Post by Histidine on Jan 11, 2022 7:04:43 GMT -8
Random stuff written on sleep deprivation mode. Intended for the Discord server, but I put it up here to give it some permanence. I may add more stuff here as more betas come out.
I read Sorzo's excellent mod-story "The Void" the night before writing this, which influences a few of my thoughts.
Spoilers up to beta 0.3!
Two adversaries
Kayto and friends have two, somewhat conflicting goals in Captain's Return: Remove PACT's control over the Neutral Rim, and stop Crow Harbour. There's a direct tension here in that fighting Crow is likely going to require collaboration with Fontana and PACT.
The two-threat plot is kinda a concern of mine in that it's easy to mess up, e.g. one threat gets way more screen time than it ought to logically or narratively. Mass Effect had this problem with Cerberus being an implausibly powerful nemesis that got in the way of the main Reaper story and generally making ME3 too human-centric (see Shamus Young's lengthy ME retrospective for the details). It's more balanced in Sunrider, thankfully: PACT is the established antagonist since the first game, while the Fallen are a new but more powerful faction.
Anyway the conflict between the two goals ought to be a major source of in-party tension. Sola should be the one most interested in fighting Ryuvia's ancient foe even if it means cooperating with the other enemy (to the point where I think she ought to have spoken up during that encounter in Cera's space station, and we could well have a scene with her having PTSD over Crow's return and attempt on her life). Ava, Kryska and maybe Asaga (whose dad was murdered by Arcadius) would mainly remember the PACT enemy. (Icari goes wherever she's told and Claude has her own Time Lord agenda as usual.)
First missions
The first few missions have a problem with being samey.
Mission 1: Get jumped by Cosette, the party members we're getting back (Asaga and [redacted]) show up to help.
Mission 2: Fight Cosette to destroy the outpost and leave the planet.
Mission 3: Run into Cosette again, the party member we're getting back (Icari) shows up to help.
Then Mission 4 takes place on the exact same map as mission 3.
It'd be pretty easy to just flip the script for mission 3: Icari is confronted by <enemy> who is pursuing her for <reason>, and the Maray shows up in time to save her the trouble of killing all of them on her own. (inspired by Garrus's recruitment mission in ME2)
Then throw out the second New Kowloon mission as it doesn't make sense anyway (replace it with a bar fight minigame).
Speaking of Cosette…
Gotta say I'm mildly miffed that SR4 straight up disregards the player's decisions regarding the fates of Cosette and the Legion in the previous games. But if annoying yandere loli is going to show up anyway, she needs to have some plot relevance (remember Ongess?) instead of merely being an annoyance I have to put down every so often.
Point and click
The point-and-click game mode used in the intro seems oddly underutilized. If it was just meant to be used in this one place, well, the intro could just as easily have used normal VN mechanics. Else, it seems like there were a bunch of places even in 0.3 where a P&C segment would've been nice. The Star Palace, New Kowloon station, a habitat on Ferros… would've been nice to explore the local culture from 'ground level' for a bit.
Gameplay stuff
I like it overall. Semi-Newtonian motion is always cool, shame the AI doesn't really know how to deal with it.
Non-ryder ships have awkwardly low armor (I think more than one has zero front armor, come on)
Phoenix Mk.II really needs a way to actually hurt non-ryders. Base 50 damage/attack assault guns is a sick joke (High Roller's guns do base 120 damage/attack for the same EN cost; Phoenix needs all three DMG upgrades to exceed this). I'd increase the base strength and make it less reliant on upgrades. Also, IIRC satchel charges were proposed for the original Phoenix back in the day; that might be an idea to bring back.
GUI request: Escape should back out of windows and unwanted states in general, come on this is UI 101. Also a hotkey to show which missiles are going after which targets (though perhaps not for enemy missiles) would be nice.
Bug (crossposted from Discord): Cutscenes with a CG background seem prone to glitching out. When I opened the chat log during the scene where you reunite with Asaga, I ended up in a state where the CG was replaced with the scene's base BG, and there was no text box, so I couldn't continue through the dialog. I couldn't reproduce with a couple of other scenes, but when I quit to main menu during the reunion-with-Ava scene, it displayed the standard BG for the scene (not the CG) with no main menu buttons, so I couldn't do anything except Alt+F4.
Other story thoughts
That lostech robo-worm in the intro sure went down easy to a Rim planetary army's gunship, huh
Random thing that came to mind: Ava uses her acting PM status to sponsor a third party candidate with a neutrality platform, advocating for Cera not being beholden to the Solar Alliance or PACT. She could even run herself, although she has the wrong temperament for that; Ava thinks like an XO, not a captain.
