Baldur's Gate Planescape: Torment — Original Incarnation. Also, MM, MoP and EED

[Kyl Von Kull]

2. The forum-posting fanbase for PS:T is disgusting. 19 years of liars, posers and pretentious illiterati. I have every right to criticize them.

As opposed to the numerous other fan forums full of honest, authentic, and down-to-earth yet well-read posters? Lead me to this promised land! Maybe the PS:T fans get deeper under your skin because you’re a systemfag/combatfag venturing deep into the lair of the dread storyfags?

I also have every right to start criticizing individual posters. Mmm... maybe I will. If you have a l'il muscle why not flex it a bit?

Because giving someone obnoxious that kind of attention would probably make their day. Especially if the dislike is mutual. How would you feel if someone you dislike/despise, who has a lot of page views, singled you out for condemnation? My guess is you’d take it as a victory.

Just something to consider, but possibly still worth it if you have a lot of repressed rage IRL.

 

[Lilura]

How am I "extreme" now? It's more like I'm just refining my taste.

DA:O definitely has better C&C. BG2 is the most overrated Renaissance RPG on the 'Dex, reddit, everywhere. It also has the most insufferable fanbase of Renaissance RPGs.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

How am I "extreme" now? It's more like I'm just refining my taste.

DA:O definitely has better C&C. BG2 is the most overrated Renaissance RPG on the 'Dex, reddit, everywhere. It also has the most insufferable fanbase of Renaissance RPGs.

Sure, DA:O has better dialogue, better C&C, and certainly much more fully fleshed out characters. But better combat? Really?

 

[Lilura]

As opposed to the numerous other fan forums full of honest, authentic, and down-to-earth yet well-read posters? Lead me to this promised land! Maybe the PS:T fans get deeper under your skin because you’re a systemfag/combatfag venturing deep into the lair of the dread storyfags?

No, it's because they are liars and posers. Anyone who parrots that PS:T is passive by design is a liar and a poser. I hate liars and posers. Everyone with an ounce of integrity should.

Because giving someone obnoxious that kind of attention would probably make their day. Especially if the dislike is mutual. How would you feel if someone you dislike/despise, who has a lot of page views, singled you out for condemnation? My guess is you’d take it as a victory.

It depends on context and target of criticism. At any rate, the butthurt I've generated on reddit is satisfying to me. tbqh, it's delicious.

The more I get downvoted, the more it fuels me. Proof: the butthurt apes have accused me of meltdown, called me the worst names imaginable, and yet I've stepped up my output (in fact, multiplied monthly output by 4).

Who is the winner? The blogger who expands on King Content or the abusive forum-poster lost in the shuffle, and unread?

Sure, DA:O has better dialogue, better C&C, and certainly much more fully fleshed out characters. But better combat? Really?

Both would have better combat if the mobs readily bled into one another (so that you couldn't wait out cooldowns in DA:O or rest to abuse healing/Vancian magic in BG2). RAVAge does the bleeding well and SCS has the best Mage duels and one-on-one battles in general. IWD and IWD2 have the best horde-based encounter design.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

The forum-posting fanbase for PS:T is disgusting. 19 years of liars, posers and pretentious illiterati. I have every right to criticize them. I also have every right to start criticizing individual posters.

DA:O definitely has better C&C. BG2 is the most overrated Renaissance RPG on the 'Dex, reddit, everywhere. It also has the most insufferable fanbase of Renaissance RPGs.

 

[Roguey]

4. Being against my criticism of PS:T combat/dialogue, and being pro-mods, makes me devalue you as a poster.

The forum-posting fanbase for PS:T is disgusting. 19 years of liars, posers and pretentious illiterati. I have every right to criticize them. I also have every right to start criticizing individual posters. Mmm... maybe I will. If you have a l'il muscle why not flex it a bit?

@ Lesifoere

Okay. You want the translation? You are a poor retarded bitch, needing excuses to like the stupid, childish stuff she likes because she is a little scared, insecure shit. Better? Of course you are going to think Torment is deep and complex if you read crap and think that makes you somewhat literate. Do you really think throwing a couple of names and discusing the writing of a handful of sword and sorcery freaks makes you part of the intelectual elite? That kind of explains what do you see in Torment, i guess.

