Review RPG Codex Review: Darth Roxor on Disappointment, thy name is Pillars of Eternity

[Angthoron]

When i phoned them they were angry i didnt recognise them and sent more trashmobs after me.

Godline: Dyrwood
You have reached the wrong godline

 

[mastroego]

Well said. PoE was a clear cash grab and a bait for BG fans waiting on a worthy successor.

You're right, right, right.

Plus, faggotry aside, if we accept as gospel that BG2's main strength was gameplay, that's all owed to late 2nd Ed. D&D rules and nothing else, the legendary wizard battles of yore were only possible because of late 2E spellbooks being so bloated.

You're wrong, wrong, wrong.

What made it great was that they WEREN'T AFRAID to put into the cauldron all the craziest and more insane effects, no matter what: if they sounded cool they went ahead and implemented them. No tip-toeing around.
This is why BG2 is still unsurpassed.
Sawyer would have implemented the most boring ones if he had the same material to plunder.

 

[Bubbles]

Doom isn't a RPG.
Which of these tasks is most likely to make your warrior/barbarian stronger and better at killing things with a sword:
A)Practice - killing monsters/people
B)Fetching a loaf of bread for the blind man cuz he asked you to
C)Reading a book on how to punch people
D)Picking a lock
E)Walking in an area where you haven't been before
F)Writing an encylopedia of the local fauna

It's not about what're more "realistic" (ugh, that word), but about what leads to the best gameplay. If you give an incentive for killing monsters, players will naturally choose the most violent solutions to any problem to maximize their gains. This is not conducive to good quest design.

Combat should be something a normal, right thinking person would want to avoid as much as possible, and PoE manages to evoke that feeling very well.

 

[the_dagon]

Can't understand the whole tone of this review.

As I completely agree Pillars is not the best RPG ever (some arguments & critics in the review are valid), the whole fully negative tone given by this review is not really giving this game justice.

Obsidian announced and sold the game as a Baldur's Gate revival, and that's EXACTLY what they've done, and they've done it well. The good and bad points are exactly the same as Baldur's Gate, and much work has been put in the lore.

You should have started the review with "I even had more fun with Dungeon Siege 3", ...

 

[MRY]

felipepepe Yes, I think your points are well taken, though I have some responses below.

I understand where you are coming from, but if one adds this, shouldn't him also add the other side? Things like how Obsidian already had BioWare's blueprint, the advancements from D&D 3rd and 4th editions, 20 years of technological progress, and a team with some of the most experienced RPG developers in the world? Part of the team actually worked on IE games back then, no company in the world was better qualified for this task.

Well, I'm not sure if that's true. Per Infinitron and some random dude, the first Baldur's Gate cost $4.5M, in unadjusted dollars; simply accounting for inflation gets you over $6M, but I suspect that industry salaries have outpaced inflation. Feargus Urquhart seemed to believe that a proper BG sequel would cost considerably more than $25M to make in 2007. In some way, any company with deeper pockets was better qualified for the task. A company with recent experience making this kind of engine would also have advantages. I've always felt Obsidian did best working with other companies' existing engines and improving them (MOTB, KOTOR 2, FO:NV), so this is -- if not uncharted territory -- at least unmastered territory.

I haven't played either BG or POE enough to do a meaningful comparison, but from wetting my toes, as I said earlier, POE seems better. Maybe worse in encounter design and worse in the underlying rules, which are very important, but better in art, writing, setting, etc. It may have underdelivered, but it really doesn't seem to be inferior across the board to BG.

This isn't a lone guy in his basement doing a spiritual successor to a classic game with zero budget ('sup Styg), they are fucking professionals, who set out to do this, asked for our trust and honestly even gloated about "how most rulesets suck".

Whether the new ruleset failed or not, I have a certain appreciation for trying something new rather than just imitating D20. There are problems with the IE design: rest spamming, tedious pre-buffing, potentially high barriers to entry in character building, etc. I don't pretend to be an expert on RPG system design; maybe these problems are with me, not with IE (and NWN) games.

The "asked for our trust" seems a little unfair. This is not a Broken Age case where they said, "We will make X" and then made Y. POE may be a disappointing example of X, but I don't see how they breached anyone's trust.

"They tried their best and delivered something" doesn't cut here, especially since we already saw them doing much, much better.

Have they done much, much better with an original IP in an original engine? Alpha Protocol would be the only example, right?

 

[Rpguy]

Character build - you can mess that up in SoZ pretty easily.

Wait, is this supposed to be a flaw? :D

Obsidian thinks it is...

