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That would mostly depend on the class of your created adventurers, not so much the stats. You can break the game hilariously by stacking certain classes. Three rangers + 2 paladins + druid is a steamroller, and six chanters with a rousing chorus of Soft Winds of Death is really funny.
So when your game fucking begins with fucking a mass epidemic Stillborns as a plot point. And you treat every single plot issue like it's exactly as super fucking cereal, as that. Please stop, re-ascertain your fucking narrative, write a new one. Because when you begin with the mass stillborns, there's only a few things you can fucking take AS seriously as that. And then DON'T FUCKING SHUNT THOSE STILLBORNS INTO THE BACKGROUND.
And that right there is the core of my problem with Pillars. It takes every issue super fucking seriously. And THEN FUCKING PUTS IT RIGHT INTO THE BACKGROUND SAYING, "NO PLAYER, DUR, DO NOT TOUCH." It starts to feel like a blander Game of Thrones. That makes me not want to continue. When I can call out the story to the level of a drinking game(Because the game literally does that for you anyway with it's writing), that's fucked. I haven't beaten this game, I've come close, and it's basically become a game I feel like I don't understand, it's alien to me why people think this is a master pee-ass. I don't get it. I've gotten to the Point of No Return once, before the DLC came out. But even then, I can't tell what kept me playing for that.
More than that, the games difficulty is front loaded in such a way that if you make a character that can deal with that difficulty, it's boring. And if you don't it's just tedious.
I just uninstalled this game for probably the 6th time since it came out. With the realization that it really does feel like a blander, even slower paced, even less focused aSoIaF knock off. And with that I just don't think this games narrative agrees with me, nor do I think this games gameplay agrees with me. It feels like a worse Icewind Dale in gameplay balance. It feels like a more serious and bland Baldurs Gate in story. It feels like a worse version of every game it's legacy calls upon. I wouldn't have been surprised if Bioware had shat out this story, but then at least, it's story wouldn't have taken itself so FUCKING seriously all the time. Seriously, it's like, let the player breathe. Don't shove that fucking information at the player.
I agree about some the problems with the Pillars story... but you do eventually figure out the cause of the Hollowborn plague, and how it relates to your personal problem.
I think that's half the problem, there was never going to be a satisfying conclusion too it. There's a good post in another thread by Hyperion,
Hyperion said:
I think a lot of that can be placed on the antagonist. Thaos was interesting in that he's lived countless lives by jumping his soul from body to body, has led this cult for centuries and kept them pretty much unnoticed by any and all do-gooders, and was well on his way to insidiously destroy an entire nation by cutting off their reproductive capabilities entirely. And he even convinced most of them that it was the result of the only 'God' who actually gave a shit about the people who worshipped him being nuked into another dimension.
Unfortunately due to the nature of his dastardly deeds, it wouldn't really matter if you clean his clock 10 minutes from now, or 10 years from now. There was nothing linking the protagonist to the disaster at hand outside of a bad case of the taco shits, and a thunderstorm. Having the soul of one of Thaos' sons was a good personal link to him, but not enough to really set the wheels in motion for a fitting climax.
"If a fictional setting is suffering from a serious, society-wide problem, then the main plot of any book, movie, or videogame located in that setting MUST clearly be about solving that problem" seems like a highly controversial statement.
You do end up solving it, though, so that's a moot point. Not to mention that the journal clearly states that the main quest is "The Hollowing of the Dyrwood". It isn't about that, of course, it isn't about anything. Like I said a few posts back, skim through the dialogues and stop caring about the setting and "story" and you'll enjoy PoE much more. White March 1 has a more focused story, but that's because it's very simple and impossible to fuck up.
The Watcher symptoms aren't that important to the non-existent plot, though, you don't end up fixing them, so that's a thing for PoE2 to explore. Sure, characters state that it is important, but for the actual story we got it isn't.
Yeah I think the problem Maxie points out is a bigger one than the baby plague. The Watcher curse totally fails to feel like a curse. I suppose Obsidz burned their fingers with the Spirit Eater mechanic in MotB and didn't dare do the same thing again, out of fear of scaring casuals.
In any case, I don't think the Pillars main quest is out to win any awards. Best you can say about it is that it gets the job done. I hope they'll do better in P2.
Don't forget to mention the reportedly maddening condition of Watcher-y, which does not impede CHARNAME's quest in any way, quite the opposite - getting madder gets you more Watcher skills to use at the expense of what exactly, seeing random ghosts which disappear the moment you pass by? Eder waking you up late at night saying that you cried for mummy?
The worst part about it, in my opinion, is that it's simply seemingly forgotten. For some time, you at least see "ghosts" and visions as you're traveling, but that just sorta disappears once you start hunting the Leaden Key. It really does feel like a mash-up between two different storylines and after you've visited Watcher's Keep, it's like the GM just said "Nah, fuck this, we're doing this thing now" and you're sorta railroaded into a conflict. It took me a long-ass time to figure out what was even going on, whether you were Awakened or a Watcher or both or if they're interchangeable concepts or one hinges on the other. It sorta feels like the opening scene to Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail, with the game being the one trying to sell you off as insane and I really wish my character had the chance to just say "I'm really quite fine".
This is especially obvious in when you get to Defiance Bay, a place where you really should be seeing "ghosts" left, right and center, but you don't. The fact that the city completely fails to feel like it's suffering from a refugee crisis but then suddenly erupts in violence because deus ex machina just makes it all the more jarring.
You're told a bunch of stuff, but it's never shown, despite the popular maxim of show, don't tell.
