The Sacrifice - The Worst "Cinematic" Quest

[DreisterDino]

Hey guys,

 

i want to leave my feedback on the quest here to see if i am alone with my feelings. For me, this quest was simply a HUGE disappointment, i didnt had much fun playing it. It was just boring and felt really cheap to me. I want to say first, i wasnt a person that hyped this Quest over the top, and when i jumped in to play it i did it with the intention to have fun - so i wasnt speed running the missions - i actually went in with a relaxed mood, went to fight most enemies although its not mandatory , enjoy the sceneries and so on. My expectations were definetly not over the top, when i rate this Quest i compare it to the 2 Quests before it (TWW; TSD) or simply try to answer the question "did i have fun". And the answer is no!

 

1. Cinematics

The first thing is, this quest was always announced to be an "CINEMATIC" quest, but where are the Cinematics??

- one at the beginning (1-2 minutes long)

- one in the middle ( maybe 20 seconds long, where Umbra attacks the operator in the ship)

- one at the end (~2 minutes long)

 

I dont count the dialogues between Ordis and my Operator, the minigame with ballas where i lie in bed the whole time or the narration in front of the "new UI background" as "Cinematics".

Maybe, and just maybe i can count the scene where i have to go to the tree under the effect of the "bloomy edge filter" as cinematic if im am generous.

This is just some stuff for trailers, not more...And compared to the 2 previous quests, it didnt have a big impact on me. Btw: I rewatched gameplays of the 2 previous Quests to "prepare" myself for this quest and remember everything lorewise that could be important, and the cinematics in those quest were much more interesting in my opinion.

 

2. Storytelling

The storytelling was even worse in this quest, i think it was implemented really bad and bored me pretty fast. I mean, its nothing new that they tell a bit of the story via dialogues between my operator and Ordis/Lotus. and its ok if a portion of the story is told this way. But the whole lore here gets narrated to you like in an audio book. Either you listen to your operator and Ordis, listen to ballas while there is this "new Ui background" or listen to ballas while you lie in bed. Seriously? To create a link to my first point, there is some lore in this quest that would be GREAT material for cinematics, instead of this boring way of narration there could be cinematics while most of this narration happens. And it doesnt need to be fully rendered videos all the time, it even could be something like slideshows of artworks which would take much less time to create then real cinematics for the developer but still would be much more interesting to watch.

 

3. Gameplay

Now, this is the worst part for me (and the most important aswell in a videogame), the gameplay was more or less a bad joke and boring aswell, and remember, i didnt speedrun this, i tried to have fun. so what do you do in the quest?

 

- run somewhere - Defensemission ( Door in front of the place where the first cutscene takes place)

- scan stuff (you can barely see)

- run somewhere - solve new ciphers (those are actually not bad and a nice addition)

- find stuff (you can barely see)

- play a minigame with ballas where he looses on purpose

-"fight" umbra, go back to minigame with ballas

-"fight" umbra, go back to minigame with ballas

-"fight" umbra, go back to minigame with ballas

- walk to a tree

- fight a few sentients

- done

 

Yes, seriously, thats it and for me it was as boring as it sounds when you read this. To point this out, i am ok with the fact that they "recycle" mission type like defense, sabotage and so on in their quests, i dont expect it to be a whole new game, but all you have to do in this quest is a short defense, a minigame and one sentient fight. thats it. And i also wanna say, i fought against the ghouls and i killed sentients when it wasnt necessary to do it (you could have just passed them most of the time), but it didnt make gameplay much more interesting.

When you want to implement sections where you have to find stuff, its fine do it.

But it has been done in the worst possible way in this quest. When you have to find something tiny that doesnt call for your attention, a good game would maybe give you some hints that you have to think about and when you do, it actually helps you finding that thing and when you mamaged to find it, you feel some satisfaction. Not here. Just felt like time-stretching.

 

The minigame, well, could be fun but im not playing a quest for something like this ;) Especially when my opponent wants to lose and its just a "put stone to recive next sentence" game.

Anf if you have to do it so often it becomes annoying anyway. All you did was this: Deplete Umbras shields, play minigame, repeat.

 

There could have been some interesting things that would have been really awesome considering the main difference between UMBRA and other frames - he can act independently.

