I feel like most of the quest chains were supposed to go to 6 chapters, and we only have the first 2/3 of them. Unfallen especially so.

My main issue with the unfallen quests though was that it claims dust predates the endless. What? It drops a bombshell like that, plus this pre-endless entity, and then nada. Like, "Hey, everything you know is wrong. The end."

Astasia wrote:

I feel like most of the quest chains were supposed to go to 6 chapters, and we only have the first 2/3 of them. Unfallen especially so.

My main issue with the unfallen quests though was that it claims dust predates the endless. What? It drops a bombshell like that, plus this pre-endless entity, and then nada. Like, "Hey, everything you know is wrong. The end."

That's my problem with it. The story flows nicely up till the end and then... it falls off into the abyss, the end, and you're left wondering WTH just happened?

Summoning @Slowhands

It's a little loose but it made sense to me. You spend the entire game and your entire existence as a species listening to this "psychic" entity that's giving your entire race a directive. When you "wake up" and go explore the galaxy and meet other races you become curious and even suspicious about what you were listening to the whole time. Then you discover it's not even a part of your race. It came from somewhere else and has it's own motivations including basically creating you. How do the unfallen deal with that knowledge? That's not the ending and it doesn't need to be.

I was also surprised to finish this story arc around turn 70. It falls flat and is anti-climatic imho.

It doesn't help that the Lost aren't developed lore-wise... you can't find any info on them. The only thing I know about the Lost comes from a few mentions in ES1 and that's it.

Lorco wrote:

I completly understand what you say, the questline had a very... abrupt ending. to be honest I thought that there where 8 chapters like in endless legend but still reading through the entire questline it does need a bit more to explain everything.

and to Astasia: regard the comment about dust pre-dating the endless, this I thought was common knowledge.

the endless found dust and learned from it but it was older then them, for example in endless legend there are at least 3 factions (combination of minor and major) that pre-date the arrival of the endless on Auriga, but all three of them have an understanding of what dust is and how to use it.

You mean the Broken Lords? 

Kryptic57 wrote:

It's a little loose but it made sense to me. You spend the entire game and your entire existence as a species listening to this "psychic" entity that's giving your entire race a directive. When you "wake up" and go explore the galaxy and meet other races you become curious and even suspicious about what you were listening to the whole time. Then you discover it's not even a part of your race. It came from somewhere else and has it's own motivations including basically creating you. How do the unfallen deal with that knowledge? That's not the ending and it doesn't need to be.

Exactly Kryptic57.  It's not a final chapter in the saga; it merely brings one up to current.  The final chapter is written by the player of that race and how they perform in the game.

Lorco wrote:

and to Astasia: regard the comment about dust pre-dating the endless, this I thought was common knowledge.

the endless found dust and learned from it but it was older then them, for example in endless legend there are at least 3 factions (combination of minor and major) that pre-date the arrival of the endless on Auriga, but all three of them have an understanding of what dust is and how to use it.

No the lore from the previous games and related information was pretty clear that the Endless created dust. We were told they created it, we knew when and why they created it, what it was, how it worked, and the effects it had on their civilization after it's creation. This idea that the Endless did not create dust is brand new to ES2, it's a massive retcon.

http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Dust

http://endlessspace.wikia.com/wiki/Endless#The_Birth_of_Dust

Hi all,

First off, thanks to Undead Puppy for caring enough to be annoyed about it. Kryptic57 got the effect we were going for:

"...You spend the entire game and your entire existence as a species listening to this "psychic" entity that's giving your entire race a directive. When you "wake up" and go explore the galaxy and meet other races you become curious and even suspicious about what you were listening to the whole time. Then you discover it's not even a part of your race. It came from somewhere else and has it's own motivations including basically creating you. How do the unfallen deal with that knowledge? That's not the ending and it doesn't need to be..."

