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The definitive, last Pillars of Eternity rating thread!

How would you rate Pillars of Eternity (with expansions and patches)?

  • 10

    Votes: 17 4.5%
  • 9

    Votes: 40 10.7%
  • 8

    Votes: 88 23.5%
  • 7

    Votes: 40 10.7%
  • 6

    Votes: 33 8.8%
  • 5

    Votes: 42 11.2%
  • 4

    Votes: 8 2.1%
  • 3

    Votes: 11 2.9%
  • 2

    Votes: 4 1.1%
  • 1

    Votes: 3 0.8%
  • 0

    Votes: 20 5.3%
  • J_C is a cuck! (kc)

    Votes: 68 18.2%

  • Total voters
    374

Vrab

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yeah but that's not pretentious, its just wrong

Pretentious should cover trying to sound intellectual while not being up to the task, like in that particular case. Using exotic words without knowing their meaning. If it doesn't it means I have a shot at being a writer, but I'm afraid I'm right.
 

Delterius

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yeah but that's not pretentious, its just wrong

Pretentious should cover trying to sound intellectual while not being up to the task, like in that particular case. Using exotic words without knowing their meaning. If it doesn't it means I have a shot at being a writer, but I'm afraid I'm right.
Yes but 'Boreal' is not exactly an exotic word. Everyone has heard of the Aurora 'Borealis'.
 

ilitarist

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Boreal means northern. Boreas was the Greek god of northern wind. I always knew my classical highschool education will one day cost me irritation when playing games.
Wikipedia:
Boreal climate - a climate characterized by long winters and short, cool to mild summers.
The Southern Hemisphere, which has no large landmasses in the upper-middle latitudes that can have both the short but well-defined summers and severe winters that characterize this climate, has very few locations with this climate. One example is parts of the Snowy Mountains in Australia, although they're more alpine than true subarctic. (Also this climate exists in India which is more like equator than North.) In our world we called a lot of things Northern or Eastern and we're still using those terms. Like show our map to an alien and ask where does he think Middle East is. It's entirely possible that people of PoE world had name for the climate and called those dwarves Boreal because they live in snow.

There are lots of thing that are called by the word that doesn't technically work for them.
southern_half.png
 

Vrab

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Boreal climate - a climate characterized by long winters and short, cool to mild summers.
The Southern Hemisphere, which has no large landmasses in the upper-middle latitudes that can have both the short but well-defined summers and severe winters that characterize this climate, has very few locations with this climate. One example is parts of the Snowy Mountains in Australia, although they're more alpine than true subarctic. (Also this climate exists in India which is more like equator than North.) In our world we called a lot of things Northern or Eastern and we're still using those terms. Like show our map to an alien and ask where does he think Middle East is. It's entirely possible that people of PoE world had name for the climate and called those dwarves Boreal because they live in snow.

Boreal means north. PoE is happening on the southern hemisphere. Nomenclature on Earth is based around European conventions and history and to a lesser degree around that of other people of the northern hemisphere because southern hemisphere hasn't produced any civilizations that exerted any influence on anything. Boreal climate, as you have noted, is a climate on northern hemisphere. People living on northern hemisphere think of more north - more cold, and since nomenclature of this sort stems from remote past when these people haven't reached the southern hemisphere in any significant way, this notion stuck. However this is, in SJW terms, norther hemisphere centrism. If our planet would be like that of PoE, we would have inverted notions, so we'd be thinking of more south - more cold. So while Obsidian tried to be cool and inclusive by placing the story and civilization in general on the southern hemisphere they actually showed their evil racism and northern bias by transferring nomenclature of our world to theirs. Which to me indicates they have no idea what the meaning is, they just wanted to sound smart, because calling the dwarfs just "ice dwarfs" or "cold dwarfs" would be too mundane for a game that sports detailed explanations of an npc's gesticulations in every dialogue.

As exemplified by Delterius, "Aurora Borealis" doesn't mean cold, snowy or long winter light, it means northern light. On southern hemisphere the term is aurora australis. The word is obviously rather exotic because most of the people don't know what it means, like for example the two of you. Which is certainly no crime neither it means anything about your or my intelligence, but if any of us would go around as professionals working on a high quality product using exotic words while missing and even inverting their meaning, we'd look like fools. Obsidian managed that, that's what I'm saying. If the writers followed George Orwell's writing suggestions there would be no problem of that sort in the game in general since the text would contain less adjectives and would be shorter, which would make it a more pleasurable experience to read through.
 

ilitarist

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It requires a special concentration of will to argue with someone starting suddenly throwing terms like SJW from out of nowhere.

