Is the story actually just complete nonsense or what am I missing?

[BRTD - Crolock]

So I just reached the desert (so please no late game spoilers) but thought to myself.
The whole story revolves around dethroning the pretender, but there can only be one Arisen alive. And only the Arisen van command pawn. Grant technically the pretender can as well.
But literally every NPC you meet calls you Arisen (because Pawns duh) but doesn't question that the Arisen is allegedly in the castle of Vernworth?
And the oh so scheming vilan has not heard about the actual Arisen? Or does not care?
It makes no sense.

Also. Everybody calls you Arisen. The Arisen is supposed to be the king. But then all the quest are: Get me there and give me stuff. And you get these Quest from people that call you Arisen. Like WTF. If I meet the president on the road, I don's ask him to help me travel somewhere. I pay my respect and move on with my life (granted, then there would be no quests but the way the game handles its lore just seems so stupid)

What am I missing?

[Knavenformed]

Originally posted by BRTD - Crolock:

but there can only be one Arisen alive

This is a lie spun up by the Vermundian government

But yes the story is a bit all over the place, and it keeps switching plots before even finishing the prior ones constantly

[Forblaze]

Originally posted by Knavenformed:

This is a lie spun up by the Vermundian government

The intent is correct. There's only one "active" arisen at a time. People like the dragonforged failed in some way that didn't involve dying.

[Galenmereth]

Believe it or not it only gets worse from there...

[Enorats]

Yeah. This story makes less sense than the previous game.. which is really saying something. You asked for no late game spoilers, so I won't give any.. but suffice to say the late game got even more confusing. I'm pretty sure I ended up working for the bad guy at one point, completely out of nowhere. The actual ending doesn't make any sense at all.

The worst part is that it's not even that it doesn't make sense, it's that it doesn't feel like they even tried to make it make sense. It feels like something an AI spat out and a human never even looked at. I feel like whole questlines just went nowhere and there doesn't seem to be any logical structure to anything.

[93@*&^%jdttk36FGT2d@lt%(fjs569]

Yeah hate to break it to you but it really does get worse from that point on. No spoilers obviously but almost nothing you've done in the main story from this point on will matter at all. The story is bad and unfortunately being overshadowed by MTX and bad performance issues.

[Knavenformed]

Originally posted by Forblaze:

The intent is correct. There's only one "active" arisen at a time. People like the dragonforged failed in some way that didn't involve dying.

They are still Arisen, and they should still have their pawns like the Dragonforged had the Fool and Olra is still there after Ashe got corrupted

The King ruled Gran Soren after lying about defeating his dragon and while the Arisen commanded the Pawns, it didn't give him any rightful rule, just Vermund does it for some reason.

[Aurelia]

Originally posted by BRTD - Crolock:

But literally every NPC you meet calls you Arisen

This was the biggest nuance for me.. The plot in that area is around secretly working up to earn the ability to be recognized as arisen without being revealed to the leading hands too early, and yet every one all over already knows that you are the arisen, and yet is somehow not a problem. It's obviously not a secret, so what even is that.. It's a massive hole.

[Grr. [SG CMD] Majah Lazah]

Originally posted by BRTD - Crolock:

So I just reached the desert (so please no late game spoilers) but thought to myself.
The whole story revolves around dethroning the pretender, but there can only be one Arisen alive. And only the Arisen van command pawn. Grant technically the pretender can as well.
But literally every NPC you meet calls you Arisen (because Pawns duh) but doesn't question that the Arisen is allegedly in the castle of Vernworth?
And the oh so scheming vilan has not heard about the actual Arisen? Or does not care?
It makes no sense.

Also. Everybody calls you Arisen. The Arisen is supposed to be the king. But then all the quest are: Get me there and give me stuff. And you get these Quest from people that call you Arisen. Like WTF. If I meet the president on the road, I don's ask him to help me travel somewhere. I pay my respect and move on with my life (granted, then there would be no quests but the way the game handles its lore just seems so stupid)

What am I missing?

A lot.

There can only be one dragon and one Arisen per Return. The arisen can abandon their charge, the Dragon can not. Dragons are Arisen the ACTIVELY destroyed the world or plunged it into Darkness and were transformed. Arisen can also transform into other equally malign things if their will is strong enough (Death, Daimon).

Arisen can also choose to defeat the dragon, yet not retain control of the cycle. Everything that happens is either the will of the Dragon or the will of the Arisen, whichever is stronger.

Arisen is not an entity. Being Arisen is a state of being that an entity can be. aka haviong a will so strong it shapes the entire world and denies death. Or even just tells death to ♥♥♥♥ off and spends thousands of years stabbing monsters for spare parts on an island in the middle of nowhere because that's their will.

[Zaris]

The general story was ok and together wiith the secret ending most things get somewhat resolved:

- your main goal is to kill the dragon or break the cycle, the whole "Arisen being king" is just a Vermound tradition and you wanted to stay undercover while being in the capital
- the queen just wanted power like any monarch before
- Phaesus tried to break the cycle that's why his research in forbidden magic and the false Arisen, but his attempt was too weak, only a real godsbane worked to break the cycle
- you were sent to the desert to look after Phaesus experiments because you couldn't get close to the fake Arisen and there you stumbled over Phaesus trying to break the cycle and failed, which means no time to deal with the queen / fake Arisen in Vermound anymore
- in the secret ending Sven takes over Vermound and the queen is out of the picture and Phaesus is more or less on your side because the Arisen and he wants the same: break the cycle

[Marzoval]

It's missing an Act 2 where you experience the fallout of all the queen conspiracy plot you uncovered with Brand in the first hours.

[Seekrt]

In the first game there were more than just one arisen alive at the same time.
You had the old ermit, the duke, the player. At least those three I can think of.

[Seekrt]

Originally posted by Marzoval:

It's missing an Act 2 where you experience the fallout of all the queen conspiracy plot you uncovered with Brand in the first hours.

Might be setting the table for some dlc.

[Knavenformed]

Originally posted by Seekrt:

Originally posted by Marzoval:

It's missing an Act 2 where you experience the fallout of all the queen conspiracy plot you uncovered with Brand in the first hours.

Might be setting the table for some dlc.

It gets resolved in a 5 minute quest later on in the game, but I don't think failing the claim for your rule actually would do anything to change it

[Zaris]

Originally posted by Marzoval:

It's missing an Act 2 where you experience the fallout of all the queen conspiracy plot you uncovered with Brand in the first hours.

The game literally solves that. Phaesus wanted to break the cycle that's why he helped the queen putting a false Arisen on the throne but he failed in the end against the dragon. In the secret ending you meet Phaesus again shortly trying to find new methods to break the cycle while Sven took over the kingdom and the queen was no more in power.