Here's a post on reddit going over a document in the game that spells out some of the more ambiguous parts of the plot:
And here'l are my thoughts on it:
It is interesting. I was always eager to defend the games story, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on there, even without the information in these books, but this spells it out very neatly. Now, a lot of that is, however subtly, tucked away in other places too. That Hexe Marie and White Crow are the same character torn in half is alluded to in some of the item descriptions for items you get after the Hexe Marie fight. That Kearush was a peaceful creature captured by Demeniss is in its glossary entry. That Goyen is an alternate old version of Kliff is... pretty obvious, same tattoos, same accent, talks to him like he knows him. Although learning that he's also a Black Desert cameo and that's where the name Goyen comes from is fun.
I dunno, man, basically all the reviews, even the positive ones, telling people to disregard the story, and, I think, even the CEO of Pearl Abyss politely throwing it under the bus when he admitted they ran out of time to fill in some gaps primed a lot of people to not pay attention to it at all, but it's genuinely not a bad story. It does warrant at least some engagement, rather than just being summarily dismissed with a "don't worry about it." I said it before, it's a lot more interesting than just about any Bethesda or Ubisoft main quest, it's just really suffering from a lack of exposition. And to an extent I was even willing to defend that, because from very early on it establishes that it's all about the plans of these, like, gods and ascended mages, right, and, well, they don't owe you an explanation. Funny as it sounds, it made me think a bit of Twin Peak's metaphysics, which is kind of what got me hooked in the first place. The ambiguity mixed with the matter of fact-ness of it it all. The one thing that doesn't come out well is the whole 108 timeloops aspect. I did actually see the tally marks in Goyen's cave but I never would have guessed that that's what they are getting at. The fact that the 108 cycles are a reference to buddhist mythology is interesting to know. Suppose it's something I should have looked into more, considering there's literally an arc about training at a buddhist monastery in the late game.
Apart from that, what makes this most interesting, though, is the fact that a lot of the entries in this document seem to be thinly veiled developers notes about earlier drafts of the story and internal considerations about it. The one about not knowing what to do with Damiane is an obvious one that even the notes in the reddit thread bring up. I agree it's a shame that she and Oongka have their one day in the limelight and then basically become background characters again, I wish they'd have had more playable sequences in the story. Maybe they'll get some DLC. The Prince Pryce thing is a reference to an early discarded draft, guess that's good to know. But, what the notes in the thread don't mention, I'm pretty sure the entries about Kliff's lack of personality are probably writer's notes too. Them admitting that they didn't really know how to make the character work and going through a couple of different approaches until they just decided to settle on the current, Venom Snake-y, strong, silent type who just follows the path laid out for him and has little agency on his own. Although, yeah, I guess it makes more sense if you consider the buddhist influences, in that he's the version of Kliff that has learned to let go of all his attachments. It's just, that really does not translate very well if you don't know what it's doing and even then, that just doesn't make for a compelling protagonist.
So I stand by what I said, it's actually a pretty strong plot. The one thing it doesn't address is what is my actual main complaint, the mostly weak character writing. Which I guess is due to the games structure, more than anything else, where characters exist mostly for their one single story arc and then basically just disappear from the plot, if not the entire game, before you get much of a sense for who they are, much less come to care about them. Maybe there's some more of that in the memory fragments, but I feel like I'm barely finding any.
