How's the writing in PoE2? PoE's merciless mountains of exposition and worldbuilding history got grating barely an hour or two into the game. I was much more a fan of Tyranny. Any indication as to how PoE2 is turning out?
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# ¿ May 6, 2018 14:34 |
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 00:30 |
I appear to be having a bug with PoE 1 where all the Kickstarter Souls are exactly the same in appearance to normal living NPCs. I vaguely remember them being gold or purple the last time I played? It makes wondering around places pretty annoying. Any idea what caused it/how to fix it?
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# ¿ May 7, 2018 06:02 |
GrandpaPants posted:For me at least, the first game had a really slow, kinda uncompelling start to it, and Thaos was never actually a very compelling antagonist. Like the most interesting thing was the Engwithan machine that he started at the beginning of the game that disintegrated people, but you literally don't go back to that until like, mid-Act 2 when you find another one. Compare it to Irenicus in BG2 who starts the game kidnapping you, killing two of your old companions (Dynaheir and Khalid), and then kidnapping your friend/sister, who you now have to find and rescue, which is a simple enough drive to propel through the actual game. After that you find out you're a Watcher, whatever that means, in a kind of dull conversation without much impact of the importance of that, and then you find another Watcher who ended up going insane because he Awakened, which is something that isn't exclusive to Watchers but isn't necessarily made clear that it's separate. All throughout is some background about the Hollowborn crisis and the Saint's War, which seemed like background dressing until it suddenly wasn't, but it ended up feeling like there was all this going on but none of it really felt like a good driver for your character's actions, except in that metanarrative sense where because you know you're the protagonist of a videogame, you're probably going to solve the Hollowborn crisis. Yeah, this is exactly my problems with Pillars 1. I'm doing my best to power on through it regardless. It's very similar to why I didn't get far into Torment. But Tyranny and Divinity Original Sin 2, on the other hand, nailed gripping intros. Pillars is just janky narrative and story wise. The initial hook feels mundane (your caravan is stopped and attacked) and then weirdly inconsequential (a weird machine does something to you but it's not that bad?). You go to a town where I guess you can end up with Eder, who is cool, and Aloth, who is not. Then there's some kind of thing going on with Raelic and then you bump into a keep which you become the leader of and then you have to go to the Temple of Woedica and it's filled with bad guys and I got three weird visions and there's this thing called Animancy, Watchers, Biavacs, and all sorts of Fantasy Proper Nouns but there's little attempt made to ease the player into it or make them care. I can't remember the post I read a while back but it basically summed up Pillars 1's writing as: "Hail, traveler! Welcome to our humble town. Before you say anything, let me regale you with twenty pages worth of our history. Two hundred years ago, we fought the...' Click, click. '...and then, during the Saint's War...' Click click click. '...which brings us to today. Now, what can I help you with?' And there's like half a dozen questions relating to it. I get that they obviously put a lot of work into the setting, and there's a desire to show it off, but there's just so many infodumps and it actively repels me from seeking out any of the worldbuilding or lore. Because of that, I can't tell what I've accidentally clicked through and what's just not explained adequately. It doesn't help that doing so much exposition through visions is kind of boring. Grieving Mother's introduction was excruciating. On the other hand, I like Pellagina. Big Shark Man seems fun. Hell, I think I stumbled into a room and just happened to solve Aloth's weird thing while trying to find someone else. If PoE2 has learned from Tyranny, I reckon it'll be great. BG1 wasn't great either.
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# ¿ May 8, 2018 12:14 |
Zulily Zoetrope posted:What was your beef with Torment? I'll grant that the intro dungeon wasn't hot, but it opens out into the Hive which is cool as heck, and you're always given a clear goal and motivation for The Nameless One. Except for when you get into the Lower Ward, but there's at least five separate plot hooks for you to stumble across telling you you wanna look for Ravel, which is a thing I wish more games would do. The CYOA into Intro Dungeon, really. I bounced right off it.
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# ¿ May 8, 2018 13:04 |
Basic Chunnel posted:Pretty fuckin long tbh. You’ll save some hours but you’re still running around and talking even when fights are somewhat shorter And the loading screens.