This is an arbitrary border of realism you're constructing.

It's obvious that fantasy has to evade real world terms. E.g. you wouldn't want to have Champagne because it's obviously named in honor of a specific place. Would you instead say "sparkling wine"? Ok, let's go with that. But than we have things like claymore. It means "great sword" in Scottish Gaelic. Does it mean that fantasy world that have both swords and claymores also have Scotts? Or maybe just some nation that speaks a language similar to gaelic? Or do they just use familiar word to call what would look like a claymore to us? Does Morrowind with all its Katanas and Wakizashi takes place in a world with Japan? Does Dark Souls world has Germany in it because it has Zweinhander?

Boreal means "snowy" in common language. It also relates to some specific geographic region of the Earth not present in other worlds. When scientist talks about boreal climate he can also mean Australia - but for some reason you'd want to forbid fantasy writers from using similar liberties and ignoring the Holy Etymology meaning that the word can forever only has meaning that it had 2000 years ago.

Even if they didn't think about the meaning of the word - it's entirely plausible. You'd see more unfamiliar words than anime fansub if you'd apply those standards to any fantasy fiction.
 

Vrab

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It requires a special concentration of will to argue with someone starting suddenly throwing terms like SJW from out of nowhere.

I'm not sure why it bothers you. Talk of centrism, especially when it's European or aligned with it, is frequent with SJW circles. I tried to be humorous at my own expense, if I need to explain a joke it means I failed so that's that. Bad joke doesn't require a special concentration of will to deal with, you can just dismiss it or call me humorless or something.

Boreal doesn't mean anything in "common language". It is a word used for professional purposes or for dramatic effect, both of which are fine when done correctly. That is the problem, because PoE is trying to sound smart but isn't living up to it. I don't know why you chose this hill to make a stand on. It's a single detail taken as example. It is also the clearest one I can think of because most other cases are contextual and can't be reduced to a single word with a clear meaning but require talking about whole sentences, lore books and dialogues. Example of claymore you give is not valid because if you took this line of reasoning to conclusion, you'd end up with a game that shouldn't be in any language we know either. But boreal means what it means. I respect that to be bothered by it you first need to know something on the subject, which doesn't seem to affect you in this particular case so I can see how you could enjoy it better than I did. It is obvious many people liked PoE and appreciated the same things that I dislike.
 

FreeKaner

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Are you legitimately autistic per chance? Language doesn't work like you think it works, meanings shift despite origins. Dollar comes from the word thaler, which comes from joachimsthaler, which mean's Joachim's Valley, which is in Czech Republic. Yet now people don't sperg because USD is not printed in Czech Republic's joachimsthaler do they? Lord comes from Old English "Bread-keeper", literally "Loaf-warden", and now it means something else and is used much more liberally. Boreal came to mean in the poles over time even if its linguistic origin was "north", there are many words that are used as descriptive terms that used to have specific definitions that no longer possess it.
 

Vrab

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Are you legitimately autistic per chance? Language doesn't work like you think it works, meanings shift despite origins. Dollar comes from the word thaler, which comes from joachimsthaler, which mean's Joachim's Valley, which is in Czech Republic. Yet now people don't sperg because USD is not printed in Czech Republic's joachimsthaler do they? Lord comes from Old English "Bread-keeper", literally "Loaf-warden", and now it means something else and is used much more liberally. Boreal came to mean in the poles over time even if its linguistic origin was "north", there are many words that are used as descriptive terms that used to have specific definitions that no longer possess it.

I'm not talking about etymology, I am talking about meaning. Boreal doesn't mean snowy or "in the poles". Boreal dwarf of the south is a dumb thing to write and portrays the author as inadequate. But you know, it's really one of the less dumb things in the game since it's a minor detail brought up because it's also very simple to point out. Or so I thought, but look where that took me.

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/boreal

Can we conclude this now?
 

ilitarist

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We should conclude this because you only want to use a single meaning out of there and understand it in a specific way that means something that can be on the south? Because nothing stops southern dwarves to be "related to Northern Wind", or relating to a geography/climate that is similar to the one we have in subarctica.

Even if we accept this specific definition it's entirely possible that Boreal dwarves call themselves that way for some unknown reason. You have Normandy and Normans south of England, literally the same unrealistic situation in a real world.

There's plenty to hate about the writing in PoE but here it's baseless nitpicking.
 

FreeKaner

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Can we conclude this now?

Yes we can because it's not something that matters whatsoever, it's literal fluff and works in accordance to how language usually works, that is shift of meaning. Fantasy using real words in the language to mean different but associated things is not new or weird at all.

