This is my full thoughts on the newest episode. Respond here or discord with your thoughts.
I am extremely impressed by the direction of the chronicles thus far. Alaric goes to great lengths to discover any weaknesses the undead may have. He discovers how to make undead of his own. He then dies, and is resurrected as a vampire. The character of Alaric himself is well thought out as well. He has dealt with the undead all his life, and has dedicated at least 40 years to fighting them. He worked his way up to the grand inquisitor, through great intelligence and being courageous. Kudos to Jack and George, and anyone else who has been responsible for building up the story.
When Alaric awakes, he’s unsure of himself or what exactly has transpired. I mean, he just died so of course he’ll be disoriented. Once he’s somewhat gathered himself, he leaves his lab turned grave. I think he has a huge lapse of judgment here. He left a large vat of vampire blood just sitting there. That was intentionally mentioned. My theory is that despite the differences between the awakened and the dead, the awakened will somehow utilize the vampire blood if they manage to find it. Perhaps they taint the blood, then feed it to someone to create some kind of dream vampire. This isn’t a fanged menace, it’s a monster that feeds on the dreams of sleeping people. It’s an idea, anyway.
A lot of us have joked that this whole episode is like the vampire tutorial, and I fully agree. Funny sure, but Alaric is now experiencing things that were once fully impossible. As someone mentioned before, he went from struggling to work more than a few hours to walking miles without any effort. In this "tutorial", we learn that silver is more than just dangerous; it is blinding to fledgling vampires. Vampires have the ability to see in the dark, enhanced strength, enhanced mobility, and resistance to most physical injury. This is great for learning exactly what a vampire can do in this world.
Alaric examining how the blood works from a scientific perspective is genuinely interesting. He experiments what is possible, and notes what the blood within him does. Oh, and that itself is cool. He says that he’s just wearing the skin of the old self. Then he says the blood is reacting to different things, and compelling him to move, as if he doesn’t have full control over his urges and instincts. Very interesting. Is this just something he learns to control and become? Or does his blood always behave as though it’s sentient?
The creatures he comes across are weird. They act like a combination of religious zealots and a hivemind. And the red tendrils he comes across seem like an infection. What are they doing, what will be they doing? Will it just continue to spread? In game, this will make for interesting missions as we may need to push back the spread of the infection. Also, the creatures don’t seem to immediately die, even when decapitated. That is NOT good, because most things die when they are decapitated. So how will they be defeated? If it’s through direct combat, maybe it’s fire or something else that snuffs out infection. If not, maybe you have to take down some kind of node or destroy the tendrils so they lose their connection or strength and the monsters can finally be killed.
I’m hoping Alaric is able to resist the hunger because it would be horrible if the first person he attacks is a child. Then again, this is supposed to be a very dark game. We will know in December.
I forgot to mention, at some point he says he sees a vision of a pale woman on top of a burning temple. I fully believe this is our Red Lady. If so, then every vampire is aware of her upon turning. This could be where we start to get more lore for her, though I kind of hope we wait until the game.
Now that some gushing about the episode is out of the way, I can talk about some dislikes. First off, the elephant. AI art was clearly used for at least some, if not most, of the art in the youtube radioplay. AI art is already controversial as it uses other artists’ work without permission to create an image, which can be passed off as your own. I don’t like it for this very reason. Some discord members have noted there isn’t much variation between the slides, speculating it’s possible the AI was trained with Apocalypse's own art. If that were the case, I believe it’s perfectly fine. The use of AI trained in their own style can save time in creating the radio shows, which I'm all for. However, I’m not confident about it. The other problem with the AI was the inconsistency with the story. Alaric said he saw 12, and the AI picture showed at least 20. Alaric was underground, then the art showed him emerging from a tower, overlooking some hills. Alaric’s hand was bitten off, then the next picture shows both hands. Honestly? This is just someone getting lazy. There is no way you watched this and thought it was 100% good to go. I believe this needs to be fixed and reposted. Once I noticed the AI art mistakes, I started getting pulled out of my immersion, and it killed a chunk of my enjoyment. Back to the AI controversy. AI is bad news for big studios and artists, it can be deadly for a small studio and a game that hasn’t even been released yet. What if there’s AI art in-game? Might as well kiss any money goodbye. Hopefully from here on, any AI is used sparingly, as it could really negatively impact the health of DHS.
The other thing, which is less serious, is why wasn’t Alaric more prepared for this? Didn’t he send other inquisitors to investigate the cultists? Are you going to tell me they ALL died? No one had any clue about them? COME ONNN. Has Deadhaus seriously been such a threat, that everyone is completely blind to literally anything else? I’m hoping that some faction of humans are like “yeah actually we knew about the crimson cultists and decided to force them out of our towns and cities”. And every single wight was sent away to fight Deadhaus? No one said “let’s keep a few of the ridiculously powerful and useful zombies here just in case”? AHHH! Alaric you fool.
Overall, this is a net positive. The story was good, the monsters are frightening, I liked hearing Alaric discover vampiric powers, and now we know for sure what Alaric looks like. The only real downside was the AI art.
I’m excited for the next radioplay! As always, Apocalypse can and should use anything from my posts. I’m open to any conversation, just message me here or discord.
