[SPOILERS] Looks promising, but the starting story is very rough

[Hawthorn]

I was not impressed with the start of the game.
- Slow walking while everyone accuses me of being the cause of the crash? How could I have been?
- The random voice over as I was slow walking was hard to understand
- The weird reading of my journal and asking me to respond to random passages when I have no idea what he is talking about
- Some passages I can say it wasn't my journal, others I had to answer like it was. Do the choices matter?


All in all it was a jumbled mess that made it hard to follow and even harder to care about. Did my decisions to help or reject people matter? Why was I accused of the accident? Did I actually do the things in my journal? The judge seemed like a 100% evil villain, way overdone for talking to me alone ..

[Tommi69]

In general I like the idea of this opening, but it wasn't obvious enough early on what was going on.

The medical automaton has some problematic pathfinding - to use it you walk a long way around it until it works. This might throw some people off.

Pathfinding in general, especially moving around static NPC's , needs some work. I got stuck behind some lady very early on after docking, and almost ditched the game because that annoyed me a lot.

[juliejayne]

Originally posted by Tommi69:

In general I like the idea of this opening, but it wasn't obvious enough early on what was going on.

The medical automaton has some problematic pathfinding - to use it you walk a long way around it until it works. This might throw some people off.

Pathfinding in general, especially moving around static NPC's , needs some work. I got stuck behind some lady very early on after docking, and almost ditched the game because that annoyed me a lot.

I checked again this morning...
1 As tommi states you have to walk all the way around to get it to work
2. After reloading my character was cured without ever getting help from the medical automaton

[ThotsBContagious]

Originally posted by Dusty:

Thank you for your input, guys. The automaton always caused problems for some players, even during playtests. To make it more obvious for players, we moved it around, made it bigger and more noticeable, made the nurse mention it, and did everything we could at the moment to make sure players saw it. Apparently it was not enough, we will come up with a solution.

Worded mine poorly, I still got the skill check on the auto nurse when I used it.

[Pastor of Muppets]

Count me as one who didn't care for the opening. I took it to be a homage to the opening of Arcanum, but beyond that I didn't understand what was going on at all and felt kind of put upon. Once I got into the city portion, I felt more at home, having played the demo. In general, I think the whole beginning of the game needs some work (for example, the splash screens that disappear before you can read everything).

[upuaut2]

i agree that the begining of the game needs some work. the journal part with the judge should have more variety, for instance they tell you, you had a loved one who died named Helen. perhaps make this different for female characters? (add a male loved ones ?) im ok with gay romances as long you can choose to do so, the more variety the better. i had no idea what was going on

[juliejayne]

It might just be me, but did the game actually say Lover. Or did it say loved one. Loved one could be child, parent, best friend, as well as soul mate.

It just seems that too many people are making too big a deal of this single line.

[Tozobi]

The two gripes I have so far would be the number of spelling mistakes (e.g you instead of your, lookig instead of looking), and the lack of fast travel between in area spots. Moving around is....slow, so fast travel would work wonders, or just an increased walking speed perhaps. Not referring to the intro slowness prior to the automaton, that one is for plot reasons, I get it.

[Jon]

Would like to have an option pop-up saying "your about to move to next area, if you want to finish current quests select 'wait' opposed to being sent to next zone...
or something like that.. never found that blokes log.

[Dead Goat]

Just want to add that I used the healing bot and it did not take away the slow walk curse.

[Hawthorn]

Originally posted by Dusty:

Originally posted by Hawthorn:

I was not impressed with the start of the game.
- Slow walking while everyone accuses me of being the cause of the crash? How could I have been?
- The random voice over as I was slow walking was hard to understand
- The weird reading of my journal and asking me to respond to random passages when I have no idea what he is talking about
- Some passages I can say it wasn't my journal, others I had to answer like it was. Do the choices matter?


All in all it was a jumbled mess that made it hard to follow and even harder to care about. Did my decisions to help or reject people matter? Why was I accused of the accident? Did I actually do the things in my journal? The judge seemed like a 100% evil villain, way overdone for talking to me alone ..

Hi, Hawthorn, thank you for your feedback. Would you mind clarifying one thing for me: you mentioned that you walked slowly throughout the introduction, but this should not be the case. Prior to entering the first portal, there is a medical automaton that can heal you and let you move normally. I guess you missed it?

You are right .. i missed it. I assume that was the nurse who mentioned it? But I was in a hurry to find my stuff. So I must have missed it!

[Hawthorn]

Originally posted by Thianna:

For anyone having trouble: Right now it seems that simply saving and reloading takes away the slow walking debuff.
I´m sure that´s not intentional, but a very handy workaround

I can confirm this is true. I was pretty sure I clicked on everything and never saw a message to heal. But after reloading a save (near the guy that punches you) I was walking quickly

[barefootwalk]

Why is the player character hurt in the first place if they are supposed to be healed half a minute into the game anyway?

I too never realized the (clearly broken) automaton was supposed to be a working health station.
Partly because I was busy trying to get the nurse to help the wounded guy encountered two seconds earlier.

[Robineus]

Boy I missed the automaton too and I was looking for everything.

[MarkFranz]

They really need to make "press alt to highlight stuff" instead of "hold alt". Will make it harder to miss interactables.

[templar1138]

Originally posted by Dusty:

Thank you for your input, guys. The automaton always caused problems for some players, even during playtests. To make it more obvious for players, we moved it around, made it bigger and more noticeable, made the nurse mention it, and did everything we could at the moment to make sure players saw it. Apparently it was not enough, we will come up with a solution.

Here's a thought: Maybe have the automaton be standing up and have idle animations rather than in a heap on the ground. It could have sparks flying from it or be missing an arm or something to convey that it's not fully functional.