I mean I do enjoy talking linguistics and etymology but not in this sense.
 

ilitarist

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You have unleashed the power of our autism and you should surrender to that regret or die in obscurity, Delterius.
 

Vrab

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There's plenty to hate about the writing in PoE but here it's baseless nitpicking.

It's always nitpicking after being proven wrong, I am skilled at that too. :P

As I said, it was an example because it is clear and isn't reliant on opinions. I'm sure you don't believe your own explanation about those dwarfs being related to the north in some other way. After all, hours ago you thought it means snowy. The writer used a word he doesn't know the meaning of, it's the most reasonable explanation. I like doing that too, but I'm not a writer.

The pretentiousness of PoE writing is imo showing on all levels, from usage of terms and language to the whole story trying to convey a metaphysical message of some sort, with meaning of life, man creating gods etc but which ends up very crude. But this is literally where we'd end up pointing each other to reading this book or that so it's probably better not to go there. Also the projection of modern 21st century western (or even specifically American) issues on medieval fantasy - slavery, racism, independence war, religion vs science debate, one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter, women in society etc, there wasn't really so much of that in BG or IWD. Not as pronounced, for sure. It's frequent otherwise ofc, from fiction literature to games and PoE is not an exception but it can still be evaded easily and it would imo be better if it is. This vaguely reminds me of GRR Martin, he thinks that if he replaces "they had a breakfast" with "they broke their fast" everywhere he'll sound archaic but it doesn't exactly do the trick, while Tolkien's writing is way more genuine and conveys actual premodern notions, even if it's from a perspective of a modern man.

I never asked for this

:despair::badnews:

Don't be silly, I haven't had such a nice friendly banter verging on flaming in years!
 

ilitarist

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Boreal still means snowy as your link says - snowy regions, to be precise. I didn't know there is so little of boreal climate on the south before this discussion but it's only because we don't have much land there, Boreal dwarves in PoE world live in breal climate.

The point about Normandy is not arbitrary. I like history and one of its properties is in general it makes little sense when you start to learn about something and it becomes clear when you actually do your research. This is what pseudohistory and Ancient Aliens and alike use: if you describe history in broad strokes it makes no sense. It's very easy to see some sort of conspiracy. No one cares about Normandy and Normans, it's not some sort of Holocaust so you want see crazy theories about it. But it's easy to invent - imagine you are a Scottish nationalist and claim that England was actually conquered by Scotts who where called Normans because they're from the North, duh. Doesn't it make more sense than what's written in history books as long as you don't research the period in general and see how insane that theory is?

So back to dwarves. It's a fantasy world. All it owns us is internal consistency. Even if those dwarves where actually called Northern dwarves there could be a lot of possible in-world explanations. Like maybe they're used to interact with some guys even more far to the South so they consider themselves Northern. Maybe they have a myth that they came from the North. This world clearly cares about its history so I expect everything to be complicated. No kingdom is just created to be eternal in that fantasy world so it's bound to be full of strange things and seeming inconsistencies.

I liked the general story but I see the limits of the player reaction. This whole story of gods not really gods had a natural reaction from me: so what? It quacks like a god, it smites like a god, what's the difference if they're artificial. It was OK overall and it was a rare place in the story were verbose storytelling worked.

About projections: I was never close to America and I don't care about slavery and racism and it didn't bother me. I find metaphors to be sufficently in good taste. I'd compare it to Deus Ex Mankind Divided. That game thinks it's very clever. It shows all the different way the people are affected by the unnatural division but it doesn't work at many levels. There's too much forced symbolism (if you haven't played the game just watch trailer and cringe) and the game demonstrably doesn't take a stand. Plus the whole idea is crazy, dividing people by implants is idiotic and doesn't work as a comparison to anything. Didn't have any of that in PoE. Hollowborn plague felt like a real, horrible issue. The game clearly took a side in a metaphorical debate but wasn't preachy about it. There was no cheap feel of forced issue - most people have their own problems even though many suffer from the main issue of the game. All good sci-fi and fantasy is a metaphor and there's nothing wrong with projecting issues there. It's not like, say, Star Trek wasn't affected by contemporary problems, or classic sci-fi doesn't deal with problems of class struggle of the time. If you don't have that then it's just a fairy tale with some generic timeless message or a Renaissance fair without a message at all.
 

Vrab

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If the story would be confined to the Hollowborn problem, I'd be very happy with it. It's a monster to defeat, innocents to save with one or two ways to allow evil character to interact with it in an evil way. It wouldn't be a masterpiece of originality but then again why would it be? But that's exactly what they weren't satisfied with, they had to go on and include the bigger picture of some sort and it's where things fell apart for me.

