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

[MajorMace]

and everyone hates this character in BG2

ahah dude

 

[Iskramor]

Biggest disapointment was paul kirsch after solid shit with tyranny we got takehu prodigy and pride of huana who is full of himself and is insuffarable faggot..What the actual fuck?????? Now imagine if takehu is writen by avellone.Durance suprassed easily in terms of writing.

 

[fantadomat]

Not sure if this has been discussed before, but something new I'm seeing on GOG with a few recent divisive game releases is that it appears that the publisher/developer can now reset the upvote/downvote of user ratings. (I noticed it first with respect to Ash of Gods, where Banner Saga fans seemed to be upvoting negative reviews, which would percolate to the top by the end of the day, only to have them reset at night fall. It seems to be going on with POE2, where you'll see that the user ratings all have 0/0 helpfulness.)

Yeah, i have noticed the same shit,sometimes your vote on the game gets reset/removed. I am talking about the 5star thing,i have seen a few times that i haven't rated a game that i am certain i rated.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Roguey]

BioWare (until 2011) was consistently above Obsidian in programming, art, sound, music, toolsets, graphics, QA, UIs, and so on.

I will insist that Mask of the Betrayer has better art direction and music than any 3D Bioware game.

 

[Lacrymas]

Inb4 it turns out normies don't actually read in games. That won't be that big of a suprise, though.

 

[Fairfax]

reactivity and consequences in 7 designers :
xoti wiggles and wigs and giggles and aloth -2

pallegina: joins u after talk with queen
pallegina u screwed her quest: PUTAAAA! > joins u after talk with queen

reactivity in linear casual not rpg:

you talk to Anomen, so does Keldorn, try to bring good side out of him, follow his quest, make him do right thing, he gets summoned to holy Order, gets promotion, get +2 stats, changed alignment, apologies to Keldorn, gets <good> dialogue options for the whole game up to ToB

you talk to Anomen, make him do bad things, he kills the guy, gets kicked out, Keldorn tries to bring him back, Anomen rages and cries you dog and they fight out of your control, regardless you lose 1 companion possibly, Anomen changes alignment to chaotic, loses some things I think, gets <evil> option up until ToB, I think can randomly leave the party cause he's an ass

oh and the dude is romanceable so more complications if you're <female>

and everyone hates this character in BG2

PoE2 actually had 8 narrative designers and 4 additional writers:

• Narrative Design Leads - Carrie Patel, Joshua Eric Sawyer
• Narrative Designers - Alex Scokel, Eric Fenstermaker, Kate Dollarhyde, Megan Starks, Olivia Veras, Paul Kirsch
• Additional Writing - Anthony Evans, John Schmautz, Casey Hollingshead, Nitai Poddar

And 18 non-narrative designers, though 2 (Olivia Veras and John Schmautz) also worked as writers:

• Design Lead - Bobby Null
• Area Designers - Drew Hammel, Jeff Husges, Jesse Farrell, John Cotto, Jorge Salgado, Matthew Perez, Olivia Veras, Ryan Torres, Shaun Dean
• System Designers - Brian Heins, John Schmautz, Matthew Sheets, Nick Carver, David Williams
• Additional System Design - Brandon Adler
• Additional Technical Design - Andy Artz, Samuel Chin

BG2 only had 9 designers for everything:

• Director of Writing and Design - James Ohlen
• Lead Design - Kevin Martens
• Design - David Gaider, Brent Knowles, Lukas Kristjanson, John Winski
• Additional Design - Rob Bartel, John Samuel Gallagher, Drew Karpyshyn

PoE2 also had a much longer development cycle.

 

[AwesomeButton]

reactivity in linear casual not rpg:

you talk to Anomen, so does Keldorn, try to bring good side out of him, follow his quest, make him do right thing, he gets summoned to holy Order, gets promotion, get +2 stats, changed alignment, apologies to Keldorn, gets <good> dialogue options for the whole game up to ToB

you talk to Anomen, make him do bad things, he kills the guy, gets kicked out, Keldorn tries to bring him back, Anomen rages and cries you dog and they fight out of your control, regardless you lose 1 companion possibly, Anomen changes alignment to chaotic, loses some things I think, gets <evil> option up until ToB, I think can randomly leave the party cause he's an ass

oh and the dude is romanceable so more complications if you're <female>

and everyone hates this character in BG2

Who wants to go through all this shit? I'm serious. This can be fun the first time it happens, if the player is in the mood for the mini soap opera. But on every next playthrough I would avoid Anomen.

