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

Trashos

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Dec 28, 2015
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I thought Thaos was a great antagonist. He's an immortal nihilist who genuinely believes he's the one saving the world. Some charismatic Emperor Palpatine figure would probably have gone down better with the general audience(whose criticism of him is "he didn't murder my father at the beginning like Sarevok so I have no reason to hate him") but I hope whatever big baddie you end up fighting in Pillars 2 is half as interesting as Thaos

A "nihilist"? Why would anyone call Thaos a "nihilist"? He is like the opposite of a nihilist.
 

2house2fly

Magister
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He believes there are no gods and without a higher power life is meaningless. Nihilist seemed to pretty much cover it
 
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CptMace

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More like, after realising there are no gods, he came to the conclusion that people could give in to nihilism and fuck everything up, like by establishing communism in defiance bay.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
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Messages
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Pathfinder: Wrath
What does "give in to nihilism" mean? Nihilism is simply the idea that life or existence doesn't have objective value, it doesn't mean that you'll start killing each other, get depressed or commit suicide. Moral nihilists think that morality doesn't exist as something above reality that governs the quality of an action, sometimes even proposing the idea that no moral judgement can be passed on any action. The action simply exists and it is what it is. Others believe morality is a social construct that relies on some relativity that doesn't exist. Nihilism is more freeing than depressing. Thaos isn't a nihilist in any sense of the word because he believes what he is doing is right (or for the greater good) and the Engwithans weren't nihilists because they only thought that life is meaningless without a higher power, not at all. There is no discussion about the objective meaningfulness of life or any other kind of philosophical issue, it's a knee-jerk reaction in the face of an existential crisis. There wouldn't be an existential crisis had they been nihilists. It's kind of hard to explain what I mean.
 

Sizzle

Arcane
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Feb 17, 2012
Messages
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Can't wait to fill up Pallegina with my superior fair-skinned seed.

Sorry to disappoint, she sterile

she's written by Sawyer so she'll probably be gay like Arcade was, or asexual so he can get out of writing romance crap for her altogether

There was a banter or two with Maneha (the lesbian Barbarian from TWM2) hitting on her that hint she may be into girls. Or at least bisexual.
 
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Sacred82

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vithrack were a big thing indeed leading up to Pillars 1, it seems they've made much less of a deal of the monsters in Deadfire, or did Josh talk at length about any of them?
 

Maculo

Arcane
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Strap Yourselves In Pathfinder: Wrath
More like, after realising there are no gods, he came to the conclusion that people could give in to nihilism and fuck everything up, like by establishing communism in defiance bay.
Yes and no. Thaos also criticized the gods religion of his time as savage and cruel (i.e. child sacrifices, conquest). It is not just that people would fall to nihilism, but they also would fall to superstition and merely create their own brutal gods again.
 

Thonius

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I want to fuck that albino elf.
Top or bottom.... row..
1521196494132.png
 
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CptMace

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Following the director's vision, poe now has the ass on the fence on save import as well. You play the watcher and it's a direct sequel, but proceed to recreate a character from scratch please.
It's meta as fuck.

Really though, I expected the possibility to recreate the character from scratch since the whole systems changed.
But it sounds like they couldn't be bothered to implement a basic check for gender, portrait, name etc. Which would be pretty hilarious. Also pretty dumb.

Yes and no. Thaos also criticized the gods religion of his time as savage and cruel (i.e. child sacrifices, conquest). It is not just that people would fall to nihilism, but they also would fall to superstition and merely create their own brutal gods again.

Most probably, I don't clearly remember his motives. However I perfectly remember that when the plague arrived in the great city of Arborensis, he made sure that the cure did not. Where's Arborensis, what plague, why did he do that - No idea. But I remember that he says that pretty well. Good dubbing, poor writing I suppose.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
But it sounds like they couldn't be bothered to implement a basic check for gender, portrait, name etc. Which would be pretty hilarious. Also pretty dumb.

Actually at first they said you wouldn't be able to change certain details such as your gender, race and background, but it looks they've backtracked on that. So I assume those things were checked and imported at one point.
 

Maculo

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Strap Yourselves In Pathfinder: Wrath


Following the director's vision, poe now has the ass on the fence on save import as well. You play the watcher and it's a direct sequel, but proceed to recreate a character from scratch please.
It's meta as fuck.

Really though, I expected the possibility to recreate the character from scratch since the whole systems changed.
But it sounds like they couldn't be bothered to implement a basic check for gender, portrait, name etc. Which would be pretty hilarious. Also pretty dumb.

Yes and no. Thaos also criticized the gods religion of his time as savage and cruel (i.e. child sacrifices, conquest). It is not just that people would fall to nihilism, but they also would fall to superstition and merely create their own brutal gods again.

Most probably, I don't clearly remember his motives. However I perfectly remember that when the plague arrived in the great city of Arborensis, he made sure that the cure did not. Where's Arborensis, what plague, why did he do that - No idea. But I remember that he says that pretty well. Good dubbing, poor writing I suppose.

That line is more striking, but he also remarks there was once many “gods.” Some of those gods demanded child sacrifices, conquest, and slaves. Hence, his pantheon was a civilizing force by fighting “degeneracy” and expelling savage religions.

