Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire + DLC Thread - now with turn-based combat!

[Cyberarmy]

In both Pillars game you get WALLS OF TEXT dumped on you that have absolutely NO personal resonance with your character at this point of the game.

This is my main gripe, also can be said for Tyranny. And I love reading...

 

[JarlFrank]

Reading is fun when the pacing is good. Dumping irrelevant walls of text on you isn't fun.

Planescape Torment is considered a classic and it has shitloads of reading. Torment: Numenera is lame because all of its text is irrelevant wankery of writers who like their own prose too much.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Tyranny has a cyoa segment that while not overly long it sure feels like it though.

 

[Perkel]

imho deadfire problem is much more fundamental.

It's a fucking sudo-pirate game in niggerland with bunch of characters that i'd rather hang myself than quest with.

Idiotic story setup is least of its problems.

They always wanted it to be BG like money but never made a effort to be BG game. They chased pretty nice GFX than just share amount of content. In BG if you don't want some companion you have 25 other companions to pick. From retarded Minsc to raped Drow.

Pillars1 was made literally 17 years after BG1 with all advancements to gaming, modern engine they didn't need to program from scratch, whole industry standardizing so you didn't need to hire amateurs who never made a game and only worked as math teachers AND TEMPLATE TO USE to make a game, and somehow POE1 has less content than BG1

Despite all of this it sold well.

Then POE2 comes along and we thought it fixed all of POE1 issues and this will be what BG2 was to BG1. And it ended up with POE+ with reworked systems with mediacore game theme, bad companions and booooring ship management game.

I remember when i switched for the first time deadfire and i saw main menu. I thought game bugged out. No that was the main menu of game. At least in Pillars1 main menu symbolized some sort of epic journey ultimately couldn't deliver but at least it was there to give you hope.

Then comes Russian gay bear Owlcat pathfinder games with system i fucking hate more than anything but somehow it is fun to play. Why ? Cause POE2 was shite. Same with Larian and BG3.

Obsidian problem has a well known "good workers" problem.

Good worker is the one that doesn't stick up his head above the rest and doesn't make mistakes. So you can't fire him but you can't build anything great either. None of those people are hungry to make amazing games. And everytime there was someone like Ziets they got rid of such people. Thing is that good workers aren't great fit for gaming business which thrives on ambition and creativity.

For comparison Troika existed for few years and in that time created 3 masterpieces. Games that will be remembered for decades onward. Obsidian early period was chaotic but it undoubtly was the time when they were ambitious but as the time went on they gradually sat down and started to rest...

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Deadfire has possibly the worst intro of all time.

Not sure I agree with criticism of first game's intro, it's not overly verbose at all. Quick opening scroll, quick ambush sequence, then a quick dungeon, then you get presented a cool mystery with weird dudes doing weird voodoo shit with adra pillar, and then you're out in the world. Deadfire takes hours to even get going.

 

[JarlFrank]

Obsidian problem has a well known "good workers" problem.

Good worker is the one that doesn't stick up his head above the rest and doesn't make mistakes. So you can't fire him but you can't build anything great either. None of those people are hungry to make amazing games. And everytime there was someone like Ziets they got rid of such people. Thing is that good workers aren't great fit for gaming business which thrives on ambition and creativity.

Yeah this has a grain of truth to it. Obsidian's games always feel very workmanlike - it's a solid product languishing in mediocrity, it's good for what it is, there's no hilariously terrible jank like in Russki-made games but there's no greatness either, it's just completely middle of the road fare most of the time. Absolutely nothing spectacular about it. Not good, but also not so bad it's good. Just plain mediocre, by the numbers, RPG design as it might be described in a "how to design RPGs" basic for dummies book.

There are a few exceptions like New Vegas and Mask of the Betrayer, but those happened because some individuals in the company had an ambition for something greater.
Most of the games they make aren't ambitious at all. Usually they got hired by publishers to make sequels, and so that's what they did - just a job.

The end result is always banalshitboring.

 

[Alienman]

Iirc, nobody wanted to do this storyline, Fergus was the one who insisted on it.

More on this, please. Did they have another story in place until Fergus got his way, or not?

 

[JarlFrank]

Iirc, nobody wanted to do this storyline, Fergus was the one who insisted on it.

More on this, please. Did they have another story in place until Fergus got his way, or not?