I read Sorzo's excellent mod-story "The Void" the night before writing this, which influences a few of my thoughts.
Spoilers up to beta 0.3!
Two adversaries
Kayto and friends have two, somewhat conflicting goals in Captain's Return: Remove PACT's control over the Neutral Rim, and stop Crow Harbour. There's a direct tension here in that fighting Crow is likely going to require collaboration with Fontana and PACT.
The two-threat plot is kinda a concern of mine in that it's easy to mess up, e.g. one threat gets way more screen time than it ought to logically or narratively. Mass Effect had this problem with Cerberus being an implausibly powerful nemesis that got in the way of the main Reaper story and generally making ME3 too human-centric (see Shamus Young's lengthy ME retrospective for the details). It's more balanced in Sunrider, thankfully: PACT is the established antagonist since the first game, while the Fallen are a new but more powerful faction.
Anyway the conflict between the two goals ought to be a major source of in-party tension. Sola should be the one most interested in fighting Ryuvia's ancient foe even if it means cooperating with the other enemy (to the point where I think she ought to have spoken up during that encounter in Cera's space station, and we could well have a scene with her having PTSD over Crow's return and attempt on her life). Ava, Kryska and maybe Asaga (whose dad was murdered by Arcadius) would mainly remember the PACT enemy. (Icari goes wherever she's told and Claude has her own Time Lord agenda as usual.)
The first few missions have a problem with being samey.
Mission 1: Get jumped by Cosette, the party members we're getting back (Asaga and [redacted]) show up to help.
Mission 2: Fight Cosette to destroy the outpost and leave the planet.
Mission 3: Run into Cosette again, the party member we're getting back (Icari) shows up to help.
Then Mission 4 takes place on the exact same map as mission 3.
It'd be pretty easy to just flip the script for mission 3: Icari is confronted by <enemy> who is pursuing her for <reason>, and the Maray shows up in time to save her the trouble of killing all of them on her own. (inspired by Garrus's recruitment mission in ME2)
Then throw out the second New Kowloon mission as it doesn't make sense anyway (
Speaking of Cosette…
Gotta say I'm mildly miffed that SR4 straight up disregards the player's decisions regarding the fates of Cosette and the Legion in the previous games. But if annoying yandere loli is going to show up anyway, she needs to have some plot relevance (remember Ongess?) instead of merely being an annoyance I have to put down every so often.
Point and click
The point-and-click game mode used in the intro seems oddly underutilized. If it was just meant to be used in this one place, well, the intro could just as easily have used normal VN mechanics. Else, it seems like there were a bunch of places even in 0.3 where a P&C segment would've been nice. The Star Palace, New Kowloon station, a habitat on Ferros… would've been nice to explore the local culture from 'ground level' for a bit.
Gameplay stuff
I like it overall. Semi-Newtonian motion is always cool, shame the AI doesn't really know how to deal with it.
Non-ryder ships have awkwardly low armor (I think more than one has zero front armor, come on)
Phoenix Mk.II really needs a way to actually hurt non-ryders. Base 50 damage/attack assault guns is a sick joke (High Roller's guns do base 120 damage/attack for the same EN cost; Phoenix needs all three DMG upgrades to exceed this). I'd increase the base strength and make it less reliant on upgrades. Also, IIRC satchel charges were proposed for the original Phoenix back in the day; that might be an idea to bring back.
GUI request: Escape should back out of windows and unwanted states in general, come on this is UI 101. Also a hotkey to show which missiles are going after which targets (though perhaps not for enemy missiles) would be nice.
Bug (crossposted from Discord): Cutscenes with a CG background seem prone to glitching out. When I opened the chat log during the scene where you reunite with Asaga, I ended up in a state where the CG was replaced with the scene's base BG, and there was no text box, so I couldn't continue through the dialog. I couldn't reproduce with a couple of other scenes, but when I quit to main menu during the reunion-with-Ava scene, it displayed the standard BG for the scene (not the CG) with no main menu buttons, so I couldn't do anything except Alt+F4.
Other story thoughts
That lostech robo-worm in the intro sure went down easy to a Rim planetary army's gunship, huh
Random thing that came to mind: Ava uses her acting PM status to sponsor a third party candidate with a neutrality platform, advocating for Cera not being beholden to the Solar Alliance or PACT. She could even run herself, although she has the wrong temperament for that; Ava thinks like an XO, not a captain.
Hot singles in your local solar system! 