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# ¿ May 8, 2018 23:38 |
So, what's the thoughts on the story and writing?
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# ¿ May 18, 2018 05:58 |
Any tips for character creation? Are there certain skills I should put on my PC? My first PC has ended up with basically Eder's skillset which feels kind of sub-optimal enough to be a bit annoying.
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# ¿ Jun 14, 2018 12:37 |
So, yeah, as my previous post indicated, I've bit the bullet on this finally. Have to say, the writing and immediate plot hook is so much better than the first game. Loving the wealth of dialogue options and party interjections, although my pal Eder seems to be upset that I've come back from the dead and I'm a bit harsher. I feel like a few companion dialogues are a bit odd, though. Maia had this whole romance thing that seemed to come out of nowhere, and Xoti's had this talk about prophetic dreams which I've not really heard anything about. It's not major but it feels like I've missed or somehow skipped a conversation or two. edit: For example, with Maia, it went "What happened to my brother?" about five minutes after we first met, then, a few days later, "So, do you bang your crew, Captain?" and it felt like maybe there should've been something in between those. Deadfire is great at making it feel like my decisions in PoE1 held real weight. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 13:28 on Jun 16, 2018 |
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# ¿ Jun 16, 2018 13:05 |
Well, that's unfortunate. Does Deadfire not autosave much? I just crashed out and lost like an hour+ of progress.
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# ¿ Jun 17, 2018 10:28 |
Fair Bear Maiden posted:Autosave seem to work more or less like PoE1, and they basically only happen when you switch to a new area. Weird. Because I went through a bunch of new areas. I wonder if it's some interaction between crashing and Trial of Iron. But I still would've assumed that autosaves would've just overridden my last manual save.
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# ¿ Jun 17, 2018 10:58 |
Ugh. A bounty went incredibly wrong and I somehow aggro'd everyone in Nekataka's temple district and, welp, there goes the Iron challenge. At least I get to start a new game with Berath's Blessings! Fair Bear Maiden posted:I'd love a game set during the Saint's War but I don't know that it would necessarily have been the best way to introduce the setting on a low-ish budget and with the mission statement of making a Baldur's Gate spiritual successor. The problem with PoE1 is that, on one hand, it's trying to do both of those things and then also tell this fairly intricate story that is, really, fairly interesting -- if sorely backloaded. The biggest feeling I get from PoE2 so far is that PoE1 just feels like a prologue to this story, practically like an origin story. I'm also concerned that so much of the interaction with the gods has been sitting around and watching them debate and ignore you. Somehow, I feel like the showdown with Eothas is going to be anticlimactic. Like I'm just kind of dragged along on his story -- he's not even really opposed to me. And maybe it has something to do with this idea that you can't really have agency if the gods exist and intervene in the world as they do (and one person can't change the world with the THE GODS ARE FAKE revelation), much like how the tribal societies can't really exist when the various Companies come barging in... but it's just not that great as a player. I'm liking it much more than PoE1 though. But it seems pretty obvious where the story might be going, if they keep up with the BG releases.
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# ¿ Jun 18, 2018 15:10 |
Well, good on the journal for spoiling me on what Eothas' plan is because I had a chat to Xoti on the ship and I think that chat was supposed to come way, way later.