My Personal opinion is that if a game gives you the option to pick a talent that is useless and there is no way for you to know it before testing it and there is no way to respec then it is a flaw.

 

[Bubbles]

My Personal opinion is that if a game gives you the option to pick a talent that is useless and there is no way for you to know it before testing it and there is no way to respec then it is a flaw.

So you're contending that PoE's character system is deeply flawed?

 

[Black]

, how I loathe you lot.

 

[HiddenX]

Good review Roxor (I told you so in 2014, already...). I think PoE is not a masterpiece, but still a game that I recommend for RPG fans. The combat designers should play Telepath Tactics for 1 month to learn how tactical fighting can be done.
I remind everyone that PoE is still a Kickstarter game with a very limited budget for such a big game (7.5/10)

 

[Malpercio]

Skimmed through it.

Meh, left like the writer had a personal crusade against PoE. Or he was so disappointed by it that it amplified its flaws x10 times.

 

[Ulrox]

Per Infinitron and some random dude, the first Baldur's Gate cost $4.5M,

I seem to remember having asked chris avellone on his twitter and he said 8 mil, - either twitter or reddit, ill try and see if i can find it.

 

[Anac'raxus]

Now, what do we make of PoE’s character system? Judged by its own merits, if I had to draw a comparison, I would call it the communism of character systems. Certainly, you have the feeling that everything you pick is kind of, sort of, equally useful (with some exceptions). But the flipside to this is that everything is also equally bland.

LOL, no. That's the game people imagined when Saywer was bloviating on various forums. Try playing the real one.

 

[Zeriel]

90's dollars are also worth a lot more than 2015 dollars.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

It's not about what're more "realistic" (ugh, that word), but about what leads to the best gameplay. If you give an incentive for killing monsters, players will naturally choose the most violent solutions to any problem to maximize their gains. This is not conducive to good quest design.

Combat should be something a normal, right thinking person would want to avoid as much as possible, and PoE manages to evoke that feeling very well.

Except you're not a normal person in this game. You're going crazy, remember?

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Combat should be something a normal, right thinking person would want to avoid as much as possible, and PoE manages to evoke that feeling very well.

Bubbles on form again. Time you got working on another sarcastic review for our lulz.

 

[hivemind]

Regretted buying shadowrun, haven't bothered playing wasteland 2 after experiencing the demo(or beta don't remember what they called it) and won't bother playing PoE after reading this review. Fuck kikestarter.

 

[Lhynn]

It's not about what're more "realistic" (ugh, that word), but about what leads to the best gameplay. If you give an incentive for killing monsters, players will naturally choose the most violent solutions to any problem to maximize their gains. This is not conducive to good quest design.

Combat should be something a normal, right thinking person would want to avoid as much as possible, and PoE manages to evoke that feeling very well.

Normal 2000s people are boring, i want to play with some adventurer from the magical middle ages, where wounds can be healed and treasures can be found in ruins plagued with dangerous creatures that guard great riches and magical treasures.
Who the fuck is this game for? for people that want an adventure or for people that want a semblance of normality? fucks sake i cant believe this point is being disputed.

 

[Night Goat]

I thought the lack of combat XP would be a good thing, because combat XP effectively punishes players who use other means, such as stealth and diplomacy, to get past enemies. But what I found was that, with very few exceptions (Raedric's hold), there aren't any other ways to get past enemies. What's the fucking point?

I also thought that balance would be a good thing - finally, a game with no trap options - but that was also a big fucking lie. Some classes, abilities and stats are just objectively better than others. How is this okay?

 

[leino]

Darth Roxor

I agree with the gist of the review, but this bit is still an embarrassment:

Meanwhile, each time PoE tries to go into ‘Tormenty’ territory, it falls flat on its face. Plato for Dummies is one example, but another good one is a question that is asked in the last 15 minutes of the game, which is probably supposed to be this game’s ‘what can change the nature of a man?’. It’s, ‘what if we can be assured of nothing?’ + 7 responses. Now, the writer must have thought that this was a doubleplusdeep philosophical dilemma, but was obviously unaware that this shit has already been answered 400 years ago by Rene Goddamn Descartes, making the question null and void. And you aren’t even given Descartes’ answer, either.

The question obviously was not meant as an epistemological one to which "well, something must exist that thinks" would be a meaningful answer. It was about justifying one's values without an objective point of reference, as perhaps offered by gods. There was really no reason to have Descartes's answer there, because it does not answer the question the game wanted to ask. (By itself it's a pretty pedantic and useless answer to the epistemological question as well, but that is beside the point.)

