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

[felipepepe]

Yep, not long after felipepepe considered the creation of RTWP to be a crowning achievement for the cRPG genre.

Yes, that's exactly what I said... good to know people can still read good.

 

[mastroego]

The Game is out. It's a fucking stinker. Accept it and hope Obsidian pulls their shit together for PoE 2.. They made the money off the game so can we stop treading water for fear that if we call PoE what it is, Obsidian will never make RPG's again.

Uhm, the game is sitting at a 90 Metacritic score and has been released to near-universal critical acclaim.

But we only care about the Codex's word. And the Codex's word is somewhat divided here.
So we pick sides. Hard. And I'm sticking to mine.
Masses be damned to hell, as always, for all time

 

[Black]

Yep, not long after felipepepe considered the creation of RTWP to be a crowning achievement for the cRPG genre.

Yes, that's exactly what I said... good to know people can still read good.

Nobody wants to read what a gamasutra boi has to say!!

 

[eremita]

But that was precisely Descartes's point, that you can be sure! Hell, you must be sure, as it's only logical. If everything you perceive or learn is a lie, the very fact that you think about it in terms of 'is this is a lie?' is something that is rock-solid. You doubt the truth of something, but can you doubt the doubt? And further doubt the doubt of the doubt? Trying to engage into this is on one hand a gigantic fallacy leading to a vicious cycle, but on the other, it only kind of reinforces your certainty that you do, in fact, think, if you can technically doubt every incoming doubt.

Fuck, in PoE's context, this shit is actually even more reinforced than with Descartes himself. Because Descartes had to find a backdoor to another thing - what if even my thoughts are false because they are implanted in me by a spiteful god? Answer: This cannot be because God is good by nature and wouldn't do such a thing. Now remove gods from the equation because ~spoilarz~ (even more bonus points because the gods of poe are not omnipotent to begin with), and you don't even need the backdoor.

God no, what a nonsense. If you take a lie as an absolute then your thinking may as well be another lie. And if you go down that vicious circle then you cannot say that your thinking is somehow not a lie, since that defeats the idea that everything is a lie.

see?

The point and the actual answer is not to go into such extremes in the first place. Descartes seemed like a good guy. Wish i could talk to him to ease his troubles.

- now, some things we are taught or think may turn out to be lies or not exactly true, but that does not mean absolutely everything is a lie.

Extremes are not truths. they are just extremes.

After reading Meditations several times, I came to conclusion that "cogito ergo sum" is meant to be rock solid on its own - the proof of God doesn't matter. Sure, he says something like one can't be certain of anything if God's a big deceiver but that's just your typical logical (deduction) bullshit. Your reasoning is basically the same, hiver - it's just a deduction tied up by the logical structure. The proof of one's existence on the other hand is basically empirical - it's an undeniable phenomenon, it's experienced and it's felt. Not even the greatest deceiver can cause your self-awareness/conscious thinking to be a lie if you're actually in this very moment questioning your own existence - you are thinking no matter what. Whether or not your thinking is flawed doesn't matter. That's a completely different problem, a subsequent issue and it's actually here, where proof of God comes into play - if he's good, he wouldn't deceive you, therefore your reasoning is not complete bullshit. So the only reason you need a good God is to prove that humans can experience things as they really are. But the proof of ones existence was already proved and lie has nothing to do with it.

 

[Gord]

I think people feel like criticizing PoE is like betraying Obsidian.. Their developers post here.. We have a long history with them as people and RPG makers.. It does nobody justice to fanboy splooge all over the place though.

I am not ignorant enough to think a forum post or a game review is going to change the world. I just hope that if we pick the most glaring issues and make enough of a shit storm about it.. Maybe something will improve in the long run.

Meh, I don't give a shit about whether Obsidian devs post here or not, nor do I give them any bonus because they managed to release a few games in the past I happened to like.
Still, I consider PoE a good game. And I do that despite the issues I think and agree it has.
But I consider it silly to call a game a "stinker" because it doesn't manage to live up to some imaginary dream rpg that never existed and never will exist - or in other cases because it doesn't exactly reproduce the gameplay of some other game.

Anyway, as I said, despite me liking PoE and having fun with it (and that's ultimately the only metric I really care about), I do see issues with it which I hope will be improved eventually. But that's no reason to focus on the negatives and go all edgy just for the sake of it.

 

[hiver]

eremita

I think you totally misunderstood what i am saying or what me, Roxor and leino were discussing. I wasnt even arguing about proof of existence, since that is obvious and empirical. Nor can any proof about god or against him be drawn from superimposing extreme ideas and assumptions, since extremes prove nothing but that they are extremes.