IIRC Sawyer wanted to focus on the politics between the different island states, focus on the actual people living in the world, but Sawyer Feargus insisted on gods and shit.

EDIT: I meant Feargus insisted on a god-level plot

 

[Alienman]

You mean Fergus wanted gods?

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

No, he means Sawyer is so balanced, he is both for and against the same idea.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Come to think of it, the new trifecta of shit (in isoRPG space) each boasts its own flavor of shite. Which do you prefer:

- Bland as fuck, mediocre shit with nary a single great element and way too much exposition (Pooplars of Eternity)
- Occasionally good level/combat design completely offset by murderously bad Belgian humor and cartoon level lore (Dipshitty Original Turds and possibly Bear Sex 3)
- Terrible design and writing all around drowning in a sea of wokeness, but with lots of numbers to play with for the autistic munchkins (Poncemakers and Turdfinders)

Me, I spit on all of these and play the good shit (Battle Brothers and Disco Elysium )

 

[Butter]

Come to think of it, the new trifecta of shit (in isoRPG space) each boasts its own flavor of shite. Which do you prefer:

- Bland as fuck, mediocre shit with nary a single great element and way too much exposition (Pooplars of Eternity)
- Occasionally good level/combat design completely offset by murderously bad Belgian humor and cartoon level lore (Dipshitty Original Turds and possibly Bear Sex 3)
- Terrible design and writing all around drowning in a sea of wokeness, but with lots of numbers to play with for the autistic munchkins (Poncemakers and Turdfinders)

 

[Alienman]

Hard choice. I had the most fun with BG3, despite it all. Deadfire falls away hard comparable to the other games. The blandness and constant assault by walls of texts are very draining.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Say what you will about InXile, but after Turds of Numenera came out, at least they had the balls to do that tell-all interview with Codex and admit to fucking some things up.

Meanwhile the Desperate Housewives of Obsidian seem to spend 1% of their time actually working on the games, and 99% of time they spend on pointing fingers at each other, possibly with hair pulling and handbag fights.

 

[The Bishop]

I don't think there's anything wrong with the way story structured in POE 1/2. I mean, it doesn't matter how you structure a turd. The problem is simply that Obsidian writers have nothing interesting to tell. They know how to construct a well sounding sentence and how to tie it into a well sounding paragraph. But they have no deep insights into anything and so nothing to share. So they just crammed the games with well sounding paragraphs, because that's the only thing they have available.

Even if you ignore the fact that Deadfire doesn't actually have a plot (giant walking statue wants to do something, then does it, the end), every individual story bit is completely devoid of life or substance. You arrive at an island and see locals have some sort of problem, but then it turns out they they are the problem themselves. You go to the next island and see locals have some sort of problem, but then it turns out... Same thing again and again. It doesn't matter in what order all of these meaningless pieces go.

TLDR: current day Obsidian is a company where talentless hacks won.

 

[Nikanuur]

Better to be cringe than a triggered trash talker who can't even do a proper comparison.

 

[Agesilaus]

I don't think PoE 1 had a problem with its opening. You're in a caravan, the narrator sets the scene well, and then a blizzard comes in and you get thrown into a new world where people are having trouble. It's good stuff, even though it's downhill from there and I didn't like the game that much. The second half of the white march was quite good, though.


Whatever weakness there is in the PoE 2 opening is the result of them not handling the "this is a sequel" thing well, and the fact that PoE1 really didn't introduce and implement the gods into its story very well, or at least not in a way comparable to how the gods appear in PoE 2. But PoE 2 is a great game if you can push through the pain of having to deal with tropical islands, pirates, and iberians.

Who are these English, what is France, and why am I supposed to kick them out?

absolute state of modern education

 

[Desiderius]

absolute state of modern education

We know what actually happened. But if you’re just relying on that why have a game at all?

 

[Artyoan]

I don't think PoE 1 had a problem with its opening. You're in a caravan, the narrator sets the scene well, and then a blizzard comes in and you get thrown into a new world where people are having trouble. It's good stuff, even though it's downhill from there and I didn't like the game that much. The second half of the white march was quite good, though.

I like PoE1's opening. I thought it did well to introduce some mystery and intrigue at the end of the tutorial. Thaos is a good villain as well. My primary dislike about PoE1 ended up being the Watcher powers being just too convenient as a plot device. I would have rather had that go away for a sequel.

