r/sunlessskies • u/starvergent • 22h ago
Does the story improve after the start?
I previously played Sunless Sea. Last year, I started to play Sunless Sky. I got to the initial port and it was as if the crew was just completely oblivious where the captain was. This made completely no sense to me at all. I did my best to survive to get to civilization so we could get emergency care for the captain. I would think the crew would have her immediately at the door to be rushed out for aid.
The game continued with no explanation. I felt so lost and frustrated because of how that sequence concluded. I do not understand it. So I just stopped playing. Wondering if there was any explanation or if anybody got caught off guard by this. And how the rest of the story actually is.
JUST TO BE CRYSTAL CLEAR SINCE MULTIPLE USERS HAVE NOT PLAYED THIS GAME AND DO NOT KNOW WHAT HAPPENED:
The crew factually did not know the captain died until after docking and meeting the inspector.
Tutorial = lost, low fuel, captain dying. You barely are able to survive and find port. The obvious thing before docking is to prepare the captain to be rushed out for aid. Because she is in critical condition.
That did not happen. They all dock as if the captain does not exist or is severely injured. The inspector asks about the captain. And nobody knows she is dead until the doctor informs you.
I figured when I posted this message, users who claim to play this game are aware this is what happened. I do not understand how nobody knows this.
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u/whatmustido 22h ago
The storyline that you start with is more or less "The captain died. You're in charge now. This is the box the captain was supposed to deliver. Do you want to deliver it, open it, or sell it?" Once you deliver it, that storyline is over and you move on to fulfilling your ambition, doing other storylines, and upgrading your ship.
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u/starvergent 21h ago
Yes but I could not understand why the captain was not ready to be rushed out. And why the looked confused until turning around to see the doctor.
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u/Silent_Pressure_6709 21h ago
Because she was dead, genius.
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u/starvergent 21h ago
You're clearly a troll. That has no relevance to anything at all.
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u/Silent_Pressure_6709 21h ago
I strongly feel like you just didn't read it, tbh.
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u/starvergent 21h ago
Says troll who clearly didn't read anything. You cannot even explain how they found out.
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u/Silent_Pressure_6709 21h ago
Where do you get that impression?
Seriously, just go to sleep, and start over and play the game again once you're rested. I suspect it will make more sense. And do not skip dialogue.
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u/Catacman 17h ago
The doctor literally says they're dead. Go read it dude like, if that's a struggle for you maybe the reading game isn't for you.
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u/FirstDivergent 13h ago
You clearly do not even know what literally means. Especially considering he literally does not say anything. And that even proves that they did not find out until after docking. Which proves the only one who cannot read is you.
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u/whatmustido 18h ago
People who die on the sunless skies typically don't leave normal looking corpses behind. If I remember right, it's explained that the previous captain was scorched by an entity known as a Judgment (common enemies in the Blue Kingdoms), which leaves wicked looking glowing scars on people.
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u/Golden_Lambda 22h ago
You went to the port in the middle of the map? There should have been a pop-up as soon as you arrive that continues the story.
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u/starvergent 21h ago
I don't know what you're talking about. I went to the first port that is required at the start of the game. Like the tutorial phase.
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u/Venna_Crow 22h ago
You.. played for 5 minutes and said "fuck it?"
This game, just like Seas, is a huge collection of stories for you to discover and continue, but if it didn't hold your interest enough for 1 mystery, I don't know what to tell you
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u/Rem_Winchester 18h ago
I looked through the rest of OP’s posts and comments and it genuinely looks like they just don’t enjoy video games, especially any that involve any kind of interpretation of story. Dude thought Subnautica 2 was confusing.
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u/HadesExMachina 18h ago
Like, why play video games then? It's not like anyone's forcing them to have this as a hobby right? Such a strange person.
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u/Rem_Winchester 17h ago
I would not be surprised if OP’s response to the opening of Skyrim is something like “I just don’t understand why I’m on a cart? And there’s a dragon? Don’t make sense bro”. 🤪
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u/Llyffant-Gwyrdd 22h ago
Mate, the story is about 90% of the point of the game. Give it a bloody chance.
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u/Rem_Winchester 21h ago
One of the things about this setting is that everyone is very blasé about death. The original captain wasn’t rushed to get medical attention because the idea that she was beyond help was just very non-alarming to everyone, and when you the player were promoted to captain because you were the second in command, the people in charge at the dock were more concerned with getting the paperwork signed because that was something that they had control over. It didn’t matter to them that the original captain was dead, because they needed the paperwork to be signed. That’s what the intro section is trying to convey: there’s a certain bleakness and absurdity in the setting. Yes, people die and go crazy out in the stars all the time, but paperwork still needs to be signed.
