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

[Delterius]

maybe the ogres domesticated the oozes by throwing them treats made of adventurer limbs

 

[Parabalus]

I can't bring myself to criticize the fact that a pack of trash mobs is composed of ogres and oozes with absolutely no reason for these creatures to get along. And yet again, yes : it's a legitimate complain. I just don't understand how it would be considered a matter of writing and not of design.

It is a matter of both. A pack of ogres and oozes might be an interesting encounter in terms of design, it's bad writing if they haven't established why they'd work together. It might not seem that big of a deal, but it's symptomatic of larger, already discussed, issues. I generally agree with what Lurker King is saying, he just isn't presenting it very well.

Those slime/ogre packs are in Od Nua right?

Everyone there is sorta being mind controlled by the dragon, don't think it's that far fetched. It has adragans serving it, why not ogre+oozes?

 

[Blakemoreland Hybrid Boss]

It is a matter of both. A pack of ogres and oozes might be an interesting encounter in terms of design, but it's bad writing if they haven't established why they'd work together, or even worse - established that they wouldn't. It might not seem that big of a deal, but it's symptomatic of larger, already discussed, issues. I generally agree with what Lurker King is saying, he just isn't presenting it very well.

Think about writing in movies. The writing part is not limited to the dialogue, but includes whether the events unfold in a credible manner or not, and whether the characters are believable or not. Of course, you could object that this was all in the script, but that’s not the point because you usually have the vision of the game laid out in a game design document. Yet, it’s not considered writing, it’s considered design.

 

[Lacrymas]

I was just giving it as an example, I don't remember whether it's actually a real encounter at all. The important part is that if some factions are established to be enemies (or mindless destroyers like oozes), them being seen together peacefully coexisting for an encounter is bad writing.

 

[Quillon]

them being seen together peacefully coexisting for an encounter is bad writing.

design*

 

[Lacrymas]

That's the thing. It might not be bad design if the encounter is different, challenging and even logical in terms of mechanics, but it will still be bad writing. That's the distinction I want to make and which Lurker King isn't and conflating a lot of terminology and using it interchangeably. I'm not saying it's good to have such internal-logic-breaking encounters, I'm just making some things clearer.

 

[Sacred82]

Lots of people here (like me) were apathetic to the first DOS and then the dumbing down of the sequel moved them from apathy to dislike.

there were also lots of fanboys, and they were responsible for the hype around D:OS2


the people who enjoyed D:OS enjoyed it for the combat, I would think the people who were apathetic about it (like me, too) were so for other reasons, and I kind of doubt the second game is worse in those regards.

 

[Darth Roxor]

accursed roxor

 

[hungse]

All i can see is

 

[CptMace]

I presented a few objections and you ignore them and repeated your previews statements. Let me explain the objections again.

First, you didn’t provide any arguments that the developers weren’t trying to achieve some sort of plausibility in the way they present the game world. You can see that in BG2 they thought about all sorts of minute details, e.g., the threat of prison involving the use of magic can be bypassed by bribing corrupt officials. To think they don’t give a shit and just want to provide the player with things to kill is a caricature that reflects your preferences, not those from the developers.

True, I'll try to adress that for BGII. First, let me say that I didn't mean to say that they didn't want to achieve any degree of plausibility whatsoever, but that they clearly put the dungeon crawling experience - and the gameplay - on top of their design priority to the point of willingly sacrificing plausibility. There is obviously an attention to detail, but I think it only goes to some extent, which is why I disagree with including encounters or itemisation in a broad analysis of its writing.
For BGII, I'd base my arguments on how the design is tailored for a hack n slash experience, and how the plausibility of the world -- as in the placement of items, monsters etc -- came second in the design process.

- Itemisation : Whacky items in whacky places
Well, Lilarcor is a typical case. But there are more obvious examples. In BG2, one of the coolest aspect of itemisation is how you can forge legendary stuff after claiming its different parts. The Gesen Bow is said to draw its energy from another plane. Quite the unusual stuff. Now I'll defend that BGII's design puts the emphasis on the gameplay since you fond the shaft of this bow in the tanner's place, on the bridge district, while the string is properly guarded by golems in a trap room. In regard of the world-building, I have no fucking idea why there's a mythical shaft laying around in some insalubrious house. It doesn't link with the tanner's business - either as a tanner or as a criminal. Why not have the shaft laying around in the thieves' guild instead of this house ? It would have been just as easy to pick up, and would have made more sense as these fucks could snatch anything they find shiny. Well I'm sure it's a matter of moment-to-moment gameplay, and they went for more-or-less balanced and spread out distribution of treasures throughout the game, gladly sacrificing plausability for it.
Crom Faeyr, the good ol' hammer is an interesting case since you enhance an existing item instead or rebuilding one. Thing is, again, I have no idea why the recipe is held by a dragon.
These things make perfect sense in terms of game design, you kill a dragon and get rewarded with a valuable treasure. They make zero sense in terms of world-building and plausibility. It would have taken 0 extra effort to put that recipe in the hands of a drow priestess, or in some blacksmith' workshop, or anybody at least lousely related to hammers. But gameplay-wise it would have made zero sense.


