So do the beacons actually do anything story-wise?

[Arion]

I used the beacon I got after Iria bad end, supposedly the MC goes back in time and now knows all the bad stuff that happened that led to that outcome.. Right?

Except... MC is shutting up and letting things play exactly as they did the last time. So much for time traveling and changing events.. We have been lied to.

[TigerNightmare]

You can make different decisions when they are presented to you, you don't get self-awareness. Even if you did, you can't exactly say, "I came back from the future, everyone surrender to me and stop doing war."

[Arion]

Guess i'l see once I get to key moments.. Though I don't recall seeing any locked dialogue options.

If it plays out exactly the same way and none of the people who die can be saved.. Then that's stupid.

[Halko]

The beacons are just a system to start the story from different points so you dont have to redo everything from day 1 and most will put you directly on the path to a particular ending so you dont have to worry about missing it.

[Arion]

Well that's not what I would expect, since the beginning is literally using a beacon to change the outcome.

Kinda dissapointing, but oh well.

[Halko]

Well its not really any different its just that the beacons arent as strong as that first use implies. You are still "going back" to change your choices but the choices are still locked to the dedicated endings.

[Meowish]

Beacons = Save points / Check points in video games

Some games try to put a meaning to the save process. eg, make you tell a story to a bard or have someone record down your adventure, transfer your data to the server for backup, etc etc. This game represent it as time travel's beacon.

You, the player, gain knowledge of the "requirement" to get into certain routes when failing, and the check points lets you redo that part without restarting all over. Just like those "learn by death" games. So it's still like you're travelling back in time to change the outcome, just that the MC isn't really scripted to be talkative about it, but you, the player, do get to know which requirement and choices that you need to take in order to get a better ending. For your case this time, it's probably the 30k money you failed to prepare...

[Arion]

Right... So having that leads to the 'good end'. Except all the people who died, still died. So it's not a perfect ending..

They need to add a perfect route where you can save everyone. That's what having time travel powers is all about - get the outcome you want. I hate when there' a story with time travel and the conclusion they wanna sell you is that you shouldn't have messed with time in the first place, total bs.

Right now, the time travel aspect of the game is essentially overlooked, aside from the beginning. Diffrent routes that lead to diffrent endings is not time travel. I guess they didn't have time to really implement this in the story.

[Derpykat5]

The first set of three beacons open up new dialogue choices and start you with 50 rep with the respective faction, thus making it easier to get to the point where you can ask that faction for help.

Originally posted by Arion:

Right... So having that leads to the 'good end'. Except all the people who died, still died. So it's not a perfect ending..

They need to add a perfect route where you can save everyone. That's what having time travel powers is all about - get the outcome you want. I hate when there' a story with time travel and the conclusion they wanna sell you is that you shouldn't have messed with time in the first place, total bs.

Right now, the time travel aspect of the game is essentially overlooked, aside from the beginning. Diffrent routes that lead to diffrent endings is not time travel. I guess they didn't have time to really implement this in the story.

From what I understand from the Cat's dialogue, this is the primary purpose of the Fool's Journey; you're collecting the Tarot cards to power up the Astrarium to change fate and save everyone. The Fool's Journey just isn't done yet.

[Halko]

Originally posted by Arion:

They need to add a perfect route where you can save everyone.

No absolutely not. They should never do this under any circumstances. The entire point of the story and the concepts behind it are that war sucks and hard choices have to be made. If they just add in some shoe horned fairy tale ending it would just spit in the face of everything the story is trying to be.

As for the concept that the tarot cards are gonna unlock a super special happy ending i very seriously doubt it. Any happy ending is just going to reek of poor writing and cop outs. It would be a terrible idea. Better for Elysium itself to be the "good" ending.

[Arion]

It depends on how that "fairy tale ending" is achieved though, if the MC goes through all the hardship and has to experience the death of friends/allies multiple times, then eventually save them all by coming up with a plan when going back in time. Likely the first plan will not go well and have to adjust it until the perfect ending can be achieved.

MC going through hell of trial and error trying to keep everyone alive, that is a 'cop out' and 'poor writing'? This isn't a story about war sucks alone, there is more to it than that.

Time travel is supposed to be a thing here, and it can't just be cast aside as an afterthought. "Oh we were able to change this one thing but now we can't change anything else" - why?

[Halko]

Valid points all around but for me it would mostly just boil down to the writers "taking the easy way out" of the themes of their stories. Every route is a bittersweet story about politics and personal relationships and how they lead to tragedies. If suddenly John Convallaria can ride up and convince Iria the Union and the Papal states along with the other factions we havnt seen to just all settle down and have a pajama party and be happy well that just feels more like a slap in the face regardless of how hard it was to achieve. The entire point of most of these stories is that there are differences that quite simply cannot be solved peacefully and lead to tragedy and thats fine for a story. We need more stuff like that overall instead of ham fisted happily ever afters. I mean exactly how do you think it would be possible for all of the different factions to come together hand in hand to sign a peace treaty without what is essentially going to be fairy tale magic? Just have them all fight it out and give all of the important characters plot armor? Have all of the major players have a sudden change of heart and welcome peace? With how the story is written they are backed into a corner. They either stay the course and keep the story going how its going or cop out and magic the problems away.

