Lehm wrote:
As for journals being suficent for retelling the story. That might be suficent for the hardcore player willing to spend a whole lot of time reading them over to get the story. One of Uru's greatest failings was reaching out to the more casual player. Now true the game itself shouldn't be tailored to the casual player, but there's no reason why they should be completely alienated. I think cutscenes are a good place to make a compromise. They benefit everyone. Old players get to experince what they didn't see, new players can get caught up on the story as they play through the ages. IMO the benefits of them outweigh the relatively minor breaks in reality they cause.
The thing is, Uru is meant to be quite realistic. People are normal people with no special powers or skill meters or anything to go through. To keep with this, Cyan came up with the idea of having an ever changing storyline - like what would happen in real life - that would play out mostly in real time. People would see
their view of events - their own special perspective of a real time adventure. It would be realistic - past choices and events outside of your control would influence how everything worked. You, in turn, would influence the future of the adventure for those who came after you (of course, to a degree).
There were some problems, largely because of the amount and timing of events. I see the answer to this in better journals and videos, which would explain what happened before, and more and better targeted events (even if smaller or automated) in the future.
Another option would be a new Yeesha Journey. Yeesha would realistically be worried that all these new explorers and all might be confused, and so (with her powers to go through time and all) would send them on some kind of Journey through the Ages to view or even "participate" in some events in the past. This would not be for all events, but it would help for some. Furthermore, it gives a reason for the time travel instead of making it a game process.