Complaining about boredom in T:TON opening, when Pillars has you finding the berreis for your explosive diarrhea as plot hook.
The intro quest isn't just about searching for berries, and you know it. Saying the intro to POE is just about finding a berry is like saying the intro to Fallout: New Vegas is just about a mailman trying to deliver a poker chip. This might seem boring and mundane, but then some Deus Ex Machina shit happens and everything gets turned upside down. The Springberry quite possibly saved your character's life in a way besides treating your diarrhea, because it got you out of the camp so you aren't there when the Glanfathans murder the shit out of everyone.
If you want a good example of an intro quest done wrong, look at FO2's unavoidable temple tutorial where you just fight some ants and then talk to a guy at the end. The springberry quest serves as a tutorial to new players, but it does in a way that feels organic and not contrived. You're sick, and a sick person needs to be healed, and in the process of searching that out catastrophe strikes, and then you're swept into something far more significant than mere diarrhea. The fate of the entire world now lies on your shoulders. Cilant Lis is also a temple tutorial of sorts, but I feel it is a temple tutorial done right in comparison to FO2's temple tutorial. It teaches you the game mechanics organically, and its more involved than just fighting ants and talking to some dude. FNV's gecko shooting tutorial similarly feels organic and teaches you the basics of the game, but it doesn't feel like a chore, and if you want to you can even avoid it entirely. I really do appreciate Josh Sawyer's approach to game design, by simultaneously providing a helpful tutorial to those who might need it, but doing it in a way that doesn't feel contrived. Most game designers fail in this respect. But no, its never just about a springberry or a pokerchip. Those are simply Macguffins, and every game has them, but not every game handles them properly.
That being said, I never felt boredom playing PoE. There's tons of exciting combat to be had, and unlike T:ToN you can't be a hippie peacenik and avoid all of it. Heavy reading of text walls can get tiresome, but at least PoE isn't just exclusively that... it is an actual game instead of just a glorified Visual Novel. PoE also doesn't try to shove an SJW political agenda down your throat either, because you actually have the option of playing as a Meadow human if you so choose. This is sadly not the case in T:ToN where apparently a billion years into the future the Meadow humans are all extinct. I know Josh often gets slammed on here for being an "SJW" himself, but I daresay he isn't as extreme in his views as Monte Cook/Colin McComb/etc. Even if he were, it seems like he is perfectly capable of separating his personal views from the characters and factions he designs. Monte/Colin/etc. were unable to separate their politics from their writing, and that's why T:ToN is what it is. But Josh Sawyer on the other hand is able to create such deep and interesting yet un-SJW characters as Edward Sallow, Joshua Graham, Father Elijah, Thaos ix Arkannon, etc. as well as the factions they represent. Caesar's Legion, for example, with its misogyny and slavery and whatnot is quite possibly the most anti-SJW faction that has ever been devised in any video game ever. It is hard to fathom that such a faction was concocted by an "SJW", and yet this is indeed the case. But you really don't see anything quite like that in T:ToN. The closest equivalent would probably be the Tabaht which were destroyed thousands of years before the game is set. So T:ToN doesn't have the clash of ideologies that F:NV or Pillars, or any truly good game should have.
In a way, I'd say T:ToN is like the polar opposite of Tyranny in the sense that Tyranny is set in a world where "evil" has already won, and T:ToN is set in a world where SJWs have already won. How game developers out in California seem to define "evil" is anything that is not SJW, so to them Terratus under Kyros is an "evil" place, but T:ToN is a "good" place. The grand struggle in T:ToN is not between "good and evil", but between the Changing God and the First Castoff and their supporters. But this is kinda like the 2008 DNC between Obama and Hillary, where regardless of who won the result is still SJWism regardless.
Many people seem to consider "The Genocide" to be one of - if not the - most interesting characters in the entire T:ToN game, but they have a hard time articulating why. I'll tell you the reason: It is because he is the sole surviving non-SJW character in the entire game. Every other non-SJW has been genocided by multiculturalism and globalization.
The Genocide alone stands in defiance of the SJW dystopia Monte Cook/Colin McComb have created. I'm sure this character was deliberately written to be deplorable, but instead he is the most sympathetic character in the game to non-SJWs. Many people wish he could be taken along as a companion, but that would directly contradict Colin and Monte's vision for this character. You are
MEANT to hate him, and if you don't, then you are a bad, bad person and guilty of a grievous thought crime. "The Genocide" is essentially Trump and everything he represents, so to an SJW he is the greatest evil in the entire game - far worse than the Sorrow, or the Changing God, or anything else. Who knows, beneath all that armor he might even be white. The very last of his kind.