The one option I think the game maybe missed was some manner of lyricsuitian metaphysicist's thingie about a meta-God beyond the gods that the animancers somehow managed to disprove. It would have allowed you another option to define your character, even if the game did not have the ability to judge such questions in a very interesting way.

I think the problem of PoE in this respect was that it attempted to do some general philosoraptoring as an aside to the story, and failed to do it very interestingly in a few bullet-point answers, rather than the theme being embodied in the story as it was in Torment. It's not necessarily that Torment was deep or philosophical either, but it illuminated the central matter in the special way that fiction can, by embodying it in a personal story.

 

[felipepepe]

MRY, you raise BG's budget, I raise you this: "Not one person of the 60 who shipped Baldur's Gate had ever made a video game before"

That, and the fact they took a notorious and beloved Turn-Based system (AD&D) and adapted it from scratch into a novel form of RPG combat (RTwP) is something I applaud, cheer and cry manly tears over. Oh, and two years later they did Baldur's Gate 2, RPG Codex's 4th Best RPG of All Time, a fucking masterpiece that blows PoE out of the water. it was their second RPG. Mad kudos to them.

Having guys with +30 years of gaming in their backs creating an extremely derived ruleset who's only strength is being easy doesn't beget the same respect. It's real benefit is not costing Obsidian any license fees - great for them, means nothing to players.

 

[Outlander]

Seems like an appropriate time to bring back those RACE TRAITOR tags

 

[Onholyservicebound]

I rate the game 6/10 but this thread is easily a 10/10

Then your sense of quality shouldn't be taken seriously. There's almost no arguments in this thread and the people who disagree with the review can't even be arsed to invest more than one post in it. We know the majority liked the game, and yet they aren't even butthurt enough to brofist the people who are against the review.
Unless one liners from Irenaeus and shadow9d9 making the same post to every shallow disagreement are your idea of a quality thread.
This is literally the worst codex thread I have ever read. Even the reddit reactions were better, I pretty much sat here mindlessly clicking through each page with 0 real engagement, at no point did I feel butthurt despite liking the game, the most laughter I got was from self aware posters, which does not a quality trolling thread make.
When the insistence that this thread is actually a quality source of butthurt and lulz is more effective at eliciting emotion than the review and thread itself, you know your thread is shit. 2/10, and the 2 is partly due to ironic posts and partly because I really like the colour scheme of the background.

Sounds to me like you wanted to leave the thread, but got butthurt critted by a disengagement attack..

I'm just disappointed is all, all the elements for a great thread are here. We have an over-hyped game with 9/10 on both codexia and metacritic(Even won out against D:OS-GOTY-2014 in the polls), getting a review that cites it as the worst game Obsidian has ever developed. And the end result is what? A bunch of back patters smelling their own farts over all the illusory butthurt they think they've caused?

Maybe butthurt is subjective, but if a handful of "Where's the real review" and "Agreeable critique but I still enjoyed the game" is true butthurt™ then you probably have lowered expectations. I hate to see the kind of circle-jerk threads you've been surfing to bring you to that point, but you should try reading VD's recent Wasteland 2 gush review thread or the pre-review of AoD thread if you want to see a modern example of thread butthurt done right.

Ultimately it could be my fault for buying so heavily into the hype surrounding Roxor's review, but seeing as skimming through a few pages of pretty much any thread in the PoE subforum would provide me with more examples of vitriol and chaos I'd say it's not as subjective as all that.
They should change the tagline to: Lowered expectations, the thread; lite butthurt for those who can't handle the subforum threads.

 

[hiver]

Another case of a game being crowdfunded by one kind of audience and then designed for another kind of audience.

 

[tuluse]

MRY, you raise BG's budget, I raise you this: "Not one person of the 60 who shipped Baldur's Gate had ever made a video game before"

Pretty sure that is a lie at worse or half truth at best, since it wasn't Bioware's first game and the Docs were involved at some level on the game being the owners of the company.

 

[Khorne]

Had more fun reading this thread than playing the game, though I admit I haven't played much.
At the very start they asked what class I want, so I pick rogue. Then they disregard that choice of mine and tell me I am now a watcher.
Why the hell even ask me to pick a class when it's already pre-determined that I am dragonborn or something?
Whatever, I am now Khorne, the watcher of eternity TV. And I have died because rogues can't run away from a fight in this game.
Almost uninstalled at this point. But, it was more of a technical failure that made me regret the time spent and never look back.
They hardcode that screen vibrator crap into their scripts and fail to provide the option to switch it off.
WTF dev? Did you even see infinity configuration utility?

Apparently, these guys think that adding the off switch would compromise their artistic integrity. Uninstalled.