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# ¿ Jun 19, 2018 08:26 |
2house2fly posted:The game kind of spoils it early as well if you do Xoti's quest. Which is kind of a series tradition, since when I first played I remember Sagani saying "don't worry, I'll help you find Thaos" which was the first indication I had that a) a character existed with the name Thaos, and b) my character would need to find this person Yeah, the thing with Xoti's quest happened to me last night. I just powered through the main quest line because I was starting to get exhausted from the sheer amount of stuff to do in this game. I went solo. Like I was worried about, the climax is fairly unfulfilling. I pegged pretty early on what the game was going for, with the lack of agency in a world where gods exist as they do in PoE, and while it's interesting, it just didn't make my last memories of PoE2's main story particularly fulfilling. I get that PoE2 is very much about this idea that there are no good/bad outcomes and no sense of finality -- life just goes on -- but there's something about it that bugs me. I liked that much of the conflict is between various colonial powers and such, and it made for some interesting ethical dilemmas and choices, and I'd say overall that it's much better than PoE1. Eothas was much more interesting than Thaos. And while I love the story of you following in his footsteps, unable to stop what a literal god has set out to do (literally 'a watcher'), it just didn't leave me satisfied as a game. It's weird. The main story is really more about the Deadfire and its future than it is about Eothas and his plan. At What Cost Progress? I suppose. I wonder how much of it stems from kind of rushing through PoE1, which I didn't find interesting at all, and not really understanding the souls, Wheel, past lives part of it. Breaking the Wheel seems pretty bad, but I wasn't sure what the actual effect of it would be? Are there only a limited number of souls? Do people often not remember their previous lives? Would breaking the Wheel mean Hollowborn for everyone? Like, I sound like I'm complaining but I'm not. I really liked PoE2, more than I thought I would. I think I just need time to mentally digest all of it. It's certainly complex, and there's some admirable about the solo ending being you abdicated what responsibility you had and now everything is worse than it was before.
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# ¿ Jun 20, 2018 08:41 |
Also, there should've been a Saint's War game.
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# ¿ Jun 20, 2018 08:59 |
I don't know how I feel about a lot of the companions. Spoilering just in case. I liked Eder well enough and he felt like a good friend to my Watcher. Xoti was fine and she fit in well with the plot and Eder. I liked Pallegina in the first game but here, in PoE2, she felt way more two-dimensional -- wasted potential, I guess (the Godlikes, as a whole, feel weirdly underutilized). She felt like she was there to be the obligatory faction PC who would be upset with you if you made certain choices, like Maia. But speaking of Maia, I like how integrated she was to the world and her personal quest had some interesting consequences. But she was also kind of flat. Maia and Pallegina both suffered from being the loyal soldier, but Maia at least had the conflict over the methods. A lot of the others I didn't really use enough but I still don't really 'get' Aloth. Kind of feel like they should've dropped the sidekicks and made the companions a bit more substantial.
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# ¿ Jun 20, 2018 11:17 |
Avalerion posted:^ I feel the same as milky moor about Pallegina, loved her in the first game (though that migh be because I really misinterpreted her quest and whole character motivation in it), in deadfire it feels like she just doubled down on her devotion to the republics at the expense of her other character aspects. I wanted to hear way more about her past and growing up in an all-male fighting order. The stuff with Giacolo was cool but also somewhat perfunctory. In the first game, Pallegina was a loyal soldier but she was also bright enough, and driven enough, to question her orders and to try and serve her country in better ways than her orders/superiors stipulate. But in Deadfire, she feels like a drone. I may be misremembering but, in Pillars 1, don't we meet her basically doing a one-woman crusade to investigate stuff she's been told not to? I always thought she was characterized by riding the line between free-thinking initiative and out and out insubordination, which we see in her PoE1 quest, but that's all just... gone in Deadfire. In PoE1 she felt like the kind of patriot who believed idealistically in the spirit her nation, whereas in PoE2 it feels more like she believes in the authority/structure of it. I guess it can be explained away by that it's been five years or however long, but it just left her feeling like a shadow of her self. edit: And it sucks because, really, siding with the VTC or RDC comes down to whether you can stomach hurting Pallegina or Maia more than it does the various structures (they all kind of suck, really) but in any second playthrough I do I won't feel bad about siding against VTC simply because Pallegina doesn't really seem like a person. That is, excepting the times where you see the woman behind the armor, like when you make fun of her and she launches into this massive string of expletives and obscene gestures or when you try to seduce her and she basically laughs at you and so on. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Jun 20, 2018 |
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# ¿ Jun 20, 2018 12:10 |
The Herald of Berath stuff felt really underused and the bit where you summon the ghosts on the pier is really awkward and sticks out like a sore thumb.
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# ¿ Jun 20, 2018 12:23 |
ewe2 posted:
It's more that the whole thing where you summon the ghosts is weirdly on rails for something that never comes up again -- unless you mean the combat ability. Like, okay, the Herald chime thing lets you talk to the Gods (or, more accurate, lets them talk to you) but the whole bit on the docks where Berath shoves ghosts through you to scare a port guard is just... weird. It felt like the first step in a subplot that never really eventuated.
