#I had a LOT of roseway thoughts I needed to get out of my system

[spaceratprodigy]

could i bother u for more thoughts on faith and max in a mock apple orchard 🥺👉🏻👈🏻

@gayafsatan — I would absolutely LOVE to brainstorm some fun ideas of them in a mock apple orchard!!

I've been replaying again so they've been rotating around in my mind a lot extra hard and was especially thinking about mock apple picking bc the botanical labs also has a lil orchard where you can pick mock apples up off the ground! But I'm currently in Roseway so oughhh.. ideas....

I want you now I am going to ramble a LOT so please bear with me I swearsies it'll be more fun if we get the full lore dump from my brain 😩💖💕

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👇 ROSEWAY THOUGHTS 👇

(I AM GOING TO TALK ABT ROSEWAY THOUGHTS AS A WHOLE AND THEN EASE INTO SOME SILLY MOCK APPLE ORCHARD IDEAS AT THE END OKAY. OKAY ILY THANK YOU).

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My thoughts are very chaotic and rambly so let me try to walk though my ideas lmao

Roseway is typically where I peg Faith's death wish arc happening, and to summarize what all that entails, it's when the mask slips and the weight of everything finally hits her in full force.

I always envision this story happening over a long period of time so a lot of time has passed since first arriving at Edgewater and the Groundbreaker.

Halcyon. Her situation. Her identity. The life Phineas threw her into abruptly and his expectations for her. Making split second moral decisions where no matter what someone is going to get hurt. Being so alien and alone, no one to understand her or believe in her predicament but having to be the mysterious competent captain regardless.

It finally gets to her. Bad. And she makes some self destructive decisions. She gets sloppy, careless, hoping someone else will end this nightmare for her. Until they almost do.

I am swiftly brushing past many details so we don't get too lost in the sauce. But Max went after her, found her collapsed and injured bad, carried her back to the ship for Ellie to do whatever she could, and then stayed by her side for as long as it took for her to wake up.

This is such a key moment for them getting closer. Because there was a lot of frustration and emotion and being forced to confront the possibility of feelings existing, but nothing they fully understand or are ready to acknowledge as such yet.

She tries to brush past the subject of what happened, deflecting everything until he raises his voice in a way he hasn't since she gave him the journal and she threatened he never talk like that to her again. And it was enough to break through her facade, for her to show just how utterly broken and vulnerable she is, and they have a proper fucking conversation about where she's at mentally. He still isn't ready for the truth about her life before. But it's a step forward.

There is a lot of patience and understanding and just. Yeah. A lot happens here. Some walls come down. There grows some room for them to become softer and closer over more time.

All of this is important because a short piece I had written a long time ago took place in this area roughly after this incident.

It was a personal outlet vent piece, I will be honest. When I wrote it it was after I had a very bad panic attack after an awful scare. And I wrote it into Faith because I just wanted to get some feelings from that experience out of my system.

The shortened version of that one is Faith recovering from a bad episode, trying to calm her breathing, waiting for her ears to stop ringing and for her vision to come back. Her legs gave out on her and she was sitting under the mock apple trees. Her voice locks up on her when she's seriously distressed. Yadda yadda yadda, Max had brought along his datapad so she could communicate anything important and she was incredibly confused because she knows he doesn't like using his datapad ever and then rendered even more speechless to know he brought it specifically for her in case something like this were to happen again. It ends with her just asking if he would keep talking to her, and they sit there under the mock apple trees for a while, in no particular rush to get anywhere.

And after this point, I think the mock apple orchards become a really peaceful, therapeutic spot for her when she just wants a moment to herself. Sits there, breathes, takes in the Roseway scenery and collects herself before jumping back into the horrors of Halcyon. Spends some time picking mock apples to take back to the ship.

I've been having a lot of ideas of her asking Max to go with her. I'm of the mind if she'd ask directly that he'd either decline, or at least pretend to be uninterested but she's the one who asked so he accepts the offer.

