The main storyline of Oath had many problems even if one ignored the riddler-style dialogue.
Fine... it could not be ignored at all!
To put it bluntly, Oath 1.0's main story was a school mystery plot.
The player arrived at Elysium Academy and discovered that a strange virus was spreading through the academy. The player and the gacha characters followed various clues together, and finally discovered the truth behind the virus.
Then they had a final battle against the source of the virus, the Calamity Aberration locked in the basement.
It could be called an extremely, extremely, extremely simple story. There were no twists or meaningful information throughout the whole thing.
For Carl, a simple plot was not a problem.
On the contrary, if Oath's writers could write an ordinary school adventure comedy.
Write more interesting interactions between characters, add more beautiful girls interacting with the player in a 2D gacha game, and give out more sweet moments.
On top of that, add some exciting story presentation.
If players could clear the whole thing with the corners of their mouths raised in a smile throughout the playthrough.
Then Carl would definitely give the story a nine out of ten, or even a full score.
This is exactly what I play 2D gacha games to see!
The problem was that Oath's scriptwriters had absolutely no self-awareness.
Oath insisted on showing off its half-baked philosophical insights.
It stuffed a huge amount of theories from philosophical books like Nietzsche, Camus, Phenomenology of Spirit, Dialectic of Enlightenment, and so on into the dialogue.
It forcefully turned an originally simple story into something as complicated as possible. The dialogue between characters simply did not sound like human speech.
One second it was something like the birth of the self-destroyer. The next was, "As determinism states, the Calamity..." and so on, full of pretentious nonsense that made people laugh.
This resulted in the player experience of playing Oath's main story being...
Watching a huge pile of dialogue that seemed packed with information and was as complicated as it could possibly be, only for it to tell a story that basically had no information content at all.
And Mio... was currently trapped in that kind of torture.
"Ah, mm."
"So that's how it is?"
"I... know? What were you all saying again?"
"So I'm the chosen Savior, oh... I get it... no, wait, what did you just say?"
Mio really wanted to shout at the game characters beside her, who were endlessly babbling about a huge pile of lore.
"Speak normally!"
"And can we leave already? You've all been standing here talking for almost three minutes."
This can also be a standing dialogue scene?
Carl watched from a distance as Mio interacted with the characters in the main story.
Because all the gacha characters in the main story were secondary consciousnesses that followed the script step by step.
They would only perform according to the method arranged in advance by the game planners.
Then Carl witnessed another classic of 2D gacha games.
Superb standing dialogue.
Everyone stood in a circle and spoke lines to each other. The only movements between the characters were either spreading their hands, crossing their arms, or holding their foreheads and shaking their heads.
When Carl played 2D gacha games before, he had seen some comments argue, "If characters don't stand still while talking, are they supposed to dance around just to say a few lines? Wouldn't that make them look insane?"
And Carl wanted to ask, what about camera work? Do you not know what camera work is?
Also, this is a main story presentation! Do you know what presentation means? Dialogue, character movements, and scenes! These are all part of the presentation!
If the characters in the game only stand together and chat, then why don't I just play a visual novel?
Oath, a game played from the player's first-person perspective, might not be able to do camera work.
But at the very least, you should properly rehearse the characters' acting movements! It was like a player bought a movie ticket to watch an exciting movie.
Only to discover that the whole movie was a speech from beginning to end, and it was boring, long-winded nonsense that made people lose all energy.
"...Ugh..."
Mio experienced the main story for four hours. During that time, Oath did indeed have some large-scale presentation cutscenes that felt pretty decent on a sensory level.
But that could not cover up the riddler-style plot, or the stiff character movements during story scenes.
Right now, she really wanted to turn off the game and go to sleep. But the Contract Stone rewards from the main story were quite generous, with almost 100 Contract Stones for each small chapter.
The final stage even gave a full 400 Contract Stones!
This made Mio forcefully endure the strong urge to flee in her heart. She could only bite the bullet and keep pushing the main story forward.
This experience of wanting to escape, but because she wanted to know the later plot and get the rewards, she could only endure the dry, boring, and tedious feeling and keep going.
How should it be described?
Prison.
Yes! Mio felt like she was in prison right now!
Finally, after being in prison for four hours, Mio entered the final chapter! Everyone gathered and charged into the underground laboratory!
She could finally be freed! Hurry up and advance to the final boss part already, let me claim the 400 Contract Stones and log off to sleep!
And after Mio followed the main group into the underground laboratory, she... got separated.
This could also be considered part of the plot arrangement, because the underground laboratory itself was a huge maze.
Mio needed to pass through this maze before she could regroup with the others and continue the story.