 

[Fairfax]

Biggest disapointment was paul kirsch after solid shit with tyranny we got takehu prodigy and pride of huana who is full of himself and is insuffarable faggot..What the actual fuck?????? Now imagine if takehu is writen by avellone.Durance suprassed easily in terms of writing.

Tekehu as a concept follows MCA's guidelines for the most part, but his personality and arc are so boring that it'd be a waste to give him to MCA. Plus he's already handled a similar concept with Kaelyn. Ydwin would have more potential as an Avellonian companion.

I will insist that Mask of the Betrayer has better art direction and music than any 3D Bioware game.

I agree, but that doesn't make what I said less true.

 

[jf8350143]

Eh. Obsidian has been experimenting with this since at least NWN2, and other RPGs have flirted with some idea of dynamic and branching companion dialogues/responses. I have never felt that this is worthwhile a direction to pursue.

I think writing and scripting resources for such reactivity should nearly always be spent on quests and the main story, and, of course, places where companion reactivity synergises greatly with them (see: Alpha Protocol). Three times more interaction? Even now, far too much time is spent on this stuff and it's not cost efficient.

When we instead have writers spend a lot of time figuring out how X character would have different emoshuns about X lore thing or Y race, it's basically a whole lot of flavour text that takes far too much effort to get done. It would be far better to achieve a tenth of AOD's quest reactivity instead. It's much more fruitful and plausible to insert consequential reactivity/C&C for specific quests because it's more self-contained, you can kill or make people disappear; with a character like Eder, you either get drastic events few players will pursue (like ded Eder) or a bunch of flavour text.

I also believe that reactivity for what happened in the previous game is a fool's errand - either that ends up being token stuff that again isn't worth it (from pantaloons, to companions dropping references to earlier events), or it ends up being too much a task to handle (E.g. first game events materially altering course of events in second game main quest).

Overall, it's another curious case of resources spent not terribly for a not terrible outcome, but you wonder if they shouldn't have been chasing better rabbits in terms of proper RPG gameplay.

Here's the thing, there are a lot of people want to see companion interact with each other, react to other companions' behaviour instead of just react to the main story. That's what makes it feels like you are having a team travelling together. Otherwise you might just have a solo protagonist and make all the companions NPCs, just have them appear in the main story related scenes.

All those budget 'should be spent on A instead of B' talk is utter non-sense since everyone wants different things from a game and whatever you do you can't please all of them. Why create a character creation system when tons of people don't give a shit about creating their own character, some people could even claim that a pre-set protagonist is a superior choice because the writer could create a more focused story instead of worrying "what about the players wants to play a evil asshole?".

 

[frajaq]

One of the few things I liked in Tyranny was that you could progress both Good/Bad bars reputation with companions, and you even unlocked different traits by doing so. I don't know why they just transferred that from that game

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Here's the thing, there are a lot of people want to see companion interact with each other, react to other companions' behaviour instead of just react to the main story. That's what makes it feels like you are having a team travelling together. Otherwise you might just have a solo protagonist and make all the companions NPCs, just have them appear in the main story related scenes.

All those budget 'should be spent on A instead of B' talk is utter non-sense since everyone wants different things from a game and whatever you do you can't please all of them. Why create a character creation system when tons of people don't give a shit about creating their own character, some people could even claim that a pre-set protagonist is a superior choice because the writer could create a more focused story instead of worrying "what about the players wants to play a evil asshole?".

The problem with Obsidian's recent work is that it often feels like they're trying to please everyone. In the process, they spread themselves too thin and the whole game suffers. I wish they would just pick a few things to prioritize and then really pour a ton of effort into them. It doesn't have to be the things I'd ideally want them to focus on just as long as they do the work to make some parts of the game truly exceptional, even at the expense of everything else.

