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Eternity Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire Pre-Release Thread [BETA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

Prime Junta

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A much more unified, disciplined and restrained construct with plenty of replay value and charm. A complete adventure that doesn't feel like patchwerk. A more creative, joyous and artistic "food for the soul". Yes, most of those things are immaterial and hard to define, but at one point you go into things that can't be verbally explained. It's not about feelings, it's a wholly intellectual categorization, but it's hard to put into words. It also takes into account who I am as a person and what my aesthetic tastes have become over the years.

Thanks, that makes sense.

It also takes the discussion into the realm of the subjective.

I agree about "more unified, disciplined, and restrained construct" by the way. Thing is, that's not unambiguously positive: BG2 for example is anything but unified, disciplined, or restrained, and it's precisely that "lavish buffet" feel that gives it its particular charm.
 

AwesomeButton

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One area where PoE indisputably wins vs the IE games is reactivity and multiple possible solutions/resolutions to every quest. Most of them are not really memorable though, and have no long-term consequences which would affect other quests.

For this I would blame in one part the writing, in another the fact that you don't really get memorable or significant rewards for quests, because of the "+1.6s"-style of the ruleset.
 

Kem0sabe

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I would happily trade reactivity and multiple solutions to quests for better quality writing.

There were a lot of cool quests in baldurs gate 2.
 

Sizzle

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BG2 was "everything, plus the kitchen sink". So while there were plenty of memorable quests and okay-to-good writing, there was also lots of "Coo! Come with me then!" :D
 

Lacrymas

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One area where PoE indisputably wins vs the IE games is reactivity and multiple possible solutions/resolutions to every quest. Most of them are not really memorable though, and have no long-term consequences which would affect other quests.

And Siege of Dragonspear has more reactivity and possible solutions/resolutions to quests than PoE. Your move.
 

Sannom

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Multi-quoting is also broken for me. After I click "Quote these messages", there is just a black loading bar on top of the screen and nothing happens.

Compared BG and BGII, PoE is much more constrained in terms of where you can go, so we can write off the wanderer/knight-errant/Don Quixote style of playing, where you just explore and go on quests when you find them. You can't really do that in PoE.
Is this a problem with the game or just the effect of a decade of experience leading you to just scour a map for every quest opportunity before moving on? I know I haven't played BG2 the way you're describing after my first experience with it.
 

Delterius

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Is this a problem with the game
Of course it is.

Baldur's Gate 1 has a lot of content in between its chapters. Even if you scour each 'hub' between the Friendly Army Inn and Nashkel, you'll clear a minority of the content avaiable on the southern wilderness. PoE is very much hub based. To make it closer to BG1 you'd need to add lot of room and content around Gilded Vale, Caed Nua and Defiance Bay. As well as removing the gating at the middle.
 

Sizzle

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One area where PoE indisputably wins vs the IE games is reactivity and multiple possible solutions/resolutions to every quest. Most of them are not really memorable though, and have no long-term consequences which would affect other quests.

And Siege of Dragonspear has more reactivity and possible solutions/resolutions to quests than PoE. Your move.

It also has some of the worst writing to ever grace the CRPG genre.
 

Parabalus

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One area where PoE indisputably wins vs the IE games is reactivity and multiple possible solutions/resolutions to every quest. Most of them are not really memorable though, and have no long-term consequences which would affect other quests.

And Siege of Dragonspear has more reactivity and possible solutions/resolutions to quests than PoE. Your move.

What reactivity and C&C? I liked Dragonspear but can't recall any of those. There were well crafted quests/dungeons, but they were pretty linear.

Multi-quoting is also broken for me. After I click "Quote these messages", there is just a black loading bar on top of the screen and nothing happens.

Compared BG and BGII, PoE is much more constrained in terms of where you can go, so we can write off the wanderer/knight-errant/Don Quixote style of playing, where you just explore and go on quests when you find them. You can't really do that in PoE.
Is this a problem with the game or just the effect of a decade of experience leading you to just scour a map for every quest opportunity before moving on? I know I haven't played BG2 the way you're describing after my first experience with it.

BG1 is a bunch of empty maps you have to map out like an eraser, while walking at snail speed to hit one or two points of interest. Good fucking riddance to that shit.
 

Parabalus

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You press a button something awesome has to happen. At every corner something awesome has to happen.

Button = awesome. You can't go wrong.
There is a middle ground between empty maps and button = awesome.

By your logic Age of Decadence is the ultimate Awesome Button game.
 

Delterius

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You press a button something awesome has to happen. At every corner something awesome has to happen.

Button = awesome. You can't go wrong.
There is a middle ground between empty maps and button = awesome.

By your logic Age of Decadence is the ultimate Awesome Button game.
By your logic maps can't be 'empty' and therefore something awesome has to happen all the time. How many points of interest should there be in a map you clear in 10 minutes? You think two is too little. Maybe 10 then? 20? One point of interest every 30 seconds or so?
 