Do me a favor, yes? Stop trying to look smart and smug with me. Criticizing the cultural tastes of someone who read parts of De Praestigiis Daemonum in original scrip when she was eleven is just awesome. Are you stupid? Sorry, foolish question with all the evidence you already gave me. But i guess a cultured person is suposed to be a retarded snob like every single person in the Codex who ever read a book, instead of just having fun and being lighthearted. Note to you, as well as others: Fantasy literature doesn't make you cultured. Science Fiction neither does. Nor does Discworld, at that. So before trying to acuse me of being a retarded because i enjoy a sappy anime every now and then, look at what your tastes are. I am not here to talk about how great my taste in literature is, because when i want to be serious business i don't look for entertainment, i look for academics. Smug commoner bitches like you get me in a bad mood, and that's bad for my Kawaiisa rating. I can feel it falling already, i'll need to go play Hello Kitty Online or something after this, jeez.

Where i was? Oh, yes. Sorry, i was talking about your commoner tastes and your commoner, superficial mind as indicated by how much importance you give to writing and style, and how much importance you give to me writing all cute and fluffy. Do you think you are impressing anyone? My, you are the girl who thinks Torment has DEPTH. You aren't going to impress anyone who has a modicum of culture, sorry.

And tell me what the Depth of Torment is, o great and cultured lady. Are you now going to say the kind of philosophy and thought to be found in the writing and the plot is on the level of Fallout 3's children of atom, just better written? And, yes, i imagine a fantasy mystery is really amazing to read, when all the rules of the mystery are invented on the spot by the writer. Such consistency, nya.

You can keep judging me because i like to write cute and fluffy all you want, but it remains the point i am a, you guys say, sixteen years old girl and have read things you don't even know exist, nor could get your paws on if you knew, nor would understand even then because you lack the background, knowledge, and understanding beyond style and it becomes obvious in every single post of you. But you are more literate and cultured because you like Torment and i like Vampire Knight because the plot is sappy and the guys are all super hot? Okay, i guess all cultured girls are expected to be nuns or something.

And I may be young, but i have seen enought crap to know most pretentious, pseudointellectual shits like you are nothing but little insecure and scared shits inside. So grow up, and spend more time thinking and studying instead of looking for culture and knowledge in commoner crap and videogames.

Oh, and of course i am in the wrong forums. Because, obviously, role playing games are not about gameplay here. They are about what can change the nature of a man, the metaphysics of some fantasy land, the personal lives and pasts of a floating skull and some random limbo swordman guy, and other mature stuff, like walking cubes with smiley-like faces, right? I thought so. Just like fantasy literature, serious business. When i was attending the lecture about the nature of the planes i felt my mind opened by such important revelations.

I don't know about you, but i'm a hardcore gamer. So when i play a game, i care about the gameplay challenging me and kicking my butt to the next country and not about the writing. I supose you, being SO bloody literate, need good writing in your games instead of your books, where good writing belongs to.

Now back to being cute and fluffy, nya. I'll get, like, totally killed if a certain someone reads me losing it like that. And i should be studying right now, i'm so getting killed today T_T

And that cat is so bloody cute! :shock:

How is it possible that those two ended up being combined into one person some 30 odd years ago?

 

[Lilura]

That was amusing to read. I don't write like that, though. But yes, it seems we share similar views.

 

[MicoSelva]

I also posted a write-up for Magic Missile (how much can one say about one first circle spell?)

There were whole articles about Magic Missile (and other spells, such as Invisibility) in Dragon Magazine back in the day.

I remember reading a translation of the one about Magic Missile in a Polish P&P RPG mag ("Magia i Miecz") in the 90s. It covered stuff such as a wizard cutting off his index fingers (and eventually all fingers) to see if the spell would still work, etc.

 

[Lilura]

You have to go back to Dragon to find an article about MM. Flattering!

 

[Kruno]

That was amusing to read. I don't write like that, though. But yes, it seems we share similar views.

I too am a 16 year old girl.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Black cat was the shit. One of my favourite Codex posters, like, ever.

 

[Alkarl]

4. Being against my criticism of PS:T makes me devalue you as a poster.

FTFY

Anyway, as I was saying, I just think that whole part one was a waste of your time, and more so, your readers time. If you don't like the game, then talk about that! I'd love to hear a criticism of this game that can't just be boiled down to "it's too wordy and the combat sucks", that's very impersonal.

