Dark Side: Plot
First and foremost: I haven't made a post focused on the narrative elements of prior King's Bounty games because there honestly wasn't a lot to discuss. The Legend kind of has a sense of an unfolding plot, but this is partly illusory: it's easy to interpret the plot in certain ways that make events seem like an actual arc if you're only half-paying attention. Even what plot progression The Legend has is pretty minor. It's perfectly functional for what the game is, and The Legend is witty and entertaining in its dialogue and whatnot, but the core 'story' is little more than a vehicle for getting you to go to the next interesting area.
Armored Princess is even thinner, spending a decent chunk of time on setting up the basic framework of the game and then booting you out into the world with little progression until you hit the end of the game and there you go everything is suddenly resolved. Again, it works for what the game is doing, but the plot doesn't provide much to talk about.
Warriors of the North makes more of an effort to have a plot that develops, with it actively intruding on gameplay in a way the prior plots did not, but it's not terribly interesting, and most of what I'd have to say about it is complaining. Stuff like the player character failing to recognize that the villain is a terrible person who cannot be trusted even though it's really obvious. Ice and Fire's story with the Snow Elves and Lizardmen is more interesting, but suffers from the fact that it's a side story added into DLC, limiting its influence on your experience.
Dark Side, by contrast, has a significant focus on its story, and the extent to which it fades into the background as you progress seems driven more by Dark Side's omnipresent incomplete state than any deliberate decision to reduce focus on the plot.
It also deserves discussion because Dark Side doesn't seem to be very clear on what it's meant to be.
I'll come back to that in a second.
The Legend's narrative is fairly straightforward in purpose: it's a scaffold for the gameplay. The position of Treasure Searcher exists to justify the particular combination of freedom and guidance you get: on the one hand, you get missions directly from the king, which act as your Primary Plot Advancing Quests, but on the other hand the Treasure Searcher is free to explore and engage in sidequests. Furthermore, your odd position lets the game sidestep some of the usual implications of being a direct agent of the government: how you choose to handle various situations is not presented as any kind of official government position, letting the game give you the freedom to resolve various sidequests in multiple possible ways without this coming with an attached undertone of loyalty vs disloyalty. Additionally, being a leadership figure acting with the crown's writ is a fairly handy justification for you being able to field an actual army without, for example, provoking your own government into thinking you're a potential rebel.
In turn, the main Quests primarily serve to justify dragging the player across the whole of Endoria, allowing the game to have concepts like 'unit types tend to be found in specific regions' without this creating problematic hoops to jump through on the developer's part. (That is, they don't need to invent some Foreign Hire-able Elves so you can hire Elves) Any purely narrative functionality they may or may not have is secondary to the point.
Armored Princess is similarly straightforward, though a bit less perfectly handled. It fails to provide an adequate explanation for Amelie fielding armies without this raising a reaction from the rest of the world, tending to comport itself more as if Amelie is a traditional RPG hero running around stabbing people herself, for example. But overall the plot serves the purpose of justifying the gameplay: you need the stones to open a portal to fight Astaroth, the stones are spread across the world, so the main plot conveniently justifies you traveling the whole of the world. Since Amelie doesn't know where all the stones are, the game even has the freedom to have islands that don't have a stone at all without this coming across a bit strangely. Similarly, Amelie's position as some prophesied destined hero provides a handy justification for her getting some immediate trust and support from the locals.
Warriors of the North takes the Armored Princess more-like-a-traditional-RPG-hero thing and extends it further: Warriors of the North largely glosses over the whole 'fighting with armies' mechanic, and the story being told is the kind of personal Hero's Journey story common to hack-and-slash RPGs. Our hero finds himself in a time when trouble is on the rise (The Undead wandering the land in unprecedented numbers), goes forth to investigate the source of these troubles, righting myriad wrongs that grow out of it during his travels, and ultimately finds and strikes down the key villain promulgating these problems. It has a bit of a twist on this story in that you spend a bit working for the bad guy without the player character recognizing this fact, and when he inevitably betrays you this leads to a journey to gather allies for a final assault on his stronghold, but overall it's a fairly straightforward story.