Lacrymas

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BG1 is that middle ground. Every map has something to do, I don't think there's a single one where nothing is happening or you can't find anything.


What reactivity and C&C? I liked Dragonspear but can't recall any of those. There were well crafted quests/dungeons, but they were pretty linear.

Nobody has said anything about C&C. The majority of quests in SoD can be completed in at least 2 ways and the reactivity is token, mostly based on race/class, but it has more of that than PoE, where reactivity to these things are also token.


It also has some of the worst writing to ever grace the CRPG genre.

Not really. Most of PoE's overall writing is worse than SoD's.
 
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Parabalus

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You press a button something awesome has to happen. At every corner something awesome has to happen.

Button = awesome. You can't go wrong.
There is a middle ground between empty maps and button = awesome.

By your logic Age of Decadence is the ultimate Awesome Button game.
By your logic maps can't be 'empty' and therefore something awesome has to happen all the time. How many points of interest should there be in a map you clear in 10 minutes? You think two is too little. Maybe 10 then? 20? One point of interest every 30 seconds or so?

Nice dodge.

Running around a map with the sole purpose a finding 1-2 points of interest (since everything else is random useless thrash encounters) is boring to me, remniscent of MMOs. Few of them have any connection to the greater story, there are better ways to hand side content out.

but it has more of that than PoE

Citation needed.
It also has some of the worst writing to ever grace the CRPG genre.

Not really. Most of PoE's overall writing is worse than SoD's.

:abyssgazer:
 

Lacrymas

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Citation needed.

The citation will come when someone makes an encyclopedic list of both, maybe I'm wrong about the amount of reactivity to race/class, but I'm not about the possible solutions. Also remember that SoD is 20ish% the length of PoE, so the overall % of reactivity may still be higher in SoD.
 

Sizzle

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It also has some of the worst writing to ever grace the CRPG genre.

Not really. Most of PoE's overall writing is worse than SoD's.

I'll take lore dumps over fantasy trannies and stoned (fully voiced) surfer dudes any day.

SoD fails writing at the most basic, fundamental level. Just take a look at this conversation you have with Korlasz at the very beginning of the game:

ZzGePQC.jpg


Only the first option is something a sane person would believably say (even though it, too, is weirdly worded), the second one is an awful attempt at humor ("bone boys", fuck me, that's bad), and the third one... well... only a very specific kind of low-INT Paladin would conceivably talk like this to some inconsequential starting mook.

Awful, just awful.
 

Sannom

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BG1 is that middle ground. Every map has something to do, I don't think there's a single one where nothing is happening or you can't find anything.
You can always find something, but often that thing isn't worth the trouble. Like that wilderness map with the Xvart village/fort. Just you running into lots of Xvart, no reward at the end, no long-term consequence, no dialogue at any point, nothing.
 

Lacrymas

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I'll take lore dumps over fantasy trannies and stoned (fully voiced) surfer dudes any day.

SoD fails writing at the most basic, fundamental level.

Bad lore dumps. Which the game is filled to the brim with. SoD has one tranny, who is painfully pointless, yes, and one stoned guy who actually gives you an interesting toy to play with. SoD doesn't fail at the most basic level, which is making sense. SoD's main quest, as a self-contained entity, makes more sense than PoE's. Yeah, SoD has a lot of OOC moments, like with Korlasz, but otherwise it tries to be constrained and give you at least one neutral, sane option to respond with, so at that it's pretty similar to PoE. SoD's writing is too contemporary, ideologically infused in some places, nu-Bioware style, but isn't as pretentious as PoE and I enjoyed it more than PoE's. Don't take this the wrong way, though, both are very bad.


You can always find something, but often that thing isn't worth the trouble. Like that wilderness map with the Xvart village/fort. Just you running into lots of Xvart, no reward at the end, no long-term consequence, no dialogue at any point, nothing.

I was actually thinking about that map when I was writing that, but you and I seem to have remembered it, so it has that going for it. It has dialogue, though, the Xvart announce that the bears they are keeping as pets will kill you, but then the bears turn on them IIRC.
 

Lacrymas

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SoD is so rail-roaded you can hear the train whistles. You can't even revisit the maps.

So what? It has more stuff to do on each map. The story in PoE is on-rails, too, the only difference is that you can't return to a previous clump of locations in SoD, which makes sense in the story. It's not like there's a reason to return to most maps in PoE, anyway. I don't think the linearity of critical maps is that big of a deal in SoD, you can do everything in each map before moving on. I wouldn't like if every RPG is like this, but as a once-in-a-while thing it's not a deal breaker. It also works in SoD because the level-range is incredibly small, there's no room for having an unbeatable encounter in the first map that you can come back to in 3-4 levels. If you can beat something at the level cap of 10, the chance of being able to beat it at level 9 is very high.
 
