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Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pre-DLC Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

Brancaleone

Liturgist
Joined
Apr 28, 2015
Messages
1,004
Location
Norcia
ZUvmdJ.jpg
With your PC being such a handsome devil, it's only natural.
 

2house2fly

Magister
Joined
Apr 10, 2013
Messages
1,877
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised at all if DLCs end up making Archmages the 5th faction.
I think adding a faction is way out of the scope of these DLCs. I'm just hoping they get some fun quests with ending slides and while I would like some content for sidekicks I won't lament if it isn't there
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,123
All those are good points. I agree. The dungeon is still far from great because it still has trash mobs, still has a terrible structure (population, area etc) and only exists to showcase "look, we like Durlag's tower".

Oh it was absolutely a trash mob paradise, but in a few places there were at least attempts to have good encounters. One was that tight corridor to the left of the catacombs, that forces you into a chokepoint protected by nasty traps, while under fire from those gooey things.
 

2house2fly

Magister
Joined
Apr 10, 2013
Messages
1,877
Yeah, the only thing I remember about Raedric's Hold is why couldn't that place be ours to rule instead of Od Nua, it would have been optional and if we decided to rule it then there was already a village to rule over. They could have stuck the mega dungeon's entrance somewhere in the basement/sewers and be done with it.
Because then you'd have to kill Raedric to get the stronghold
 

Sizzle

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2012
Messages
2,471
Could be argued that companions are fulfilling role of other players in pnp, if so then its at very heart of dnd.

The heart of D&D is combat.

Luke K. said something about how BG fans writing fan-romances caused BioWare to include romances in BG2.

This is a prime example of why devs shouldn't take note of what fans are doing/saying.
This is an interesting point.

I think we must ask ourselves why *did* romances work in BG2? And why isn't that replicable in other rpgs?

If I had to pick one element - length. The ones in BG2 consist of about 20-30 lovetalks, scattered throughout the entire game. So that gives it a nice, organic (or, as organic as a cheesy fantasy romance can possibly be) flow. They start out slow, with flirty chit-chat that only gets amorous after a while. While they mostly are just playing therapist, they're still miles ahead of the drek we get today.

Now, compare that to modern romances - they consist of only a couple of conversations (usually gated by story progression, because we wouldn't want to waste such lovely writing in the first act of the game, now would we?), which are usually littered with crass humor and sexual innuendo, and then we get to the inevitable payoff (aka - the fucking) scene, which are becoming more and more explicit and leave very little to the imagination.
 

Grampy_Bone

Arcane
Joined
Jan 25, 2016
Messages
3,640
Location
Wandering the world randomly in search of maps
I think we must ask ourselves why *did* romances work in BG2? And why isn't that replicable in other rpgs?

-More gradual. Spread out across many dialogues, not just "Hi we met yesterday and now I Love you."
-More subtle. Old Bioware writers at least understood the basics of human courtship and had less tween-fiction "I hab feelings for you" style writing
-No character was overtly sexual, even the "ladies man" Haer Dalis
-Possible to fuck it up by saying the wrong thing

Even with that you still had cringey stuff like Jaheira hooking up with you while her husband's body was barely cold and girls fighting over you in stupid ways. Romance should probably be scrapped for most RPGs, or limited to NPC non-party members.

Modern games can't do gradual because instant gratification, can't let them fuck it up because wahhh I don't like consequences, and everyone is super-horny and direct because the writers learned about sex from anime and porn.
 

Riddler

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 5, 2009
Messages
2,353
Bubbles In Memoria
So has anyone figured out what the effects of allying with
the Vampires
are? Does it affect the end game in any way?
 

Jason Liang

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2014
Messages
8,336
Location
Crait
I have to disagree. I don't know what the key difference is, but I don't believe it is simply the quality of the writing.
 
Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
Joined
Feb 13, 2013
Messages
5,274
I'd rather not dwell on the sordid reasons for the enduring appeal, but romanceable NPCs are still coming out for BG2...
 

oldmanpaco

Master of Siestas
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
Messages
13,609
Location
Winter
I think we must ask ourselves why *did* romances work in BG2? And why isn't that replicable in other rpgs?

-More gradual. Spread out across many dialogues, not just "Hi we met yesterday and now I Love you."
-More subtle. Old Bioware writers at least understood the basics of human courtship and had less tween-fiction "I hab feelings for you" style writing
-No character was overtly sexual, even the "ladies man" Haer Dalis
-Possible to fuck it up by saying the wrong thing

Even with that you still had cringey stuff like Jaheira hooking up with you while her husband's body was barely cold and girls fighting over you in stupid ways. Romance should probably be scrapped for most RPGs, or limited to NPC non-party members.

Modern games can't do gradual because instant gratification, can't let them fuck it up because wahhh I don't like consequences, and everyone is super-horny and direct because the writers learned about sex from anime and porn.