And so long as you ignore how it largely glosses over the army-fighting mechanic, the narrative also does a pretty good job of justifying the gameplay: you're a free agent, able to go where you like and do as you will, with the main plot defined by the primary threat and specific objectives given to you first by wise men and then later by literal agents of the gods so you're never left without specific direction. You're free to take or ignore sidequests as you please and handle them however you think is most appropriate, and the main plot drags you across much of Endoria. Notably, every land except the Ice Gardens (Which is DLC-exclusive) and the Isles of Freedom (Which is wholly optional to even discover Sea Charts to) is a location the main plot drags you to, which provides implicit justification for any future King's Bounty game set in Endoria to add on new lands if it likes; why wasn't Olaf given the option of finding these new lands this later game invented? Because it wasn't relevant to his story, that's why.
So that's all fairly straightforward and clear.
For Dark Side, though...
Well.
The advertising for Dark Side is pretty straightforward: have fun playing the bad guys!
And to some extent Dark Side is handled that way. Daert really doesn't have any redeeming value, morally. Many of the allies you gather are terrible people. There's a decent number of moments where your character kills, enslaves, or otherwise does deeply unpleasant things to people who haven't done anything to earn such, often while your character delights in the evil they're sowing.
But in a lot of ways Dark Side comports itself as more a Light Is Not Good, Dark Is Not Evil sort of story. The holy inquisitors attacking Atrixus delight in murdering babies and torturing young women. (Whose only crime we ever learn of is happening to be demonic) The Elves of the world are basically all terrible people who attacked and tried to wipe out the Orcs because of racism, the Orcs having done nothing to deserve this. Some of your Dark allies are actually pretty decent people, and I don't just mean the ones you trick into serving the bad guys. And of course there's the thing with Bagyr's Companions mostly coming to realize he's not actually a bad person.
These two angles aren't precisely mutually exclusive, but they're certainly dissonant, and Dark Side doesn't seem to have a deeper purpose behind them. The ending of the game could be taken as a suggestion that the developers are of the view that Light and Dark is a pretty arbitrary distinction, that there are horrible people and noble people everywhere you go among all peoples, which would somewhat reconcile the two angles together, but the ending is also this weird joke ending so it's hard to tell how seriously we're meant to take this potentially-serious element of it.
Plus, if that is the intention, the story still runs into the issue that nobody is particularly consistent in this regard. No matter which character you pick, at the end of the game the other two will attack you because they want to be the one to defeat the forces of Light, personally, never mind that this is only really in-character for Daert. Whoever you play bounces back and forth between being appalled by the terrible things the forces of Light do and delighting in doing terrible things themselves, with no self-awareness and no hint of irony. And within individual plot threads, this dissonance tends to recur, such as how the game has multiple Racism Is Bad beats attached to the Elves in particular and never really gives us a good Elf, thus suggesting that Racism Is Bad Except When You're Being Racist To Elves Then It's Justified. (The closest to an exception is that there's an Elven queen who we never specifically learn anything to indicate they're a terrible person, and the plot is sympathetic to them being lonely and whatnot) Even Dendra turns out to be Yet Another Evil Elf!
This is one thing where I have to wonder whether it's a consequence of the game's incomplete state or if it goes deeper than that. Would these narrative problems have been present if the developers had polished the game properly? Or are they just a consequence of Dark Side being rather like a first draft, the creators getting down the basics of their thoughts with the intention to come back later and make it work properly only someone came along and published the first draft as-is?
It's too bad this particular development team didn't get to make another King's Bounty game. I'd have liked to see what they would've done.
In any event, part of the point of the above is that these elements of Dark Side's design clearly aren't gameplay-driven. In fact, Dark Side seems to take the gameplay framework for granted, having constructed its plot separately from any question of intersecting with the gameplay. Some of the oddities are sort of understandable, arguably even inevitable; for example, whichever character you pick is the one who is selected to go forth into the wider world and fight for Darkness' sake, while the other two hang out in the Spirit of Darkness' castle for the rest of the game. Sure, fine, even if it's a bit disappointing that they don't do anything in mechanical terms.