 

[eremita]

eremita

I think you totally misunderstood what i am saying or what me, Roxor and leino were discussing. I wasnt even arguing about proof of existence, since that is obvious and empirical. Nor can any proof about god or against him be drawn from superimposing extreme ideas and assumptions, since extremes prove nothing but that they are extremes.

I was talking about this line specifically: "God no, what a nonsense. If you take a lie as an absolute then your thinking may as well be another lie. And if you go down that vicious circle then you cannot say that your thinking is somehow not a lie, since that defeats the idea that everything is a lie."

Thinking cannot be a lie if you're already thinking. The content of your thoughts? Different matter.

 

[hiver]

Thats not true. If we assume god is some kind of evil monster then not even your thoughts can serve as proof of anything. Just the fact that you are thinking wouldn't mean anything in that case. You would be nothing more then a program build to think its thinking independently.

But i was rather arguing that thinking - everything is a lie - is nonsense just by itself, nothing more then extreme assumption - so it does not need any special proof for or against it.
Because it is nonsense extreme idea.

You misunderstand me to be arguing that everything is a lie there, for some strange reason, while that very sentence proves that kind of thinking is basically an oxymoron.


maybe i should have made it clearer....


If you are thinking everything is a lie, then that very thought may not be true - ok?
Or, if you think everything is a lie - then you cannot think that "everything is a lie" is true - since that would defeat the starting position.

You can spin yourself inside such preposterous assumptions indefinitely and thats just pointless. Since the starting position is preposterous unfounded extreme assumption.


Besides that, i exist even when i dont think, obviously, as that happens every night when im sleeping.

 

[Ulrox]

GUYS GUYS, STOP ARGUING! WE ALL KNOW DRAGON AGE:I IS THE BETTER GAME OK?

 

[karnak]

GUYS GUYS, STOP ARGUING! WE ALL KNOW DRAGON AGE:I IS THE BETTER GAME OK?

No way!
The Witcher has the best tits.

Tits always win!

 

[Bubbles]

No way!
The Witcher has the best tits.

Tits always win!

Generally true, although the forces of decline are already hard at work to clog our tit pipeline:

 

[Black]

Does this mean there will be more hours of sex or less?? This is important.

 

[karnak]

No way!
The Witcher has the best tits.

Tits always win!

Generally true, although the forces of decline are already hard at work to clog our tit pipeline:

Shit!

 

[Irenaeus]

the writer had a personal crusade against PoE.

More like personal crusade for attention.

 

[Modron]

the writer had a personal crusade against PoE.

More like personal crusade for attention.

I can't handle the irony.

 

[Irenaeus]

I often respect your posts so I am gonna be as polite as possible

-snip-

It is true that PoE does not have turn-based combat; otherwise, it has included all the parts one could want: a rich, non-licensed setting; a complex character system with races, classes, skills, stats, talents, feats, etc; dialogue trees with skill-checks and other checks; tactical party-based combat with a large party; an "isometric" camera angle; painted environments; liberal use of text and text adventures; and at least some degree of exploration. Now, each of these parts may be withered or malformed in some way -- I haven't played the game for more than a tiny bit, so I can't say -- but the parts are there.

-snip-

Is anyone else noticing the pattern of people who rush to defend this game are also the people who played it the least or know the least about it..

I have 80 hours logged on PoE and I give it a 10/10. You retards, including Roxor, are just a vocal minority.

 

[Gurkog]

PoE Devolves at the conclusion of act 2.

Their big mistakes were the endless dungeon and keep stretch goals. All the resources put into those could have been used to polish the 2nd half of the game. I enjoyed most of my time with the game, but the end was disappointing.

 

[Lhynn]

You dont count iren.

 

[Athelas]

PoE Devolves at the conclusion of act 2.

Twin Elms is a better city than Defiance Bay.

 

[Broseph]

You dont count iren.

Oh please. I disagree!

 

[Kem0sabe]

Twin Elms is a better city than Defiance Bay.

Twin elms is less of a city than defiance bay

 

[Irenaeus]

Twin Elms is a better city than Defiance Bay.

Twin elms is less of a city than defiance bay

Twin elms looks cool so far, just entered.

 

[Athelas]

Twin Elms is a better city than Defiance Bay.

Twin elms is less of a city than defiance bay

Not all of us are size queens.

 

[Ulrox]

PoE Devolves at the conclusion of act 2.

Twin Elms is a better city than Defiance Bay.

I thought Defiance Bay was more interesting than Twin Elms. I enjoyed having to choose factions and backstabbing the other factions. - I very much agree that Pillars devolves, though not after act 2, but after Dyrford. Dyrford was ok. Defiance Bay probably gave me the biggest infinity engine nostalgia as I always loved going through cities in the other games.

Spoiler

I also enjoyed that I could petition the gods in act 3.

 

[Johannes]

the writer had a personal crusade against PoE.

More like personal crusade for attention.

I can't handle the ireny.