Sometimes the impossible should stay impossible because it is quite frankly more interesting that way.

[Arion]

Well obviously that is not possible, there are villains like Auguste and the corrupted council of knights who cannot be reasoned with. As well as the heads of the Papal states who are likely evil, haven't played that route yet.

What I mean is that the MC will save their friends and allies, keep them alive through the war. Or at the very least make the attempt, when having the ability to go back in time - you go back and try to avoid the tragedies.

If time travel wasn't a thing in this story, i'd have nothing to say. Characters die on routes and that is that. But time travel IS a part of this story, and it cannot be cast aside and forgotten.

At the beginning the MC speaks up and the others listen, thus they stay alive and don't die in the revolt. Why can't the MC continue to do this in future events to avoid more deaths? MC can speak up about the double agent when in the office with Dantalion, can speak up about the union's plans and avoid having to leave the Valderians to die, can warn the Valderians about Elaman coming to attack their home and so on and so on.

That is what i'm talking about, a route where MC learns from past events and changes them. Just like in the beginning in the revolt. That is what they need to add, that is what I expected the beacons to do.

This isn't a conversation about happy endings vs bittersweet endings, I like either one. This is about what is expected when time travel is involved. If they don't want to go deeper into it, then they shouldn't include time travel in the first place.

[Meowish]

Well, let's not get over heated and take a step back from the screen and tell yourself that it's a man-made game you are playing right now. And It's not a build your story as you go type of game with advanced AI as support that create contents as you progress. You are just a traveler that travel on pre-designed railways. These railways may split path according to the designer's wish. But as long as you're not the designer of these rails, you are just a by-stander, an observer of the routes and their outcomes, you can't really change that unless you opt to join the writing crew of the game and become one of the writer... Or become one of their huge sponsor to gain enough vocal power over the developers to direct them to set a rail that pleases you. Or you can start a doujin project and make your own routes of stories from there. On the bright side, it's an online game that updates its story from time to time, so it's not the only ending you will be seeing and more are coming...

Yes, the recent Baldur Gate 3 made a huge impact on the story telling game worlds with soo many possibilities it's hard to keep track of, but even then, they are still based on limited choices on pre-designed railways, you don't get 100% what you want, but close. And that makes us want more... Well, certain AI-based story telling games are on the rise (or in the making) where worlds and stories are generated on-the-go... but they don't really fit online games design requirements right now, and are more suitable for offline based games on devices that can tolerate huge storage space... well.. co-op maybe possible... but MMO, we don't have the commonly-used device nor a server that supports it yet... let alone a mobile phone game... But something like that will come sooner or later, as technology advanced. (Nvidia is pushing that idea right now https://inworld.ai/ )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uryeFhnNzEs

In fact, the Chinese Mobile MMORPG "Justice Online" brags about its uses in AI generated contents (mainly NPC chat and quests). But whether or not it will meets our expectation is another thing, since we can't change the main story or the outcome of things, just AI generated tasks which could be extremely boring. At least we might enjoy chatting to random NPCs like this guy here. AI is a technology that's still under development, they aren't perfect yet. But for real AI generated worlds and story settings, they could happen, but it will be some time to go before it happens. Right now, if there's one you can experience, it will be like journeying through a very very weird dream that makes no sense sometimes, most of the times... with weird landscapes and characters that may be beyond our understanding or recognition...

But if you want to experience an online world that changes every seconds without the main developer's decisions and the world updates itself on the fly based on decisions and actions of its residents... especially that your decisions and actions may impact the direct short-termed future of the virtual world and people/residents that have interacted with you... such Virtual worlds do exists long ago... try https://secondlife.com/
Oh, just be warned that all users have near total freedom in doing stuffs in that world, including creating objects or even implementing AIs Chat bots, so people you meet and able to chat with nowadays inside that virtual world might not be a real human anymore.

[Arion]

Eh no I do not actually want to play a game like that. It's more like what they initially presented this story as, but then it is not what I expected.

This isn't even about what I want, it's like if you read a book and you can guess where things are going, but then the writer is inconsistent and things don't add up.

If the MC can time travel and change events, they should be able to continue doing so. If they can't, if the power is limited - then do let us know how it works so we don't expect something that isn't going to happen.

From next patch info they do update the Spiral with more content, so here's hoping they will eventually address this issue.

[Halko]

You have to be delusional to buy into the AI hype train.