Mirabel's Campaign + Friendship Campaign Grievances

[Wilde_Times]

I hate to be the guy to bring criticism, but there is a LOT of contradictions to both Mirabel as well as Kuzco’s and Rose’s characterization after completing the friendships for them.

First off there is NO way Kuzco is this friendly towards others when in previous friendships, he is clearly shown as the cocky and and wise-cracking character just like he’s supposed to be portrayed as. If I were to write the story, I would have had it where they were still trying to discover the lost magical ceremony with Kuzco being increasingly harder to wrk with out to his arrogant nature. It had a great concept of having two South American natives be a friendship, but the execution was below average.

And Rose’s friendship is all kinds of wrong and doesn’t make any sense. I’m not sure who the new writers are, and I don’t want to slander them in any way shape or form, but there is NO way they even watched American Dragon when writing this. I’m not even gonna get into the fact that Mirabel apparently knows what dragons are and that they are territorial when in no way was that ever something Mirabel knew about in Encanto. Also, I know she gave up hunting creatures in Jumbaa’s friendship, but Rose is not at all bubbly as how she’s depicted in this friendship. She seems so eager to help dragons out to a very uncharacteristic degree. It’s not the worst friendship out of the two, but it is so painfully dull and wastes so much potential with the characterization of both characters.

Lately there’s been a decline in the way friendship campaigns have been progressing. It’s becoming a lot more stale and uninteresting with characters who don’t really behave the way they are supposed to in canon, and it’s really starting to show. Ever since I would say Shere Khan’s inclusion, friendships always felt so bare bones, and (I hate to be the person to bring it up) AI generated. I mean it’s pretty telling that most of the recent campaign dialogue followed a pattern of 5-6 lines long with no other characters jumping in friendships from time to time. It feels like they pitted two characters into Character AI and written the dialogue from there. From Doofensmirtz, Max, and now Mirabel, I feel that we have by far the worst characterizations of characters who we have been wanting for in ages. It feels as though they saw the character in question and were given no background on who they were and just decide to write a story about them. I’m not asking for a deep delve insight on the character, but a lot more effort would be appreciated. The interactions are the reason I play this game, not just to see a beloved character in the spotlight, I remember when this game made an effort to make every character close to their original counterpart, whilst also interacting with characters outside of their own franchise. It was fun and exciting, and it really disappoints me when we’re introduced to great new additions like Owl House and Encanto in the game, and there doesn’t seem to be that wit or charm to fleshing them out. I’m still gonna play the game for the characters, because I know this game can do better. I and many other players have seen them try their hardest before, and even though some friendships worked and others didn’t in the past, at least they had tried to put in the best efforts they could. If they just take the time to actually watch the source material, and have a fun idea to write, I think this would be so much better than what we have right now.

[Mister_Toon]

It’s good that I’m not the only one that sees this. Mirabel’s friendship with Kuzco dosen’t even have him narrating it.

[Wilde_Times]

I don’t want to be critical of people, but I’m really starting to think they aren’t putting as much effort into the stories anymore. I’m still excited to see who will come into the game, but I’m equally nervous for what the friendships will entail if this is the level of quality we’re dealing with…

[Jody_Caviness]

@Wilde_Times

Ever since I would say Shere Khan’s inclusion, friendships always felt so bare bones, and (I hate to be the person to bring it up) AI generated.

You’re not the first person to bring it up, and while I’m reluctant to make any claims along those lines myself, the Mirabel/Kuzco campaign makes it a lot harder to dismiss the idea. At one point near the end, when deciding whether to actually try to perform the ceremony, Kuzco frets about the possibility of the two of them turning into… frogs. Not a word about llamas (or turtles or birds or whales…), no mention of Tiana or Naveen (assuming they stick with Kuzco oddly using frogs as his example), not even a response from Mirabel pointing out that at least they’d still be able to communicate with humans since her cousin Antonio can talk with animals. Several easy, obvious ways to punch up the story that would take a couple of minutes to slip in to the dialog. And that’s on top of Kuzco acting completely contrary to his earlier campaigns, the two of them being so eager to adventurously explore a temple, the city suddenly having a backstory involving “ancient” sites and ceremonies, Kuzco speaking so positively of magic and knowledge…

Honestly, I understand storytelling getting the short shrift as the staff works to increase hero development, resolve critical bugs, and continue balancing characters. That’s a less-critical part of the game and one that seemingly only a minority of players cares about. I don’t like that the storytelling’s been relatively neglected of late, but I get it. At this point, I do believe that there are people working on the game capable of the enjoyable writing of years past; I just don’t know how long it’ll be until they’re given the time to attain that level again – or even if they’ll ever be given that much time for writing.