- Encounter design : Liches and Bitches
In Athkatla, there are liches hidden behind the walls of taverns rated 2/5 on tripadvisor. There are golems everywhere, because there are powerful wizards everywhere. Athkatla is a place where magic is regulated but there are far more wizards than on the sword coast, and they're all more powerful as well. I haven't counted, but I'm pretty sure there are as many vampires in athkatla as there are regular people.
Thieves in Athkatla are the real deal. Their average power level suggests they could besiege and conquer Candlekeep with ease.

Yet, and that's my point : most people won't care. It won't occur to them that a dragon holding onto a recipe which explains how to turn a hammer into another hammer, which would be of absolutely no use to her or him, makes no sense. Because gameplay-wise, it makes perfect sense. They don't have the same frame of reference here.

Imagine someone who's all about combat in crpgs and who considers that writing, level-design, systems etc are all integral to combat design. Basically, a pure gameplay perspective on crpgs, and a suspiciously sawyerist vision on top of that. The guy would deem PST's design shitty, but more importantly, he would deem pst's writing shitty. He would disregard the intention of the designer and jump to the conclusion, by his uniformised framework, that PST has a particularly flawed writing - since it doesn't serve the combat.

Hence my stance : It's fine to attack the game on this, but it's a matter of design, not a matter of writing. They pursposefully went for this type of design because they - rightfully - considered it beneficial to the game experience.

Second, even if they didn’t want to make things plausible, it doesn’t shield them from criticism. The developers from Bioware didn’t want DA:I to have good combat and itemization, but that does not shield them from criticisms about such combat and itemization. If this line of reasoning does not work in this case, it does not work with BG2 either. Again, you didn’t provided any reply to this objection, but just repeated your statement without arguments.

Oh I agree with that, I tried to be explicit about the fact it doesn't shield them from criticism. But since we were discussing what should be criticized as good/bad writing and whats more relevant to the design, I just meant to say that I'd rather put some of this stuff on the account of good/bad design.

Spoiler

I think it'd make more sense to directly criticise their approach of the world-building from the get-go

I never pretended that anyone is shielded from criticism.

I can't bring myself to criticize the fact that a pack of trash mobs is composed of ogres and oozes with absolutely no reason for these creatures to get along. And yet again, yes : it's a legitimate complain. I just don't understand how it would be considered a matter of writing and not of design.

Because you are adopting a superficial notion of writing, which is nothing more than the available written text in dialogues and story. Read the comments above about this topic.

I do, but I think most people would do so for BGII, IWD or games with such a design (focus on moment-to-moment gameplay, hack n slash structure of quests/dungeons...). I insist however that it goes beyond the written text, I think the story, narration, main quest and side quest structures and pacing of the story are all on the account of writing as well.

I mean, take a look at awesomebutton's thread about ranking some games in terms of writing. Nobody's really talking about anything but the usual stuff we label as writing. There's no mention of itemisation or encounter design.

 

[Prime Junta]

That's the thing. It might not be bad design if the encounter is different, challenging and even logical in terms of mechanics, but it will still be bad writing. That's the distinction I want to make and which Lurker King isn't and conflating a lot of terminology and using it interchangeably. I'm not saying it's good to have such internal-logic-breaking encounters, I'm just making some things clearer.

Nah. Calling it writing stretches the definition of writing so far it's no longer useful.

Worldbuilding = the history, economy, ecology, internal logic, ethnography, etc. of an internal world.
Writing = text that's actually in the game.
Design (with its various subdisciplines) = the maps, artefacts, and systems that are in the game.

In a well-made game, worldbuilding, writing, and design all support each other. The writing and design communicate and make use of the worldbuilding, and present a coherent and believable picture of the stuff that's going on in the game.

So your ogres-and-oozes level would fall under worldbuilding and design. It's incoherent worldbuilding if the world is built without taking into account ecology (how do ogres and oozes coexist?) or inconsistent design if the worldbuilding does consider it but the design doesn't reflect it. Pillars (OC especially) tripped up with this stuff a fair bit. The large-scale worldbuilding is excellent -- clearly better than anything from BioWare for example -- but the small-scale stuff, of how it actually comes across in the maps and encounters, is often clumsy.

