Viridian Forest: For the most part everything flows well, but pretty soon into playing a story issue jumped out at me. 'The Suspicious Mayor' storyquest when you meet him in the Abandoned Well. [EDIT as I replayed through this]. You get told the mayor is investigating a water shortage with Bumbak, and the rest of the guards are tied up so please find him. The Abandoned Well is, apt to its name, an old well that's crumbling and broken open with a long dusty tunnel down to the bottom where you find the Mayor after Bumbak passes you.

Player character questions why the Mayor is there because the well has no water. Well, PC was just told by the guard the Mayor is investigating a water shortage. Suddenly, the PC is an idiot. I expected the Mayor to tell the PC they were being an idiot, but instead the Mayor goes 'I must have the wrong well! These maps are so old, I didn't know there were pirates down here!'

So...he's investigating a water shortage...but the dry well isn't supposed to be investigated. Everdusk is right outside Bamboo Village and why does the *Mayor* have an old map? There are pirate mobs all over the overland map, but the Mayor didn't know there were pirates.

If there is one thing I really don't like with game stories is when my player character is an idiot. In the original, the Mayor tells you he is investigating the pirates and working on a plan to bring them down. However, there have been rumors of spies, so keep quiet about it. Why was this part changed? There is 'Suspicious Mayor' and there is failing to even reach the level of a Scooby Doo villain. The NPc even still does that 'shhh' animation, but the current English translation leaves it utterly devoid of context and random.



I started paying attention to story changes after that. All foreshadowing of the conclusion was stripped out. I don't see why. The guards murmurs about why Nam Soyu is sending messages, and then dismisses it is missing. That was your first clue. That's gone now. The foreshadowing in this Act was subtle, it misdirected and made me go 'aha!' when I first played through Blackram Narrows on TW. The current story goes on a single track. The Mayor is unconvincing, the PC oblivious and the ending lacks the build up of the original version.

Cinderlands: Similarly, a critical foreshadowing piece was erased. You begin to suspect Gil is not who he says he is thanks to his dialog. Dialog that is now gone. This is pretty bad because the ending cutscene of the storyline had one off hand comment about the compass pointing in two directions as build up. That was it. The cutscene packs a lot of surprising information in it just by itself. Coupled with minimal foreshadowing makes then entire thing seem like it came out of nowhere.

The story has now built a pattern of just springing things on the players. Proper use of foreshadowing is a valuable story telling tool. When plot threads feel random, the story suffers.

Moonwater Plains: Just one question. Why?

The original transition sequence: Madun attempts to correct the flaws in the Dragon Pulse to Moonwater Plains. However, he doesn't fully succeed. Near the end of your journey, the Dragon Pulse twists and you pop out where you want to be in Brightstone ...but not when you want to be.

There is a rigid cutscene after completing 'past' Brightstone Village questline that transports character to present day Brightstone. It has been said that cutscene content cannot be changed. Well, that's a problem. Current story iteration has 'past' Brightstone be a divination sequence where you are riding the prodigy/sage Madun's viewpoint. There is no explanation given that explains how you go from there to the Brightstone in the present. Shouldn't you have appeared back where you started the divination in the first place?

No mention is made of why Jinsoyun didn't kill Madun. He doesn't make note of it in preceding dialog, and it's dropped entirely upon getting to the 'present'. It just happens. In the original, she doesn't kill the player character as they have the Twilight Flowering Wound (Mark of the Black Rose in English), and divines that this is a person she will meet again in the future. Madun has no relation to Jinsoyun at all. The writers tried to shoehorn in 'I had the mark of the black rose too!' This was done because game content the localization cannot change has the player suffer the Wound's affects in Jinsoyun's presence. But since we're supposed to be Madun now, something has to explain that.

No word on who gave it to Madun in this translation. He says Iksanun helped him get rid of it, however when you meet Iksanun, he says the only way to overcome it is to go through a whole story arc based on the local spirit beasts giving you power.

None of them, including Iksanun, mention meeting Madun before. You'd think if someone else in recent memory popped up with a super rare dark chi curse by the Big Bad, someone would have said something.

I found the justification for the divination sequence really weak. Player character needs to see what Jinsoyun is capable of? Player character was there when she killed Master Hong and students. Her arrival and subsequent murder of lyn civilians is no more 'noteworthy' than that. She's evil. We get it. It feels very patronizing and unnecessary in story context.

Cutscene accompanying said divination journey does not make much sense. You are traveling a wormhole, and another path forcibly interjects. The impression is 'not as planned.' So...what happened? This is not covered, tying into the first point. You can't finish your conversation with Madun since he was there to help you because now you're on another continent. Somehow. You go through 'another' divination in the Necropolis. No traveling wormhole cutscene there, conspicuously.

I made note of the time travel/divination confusion in the Open Discussion with English Localization when it was said there were 'two' time travel instances in the original game. No, there is not. There is one time travel (Moonwater transition) and a divination journey (Necropolis). It was erased for being 'off topic.' I'd like to take the point out that the thread is named Open Discussion, and posts were erased for not being Q&A. NCWest member Elusive made the exact same mistake on the Dojo of referring to the divination journey in the original game as time travel (Elusive stopped posting in that thread altogether).

Imagine my (not) surprise that it's confused in the game as well. You took a divination journey to the viewpoint of the soldier General Doyung said was at the scene. There is 0 reason the Soul Warden NPC Takgun would recognize you from the past, as you weren't actually in the past. But he does.

Maybe a minor nitpick, but the Snapjaw Sages. Ashjaw says 'half from each of us should suffice.' You bow and he does the animation. You talk to Redjaw and he just insults you. So...you got half from him? No animation. No bow like you did for the rest of them. Did he let Ashjaw split up his lifeforce on his behalf because he couldn't be arsed?

In the original, Ashjaw is generous. Redjaw refuses to give you anything. He was a belligerent jerk the entire zone so it was no surprise. What was the point of changing this?

Conflicting 'what, wait a minute' moments happened in the Pig Farm zone as well. When rescuing the guildmaster and the Pig Sage, the guildmaster says that the Pig Sage could have blabbed about the guildmaster being there to make an alliance to escape torture.

But...the guildmaster was there to make an alliance....with the Pig Sage. Maybe I'm missing something, but that sounds like the Pig Sage had a very good reason to not implicate himself further making the 'he's a better man than I' comment silly. In the original translation, the guildmaster actually pretended that the Pig Sage had captured him when the Talus forces came to get off light. That makes keeping quiet being 'noble' make sense. The Sage chose to suffer alone even when he was betrayed.

You can really see how that old pig was a friend to Iksanun and your late master, Hong

I just finished the portion of the Cinderlands where you leave the healer's hut in a Black Rose induced state and proceed to fight villagers. This culminates in Jin and Hong telling you to succumb/fight your desires respectively. It's quite obvious the mood was supposed to be set with the weather, lighting ,etc. But I just felt nothing. There is zero emotional investment in all of these characters and I actually found myself bewildered by what was actually going on.