I am extremely impressed by the direction of the chronicles thus far. Alaric goes to great lengths to discover any weaknesses the undead may have. He discovers how to make undead of his own. He then dies, and is resurrected as a vampire. The character of Alaric himself is well thought out as well. He has dealt with the undead all his life, and has dedicated at least 40 years to fighting them. He worked his way up to the grand inquisitor, through great intelligence and being courageous. Kudos to Jack and George, and anyone else who has been responsible for building up the story.
When Alaric awakes, he’s unsure of himself or what exactly has transpired. I mean, he just died so of course he’ll be disoriented. Once he’s somewhat gathered himself, he leaves his lab turned grave. I think he has a huge lapse of judgment here. He left a large vat of vampire blood just sitting there. That was intentionally mentioned. My theory is that despite the differences between the awakened and the dead, the awakened will somehow utilize the vampire blood if they manage to find it. Perhaps they taint the blood, then feed it to someone to create some kind of dream vampire. This isn’t a fanged menace, it’s a monster that feeds on the dreams of sleeping people. It’s an idea, anyway.
A lot of us have joked that this whole episode is like the vampire tutorial, and I fully agree. Funny sure, but Alaric is now experiencing things that were once fully impossible. As someone mentioned before, he went from struggling to work more than a few hours to walking miles without any effort. In this "tutorial", we learn that silver is more than just dangerous; it is blinding to fledgling vampires. Vampires have the ability to see in the dark, enhanced strength, enhanced mobility, and resistance to most physical injury. This is great for learning exactly what a vampire can do in this world.
Alaric examining how the blood works from a scientific perspective is genuinely interesting. He experiments what is possible, and notes what the blood within him does. Oh, and that itself is cool. He says that he’s just wearing the skin of the old self. Then he says the blood is reacting to different things, and compelling him to move, as if he doesn’t have full control over his urges and instincts. Very interesting. Is this just something he learns to control and become? Or does his blood always behave as though it’s sentient?
The creatures he comes across are weird. They act like a combination of religious zealots and a hivemind. And the red tendrils he comes across seem like an infection. What are they doing, what will be they doing? Will it just continue to spread? In game, this will make for interesting missions as we may need to push back the spread of the infection. Also, the creatures don’t seem to immediately die, even when decapitated. That is NOT good, because most things die when they are decapitated. So how will they be defeated? If it’s through direct combat, maybe it’s fire or something else that snuffs out infection. If not, maybe you have to take down some kind of node or destroy the tendrils so they lose their connection or strength and the monsters can finally be killed.
I’m hoping Alaric is able to resist the hunger because it would be horrible if the first person he attacks is a child. Then again, this is supposed to be a very dark game. We will know in December.
I forgot to mention, at some point he says he sees a vision of a pale woman on top of a burning temple. I fully believe this is our Red Lady. If so, then every vampire is aware of her upon turning. This could be where we start to get more lore for her, though I kind of hope we wait until the game.
Now that some gushing about the episode is out of the way, I can talk about some dislikes. First off, the elephant. AI art was clearly used for at least some, if not most, of the art in the youtube radioplay. AI art is already controversial as it uses other artists’ work without permission to create an image, which can be passed off as your own. I don’t like it for this very reason. Some discord members have noted there isn’t much variation between the slides, speculating it’s possible the AI was trained with Apocalypse's own art. If that were the case, I believe it’s perfectly fine. The use of AI trained in their own style can save time in creating the radio shows, which I'm all for. However, I’m not confident about it. The other problem with the AI was the inconsistency with the story. Alaric said he saw 12, and the AI picture showed at least 20. Alaric was underground, then the art showed him emerging from a tower, overlooking some hills. Alaric’s hand was bitten off, then the next picture shows both hands. Honestly? This is just someone getting lazy. There is no way you watched this and thought it was 100% good to go. I believe this needs to be fixed and reposted. Once I noticed the AI art mistakes, I started getting pulled out of my immersion, and it killed a chunk of my enjoyment. Back to the AI controversy. AI is bad news for big studios and artists, it can be deadly for a small studio and a game that hasn’t even been released yet. What if there’s AI art in-game? Might as well kiss any money goodbye. Hopefully from here on, any AI is used sparingly, as it could really negatively impact the health of DHS.
The other thing, which is less serious, is why wasn’t Alaric more prepared for this? Didn’t he send other inquisitors to investigate the cultists? Are you going to tell me they ALL died? No one had any clue about them? COME ONNN. Has Deadhaus seriously been such a threat, that everyone is completely blind to literally anything else? I’m hoping that some faction of humans are like “yeah actually we knew about the crimson cultists and decided to force them out of our towns and cities”. And every single wight was sent away to fight Deadhaus? No one said “let’s keep a few of the ridiculously powerful and useful zombies here just in case”? AHHH! Alaric you fool.
Overall, this is a net positive. The story was good, the monsters are frightening, I liked hearing Alaric discover vampiric powers, and now we know for sure what Alaric looks like. The only real downside was the AI art.
I’m excited for the next radioplay! As always, Apocalypse can and should use anything from my posts. I’m open to any conversation, just message me here or discord.
