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Eternity Pillars of Eternity II Beta Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

AwesomeButton

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I'm not looking to shift goalposts, as I don't believe it possible to put a goalpost.

"What is literature", someone asks, and then is too lazy to read. Well, the perception changes according to the social and historical context. The most certain thing I can say is that in this day and age, having played the games I have played, PoE is worse than most I've played.
 

frajaq

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When you say that do you consider only the vanilla content or are you adding the White March DLC content too?
 

Abu Antar

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Best waifu.
836854-sayoko.jpg


Oh wait, wrong thread! Or is it...?
 

2house2fly

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Quick answer: better than PoE.

Oh come on, surely you can do better than that. That's not even good weaseling.

Seriously bro, just list a couple of games you think have average writing, explain why you feel they should represent the average, and how their writing is so much better than P:E's that they deserve to be placed in a higher category. How hard can it be?
Ok really now. What do you thing is good about the writing in PoE? If you say Durance i will sidekick you trough the monitor :). I have the feeling that we see writing as different thing. I see it as more of a lore and world building and don't put big emphasis on the dialogues,most rpgs do them ok.
I think of "writing" as all of it together, really. Lore and worldbuilding are important, so is the structure of the plot, and in a game the player's input/freedom should be acknowledged. Plus any given line of dialogue should be entertaining. Even level layouts and character design can be considered "writing"
 

Mexi

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Kotor 2 best romance. Just how it works RL ghettos.

Nigga beats his bitch until the hoe blows.



Also, Prime Junta is so used to shit that it is average for him. Awesome Button hit the nail on the Prime Cunt's Agenda a bit earlier.


Quick answer: better than PoE.

Oh come on, surely you can do better than that. That's not even good weaseling.

Seriously bro, just list a couple of games you think have average writing, explain why you feel they should represent the average, and how their writing is so much better than P:E's that they deserve to be placed in a higher category. How hard can it be?
No, you are looking for a game title so you can start a biased comparison to PoE and an argument no one is interested in. Read my opinion in the thread I cited.

I'd say a game that has both good and bad writing is DA:O, but I can't define "average" as a middle point between its good and bad parts.
I like how they called him out and he couldn't name one game that he considers average. I wouldn't call that hitting the nail on the head. If you're going to say something stupid like that, at the very least, defend it when you're called out on it.
 

Prime Junta

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Sooo you like the same things as i do about the game,but you just close your eyes about the retardation. It seems that you have higher threshold about stupidity in the writing.

First off, coming from someone who considers ME writing "not stupid" this is a bit rich. WE ARE BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION lel

It's also not true. P1 writing does have plenty of stupid in it, point is that it's par for course in RPG writing. Hence, average.

But it does seem that once you look past that bleeding edge of yours, and disregard obvious retardation like Aerie's backpack baby as well-written romance, we don't actually appear to disagree all that much.
 

Kyl Von Kull

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I feel like the people who really hate PoE's writing forced themselves to read all of the backer content. Once I realized the gold NPCs were just flavor text, I stopped clicking on them and the experience was much improved.

As for the descriptive narration within dialogue, it seems like an odd complaint for a role playing game. I've never had a pen and paper dungeon master who didn't do this to excess and it's not like Obsidian could pay for cut scenes, which is what the "show don't tell" argument is really calling for (if you want "show don't tell" don't buy an isometric RPG). Pillars may not be inspired, it would've benefited enormously from another editing pass, but its writing is solid enough to justify its own existence. Also, I'm skeptical of people who played the game through to the end, read every single word, and think it's absolute shit. WTF is wrong with you? If I thought a writing heavy game had genuinely bad writing, I would stop playing pretty fucking quickly.

As for plot holes, I don't think this is anyone's real problem with anything, ever. People forgive plot holes when they otherwise like the narrative/tone (ELEX) and they become vitriolic about plot holes when they otherwise dislike the narrative/tone. I suspect PoE's tone was too serious--not goofy enough--so it ends up being held to a much higher standard. I think, as a whole, with the expansions, it's better than mediocre, but I'd never argue with anyone calling it mediocre. Calling it horrible is kind of absurd, though.
 

Mexi

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I feel like the people who really hate PoE's writing forced themselves to read all of the backer content. Once I realized the gold NPCs were just flavor text, I stopped clicking on them and the experience was much improved.