Why not implement this in the gameplay? Maybe only in somekind of bossfight in the end where you have to be in Operator all the time and work together with your Umbra frame: You are the one depleting shields of enemies, open them up to finishers, stagger them and so on with your operator while Umbra finishes them off for example. It was a fun moment when i noticed that Umbra isnt just an empty shell when i am in operatormode, but there was nothing done with this at all in the quest.

 

So, yes i am disappointed a lot by this quest.

No, its not because i myself built up hype and expectations the game could notlive up to, it simply wasnt good.

Its a lazy excuse if the answer to someone who says that he didnt like it is "well, you hyped it too much, your fault".

I didnt expect much, just a quest thats on the same level with TWW/TSD. But it was nowhere even close to those quests in any way...

 

Still, if you enjoyed this quest, i would like to hear why you did enjoy it :)

[GinKenshin]

I enjoyed the emotion of the story, about the father and his son, which reminds me of my late dad. also accepting a 'faulty' being like the tenno did. loved how evil ballas was 

 

I disliked the vague scanning, especially the 2nd part which took my 10min then relying on YT to find the missing part 

 

I liked the new hacking and the mini game, komi. the quest was an ending, so finally seeing a clear statement of the story so far is refreshing   

[Baterial]

Do better job and have about 4 months to do all the work and other stuff besides it.

This is work only +/-170 people

[Iccotak]

the only part I did not care for was the pursuing Umbra part.
Operator gameplay needs work. 
 

14 minutes ago, DreisterDino said:

I dont count the dialogues between Ordis and my Operator, the minigame with ballas where i lie in bed the whole time or the narration in front of the "new UI background" as "Cinematics".

That's not how it works. Everything that happens in gameplay serves the story. Plenty of story driven games don't have cutscenes

[MillbrookWest]

"Cinematic" is a descriptor.

It is defined as the use of various techniques to compose a story in visual form.

In video games (more specifically this quest), you lying in the bed would be considered cinematic, as it's usage is purely for story, and not gameplay.

In addition, all the scenes where gameplay is removed, and your input is limited, can also be considered "cinematic". 

Edited June 17, 2018 by MillbrookWest

[DreisterDino]

vor 20 Minuten schrieb Baterial:

Do better job and have about 4 months to do all the work and other stuff besides it.

This is work only +/-170 people

😄 I knew this would come...

1. One year at least, first announcement on Tennocon 2017

2. In any discussion you see someone saying "Do better". No valid point though. Noone needs to be able to do something better to criticise it.

vor 19 Minuten schrieb Iccotak:

That's not how it works. Everything that happens in gameplay serves the story. Plenty of story driven games don't have cutscenes 

Might be true and like i said "i accept that some story is told via dialogues between my Operator and Ordis", but still i think it was poorly implemented here and boring to listen.

 

vor 18 Minuten schrieb MillbrookWest:

"Cinematic" is a descriptor.

It is defined as the use of various techniques to compose a story in visual form.

In video games (more specifically this quest), you lying in the bed would be considered cinematic, as it's usage is purely for story, and not gameplay.

Ok then, but if i count this as cinematic, it was a bad and boring cinematic for sure for me. Doesnt make it better at all...Its not interesting seeing the same scene from the same perspective doing the same stuff over and over again. You can do sooo much with switching camera angles, switching between different ways of visual storytelling or using the various cinematic technics that are used nowadays.

Edited June 17, 2018 by DreisterDino

[Fiftycentis]

i just didn't like the search for things (expecially in the lua lab, the one on earth, with the scanner wasn't too bad) and the fight, unless you had tons of hp with vazarin or an amp that could oneshot it (and most of the players don't) it was just "hit, die, repeat", really boring

[MillbrookWest]

12 minutes ago, DreisterDino said:

Ok then, but if i count this as cinematic, it was a bad and boring cinematic for sure for me. Doesnt make it better at all...

Artistic works are seldom liked universally.

The Mona Lisa is widely regarded as one of the finest pieces of art on earth, and after having seen it i'd personally say that I have seen better.