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Sizzle

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Bad lore dumps.

Compared to this crap, PoE's lore dumps are Pulitzer material.

SoD has one tranny, who is painfully pointless, yes, and one stoned guy who actually gives you an interesting toy to play with.

It also has established characters changing their behavior to suit Beamdog's agendas, conversations where you're given no option at all but to behave like a butthurt feminazi (like the "wench" one with Voghlin), etc.

SoD doesn't actually fail at the most basic level, which is making sense.

SoD fails at its very inception, as it is a pointless, cash-grab pseudo-expansion, set in a period no one but the most fanfic-penning fanboys and fangirls ever gave two thoughts about. The entire Beamdog's EE line, topped off with SoD, is nu-Star Wars tier in their utter uselessness.

SoD's main quest, as a self-contained entity, makes more sense than PoE's.

A self-contained entity that can be (and should be) safely ignored. I. e. - not a very good one.

Yeah, SoD has a lot of OOC moments, like with Korlasz, but otherwise it tries to be constrained and give you at least one neutral, sane option to respond with, so at that it's pretty similar to PoE.

I'm pretty sure PoE usually gave us more than one. SoD often does not give us even the one.

SoD's writing is too contemporary, ideologically infused in some places, nu-Bioware style, but isn't as pretentious as PoE and I enjoyed it more than PoE's.

Don't know what to say. I very rarely thought that PoE's writing was full-on pretentious, while I often thought that exact thing about SoD's. As in - you can see that it was written by a very poor writer, who actually thinks they are really very good, and so tries to cram in "humor" and that certain brand of aggressive leftist propaganda every chance they get.

Don't take this the wrong way, though, both are very bad.

The difference being that PoE's could have used an editor, and SoD's could have used an entirely different writing team ;)
 

Lacrymas

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Compared to this crap, PoE's lore dumps are Pulitzer material.

The difference is quantity, both are bad, but if I had to eat a spoonful of shit versus a bowl of shit, I'd choose the spoon.

It also has established characters changing their behavior to suit Beamdog's agendas, conversations where you're given no option at all but to behave like a butthurt feminazi (like the "wench" one with Voghlin), etc.

Not really, this is a very common misconception a lot of people seem to have and I don't really know where they get it from. Every character is the same one-dimensional caricature they are in BG1, they just talk more and their one-dimensionality starts to grate, as opposed to their overall quietness in BG1. There are 2 OOC moments with Viconia, where she is uncharacteristically altruistic, but it's not aggressive leftist propaganda. There ARE OOC moments which are very jarring, but it's not universal.

SoD fails at its very inception, as it is a pointless, cash-grab pseudo-expansion.

Yes, it's pointless, but I really don't get the impression that it's a cash-grab. The EEs and nu-Star Wars, yes, but SoD does indeed feel like the labor of fans who tried to do the original justice. They failed, but that's not the point.

A self-contained entity that can be (and should be) safely ignored. I. e. - not a very good one.

PoE can also be safely ignored without you losing anything in your life, so that's not really that important. As opposed to BG, where you do lose joy and a piece of history if you don't play it.

I'm pretty sure PoE usually gave us more than one. SoD often does not give us even the one.

PoE is filled with the dispositions, so it railroads you to certain answers in general. Yes, most of the time it tries to give you a non-disposition answer, so that's good. The thing that I do remember, however, is that most of the time your character in SoD is a pussy in all the answers, including the "evil" ones. If I had to choose which one does it better, I'd say PoE.

As in - you can see that it was written by a very poor writer, who actually thinks they are really very good, and so tries to cram in "humor" and that certain brand of aggressive leftist propaganda every chance they get.

Both SoD and PoE suffer from an overall problem with the writing. SoD's is nu-Bioware style fan-fiction written by people who don't have enough life experience to do justice to the things they are writing about, including their "strong womynz" thing. That's why it comes off as leftist propaganda, the lack of experience in being a truly strong PERSON (not only woman), but, yeah, they were thinking of it from a leftist propaganda angle. PoE's is a lack of editing and creativity in general. PoE's might function as a piece of constructed writing if it's edited, but the ideas won't become more interesting or creative.
 

Ulfhednar

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It's not like there's a reason to return to most maps in PoE, anyway.

The bear cave and the Drake Bounty in Valewood.
Returning to Aufra in Gilded Vale after visiting Ranga .
Picking up the Larder Door in Gilded Vale after dealing with the Bandits.
The two mid-level encounters in Magran's Fork.
The scroll of Wael quest and the Forest Lurker bounty in Black Meadow.
Defeating undead Raedric in Raedric's Hold.
The Vailian trading company quest in Anslog's Compass.

Almost every area before reaching Caed Nua in Act I has a reason to return to it at a later date, or a quest that involves multiple maps, and I don't think it would be hard to compose a similar list for areas that come in Act II and Act III.
 

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