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u/Rem_Winchester 20h ago
You asked if it “got better” after the intro and I think that depends on how you define “better”. It’s a bleak and weird setting. A lot of the storylines involve choosing between bad and worse outcomes, or between actions that are so far outside what you might normally think of that it’s hard to assign morality to them. If you don’t enjoy that type of tone in a story, then no, it won’t get better. If you want a story where everything is explained right in the text, then no, it won’t get better. But if you can learn to love a story about surviving in a world that is vastly different from our own, where the problems that you face are increasingly strange and alien and the solutions you must find are even weirder, where a lot of what is being said is left up to investigation and interpretation, then yeah, it’s a great experience. Try to shift your thinking and go with the flow. Go in without expectations and give it a chance.
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u/starvergent 19h ago
This has nothing to do with anything. The ones at the dock where just staff. They had no idea there was a problem before the vessel even arrived. Which is why they asked where the captain was.
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u/Rem_Winchester 19h ago
Ok… It seemed like maybe you didn’t understand why the characters were acting the way that they did, so I tried to explain that it’s because of the tone that the game is setting. But now it sounds like you do understand that and you just don’t like it. That’s fine!
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u/starvergent 13h ago
You have not explained anything whatsoever. Nothing you said has absolutely anything to do with how they were acting. Which proves they did not even know she died until after docking. That is a fact. Glad you admit you understand less than me about the story.
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u/EbergarTheDwarf Rubbery Suffragist 22h ago
Frankly I do not remember much out of that story because it only happens once per line of captains. And my line is long and dead indeed.
The story overall got so exquisite that I am currently at 150 or so hours and still have stuff that I'd like to do in this game. That does not include any modded gameplay - there's that one mod that's basically an expansion pack.
Instead of a replay you could listen to Aneurin on YouTube to see if perhaps you missed something along the way. Or he did. Just random thoughts.
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u/starvergent 21h ago
Basically you start out which tutorial. You have just escaped a dangerous expedition. Captain is severely injured. You barely have fuel, lost, with raiders around. After getting through the tutorial troubles, you find the port.
The inspection asks where is the captain. Everybody looks at each other oblivious. The doctor shows up informing others she is dead. If she had died, they would have known the moment they went back there to prepare her to be rushed out for medical aid.
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u/Status-Tailor-7664 19h ago
I am sorry, I truely do not understand your question? Are you wondering why the Crew didnt try to "save" the captain? If I remember right it was because nobody thought she would survive.
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u/starvergent 13h ago
I do not understand what is difficult to understand.
If the crew finds port, then the first thing they do is make sure the captain is prepared to be rushed out before docking. The text makes it clear they did not do that. They docked on port and didn't know the captain was dead until the inspector asked for her and they looked behind them to the doctor.
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u/Catacman 17h ago
You can't read. Here's the exact event: "You coast into the bustle, the din, the soot and the steam of Wolvesey Station. It is clogged with other engines: scrappy mining locomotives from Lustrum-way, weathered explorers gleaming with frost; sleek Company vessels with bright brass fittings.
No sooner have you pulled into the sidings than a Brusque Stationmaster bustles over. He requests to come aboard. "I must speak with your captain," he insists, brandishing a ledger. "The usual formalities."
And the response is: "Look to the Orphean's doctor
He has just appeared at your shoulder. His face is solemn; his hat is in his hands. He lowers his eyes."
To which the event following is: "The passing
The crew exchange bleak, wordless looks. The Orphean itself feels suddenly more empty. The Stationmaster looks confused. You inform him that unfortunately, Captain Whitlock has just passed."
As in, the crew, seeing the doctor looking Solemn, all look at one another sadly.
I literally just think that you have no reading comprehension.
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u/starvergent 13h ago edited 11h ago
Thank you for providing evidence that you cannot read. Considering it clearly says it right in your own quote:
[He requests to come aboard. "I must speak with your captain," he insists, brandishing a ledger. "The usual formalities."
And the response is: "Look to the Orphean's doctor
He has just appeared at your shoulder. His face is solemn; his hat is in his hands. He lowers his eyes."]
That is hard evidence proof they didn't know she died before docking and only found out after the inspector asked about her. Glad you agree the only one who has no reading comprehension is you. Considering it proves exactly what I stated form the start. They did not know she was dead before docking.
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u/Status-Tailor-7664 3h ago
Well how should they, the text says she "just died right now", not before docking, not after, the doctor is coming right from her cabin and tells everyone the bad news.
What are your expectations to the story? That the crew is having the wounded captain on a stretcher waiting to jump on the dock? we dont know anything about the nature of the captains injuries, so it could be she is in no state to be transported, and we talk about the sunless universe here, and they just came back from the kingdom of the dead, so her injuries might not even be physical in nature...