Just as Mio was somewhat irritated and running around randomly in the maze, under Carl's deliberate guidance, she broke into the hidden room of the final boss.
In other words, the surveillance room where Carl's main body was located.
"You... have finally arrived, Miss Player. I have been waiting here for a long time."
Carl welcomed Mio's arrival softly with standard villain-style slow clapping.
"I know you're the final boss, Carl. Stop wasting words! Hurry up and start the fight, then give me the final 400 Contract Stones!"
Needless to say.
Mio's feelings toward Carl were still quite special. The main reason was that Carl had accompanied her throughout the entire playthrough.
And he was also the game character who gave her the strongest sense of being alive.
At the very least, she could understand every sentence Carl said!
This made Mio feel an inexplicable sense of closeness toward Carl.
Unfortunately, Carl was a useless three-star character. After Mio pulled Hasumi, she had already made Carl a warehouse unit.
So right now, Mio was speaking to Carl as a friend, telling him not to pull any weird tricks and to quickly finish the fight so she could log off.
"If you want it, then come take it yourself."
"But as for the rules... you understand."
Carl lightly snapped his fingers and said to Mio.
"Let's play an interesting little game. If you win, I will give you the final reward directly."
"A mini-game?!"
When Mio heard those three words, she felt an instinctive wave of nausea.
Because over these three days, for the sake of Contract Stones, she had been forced to play a huge pile of boring mini-games!
"I don't want to! Just show your HP bar and start fighting! I'm begging you!"
"I don't want to play any more boring jigsaw puzzles, grid-walking, Rubik's cubes, matching games, or those kinds of mini-games! I really, really don't want to touch them again! I've seriously played them until I'm about to puke."
Mio did not believe Carl could come up with any interesting mini-game.
It would definitely be another pile of BabyBus-level preschool games.
"That will not do. You must play this game. Otherwise... Miss Player, you will suffer an extremely harsh punishment."
Carl said this rather lightly, and it successfully made Mio laugh.
"Punishment? How can you punish me? At most, you can kill me, but I can revive at any time. You should know that very well, Carl."
Mio really laughed out loud at Carl's threat.
How could an NPC in a game punish a player?
The scariest punishment Mio could think of was deducting all her Contract Stones.
But if there really was a punishment like that, then she would call the consumer protection agency and complain about the game developer!
However, Carl's next sentence made Mio's spine go cold, her hair stand on end, and frightened her so badly she would be unable to sleep all night.
Carl raised his hand, and the door behind Mio directly closed and locked. Then Carl gave Mio the most terrifying death sentence.
"If you do not play this game... then I..."
"Will tell you one whole hour of unskippable riddler-style story!!"
You have to listen to one whole hour of unskippable riddler-style story before fighting the final boss?
Then why the hell am I still playing?
Although Mio had already listened to four hours of unskippable riddler-style story before arriving here.
Carl's threat still successfully worked.
"Fine! I get it! I'll play, okay! You're not allowed to add any hard-to-understand words like destiny, fate, existence and woodiness, or the measure of all things into your lines anymore!"
"If you make me hear those words again, I'll stab my own ears deaf!"
Mio surrendered on the spot.
If she had to play a boring mini-game, then she would play it.
At least she could still do something. With riddler-style story, she could only stand there and listen. It was even more torturous than listening to a teacher lecture in high school.
"Do not worry, Miss Player. I guarantee that this mini-game will absolutely be more interesting than any game you have played before. Let the performance... begin."
Carl waved his hand again, and several cards flew in front of Mio like snowflakes.
More interesting than every game she had played before? How interesting could it be?
Mio was not willing to believe it at all.
Because although Carl had proposed this game, from Mio's perspective as a player, this mini-game was definitely also made by Oath's official team!
Mio had already experienced far too many boring gameplay modes made by Oath's developers over these three days. Just hurry up and serve it already.
Mio looked at the several cards flying in front of her.
She was very familiar with these cards, because they were playing cards from the real world.
This made Mio laugh speechlessly on the spot.
"After boring gameplay like jigsaw puzzles, matching games, Rubik's cubes, and grid-walking, the new mini-game is playing cards?"
"So how do we play? Old Maid? Landlord? Texas Hold'em? No matter which one, it's not interesting."
"How can a card game be fun?"
Carl did not answer Mio's question. As always... responding with action was the most convincing answer.
"This game has nothing to do with Oath's developers. It is adapted from a game from my homeland. I once became addicted to that game for hundreds of hours, and now..."
"Let the first round of Balatro in this world, or rather... Oath Cards, begin, Miss Player."
(To be continued.)