• incredibly high production value. With voice-over and detailed art
  • And a lot of reactivity to my inaction in the opening scene
  • VO is strong
  • The earl’s castle is a great map. Big, with a bunch of people, you can move around. Aerial view helps a lot
• Had double inventory (objects and thoughts/clues)
• Detailed expression, movement and animations
  • A lot of walking around
• The title sequence showcases each job's strong suit (like animation for animators or sound)
• The map is an okay idea, showing the spatial relationship, but also providing some choices along the way. Good representation for travel,
• Unpausable/Unskipable cutscenes are bad.

Narrative

• There’s some hint on branching choices, but not too much
  • You can attempt return keys from the monastery to the old keeper – but he won't take it (and potentially, lock you away from areas)
  • In Shiring, you can steal a chicken tight and it seems like you can give it to either Alfred or the knights (to buy his grace or to get something from knights). But it’s actually a false choice and offering it to knights doesn’t lock the other option. Shame.
  • Additionally, you’re helping Tom to spot decrepit parts of the castle to persuade the earl to hire you. It would be cool if you can say “it’s all that I found” – and then the story reacts accordingly. Maybe that reflects how much Tom will get paid, and, in turn – how well off are the people that depend on him.
• Seeing the consequences of your actions is nice. What’s more awesome, is to see the possibilities of other choices – like in “Detroit: Become Human”
• Big choice to spread three portions of bread among 6 groups of people
• The fact that Jack is burning the cathedral is kinda bad. I don’t think I really had an idea to do so – and you have no way to not do that. It would be meaningful as a difficult choice – but burning the place that give you refuge is at least worth a choice.
• It doesn’t seem like there were stakes in talking to Bartholomew – like, he’d “confess” no matter what I’d choose. Lost opportunities, in my opinion: you could investigate his persona and then make choices based on that, getting various degrees of success.
• I’m not particularly interested in William Hamleigh (brutish rapist) or bishop or archbishop. The other two are corrupt, but at least they’re distant enough to add a flair of mystique to their scheming. William’s afraid of fire – but otherwise pretty regular. Maybe he’d get something interesting going on for him (like Theon Greyjoy)…
• I tried to mount the horse and got a failure screen. Which brought no consequences, as the game restarted and I tried the less obvious option.
  • A restart might work in a Metroidvania-like time loop, as it would reset our progress
• Reusing locations is smart. With so many resources devoted to drawing stuff, it would be shame to give them just a dozen minutes of screen time.
• Richard died unexpectedly after an attack. It seems like on of the prior decisions did not payed out. That also locks me from doing a reasonable trade because sexism of the merchant (which wasn’t telegraphed properly)

[I dropped the game]