Opinions on how TCR & FG are dealing with AAMFP criticism

[Dikiyoba]

Count me in as another person who was seriously unimpressed by the storytelling. The plot was vague and contradictory. Mandus' motivations were hackneyed and random. The pigmen's actions were even more unexplained. The children were just props. The story was told in the least interesting way possible: a linear narrative in a linear game told entirely through notes and cutscenes (minimal, interactive cutscenes, but still cutscenes). The player has no options, no impact on how the story unfolds, no participation. Also, the notes are really intrusive and break immersion. All in all, it's a much worse story than TDD's story, and TDD managed to have gameplay and be really freaking terrifying at the same time it was telling that story.

The failure in storytelling really ticks me off, because there was such potential, so many things that could have been done, and it was all wasted. What if the story really focused on how Mandus was manipulated by the "egg"'s distorted view of the future? What if we participated in Mandus' descent into despair and evil by being forced to kill his children in a flashback like we had to kill the man in TDD? What if the narrative structure was something unusual, like in media res (imagine the London scene as an opening!) or an alternating narrative that jumps between Mandus' attempts to stop the machine and all the events alluded to in the backstory that led up to him going evil? What if the gameplay helped tell the story? Anything like that would have made the story so, so much better.