Edit: Hell, the whole Awakened Watcher thing isn't even resolved, is it? I haven't played in an extremely long time now, so correct me if I'm wrong. It's supposed to be the main driving motivation for the character, fix this or you'll go insane, but then it all gets lost, much like the motivation for WW2 being propped up as the liberation of Poland, only to promptly forget about it once the war got rolling.
If it wasn't for the rapidly impending insanity of the protagonist, there would be no reason to go after the Leaden Key looking for help, but once you're looking for the leaden key, all urgency in relation to the growing insanity disappears, all hints of it are gone, but you're still hurried along like the world depends on it. And then it's completely ignored because oh, right, it's going to take literally decades before it's debilitating.
The transference of focus, the bridge between the two major narratives, where you're taken from the personal issue into something greater, is truly awful. There's probably a million ways that could've been handled better.
The Watcher's condition is resolved. Confronting and defeating Thaos resolves the trauma of his past life. One of your companions asks you about it, IIRC. You tell him the nightmares aren't going to be a problem anymore.
The Watcher/Thaos story is an obvious metaphor for buried childhood psychological trauma etc.
In reality, if you were suddenly frozen in place and forced to experience flashbacks of ghosts at intervals you'd be quite frightened and worried, but since this is a computer game your reaction is nothing.
In reality, if you were suddenly frozen in place and forced to experience flashbacks of ghosts at intervals you'd be quite frightened and worried, but since this is a computer game your reaction is nothing.
When I played the game, I thought that the sparsity of ghost visions in Defiance Bay made sense because they're a wilderness phenomenon - something you see when you're out there alone with your thoughts. It's a common fictional trope that large concentrated populations of people somehow reduce the "mystical potential" of a location. Typically it's the secluded countryside manor that is haunted by ghosts, not the big city high-rise.
As a critique of the game's storyline, "Why were there no ghosts in Defiance Bay?? THE INSANITY ISN'T BELIEVABLE LIKE THIS" seems more like a post-hoc rationalization than anything. If Obsidian wanted to make the storyline more engaging, they should have done things like making the Leaden Key and Thaos a more active agent with more quests related to them etc.
Not remotely true. There's tons of situations in the beginning where it just flashes past like it's nothing. The fact that you don't even remember this only reinforces my point, really.
]Not remotely true. There's tons of situations in the beginning where it just flashes past like it's nothing. The fact that you don't even remember this only reinforces my point, really.
I'm talking about the flashbacks not the "Oooh, ghosts doing ghost things" parts. Given time, anyone can adjust to those (for example, I see the world through a haze of colored dots after I woke up one night from a dream and experienced vivid hallucinations. I have to consciously think about them to notice them).
The Watcher's condition is resolved. Confronting and defeating Thaos resolves the trauma of his past life. One of your companions asks you about it, IIRC. You tell him the nightmares aren't going to be a problem anymore.
We were talking about this exact same thing in the Jeff Vogel vs PoE thread and people said that you don't fix your symptoms, but only "get closure" for the past lives thing. Can anyone remember if you DO fix them?
EDIT: Also, I think the action should've been pushed forward in time, like 50 years after the Hollowborn started, so the damage it is doing is reaching critical levels with many regions starting to entirely die out.
For you, the death of Thaos brought an end to your waking visions, and a silence to the whispers of the past. In their absence, you were able to sleep.
The questions of a distant lifetime ceased to trouble your soul. All that remained was what to make of the answer.
It does seem to imply you were only ever hurting because of soul guilt, for which you now got closure.
For you, the death of Thaos brought an end to your waking visions, and a silence to the whispers of the past. In their absence, you were able to sleep.
The questions of a distant lifetime ceased to trouble your soul. All that remained was what to make of the answer.
It does seem to imply you were only ever hurting because of soul guilt, for which you now got closure.
Wow, then the whole thing is even more of a mess. I guess you won't end up like Mearwald because it's something completely unrelated? Is every Watcher going to end up like him or is he a special case? Or every Watcher has to resolve "soul guilt" to not end up like him? The writing in PoE is a particularly intense case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.
How many times have we talked about this now? Six? Seven? And I swear it's always the same idiots asking the same question.
The Watcher and Mearwald are both Watchers and Awakened. The latter is always a problem (Aloth and Maneha being two different explorations of that), but it becomes worse for Watchers as the visions of their past life/lives seem to take a more vibrant, lifelike quality, which ultimately leads to being unable to make the difference between the past life and reality. Once the Awakened soul is put to rest thanks to the answers they received, the visions disappear.
How many times have we talked about this now? Six? Seven? And I swear it's always the same idiots asking the same question.
The Watcher and Mearwald are both Watchers and Awakened. The latter is always a problem (Aloth and Maneha being two different explorations of that), but it becomes worse for Watchers as the visions of their past life/lives seem to take a more vibrant, lifelike quality, which ultimately leads to being unable to make the difference between the past life and reality. Once the Awakened soul is put to rest thanks to the answers they received, the visions disappear.
This whole story is not that bad, the game just features a very uneven and fairly uninspired narration. For the reasons that have been discussed already.
So I wouldn't consider someone who got confused with that Watcher/Awakened diference an idiot, the game is not that clear on the matter, since among the few people you cross who happen to be awakened in the base game, one is a watcher, and it happens during the whole let's tell the player what a watcher is, which is although poorly done ironically. The other one is a companion and there's only one soul he has to deal with, which just throws us back to some schyzophrenic dual personnality thing. Well that's the box I put Aloth in as soon as I met him.