That said, in a hack-and-slash fantasy cRPG, this is kind of picking nits in my opinion. Not a great many of Baldur's Gate 2's environments make a whole lot of sense either if you start thinking about it too hard from that PoV. The genre demands dungeon crawls with set-piece combat encounters, and if the focus is on that, then internal consistency often has to take a back seat. The best dungeon in BG2 is IMO Firkraag's stronghold, and the monster composition in it does not make a lick of internal sense. Golems, werewolves, orcs, vampires, and genies all happily coexisting in a dragon's lair? You need a good many more contortions to account for that than for the ogres and oozes.

Put another way, I don't really fault Pillars for illogical monster compositions or contrived dungeon maps: that's kind of to be expected. I do fault it for too many trash mobs and often-repetitive, hastily cobbled-together encounters. I think you only notice the ogres and oozes because the levels and encounters themselves are kind of meh.

 

[Lacrymas]

Worldbuilding is part of the writing, though, I don't know why you are separating it. I have never encountered such distinction before. Do you see worldbuilding as some kind of list of things that exist in a setting and is divorced from anything else? Even so, it will still be a writing exercise. What else would it be?

 

[Quillon]

Environment/character art, portraits etc are part of the writing too. They tell stuff without words but why separate them? If you ask me everything in a game is writing. It's all codes and 1s and 0s, no? WRITING MY NIGGA!

 

[Sizzle]

Well, that's (a part of) the problem - the worldbuilding in PoE doesn't always mesh well (or sometimes at all) with the rest of the writing.

The overall ideas of PoE are sound. Some of them, like taking place in a post-revolutionary area that's akin to 18th century USA, are pretty interesting. But few of those are actually relevant to the plot - they are merely background lore fluff.

So, yes, it should be considered a separate aspect of both writing and design.

 

[Sacred82]

accursed roxor

come on, your people are used to being scapegoats

 

[Lacrymas]

So, yes, it should be considered a separate aspect of both writing and design.

It will just be considered bad writing if taken as a whole. It's much harder to fail at worldbuilding than at writing characters and dialogues, that's why amateur writers spend so much time writing about the world. If the worldbuilding doesn't have anything to do with what we are doing, why have it at all? It bogs down the overall writing with useless trivia that wastes your time. It's good if it adds some kind of wanderlust and anticipation (or foreshadowing) for what comes next, but the vast majority of explanations about the world in PoE are literally useless and self-contained. This all comes down to the writers not having a grasp of what a complete work of art is, especially one as standard as 99.9% of semi-/mainstream video games, it's not simply a collection of ideas that you can come up with. The fact that the worldbuilding IS separate from anything else is clear evidence of this, it means the writing has failed in this basic aspect, it doesn't mean that they are fundamentally separate.

 

[ArchAngel]

Well, that's (a part of) the problem - the worldbuilding in PoE doesn't always mesh well (or sometimes at all) with the rest of the writing.

The overall ideas of PoE are sound. Some of them, like taking place in a post-revolutionary area that's akin to 18th century USA, are pretty interesting. But few of those are actually relevant to the plot - they are merely background lore fluff.

So, yes, it should be considered a separate aspect of both writing and design.

Yea it would have been a much nicer game if they focused on colonialism instead of gods. They could have even made it a bit controversial by showing colonizers (USA) as what they were (evil murderers doing genocide on local population).

 

[Maculo]

Worldbuilding is part of the writing, though, I don't know why you are separating it. I have never encountered such distinction before. Do you see worldbuilding as some kind of list of things that exist in a setting and is divorced from anything else? Even so, it will still be a writing exercise. What else would it be?

I will catch flack for this example and perhaps deserving of it – Blizzard games. I believe Blizzard actually puts some thought into world-building to the extent the other writing/characters appear to be an afterthought. For example, Warcraft 2&3 and Starcraft 1 created the backdrop of different worlds, clans/factions (i.e., Orc clans, Terran organizations, Protoss castes/groups. Each had their own specializations (crafters, warriors, mystics, miners, etc.), motivations, and inter-rivalries. The background was not deep, but there was a sense of function or motivation.

When Blizzard gets to dialogue and characters....that's when the writing turns into a giant mess. Arguably, you could attribute this to bad execution, but the consistent difference in quality makes the world-building and characters/dialogue appear completely divorced from one another.

 

[Sizzle]

So, yes, it should be considered a separate aspect of both writing and design.

It will just be considered bad writing if taken as a whole. It's much harder to fail at worldbuilding than at writing characters and dialogues, that's why amateur writers spend so much time writing about the world. If the worldbuilding doesn't have anything to do with the what we are doing, why have it at all? It bogs down the overall writing with useless trivia that wastes your time. It's good if it adds some kind of wanderlust and anticipation (or foreshadowing) for what comes next, but the vast majority of explanations about the world in PoE are literally useless and self-contained. This all comes down to the writers not having a grasp of what a complete work of art is, especially one as standard as 99.9% of semi-/mainstream video games, it's not simply a collection of ideas that you can come up with. The fact that the worldbuilding IS separate from anything else is clear evidence of this, it means the writing has failed in this basic aspect, it doesn't mean that they are fundamentally separate.

