Development Stories: Timelines & Retcons

Hmmmkay. Much as I like the day zero concept, what is most important to me about PoE is that content is not removed, it's carefully folded in, if you can grind to get to it. Rigwald the Wolven King is reincarnated as a map boss somewhere. Breachlords and legion conflicts are still there if you can amass 100 splinters (or buy a full stone). Catarina, the Omnitect, Abaxoth, the Abyssal Liches, the Pale Court, the Warbands, they're all still there waiting for you each time you level a new character.

So I'm not sure that the new day zero works perfectly for the Shaper and Elder fights. I never managed to reach either during their heyday, I was busy working up to them, tweaking my builds and buying the right kit. Can I still do them? Am I actually going to be able to find guardian maps myself or will I have to buy them? If I do find them and complete them and assemble a set of Shaper fragments, how does me fighting the Shaper work in the timeline where the Elder already beat him and the Conquerors nuked both of them?

It's not a big problem, the basic issue is that the content is still accessible. But it feels a bit weird, for the Shaper/Elder/UberElder in particular, because the timeline puts them so firmly in the past (which hasn't happened to other league bosses, they just don't exist in this timeline at all).

It was very upsetting to find out that us, the player, was no longer the one who ended Shaper, or the Elder or whatever, and we're just complete strangers to Zana... again. But it would've been SO much worse if none of it had happened at all. So, while the 'day zero' concept isn't ideal, it's definitely better than nothing, and if it works for future design I guess keep with it.

That doesn't really address the power gap issue for me though; if there's people like Shaper and Conquerors just running around all over the place why does the main storyline matter at all. There's so many powerful NPCs and enemies- many of whom handwaved as being random exiles- in the game by now; surely one of them can just flick Malachai and Kitava out of existence on a whim, let alone the Templars of Oriath. I guess the idea is we're one of these exiles, and the plot is our journey to get there, but with the scaling difference the original story feels really underwhelming and inconsequential (What is this a battle shounen?!? etc.). Maybe this is something you can't avoid with linear story in leveling RPG, I don't know but still...

Pix confirms...solid snake coming to POE

It's really cool hearing about the meta elements of games like this. I hope to see more posts like this in the future.

I never thought about PoE2 being a time to expand upon past leagues. I can't wait to see what y'all come up with.

I do understand now the day zero mechanic, though I don't quite understand why the story does not support a multitude of exiles when there are clearly lots of them coming through Lioneye's Watch e.g.

I would hope for PoE 2 you could maybe work a solution in that incorporates the hundreds of exiles fighting their way through the world there and also that you always wash up on the same shore, doing the whole content again. Perhaps something about parallel timelines or something a bit smarter than i can come up with right now.

DotA 2 found a way to do it and i really like if every mechanic is somehow implemented in the story and background of the game, even though that might be hard.

Also: Does PoE 2 feature neutral or friendly characters in quest areas too? I kinda disliked that the towns are the only places in which you would find anyone liking you, the rest of the areas stuffed with monsters and humans that attack you on sight (but oftentimes not each other).

Kindly rebuild Theopolis, in a similar idea as Wolcen, but in your own style (better, I hope)!

Also, make maps easily sustainable, as this is a major reason for each I quit early each league.

Another issue I have with the story is the gameplay and story segregation. Just in the first 2 acts, for example.

Hillock is said to be a brute of a man, made even worse after his death. So strong that 4 men had to ambush him at night just to kill him the first time. And your character killed him at level 1.

The Vaal Oversoul is so powerful that just its awakening caused an eternal night that only dispels after its death. The Eternal Empire cannot kill it and could only seal it away. And you killed it at around level 20.

If it were up to me, I'd do something like making Hillock a level 30 miniboss, and you could only lure him away from Lioneye's Watch so that the people there are willing to open the shield and allow you in. Then in Act 6, you kill him, as you should be around level 40 by then. It would make more sense that you are able to kill him then.

The Vaal Oversoul would require some kind of mechanic to defeat. Perhaps some kind of Azmeri ritual of some sort with Yeena and Eramir's help, since you talk to the two of them when dealing with the Apex. Maybe using the stone circle that you place Greust's necklace in, to ask the assistance of the previous Azmeri dead to modify the Apex in some way that weakens the Vaal Oversoul, for example. That way, it'll at least make sense how you could take on something that not even an Empire could.

These are some of my thoughts on this topic. I seriously doubt anything would come out of this, as it seldom does, but maybe...

I'm replying very late in this thread so this will fall on deaf ears but I will still post it.

I'm a veteran player (since beta) and slowly over time became a "speedster" (i.e. race through the game to finish the new league challenges in 4-6 weeks then take a break until next league). However, I went to the first exilecon in 2019 and played the snot out of the PoE2 beta and really got interested in where the story is going with a "tabula rasa" to work with (i.e. new day 0 as it is well described here).

And with exilecon 2023 fast approaching, I have begun to hard BINGE on all PoE lore. All of it. All of kittencatnoodles videos, the massive PDFs that were/are on reddit, msg boards, etc. What I'm finding is I am shocked at how much lore there actually is, and how I've "missed it" (i.e. clicked over it in-game) for 10+ years. It's bothering me a lot. I normally like lore in a game, even if it is piecemeal and through item descriptions alone (ex: Dark Souls 1 was amazing in this respect, zero plot, yet the most rich world ever made in terms of lore). But I came to think PoE had no story for some reason.

I've come to a conclusion of how this came to be for my PoE journey. In a nutshell, playing since there were only a couple acts and the new main boss kept changing and tidbits were added over time, I never felt there was any cohesion or "grand plan". And then the leagues just felt "throw away" and crammed in and loosely tied to the game, so why invest brain power into the lore of a game that has no long term vision? But now that I have binged on a large number of hours of all this lore I can say ... holy hell was I WRONG! You all did such an incredible job making it all fit! Everything works together so well to reveal a very deep and rich world. And now I'm wildly obsessed with it all and where it is headed. It's making me want to play the game even more, and pause to read the flavor text of ever item and piece it all together. I think I'm shifting to a full on lore nut?!?!

I love the story talk for exilecon 2019 that Matt gave. It really shows attention to detail over types of players (even shifting over time like me), timelines (character vs player vs canonical) and mantras to minimize retcons and work with art/design to fit it all into the world setting. Super, super cool. I really hope you get to make PoE2 truly immersive and bring a whole new audience to the game.

One last random thought regarding integration of past leagues into a new day0+ timeline ... that isn't always the case right? I mean when things "go core" we most certainly see them get added into the campaign towns. New masters as they were added (Einhar, Alva, Niko, etc) which then solidified post Betrayal. And even Expedition is now there as if it always was. Plus random past leagues are added later in the campaign like Abyss, Delirium, and so on. So I don't get (or care) why these can't be integrated into a new timeline on occasion. Otherwise everything has to be booted to maps since they are out of space and time. Given the lore of the leagues ties into the history of the world, it's not a big deal. But maybe this is what was meant by "we don't know of our past characters dealing with that league" and so it is in the "player timeline" (or canonical)?

Anyhow all good stuff. I will never, ever skip a single piece of dialogue again.