But otherwise... well, Dark Side reiterates the issue that the army-based gameplay isn't properly justified by the narrative, but it makes it even worse. The forces of Darkness have been beaten back, horrifically slaughtered and enslaved, but you're able to raise increasingly large armies of Dark troops as you advance through the game. There's elements of justification to this, as it is broadly the case that you are supposed to be building up your technology and recruiting allies and so on... and in fact this works fine when it comes to enabling access to Dark versions of Light races. (eg Traitor Humans) But increasing your access to core Dark forces purchasable at the Shelter is just strange. Why does donating hard-working Human/Elven/Dwarven/etc Prisoners to your military department lead to increasingly large numbers of Orc, Demon, and Undead soldiers lying around, waiting for you to purchase them? Like, sure, the Undead could easily be slaughtered prisoners, and the mechanic of converting Prisoners to Demons could be used to justify that too... but Orcs? How's that supposed to work, particularly given the Orc lands have had their populations decimated such that freeing the survivors really shouldn't provide you with all that many troops?
Similarly, the Sea Chart/islands-based gameplay is inherited, but Dark Side's narrative justifications for going to these various islands is... shaky. If you're not paying attention, it's easy to think that freeing Dark lands and conquering Light lands is a primary objective, but in actuality these are mostly optional. You absolutely have to conquer Insulberg, but that's because Queen Elsa is one of the components of the Weapon of Vengeance and won't turn herself over until you've fully conquered Insulberg. The nine characters necessary for the Weapon of Vengeance are the only essentials to completing the game, and most of them are actually basically off to the side of conquering/freeing the realms. There's some mechanical incentives for conquest -access to new troop types primarily, but disposing of a king also makes progress on the Ruler of Fate Medal- but... overall the connection between the narrative and gameplay is tenuous in this regard. Narratively, it really ought to be plot-important to at least free all the Dark lands, but mechanically? Nah.
So like I said: Dark Side doesn't seem to know what it's trying to be, narratively. Not in a 'pure' narrative sense, and not in a 'narrative as connected to gameplay' sense.
---------------------------------
Next time, we resume a more normal schedule by talking about Dark Side's Bosses.
Well.
Its Boss. Singular.
Armored Princess is even thinner, spending a decent chunk of time on setting up the basic framework of the game and then booting you out into the world with little progression until you hit the end of the game and there you go everything is suddenly resolved. Again, it works for what the game is doing, but the plot doesn't provide much to talk about.
Warriors of the North makes more of an effort to have a plot that develops, with it actively intruding on gameplay in a way the prior plots did not, but it's not terribly interesting, and most of what I'd have to say about it is complaining. Stuff like the player character failing to recognize that the villain is a terrible person who cannot be trusted even though it's really obvious. Ice and Fire's story with the Snow Elves and Lizardmen is more interesting, but suffers from the fact that it's a side story added into DLC, limiting its influence on your experience.
Dark Side, by contrast, has a significant focus on its story, and the extent to which it fades into the background as you progress seems driven more by Dark Side's omnipresent incomplete state than any deliberate decision to reduce focus on the plot.
It also deserves discussion because Dark Side doesn't seem to be very clear on what it's meant to be.
I'll come back to that in a second.
The Legend's narrative is fairly straightforward in purpose: it's a scaffold for the gameplay. The position of Treasure Searcher exists to justify the particular combination of freedom and guidance you get: on the one hand, you get missions directly from the king, which act as your Primary Plot Advancing Quests, but on the other hand the Treasure Searcher is free to explore and engage in sidequests. Furthermore, your odd position lets the game sidestep some of the usual implications of being a direct agent of the government: how you choose to handle various situations is not presented as any kind of official government position, letting the game give you the freedom to resolve various sidequests in multiple possible ways without this coming with an attached undertone of loyalty vs disloyalty. Additionally, being a leadership figure acting with the crown's writ is a fairly handy justification for you being able to field an actual army without, for example, provoking your own government into thinking you're a potential rebel.
In turn, the main Quests primarily serve to justify dragging the player across the whole of Endoria, allowing the game to have concepts like 'unit types tend to be found in specific regions' without this creating problematic hoops to jump through on the developer's part. (That is, they don't need to invent some Foreign Hire-able Elves so you can hire Elves) Any purely narrative functionality they may or may not have is secondary to the point.
Armored Princess is similarly straightforward, though a bit less perfectly handled. It fails to provide an adequate explanation for Amelie fielding armies without this raising a reaction from the rest of the world, tending to comport itself more as if Amelie is a traditional RPG hero running around stabbing people herself, for example. But overall the plot serves the purpose of justifying the gameplay: you need the stones to open a portal to fight Astaroth, the stones are spread across the world, so the main plot conveniently justifies you traveling the whole of the world. Since Amelie doesn't know where all the stones are, the game even has the freedom to have islands that don't have a stone at all without this coming across a bit strangely. Similarly, Amelie's position as some prophesied destined hero provides a handy justification for her getting some immediate trust and support from the locals.