I liked the quest, i'd agree that DE could have done better, but then this also applies to their other quests too for example; how does the Stalker even get onto the Orbiter in the second dream? Looking past that, the Warframe community generally loves this quest mostly for its significance to both DE as a company, and them[the players] for their time investment.

In a similar vein, i quite like what this quest did for the Warframe world. For those that haven't gone Wiki diving for lore, you get to see behind the curtains on a few of Warframe's more obscure things. The sentients are in some ways portrayed as warframes boogeymen, yet Ballas is somehow working with them. what does this mean looking forward?

It sets up more cinematic quests to come, and im fine with that.

Edited June 17, 2018 by MillbrookWest

[LordSebastian]

Well, i do agree with a lots of stuff said here.

For me the main problem is that, well, this quest hadn't bringed us something new.
just to remind, all quests gave us some new mechanic or something like that
Operator
Focus system
Riven Mods

But this quest gives us...well...nothing. No replay-ability. Exc Umbra is fun and original, yes. His passive is something new, yes.But its still just a Excalibur Prime (sorry, dear founders) with a Spectre as a passive.

I was really disappointed about the quest. It was way too short, compared to others. It felt like the quests, that gives you warframes (aka Titania or Harrow quests) and funny thing, it basically was such type of a quest.

and still, your decisions that you make (white, gray, black choices) still just a placeholder that does nothing. 

I really can't believe that this quest was at development for about 2 years. its just a lie.

[DreisterDino]

vor 11 Minuten schrieb LordSebastian:

For me the main problem is that, well, this quest hadn't bringed us something new.
just to remind, all quests gave us some new mechanic or something like that
Operator
Focus system
Riven Mods

But this quest gives us...well...nothing. No replay-ability. Exc Umbra is fun and original, yes. His passive is something new, yes.But its still just a Excalibur Prime (sorry, dear founders) with a Spectre as a passive.

I was really disappointed about the quest. It was way too short, compared to others. It felt like the quests, that gives you warframes (aka Titania or Harrow quests) and funny thing, it basically was such type of a quest.

and still, your decisions that you make (white, gray, black choices) still just a placeholder that does nothing. 

I really can't believe that this quest was at development for about 2 years. its just a lie.

I didnt talk about the things that the quest gives us on purpose, because i wanted to rate the quest itself on what it is, not for what it possibly rewards us with.

And would want to keep it like that in this thread, there are many other threads talking about Umbra as a Frame and the mods and so on^^

 

I agree with you on the point that this was really short, if it wasnt for the scanning part you maybe have real gameplay of 10-20 minutes.

[LuckyCharm]

Personally I didn't like the quest. I've had the chance to see it 3 more times so far too and each time I still don't see the appeal. My operator is still just all "Q.Q Mum why you leave! Where you go?!" and when she finds out theres ..nothing. I would be hella pissed if it was actually me there. I'd be yelling at her like "Get your butt back here. I didn't come all this way only for you to run off again!"

My operator looks so weak, even though she's crushed eidolons and killed hundreds. That and she's needing to be still babied by ordis and having to get the holo-lotus order her around.  

[Ragingwasabi]

umbra fight mechanics

i hated umbra's fight mechanics. he gains immunity to all our attacks and frame abilities cant even target him for no reason (my trin couldnt link to him for DR and status immunity). he is supposed to be another warframe, the only difference being that he has sentience. why does he have immunity to normal damage when our normal warframes dont have that immunity. why did they break the lore in a cinematic quest thats meant to build lore?

they need to make umbra a normal enemy. allow us to attack him the same way we would an enemy warframe specter. Just have Ordis warn players not to kill him. We should only have to void stun and use tranference. this is for the sake of lore, DE, please.

 

stunlocks
theres also the fact that umbra hits you through void mode. i suppose thats not too BS because frame powers can hurt enemies through the rift. but then theres the stunlocks. omfg the stunlocks. every strike is a stunlock. i was too busy trying to get out of stunlocks to hear what ordis was saying about using tranference on umbra. it was such an irritating part of the quest.
and the funny thing is his actual damage output with the exalted blade is so low, it takes so many hits for him to kill the grineer mobs.

perhaps increase the damage output but get rid of the stunlocks. if our operator got 1 or 2 hit, it wouldnt be as bad as being stunlocked to death (both frame and operator). we can jump back into our frame faster and gtfo.
 

