The Story of the Millennium - Er, I Mean, Millennium's Story
A couple of days ago, I offered my first impressions of the new indie RPG, Millennium - A New Hope. I was (and still am) pretty excited about this new series from now-veteran studio Aldorlea Games. It shows a greater level of polish than previous titles, and (from what I can tell) is much more story-driven.

And that latter part is both a blessing and a curse. You won't find me criticizing the story of Depths of Peril or Knights of the Chalice much, because --- well, there isn't much there. 90% of it exists only in my mind. But in these more story-heavy games, the writing plays a much bigger role, and even small flaws are more noticeable.

As I indicated - and maintain even after playing it a bit further - the core conflict just wasn't washing with me. The story designer (I assume we're talking Indinera Falls here) seemed to be assuming some kind of intuitive step of logic that just didn't exist for me. My naive assumption was that this was simply in need of a quick fix easily applied with the next update.

Indinera and a fan of the game took up my invitation for a discussion, however, and shared some of their thoughts on the story. And while I don't feel my misgivings on the story are significantly lessened, I think the discussion did me good and demonstrated to me that it wasn't a quick-fix kind of situation. I think I held some flawed assumptions.

No, what I think may be going on here is somebody took up the call to mix things up and do something experimental with the plot. It's not just that city of Mystrock was a poorly presented foe. Indinera suggests that it's really not intended to be the "foe" at all - in spite of all the mustache-twirling on the part of Lord Dragon and his adviser.

Wow - that's kinda like finding President Shinra savagely impaled, after expecting him to be the Big Boss of the game in FF7! Okay, maybe not, but it does shine an interesting light on things. Indinera is not going for a traditional plot-line here. And that is to be applauded, even if the first few minutes of play left me with the feeling that the writing could have used an extra editor. The envelope does need to be pushed, and I'm pleased to see indie authors trying to do something different with their stories.

And so, at this point I'll defer to people who have played the game through further towards it completion to comment on plot development. And I'll direct you to the discussion taking place in the forums:

Forum Discussion on Millennium - A New Hope

And encourage you to check it out yourself and let me know if I'm on drugs:

Download Millennium: A New Hope

Labels: Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:50 AM (Permalink)