Warriors of the North takes the Armored Princess more-like-a-traditional-RPG-hero thing and extends it further: Warriors of the North largely glosses over the whole 'fighting with armies' mechanic, and the story being told is the kind of personal Hero's Journey story common to hack-and-slash RPGs. Our hero finds himself in a time when trouble is on the rise (The Undead wandering the land in unprecedented numbers), goes forth to investigate the source of these troubles, righting myriad wrongs that grow out of it during his travels, and ultimately finds and strikes down the key villain promulgating these problems. It has a bit of a twist on this story in that you spend a bit working for the bad guy without the player character recognizing this fact, and when he inevitably betrays you this leads to a journey to gather allies for a final assault on his stronghold, but overall it's a fairly straightforward story.
And so long as you ignore how it largely glosses over the army-fighting mechanic, the narrative also does a pretty good job of justifying the gameplay: you're a free agent, able to go where you like and do as you will, with the main plot defined by the primary threat and specific objectives given to you first by wise men and then later by literal agents of the gods so you're never left without specific direction. You're free to take or ignore sidequests as you please and handle them however you think is most appropriate, and the main plot drags you across much of Endoria. Notably, every land except the Ice Gardens (Which is DLC-exclusive) and the Isles of Freedom (Which is wholly optional to even discover Sea Charts to) is a location the main plot drags you to, which provides implicit justification for any future King's Bounty game set in Endoria to add on new lands if it likes; why wasn't Olaf given the option of finding these new lands this later game invented? Because it wasn't relevant to his story, that's why.
So that's all fairly straightforward and clear.
For Dark Side, though...
Well.
The advertising for Dark Side is pretty straightforward: have fun playing the bad guys!
And to some extent Dark Side is handled that way. Daert really doesn't have any redeeming value, morally. Many of the allies you gather are terrible people. There's a decent number of moments where your character kills, enslaves, or otherwise does deeply unpleasant things to people who haven't done anything to earn such, often while your character delights in the evil they're sowing.
But in a lot of ways Dark Side comports itself as more a Light Is Not Good, Dark Is Not Evil sort of story. The holy inquisitors attacking Atrixus delight in murdering babies and torturing young women. (Whose only crime we ever learn of is happening to be demonic) The Elves of the world are basically all terrible people who attacked and tried to wipe out the Orcs because of racism, the Orcs having done nothing to deserve this. Some of your Dark allies are actually pretty decent people, and I don't just mean the ones you trick into serving the bad guys. And of course there's the thing with Bagyr's Companions mostly coming to realize he's not actually a bad person.
These two angles aren't precisely mutually exclusive, but they're certainly dissonant, and Dark Side doesn't seem to have a deeper purpose behind them. The ending of the game could be taken as a suggestion that the developers are of the view that Light and Dark is a pretty arbitrary distinction, that there are horrible people and noble people everywhere you go among all peoples, which would somewhat reconcile the two angles together, but the ending is also this weird joke ending so it's hard to tell how seriously we're meant to take this potentially-serious element of it.
Plus, if that is the intention, the story still runs into the issue that nobody is particularly consistent in this regard. No matter which character you pick, at the end of the game the other two will attack you because they want to be the one to defeat the forces of Light, personally, never mind that this is only really in-character for Daert. Whoever you play bounces back and forth between being appalled by the terrible things the forces of Light do and delighting in doing terrible things themselves, with no self-awareness and no hint of irony. And within individual plot threads, this dissonance tends to recur, such as how the game has multiple Racism Is Bad beats attached to the Elves in particular and never really gives us a good Elf, thus suggesting that Racism Is Bad Except When You're Being Racist To Elves Then It's Justified. (The closest to an exception is that there's an Elven queen who we never specifically learn anything to indicate they're a terrible person, and the plot is sympathetic to them being lonely and whatnot) Even Dendra turns out to be Yet Another Evil Elf!
This is one thing where I have to wonder whether it's a consequence of the game's incomplete state or if it goes deeper than that. Would these narrative problems have been present if the developers had polished the game properly? Or are they just a consequence of Dark Side being rather like a first draft, the creators getting down the basics of their thoughts with the intention to come back later and make it work properly only someone came along and published the first draft as-is?