But I can see her being vague and just saying that she's heading out if he'd join her and she leads him to the orchards. By this point they're already often in each other's company, she indulges his interests often, letting him be the one who is finally listened to. But in general, they get along very well in conversation when it comes to a handful of similar interests and their personalities and attitudes bounce off of each other well.

(In my story anyway, since she spends an extended amount of time in Edgewater and the Vale, there was also a lot of time spent doing some early bonding with Max. So do with that info what you will. They're not likeee besties yet but they're much more than strangers by this point, ya'know? Just to get an idea of where their familiarity with each other is at and why there's enough respect and trust to some extent already existing. Not to mention how much time they had spent on the Groundbreaker).

They'd be having such a peaceful time away from the rest of the crew.

Oughhh hear me out, okay, Faith loves to bake. She doesn't even ask, she just makes Max hold her bag open while she starts collecting mock apples and after they finally head back to the ship she figures out how to make mock apple pie for the crew 😭 we already know Max doesn't care much for sweets (I wonder how sweet or tart a mock apple pie would be.. Faith girl what all Halcyon ingredients are you adding to that bad boy) but.. what if.... After everyone goes to bed...... He tries some anyway........ Because she made it..........

Most of what's bouncing around in my brain is them early on having wholesome bonding time in a spot just for the two of them. Just enjoying each other's company. Realizing they have genuine respect for each other, Faith feeling like she found a genuine friend who went to lengths further than anyone had in her entire life to make sure she survived. I am specifying Faith's feelings here intentionally. I write Max in a more complicated spot very blinded by his revenge scheme more or less unaware for a long while just how much the lines start blurring between his faith and his Faith. To put it succinctly. (Look I know I'm always drawing The Good Stuff™️ but in actuality their relationship is suchhhh a slow burn. They are not the most romantically inclined people lmao).

But also.. once she realizes she can talk to him when she needs to. I think coming back to this spot, off the ship, away from the crew, she just likes it there. She likes being there with him. She finds comfort in that spot.

OKAY BUT DO YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE WOULD BE CUTE.... they should come back here.. post-scylla and post-gorgon...... Ya'know......... The first being when they establish not wanting to be apart and the second being when they want to make that partnership a permanent one......... ASKING HER IN THE MOCK APPLE ORCHARDS WOULDN'T THAT BE DARLING ough okay I need a minute my brain is going too fast to comprehend

My Roseway ideas aren't the most cleaned up I know BUT so many important bonding moments exist and oughhhh LOOSE IDEAS ARE STILL WORTH TALKING ABOUT OKAYYYYY

I just want them to go mock apple picking together and learn how to get smiles out of each other and not understand why it makes their chests hurt but they know they need to do it again

ACTUALLYYYYY post-scylla when he's much more mellowed out and they're the closest they've been I think would be so so nice. they'd be so much softer and he'd probably be so much more involved in wanting to enjoy silly lil activities with her.....

Currently imagining him reading out loud to her, all the conversations they'd have, maybe he brings his tossball cards to show her, maybe they bring one of the lil games, have a lil makeshift picnic....

Godddd the transition between just how much enthusiasm he shows spending time with her is enough to make me explode. Can you see my vision. The reluctance, to the hesitancy, to becoming absolutely inseparable.

I HAVE A LOT TO THINK ABOUT BUT I'M GETTING SLEEPY SO SENDING IT!!!!!!

Literally feel free to add on or share your own thoughts I'm begging you lmao I promise there is so much room for ideas to be fleshed out and better put together, I'm mostly just spitballing what all I think would be incredibly fun ideas to work with. Plus I'm kind of thinking across the timeline and how much their relationship would change between each visit. And how over time they would enjoy it more and more and make each visit more special than the last.

WAIT BEFORE I LOSE THE THOUGHT!! They make a stop RIGHT BEFORE HEADING TO SCYLLA TO GO TO THE HERMIT'S LODGE!! Oh that could hurt so good omgggg. Okay okay I need to stop now I NEED TO STOP.

