1 Response

1. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Running this on a max-level fire/energy tanker, +1/x2 with bosses on.

   —

   So, flashing back to WW1, under the sardonic guidance of Mender Tesseract. Okay, let’s see what’s messing things up.

   Hmm. Blue tunnels. I would have gone with tan tunnels.

   Anyway, grunt soldiers with melee picks and shovels, higher ranks with guns. Very fitting the story. I find some temporal anomalies (all of them in the same room) that seem to denote something notable has been pulled out of time.

   Huh. For some reason the Germans are all speaking, well, German, but the officer in charge is spouting English? Anyway, his notes (which I can also read) indicate that he dug too greedily and too deep, and stumbled on weird things which he sealed up behind him.

   Any bets where we’re going next?

   —

   Oh lord, Oranbega? That’s not supposed to go there!

   I hear Germans as I enter. So some of them were stranded back here? …well, I don’t blame them, really. The Circle are pretty freaky.

   There are explosive charges leftover from previous tunnel activities, distracting from the real objective, which is to find clues as to what’s going on here.

   A genuine Circle entry about being displaced in time. A rack of seemingly medieval weapons made by modern recreators. …which I guess the modern Circle might grab onto?

   Everything else seems to point to some mage messing with an obelisk that catapulted them all back into the past.

   —

   Ah, I see. The Circle didn’t do this, but they’re investigating, and unlocking the secrets of time travel is a bad thing.

   So we have to destroy… however they got pulled here. I wonder what did it?

   There are stasis tubes marked as “temporal warp generators” but with their default description, a boss with the default boss description, and a couple of captured soldiers who die horribly to Behemoth fireballs and firebreath. Not much for answering the wonderment there, other than a comment they’re made of the same strange metal that wound up in Oranbega.

   Apparently Tesseract doesn’t know what they are either, and she’s passing them up the chain.

   —

   And now we have a couple other things to do to preserve the timeline. Peachy. Well, nobody ever said this would be easy.

   The German officer here has an escort of Circle. That seems like an oversight.

   There are also a couple of warding obelisks to break down for… some reason.

   I have to spring someone and… actually lead him out of Oranbega. Over the rickety bridges, through the portals, and past the crystals which automatically occupy an escort’s attention when they get close to one.

   You can’t exactly help that last one, but given that this guy’s just hangin’ out in the end room, and the walk back is completely uneventful, could it not be an escort?

   Also the clue I get on mission complete seems to be a dummy — “Lieutenant: ddd”.

   The strange temporal devices that caused this all… are still a mystery. Silos maintains they’re from the future, and from space, but that’s not important right now. What’s important is — I have to believe in myself.

   —

   Storyline - *****. Now that I think about it, for an organization that’s supposed to be dedicated to preserving the sanctity of the timeline, there really aren’t a lot of missions like this arc in Ouroboros. I guess the weird temporal artifacts are supposed to be foreshadowing of the Coming Storm?

   Regardless, this is a well-contained little story about correcting a timeline through more than just play-acting through history. The only problem I have is that the temporal distortions are set up as a puzzle to solve - I suppose part of that is the limited model selection in the game so you can’t actually have genuinely mysterious objects. Everything looks like something I’ve seen before. But for at least half the arc I’m figuring that I’ll find the people responsible and maybe biff them in the face.

   I don’t know if this is something fixable. I mean, I’m operating at the Ouroboros level but I could stand some reminder at some point that this is yeoman’s work, basic investigation.

   Design - ****. Oranbega is Oranbega, the tunnels are tunnels. It’s nice to see the blue caves when appropriate - though again, this seems kinda like a job for brown caves, mostly to improve visibility of the enemy forces.

   Speaking of the enemy forces, there’s generally a good job done with them here, too. The minions are melee sappers using mining tools, the higher ranks have guns. Now that you can select the powers an enemy has you might want to take period-inappropriate devices away from the boss rank.

   The end mission feels kinda like an early version of itself - there are some obelisks to break that don’t do anything and there’s dummy text in the mission complete clue.

   Gameplay - ***. Mostly for the last mission. I had the entire thing cleared out with an hour to go, but I ran into so many crystals trying to get the escort out that I nearly ran out of time. If I hadn’t wanted to see how the story ended for the review, I seriously would have written the arc off there. I know it’s not your fault that escorts bug out on crystals, and they actually show up pretty randomly in Oranbega maps, but this needs to be addressed. Maybe if you’re going to have an escort, put him up front?

   Detail - ***. Circle bosses and destructible objects have their stock descriptions. I forget if that was variable at the time this arc was released, but it certainly is now. Those are nice little ways to drop some hints to people who are paying attention.

   On one hand I understand why you have the soldiers, mostly patrols, shouting in German or French. On the other it’s kind of weird that occasionally when I should understand someone, like a boss, they speak pretty good English.

   Also, look at that German boss in the last map. Pretty sure he’s not supposed to have a Circle escort.

   Overall - ****. The last mission needs a little patching-up, but most of the problems with the arc aren’t necessarily of its own making. And the story - actually doing something to fix time for Ouroboros! - is something worth telling that I haven’t seen before.

   Posted on December 31st, 2011 at 6:48 pm