PoE’s execution left much to be desired, but if you chose the redemption options for the Inquisitor, then you saw a more benign side of Thaos and arguably had a neat setup for a showdown with him. I think what screwed the execution was that you could partly choose what your primary motivation was, whether that be revenge against Thaos, stopping Woedica, ending the watcher symptoms, or ending the hollow born crisis, all of which linked. Consequently, the story did not give much of a hook for any of those issues.
 

Bocha

Novice
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Apr 14, 2016
Messages
35
The pc from poe1 dies in caed nua , his soul must take another body or something similar, could be the reason to start from scratch...
 

KateMicucci

Arcane
Joined
Sep 2, 2017
Messages
1,676
Really though, I expected the possibility to recreate the character from scratch since the whole systems changed.
But it sounds like they couldn't be bothered to implement a basic check for gender, portrait, name etc. Which would be pretty hilarious. Also pretty dumb.
It's reasonable that a player might want to keep their decisions but play a different character or at least edit their appearance.
 
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Grab the Codex by the pussy
My whole argument is that P1's writing is average, compared to the general standard in RPGs.
It’s only average if you assume that writing in cRPGs should be evaluated by the same metric of writing in novels, etc. You consider the total amount of available written text in the story and the dialogues and compare this with the story and dialogues of the average cRPG.


That’s a wrong angle, because it’s a completely different medium. Rather, “the writing” in a cRPG should be evaluated by the quality of the quests, the exploration and a bunch of other things that simply are not written text. Level-design, C&C, itemization are all integral to writing. When you consider things this way, it’s obvious that PoE is way worse than some cRPGs with generic story that have better combat, exploration, etc.

The so called "cRPG writers that are flooding the genre with insufferable lore dumps and colourful prose filled with adjectives to the brim also ignore this basic notion that the good cRPG writer is nothing more than the good developer.
 
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AwesomeButton

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My whole argument is that P1's writing is average, compared to the general standard in RPGs.
It’s only average if you assume that writing in cRPGs should be evaluated by the same metric of writing in novels, etc. You consider the total amount of available written text in the story and the dialogues and compare this with the story and dialogues of the average cRPG.


That’s a wrong angle, because it’s a completely different medium. Rather, “the writing” in a cRPG should be evaluated by the quality of the quests, the exploration and a bunch of other things that simply are not written text. Level-design, C&C, itemization are all integral to writing. When you consider things this way, it’s obvious that PoE is way worse than some cRPGs with generic story that have better combat, exploration, etc.

The so called "cRPG writers that are flooding the genre with insufferable lore dumps and colourful prose filled with adjectives to the brim also ignore this basic notion that the good cRPG writer is nothing more than the good developer.

For people actually interested in the subject and not just in inane terminological arguments that go in circles, and who are looking to establish actual knowledge and consensus, as opposed to fighting for the greater cause of proving "this game is gud because my imaginary forum reputation has become tied to it being gud":

In an RPG, one way to evaluate the quality of "writing" would be - how much does any of the text I read contribute to my roleplaying experience. Do I feel inspired to roleplay more? Do I picture in my mind the things that all the writing describes - items, people, their actions?

It's tough to compare good writing in a book/movie with good writing in a role playing game, because obviously, the reader or viewer has no agency, while the player in an RPG has a large degree of agency. So what you call "yearning to turn the next page" could translate for an RPG as yearning to keep playing and progressing towards completing the quest you are currently on, or achieving whatever goal you have set for yourself right now.

It's one of the many things PoE would have been better off without but ended up in the game regardless, because it was a kickstarter promise, in some form. I read a couple, but since they were completely disconnected from any other aspect of the game, and were not in themselves interesting to read, I soon stopped bothering with them.

I don't think PoE's setting is unappealing because of its own lack of quality, more because it's poorly integrated into the game's story and plot. When reading the collector's book for PoE, I was very interested in the setting, the cultures, languages and history. In the game,however, they all looked pretty bland, like the designers themselves were just going through the motions, and were not themselves feeling immersed in the world they were constructing.
 
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Prime Junta

Guest
That’s a wrong angle, because it’s a completely different medium. Rather, “the writing” in a cRPG should be evaluated by the quality of the quests, the exploration and a bunch of other things that simply are not written text. Level-design, C&C, itemization are all integral to writing. When you consider things this way, it’s obvious that PoE is way worse than some cRPGs with generic story that have better combat, exploration, etc.

okay

Are you also of the opinion that it's not possible to discuss the quality of screenwriting for a movie or a TV series, because you can only evaluate it by considering the quality of the cinematography, acting, editing, sound design, and everything else that goes into it?

'Cuz that would be pretty retarded from where I'm at.
 

AwesomeButton

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(the fact that the player has) Agency makes your environment in a game more important than your environment in a movie/Series.

Also, fewer people have the senses to evaluate cinematography, than have the senses to spot plot holes and cliches in the story and dialogues. That's a reason to not take other factors under consideraton when evaluating film.
 
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Prime Junta

Guest
Those sound like artificial distinctions to me. I mean, sure, they are factors to consider when discussing the writing, and the importance of writing itself may change, but I don't see how it makes it futile to discuss writing as its own thing at all.

Put another way, "the writing is shit because the game has shit exploration" sounds pretty fucking dumb to me.
 

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