I ended last update at the outpost, but before I explore there I’m going to deal with some sidequests.

Our first pitstop is Fortifel. Tehgonan has a personal quest here. (I’ll spare you the new party member text this time; the only notable piece is that Moke doesn’t mind the cold either. Are all shra cold-tolerant?) Tehgonan wants to join a Fortian magic academy but Alito says he doesn’t know much about them since Metsueno disliked magic “and I myself am untrained” which implies that shra can be trained in magic use even though that contradicts everything on the subject before now. I’ll just assume he’s talking about theory rather than practice… though Tehgonan specifically wants to do spellslinging so even that doesn’t make sense. Ugh, even the tiniest Fortifel sequences are determined to crush my soul with worldbuildingfail. Then Qualstio shows up and says he’s too young to enroll but can take a preliminary test that might get peoples’ attention. He has to get a perfect score to even be considered because Fortifel is full of elitist douchebags. There’s also some exposition about how Moke took the test but failed.

Qualstio: “You wanna try it again too? Maybe shoot for that Councillord Spot?”

the capitalization burns ussss

Moke says no, he doesn’t want to deal with the Councilmen because Nitzina has popped out of existence apparently. Game, I know English doesn’t have good gender-neutral titles, but you already used plain old “council” to refer to them in the past. Reminding me that you chose to make the ruling class almost all guys even though this is a fantasy universe where standard gender roles should have no bearing every time you refer to them does not endear yourself to me.

(Oh, and Qualstio makes sure to mention he scored a perfect on his first try, just in case you had forgotten how perfect and wonderful he is.)

The mechanics of this quest are actually more involved than the others. Tehgonan gets 5000 free clarity essence from studying, but it’ll cost 5000 essence for him to take the test. His intelligence score also needs to be at least 70. This is quite different from virtually every other personal quest, where you just have to get a stat to 70 and that’s all there is to it. I guess the developer started off really inspired with these things but got burned out.

I only have enough essence to get his intelligence up to 62, so we won’t be seeing the conclusion today. Instead we’re doing this quest.

Santes is present in this cutscene because life is suffering, so there’s a lot of pointless chatter before we finally get to the point: the sailor has found the Titanic W.S. Paradise, a revolutionary steamship that was lost at sea fifteen years ago.

Santes: “Aww, that’s too baaaaad. (Psst, Dehl! Who’re we talkin’ about again?)”

Jesus Christ. She’s a grown woman and she sounds like a toddler! What was the developer thinking?!

Ugh. Well, the big deal about the discovery is that the ship didn’t crash; it’s still all in one piece. The sailor posted a bill for an investigator and got a shra with naval experience (no points for guessing who), but he didn’t show up so Ilganyag’s hired instead.

I really like this quest. It’s essentially a miniaturized adventure game; there’s no combat, just some inventory puzzles. There are even secret(ish) logs that help you piece together the mystery!

Unlike in Cries of the Land, this is actually helpful instead of a nuisance because inventory is conserved between characters. It helps to split up instead of making one character walk up and down the entire ship to accomplish anything.

There really could have been a better medium for the messages than paper, though. The wood is rotting and collapsing all over the place but every scrap of paper is perfectly preserved, really? It’d make much more sense for this one at least to be scratched into the woodwork. The magically preserved paper reads To whomever discovers this tomb – I’ve done something horrible. But, I had to! They were uncontrollable! Like animals! I wish the Captain were still here. I can’t bear to see what tomorrow brings, so I shall squelch it and end this nightmare. Should you discover my identiy, please deny the truth to my wife. Let her believe I, with these souls, was merely lost at sea. That’s a quality creepy introduction!

The story is that the captain was a shra, but the passengers were racist douchebags so he had to hide his identity. He got a dose of some illegal drugs the passengers were smuggling and went nuts. Since the passengers didn’t know he was the captain, they thought he was a monster and lynched him. Without anyone to operate the engines, the crew panicked and called for an evacuation, but there weren’t enough lifeboats and chaos resulted. The guy who wrote the first note barred everyone in the lifeboat room and ran off. So, once again, the moral of the story is that racism is bad (and so are drugs), but I find it to be a more subtle and believable story than, say, Alito just happening to be a supergenius and therefore all racism is solved forever. The writing here is quite good in general, actually: you see logs from a number of perspectives that paint a bizarre and chaotic tale, when the real causes are actually very mundane, a fact you only realize when you have the whole story. And… that actually demonstrates the scope theme really well! A+ job, game. There are a lot of creepy details too, like a makeshift barricade in one staircase and a sack filled to bursting with rotten food. (We really should have seen the captain’s corpse, though – the endgame shows the developer doesn’t shy away from gore, so a dismembered skeleton wouldn’t be too much to ask for.) I think the logs could have been better-hidden (you don’t have to go out of your way or even solve any extra puzzles to get the full story), and the fact that the sailor figures out pretty much the whole thing even if you get no evidence is kind of forced, but overall I think it’s a solid level. Since How Far is a legit adventure game we might see more stuff like this, which would be pretty neat.

I do have a few nitpicks:

I’ve always found the whole “killed while writing mid-sentence” trope dumb. In this case, I suppose another event could have interrupted them and they just never got back to finishing rather than literally continuing to write as they were dying, but it’s still a bit too convenient that the captain narrates every minute detail. Written notes are not thought bubbles.

Also, the clothes in the drawers have rotted away, but, like the paper scraps, this silk sheet that’s even more exposed is in perfect condition. Because.

