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The writing in this game is average
- Thread starter Brotherman Bill
- Start date
circ
Arcane
It was. If you discount the camera and controls from hell.
- Joined
- May 29, 2010
- Messages
- 36,709
I suppose one could, but it would come at the expense of something else. Just as Dragonfall DC, Wasteland 2, and Dead State had to make sacrifices.
Who's their A-team? Go on, name names. Interested in hearing what kind of A-talent they have on those various Russian MMOs, World of Tanks clone, and Pathfinder Adventure card game.
Pope Amole II
Nerd Commando Game Studios
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2012
- Messages
- 2,052
You know, I want to rant a bit about the whole "false gods". There's so much stupidness in it that I don't even know where to begin.
First, the way Iovara learns about it is completely dumbfuck. So the majority of engwithians gets converted into gods and the minority remains to spread the word, ok. But, if they wished to keep this a secret, it's an incredibly dumb plan - whatever are their origins, the gods are very potent and far-reaching. They can come into visions, they can perform miracles, they can do lots of stuff. Heck, Rymgrand has a fucking armageddon device at his disposal - not bad for a forged deity, eh? The point is, they don't need to send heralds and missionaries to faraway lands - why risk the slip of the tongue (which totally happened)? Just appear in a dream to someone already there, create a couple of miracles, voila. The same effect without as many risks. It's also a very stupid thing that they've left their animancy equipment in a fully working state and that, apart from the Leaden Key, they have quite an indifferent attitude towards the studies of animancy. They surely don't bother to keep their origins secret.
On the other hand, their motto "the gods don't mess with the affairs of mortals" makes zero fucking sense. These gods were created to mess with the affairs of mortals - the whole point was "let's sacrifice ourselves so everyone past us is living in a better world". Choosing to abstain from involvement as everything goes to shit sorta misses the point, you know. Especially when the main problem of the game (Waidwen's Legacy) is directly caused by their divine origins and issues. I can understand some deities giving zero fucks about it (Rymgrand, Wael, Skaen for example), but for Hylea to stare at the hollowborn blankly? For Berath to accept the interference with his wheel? To allow that to last for what, more than a dozen of years? That totally goes against their nature. Against the point of their existence. Especially when that's caused by pretty much divine interference. And, if this plot was actually thought out, you'd spend a game as their agent, willing or unwilling. These babies need to take some serious schooling from Azura.
Another thing is that this whole false gods debate is just shoddily crafted atheistic propaganda. The usual "you don't need a God to have morality" stuff. The thing is, we're not talking about christianity here so this argument is beyond retarded. It's just the extremely western-centric worldview that, in a typical western fashion, doesn't even bother to comprehend that different value systems can actually exist. Even inside the system that they've imagined. Eoran deitys are mostly amoral, they just don't touch this aspect of life. You can criticize Eothas with this shit, but Wael? Skaen? Ondra? Berath? Rymgrand? This shit just doesn't apply to them. I mean, so the gods are false, yeah. But take Skaen - he's the best example as we have more info on him than on the other ones. Skaen is super-effective. You're buttfucked by life - kk, go to Skaen and he'll help you buttfuck the life back. Sure, the cost is horrible and so on, but as you already have nothing to lose, what do you care? What kind of morality is that?
Actually, it's the absolute contrary thing - it's the selfishness, many gods serve exactly that. Wael, for example, is all about self-indulgence with being all clever and crap. You even role-play his priest that way. Ondra is about being all emo, it seems. Magran or Galawain are about being a badass - at least thinking you're pretty tough, Durance with his "everyone are shit" is an excellent example. But, once again, it can be really different. Eothas - yeah, he's your classical moral deity, it seems. Hylea also looks that way. Berath... He looks true neutral to the point of personality erosion so I'm not even sure why you go to that one. As well as Rymgrand - he's just an egoistic dick. Anyways, the array of ideas behind the gods are so diverse that you can't really counter them with a singular argument. And it's hard to go "fuck the gods, we can do everything on your own" because, well, these gods have actual power and you just can't do what they do on your own. Unless you're a cipher or wizard, but what about the common folk?
