The game progression is pretty simple even though there are 4 characters since their paths are very similar. Basically they all start with the same beginning; a tutorial mission that allows them to learn the controls while also completing the task and setting off the events of gameplay. After completing this, the characters will receive tasks from certain other characters that allow for story progression, and the completion of each one allows for the next task to open, moving the story along. However, between tasks, the characters can take side quests, train, or simply explore the area while interacting with the characters within their country, for multiple purposes. Talking to people, depending on which character you’re playing and what the context is, can raise moral, help gain information, get side quests and raise your credibility (in the case of the merchant and the Vanator heroes).
The game also allows for characters to develop relationships, but only with select characters. Depending on who you romance, you can gain or lose certain things. Like romancing a scientist might raise your country’s technology, but loses you credibility with the church, and so on.
Depending on who the hero is, the game play differs, and here is where it gets complicated.
If you play as Mavrock the King; your gameplay mostly consists of manipulation, puzzle and strategy. You will pit your political opponents against each other, strategize your resources and troops and plan out massive moves, be it to conquer, to assist or to destroy. You will occasionally fight, but these scenes are far and few between.
If you play as Arjun Parkash the Merchant, your gameplay will be more of a mystery and strategy game. When you land in a country, you have to figure out what is going on, who to trade with and who not to trade with, who to trust and who to avoid. In each country you will have the chance to assist refugees, who may or may not be friendly, and who you save changes the later scenes.
If you play Costine the Vanator, it is a very heavy fighter game with manipulation as well. You have so many enemies, that you are constantly having to fight them off in order to survive while also attempting to win people over and find a way to ensure your people’s survival. Which is tricky when the people you need to convince are the people who want you dead
If you play as Vester the Commander, you are a mixture of strategy, combat and manipulation (the closest to being like Dragon Age or Mass Effect). Depending on the mission and what it entails, you can strategize formations for your brigade and then execute them in the mission, while also fighting combatants. You also have to ensure that the borders are safe and that death is kept at a minimum.
The main gameplay has 3 overall arcs within it that the character plays through; the 1rst crisis, the 2nd and the 3rd. Depending on which character they are, the events differ, but they are intertwined. Each of these arcs deals with the major conflicts unique to each character, and helps move the story along. The 3rd arc finale is where all 4 characters interact the strongest, as that’s the culmination of the game where all the decisions come to a head and result in which ending you receive.
Based on your decisions, you have 3 possible endings per character; the Good, the Peace, and the Bad, each of them differing per person.
Good endings are the ones where all the country’s demands have been met, while maintain some but not all of its good relations and keeping war to a minimum. You might have killed one of the other heroes, but the others are still alive and there’s relative peace.
Peace endings are where you’ve managed to befriend the other 3 heroes and kept war to a minimum, while getting some but not all of the country’s expectations done.
Bad endings are where your country goes to war, and destroys 2 or more of the other heroes, resulting in your country dominating the others for better or for worse.
“Once in the Time of Unending Twilight, eleven great flying serpents circled the infinite sky. Their scales were formed of primordial vestiges of long-forgotten earths and celestial bodies, and their wings soared over the winds of dreams ancient and future, forever circling in an ancient, unceasing current. These 11 were the first and last moons and suns of a forever unliving and undying galaxies, occurring concurrently of each other in an unbroken cycle of entropy and ectropy. They were alpha and omega, both.
Yet an end and beginning is formless and forever disconnected without continuation between, and an observer to perceive that passage of time. The serpents could forever coil into and out of each other, begin and end again and again, yet so long as they were alone in this tedium of creation, divided between tail and head with no body between, they could not truly exist. And so, they deigned to be, and as a consequence, the world began.
They serpents coiled together to a single, wriggling ball. Their skin shed and their feathers molted constantly, again and again, scales and sweat forming land and seas, the gust blown by their flapping wings bringing sky and thought and dream into an ever revolving current surrounding the newly formed earth below. The atmosphere they had forged had a twofold purpose- from it, life began to spawn on the world formed below, animal and man both slowly emerging from the womb of the sea to breathe in the reality around them. However, the world beyond the life-giving atmosphere was still formless, shapeless, forever in flux between existence and non-existence. If any soul dared to venture beyond the skies, their essence would be dispersed into the howling chaos and creation of the endless birth and death of the eternal dark above.
The 11 winged snakes were proud of what they had created, yet they knew, so long as the space beyond the world was infinite, their creations could not continue to observe and revere them as the great creators they were. This planet would stagnate, would crumble, would fade back into the tedium of non-existence. And so, they turned to the endless sky above and soared through dream, leaving a promise to their first creation- that one day, when Infinity was made perceptible, they would return and Ascend the world past the veil that held them still, where the majesty they had formed could be observed until the slithering crawl of the end swallowed them all whole.
And so the 11 vanished into creation, and the world awaits it’s fated Ascension.”
- from the teachings of Mother Septimus
Followers are called Ascenders- derisively called “Ass-Enders” by those who aren’t part of the faith
Worship eleven creation serpents that will one day bring their world to the center stage and allow them the chance to perceive infinite creation
While in none of the original texts, the Ascenders have come to adopt in the Holy Canon that those who don’t follow the faith will die in a massive rapture event when the snakes return unless they recant the wicked turn of the world and submit to a more Luddite lifestyle
Nothing can ever be as brilliantly made as that which the Serpents themselves created- thus, technological and genetic advancements are seen as affronts to the 11 unless they are used to serve them
Church is divided into two branches- the Wings and the Fangs. The Wings branch practices theological study of the Serpent Sacraments. The Fangs Branch contains the vicious Slayers, fierce warriors that once spread the Virtue of the Serpent in a series of ultra-violent crusades
The Church is mainly consolidated to Aldorf, yet it has incredible sway over the government there, the current head of power merely a puppet of the church’s head
No preferential treatment to men or women, as both were created by the serpent, and therefore must be equally valuable