Just some casual feedback/discussion about Northern Rebirth.
I'm returning to Wesnoth 1.18 after more than a decade away and playing through all the campaigns again. Dead Water was just mainlined when I left, so there's a lot of stuff I hadn't experienced -- and it looks like Wesnoth has really come a long way since then! All the mainline campaigns are more polished than I remember: the new music is professional, the portrait art is phenonmenal, the additional animations add a lot to immersion, and even the writing seems to have improved.
When I hit Northern Rebirth (going chronologically), however, I am noticing a very sharp departure in style from all previous campaigns. The art is from a previous era -- but that isn't such a big deal, as Legend of Wesmere also has an older art style. More jarring is the writing and the scenario design. The writing is full of modern vernaculars and employs a great abundance of unusual techniques, such as the liberal use of capitalization and lots of these bracketed actions:
In terms of scenario design, I think the campaign is famous for being "very big" and "to-scale", which is a departure from Wesnoth's generally semi-abstracted design philosophy. There are a lot of turns with lengthy queues of units just banging against each other in a chokepoint with minimum tactical finesse, which is a carthartic sort of feature often seen in UMCs but quite unusual for a mainline piece.
There's also a lack of polish in small details that seems particularly out-of-place amongst the new-and-improved campaigns. For example, the fact that we use ordinary peasant units and could therefore advance to Royal Guards while still struggling in the mines as a motley crew contrasts sharply with the treatment of a similar issue in Liberty, where custom units are used to make the setting much more consistent (even though the custom units are for flavour only).
All in all, I feel like Northern Rebirth kind of hit the breaks on my mainline campaign run and interrupted the immersion. Compared to all the shiny new mainline campaigns (except Winds of Fate, which is understandably lacking in polish due to its being so new), Northern Rebirth feels to me like it's from a different era of Wesnoth development.
I'm returning to Wesnoth 1.18 after more than a decade away and playing through all the campaigns again. Dead Water was just mainlined when I left, so there's a lot of stuff I hadn't experienced -- and it looks like Wesnoth has really come a long way since then! All the mainline campaigns are more polished than I remember: the new music is professional, the portrait art is phenonmenal, the additional animations add a lot to immersion, and even the writing seems to have improved.
When I hit Northern Rebirth (going chronologically), however, I am noticing a very sharp departure in style from all previous campaigns. The art is from a previous era -- but that isn't such a big deal, as Legend of Wesmere also has an older art style. More jarring is the writing and the scenario design. The writing is full of modern vernaculars and employs a great abundance of unusual techniques, such as the liberal use of capitalization and lots of these bracketed actions:
Some details of the story seem inconsistent with the mainline lore or developed/executed in such an alien way that it doesn't seem to be from the same universe. An example would be the existence of the immortal white mages and liches -- they seem disconnected from all the existing lore on the undead (Wesfolks, Ardryn-Na's book, Illiah-Malal, Sagus and Asheviere) and the mages, both in style of characterization and backstory.(Stab)
What the...? (Gurgle)
(Trip) Oof!
(Giggle) Thank you, honey.
(Rolls eyes) Women!
Yes, if you would ever buy me a house! (Pouty face)
(Flap flap flap)
(Sheds a tear)
In terms of scenario design, I think the campaign is famous for being "very big" and "to-scale", which is a departure from Wesnoth's generally semi-abstracted design philosophy. There are a lot of turns with lengthy queues of units just banging against each other in a chokepoint with minimum tactical finesse, which is a carthartic sort of feature often seen in UMCs but quite unusual for a mainline piece.
There's also a lack of polish in small details that seems particularly out-of-place amongst the new-and-improved campaigns. For example, the fact that we use ordinary peasant units and could therefore advance to Royal Guards while still struggling in the mines as a motley crew contrasts sharply with the treatment of a similar issue in Liberty, where custom units are used to make the setting much more consistent (even though the custom units are for flavour only).
All in all, I feel like Northern Rebirth kind of hit the breaks on my mainline campaign run and interrupted the immersion. Compared to all the shiny new mainline campaigns (except Winds of Fate, which is understandably lacking in polish due to its being so new), Northern Rebirth feels to me like it's from a different era of Wesnoth development.
Statistics: Posted by fishrose — Yesterday, 9:23 pm