As for the descriptive narration within dialogue, it seems like an odd complaint for a role playing game. I've never had a pen and paper dungeon master who didn't do this to excess and it's not like Obsidian could pay for cut scenes, which is what the "show don't tell" argument is really calling for (if you want "show don't tell" don't buy an isometric RPG). Pillars may not be inspired, it would've benefited enormously from another editing pass, but its writing is solid enough to justify its own existence. Also, I'm skeptical of people who played the game through to the end, read every single word, and think it's absolute shit. WTF is wrong with you? If I thought a writing heavy game had genuinely bad writing, I would stop playing pretty fucking quickly.

As for plot holes, I don't think this is anyone's real problem with anything, ever. People forgive plot holes when they otherwise like the narrative/tone (ELEX) and they become vitriolic about plot holes when they otherwise dislike the narrative/tone. I suspect PoE's tone was too serious--not goofy enough--so it ends up being held to a much higher standard. I think, as a whole, with the expansions, it's better than mediocre, but I'd never argue with anyone calling it mediocre. Calling it horrible is kind of absurd, though.
I wish this forum had more people like you instead of these fucking sperglords.
 

fantadomat

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Lol this is becoming a endless repetition,defenders are just trying to shoot the bush next to the arguments and go on spouting some passive aggressive almost insults.
"Hurdur me likes Torment therefore all arguments wrong,me have great taste! You like ME,you shit taste."

How about instead of shooting the bush,you try to go for the argument and all the examples of bad writing in PoE that i have pointed out? If you keep on going like this,you will run out of straw. Also i can't fight your arguments because you don't have any. You just try to compare it to other games and say how bad the other game is.

Who the fuck mentioned "descriptive narration within dialogue" in the past few pages?
 

Prime Junta

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How about instead of shooting the bush,you try to go for the argument and all the examples of bad writing in PoE that i have pointed out? If you keep on going like this,you will run out of straw. Also i can't fight your arguments because you don't have any. You just try to compare it to other games and say how bad the other game is.

Why would I? I agree with you -- broadly -- about the examples of bad writing in P:E. I could certainly come up with more.

My whole argument is that P1's writing is average, compared to the general standard in RPGs. The general standard is defined by those other games, so how else could I defend this argument than by comparing it against them?

You seem to want me to argue that P:E's writing is awesome, great, fantastic, fabulous, but that never was my argument. I think it's average, with some good bits, some bad bits, some retardation, and a lot of forgettable. Just like most RPGs.
 

fantadomat

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How about instead of shooting the bush,you try to go for the argument and all the examples of bad writing in PoE that i have pointed out? If you keep on going like this,you will run out of straw. Also i can't fight your arguments because you don't have any. You just try to compare it to other games and say how bad the other game is.

Why would I? I agree with you -- broadly -- about the examples of bad writing in P:E. I could certainly come up with more.

My whole argument is that P1's writing is average, compared to the general standard in RPGs. The general standard is defined by those other games, so how else could I defend this argument than by comparing it against them?

You seem to want me to argue that P:E's writing is awesome, great, fantastic, fabulous, but that never was my argument. I think it's average, with some good bits, some bad bits, some retardation, and a lot of forgettable. Just like most RPGs.
:dealwithit: You could have said this earlier mate. I do agree that there is some well written dialogue in the game and some good quests. But the main quest is garbage level of writing and the world building is poor. Lets just change the subject of the conversation on something more cheerful,like Lacrymas's Skaen fetish and hist taste for cloacas. Don't know if he likes to whip people or to get whipped....both go well with Skaen.
 

AwesomeButton

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When you say that do you consider only the vanilla content or are you adding the White March DLC content too?
I wrote a thread on my impressions of TWM, and although I saw mostly everything as an improvement there, even the writing, I think I concluded that it's still largely a letdown, but hey it's writing in a videogame, so let's not get too preoccupied. Or something in those lines.

Returning to the writing's quality, not everything about it is lollipops and roses. The trademark writing stumbles of the original game were still present. For example - a fisherman with absurd lines such as "[I do] just about everything. I track the day's catches and see that our nets and hooks are in working order". This must have been written by someone who hasn't paused for a second to think how a fisherman would describe his work, let alone take the time to actually learn something on the subject before he writes the line. Wasn't it Sawyer himself in his blog who was urging people who do writing and game design to research the subjects which they write on? I know he has done that, and it's a really good piece of advice!