It's too bad this particular development team didn't get to make another King's Bounty game. I'd have liked to see what they would've done.
In any event, part of the point of the above is that these elements of Dark Side's design clearly aren't gameplay-driven. In fact, Dark Side seems to take the gameplay framework for granted, having constructed its plot separately from any question of intersecting with the gameplay. Some of the oddities are sort of understandable, arguably even inevitable; for example, whichever character you pick is the one who is selected to go forth into the wider world and fight for Darkness' sake, while the other two hang out in the Spirit of Darkness' castle for the rest of the game. Sure, fine, even if it's a bit disappointing that they don't do anything in mechanical terms.
But otherwise... well, Dark Side reiterates the issue that the army-based gameplay isn't properly justified by the narrative, but it makes it even worse. The forces of Darkness have been beaten back, horrifically slaughtered and enslaved, but you're able to raise increasingly large armies of Dark troops as you advance through the game. There's elements of justification to this, as it is broadly the case that you are supposed to be building up your technology and recruiting allies and so on... and in fact this works fine when it comes to enabling access to Dark versions of Light races. (eg Traitor Humans) But increasing your access to core Dark forces purchasable at the Shelter is just strange. Why does donating hard-working Human/Elven/Dwarven/etc Prisoners to your military department lead to increasingly large numbers of Orc, Demon, and Undead soldiers lying around, waiting for you to purchase them? Like, sure, the Undead could easily be slaughtered prisoners, and the mechanic of converting Prisoners to Demons could be used to justify that too... but Orcs? How's that supposed to work, particularly given the Orc lands have had their populations decimated such that freeing the survivors really shouldn't provide you with all that many troops?
Similarly, the Sea Chart/islands-based gameplay is inherited, but Dark Side's narrative justifications for going to these various islands is... shaky. If you're not paying attention, it's easy to think that freeing Dark lands and conquering Light lands is a primary objective, but in actuality these are mostly optional. You absolutely have to conquer Insulberg, but that's because Queen Elsa is one of the components of the Weapon of Vengeance and won't turn herself over until you've fully conquered Insulberg. The nine characters necessary for the Weapon of Vengeance are the only essentials to completing the game, and most of them are actually basically off to the side of conquering/freeing the realms. There's some mechanical incentives for conquest -access to new troop types primarily, but disposing of a king also makes progress on the Ruler of Fate Medal- but... overall the connection between the narrative and gameplay is tenuous in this regard. Narratively, it really ought to be plot-important to at least free all the Dark lands, but mechanically? Nah.
So like I said: Dark Side doesn't seem to know what it's trying to be, narratively. Not in a 'pure' narrative sense, and not in a 'narrative as connected to gameplay' sense.
---------------------------------
Next time, we resume a more normal schedule by talking about Dark Side's Bosses.
Well.
Its Boss. Singular.
Hello. I'm not sure you'll read this (or that my English is good enough) but still. Your words about Dark Side being like a first draft is both right and wrong. The game had a very troubled production with diminishing budget and treat of cancelling as not potentially profitable enough product. It survived, unlike Кодекс Войны/Fantasy Wars 2 (it's English name is so bad IMO), but was pretty much rebooted midway.
ReplyDeleteInformation about the original idea is based on leaks and some informal talk, so don't quote me on this. From what I remember, original idea was something like this:
The game is set in Teana, the world of Armored Princess/Crossroads. Just like Warrior of the North shows us Endoria years after the Legend, the Dark Side does the same with Teana. In the end of the Princess, Humans got the tyrant replaced with the rightful king, Dwarves got rid of Lizarmen control and Elves were saved from Orcs and Dark Elves. On the otherside, Orcs are severely weakened after death of so many warriors, few remaining Dark Elves are forced to hide in the dark corners and Lizardmen in turmoil after the death of their god-ruler. So, the good guys won, but still have reasons to hate the bad guys, who are still here, weak and vulnerable. Hmmm...