[ingloriousbi]

Long, drawn-out 80-hour experiences aren’t always a good thing. They can be incredibly frustrating.

Side quests become tedious, with no real rewards. They become fetch quests or grind quests or inconsequential rp quests. 100% requires all these little collectibles – like the ac feathers or solas’ orbs or what have you. Travel between locations can be difficult or stunted, and gameplay can become tedious – the fighting takes too long, or the cutscenes take too long, or the dialogue is unending. I usually find myself skipping through long dialogue when I can read the text, I don’t usually read everything on terminals, and I usually only ever 100% things out of compulsion.

For reference: my first dark souls 3 playthrough was 50 hours, but my second was less than 20. Even going by just the second play through I would consider dark souls 3 worth 60 bucks.

Because it isn’t *just* about hours. An 80 hour, long-ass drawn out low quality shit show isn’t better than a high-quality, well polished 20 hour game. But those 20 hours need to be *polished* and they need to serve the game. In a game like dark souls 3, that meant the atmosphere, combat, boss fights and environment needed to be polished and interesting. And they were! The atmosphere was amazing, there was good enemy variety, the boss fights were awesome, the lore was interesting enough to keep me on my toes, and the combat system had good depth to it.

But RPGs need roleplaying elements. Shooters need engaging gameplay. For 60 bucks, the outer worlds should have offered more time with its existing system or greatly enhance it.

The armor and weapons easily capped their max armor/damage, and with the tinkering ability and unending trash a-la fallout, I had a better weapon than any drop or quest item ever gave me. Instead, the constant armor and weapon drops exclusively became a means to money, and this translates into insane inventory management, because of course it does. I can’t speak too much to weapon/attack variety, because once I’ve got a gun I like I usually do a full playthrough with it (although the distinct lack of snipers annoyed me, especially for places like roseway and tartarus), but armor variety was shit. Armor offered little balance, bad mods, shitty stats, and all looked ugly as hell. I never used any medical items except for the standard heal, and never felt the need to (I was playing on regular difficulty). The difficulty curve was really weird; I struggled the first hour or so and soon after I was completely overpowered; but manti-queens were still always a tedious, semi-difficult bore, even when I one-shotted everything else.

The roleplaying elements started off really strong. Back in Edgewater, way at the start, someone even commented on my wearing marauder armor – which just happened to be the first thing I looted from some enemy. There was a lot of humor to balance how genuinely overwhelmed I felt with this new world (in a good way) that slowly gave way to more serious narrative, while never taking away your options for fun. As I found my bearings in the world, the narrative offered good themes and such (obviously; fuck capitalism!) but also had a good balance of “large save the colony!” vs “Im just a dude in space” and you can roleplay for either or in the middle of those two. There was never really a moment I felt it was weird that I was putting the main quest on “hold” to do side quests (with the exception of the fucking tailoring quest line which was really jarring lmao).

Questlines typically offered a healthy balance of options; it really allowed for different outcomes, different character motivations, etc. I didn’t feel shoe-horned into certain dialogue options in order to complete quests the way I wanted to complete them. There was nuance to your choices/dialogue options with characters and in questlines. Persuade, lie, or intimidate weren’t always a different button to the same outcome; oftentimes they actually led to different things happening in the quest. There were also different ways to complete your goals in-game, with different kinds of stealth, to murder or not to murder, talk your way through, guns-blazing, etc. Usually quests gave options I wasn’t really expecting and had a pretty good amount of interactivity between them (think the strike quest on Monarch, or the Sublight quests on Monarch). The only time I felt really shoe-horned was at the end of Lily Hagen’s questline and during the ending quest. Lily Hagen’s last quest is also the only time I felt like I got a significant choice where the consequences didn’t actually matter, which was really frustrating considering the ending of the fucking game.

