Are you forced to join the First Scholars guild?

[AliceTheGorgon]

I was quite pleased when I was able to leave the temple mine without reading the lore holograms in it, and ever more pleased when I was able to fail the quiz, but the game won't let me take the sky bridge to Maroon Valley, and Sergey just keeps saying I should take the quiz.
I even went back and failed the quiz again to see if they'd get the picture, but they just repeated their dialogue from the first fail and keep saying I should check the Encyclopedia.

I have no desire to join them, or even to have anything to do with them. And it doesn't make sense for Lea to be so 100% on board with immediately joining the first guild she hears about nor being so attached to the first player she meets.
None of this has anything to do with her memories, and would seem like a distraction from the task at hand.

[Ernsteen]

Yes.

[AliceTheGorgon]

Welp...

Thanks for the answer.

[Reborn]

Originally posted by ReverseNecromancy:

I was quite pleased when I was able to leave the temple mine without reading the lore holograms in it, and ever more pleased when I was able to fail the quiz, but the game won't let me take the sky bridge to Maroon Valley, and Sergey just keeps saying I should take the quiz.
I even went back and failed the quiz again to see if they'd get the picture, but they just repeated their dialogue from the first fail and keep saying I should check the Encyclopedia.

I have no desire to join them, or even to have anything to do with them. And it doesn't make sense for Lea to be so 100% on board with immediately joining the first guild she hears about nor being so attached to the first player she meets.
None of this has anything to do with her memories, and would seem like a distraction from the task at hand.

Well considering the first person she meets is nice to her they become close friends and that guild is made up of her friends so why wouldn't she join? A massive amount of story revolves around lea and her friends, why not just ask the developers to completely remove the story for you. Seriously why even play the game if your so against the idea of her making and spending time with her friends so she can grow and have character development.

[AliceTheGorgon]

Originally posted by Rebornscannon:

why even play the game if your so against the idea of ...

Ignoring, for now, that that is not at all what I said, I will point out that games generally do not let you know absolutely everything about what a game is like as you would experience it when playing (and pretty much the only way they could would be basically giving away the game for free and just asking for donations), and thus, no one can be 100% certain they'll 100% like the story before playing any game.

Originally posted by Rebornscannon:

her making and spending time with her friends so she can grow and have character development.

Making friends with the first player to speak to her (but not any of the boat crew, for some reason), and joining the guild of that person's other friend, is not, by any means, a requirement for character development. There are many other ways to have a character grow and change. Such as exploring the world and seeing if any of it brings up a forgotten memory, for one example. (And yes, I've read briefly about the ending so I'm aware that she doesn't actually have any memories, being an AI.) The idea of "play the game and see if anything sparks a memory" is explicitly stated by one of the characters in the beginning, and is an obvious option, and yet the whole amnesia thing seems rather forgotten in the interactions with Emile and her friends.
Additionally, even if making friends was part of the growth, many games allow the player to have a say in who the character befriends and spends time with. This game doesn't, but who, why, and how fast a character befriends other characters is not exactly something that is made explicit and 100% clear in any game's marketing (Edit: Especially since back when I bought the game it was in early development, and thus, the story likely wasn't even fully planned yet), because getting accurate impressions of the characters across without spoiling every interaction and fact about them would be rather difficult and time consuming, and most people don't care as much about who characters befriend and why they do.

Originally posted by Rebornscannon:

why not just ask the developers to completely remove the story for you.

That is, again, not remotely similar to my post. You'll notice that my post was simply asking for confirmation about a story event, since there was some minor ambiguity that I had gotten my hopes up meant something that it didn't. And while I do like the actual gameplay quite a bit, and would certainly play through if there was a way to remove the story (including its "go here and meet <x> character" things), I am quite aware that my personal tastes and distastes are my own, and that I seem to be getting pickier over time. I do not expect anyone to cater to my tastes, and I have not asked anyone to. Nor have I disparaged the game for its story not being entirely to my taste.

As a reminder, it's the second day of playing when Lea is invited to a guild and agrees to join, and by a character she has only known for one day before the invitation. This may be normal for some extremely gregarious segment of the population, but it's at least rather unusual, and seems pretty odd for someone who has no memories to do so suddenly and without any indication that these people seemed familiar or any other indicator that joining them might somehow end up helping her regain her memories.

I will also emphasize that I don't dislike the characters, and Emilie was slowly growing on me after the negative impression that her odd and highly competitive first interaction gave me. My primary issue was the lack of choice in who the character interacts with, and how rapidly and strongly she began attaching herself to them for no apparent reason.

[akai]

In terms of genre, Crosscode heavily leans towards classic JRPG-style game. As with most games in this genre, the main storyline is heavily scripted and there is a fairly linear main story. This contrasts with WRPG-style game where the main character is often a blank (and often, deliberately bland) personality that players are supposed to fill in; JRPG-style game works more like an interactive storybook, and all the main characters have distinct characterization and personality that is tightly woven into and is central to the plot. This means that you don't really get to make much choices on who you interact with and how the interaction goes, but rather you should just sit back and enjoy the story as they unfold.

With that said, Crosscode mixes this storytelling-heavy genre with MMORPG, with lots of side quests and puzzles that invites you to explore its vast open world and to go back and revisit places you've been into. This allows you to get in and out of the main story whenever you want instead of just being completely railroaded by the main plot.

So, yes, you are forced to befriend Emilie and you are forced to join the guild that the storyline wants you to join.