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# ¿ Jun 21, 2018 13:04 |
trepanation posted:Eh, honestly I'm finding it a bit weird how eager fans are to slam Pellegina for being a single-minded VTC hardliner or Aloth for being boring or w/e but are fine with glossing over their best bro Eder's orlan racism. Well, it's only weird if you don't see the real reason they're doing it. It's not so much about what they saying as who they are. Eder is fun and likable and feels like a friend, even if he has that racist streak. Pallegina is incredibly boring and feels like a cut-out of herself. It isn't so much the content. People would be less eager to slam ol' Birdface if she had any other aspects. Eder is fun. Aloth is basically a laser aimed at the brains of people who like the wimpy, broody wizard type, so, that appeals. Pallegina is practically a drone for a capitalist state that endorses slavery. She's just not fun. She feels like the character in a RP group who just refuses to interact with the hooks provided by other players. And sometimes she can feel pretty mean, in a way that goes beyond being stern. Your Parents posted:I would rather hang out with someone who occasionally made jokes about races he didn't hang out with or know a lot about until a few years ago than with a navy seal dedicated to a religious fanatical form of Trump support. Her entire internal life (in this game) is thinking the only reason she was ever in trouble was that she didn't "just follow orders" enough. Apparently, there's a heap of stuff in her interactions with Tekehu that humanizes her a bit. I think we're supposed to think that's she's embraced the system for that reason, that she's basically a walking tragedy. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Jun 21, 2018 |
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# ¿ Jun 21, 2018 15:38 |
Also, Pallegina is literally Powered By Nationalism to the extent that it gives her the ability to set things on fire and bring people back from the dead, so, maybe that's why people don't like her so much. Right at the end of the game, when we're all doing our big goodbyes this is it, she grabs my Watcher by the arms and is like HEY. I LOVE VAILIA. edit: I mean, I assume that's why she's a Paladin and where her powers come from. Whenever Director Whoever gives a speech, her eyes literally light up with blue fire.
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# ¿ Jun 21, 2018 15:53 |
There's also a Goldpact Paladin with extreme OCD in the Gullet.
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# ¿ Jun 22, 2018 03:01 |
Also, her personal quest, while touching, is just kind of boring, too. Go here, answer the questions, done.
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# ¿ Jun 22, 2018 04:53 |
mary had a little clam posted:Regarding the ending, as a Rymrgandian, I initially told Eothas I'm just here to watch, but after the credits, I reloaded and told him to destroy everything. He thought about it for a sec and then was like "Nah". I took Mystic instead of Philosopher, so I couldn't see the Philosophy options. Can you actually reason him into full-on extinction? Yes you can, but I don't know what it depends on.
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# ¿ Jun 26, 2018 15:04 |
I found DOS1's tone way too wacky but DOS2 felt like it edged more toward tongue in cheek.
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# ¿ Jun 27, 2018 12:21 |
Wait. People were actually suckered by the VTC's 'Oh, yes, that was a mistake, we totally do not accept slavery' weak defence?
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# ¿ Jun 30, 2018 12:29 |
Mondian posted:That's how I felt about the pirates too. They try to play up honor and tradition, but I let Furrante think I was on his side, but took off with his ghost ship alone. When he caught up to me on Ukaizo he gave this bullshit speech that was new blood af and when I called him on it he got pissed and attacked. Everyone is poo poo. I think that's one of the central aspects of Deadfire. There are no 'good' alternatives but abrogating your ability to choose some kind of direction for the future when you have the ability to do so is the worst outcome. If The Watcher goes, hey, gently caress you all, you're all terrible and I'm going to do this myself, everything gets worse. It also links back to Eothas and his whole mission to destroy The Wheel.
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# ¿ Jun 30, 2018 15:52 |
En Garde Motherfuckers posted:This is a valid way of handling the end of the questline, though. Weird! You may need to go into the "rat on Furrante" tree to get a reaction, or wait until you get to the stage in the Principi line where she would normally ask you to off him (and presumably get the lines you would when you do kill him "normally"). Yep. I killed Furrante then had to wait for Aeldys to tell me to go and kill him before I could tell her I'd killed him.