And this is really nitpicky, but the sparkling barrel strikes me as out-of-place here simply because the game never does it anywhere else. It’s not like you even need it since the layout of the room makes it obvious you’re supposed to examine there. (It even boxes you in so you can only move in a straight line.)

This room does contain the funniest denial choice, though.

Alito: “Rank 16 acquired

FFFFFFFFFFFF

At least this didn’t happen during the next quest. That would have just been cruel. 16 is 4 squared so Your allies feel great pride in achieving such a prestigious rank and everyone gets skill points, yay.

“Am… am I still being helpful to you?”

“Still”? Darn it, that implies this is a continuation from something he would have said in the rank 15 message. Guess I’m overleveled. I should really stop doing the special objectives, but that would make the completist in me cry.

Afterwards, we get a cutscene. Because surely you just can’t get enough of Rehm after getting his disconnected subplot jammed down your throat for half the game, he barges in.

His portrait is pretty much unchanged from interlude 3, which is a nice touch to show he’s still in the same emotional state. Dehl says he looks intoxicated which leads to a pointless tangent about Moke thinking he’s poisoned and if he can procure an antidote because random quirkiness is the same thing as actual character traits right?

I’d just like to take a moment to point out that the sound direction in this scene is spectacular. There’s a storm outside, and we occasionally see lightning flashes, but the thunderclaps are delayed and of varying volume, just like in a real thunderstorm. The ambient sound also becomes louder when Rehm opens the door, and becomes muted again when Dehl closes it. Little details like this are important, so kudos, game.

Anyway Rehm was the guy who applied for the job and feels the guild cheated him out of it, so now he’s extorting it. Unfortunately Dehl refused payment because he’s Dehl. (Seriously, how are they not starving?) Instead Dehl tells the crazy extortionist he can stay the night and they can work out something in the morning, because as we’ve established Dehl is selfless to the point of insanity.

OH BOY SANTES AND QUALSTIO ARE IN THIS CUTSCENE. I AM ELATED.

Rehm comes running up, because once again Dehl has abandoned a mysterious stranger in his house rather than disturb them.

Dehl: “I apologize. I did not wish to disturb you while you slept.”

THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED IN THE HOUSE AND WAITED FOR HIM TO WAKE UP. THAT IS WHAT NORMAL PEOPLE DO. But no, traumatize him by disappearing, presumably to alert the authorities for all he knows. That’s clearly the nice thing to do here.

Is… is the developer speaking from personal experience? Is this something he does? Is this something people in general do where he lives??? I don’t even.

Dehl: “Well, this is but the few of us who could be tasked to wake at this hour, Officer.”

Apparently this list includes Tehgonan because we all know what early birds teenage boys are. Apparently this list does not include Fero the hyper-alert. I’ll just assume he’s off hunting and couldn’t be bothered with this.

Anyway so Rehm has a breakdown and starts rambling about how the officers torture and abuse him and he wants out. Dehl responds to this coldly and stoically.

Rehm: “They starve me, whup up on me, keep me tied up…!”
Dehl: “Why do you deserve such punishment? They did hire you for your service, yes?”

Okay, so, drunk guy breaks into your home trying to extort you, you let him sleep on the couch. The next morning he comes to you with a sob story and that’s when it’s time to go well son you know what you signed up for? I get that Dehl’s supposed to be really calm and collected but for once he feels as much a caricature as the other characters. He should be showing at least the same level of warmth and concern he gave Rehm earlier, not this cold interrogation. Maybe it’s that ever-present smile on his portrait that’s creeping me out, but his behavior just seems off.

Rehm: “Th’ liquor helps keep me numb, but it ain’t good on my memory.”

So yeah he forgot everything from the interludes. This is why I question their inclusion; the entire plot could have been cut out and literally nothing would be lost. You don’t need to know anything from the interludes to understand and sympathize with Rehm’s present-day plotline. It’d change his Sikohlon ancestry from dramatic irony to actual reveal, but honestly I think that might actually work better.

I’ve harped on this before and I’ll harp on it again: This is why editing is important. A story should be consistent. A story should be more than the sum of its parts. A story should not be hastily assembled out of assorted parts that don’t quite fit. The hardest and most important part of the editing process is cutting out parts you like but which simply don’t work in the story, and that’s what the developer should have done here.

This could have actually worked if the events of the interludes were significant in any lasting way. Then it would be true dramatic irony; not even Rehm remembers the important events from his past, but we do. We could view him through the lens of how he used to be, but also see him diverge from his past behavior. But that’s not the case. He returns to his previous personality and outlook, having learned nothing, and the plot events of the interludes don’t even matter because he never meets Taru again and never remembers Sara. The interludes don’t have nearly enough of a bearing on his character arc or the plot at large to justify how much they’re featured.

I’m sorry, Rehm, you were saying something?

Rehm: “You gotta help me! Don’t let ’em catch me again! Jus’ gut me now if you gotta, please!”
Zargos: “Hate t’say it, but, makin’ enemies with the Officers of Nal isn’t high on our t’do list.”

What the frick. Zargos is a sociopath. He could at least kill him like he asked, they could probably hide the evidence long before the officers came knocking. But I guess even that’s too much effort for him.

Dehl, surely you, as a kind and compassionate soul, will help save this man from what he considers a fate worse than death?

Dehl: “This is true. Most likely, any involvement would make us accountable for your actions.”

…

Why is everyone in this game a monster?

I’m sorry, it’s ragequitting time. I’ll be back when people have decided to stop acting like evil Vulcans.

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