The way skill points allowed for both in and out of dialogue improvements was really cool (e.g. persuasion isn’t just new dialogue options but affects enemy’s statuses, etc) and the combination of skills required during roleplay elements (i.e. you need persuasion AND science points to convince a scientist of X) felt really strong and did really well for my immersion. In the last mission this all went to shit though.

I liked a lot of the individual characters (I fucking love Phineas and ADA, Zora and Sanjar and even the Van Noys were really fun, a lot of characters were really sympathetic like Reed and Graham) and most of the companions have interesting enough personalities, but there’s a definite problem with the crew members and their implementation.

There was a huge difference in character quality between them; Felix has significantly less character depth to him than any of the other companions, even though his questline felt like it should have had a significantly larger impact on a person. Ellie and Nyoka are super interesting characters, but neither really allow for significant character growth after their respective missions or during companion dialogue.

Parvati and Max have significantly more depth than anyone else on the ship, and these are characters with the most growth and arguably most impactful side quests (measured by impact on the characters). They also have way more, and more in depth, companion dialogue. And still I’d argue the growth is too little. You run out of dialogue with your companions super quickly and they rarely have anything to say about your choices or whatever. Only Ellie really spoke up about some stuff I did/had questions for me about Phineas and even then it didn’t actually matter. Ellie’s lack of character growth was probably the most jarring, because she actively starts conversations that would/should lead to it but she remains unchanged until the epilogue informs you You Did Change Her Mind After All. Felix’s lack of anything was really disappointing especially since I didn’t really care for him, but he was really sympathetic to the captain and to the unification of the crew, especially near the end (his joining the crew was also the most random). I loved Nyoka but her alcoholism is a little much and casually overplayed for no reason, and it actively inhibits what could/should have been character development after her mission. I actually kind of feel like non-companion NPCS like Catherine Malin or Zora had more character development and relationship development with the captain than some of my companions. Parvati got the most personal and had the most growth, but it was *all* in relation to her dating life lmao.

This lack of depth or use for the companions is really bad when you think about the way they are positioned in relation to the factions and again, this is made worse during the last mission. I was kind of happy there were no romances when that was announced, because I thought it would allow for more independent character growth instead of development based on whether or not you’re fucking the player character, but what it really lead to was static characters and static interaction with them. The interactions between them are fun at the start but there aren’t many of them and they quickly end up repeating themselves. I wasn’t expecting fucking Mass effect or Dragon age companions, but I was expecting better than the fallout 4 fare.

The gameplay, skill division and choices/quest options really allow for interesting replayability for both different options/character motivations within an ending but even more so when you consider the fully pro-board playthrough (idk if I could stomach it though). But even with another playthrough I’d be looking at just 40 hours of gameplay (if I 100% it again, and I could probably do it in less than 20 now that I know where/what/how and how useless most loot is) and the companions would remain disappointing.

And the ending just throws it all in my face, especially the skill/stat division is just… terrible. I was level 30 and all side quests were done; I couldn’t milk more levels/exp if I WANTED to, and it was still bad. But I did get to walk back to my ship, re-spec my stats, and then walk all the way back to the end of the mission I’d already played which was super fucking funny.

It was a good game, and most of the game was genuinely good, but the things that let me down were the things that I really wanted, or are really impactful (IT’S A SHOOTER RPG, WHY DOES YOUR COMBAT SUCK). And it was so short. It was a eally well polished, quality experience, and I wouldn’t have liked to see it stretched out to 50 hours because it would have ultimately done it a disservice (and the story WAS genuinely really good and well-done, the world was well-crafted, and I would have hated to see it drone on and one when it’s better than that) , but I WOULD have liked to see an hour or two extra per companion and a price reduction to 40 bucks at launch.

Theme: 10/10 Narrative: 10/10 Atmosphere: 10/10 Environments: 9/10 Shooter-gameplay: 5/10 Character creation: 7/10 (shitty physical creator 3/10, very good stat creator 8/10) RPG Dialogue/Quest Gameplay: 8/10 Companions: 4/10 Inventory management: 1/10