Defiance: Time-Limited Episode Missions
April 14, 2013
Thanks to catching the tail-end of a twitter conversation a few days ago, I was reminded to complete all the current Episode Missions in Defiance.
Good thing too, since they won’t be around in-game after the 15th. Because of Trion and SyFy’s collaboration on this cross-media project, the timeline content in both the game and show have to mesh and be in sync — so it would follow logically that at least some of the content will be time-limited. The two particular NPCs involved in the current quests, for example, will be gone after the first episode of the show airs Monday night, since it wouldn’t make sense for them to be in the San Francisco Bay area anymore. So, it’s bye bye for now, Nolan and Irisa!
On the one hand, these are exactly the kind of dynamic world changes I would expect to participate in on a cross-media undertaking such as this; part of the draw for me was being able to see events in the show affect the game, and hopefully vice versa. Of course, this will mean working more diligently to keep track of these connections and do content like episode missions on time, but I’m also fairly certain stuff like that won’t be popping up every week, allowing me ample opportunities to catch up. Speaking of which, last night’s polishing off of the episode missions wasn’t bad at all, taking me no more than two hours to complete, especially since I did them in a group with my husband and a guildie.
There are four of this type of quests in all, designated by a star-inside-a-square symbol on the map, and easily accessible to new players as far as I know. All of us had already done A Little Competition earlier in the week, so we hit up the next mission The Searchers, which appeared the first in a chain. This was followed up by The Heist (which contains a solo portion) and The Departed. That these missions are special are obvious right from the start, with longer and more elaborate cutscenes, as well as more challenging enemies and cooler-looking instances. They’re also fun as hell.
So be sure to hit them up; there’s still plenty of time before tomorrow night. You get some decent rewards out of it too, including a couple of outfits and an amazing purple-quality assault rifle. Not only is that my weapon-of-choice, I’m also now proudly sporting a spiffy fur-collared mauve jacket (also known as the official uniform of “We Love Irisa” fan club!)
MMO Gamer Chick 
I saw the warning about the episode quests as well, so my husband and I made sure to push to finish them. It was pretty hard as a really new character, but fun and worth it. I expect that those quests will keep adding to the flavor of the game in ways that none of the others will match.The challenge really made us learn to use tactics better. It will be interesting to see how quickly you have to jump on them each week, but hopefully all of the chains will be something you can do in a few hours of dedicated game pay time. I love the dynamic feel of “live” events, but don’t like feeling the need to play every day to do them. This will hopefully provide a bit of the best of both, not requiring being able to play every day, combined with seeing the world change and new content.
Yeah, they were kinda tough! I didn’t notice it until that one quest where you’re put into a solo instance, but at least they gave you a couple companions. I was actually quite impressed with the AI, since even though my companions would go down all the time, they had the good sense to crawl behind cover for me to revive them 😛
And I wouldn’t worry about not being able to keep up, being that I would be VERY surprised if a game dev can keep up with that kind of update schedule. And I also think I saw an interview where they said they won’t have episode quests like this all the time, but there will be other ways to see the changes in the show reflected in the game, etc. And I assume the “big” stuff would be available as DLC and stuff.
So I took the time off my usual gaming schedule and watched the show’s pilot this evening.
Actually it’s quite good, I look forward to more.
And I’m itching to get my copy of the game so that I can explore the lore a little more first-hand. 😀
[…] felt connected to the characters Josh Nolan and Irisa, since the three of us had some good fun shooting up mutants in game together last weekend. In a way, it was like seeing an old friend again, like, “Hey, wasn’t I was reviving […]
Old friend? Nolan is the schtako head who screwed you out of 90k scrip.
Heh, well, can’t deny that’s totally Nolan. 🙂