PoE2 felt like an entirely different world. Right away the game moves to the sea, with no attempt to root itself into the previous game's setting for continuity and immersion. First chapter should have been in your former stronghold before it is destroyed. The graphic style seemed more colorful and exaggerated. The tone is too light given the circumstances and then the returning characters of Aloth and Eder seem like different people. It is easily the most off-putting opening few hours to a game that I can recall. Didn't help that it took two weeks for them to fix a bug with Eder's import state being wrong and I had no idea what the ramifications of that would be if I kept going anyway.

The gimmicky marketing of a pirate/sailing theme hurt it as far as sales go, I think. The white march dlc of PoE1 also apparently didn't sell well so the appetite for the game might not have been there to begin with.

 

[Haplo]

The issue with PoE1 lies more in pacing. Particularly when you reach the town hubs, the pacing is awful. Defiance Bay is rather weak and mostly boring... and by the time you get to Twin Elms, I guess fatigue kicks in big time.
The hubs also feel disjointed and disconnected somehow, particularly Twin Elms.

Plus the main issue with the story is that you have this central plot of the terrible Hollowborn crisis... that somehow eventually gets put to the side... and becomes pretty insignificant overall.
I liked the initial themes and atmosphere a lot, but they weren't consequential or explored enough IMO.

 

[Grunker]

The issue with PoE1 lies more in pacing. Particularly when you reach the town hubs, the pacing is awful. Defiance Bay is rather weak and mostly boring... and by the time you get to Twin Elms, I guess fatigue kicks in big time.
The hubs also feel disjointed and disconnected somehow, particularly Twin Elms.

Plus the main issue with the story is that you have this central plot of the terrible Hollowborn crisis... that somehow eventually gets put to the side... and becomes pretty insignificant overall.
I liked the initial themes and atmosphere a lot, but they weren't consequential or explored enough IMO.

Like I say in my review, the main issue with the main plot itself is that it is designed so that there is no progression for 90% of the game and then all the progression happens in the end, meaning mountains of text with vague hinting and nothingburgers take up the vast majority of plot interaction we actually do. Essentially, the nature of the reveal forces 95% of the writing to conceal anything of actual substance. This kills any hope of pacing in the story.

Contrast this with Planescape: Torment which also has a story that relies on a final twist that subverts the story, but has a story designed with many sub-revelations (and arguably the biggest revelation about one-third through), meaning it is well-paced despite relying on a lot of secrecy.

It doesn't really matter if the writers responsible for PoE were good enough - no one can write nothingburges for 4/5s of a game and make it interesting in the slightest.

(This is in addition to all the other problems with the writing of course, I'm just talking about main story here.)

 

[Lios]

Speaking of Poe openings, I just realized that in Poe 1 opening, instead of running around searching for the diarrhea cure, and if you want to rp as a psyco cruel mofo, you can just slaughter the whole caravan, and the game actually aknowledges this, so you just enter the ruins and you skip the whole tribal ambush etc.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Avowed opening - you have diarrhea, but Eothas has the only cure, so you have to hunt him around while constantly speed shitting.

Best of both worlds.

 

[Roguey]

Say what you will about InXile, but after Turds of Numenera came out, at least they had the balls to do that tell-all interview with Codex and admit to fucking some things up.

Meanwhile the Desperate Housewives of Obsidian seem to spend 1% of their time actually working on the games, and 99% of time they spend on pointing fingers at each other, possibly with hair pulling and handbag fights.

My recollection is that McComb made no such concessions.

Fargo never cared for Torment to begin with, just something he thought would be easy money.

 

[Faarbaute]

What happened to your keep, your soul and all that, what with the god-statue waking up, should have been made into a playable sequence at the beginning of the game, to give it at least the chance of working as a hook.

Compare it to another mediocre offering in the form of Dragon Age:Origins, and you can clearly see the difference, and see the superiority of the latter delivery.

As a human noble, you actually play through the attack on and subsequent escape from your family's estate. Then you play through the disastrous initial battle with the Darkspawn, and so on. You, the player, are present for these events through your character, there are multiple simultaneous early plot developments, which you play through, that serve as story hooks, and now you have a reason to care about events as they are unfolding.

If DA:O were POE II in this case, the game would begin on the road, after the aforementioned sequence of events had already taken place, with an exposition dump telling you about them, and how much you should care about it.