- Dec 24, 2018
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ExcellentJust a figure of speech. I wouldn't keep coming back here if I didn't enjoy the discussion
I definitely agree with your post and can even understand your perspective. But there are so many things that frustrate me. Even not too long ago I believe it was you that made a post regarding the layout of the city of Wollust. I read the whole thing and it left me even more depressed because I realized that even after an entire season of "world building", Ocean failed miserably at it, imo. I find myself unable to paint a clear picture of what the town looks like. Unable to understand most characters because everything is vague. Everything is surface level. There is no anchor to ground the story. Everything in this story seems to be in a permanent state of flux. I feel like there is nothing I can hold onto. No piece of solid land I can start navigating the story from that won't just crumble away beneath my feet.
Don't let Maviarab see this but at this point, having done a new playthrough of both games, I have to admit that even though I don't much care for it, WiAB is the far superior game. In almost every regard. Like you said it's more focused, more grounded, more reliable and easier to understand. Even the dialogue is stronger. And that sucks for SG![]()
In gneral, all agreed. It's frustrating, but there's still a lot of great things. Most of the continuity issues are thefirst three chapters, because Ocean's tried to find new jigsaw pieces and force them into the shape of the old, without them being the same shapes. The whole point of those changes was to make it ambigious. If (one day far in the future) Ocean does a directors cut, I imagine he'll return plenty of things back in. As it is now, he could do that easily without really having to do much work. For that to happen though, SG will have to be successful enough that he can deliver it completely the way he wished, without the dictates of external pressures (real or feared). It's far easier to do it with a successful franchise, I'm not naive about that.
Regards Wollust's geography, it's like the dead guys in Diehard who flinch and blink. I get what Ocean intends but I suspect he just got overwhelmed with all the things left to do, and just decided to get it out and move on. I highly respect that decision, simply because WIaB and CH 4.5 and 5 of SG (actual chapter content, not the release themselves) do have far more continuity than Ch 1. Wiab's current coherence shows that it's easier to build from scratch rather than shoehorn in a rework. But yeah, it's like a dream, where two different mutually exclusive things coexist. I just allow my disbelief to be suspended, as the locations aren't really so important - the cabin could be anywhere, and the narrative result is the same - Nika experienced something traumatic. Easiest thing to fix all that geography? Put tha cabin 2 hours away. Most of Europe is only 2 hours to a new border right?
I think Season 2 will end up having the same sort of consistency that WiaB enjoys, now that Ocean's gotten over the first hurdle. I think it's important to recognise that it's the first time he's released a fully commercial version of the game, and it's still better than 95% of what steam presents in my discovery queue.