Obviously they don't have the writing talent to make the old model work--great narrative, great dialogue, great characters and seriously subpar gameplay. But presumably Sawyer has the skillset to give us a game with great quest design, great encounter design, and fun/interesting potential character builds. Rather than really drilling down on that stuff, he tried to make a game with solid everything, so even the best parts of Deadfire feel like they're worse than they should've been.

Obsidian needs to stop trying to make well-rounded RPGs, which is exactly the same mistake they made with Pillars 1. Sawyer should know better with his love of all things German: he who defends everything defends nothing. But I guess that's anathema to Herr Balance.

 

[Great Deceiver]

This new "narrative designer" title makes me rage for some reason. What happened to "writer"?

Is "narrative designer" something Tumblr dangerhair womynz came up with because they don't feel validated enough simply being called a writer when they write shit? I don't get it.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah, Deadfire is a better game in almost every way but it also repeats a lot of the same mistakes. Instead of making something that has focus and purpose, they overextended again with ill-thought stretch goals and futile chase after Larian's share of the pie.

Like, Biowhore fans on Steam are mad because romances are too short and generic, while people here are mad because water spells are turning freaking xaurips gay. God only knows how much time and resoures Obsidian wasted on developing the romances, only for it to fail on all fronts and piss off entire fanbase from left to right.

 

[TemplarGR]

Yeah, i have noticed the same shit,sometimes your vote on the game gets reset/removed. I am talking about the 5star thing,i have seen a few times that i haven't rated a game that i am certain i rated.

You people should try making user reviews on metacritic at release of any AAA game. Only 10/10 user reviews are allowed, any negative one is getting removed in like 2 seconds. I have had 2 metacritic accounts banned for calling metacritic out on it. Remember it happening during Civilization 6 release, back when Civ 6 had a 95 metascore due to bribed reviews and the metascore was similar due to shills with only 1review/vote giving Civ6 10/10. I made reviews with detailed accounts on what was wrong with the game, the reviews removed. I redid them 5 times, the fifth time they removed my review they banned my account as well.

Of course if you visit metacritic now you can see a ton of negative user reviews because i suppose the bribed grace period is over and they can't justify the effort to supress user opinion anymore, but yeah, that is metacritic for you.

Also would like to remind that even sites like IMDB are severely compromised these days, with marvel universe trash like Black Panther getting masterpiece scores, so much so that even the most voted review on Black Panther at IMDB cites the fact that something seems fishy about the scores...

All i want to say is that currently there is a ton of marketing manipulation on all entertainment forms, because hype and good reviews sell games/movies/whatever, not quality. So they want to make sure that negative opinions are censored and out of sight.

And GOG is no stranger to this. Visit any garbage game on GOG and you will find at least 3.5 out of 5 stars. There is no game, even the most garbage one, with a lower score...

 

[TemplarGR]

Yeah, Deadfire is a better game in almost every way but it also repeats a lot of the same mistakes. Instead of making something that has focus and purpose, they overextended again with ill-thought stretch goals and futile chase after Larian's share of the pie.

Like, Biowhore fans on Steam are mad because romances are too short and generic, while people here are mad because water spells are turning freaking xaurips gay. God only knows how much time and resoures Obsidian wasted on developing the romances, only for it to fail on all fronts and piss off entire fanbase from left to right.

Storyfags, the cancer of the video game industry. People who would rather read novels and/or watch movies and tv series, but for some odd reason want to play video games instead. I suppose the reason is twofold, for one, most of those were kids/teens when they first played RPGs so they got influenced a lot by romances/stories there and since they had no other frame of reference they think that is the perfect way to tell a story, and secondly, there is the power fantasy element involved that lets them feel they are better than they are in the real world, and that stuff they can't take from other forms of storytelling. So yeah you may be a pimplefaced nerd with no social life, no skill, no money, dungeon crawling in your mom's basement, but sure, you are saving the world for the 5000th time AND you get a legion of hot chicks because you are so awesome. LOL.

This cancer has come to the point where people don't even understand what an RPG is anymore, and they think that the only thing that makes an RPG is the epic story with fluff dialogue choices and ridiculous fan fiction romances. I have witnessed tons of negative reviews on perfectly fine games because "the story wasn't good" (meaning "i didn't feel like a badass in this game") and have witnessed tons of hype on garbage games because they had a good story and fleshed out characters.

