So when the game released one of the biggest community nags was how the Kraken had no body, at the time I didn't linger too much on that criticism because to me the issue with the Kraken was that it was incredibly underwhelming gameplaywise. Release Kraken was a pushover; he would gank your ship and stare blankly at it for a few days, once in a lifetime would attempt to do damage or peform a tentacle grab and worst of all, after wasting your time, it didn't even drop anything at least as a consolation prize for you tolerating it.
With shrouded spoils these issues were resolved, allowing for a fairly challenging fight with the biggest sea baddie of the pirate mythos, but still one thing is needed to complete the battle and make it a 10/10, which is the body.
We already know he it should look, but how it should play out and the reason why is necessary is the following:
- The climax of the fight
Fighting the Megalodon showed me something that was missing from the Kraken encounter: the victory fanfare. It's incredibly satisfying to land the killing blow on the Meg due to how the orchestral hit plays and the death animation sync up, it's an amazing dopamine rush, that is oddly missing from the Kraken fight. Every victory from the Kraken encounter ends anti-climaticaly, sometimes you don't realise you landed the killing blow until the ink fades away, which is why adding the body would allow for a killing blow fanfare that would be incredibly satisfying, which means the Kraken's body should appear near the end of the fight, as a final phase.
This fight would begin as normal, dark ink ambushes the ship and the tentacles rise. After taking out a certain number of tentacles, the Kraken surfaces, creating a few more tentacles and becoming the final target. After dealing enough damage to the head, the Kraken should peform a death animation, make all the dark ink dissipate and sink like the Meg does, allowing for players to swim around and see the big baddie in all it's defeated glory. Which leads to:
- Simplified treasure location
With a kraken head, it wouldn't be necessary for each tentacle to drop loot, having all the loot drop from the head would be a good QoL change, since the fight would drag on for a bit, and having to pick up treasure from the ink after each tentacle kill is always a fairly obnoxious endeavour.
- Standardizing Sea Monster Battles
Sea creatures and monsters can have a standard battle, where it ends climatically with a killing blow. Knowing that Rare seems to want to add new beasts to the wilderness, having a defined battle structure should allow for variation that respects pre-estabilished improvements introduced with Shrouded Spoils, so every new creature added already comes with good depth and challenge as well as good rewards and good battle climaxes. Having fights follow the standard will allow for players that tackle each sea monster fight for the first time to know what to expect: the fight will end with a climatic killing blow, all the treasure will surface from the corpse and every fight will be challenging.