I like how they called him out and he couldn't name one game that he considers average. I wouldn't call that hitting the nail on the head. If you're going to say something stupid like that, at the very least, defend it when you're called out on it.
Actually there is no inconsistency. I can like and I can dislike a piece of writing, but to consider it average, I need to have a mean to which to compare. If it's a school class' worth of writing exams, I can tell you that some text is average with regards to the rest of the texts.

In a way I already did this here, when I said that PoE has worse writing compared to the majority of games I've played.

But if that kind of answer does not satisfy you, you can always get bent. :salute:

Talking about calling someone out, I think the record is decisevely in my advantage.
 
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As for the descriptive narration within dialogue, it seems like an odd complaint for a role playing game. I've never had a pen and paper dungeon master who didn't do this to excess and it's not like Obsidian could pay for cut scenes
Yeah but most of the time, it's irrelevant random stuff that is described. It shows, they wanted to give most if not all characters whatever their importance a few descriptive lines during dialogs. It makes the whole thing too heavy, imo.
Who the fuck mentioned "descriptive narration within dialogue" in the past few pages?
I did, actually.
 

fantadomat

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why don't you fags talk about the story of PoE1 in the PoE1 topic.
At least people participate in conversation and don't spam the buttons like some kind of retard. Go and drink some bleach you whiny cunt! Spamy lurkers like you shouldn't have button privilege. Now go back in your cave coward.
 

frajaq

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How was the writing in the Backer Beta content anyway, it's just like one town and a couple of zones?
 
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aweigh

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i would definitely say PoE has poor writing because I have simply never before encountered an RPG that I enjoyed playing but found its dialog so impenetrable almost so boring that I actively refused to read it in later parts of the game (And it goes without saying that I stopped reading backer content immediately upon encountering it).

the main problem about it is that (to use a case of good writing mentioned by prima junta) the majority of the bits of writing such as companion quests and backstories (such as Sagani) are a ton of words and shit about how theyre from places you dont visit and about people you never talk to or interact with in a meaningful way.

maybe if you actually visited saganis village and talked to her husbands I might have bothered caring about her story (playing with her kids in some stat-checked scenario wouldve been fun) or if you actually the Vailian republics I might have given a rats ass about Palleginas dirty cloaca and before anyone goes on about how that would be impossible and bloat the game:

- dont write out of scope from the beginning then
- keep it simple
- take FALLOUT NEW VEGAS as inspiration

Everything your companions talk about every single word in F: NV is something you either visit or fight or talk with.
 

Sensuki

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Doesn't matter. In terms of writing, it's average in both categories.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ho-disagrees-is-an-edgelord-or-burnout.99193/

'Nuff said really.

Prime Junta said:
And now there's Pillars.

I'm a storyfag. Or more like lorefag really. If a game gives me a world that's coherent, believable, and lived-in, I can forgive a lot. Pillars has that in abundance. It's far better in this respect than any IE game other than Torment. We have nations fighting wars for reasons which make sense, with power relations changing, alliances shifting, fortunes reversing, and reversing again. We have technological, scientific, and social progress. We have people with complex relations to their gods, whom the follow -- or hate, or resent, or wrestle with -- for human reasons. We have -- finally -- put to sleep the Scots dwarf, with subraces no longer forming only their own cultures. In fact we have a range of cultures that's far broader and more interesting than anything I remember seeing in any cRPG, and drawing from a much broader range of historical cultures than just about any other game I've played. Eora exists for its own reasons, not just as a sandbox for you to play in.

The writing and story were really good as well. We had a compelling, memorable, and really well voiced antagonist, equally compelling allies like Lady Webb, and a general flow that kept a lot of freedom without losing momentum. Not flawless, mind: like most games with a blank-slate protagonist, the main story had some problems with character motivation and acknowledgment of character choices or background (what if I thought being a Watcher was the coolest thing evar?) and the companion writing was somewhat uneven, but I was only disappointed with one of them, and there only a little. The companions' motivations for hanging out with me made sense, for the most part and with relatively minor exceptions, and they had distinct and interesting personalities, even the not-so-likeable ones. We've come a long way here from "For Shar!" and "For the Balance!"
 
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