This whole article just reads as a very angsty and edgy attempt to prove how shit the game is, and by the end of the article we have proof positive why you wrote it in this manner: someone on "teh reddits" said something you didn't like, so, in retaliation you decided to go break their favorite toy. Imo, you're better than that. It reads like a revenge piece, a very poor one.

King Content

Wtf is this? Content written by KC? That would be epic, point me to that!

 

[Lilura]

boiled down to "it's too wordy and the combat sucks"

It is, though. And I gave examples. Yes, everyone knows about that but it still has to be said in a general overview. I have a proposal for in-depth coverage written out, and have covered aspects of the game that no one else has, already. So I don't think it's a poor piece. By the same token, I admit that it's not particularly good either.

Also, the footnote was added after the write-up was written and linked to. If it's "a revenge piece", it's about the fanbase long before the existence of reddit. reddit just added to what I knew all along (that the fanbase is fraudulent).

 

[agentorange]

(who, incidentally, holds a view, long-held by myself, that Fallout did a better job of balancing dialogue, questing, exploration and combat, and that PS:T should have followed suit)

You need a citation for this. I don't doubt that he said something like this and I personally agree, but it makes any writing seem more authoritative when you have a citation backing this kind of statement. It's also informative for the readers.

Generally agreed with the piece. It is true that you can't excuse the terrible combat in PST; although a game exists as a sum of all of its individual components, and it's fair to judge the overall quality of that totality, every individual element of a game can, and should be judged on its own. PS:T should have taken the same approach to combat as AoD, which is really the same approach as Fallout 1 (Barring random encounters every combat situation in Fallout 1 is unique, with a set, finite amount of enemies and predictable, thoughtful placement of those enemies). Both Fallout 1 and AoD are prime examples of games that understand their own strengths and abide by those strengths, whereas so many games attempt things outside of their means simply because they are expected (Even a game like New Vegas, that I love almost all aspects of, fails in trying to do an epic scale battle at Hoover Dam. They would have been better served doing something like the Ordu assault on Haran's Pass in AoD, a smaller, manageable encounter but with far reaching plot implications.)

 

[Lilura]

Ok, I've omitted the Avellone line because I can't remember the source. Thus, this overrated writer will not be mentioned in a retrospective for the first time. I do think Avellone is a good writer and he seems like a good chap, but he has been so overrated by critics and fanbase. You would think he was solely responsible for PS campaign setting, the way his name gets thrown about and the rest of the team ignored like they don't exist.

Again, the fans and critics are falsehood-perpetuators. To his credit, Avellone has tried to tell the public that he wasn't the only dev and that Black Isle didn't invent PSCS.

And yes, Fallout is vastly superior to PS:T.

Criticism of PS:T has only begun. As a game, it's a total wreck. A shell of a D&D game.

Tragic.

 

[Elex]

i just noticed the tags.

 

[aweigh]

I've always had a sneaking suspicion that posters who say they want a "deep and mature story and writing" don't actually really know what constitutes such, and in reality they simply mean they want stuff like good combat and varied conflict resolution; however they have fond memories of playing "good stories" back when they were teens and fail to realize that their taste and ability to discern has matured past the kind of writing done in most games.

 

[Lilura]

Storyfags are more interested in being led by the nose than they are in choices.

They want to be told how their character feels, which is what PS:T often does for TNO.

False spiritual successor Numenera aside, I can't even think of an RPG, off-hand, that would qualify as a storyfag RPG, other than PS:T. And its true spiritual successor Mask of the Betrayer reduced cascading text dramatically and emphasized reactivity instead.

Better ruleset, itemization and combat, too. Also, more meaningfully non-linear.

As such, I have replayed MotB much more often than PS:T.

 

[NotAGolfer]

I've always had a sneaking suspicion that posters who say they want a "deep and mature story and writing" don't actually really know what constitutes such, and in reality they simply mean they want stuff like good combat and varied conflict resolution; however they have fond memories of playing "good stories" back when they were teens and fail to realize that their taste and ability to discern has matured past the kind of writing done in most games.

They don't really know what they are talking about when they demand mature writing. What they really want is something less immature than the stuff that they were content with as kids."
Uh huh.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

As such, I have replayed MotB much more often than PS:T.

By the simple act of letting you create a character instead of playing as a predetermined bloke, no matter how open his development is to you, MoTB had already exceeded P: ST.

 

[Lilura]

Gender rarely has profound reactivity in RPGs. Even Fallout's gender-based reactivity is token. Which is why I mentioned the 3.x ruleset.