I rather like the idea that once their science is advanced enough they turn it on their gods, and in my mind as I was writing it that made for a strange, disturbing revelation at the end of the tale. Clearly this did not work for everyone! I left it a bit vague--okay, too vague--because for a lot of reasons we don't want to be too explicit about the backstory and the lore of the universe; you need to play through a few times and tie together a lot of vague hints to get the whole picture, as Encelus commented:

From what I gathered, it's a wounded "Lost" living in Koyasil's core and he's what the Unfallen hears. I gotta agree though, not much explanation outside of that - but I guess they want you to infer more about the Lost from the academy meta plot instead.

To make it all happen there was a bit of retconning (yes, you caught us, but we did it for a lot of good reasons though personally I now feel kinda unclean...), but it allowed us to provide a backstory to ES2 like the one we had for Endless Legend, in which there is a greater conflict and adventure going on than just the factions struggling for supremacy.

I'll go back and look over it again in the next couple weeks and try to flesh it out a bit. 

Thanks for the comments,

-Slow

The end of the Unfallen quest chain is more confusing that the whole Horatio plot twisty quests, and that's saying something.

P.S. That one is also my fault...

-S

I wasn't annoyed by it, I actually quite enjoyed it up until the final quest, where it just became confusing and too vague to draw any conclusion.

I get the value of an open ending that lets the player fill in the gaps, but sometimes, we need more than 4 pieces of puzzle to figure out the whole picture.

[Spoilers in comment, tons in thread but just saying.]

I agree. I played through the quest relatively quickly and ended it just thinking it broke off suddenly. It didn't feel like leaving an ending open, more like  cliffhanger. Granted, I did the end option that terraformed another planet, so I didnt even get to find out what the Heart is, just that "alright it's on Koyasil."

Slowhands wrote:

Hi all,

First off, thanks to Undead Puppy for caring enough to be annoyed about it. Kryptic57 got the effect we were going for:

"...You spend the entire game and your entire existence as a species listening to this "psychic" entity that's giving your entire race a directive. When you "wake up" and go explore the galaxy and meet other races you become curious and even suspicious about what you were listening to the whole time. Then you discover it's not even a part of your race. It came from somewhere else and has it's own motivations including basically creating you. How do the unfallen deal with that knowledge? That's not the ending and it doesn't need to be..."

I rather like the idea that once their science is advanced enough they turn it on their gods, and in my mind as I was writing it that made for a strange, disturbing revelation at the end of the tale. Clearly this did not work for everyone! I left it a bit vague--okay, too vague--because for a lot of reasons we don't want to be too explicit about the backstory and the lore of the universe; you need to play through a few times and tie together a lot of vague hints to get the whole picture, as Encelus commented:

From what I gathered, it's a wounded "Lost" living in Koyasil's core and he's what the Unfallen hears. I gotta agree though, not much explanation outside of that - but I guess they want you to infer more about the Lost from the academy meta plot instead.

To make it all happen there was a bit of retconning (yes, you caught us, but we did it for a lot of good reasons though personally I now feel kinda unclean...), but it allowed us to provide a backstory to ES2 like the one we had for Endless Legend, in which there is a greater conflict and adventure going on than just the factions struggling for supremacy.

I'll go back and look over it again in the next couple weeks and try to flesh it out a bit. 

Thanks for the comments,

-Slow

The end of the Unfallen quest chain is more confusing that the whole Horatio plot twisty quests, and that's saying something.

P.S. That one is also my fault...

-S

I was wondering if the creation of Dust being tied to the Lost was a retcon or merely fuzzy mythology where some people who became aware of the Lost suspected they might have somehow been source of Dust. (The Dust Wars and Time aren't overly conducive to proper record keeping afterall.) But I'm sure it'll prove interesting in the long run. 

Also it now sorta feels like I'm the only one who got the Unfallen's ending....Like....To me it felt like Kyosil was a planet sized dyson sphere designed to serve as a prison for a member of the Lost. But there was just a big enough crack in the prison's walls to allow The Heart the ability to direct the evolution of the Unfallen and commune with them as a sort of 'World Spirit', or at least that was my take on it. The idea that buried beneath the crazy amount of plantlife of skyscraper sized tree's and roots and beneath the loamy soil is a Dyson Prison holding an Old God is sort of fascinating.