#yay back to writing things on tumblr bc twt's word limit

[neptrabbit]

i think they’ve rlly progressed in portraying npcs. two of the main npcs from this patch (dunyarzad and rana) are very likeable, so the endings of the archon quest & the world quest (despite how long it is) are actually quite emotional to me

in previous cases, the big problem is always that the npcs dont get a lot of development or we don’t know the npcs well enough before something terrible happens to them - for this reason, teppei’s death just didnt feel very impactful to me personally. we got to know zhiqiong a bit better before she disappears, but alas, still not quite well enough for it to hurt

with the new NPCS, they first have the entire act 1 set up for us to know dunyarzad - who she used to be, how she interacts with other characters, etc. (the contrast in personalities is also used effectively in act 2). you can’t really say her character has a lot of depth, but it is very effective. you can vaguely tell they are using some of the methods they use to flesh out playable characters

similar to rana - we have the entirety of chapter 1 to get to know her, who she is, how she interacts with the ppl in her life, etc. despite how absolutely ridiculously long the entire quest is, the characterization is effective

ofc with this, the quests have become noticeably longer, its a wild change from the prev archon quests & world quests, but ykw? i don’t mind as long as the story is good lol