Eastern Invasion Storyline Update

[Loci]

I have updated the storyline for Eastern Invasion. In essence, Gweddry and co. spend the campaign searching for a way to defeat Mal-Ravanal instead of abandoning their country and running away. I tried to retain the mostly frantic pacing of the campaign, so it's rather light on exposition and explanation. There's still plenty of room for improvement, but hopefully this update gets the Eastern Invasion storyline into the same ballpark as the other mainline campaigns.

I have attached the revised campaign, as well as a condensed "script" containing most of the story text. Please note: while my goal was to make the campaign storyline coherent and interesting, I did make playability changes to a few scenarios. I do not believe that these storyline updates will impact any other campaigns.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

[UnwiseOwl]

Running through EI again for the first time for many years and the dialogue really is poor, I welcome any change to it. I think even after this revision the dialogue is a bit simplistic to be reaching the level expected of mainline, though, mind if I take a swing?

[zookeeper]

I have updated the storyline for Eastern Invasion. In essence, Gweddry and co. spend the campaign searching for a way to defeat Mal-Ravanal instead of abandoning their country and running away. I tried to retain the mostly frantic pacing of the campaign, so it's rather light on exposition and explanation. There's still plenty of room for improvement, but hopefully this update gets the Eastern Invasion storyline into the same ballpark as the other mainline campaigns.

I have attached the revised campaign, as well as a condensed "script" containing most of the story text. Please note: while my goal was to make the campaign storyline coherent and interesting, I did make playability changes to a few scenarios. I do not believe that these storyline updates will impact any other campaigns.

I welcome your comments and suggestions.

Thanks, much appreciated.

Unless someone else steps up to handle it, it might take a while for me to proofread and commit this, but hopefully not too long.

[Kanzil]

I've looked at your revisions,and have also added my own enhancements(well actually I've rewritten all the lines up to scenario 4a).I've kept your basic ideas,and turin's, just re-phrased them,though I haven't added any new lines.

script (2).txt

(41.99 KiB) Downloaded 289 times

More will be forthcoming, should you like it.

script (2).txt

A small edit

(42.22 KiB) Downloaded 297 times

[Loci]

I am well aware that there is plenty of room for improvement in the dialog. What I would like to avoid, however, is having a large number of independent rewrites because that makes it very difficult to reconcile the changes into a final version. In the worst-case scenario, the rewrites diverge to the point that it becomes impossible to recover and the entire effort is abandoned.

I don't know how projects like this are usually managed here on the boards, but I would prefer to see gradual and steady improvement of the campaign instead of a haphazard blitz to rewrite the entire storyline for the next release. Given that (almost?) everyone thinks the storyline needs improvement and yet it hasn't happened in the last couple of years, I think it's best to focus on one set of changes and get them approved and committed to mainline, at which point everyone else is invited to spearhead their own improved rewrites.

That being said, you are more than welcome to rewrite the dialog (not that you need my permission), and I will integrate those parts which I feel make the most improvement to the current state of the campaign.

A few quick notes:

The main characters should have coherent "voices": Dacyn is an old mage, so a broad and somewhat antiquated vocabulary is reasonable. Gweddry is a young commander; he probably shouldn't be dropping "erelong"s.

Any changes to the storyline significant enough to impact any other Wesnoth canon should be avoided without very good reason. That is one of the reasons I chose the concept of the "null stone", as opposed to a "sceptre of lich killing". The null stone can be written-off as a mage's trinket, while the sceptre would likely become one of the royal treasures of Wesnoth, trotted out whenever undead threatened.

[Kanzil]

I asked Zookeeper,and he said I was welcome to try.I am currently in the process of putting my changes into the scenario files.This is not a "haphazard blitz",this is an attempt to re-write the dialogue,without adding any new lines,in more descriptive and suitable(slightly more archaic rather than modern) language and thus ameliorate the negative effect of it on an otherwise very good campaign.

I agree with your notes,and I will change the (I have changed the line spoken by Gweddry to one of Dacyn's)dialogue in line to your suggestions.

I am going to slowly work through the campaign.