Also not every character was trying to get into your pants and homosexuality was not over represented.
 

dragonul09

Arcane
Edgy
Joined
Dec 19, 2014
Messages
1,445
There's probably also the novelty effect. Romances weren't A Thing back then.

And they weren't as convoluted as they are now, you had a simple romance between a man and a woman and they werent as intrusive as they are now, but now you have fanatics demanding that you put a romance where you can fuck anyone with or without a pulse, or they won't buy your game, or even worse they will put journalists on your ass because you don't have the entire spectrum of degeneracy in your game.
 

2house2fly

Magister
Joined
Apr 10, 2013
Messages
1,877
I think we must ask ourselves why *did* romances work in BG2? And why isn't that replicable in other rpgs?

-More gradual. Spread out across many dialogues, not just "Hi we met yesterday and now I Love you."
-More subtle. Old Bioware writers at least understood the basics of human courtship and had less tween-fiction "I hab feelings for you" style writing
-No character was overtly sexual, even the "ladies man" Haer Dalis
-Possible to fuck it up by saying the wrong thing

Even with that you still had cringey stuff like Jaheira hooking up with you while her husband's body was barely cold and girls fighting over you in stupid ways. Romance should probably be scrapped for most RPGs, or limited to NPC non-party members.

Modern games can't do gradual because instant gratification, can't let them fuck it up because wahhh I don't like consequences, and everyone is super-horny and direct because the writers learned about sex from anime and porn.

Also not every character was trying to get into your pants and homosexuality was not over represented.

Good news for the Pillars 2 romances, there are two characters you can't romance and none of the party members are homosexual
 

Trashos

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2015
Messages
3,413
Ya all Jaheira haters, while that romance and the whole interactian with Jaheira is most realistic and very well crafted.

As for the argument about timing, I have 2 things to say. First, a lot of events are time compressed in RPG stories, and let's not forget that you gain 10+ power levels within SoA alone. Second, you actually think that a woman who lost her husband is going to stay alone for mourning purposes if there is no heavy societal pressure? I have news for you, she won't. Be angry all you want, that's not how women are like.

(Fun fact: In Pericles' Funeral Oration, in Ancient Athens ~430 BC, Pericles asks the wives of dead soldiers to be decent and stay under the radar -obviously so that the morale of the married alive soldiers doesn't drop)
 

FreeKaner

Prophet of the Dumpsterfire
Joined
Mar 28, 2015
Messages
6,908
Location
Devlet-i ʿAlīye-i ʿErdogānīye
Fact of the matter is video game developers often barely write a decent and coherent story, failing to deliver a casual and mundane human interaction or a plot tension between different characters. They have no place writing about complexity of depths of interpersonal relationships. If they tried to write an in-depth friendship they would also fail.
 
Last edited:

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,083
Location
Bulgaria
Fact of the matter is video game developers often barely write a decent and coherent story, failing to deliver a casual and mundane human interaction or a plot tension between different characters. They have no place writing about complexity of depths interpersonal relationships. If they tried to write an in-depth friendship they would also fail.
Well tumbler retards do lack any kind of social experience. It is pretty hard to write normal human interactions when your only experience is agreeing to a bunch of screeching sjws on the internet. Great examples of good writing of human interactions are Kingdom Come and the Witcher 3. The most memorable moments of those games are getting drunk and fucking.
 

Quillon

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2016
Messages
5,214
Fact of the matter is video game developers often barely write a decent and coherent story, failing to deliver a casual and mundane human interaction or a plot tension between different characters. They have no place writing about complexity of depths interpersonal relationships. If they tried to write an in-depth friendship they would also fail.

Everything's on Fire and No One Knows What to Do indeed.
 

oldmanpaco

Master of Siestas
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
Messages
13,609
Location
Winter
I think we must ask ourselves why *did* romances work in BG2? And why isn't that replicable in other rpgs?

-More gradual. Spread out across many dialogues, not just "Hi we met yesterday and now I Love you."
-More subtle. Old Bioware writers at least understood the basics of human courtship and had less tween-fiction "I hab feelings for you" style writing
-No character was overtly sexual, even the "ladies man" Haer Dalis
-Possible to fuck it up by saying the wrong thing

Even with that you still had cringey stuff like Jaheira hooking up with you while her husband's body was barely cold and girls fighting over you in stupid ways. Romance should probably be scrapped for most RPGs, or limited to NPC non-party members.

Modern games can't do gradual because instant gratification, can't let them fuck it up because wahhh I don't like consequences, and everyone is super-horny and direct because the writers learned about sex from anime and porn.

Also not every character was trying to get into your pants and homosexuality was not over represented.

Good news for the Pillars 2 romances, there are two characters you can't romance and none of the party members are homosexual

A bisexual is just a homosexual with commitment issues.
 

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