 

other than that, the quest was pretty awesome. really loved the cinematics.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 18, 2018 by Ragingwasabi

[BowboyBeemboop]

Having played this game since 2013/2014, the significance this quest has on me is huge. I really liked the quest and the cinematics. Although I was a little disappointed I didn't get any new gameplay mechanics, I'm excited to see where the story goes from here. I'm seeing the stories as arcs, as well. We've just finished the "Tenno" arc and now we're going into the "Lotus/Tau" arc.

Who is 'Mother'? Was Ballas talking about Lotus or 'Mother' when he mentions "her/she" after you've stabbed him? Is Lotus bringing Ballas to Hunhow? For what purpose? Will we have to fight the Lotus? Will she ever come back? I'm pretty hyped.

What The Sacrifice shows/tells us wouldn't be much of a surprise or eye opener if anyone's played Dark Sector, though. The 'infecting soldiers with a virus that turns them into a warframe' story is similar in Dark Sector, if memory serves me right.

[--RV--arm4geddon-117]

At first i wasn't impressed but as the days passed i kinda grew fond of the quest and excalibur umbra, and i'll admit my all out despise and disinterest in Excalibur till the quest dropped...

Now i like it.

Was it too short perhaps and not as epic as the 2nd Dream ? hell yes, but still not bad imo.

There's many developement doors opening up ( more umbras, Tau system quests, tilesets, storyline , more Umbral Mods etc ) i hope DE doesn't let it die, and i'd really love to see more Umbra Frames and Mods in the future ( if not powercreep mods per se, utility ones, like an Umbral Quickthinking an Umbral Rage, stuff like that xD )

[AzureTerra]

Forced tween combat = BAD. Another excalibore is not worth it

Edited June 17, 2018 by AzureTerra

[--END--Rikutatis]

I enjoyed it, I thought the story was pretty good, but I didn't enjoy the cliffhanger at the end so much. For me it goes like: Second Dream > War Within > The Sacrifice > Chains of Harrow

Absolutely love the Umbra warframe though.

[Nipponsei]

I enjoyed it but i do agree that this felt like the weakest of the 3 main quests.

In the end i had more questions than answers and the whole quest felt like an introduction to more cinematic quests instead of a closure to the past 2 quests.

My guess is that DE had their hands full with stuff for Tennocon so they could go full 200% on this quest and had to split their resources.

They probably promised this quest before Tennocon, i would have preferred it if they DElayed this quest till after Tennocon so they can put more focus on it.

So in the end all the Sacrifice really did is hype me up for the next upcoming cinematic quest which is exactly what the War Within did so nothing really changed.

All i can do i wait a year or more until the next quest gets released and we get more lore and story out of it. Hopefully more answers too!

[Atsia]

From what I've heardand read, the Sacrifice was only 3-4 months of work, and Steve had apparently said to "don't expect much in the way of gameplay content" or something to that effect. To me, it concludes the story of the operators growth rather than  an actual final conclusion of storylines.  It WAS too short to me and the Umbra fight can be annoying, though i got lucky i guess, and @Ragingwasabi I haven't heard of Umbra being immune to damage entirely, but i do think he's supposed to be immune to certain frame abilities,  like stalker and his acolytes are.

[Kaotis]

We didn't get the huge katana... we didn't get a replacement for that holo lotus not even a fcking "disable that S#&$" in the menu...Like for real after a certain mr it should be automatically disabled why the holly f would i care that a grinier assault team will spawn soon if my kill counter for that mission is 2k? I obliterated their friends ...unless  they magically steal all the mushrooms from mario (if we are going to copy the gimmick of she's in another  castle might  as well go all in no ? 😉 ) they will die 0.1 secs slower than their friends ...

About the actual quest... nice lore revelations , meh frame , good mods , meh weapon .

Edited June 28, 2018 by kaotis

[--LA--Vengeance]

I think u went too hard on this. From what I could read,u barely liked anything.

It's my favourite quest, for now. The only part which I didn't like was ending with Lotus,I think it was too short. 

