The latest on the Valley 2 schedule

[Aklyon]

AVWW 2: Revenge of the town scenery?

[tigersfan]

AVWW 2: Revenge of the town scenery?

LOL!

[Coppermantis]

That actually was the stratospheric citadel -- you can get those for your town in the first game, though its very hard. In the second game they have a more nefarious purpose.

Well how about that.

I wonder what this nefarious purpose will be. I instinctively think something like the Ice Pirates, but those weren't exactly nefarious.

[LaughingThesaurus]

Stratospheric Citadels are enemy buildings now?
...were the survivors from the last game made the evil overlord now? =o

[Coppermantis]

Stratospheric Citadels are enemy buildings now?
...were the survivors from the last game made the evil overlord now? =o

It sort of makes sense. Once the winds were driven back and the overlord's threat eliminated, they no longer had to cooperate and work hard to survive. The survivors begin to become more independent and form multiple factions that fight over the land that is now available for taking. Weaker survivor groups are eliminated and the stronger ones begin to subjugate the remainders, taking control of the Stratospheric Citadels, Overlord towers and so on, essentially becoming that which they once fought against.

Of course I doubt this is actually what happened, but hey.

[Aklyon]

Stratospheric Citadels are enemy buildings now?
...were the survivors from the last game made the evil overlord now? =o

It sort of makes sense. Once the winds were driven back and the overlord's threat eliminated, they no longer had to cooperate and work hard to survive. The survivors begin to become more independent and form multiple factions that fight over the land that is now available for taking. Weaker survivor groups are eliminated and the stronger ones begin to subjugate the remainders, taking control of the Stratospheric Citadels, Overlord towers and so on, essentially becoming that which they once fought against.

Of course I doubt this is actually what happened, but hey.

It could be what happened in (the original area of) Environ, you just didn't mention where the Glyphbearers and the Illari fit in there.

[LaughingThesaurus]

I haven't unlocked all the mysteries but, it seems like there should be one for something like 'why things went to hell in the first place'.

[Aklyon]

Speaking of mysteries, are those returning, Chris?

[KDR_11k]

AVWW 2: Revenge of the town scenery?

Lesson learned: Don't build gazebos in your town!

[tigersfan]

AVWW 2: Revenge of the town scenery?

Lesson learned: Don't build gazebos in your town!

Or if you do, definitely don't shoot them with arrows!

[x4000]

Cheers folks.

To the question about mysteries: those won't be returning, at least not in the 1.0 version of Valley 2.  However, there is quite a bit more text of different sorts that is more gameplay-integrated and which helps to progress things as well as giving little bits of backstory.  We have a new "text interjection system" that we're putting to excellent use.

[LaughingThesaurus]

A text interjection system almost sounds like a fancy version of what Ninja Gaiden (NES) did for storytelling.

[x4000]

What ninja gaiden did was more like what we're doing for some of the key cutscenes in shattered haven. We call those "comic panels." The text interjection system here is more along the lines of how sudden triggered minor cutscenes can happen in various early final fantasy games, except these are only made of text. In shattered haven we have a much richer cutscene engine for in-engine stuff like ff4 or ff6 were capable of. That level of technical capability, not that level of storytelling.

[LaughingThesaurus]

So we can have conversations just sort of happen in the form of multiple dialog boxes then basically?

[x4000]

More or less; those get triggered at various points. A lot of them are one-liners that block the action while you read, to keep things moving though. Bosses talking to you, etc.