Predetermined protagonist also doesn't seem to adversely affect reactivity: Vault Dweller, Chosen One, Living One, Spirit-Eater, JC Denton, Bhaalspawn, Geralt...

It's more about the ruleset and the design.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

False spiritual successor Numenera aside, I can't even think of an RPG, off-hand, that would qualify as a storyfag RPG, other than PS:T.

Really? What about every BioWare game from KOTOR on, half of Obsidian's catalogue, all three Witcher games, and Bloodlines just off the top of my head? Unless you mean that a true storyfag game has very limited C&C, which strikes me as a strange thing to believe and would also rule out TTON.

They want to be told how their character feels, which is what PS:T often does for TNO.

We need to distinguish between two different kinds of feelings here. IIRC most of those one-response dialogue nodes relate to either recovered memories or descriptions of how it *feels* to come back from the dead/have amnesia. These are moments when TNO is describing what might as well be a physical affliction. If you were playing as a character with tuberculosis, you wouldn't get a choice about that character's respiratory distress. This kind of *feeling* is very different from how TNO feels about people or a particular course of action or an idea--generally you have a lot of freedom to express a range of opinions on that kind of thing.

And look, it's essential for the game to tell you how TNO's condition *feels*. Without these descriptions, the plot would have nothing driving it forward. So you're immortal, so what? Sounds good to me; besides, memory is overrated. When the objective of the main quest is basically suicide, the game had better offer you a damn good reason why the protagonist would want to die.

Now, perhaps there was a better way to do it. Rather than forcing you to say this stuff in conversation, they could've had a narrator explain the TNO's particular spiritual agony in the second person like the dream sequences in Baldur's Gate. But, regardless, I don't think this is at all emblematic of a lack of choice when it comes to expressing yourself via dialogue.

***

The fact that, far too often, there is a patently correct dialogue choice is more problematic. Then again, TTON gave you eight different color-coded options for how you could feel about everything and I'm not sure if that really ended up bringing anything to the table. The thing about the one right answer issue is that on a non powergamed initial playthrough, you often couldn't unlock the right answer until you'd leveled up a few more times and boosted your stats. Unlocking better dialogue options was a good way of illustrating the progression of your character. It's the storyfag version of mopping the floor with an enemy who'd previously kicked your ass at a lower level.

 

[Lilura]

The games you quoted have never been called "interactive novels". I don't count them as storyfag RPGs. Maybe there is some garbage that I haven't played, but Vamp Bloodlines and The Witcher are not storyfag RPGs in my book. And yeah, I didn't play TToN much. I couldn't stand its twaddle and wankery.

Memory regain sequences similar to BG2 dream sequences would have been better, yes. And would have cut down on the cascading, too. They would have needed to cut down on fluff memory regain and just leave memory regain that is reactive in there (memory regain that affects stats and future important dialogues).

Maybe you haven't played PS:T lately? There are heaps of threads where TNO only gets one response option in dialogue for multiple questions/answers. I guess such oversights are a relief from the torrent of text, though.

Just tried maximizing my XP gain in dialogue with Ravel as Mage TNO. Again, it's like pulling teeth. Why do people like this shit?

And the worst part is, the Ravel combat encounter fires directly after what is essentially a novel in itself. Imagine the newbies getting killed off and having to go through that again. Should have at least added an auto-save, ffs.

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

Ok, I've omitted the Avellone line because I can't remember the source. Thus, this overrated writer will not be mentioned in a retrospective for the first time. I do think Avellone is a good writer and he seems like a good chap, but he has been so overrated by critics and fanbase. You would think he was solely responsible for PS campaign setting, the way his name gets thrown about and the rest of the team ignored like they don't exist.

Again, the fans and critics are falsehood-perpetuators. To his credit, Avellone has tried to tell the public that he wasn't the only dev and that Black Isle didn't invent PSCS.

And yes, Fallout is vastly superior to PS:T.

Criticism of PS:T has only begun. As a game, it's a total wreck. A shell of a D&D game.

Tragic.

 

[Roguey]

And the worst part is, the Ravel combat encounter fires directly after what is essentially a novel in itself. Imagine the newbies getting killed off and having to go through that again. Should have at least added an auto-save, ffs.

Wouldn't you just respawn at the beginning of the maze and be allowed to start the battle over?