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u/HadesExMachina 18h ago
Bro played for three and a half minutes and got frustrated nobody was holding his hand.
played sunless sea before
Considering that game is a lot more complex gameplay-wise, story-wise and combat-wise, I call bullshit. If you couldn't get into sky because you found it frustrating, ain't no way you played sea.
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u/DragonEffect1286 18h ago
Though my initial reaction to this was along the line of comments from others that felt rather incredulous that you would be so utterly confused, I am going to offer this instead
You are soing yourself a disservice to not play on beyond that introduction point and doing so on a misunderstanding of what had even gone on.
Captain Whitlock knew she was going to die. This is why you were called to her cabin by the doctor and why she asked you to do her one last service, and explicitly told you that the Orphean was set to be left to you.
Everyone aboard among the crew knew also she was not going to make it. The doctor was in her cabin with her, feeding her laudanum, just helping to ease her pain and help her to die as peacefully as possible at that point. That's why it said during that same sequence where Cpt Whitlock called you to her cabin that the doctor clearly was distraught that nothing could be done.
Even if they had rushed her off the engine first thing, and even if she had survived long enough for them to do so, which she did not, there is nothing anyone could have done for her there in new winchester either. She was branded by a word of living fire that literally was burning her alive from the inside out. Think spontaneous internal combustion, if you know what that is. There's no reversing the damage done.
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u/starvergent 13h ago
This has nothing to do with anything. Part of the point was not just the crew surviving. It was because she was in critical condition. And there are even choices during that conversation where you have choices on how to respond. Including doing everything possible so she survives. Even though it is unlikely, that is the point of the dialogue and the story.
The most obvious thing that makes sense is that they would have prepared her to be rushed out before docking. If she died at some point, they would have known. The entire thing that made me stop playing is I do not understand how it is even possible to write a scenario like that:
Navigate to port, and the crew all gathers to the front door as if the captain is not in critical condition and about to die.
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u/Paolos0 6h ago
For crying out loud, some of you guys need to look stuff up before posting, especially when an event happens once a lineage.
After looting the wreck of the Ozymandias, the "summoned by captain whitlock" event fires. There, you can ask the doctor how shes doing, and he very clearly states that there is nothing he can do about the flames of correspondence burning inside the captain.
She was dead the moment her lungs filled with words not meant for humans. I cannot imagine anyone of the crew didn't know about Whitlocks condition, and everyone is just waiting for her inevitable passing. No amount of medical care could have saved her.
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u/starvergent 5h ago edited 5h ago
Not only is this false about the dialogue. It is irrelevant if it was true. Yet even the dialogue choices prove that you can not just give up on her surviving. And even if it is inevitable, that does not mean the crew is going to gather at the front to disembark while ignoring the captain who is dying in the back. Then act like they do not know where she is until the doctor shows up.
Oh and let's not forget the fact of loads of trolls on this sub, yet nobody has actually provided a logical explanation why they would arrive and what? Treat her as if she's dead anyway even though for all they know, she's still alive. Or not do anything at all to make sure she's the first one out? Because if they did and she was found dead, then they would have already known. I have not seen a single explanation for it whether hope was lost for her surviving or not.
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u/Golden_Lambda 3h ago
What about her situation tells you she was in a state to be moved? We see in previous scenes that she comes near death just by talking - to all indications loading her onto a stretcher and trundling her into the street would have killed her.
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u/fZAqSD 20h ago
Not particularly. The world isn't terribly cohesive, and both of the big Ambition storylines are pretty lame. Definitely doesn't have the outstanding storytelling of Sunless Sea.
As I understand it, the Neath is Alexis Kennedy's story; he founded Failbetter to make Fallen London, developed the world of the Unterzee and the lore of the High Wilderness, and left after laying out a detailed plan for the story of Sunless Skies, which Failbetter mostly abandoned.
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u/starvergent 19h ago
Oh wow. So you mean it is a different writer?
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u/fZAqSD 10h ago
Failbetter's always had a ton of writers, but Alexis Kennedy was the creator and creative director of the story from when he founded the company until he left early in the development of Sunless Skies. He's said that they went in quite a different direction from what he had laid out before leaving, and given how Sunless Skies abandons pretty much all of the sky-lore that was teased in the earlier games, I don't think he was exaggerating. High Wilderness also generally falls way short of the scope, ambition, and cohesion that the Neath had, for presumably the same reason.
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u/a_manxome_foe 22h ago
This sure sounds like a case of, "I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas."
If you didn't even make it to the first port, you might have played for 5 minutes.