(And while I’d agree that Shere Khan marks the start of the decline in friendship campaign stories, I do think Luz’s campaigns were pretty good.)

[Monarch_Mummy_V]

Cruella De Vil gets me as well

[Wilde_Times]

@Jody_Caviness

At one point near the end, when deciding whether to actually try to perform the ceremony, Kuzco frets about the possibility of the two of them turning into… frogs. Not a word about llamas

I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THAT!!

[Wilde_Times]

What really baffles me about Cruella’s campaign is in her Shere Khan friendship. It’s obviously stated that in her world the animals don’t talk (at least she doesn’t see them talking), and I would have expected her to be at least a little startled at Shere Khan talking. Also the dialogue just makes her seem like a petty criminal who JUST wants the Dalmation fur for her coats. To me, Cruella is an opportunistic woman, who regardless of Dalmatians, would realistically have a FIELD DAY with Shere Khan to get his striped fur as her own coat. That’s the main reason why in my concept of her, I gave her a friendship with Clawhauser because of that reason alone. And Percival was a pretty good choice for a friendship, but the problem is that the setup/payoff of the campaign is pretty bad. It’s literally just them talking about poaching for the ENTIRETY of the campaign and it goes no where. And its the same with Mirabel and Kuzco’s friendship. Had a flawed but interesting setup of a ancient ceremony, but ended without a satisfactory payoff. These friendships honestly make me think back to Doofensmirtz where he literally states in his friendship that he wants to take over the Trip-State Area, even though it makes ZERO sense for it to be there.

[Monarch_Mummy_V]

If you were to improve Cruella story, how would you change it?

[Mister_Toon]

@Jody_Caviness

Honestly, I understand storytelling getting the short shrift as the staff works to increase hero development, resolve critical bugs, and continue balancing characters. That’s a less-critical part of the game and one that seemingly only a minority of players cares about. I don’t like that the storytelling’s been relatively neglected of late, but I get it. At this point, I do believe that there are people working on the game capable of the enjoyable writing of years past; I just don’t know how long it’ll be until they’re given the time to attain that level again – or even if they’ll ever be given that much time for writing.

That’s actually a very promising theory. But still, if that’s true, you think that they would get people that are creative enough to do the campaigns in their stead.

[Jody_Caviness]

@Mister_Toon

But still, if that’s true, you think that they would get people that are creative enough to do the campaigns in their stead.

Writing stories for the main campaign or friendship campaigns, designing backgrounds and hero appearances, coming up with skills and coding them and the animations, adjusting stats, debugging and testing, etc. etc. etc. – all those tasks take time, and for employers time is literally money. My guess is that PerBlue has set a (severely?) restrictive budget for the game; getting someone to write the campaigns would mean taking money (and thus, time) from another area of the game.

[Wilde_Times]

@Jody_Caviness

Honestly, I understand storytelling getting the short shrift as the staff works to increase hero development, resolve critical bugs, and continue balancing characters. That’s a less-critical part of the game and one that seemingly only a minority of players cares about. I don’t like that the storytelling’s been relatively neglected of late, but I get it. At this point, I do believe that there are people working on the game capable of the enjoyable writing of years past; I just don’t know how long it’ll be until they’re given the time to attain that level again – or even if they’ll ever be given that much time for writing.

That’s a good point. It honestly may be more in their best interests to bring new heroes out into the open, and I am all for that. I just feel that this game achieved something so special that no other of the various Disney mobile games could every DREAM of doing. And that was to mix different franchises with each other, and have them work together to stop of common enemy whether they are heroes, villains, anti-heroes, etc. Sure Sorcerer’s Arena can allow you to mix mash different franchises as well, but its at the expense of team comps being dependent strictly on one franchise (Incredibles, Frozen teams). Not to mention no real reason for crossover in the first place. Disney Heroes Battle Mode took the extra mile and actually made a big effort in having interactions with certain characters that really freshened up the game in ways that seem nay impossible. Especially when taken into account some of Disney’s lesser known properties, and you got a game that really treasures Disney as a whole, and can appeal to even more fans. It’s something that I have always loved about the game and I can only hope for the best that the writing is improved as it progresses into the future. No matter what the case, I am still super interested and intrigued to see what new characters they have in store.

[Mister_Toon]

Preach man. Preach!

[Pipsqueak]

if anything makes it clear that AI cannot adequately replace proper content writing yet for this sort of application, it’s these friendship campaigns

they are truly awful

[Musketeer-Endgame]

@Jody_Caviness

Kuzco frets about the possibility of the two of them turning into… frogs.

[Fireflyer]

I guess that works too…

[Miguel_DLXXV]

You made a great point, I gotta agree with you. I play the game for the characters and their interactions in the first place