Basically, Humans, inspired by demon-fighting Ameli the divine messenger, decide that Demons should be not just pushed from Teana but completely annihilated (and have some nice things too!). Elves seek vengeance for the horrors, inflicted on them by Orcs, and kinda go overboard with it. Dwarves initially neutral, but eventually join thier light comrades. Vikings see Lizarmen' crisis as a perfect opportunity to pillage and plunder. Soon, Orcs are slaughtered by their former victims, Demons get invaded by fanatical Humans, already rare Undead and Dark Elves just try to survive while Lizardmen, who once dreamed of taking over the worlds, now robbed and killed by Vikings and various adventurers. Their temples are sacked and their land is gradually taken over.
As you can see, originally it was demons and not orcs who were pretty much victims to sudden unprovoked violence. And it was Neolina wore the Villain-in-name-only hat that is now Bagyr's. Elf/Orc conflict was completely different with Elves being sort of heroic antagonist/fallen hero trope. Daert was a prince (I think he was actually titled "prince Daert" even in some Russian release marketing) and his personal story was related to Aralan, which was one of the first location created and originally was placed on Teana. In Russian version it still have dialogues written in style quite different from the rest of the game. Aralan was actually one of the central story locations and it's corraption was a plot quest. I think (but not sure) that Daert was originally a Dark Elven vampire. Or he was once a human, but was turned and adopted as a son by a Dark elven vampire. In either case, he hated normal Elves and "lesser" races and wanted to succeed Zilgadis, Maedrilade and other Dark Elven "heroes". Just like in the final game, he was THE villain protagonist. Also, instead of just biting his companions and instanly making them evil, he broke them by talking, proving to them that they are failures and that Light is either powerless or deceiving, bringing them to despair and than offering a new life, so to speak. There could also be some seducing stuff in case of Lucia. I think it all was found to too much through. A pity, as in the final game corrupting the most faithful-to-light people by just defeating and biting them feels rather lame.
DeleteIronically, in the original draft Daert was the closest thing to a canon protagonist. In the rebooted version he has the least amount of unique dialogues and the blandest companions.
Btw Lizardmen were supposed to exist in Netana too. Their original island became Amazonia.
Also, I'm happy to see someone who like this game. Even in it's sorry state it have some very good stuff. I wish it got a Crossroads/Ice and Fire analogue.
('Fantasy Wars' is an incredibly bland/generic name, yeah; if Code Of War is an accurate translation of the Russian name, I'm not sure why one wouldn't just go with that. It still sounds a little generic, but it at least suggests a thing that might stand out)
DeleteThat's a very interesting description, and now that it's pointed out I actually can see how some of the foundations of Dark Side (Like the Orc/Elf conflict) would fit readily to being a sequel to Armored Princess. It's not a theory that would've occurred to me on my own, but I can totally buy it was Dark Side's starting point.
Some of the specific bits also resonate even into the mangled English release; Daert's starting situation has a lot of trappings of him being some manner of noble or royal that are confusing in the final product but would fit readily to a Prince Daert situation. Similarly, while Aralan doesn't feel differently-written in the English release, it still has a shocking amount of story beats to it, much more so than basically any other portion of he game; it's something I was always weirded out by, but would make perfect sense in the context of 'Aralan actually got made really early', so it would have more time to get fleshed out. (And to have been made without a looming sense of doom; Dark Side looks to me like a lot of it was not only rushed but suffered from the devs being very, very aware of their time/budget running out)
And yeah, I like Dark Side. Even in its mangled state, it's surprisingly enjoyable, and there's glimpses that it could've been genuinely great if it hadn't been screwed over in development and after initial release.
I just thought this Dark Elves stuff I talked about may feel semi-random to you, so I want to explain just in case.
DeleteBack when the Armored Princess was in development, devs announced that there will be a new race and asked people who would they want (NOT "who you want us tho add" - they never promised anything, regardless of what some may say). For various reasons, Dark Elves were the most popular answer. Btw, in case you're interested, other popular answers were "something Russian/Slavic" and "something outta there" (like space-themed race, sentient insects or robots. Yeah, really.)
Later devs revealed that the new race in Lizardmen, whom Katauri themselves quite liked but most of the fans didn't. To clarify - it's (propably) not the KB Lizarmen themself are at fault - all kinds of beasmen and animal-people are way, waaay less liked in Russian fantasy circles than in the west.
After no so warm reception of the Lizarmen Katauri told that the game will actually have Dark Elves with an important role, but not as playable race. Indeed, we eventually got Zilgadis as story villain (+Droids for people who wanted robots and eventually somewhat Slavic "Vikings" with Volhvs and stuff, through they were de-Slavified in the English version, with Volhvs becoming generic "Soothsayers").
