365 Cycles Later: A Downpour Retrospective

I’ve been wanting to make this video for a while, as I’ve noticed a lot of these details and recognized why they’re a problem over the past few months of replaying the game. This video isn’t saying “downpour bad,“ it’s saying “these are the failures of the downpour DLC, and if the game continues to receive updates I want future updates to not make similar mistakes.“ Even over the course of editing this video, I made some new observations that reinforced this video’s narrative. Iterators have no narrative autonomy in downpour, for instance - every action is driven by a slugcat, whereas pre-downpour the main iterator storyline revolved around Five Pebbles failing and killing moon. Everything in downpour is either a direct result of that original failed experiment or a slugcat. Nothing happens because an Iterator decides to. Downpour even retconned that to have slugcats be more involved in Pebbles’ collapse, with Spearmaster delivering the gold pearl. At this point I wouldn’t be surprised if a new slugcat campaign involves a slugcat pre-spearmaster that ruined Pebbles’ experiment. Spearmaster’s campaign has the issue of lacking a meaningful narrative, it’s fanservice where you get to see a pre-collapse moon and angry Five Pebbles but don’t actually have any impact on the world or go through a personal journey. It’s quite a shame, because Spearmaster’s mechanics are the most similar to the base game slugcats. I had some ideas about writing spearmaster to be a lab experiment learning what it’s like to experience autonomy and life for the first time, and Moon treating Spearmaster’s injuries from five pebbles in a way that echoes how hunter spends his few remaining cycles helping moon, but that didn’t end up making it in. Felt it would’ve given SRS and iterators more depth as results-oriented creatures that didn’t care for spearmaster’s wellbeing, as purposed organisms are tools, with Moon being a bittersweet exception on the verge of death. Crucify me but slugpups weren’t really that well executed, they’re almost always a burden that requires constant babysitting, can’t properly follow you, and give little to no payoff. It’s particularly bad as hunter, where you have to give up your backspear and you’re forced to let your slugpup die, since it can’t ascend with you. It doesn’t even make sense on the timeline, since hunter is pre-gourmand. I really don’t like that they can’t be toggled off, because I dislike encountering them every time I play hunter. 0:00 Intro 0:30 A world before Downpour 3:52 Hunter 5:29 The 5 new slugcats 10:41 Downpour’s dialogue was not good (This isn’t saying all of downpours dialogue is bad, but it has some BAD moments) 14:25 Broadcasts make no sense 15:08 More dialogue issues 15:41 How iterators and Slorgcayts changed 17:28 How FP’s dialogue changed 24:35 A lack of narrative diversity 27:00 A lack of dream art 28:27 A lack of lineages 29:15 A lack of meaningful creatures 30:35 A lack of stability 31:04 The butchering of Hunter’s description 31:45 What downpour did right 36:18 Closing thoughts For early access to videos, exclusive content, voting on stream games, and to help me be able to make content, join #rainworld #gaming #rainworlddownpour