That's talking about the story, writing could still be better or worse on it's own. Do you for example think it was a good decision to include those long descriptions of what an npc is doing physically during dialogues? That got tedious real fast. My impression was that the amount of text was supposed to be seen as the quality of it.
 

pomenitul

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In French, the word for 'nothing', rien, directly stems from the Latin res, which means 'thing'.

The 'Jerusalem artichoke' is not an artichoke and it doesn't come from Jerusalem.

The verb 'to sanction' can have contradictory meanings.

Is it really that surprising that 'boreal' imprecisely refers to cold climes in the common parlance?
 

Trashos

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As a Greek, perhaps I should let you all know that "boreal" means more or less "from the north". Like a wind coming from the north (in greek: borras=north, boreios=northern, notos=south, notios=southern/ I don't know if any of that is changed in latin).

That said, english language often rapes greek words and their meanings, so this is where my contribution ends.

EDIT: Due to the location and climate of Greece, a northern wind is almost synonymous to a cold wind. Still, borras means north, not cold. I can see why Australians could be confused by this.
 
Last edited:

ilitarist

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Well, husterikos means "of the womb" in Greek, doesn't mean we can't call men hysterical.
 
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Also pretentious writing. "Boreal dwarfs of the far south"... lol

'ice dwarves from cardinal direction' is pretentious now

don't play bloodlines, that'll drive you to suicide

Boreal means northern. Boreas was the Greek god of northern wind. I always knew my classical highschool education will one day cost me irritation when playing games.
first thing I think of is 'boreal forest' tbh
 

Vrab

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We're going back to the etymological realm for some reason (I'll take a wild guess and say it's because some poeple are trying to be hired by Obsidian as writers :smug:). Boreal means northern, regardless of its etymology, although in this case its etymology is very directly related to its meaning. Which is why I mentioned it when trying to initially clarify it, which was a mistake because it invited everyone to display their knowledge of etymologies instead of just noting the meaning. What is the etymology of the french word for nothing or any other word doesn't add anything to this. I guess the only explanation that would not include the writer using a word he doesn't know the meaning of would be ilitarist's idea that maybe those dwarfs somehow came from the north like the Normans of real world, but I think that's really really stretching it to fit the case. Face it, it was an error, and if that would be the only thing it wouldn't even be a problem and would genuinely be autistic nitpicking.

Luckily for all of us, we are enjoying our autistic nitpicking. We aren't exactly normal people, so let's carry on focusing on the word boreal! Say in Croatia we use the word bura for the northern wind, in particular at the coast, which comes from the same source as the word boreal. But if you use an adjective buran (literally like bura or of bura) you are saying forceful, unstable, turbulent and is typically used for describing periods of time or events. So you could certainly say that the happenings in Dyrwood are burni but they still aren't boreal! Except if you are far to the south and are referring to those softies closer to the equator. :lol:

first thing I think of is 'boreal forest' tbh

Well that's the thing. The writer had that exact idea and used it like that, thinking boreal is just some rarely used adjective meaning cold or something related to it because boreal forests are cold. But it actually has a meaning which is exact opposite to what the game setting would require. As I said earlier, this isn't a capital crime, but it is way more pronounced when it comes from a professional. It's at least funny. Admit north dwarfs of the south are funny.
 

FreeKaner

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If I remember correctly also the Boreal dwarves came from North and spread to other parts of the world from there, the puzzle for the Durgan's Battery Foundry had something to do with them journeying from North to South to East to West.
 

Vrab

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If I remember correctly also the Boreal dwarves came from North and spread to other parts of the world from there, the password for the White Forge had something to do with them journeying from North to South to East to West.

Those aren't Boreal, Sagani's people are Boreal ones.

Here's from the wiki, about Sagani's people:

Boreal Dwarves
Enutanik (eh-NOO-tah-nik, “people of the tundra,” Enutanik) Boreal dwarves are originally from a southern Boreal region.

Admit that's just dumb, come on lol.
 

FreeKaner

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If I remember correctly also the Boreal dwarves came from North and spread to other parts of the world from there, the password for the White Forge had something to do with them journeying from North to South to East to West.

Those aren't Boreal, Sagani's people are Boreal ones.

Here's from the wiki, about Sagani's people:

Boreal Dwarves
Enutanik (eh-NOO-tah-nik, “people of the tundra,” Enutanik) Boreal dwarves are originally from a southern Boreal region.

Admit that's just dumb, come on lol.

It's one of the least dumb naming conventions in the game. In fact it's one of the few ones that make sense. I thought we were done with this?
 

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