To be fair…we’re not really interested in telling a story that just ends with the world saved and all the bad guys vanquished. If we ever get to that point, I feel it’d be well into the future, maybe with GD 5…thousand.
You are dealing with otherworldly forces beyond imagining, and humanity already lost the war. You’re the remnants, the survivors struggling to make it in the new reality hoping to retake what was once theirs.
The story so far was one such chapter in a larger tale of survival. A great evil that would have brought about the complete annihilation of life on Cairn was pushed back in the void. That in itself is a triumphant victory.
The main enemies are Both the Aetherials and the Chthonians. The Aetherials despise Chthonians for a reason. To underestimate one in favor of taking on the other would be a foolish mistake.
However I understand the feelings about the ending of the base game. Without a cinematic, some players felt that there wasn’t really anything to mark an “end” to it, but cinematics unfortunately are not cheap. Also we tried to play up a lot of different story threads in the second half of the game that perhaps was a bit too much in retrospect, though establishing a world’s lore and people was important to us for the first installment of Grim Dawn.
Honestly, I felt the story to be quite wrapped up “for now”.
The Aetherials were set back by you destroying/diminishing their attempts of building large host armies (Warden Krieg’s prison experiments, Cronley’s lets put crystals in my face party, and the more or less cleaning of the killing fields), you also dealt them a blow in taking down their leadership in Valbury.
I assumed they would be in tactical retreat to figure out their next move.
Focus then would be on Cthonics, in which you took down Loghorrean and cleared the Bastion of Chaos.
In both Arch enemies you never really did defeat them, which I think fits perfectly with the idea of the player char not being super Mary Sue Jesus. You are just one badass adventurer trying to survive in the grim world.
Please, if your budget is tight forget the cinematics, invest it in multiplayer (some kind of version of D2 battle.net would be great) and optimizing game engine. Your cinematics are not going to match up those of a multibillion company, but your game is already better. Focus on the game!
Thank you very much for taking the time to respond to my question! I appreciate the honest answer!
And to be fair, I will say this: in my original post, I was about to say something like this…“I thought after I defeated the Loghorrean I was going to return to the main story of the Aetherials vs. the C’thonians,” and then I realized, wait a minute, that WAS the C’thonian storyline that I just finished!
So yeah, there is a feeling of some closure for that half of the war, at least temporarily, but it was just the other half (the Aetherials) that didn’t seem to be dealt with. But I do like the idea of a game continuing on in this setting, rather than completely ending it all. That could be an interesting setup for further content.
I am quite fine with this with the assumption more Acts will be added?
Indeed!
I like cinematics but understand with a low budget this might not be viable as much as in some other games…that said I am sure a viable compromise could be achieved.
I don’t expect a cinematic at the end of each Act but maybe in certain main plot points like at the end or beginning of a new “chapter” which is made up of many Acts?
I loved the cinematic at the start of the game and would really like to see more like that!
Not a clue where the dbr filename comes from, but the name of the monster that record is for is “Sharanatu, Harbinger of the Void”. Anyway, kinda off topic, and I was only teasing anyway. I have no idea what is coming next in the story, but I have high hopes for an undead aetherial possesed chthonic beast insect xpac boss.
I guess you don’t realise that MP while it’s shouted about loudly on the forums is one of the LEAST played aspects of GD along with Ultimate, so why should the devs waste money building something that doesn’t get used.
Hell I had to have a battlenet account, but I never played D2 in MP.
One of the reasons it’s least played because it does not work that well. It works ok, but not even close to what ancient D2 multiplayer had to offer. It’s probably a considerable invesment, but all it takes is separate servers/saves stored online/some ladder system and many many more players will play GD. You don’t have to remove single player option.
and a much more important factor is the most people play games solo…
It’s probably a considerable invesment, but all it takes is separate servers/saves stored online/some ladder system and many many more players will play GD.
Define ‘many’, given that Crate said closed servers cost about as much as GD cost to begin with, you would need to double the player base to get the same return on investment.
Let’s assume it is worth doing for 300k new players. Do you think you get anywhere near that number ?