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# ¿ Jul 1, 2018 02:12 |
frajaq posted:lmao at Skyrim still being there how are there still people who don't own it
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# ¿ Jul 7, 2018 00:42 |
I really didn't like PoE1 at all but Deadfire has superior writing which does wonders for its main plot.
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# ¿ Jul 7, 2018 15:56 |
Azran posted:I would argue MOBAs haven't been a thing for a while now, they were superseded in popularity by team shooters like Overwatch and then by Battle Royale games. Most MOBAs nowadays are either dead or stagnating growth-wise, games like Dota 2 aren't getting bigger any time soon, despite having Valve behind. DOTA2 hasn't been stagnating, it's been actively losing players. I think it lost 20% in 2017 alone. MOBAs are basically dead and, in my experience, they've all gone to Battle Royales.
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# ¿ Jul 8, 2018 15:11 |
The other thing is that the story isn't exactly going to make people go WOAH YOU HAVE TO PLAY THIS.
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# ¿ Jul 22, 2018 07:46 |
I liked the story and I like thinking about it, but it didn't leave me feeling happy with the time spent following it in PoE2. But, I mean, when a game begins with one of the Fake Gods ruining your life, almost killing you, and the tagline being that you're going to 'hunt' him, it did establish an expectation that I'd be able to get some degree of vengeance. At the same time, however, it became pretty clear early on that vengeance wasn't in the cards and that Eothas was just kind of going to do his thing. It's a neat story but I think I would've preferred it as a novel.
Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Jul 25, 2018 |
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# ¿ Jul 25, 2018 02:14 |
Avalerion posted:I think they could have had you fight Eothas (maybe even a ship battle) - and after you blow him up he just reforms and wrecks the wheel anyway? And then the watcher himself gets to direct the leftower essense instead of just convincing Eothas what to do with it. It'd be a very different story, though. Like it or not, PoE2 feels like it is very much about being an observer to world-changing events. Eothas is personified, sure, but you can bet there are Huana who wake up and see that the world has changed around them due to the Deadfire Company setting up shop. Time marches on. Eothas literally marches on. It's kind of the tension about having a game where the player has agency but then also including entities that outstrip the player and giving them agency. It sucks that the player can't do anything but stand there and watch as Eothas gets to break the world. It'd also suck if the player could destroy Eothas. Thing is, while I'm more excited about a prospective PoE3 than I was about PoE3 at this point, I'm not sure where you could go with the story from here, especially if there's no desire to do what PoE2 points as what people should be doing: eliminating the gods. But it's certainly better about curtailing player agency while not feeling like a cheap 'but thou must [not]' than MotB ever was.
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# ¿ Jul 25, 2018 08:59 |
Avalerion posted:I don't think there's any evidence it did badly, though it's clear it didn't do as well as say Divinity 2, with deadfire being (imo) a much better game that stings a bit. Overall yea I assume it did well enough, though not as well as it could and some people hoped. And fig probably takes some pressure of having to sell well, anyway. I don't know if I'd call Deadfire better. In my head, Divinity 2 and Deadfire are basically neck and neck because they're so different. I had more fun playing Divinity 2 but Deadfire has a really neat story. I'd recommend Deadfire to very specific people who I think would appreciate what it's trying to do, whereas I think it's safe to say that the world and story of Divinity 2 has a much wider, safer appeal.
