My collected criticism on Pillars of Eternity (very minor spoilers)

[Prime Junta]

Finally - I am asking all the experts in the Codex - is there games that show the sort of C&C wished by the OP? I have played both KOTR and Mass Effect and would not play them again to experience an evil/ or good experience - are those sides drastically different? How much does the plot change?

KOTOR and ME have more pseudo-choices than real-choices. The pyrotechnics are different, the people you kill are different, and the ending slideshow is different, but the main plot arc and resolution is the same. Whatever you do, you'll end up fighting the end boss/fighting your way through that incredibly tedious mob to get hit in the face with a stale fish.

There are games with deeper C&C. From the classics, Fallout 1 and 2 are pretty good examples, especially Fallout 1 IMO (with Fallout 2 the consequences are more in the sub-arcs than the big plot arc). To pick something a little more modern, the Witchers are pretty good with C&C too; things play out materially differently depending on who you side with and what you choose. Dragon Age: Origins has pretty serious C&C as well (although that IMO is its one redeeming feature, I really don't dig the cooldown-based gameplay and dating-game intra-party-shenanigans). NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer will give you a really different experience at all levels when playing as "good" (suppressing the curse) or "evil" (embracing it).

That's a few off the top of my head.

 

[felipepepe]

C&C is really hard and expensive to do. Most games go for small cosmetic choices, those nauseating "illusion of choice", which are basically this:

You reach a important event, make some choices, the game reacts to it in a cosmetic way, and then you're back on the main/only plotline. "Wow Jedi Exile, you're a Sith Lord, the scourge of the galaxy! Now please go save the galaxy" "Ok". Is what Pillars does in Act 2. "Hey, you got all these cute evidences, facts and dialog checks, but Thanos just killed everyone so they don't matter at all. Sucks to be you!"

A few games do this way better, which various ramifications over a central story, but your choices will heavily alter what choices you get in the future.

The Way of the Samurai series is my favorite example - a game where each choice will COMPLETELY change the story. Everything happens in a small village, over a short set of days - each with various events by various factions. So Say for example that it's morning of day 3: you can save a girl being kidnapped, help rebels burn down a school, protect the school from rebels, go fish with a bro or just sleep. Your choice will affect how each faction evolves and the options you have next time - if the school was burned down by the rebels, you won't be able to see the event that would happen there on day 4, and if the girl was kidnapped you won't be able to get the ending where you run away with her, and so on...

Here's the complete event tree of WotS4:

You can see that there's a "main story" on the upper half, but with various ramifications - and those will affect the ending you get. But more than that, there's a second, entirely different story-line in the lower half, all based on a single choice you made at the start. This is extremely rare, IIRC only The Witcher 2 does something equally radical.

Age of Decadence, on the other hand, is a nightmare impossible to map, because everything leads to another different thing, and apart from visiting the four cities, everything else is miss-able or can be denied. It really feels like a CYOA game, which were structured like this:

The only other games like those are mostly Japanese Visual Novels, or things like Princess Maker 2, Long Live the Queen, etc...

 

[Theldaran]

For branching plot, you may want to check out Virtue's Last Reward, a visual novel adventure on Nintendo 3DS and PS Vita. In this game, you walk down a tree with fixed events, but there are many different paths in which you can experience the events (and that is also controlled by the writers). It's a character-driven story about trust and betrayal, with your life at stake. Then the story moves to time travel and scientific mumbo jumbo, if you like that. The event tree is kinda big, with around 9 endings and that many bad endings. Aside from some aspects the feel is less Japanese-ish and more Western than most games of its kind.

This game will be having a sequel hopefully this year, which will be supposedly tailor-made for Western audiences or at least with us in mind, since we're who made it possible after all. It will be selling like hotcakes I think. It does have a prequel, 999 "Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors", but it's kinda old.

 

[Mygaffer]

I know this is an old post you should really check out what they are doing with the sequel, Deadfire. Engagement as a thing every character and enemy has is gone, there will only be a few enemies and characters that get engagement and it will be more powerful as a result, so now you can move around freely but also have one party member with an engagement build that is more tacitcal than it was in the first game.

Spells are going to get stronger, the way they are balancing that is they will take longer to cast BUT you can re-target them any time before the actual cast goes off. Instead of per rest specific spells or abilities they are going to allow you to empower spells and abilities to make them more powerful in interesting ways and those will be per rest. That way you don't have to feel like you can't cast your spells as a caster in case you need them later, if you get in a tough encounter later you'll use your limited "empowerment."

They started to fix the problem with unique items being so bland with the souldbound items, I don't know if you've used them but they do really interesting things, besides many of them being superb or legendary when upgraded, or having other really good +acc and +dmg buffs, they do interesting stuff like cast blindness on hit, cast dominate on hit, summon vessels, etc.

Also they're going to vastly change factions, the faction decisions will matter throughout the game and they're changing the way dispositions work.

There's a lot more I could talk about but for the people who didn't like the first game, and I know there's a sizeable chunk of old BG fans who feel that way, it really seems like Deadfire is going to fix most of the issues. I really liked Pillars personally but there were definitely design flaws that needed to be fixed.

They're doing a campaign for it right now:

https://www.fig.co/campaigns/deadfire

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Mygaffer]

You don't like the announced changes?

 

[Lhynn]

I know this is an old post you should really check out what they are doing with the sequel, Deadfire. Engagement as a thing every character and enemy has is gone, there will only be a few enemies and characters that get engagement and it will be more powerful as a result, so now you can move around freely but also have one party member with an engagement build that is more tacitcal than it was in the first game.

Spells are going to get stronger, the way they are balancing that is they will take longer to cast BUT you can re-target them any time before the actual cast goes off. Instead of per rest specific spells or abilities they are going to allow you to empower spells and abilities to make them more powerful in interesting ways and those will be per rest. That way you don't have to feel like you can't cast your spells as a caster in case you need them later, if you get in a tough encounter later you'll use your limited "empowerment."

They started to fix the problem with unique items being so bland with the souldbound items, I don't know if you've used them but they do really interesting things, besides many of them being superb or legendary when upgraded, or having other really good +acc and +dmg buffs, they do interesting stuff like cast blindness on hit, cast dominate on hit, summon vessels, etc.

Also they're going to vastly change factions, the faction decisions will matter throughout the game and they're changing the way dispositions work.

There's a lot more I could talk about but for the people who didn't like the first game, and I know there's a sizeable chunk of old BG fans who feel that way, it really seems like Deadfire is going to fix most of the issues. I really liked Pillars personally but there were definitely design flaws that needed to be fixed.

They're doing a campaign for it right now:

https://www.fig.co/campaigns/deadfire

Tell us more about this... "Deadfire" game you speak of.

 

[Luckmann]

Baldur's Gate 1 is better than Baldur's Gate 2.

 

[laclongquan]

I havent played the game so I can not speak on its strength in gameplay or other system.

However, I do see a few screenshot of the dialog and I must say it totally turn me off. Pompous, long winded, and uninspired.

So a big mark agaisnt POE based on storyfags' standard, which is a rare thing for me, since I usually judge game on gameplay.

 

[Mygaffer]

Tell us more about this... "Deadfire" game you speak of.

Well it's a super niche title that got almost no reaction, positive or negative, on RPGCodex so I'm not surprised you haven't heard of it. It's a game where "Hitler" shoveled all the "Jews" of fun character builds into the "oven" of balance.

But now there's a 100' statue that squeezes people to death, and like pirates and junk, so it's instantly cool now.

Duh.