Next on our retardation list is Abydon the Golem. Yeah, the man who died yet was able to recraft himself into a god. An artificial god. Which is worshipped as well as the "actual" ones. Oh noes, the deities are false, if world will learn about it, everything will crumble!!! Yeah. It's not even surprising - someone has already mentioned in the thread that, in many cultures, pantheons had much humbler origins that being something eternal and incomprehensible. But you'd need to be willing to look past your culture to actually notice that. Y'know, that's the funniest thing about all this SJW/divercity bullshit - it's your classical phariseeism. They may talk all they wish about their virtues and holiness, but all they care is about societal powers and their good looks. And, of course, they stand for the mono-culture and mono-culture only - it's all about making everyone else think their way. Because it's the only right way - are you some kind of a shitlord to be willing to think some other way? And while you can say that this game is not exactly heavily touched by the SJWism, I'd say it's the overall plague across the society. The SJW is just the most radical form of it.
What I mean is that Eora is absolutely based around the western moralities, values, etc. They'd put some flashy stuff for us to witness how open-minded they are (black italians, inuit strong woman, noble native americans), but in reality the world is still grounded in the very same western post-christian values. Which makes zero fucking sense as the main part of this world is the reincarnation of souls. And you know what part of the earth actually build their culture around this? Orient. The game should've been fucking oriental. If not in the looks, then in philosophies, in morals, in values. Karma, sansara, shit like that. Such questions are addressed in the game (because they're bound to arise in such setting, that's the only natural way), but they're all resolved in the light of western mentality. Which never bothered to have anything with that shit. That alone makes the entire setting shit, it's just trying to put the square peg into a round hole.
First, the way Iovara learns about it is completely dumbfuck. So the majority of engwithians gets converted into gods and the minority remains to spread the word, ok. But, if they wished to keep this a secret, it's an incredibly dumb plan - whatever are their origins, the gods are very potent and far-reaching. They can come into visions, they can perform miracles, they can do lots of stuff. Heck, Rymgrand has a fucking armageddon device at his disposal - not bad for a forged deity, eh? The point is, they don't need to send heralds and missionaries to faraway lands - why risk the slip of the tongue (which totally happened)? Just appear in a dream to someone already there, create a couple of miracles, voila. The same effect without as many risks. It's also a very stupid thing that they've left their animancy equipment in a fully working state and that, apart from the Leaden Key, they have quite an indifferent attitude towards the studies of animancy. They surely don't bother to keep their origins secret.
On the other hand, their motto "the gods don't mess with the affairs of mortals" makes zero fucking sense. These gods were created to mess with the affairs of mortals - the whole point was "let's sacrifice ourselves so everyone past us is living in a better world". Choosing to abstain from involvement as everything goes to shit sorta misses the point, you know. Especially when the main problem of the game (Waidwen's Legacy) is directly caused by their divine origins and issues. I can understand some deities giving zero fucks about it (Rymgrand, Wael, Skaen for example), but for Hylea to stare at the hollowborn blankly? For Berath to accept the interference with his wheel? To allow that to last for what, more than a dozen of years? That totally goes against their nature. Against the point of their existence. Especially when that's caused by pretty much divine interference. And, if this plot was actually thought out, you'd spend a game as their agent, willing or unwilling. These babies need to take some serious schooling from Azura.
Another thing is that this whole false gods debate is just shoddily crafted atheistic propaganda. The usual "you don't need a God to have morality" stuff. The thing is, we're not talking about christianity here so this argument is beyond retarded. It's just the extremely western-centric worldview that, in a typical western fashion, doesn't even bother to comprehend that different value systems can actually exist. Even inside the system that they've imagined. Eoran deitys are mostly amoral, they just don't touch this aspect of life. You can criticize Eothas with this shit, but Wael? Skaen? Ondra? Berath? Rymgrand? This shit just doesn't apply to them. I mean, so the gods are false, yeah. But take Skaen - he's the best example as we have more info on him than on the other ones. Skaen is super-effective. You're buttfucked by life - kk, go to Skaen and he'll help you buttfuck the life back. Sure, the cost is horrible and so on, but as you already have nothing to lose, what do you care? What kind of morality is that?