Still, there remained some unsatisfied people, which eventually led to a sort of meme about DE and their presence. Like, "Maybe the next KB will have DE?" WotN announced"..second humans." WotN was much more popular among the western fans btw - it's devs found it somewhat disheartening. "Hey guys, what if WotN get a DLC with DE? Yeah sure, we'll get LIZARDMEN again." And we've got lol. But we also got Snow Elves who IMO were pretty nice - I definitely like them much more that default wood ones. But I digress.
Darkside original story was supposed to kinda throw a bone to those DE fans. Even without being "proper" DE race, they would have important role in the story with Aralan being mandatory quest, Spirit of Darkness having prior connections to DE and them being possible inventors of necromancy.
You can still see some remnants of it in the final game - Maedrilade is spoken of as if he is a very known person and you've already heard about him (maybe in Russian version only?) - and he use and sell undead units instead of recolored Elves. Gnawie (I think this is his English name) - a Dark Elf servant of Spirit of Darkness - feel quite random in the final game (I mean, he is a werewolf who live in Dwarven caves for some reason and somehow an agent of the almost deity?). And we also have Daert, who is rather knowledgeable about SoD (he always tells other characters about it in prologue regardless of whom we play) despite being a random vampire from a human island.
That's all very interesting and does fit very nicely with tidbits that had stood out to me a little but where I'd never been sure what to make of them -for example, the two Soothsayer characters Olaf gets help from do mystical stuff to predict the future and whatnot, and it always stood out to me how it was in an unusual place in terms of level detail. (More than the usual 'the wizard does fantasy stuff, it works', but not enough to be 'we're really passionate about worldbuilding and are showing off our magic system we thought out in significant detail') Just a brief skimming of what Volhvs traditionally do suggests Warriors of the North is taking direct inspiration from reality here, which neatly explains that. I'm guessing the Ice And Fire-added Mystics are not similarly based on a real Slavic thing? Because the one Mystic you meet in the plot always felt more generically fantasy-y, at least to me.
DeleteAnd the Dark Elf meme-y stuff fits with a bunch of stuff -I always found it a bit random that Zilgadis was asserted to be a Dark Elf when no such class of being otherwise existed in Armored Princess (To the point that I actually wondered if this was something the translation introduced for whatever reason), but fans wanting Dark Elves puts that in a more sensible (If still awkward) context. Dark Side also puts more narrative focus on Dark Elves than on Zwerg or Traitor Humans (There's not a single Zwerg character, and only one guy I'd readily class as A Traitor Human Character), which I didn't really think about given its general rushed state but fits to what you're saying. It also fits to... Dark Side always felt to me like it had an undertone of trying to be a fan-pleasing game to me? I have a hard time articulating why it comes across that way to me, but what you're saying about the Dark Elf stuff resonates on that level.
(I don't remember how Maedrilade gets responded to, it's been a while since I had a character reach him. Gnawie is indeed the English name of the friendly regular Werewolf Elf, and yeah, he's... strange in the final product)
Yeah, Mystics are just some generic casters. They kinda feel out of place among Vikings, don't they?
DeleteZilgadis was not the only one Dark Elf in Armored Princess - wthere was also prison necromancer guy who served Demenion (the Human usurper king). Sorry, I don't know his English nickname but in Russian he is basically called "Bat". Existance of others is mentioned but yeah, their are really undeveloped.
About DE narrative focus - I'd say the whole fact that they already exist and, in Aralan case, have conflict with their light cousins make one think even without knowing anything about cut content, doesn't it? I mean, in case of Humans and Dwarves you just remove current ruler, put your puppet instead and make them officially change their country allegiance. In Elf case (wtll, Aralan) you are helping a defeated Dark faction to take back their lost power. It feels somewhat closer to Orcs/Demons "free our home" mission than to Humans/Dwarves' "take over enemy land", right? In contrast, Portland is pretty much standart "take over enemy land" mission despite one of the playable characters being from here. And unlike Bagyr and Neolina, who get a lot of special dialogues in Tristrem/Atrixus, Daert have no recognition apart from Klarissa. Poor Daert, atleast he still have main menu song :)
About Maedrilade - I meant that when Blackie mention him for the first time, the dialogue written as if you're already know or atleast heard about him. This may have been fixed in Non-Russian versions. Btw, have you ever noticed that there is also this unusual thing with getting completed queststep for "finding way to Aralan" first time you get there? Another relic of times past :) Speaking of relics, in release version you could still trigger Daert-Barristan dialogue about futile deaths and falsity of Light, but it was buggy. Later patch removed them.