Agreed for the most part, but here they kinda had to do it - in order to set up the lore for future games. Though it could and should have been handled better.

Well, that's (a part of) the problem - the worldbuilding in PoE doesn't always mesh well (or sometimes at all) with the rest of the writing.

The overall ideas of PoE are sound. Some of them, like taking place in a post-revolutionary area that's akin to 18th century USA, are pretty interesting. But few of those are actually relevant to the plot - they are merely background lore fluff.

So, yes, it should be considered a separate aspect of both writing and design.

Yea it would have been a much nicer game if they focused on colonialism instead of gods. They could have even made it a bit controversial by showing colonizers (USA) as what they were (evil murderers doing genocide on local population).

They kinda did, but, again - mostly as part of in-game lore books.

 

[frajaq]

Wouldn't it be nice if the PoE 1 was playable when one of the wars between Dyrwood colonizers vs natives was going on? For all it's talk about the tensions between the two people in the playable region we have like what, one quest where that's shown and we can intervene? (the Mercenary squad stranded in Northweald)

 

[Prime Junta]

Worldbuilding is part of the writing, though, I don't know why you are separating it. I have never encountered such distinction before. Do you see worldbuilding as some kind of list of things that exist in a setting and is divorced from anything else? Even so, it will still be a writing exercise. What else would it be?

It's by no means divorced from everything else; it's more like a cornerstone of everything else. "In a well-made game, worldbuilding, writing, and design all support each other. The writing and design communicate and make use of the worldbuilding, and present a coherent and believable picture of the stuff that's going on in the game."

It is mostly not a writing exercise. I suppose everyone has their own way of doing it, but with me the process involves stuff like bubbles with arrows between them, maps, tables of things, doodles, sometimes drawings, sometimes models, and so on and so forth. Writing too, for sure, but comparatively little of the writing is directly related to the worldbuilding.*

Look at it this way: if you're planning to run a role-playing adventure in a real setting -- say, Paris, 1931 -- and you want to portray that setting believably, you're going to be doing a quite a lot of research. You'll be reading up on the political situation, looking at archived newspapers and pictures, trying to find a Galeries Lafayette catalogue for that year, checking what the Hôtel Lutetia was like at the time, and so on and so forth. Once you've formed a coherent and sufficiently complete picture of the setting, you can start working on the characters, conflicts, end events in your adventure, and as you stumble on holes in your understanding, you'll go back to your research to fill them out. Right?

Worldbuilding is like that, except for an imaginary setting. You're asking the same research questions, only you're answering them yourself rather than digging through sources.

So mostly not writing, and definitely an activity distinct from writing. (And naturally the same process applies if your objective is to write a story, screenplay, or game script; it doesn't have to be a RPG adventure.)

*Unless what I'm writing is very specifically a setting, e.g. a lot of the stuff behind the link in my .sig.

 

[Lacrymas]

That's a false equivocation. It's absolutely not the same doing research for a real historical place and coming up with a new world. Next thing you'll be saying is that reading up for a history exam is writing. Every creative endeavor requires research and thorough understanding of a subject, but not in the way you are saying.

 

[Prime Junta]

That's a false equivocation. It's absolutely not the same doing research for a real historical place and coming up with a new world. Next thing you'll be saying is that reading up for a history exam is writing. Every creative endeavor requires research and thorough understanding of a subject, but not in the way you are saying.

Sorry, I must have been unclear. I meant "an analogous process," not "the same process." Point being, it's an activity that's distinct from writing, which underpins and supports it, and serves the same purpose for an imaginary setting as research does for a real setting.

Reading up for a history exam is a reasonable analogy as well. If running the adventure/writing the story/making the game is taking the exam, then doing the worldbuilding is reading up for the exam. Again: a distinct activity.

Edit: I'll underline again why in my view it's important to treat worldbuilding (for a game) as distinct from writing. It's because it should be reflected in everything, not only the writing -- architectural styles, clothing styles, weapon and armour designs, design of everyday objects, how people and creatures look and act, and so on and so forth. Definitely also the writing, but by no means -- or even primarily! -- only the writing.

 

[Delterius]

writ·ing
ˈrīdiNG/
noun

1. the activity or skill of marking coherent words on paper and composing text.
   "parents want schools to concentrate on reading, writing, and arithmetic"
2. written work, especially with regard to its style or quality.
   "the writing is straightforward and accessible"

I'm helping

 

[Sacred82]

narrative is a huge thing in itself, and worldbuilding is also a huge thing.


You better make a distinction between them for yourself before you attempt either or you're gonna end up with a clusterfuck or one of them being lackluster.