But do know what Capitar is? Not really. And we're not likely to be inclined to learn much just to play a game and 'get into it'. More so, Elemental is a post-Apocalyptic fantasy world... a far cry from the standard fantasy conventions (setting particulars not withstanding at that). Elemental, perhaps, needs to be much more forceful with what it is. We see these fantastic battles and unit portait backgrounds that are hardly reflected in the in-game art. People generally are very generic. Do I really have any interest in Vaenia when, inevitably, I simply part him in a city and ignore him for the rest of the game?
Having read the lore and being a writer/artist myself, I quite like the idea of the setting and the promise of it. Standard fantasy is overdone and just bland these days, and I like the ideas being thrown around with Elemental's setting.
I think, however, that two things are really necessary. The first is this lore needs to be more visually confident about what it is. When the book, Destiny's Embers, talk about Urxen being big and hulking, they need to be hulking in the game, as opposed to merely stocky grey humans. Their character models--those of all the fallen--need to be pushed to further anatomical extremes, to emphasize just how warped from normal people they are. Their architecture, tech trees, weapons, and even attire need some love to make them all feel bolder. The same needs to go for the human nations. I don't merely mean mechanical differences (That will eventually come); I mean a legitimate stylistic pass, as if not merely state "this isn't standard fantasy", but to shout it. There are some legitimately cool things going on here, and I don't think Brad needs to give in and incorporate more "mainstream" bits just to make people understand it. People need to understand it by merit of the game's presentation.
The second is the lore and story itself needs to be communicated in the game better. The campaign just doesn't do it. I understand that this is hard in what amounts to a 4x strategy game, but there need to be more direct references to lore, and a better integration of how this works both mechanically in the game and how the story is presented to the players. Gaming is, by its very definition, a compelling medium to tell a story, because the player has the possibility of being more emotionally involved with the characters and the setting by merit of being able to interact with it. Elemental needs to capitalize on this in whatever ways it can.