Now why I liked it? Because it answered some questions,it was emotional and soundtrack is really nice. Unlike other 2, The Sacrifice was more about feelings of frame and not fully focused on the operator (even tho operator played nice role). I also think it created stronger bound between frames and the operator. In fact,only after this quest I got interested to do more stuff for the operator and started liking that kiddo. And even playing Excal Umbra (I didn't play at all Excal). Might be only me that likes those frames/stories which has some fked up background. Ballas voice actor also did amazing job. And Ballas as char is interesting; u sorta want to punch him in the face but at least I can't hate him.

But also I hope that u appreciate more their hard work, games mostly get abandoned by Devs after 5+ years but they keep working on it,giving bunch of updates and pushing forward which is simple impressive. Quest itself isn't just black or white, it answered many questions actually. If u focus on few things that u consider as negative,u won't be able to see positive stuff.

[-CdG-Velvent]

I wouldn't call the sacrifice the worst cinematic quest, certainly not the best, but defiantly the most underwhelming one in terms of content.

I am rather sure DE split the overall content in half and we're gonna get the rest at tennocon or shortly after, which would also explain the massive cliffhanger ending.

Of course if my theory is incorrect and that 1 quest is all there is than yep its defiantly the "worst" one of the cinematic quests.

[Gravitus123]

Dunno i personally found it the most intriguing quest especially the table part that literally gave me the shivers plus the voice acting in that scene was just eugh chilling

[BlazeDeval]

I agree with most of the things said in the original post.. Wasn't that fun and it was short for such a long wait. 

My main issue was that it feels like we only got half the quest. The previous two had their conclusions with teases of upcoming story pieces as well. 

This one just had the teases, no conclusions.

Spoiler

And why couldn't we stab Ballas more than once? I wanted to shorten that arm of his.

 

[rhoenix]

Like TSD, TWW, and TCoH, the Sacrifice had me thinking for days after I played it.

Did it resolve the whole Lotus issue? No. Did it add a dramatic addition to gameplay-wise as TSD and TWW did? No.

However, it did finally explain the how's and why's of warframe creation.  And, it added the delicious addition that Ballas was involved with Hunhow and the Sentients during the Old War, as well as later.

More than those though, it gave strong personal growth for the operator.  From TSD, to TWW, to TCoH, and now the Sacrifice, we've seen the operator as a character grow and evolve from child, to adolescent, to teen, and now closer to adult with how they talk and act.

We also got a new free frame and free melee weapon that started at level 30, and was crafted in 10 seconds, which I can't complain about.

It didn't resolve the entire Lotus storyline they're running with, but then again, this game will be going for a while longer, so it's merely a matter of time.

Overall, I'm just fine with the Sacrifice quest.

Edited July 1, 2018 by rhoenix

[DreisterDino]

Am 28.6.2018 um 16:03 schrieb Vengeance_A:

I think u went too hard on this. From what I could read,u barely liked anything.

I[...]

But also I hope that u appreciate more their hard work, games mostly get abandoned by Devs after 5+ years but they keep working on it,giving bunch of updates and pushing forward which is simple impressive. Quest itself isn't just black or white, it answered many questions actually. If u focus on few things that u consider as negative,u won't be able to see positive stuff.

 

I dont think i went "too hard" on this, like i said, i didnt overhyped the Quest, i simply expected some kind of cinematic quest.

And for an "cinematic" quest, this was poorly executed at best in my opinion. Why i feel this way i explained in my starting post.

I accept if people feel different about this quest, this is why i asked about your opinions in this thread 😉 I even watched some Videos some days later on Youtube, but i just cant start to like the quest. In terms of cinematic approaches there are so many possibilites, still DE didnt make use of 90% of possible ways of storytelling, instead you go from animated picture with soundoverlay to minigame in bed with ballas and start this process over and over again until the quest is done.

 

A bit triggered by the last part 😄 I dont have to appreciate everything they put out just because they work on this game for 5 years, this is what they have to do if they wanna continue to make money 😉 I appreciate a lot of things (like i said already, i think the quests TWW and TSD were pretty good) but if there is something that i think is executed fairly bad i can communicate that without wearing my pink "DE is awesome and so is everything they do" goggles.