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# ¿ Jul 25, 2018 09:04 |
Taear posted:It seems mad to me saying that a turn based game has a wider appeal. They always felt like the ones the grognards loved and "normal" players didn't. I'm a fairly casual player. I play through on normal and don't tend to bother with thinking much about what I equip or level beyond what I think is cool. I found Divinity 2's combat much easier to get into because the 'x amount of turns' thing for effects and durations was easier for me to process than the real-time 'number of seconds' way that Deadfire handled it. I don't know how it stands for other people, but I do know that -- at least among my Steam friends list -- Divinity 2 is way more popular (exactly triple). I think turn-based games allow people to relax more. But also, like Your Parents says, Divinity 2 is like cheap airport novel fare. It's easy to get into, fun enough, and you don't take it too seriously. Deadfire's story and ideas are, by far, far more interesting to talk about than Divinity 2. While I enjoyed Divinity 2, I'd be hard-pressed to recall much about it beyond some of the zanier moments. But I can remember a lot more about my Watcher's journey to understanding Eothas' purpose. mary had a little clam posted:Something I've noticed lately in modern ~Cultural Discourse~ (and maybe it's always been this way) is that a vocal subset of cultural consumers seem to feel entitled to whichever narrative they assumed they would get or whichever narrative they think they were smart enough to guess from the promotional art. When they don't get it, instead of engaging with whether what they DID get resonates, they complain about the creators trying to be subversive and compare what they got to what they thought they would. Well, that's basically what the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy was. It's what the Star Wars prequels were. I don't know how you quell the tension between what the creator wanted out of the work and what the audience took from it. At the same time, though, we do live in an age where there is something of a combat between audience and creator. Look at The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson posing with Your Snoke Theory Sucks. Song of Ice and Fire, where the leading theory as to why GRRM hasn't done another book is because someone on Reddit had guessed the rest of the series. Westworld Season 2 where, IIRC, the writers said something to the effect of 'we go on Reddit and steer clear of whatever they're guessing or predicting'. The writer of Babylon 5, in one of the audio commentaries, mentions how you should be able to predict a good story but it shouldn't be predictable. At the same time, it's not like there weren't a wealth of early 2000s shows -- Lost, Heroes, Battlestar, Terminator, Prison Break -- that were about encouraging people to guess and then blindsiding them with something improbable or the realization that there was no overarching plan or plot. It's not really a new problem. But what is new is that there's a market for endless pop culture speculative theories on Youtube and Reddit. And it could be argued that interactive fiction, such as video games, creates an expectation in the audience's mind that the story will be what they want. Dan Didio posted:The short set-piece with Eothas hauling you out of the 'god-killing' volcano was more impactful and engaging to me than most of the god-fightin' that occured in RPGs in the last decade or so. Loved that whole section. The Deadfire main plot is short but it's packed full of goodness. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Jul 25, 2018 |
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# ¿ Jul 25, 2018 16:01 |
bewilderment posted:I don't think it was quite that big. There was an AMA on reddit like a year or so before release with the old director where the question was "Can there please be no magic button that wins the war and beats the Reapers, can the galaxy just come together and win thanks to better tactics and rallying together" Nah, Casey Hudson said it wouldn't like a 'press button' ending... I think about three days before release, too. Pretty sure it's on Twitter or in a preview article or something.
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# ¿ Jul 25, 2018 16:45 |
Lt. Danger posted:Ignoring the parts of the ending decided on Tuchanka and Rannoch, the ME3 ending options are determined by warscore (made up of multiplayer score, sidequests and minor import variables) and, if warscore is low, the Collector Base choice made at the end of ME2. The obvious mistake Bioware made here is that the kind of person who actually completes a game (and posts about it on the internet) is also going to be the kind of person who does multiplayer, completes all sidequests and imports saves, i.e. has maximum warscore. Same problem as ME2's suicide mission, really - you can have really complex and intricate systems working away under the surface, but if you don't plan properly everyone's going to end up with the same result anyway. Yeah, well, I did all those things AND I put Thane in the vents.
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# ¿ Jul 25, 2018 17:38 |
I thought of a BG2 comparison when Deadfire was said to be the story of getting revenge on the being who stole your soul. You can sort of sum up CHARNAME and Irenicus with that. Maybe it's why a lot of people are down on the inability to really hurt Eothas, because of those expectations/adherence.
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# ¿ Jul 26, 2018 06:24 |
Hieronymous Alloy posted:Is there any other game franchise where the storyline inspires this much critique let me tell you about the mass effect thread and my many probations therein article the first
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# ¿ Jul 26, 2018 15:36 |
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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 00:30 |
Did people know the Wheel was an actual structure pre-Deadfire? It seemed like everyone talked about it as a belief, a metaphor. Then there's no doubt from anyone that it exists in a physical form.
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# ¿ Jul 28, 2018 09:05 |