How are we progressing the plot exactly?

[goblinball]

I’m really enjoying the new beta so far, the boss is cool the QoL stuff is cool and I know it’s unfinished and there’ll be more to come. However, the whole warbot summoning process really just feels like celestial champion/moonstorms 2 (and not just because we have to fight the cc first phase again!)

I would have personally preferred the buildup to the fight being more different than having to collect materials and catch lunar stuff to power wagstaff’s experiments… again… only for the experiment to have catastrophic results and end up summoning a lunar boss… again… 

I understand that this encounter would obviously have some parallels to celestial champion (and don’t get me wrong, the fight itself does a great job standing on its own!). But it feels like things are just repeating, rather than us progressing forward in the story. 
 

I know it’s probably too late to change this, and obviously we don’t have access to the full fight, maybe the 2nd phase will justify everything and it’ll be worth it and awesome. I’m moreso just posting this to see what you guys think, and ask if I’m the only one who’s bothered by this.

[aidancode]

Adventure mode left us with a plot twist about who is really in charge

Fuelweaver left us with questions and answers about the ancient civilization

Celestial Champion... was vaguely explored in the YouTube shorts

 

Ngl I feel like we haven't gotten any serious new lore stuff in game in a hell of a long time. It's unfortunate since the in-universe storytelling is awesome.

[Szczuku]

That's the neat part: we aren't

Just how the moon quay was just a random thing that Wagstaff did for no reason, the Warbot is also that. He build a war machine cuz he could

It's getting harder to believe that Klei has a comprehensive, thought-out story in mind. Especially considering that it's been over two years since Klei has shown us that weird portal Wagstaff was working on in Wilson's "rework" cinematic and instead of doing something with that, the devs just pivoted to a random killer robot, cuz they needed yet another boss to be the highlight of an update

[Bumber64]

We found out that Wagstaff learned precisely nothing from the WX incident.

Surely the lunar entity beyond our understanding, which previously attacked us, is more compliant than a human mind?

Edited May 24, 2025 by Bumber64

[goblinball]

10 hours ago, Szczuku said:

It's getting harder to believe that Klei has a comprehensive, thought-out story in mind. Especially considering that it's been over two years since Klei has shown us that weird portal Wagstaff was working on in Wilson's "rework" cinematic and instead of doing something with that, the devs just pivoted to a random killer robot, cuz they needed yet another boss to be the highlight of an update

Idk I think they definitely have stuff planned out. I refuse to believe the wagstaff portal in the shorts isn’t setting up something, and even warbot was foreshadowed in the last animated short with a gestalt possessing one of wagstaff’s gizmos. Us having to fight a wagstaff robot as a boss also totally makes sense with all the buildup of him collecting lunar energies and his other creations having a larger presence both in the shorts and in-game.

I guess what I’m asking is just… why? Why do we need to fight the celestial revenant? I thought wagstaff got all that sweet juicy lunar energies when we beat up the celestial champion, why do we need to gather even more lunar junk for him? And what does this accomplish? All of this setup for wagstaff to build a cool robot boss, only for us to presumably immediately destroy it? 
Again, obviously we only have access to a beta version of the first half of the fight, maybe everything will make sense in the coming weeks. However, the part of the fight we can do doesn’t have much higher stakes than the celestial champion to me. We’re just doing wagstaff’s dirty work for him, as per usual. It’s just our job now I guess, and unfortunately it’s not nearly as exciting the second time.

[Szczuku]

40 minutes ago, goblinball said:

I refuse to believe the wagstaff portal in the shorts isn’t setting up something

This is the same line of thinking people had in 2020 when Archive Portal was first added to the game. Or in 2018 when Gorge ended with survivors and the Goats jumping into the gateway and, back then and presumably, traveling to another dimension. Yet here we are, in 2025, with neither of those ever being expanded upon.

So even if the devs have a making-sense-lore-wise reason for Wagstaff to be building a war machine and the survivors still trusting him, there's no telling if you'll see it anytime soon

49 minutes ago, goblinball said:

even warbot was foreshadowed in the last animated short

Sure was. Even took place in the junkyard but I guess these things can be changed on a whim. So yeah, hard to believe that there's a concrete story behind the new content, rather than a lose web of ideas on a cork board

[goblinball]

43 minutes ago, Szczuku said:

This is the same line of thinking people had in 2020 when Archive Portal was first added to the game.

The archive portal was seemingly originally where the lunar siphonator was going to be placed, as seen in one of the rhymes with play streams back when that update first happened. I think the archive portal did have a planned use back when it was first introduced, but alas plans change over time. Wagstaff’s portal has had much more emphasis placed on it in the shorts compared to the archives and gorge portals though, I don’t think klei could get away with just ditching it.

[Hollow soul 3]

They mentioned that there's more coming out during the beta. If this is the end point of the lunar side, we'll probably get a more complete picture as the pieces get released

[Milordo]

15 hours ago, aidancode said:

Adventure mode left us with a plot twist about who is really in charge

Fuelweaver left us with questions and answers about the ancient civilization

Celestial Champion... was vaguely explored in the YouTube shorts

 

Ngl I feel like we haven't gotten any serious new lore stuff in game in a hell of a long time. It's unfortunate since the in-universe storytelling is awesome.

^^^^ 

This people. This.

[GenomeSquirrel]

since Fuelweaver, we’ve been beating bosses that we created, makes one wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t bothered

[Bumber64]

56 minutes ago, GenomeSquirrel said:

since Fuelweaver, we’ve been beating bosses that we created, makes one wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t bothered

Trying to reach home by randomly hopping worlds didn't pay off. Seems like survivors are trying to obtain enough power to force their way out. Why that involves building a mech instead of trying to activate the sealed portal using CC's energy, we may never know.