And since those people are a large chunk of the market, and have money to spend, RPGs have seriously declined in order to appease them.

In Obsidian's case, i think the problem lies with the engine. In Bioware games, there is a full 3D "cinematic" camera where you can watch nicely detailed models speaking and stuff (or perhaps stare for hours at Miranda's ass). That way, romances feel more real because you can perceive the characters as something more than tiny sprites on an isometric engine. You know you want to romance Miranda because look at dat ass brah! You can't do that in isometric games, so i suppose romances feel more superficial. I doubt most storyfags would actually care about quality writting since they eat Bioware shite for breakfast anyway.

 

[Prime Junta]

You people should try making user reviews on metacritic at release of any AAA game.

Behead everyone making user reviews on metacritic at release of any game, AAA or otherwise.

 

[Reinhardt]

people don't even understand what an RPG is

You can't blame them.

 

[Background Character]

Aloth's quest is the one that takes you to northeast of the slave fort right? The one with the Thaos mural? What is it about, can someone spoil it for me? Aloth is not in my game, he tripped and fell over a blood pool.

Also is there a way to solve the slave quests that happens in those islands in a way that's unsatisfying for every faction?

 

[dragonul09]

In the last two days the game couldn't even muster enough players to get 8k on steam and it averages at a total of 10k in the last 30 day, but Infinitron for the 99 time suspects that this weekend will truly be the one where people will finally buy the game in mass and will peak at 50k

I can already see PowerTrip Feargus face, just looking for someone to blame, pity Avellone already left, so there's one less employee to blame

 

[aweigh]

Holocaust face.

 

[Grunker]

reactivity and consequences in 7 designers :
xoti wiggles and wigs and giggles and aloth -2

pallegina: joins u after talk with queen
pallegina u screwed her quest: PUTAAAA! > joins u after talk with queen

reactivity in linear casual not rpg:

you talk to Anomen, so does Keldorn, try to bring good side out of him, follow his quest, make him do right thing, he gets summoned to holy Order, gets promotion, get +2 stats, changed alignment, apologies to Keldorn, gets <good> dialogue options for the whole game up to ToB

you talk to Anomen, make him do bad things, he kills the guy, gets kicked out, Keldorn tries to bring him back, Anomen rages and cries you dog and they fight out of your control, regardless you lose 1 companion possibly, Anomen changes alignment to chaotic, loses some things I think, gets <evil> option up until ToB, I think can randomly leave the party cause he's an ass

oh and the dude is romanceable so more complications if you're <female>

and everyone hates this character in BG2

If ever a post served as the perfect example of bias, this would be it.

You are comparing cross-game reactivity from PoE -> PoE 2 to intergame reactivity in BG2.

So what happens if you actually make the honest, direct comparison?

Oh that's right: no fucking matter what you did in BG1 Jaheira, Minsc and Imoen will be there to greet you at the start of the game, acting as if you ran along with the standard party, even if you never met them - hell, even if you killed them. Returning companions have 0 reactivity as there is no data imported from your old save except your character's stats, meaning that they will all behave exactly the same regardless of, well, anything.

Good grief.

 

[Trashos]

There is a thing called efficient distribution of resources.

 

[aweigh]

Intergame reactivity is the leading cause of black on black crime

 

[Tigranes]

Which is why I wasn't a big fan of either Obsidian trumping up intergame reactivity or fans demanding "willl every single detail of what I did at that inn be reflected". It just isn't a great place to concentrate your writing and scripting and branching. Really consequential and rewarding reactivity with gameplay consequences are often going to be generated through quest / main plot reactivity.

Oh and I know some guy replied before with "ok but thats dum everybody wants different things and some people like the flavour text" - some people want to romance everything and have unlimited party members so they don't miss any of the banter, doesn't mean that's a good use of your limited resources OR that it's a good feature to include in your game. It's the wrong rationale to chase. Intergame reactivity and companion reputation based dynamic banter is nice to have for a game of this type, but these games are not & should not be first and foremost relationship simulators no matter how some people might wish.