Bonus - at some point you could chose any 3 companions from the 9 present in game. It was done in dialogue with Spirit of Darkness. Remnants of this can still be found in game files. I guess it was more comvinient gameplay-wise but I actually glad it was removed. I prefer more personal companions. Than again, I also like race-locked classes in RPGs when majority of people hate them, so...
Alright, I better stop with those walls of text :)
I started with Ice and Fire so Mystics didn't feel immediately incongruous among the rest of the Vikings, but by the time I was done with the first four islands... yeah, they're really out of step with the rest of the Vikings.
DeleteI had no idea the necromancer running Demenion's prison was supposed to be a Dark Elf. I'm going to need to pay attention to see if I just missed dialogue referencing that or if it's simply not claimed in the English version.
And yeah, I was really caught off guard by the Light Elf/Dark Elf conflict; it's not exactly alike to retaking Atrixus or Tristrem, but it's certainly far more like those than it is like the Dwarf and Human lands being conquered with ineffectual puppet rulers installed. The contrast with the Zwerg in particular felt weird, where Zwerg are... what, a different race or something? But then the narrative doesn't acknowledge them at all, you're not putting an oppressed Zwerg on the throne or anything like that.
I'll need to pay attention the next time I get someone to the point of Blackie speaking up about Maedrilade. I really don't remember how it's presented, and after the first time through I usually just skip through those.
The Companion thing is interesting and certainly explains why you always have to bring every Companion to the Spirit of Darkness; it's a little strange and a little inconvenient in the final product that you have to deliver your own Companions to enable them, but if you were supposed to pick who you liked via the Spirit of Darkness, that need would be a lot more sensible.
Walls of text are welcome here, though. I'm plenty wordy myself...
Bat's description (one that shown when you move your cursor on hero's portrait) directly tells that he is a Dark Elf. Actually, there may be some other DE heroes. I don't remember for sure as it was quite some time since the last time I played AP. I do not know if English version removed that, but I wonder why if this is the case.
DeleteA different race? Errrr... "Zwergs" in Russian is a just generic fantasy word for dark/evil Dwarves. Like, say, Warhammer Fantasy fans usually call their Chaos Dwarves just "Zwergs". For some reason, this word's use became much rarer last years (than again, so are Dark Dwarves as fantasy race) but at the time of the game's release it was still common. I guess localizers somehow never heard it or isimply liked it more than just "Dark Dwarves". I mean, English does not have a single word for an evil Dwarf, right? In case it does, it should have been used in place of "Zwergs", of cource.
You can still easily find some other cut stuff in the game files, like updated to Dark Side Lizardmen (now Dark but still very racist and getting minor morale penalty even with other dark races) or cut spells (I think it was mostly summons for some reason). Through I guess you are more interested in plot/worldbuilding stuff.
I'll try to remember to check that guy the next time I get a file fighting him, then. It's possible I just forgot...
DeleteI mean, 'Dark Elf' is often a different race... but okay, that at least explains where the Zwerg name comes from. And no, there's not a Standard Evil Dwarf Name in English. A few different settings have their own one-word names for Evil Dwarves, but as yet none of them have attained Memetic Status.
And yeah, I know about most of the cut content. I've done a post on the Lizardmen racial Morale stuff, for example. This post is actually the only one that focuses on the narrative end of things particularly -most of my King's Bounty posts are focused on the gameplay.
Well, Dark Elves are usually (through not always) magically changed to some extent while Dark Dwarves are often just culturally different. But OK.
DeleteSorry. I've read all of your Dark Side posts in one go (along with some other stuff) and it seems some things messed up in my head.
A couple more of tidbits about original plan for DS - it seems Helvedia was a much earlier area instead of highest level one (kinda obvious if you think about it). Sandy island was both early game area and one of earliest created. It is possible that ship graveyard here had some purpose.
And that's it.
Exellent work btw. It seems I never told you that. I'll read your other KB analysis posts when I finally have free time - it should be really interesting.