Some thoughts on 3.7’s writing

Extreme incoherent rambling; overall still processing it and my initial thoughts are probably going to shift after a few more days

My whole day has been seized by the last quest, so I’ll just put it like this and come to things later; I’m overall still processing 3.7

I legit had to put down my phone multiple times so as not to get pissed off at the hyv overt verbose special. It’s something that haunts the writing a lot, and it ends up making things drag on too long. It took me a while to come around to Castorice even after 3.2 bc she falls victim to this a ton too. There’s a difference between waxing philosophical and putting something on repeat over and over again. Like, I do not need you hammering in the point about seeds, ripples, pebbles, etc. all the time, and you do not sound any deeper for speaking in those metaphors 24/7. Moments like these are when hyv stories grind to a halt, and I feel like I’m lobotomizing myself trying to process it all.

However—and, fittingly I suppose, given she is a storyteller—Cyrene falls into the absolute worst of this writing tendency. And this is coming from someone who has a fairly high tolerance for this style of unnecessarily verbose writing. I could stand a bit of it at the start, with the memories of Demiurge at the beginning—at that time, you ARE listening into the ramblings of a girl who has had no company, stuck recording memories of events she is completely unable to participate in. It’s a miracle she doesn’t sound insane, and it did make me feel bad for her. In addition, there’s also the Heart there, so it actually explains how the Cyrene we interact with st the end came to be—and how the real Cyrene is just. Screwed. At the very least, this scene does establish sympathy from me. Hell, I could even excuse how long it was too, the repeating nature of it; I think some of Khaslana’s monologuing and story stretches on too, but that to me felt deliberate as a way to hammer in e despair of trudging along in the cycles. This could’ve also been a way to do that…even if it’s just a repeat of 3.6, just eith the Hwaet added in and an, admittedly gorgeous, set of CGs.

But then…after that? No, it just grinds everything to a halt. I already went through an entire scene of you talking to yourself like this; I do not need to hear you repeat the point we already got from those scenes, also in the same flowery verbose way! It grates on me like hell because it makes me feel like I’m stupid. One of the reasons Cas annoyed me was precisely because it felt like they overdid it on hammering in her struggle and musings with death; a good chunk of all of that didn’t need to be there, hell, the animated short for her already did a good job at that. But Cyrene, it feels even worse because it also juggles with the literal climax of the story—and is placed right besides it. It really messes up the pace of actually defeating Ironyomb, and when fighting the guy, unless you took a break, all of that is going to be weighing on your mind as you play through the hyped up boss battle. At least we know nothing tops One Punch Aquila?

Part of it, too, is that I dislike the voice direction hey took with Cyrene. it’s also something that made me nitpick at cas and hysilens. Their voices are fine, but for some reason, I can’t listen to them for long stretches at a time. It’s just personal taste at the end of the day, but I dislike the cadence Cyrene and cas use most of the time; it feels like they’re trying to breathe into the mic for me, and keep their voices really low. Which is fine, but their voices overall feel so flat that I couldn’t stand being made to listen to them for long stretches of time—especially when they keep on repeating the same thing over and over and over again. Hysilens just sounded a bit off; feels like she was gritting her teeth all the time, lol, but she wasn’t as bad as the other two bc she didn’t uh, talk for as long.

Still, by the end, where things wrap up, she does pretty much stop it. The metaphors are still there, but that’s fine, because now they get to be used without 300 extra words of waxing. It actually felt like we could enjoy the story without the writers trying to remind us abt what the flowery language is supposed to mean. Some of the sections do still drag on for too long, but it’s bearable enough I guess.

I do like the final stretch with her though, seeing the fate play out. That section was well done, and I think her VA did kill it; it sounded like she was keeping herself from crying the whole time, which is by far a more compelling performance to listen to than everything else up until that point. For all its faults, I do think 3.7 at least ended up a good note—and for Amphoreus as a whole, with the Exotale and As I’ve Written Quest, I think the region got a really nice send off. But that’s not the main story, to be fair.

Overall…3.7 is kind of a mixed bag, and emblematic of one of Amphoreus’ biggest writing flaws: dragging on. Particularly, by having the characters honing in on themselves (idk how else to put it it’s late and I’m tired lmao) and proceeding to wax on themselves just…for too long, and with a lot of unnecessary padding. I’ve already discussed Cas, but until Cyrene she was the worse of this storytelling to me. Phainon would’ve irritated me more on this front, but given his story, it could fold back into being fitting on a metatextual and textual level. I kind of felt the padding with Mydei, but it’s been so long that I can’t really remember everything apart from the general plot of 3.1, so I won’t get too much into it (tho I think most of it happens through mural-like stories, so at least it also developed Kremnos a bit too, which makes better use of time). I really disliked the DH section at the start of 3.6 bc it grinded everything else to a halt; and it felt at once too brief and too long? Like, they wanted to go more in depth into him but didn’t have the time, however that also made it feel like it was too long for what they did have…? Idk, but I really didn’t like the placement and execution.

I think a recent instance of this from a hyv to point to is a lengthy section in Luna II, and to be vague, takes place “outside” of Nod Krai proper. This similarly grinded the plot itself to a halt, imo, and was a bit of a clumsy implementation of what they were trying to get across. However, there are at least two functions it serves

1. Develops the central character on a deeper level; and very well at that (basically, in isolation, a very well executed story segment)

2. Shows the character contrast with another major character within the story—so even if plot did not progress in a meaningful way (at least at the time, there are a couple of things that come up, but only at the end), there is thematic development regarding the greater story

And, imo, DH section did not do either of those two things well enough for me to like it, so it dragged on, and it didn’t feel like much of what happened there really developed the plot, and what relationships it did develop didn’t feel like they were shown meaningfully. An underwhelming payoff—which, thankfully, I think the other characters I mentioned at least avoid. But it doesn’t change how much they drag on, and in the same way; things just repeat, on and on.

I think the devs saw the success of Aventurine’s story and wanted to try doing the same thing again with a few other characters. That sort of deeply psychological, tearing down the character’s barriers stuff. But those are hard kinds of stories to write, and you inevitably risk drawing ire if a reader is not already invested in a character, or if they feel like you’re trying too hard to make them like your character. I don’t think Aventurine’s story was perfect, but I think it avoided a lot of those pitfalls with overly verbose talking, and by having many parts of his story be sprinkled and spread out, does allow you to breathe—while that risks breaking pace for some, having time to unwind from something can let you process it. And that’s just not something most of the characters in Amphoreus who do get this treatment receive; ALL of the focus is on them, but far too much of that focus is spent treating the player like they aren’t able to understand anything of what they’re being told until the very end. I think it’s why I ended up liking Anaxa and Cipher a bit more than the rest of the overall cast; it felt like the story was actually letting me breathe from having to process them all in one go. And, like I was actually allowed to try and parse them as characters.

With all that said…where does Cyrene fall? Well, I like her…as what she does for the plot. I quite like her conceptually, but the character itself feels too flat and so much of the time I felt like they writers desperately wanted to make me adore her, which fired back in them. I think I enjoyed the ending less because of Cyrene and her sacrifice itself, but more because it was just a very bittersweet ending for a world I’d spent the better part of a year in, getting to know it and the inhabitants. It’s unfortunate because I was really hoping that they’d be able to turn her around and make me adore her, but as it stands I only like her, maybe a bit lukewarm on some days.

Funnily enough I quite like Mem. I think that’s because she doesn’t try to remind me of this cool seed and all the ripples in the water every half second, lol

Anyway that was way too long, but there’s are just a lot of disjointed rambles lol. Hope you didn’t get a lobotomy reading this, if you got this far 🙏