exactly the same to any way you ask him about his lovelife, which rather shatters my belief in the game's claims of branching storylines (and yeah, I get that you likely need a blue-collar upbringing to get him to talk, whatever). That brings me to another thing I felt was missing: if I associate that universe with something other than truly stellar writing and metaphysics, it's with stuff like: "Your "A** not kicked by the Devil"s drops by 3. New amount: 0 - "The Devil is kicking your a**!"" Even if a placebo of sort, having each character give you twenty different quality changes in a conversation would go a long way to making me believe the game actually has any branching.

Smaller nitpicks:

• So how could people know my form of address, and how would they possibly hope to use it, when I always give my name and never the form of address?
  
• "Romance without attraction" is just an odd description, doesn't evoke "chaste romance" at all.
  
• I'd always thought "London was stolen by bats" meant some specific, passably humanoid bats - turns out it was literal bats?! Then the mechanism how they pulled it off is somewhat unclear to me.

[Arcturus Asriv]

I'll be getting Mask of the Rose.
But still hoping we'll get a Fallen London game on Steam eventually.