Okay, things just got super interesting because I'm pretty sure some bad guy just stole a lady's soul to power a teleporter and the party was dragged with him to Heaven.

Except "Heaven" is just another massive ancient device and people admit there's probably a different one, but some are convinced it's pretty enough to work even though you can totally just go there and come back.

So anyway Rush's parents were already up there doing research. This'll be interesting.

Normally they say the teleporter only has enough juice to work like 3 times a year tops and their trip was understood to be one that would strand them there for a while. So obviously powering it with a relatively young soul probably makes sense, horrific as that is. It's already been established that using these things requires soul power and can kill you pretty fast for the more powerful ones. Like it would be pretty brutal if the limit on this one was a human sacrifice

Not least because this dude as the villain on the box art already has one on his side that can fly, so unless he can't reveal himself to borrow the keys out of contrived BS, just straight-up sacrificing a lady for no reason doesn't make sense.

Because somehow I don't think this game is written well enough to balance more than one villain faction, TBH. XD

Don't get me wrong, they exist, but they're very much there to be red herrings and quickly fall to the margins.

Like I ultimately don't see this all coming to a single chain of command and that's WITHOUT looking up spoilers. They already introduced the sympathetic mook, the evil vizier, the politically oriented bad guy who obviously doesn't have the teeth to be the big bad, and an obvious red herring people THINK is The Conquerer who may be big and scary, but really registers as a pre-established monster type and is immediately rendered less interesting in the same cutscene.

I'm going to go with "the guy who made it onto the box is the real big bad" and say that everyone else who lacks any real intrigue probably answers to him one way or another. It's just easier writing and to be blunt it would have been much more believable if the other super powerful mage didn't answer to a sexist kid in a tie who clearly didn't have much thought put into him and could easily be pushed off a cliff without changing anything.

Yeah, uh, this place doesn't look very much like Heaven. Very spiky and orange and in the eye of a tornado. Not Hell, but definitely not Heaven. I was expecting like, grass and flowers and bunnies. XD

Also hilariously even though David left the party for the cutscene he's still in my battle setup. XD

Oh, uh, cool. Giant suspiciously functional and shiny ruin with glowing runes everywhere and a straight path that keeps you nervous with a bunch of moving parts to open it in front of you to the tune of a track that's like 30% different bell instruments with an atonal sweep at the end of the loop.

This is all very much set dressing to a boss battle. One they want you very nervous for.

Okay, THAT all completely defied my expectations. I won't say there's no payoff, but I was wrong on every front.

Although I do say it lessens both the presented antagonists, since one is reduced to a force and the other is too sniveling and unlikable to spend real time as a believable threat. Push him off a balcony for sure.

I will say this game has gorgeous pre-baked reflections even if the textures in the shiny word place were super low-res.

Also I have A Real Problem™ with going straight from not-Heaven to a ruin where naked albino Qsiti are a major enemy, not least because 1) IT'S THROUGH A DOOR IN A CHURCH and 2) they're one of the 4 intelligent species in the world and might I reiterate THEY ARE NAKED AND IN A RUIN UNDER A CHURCH. So these poor feral morlocks are being treated like standard monsters including you can SELL them and also DISMEMBER THEM FOR BODY PARTS.

I am... Uncomfortable.

@bluestarultor Oh holy fuck