Interludes - Campaign Alternative for Alts

I love the interludes GGG created. I think they are really smart replacement to Cruel. They're focused, lore friendly, and quick without all the extra animations found in the main campaign. I would hate to see all the work GGG has done on the existing interludes just be thrown out in 1.0.

There are many people that would like a campaign skip. I don't necessarily agree with this, but I do get annoyed by the second alt of the league for having to sit through the rising time portal and hear "Goodness me!" from Alva or watch Tavakai do his misguided betrayal... again... and again.

So here is my idea. One of those "Good job, devs. Please do more work" kind of ideas.

Every league, you must get through the campaign all the way until you unlock the atlas. After that, alternate characters could go through an "interlude" campaign that follows in the wake of the main campaign. These interludes would be faster with less animations, less zones, and easier to acquire character bonuses (or better yet, let the bonuses you get in the main campaign apply to all characters for the league once you get them the first time).

They can be lore accurate and canonical. Act 1: Maybe some local baron tries to take over after we kill the count, and the alt characters get to stop him. Act 2: Generations of cultural divide between the Faridun and the Vastiri doesn't just go away with the death of Jamanra, and our alts could bring stability to the region by putting down rebellions on both sides of the conflict. Act 3: Exposing the ruins brings hoards of new tomb raiders and adventurers and this is sparking conflict between the local tribes and the foreign invaders. Act 4: Since all of our allies have gone off to war, maybe some new threat emerges and tries to take advantage of that. Or instead of following in the aftermath, maybe Act 4 runs concurrently with the main campaign and we gather our allies like we do in the current interludes. Act 5 and 6? I don't have ideas for that yet but hopefully you get what I'm going for here.

I think I saw a few ideas like this a way back and I was always a big fan but I understand the hesitation from a dev standpoint and especially one from an EA standpoint. I think right now they are just prioritizing having a finished campaign at all, rather than accommodating player's desires to skip it or have an alternative lol.

If the campaign offered the possibility of exclusive RNG-based events or quests that only could only occur on subsequent play-throughs of the campaign, it would definitely keep some "freshness" in the equation and a reason for people to not feel like another re-roll is a guaranteed "waste of time".

I think I've also heard the idea of being allowed to adjust the starting weapon/skills of your characters after you beat the campaign. eg. you could pick warrior, but have that first guy you stab on the beach drop a quarterstaff and get whichever t1 quarterstaff skill you also choose - you could also elect to still get a mace, but have eq drop instead of rs, etc.. Small things like that I think would go a long way to make things feel more fun on that 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th (and so on) play through.

I think there's probably a lot of tricks they could pull to make subsequent play throughs feel fresh and be perceived as a chance to experience some higher autonomy or novelty without cheapening or trivializing the experience and still maintaining their "no-skip" ideals.

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karsey#2995 wrote:

I think right now they are just prioritizing having a finished campaign at all, rather than accommodating player's desires to skip it or have an alternative lol.

I do not mean the devs should compromise development time and make this happen now. I'm certain 1.0 will not have any sort of campaign skip nor do I even think it should. It's just something to think about and perhaps work toward in the future.