Actually, it's the absolute contrary thing - it's the selfishness, many gods serve exactly that. Wael, for example, is all about self-indulgence with being all clever and crap. You even role-play his priest that way. Ondra is about being all emo, it seems. Magran or Galawain are about being a badass - at least thinking you're pretty tough, Durance with his "everyone are shit" is an excellent example. But, once again, it can be really different. Eothas - yeah, he's your classical moral deity, it seems. Hylea also looks that way. Berath... He looks true neutral to the point of personality erosion so I'm not even sure why you go to that one. As well as Rymgrand - he's just an egoistic dick. Anyways, the array of ideas behind the gods are so diverse that you can't really counter them with a singular argument. And it's hard to go "fuck the gods, we can do everything on your own" because, well, these gods have actual power and you just can't do what they do on your own. Unless you're a cipher or wizard, but what about the common folk?
Next on our retardation list is Abydon the Golem. Yeah, the man who died yet was able to recraft himself into a god. An artificial god. Which is worshipped as well as the "actual" ones. Oh noes, the deities are false, if world will learn about it, everything will crumble!!! Yeah. It's not even surprising - someone has already mentioned in the thread that, in many cultures, pantheons had much humbler origins that being something eternal and incomprehensible. But you'd need to be willing to look past your culture to actually notice that. Y'know, that's the funniest thing about all this SJW/divercity bullshit - it's your classical phariseeism. They may talk all they wish about their virtues and holiness, but all they care is about societal powers and their good looks. And, of course, they stand for the mono-culture and mono-culture only - it's all about making everyone else think their way. Because it's the only right way - are you some kind of a shitlord to be willing to think some other way? And while you can say that this game is not exactly heavily touched by the SJWism, I'd say it's the overall plague across the society. The SJW is just the most radical form of it.
What I mean is that Eora is absolutely based around the western moralities, values, etc. They'd put some flashy stuff for us to witness how open-minded they are (black italians, inuit strong woman, noble native americans), but in reality the world is still grounded in the very same western post-christian values. Which makes zero fucking sense as the main part of this world is the reincarnation of souls. And you know what part of the earth actually build their culture around this? Orient. The game should've been fucking oriental. If not in the looks, then in philosophies, in morals, in values. Karma, sansara, shit like that. Such questions are addressed in the game (because they're bound to arise in such setting, that's the only natural way), but they're all resolved in the light of western mentality. Which never bothered to have anything with that shit. That alone makes the entire setting shit, it's just trying to put the square peg into a round hole.
I have nothing against RPGs made in proper not post but western and christian setting like LOTR and Narnia but it pains to see Elder Scrolls* having far more interesting Theology and setting than this game from supposedly 
Absurdian, We blamed Evul Publishers for games being bland but its Josh Sawyer being true to his Yankee fun hating Puritan soul.
.
*Yes its mostly Micheal Kirkbridge work but those copperhead fuckers could ask him not Josh to do Cosmology for them.
Absurdian, We blamed Evul Publishers for games being bland but its Josh Sawyer being true to his Yankee fun hating Puritan soul. .*Yes its mostly Micheal Kirkbridge work but those copperhead fuckers could ask him not Josh to do Cosmology for them.
Gurkog
Erudite
They went full retard with the companions in PoE. All ended up as ego stroking circle-jerks. I thought Obsidian knew better than to cater to biotard desires.
The relationship with the main antogonist was shit. I didn't care for it or the try-hard character added half way through the game. Come on Obsidian, this shit is rookie level mistakes... guess they really did have their B-team making this one.
The relationship with the main antogonist was shit. I didn't care for it or the try-hard character added half way through the game. Come on Obsidian, this shit is rookie level mistakes... guess they really did have their B-team making this one.
best companion ever was Dak'kon, good old times
I liked Pallegina. I thought she was well executed as a hot-blooded ersatz Italian. Generally, I liked the more low-key companions than the super serious woundedness of Durance and GM. Durance and GM had the most interesting backstories, but having the central conflict being their unwillingness/inability to talk about it and solving that conflict by repeatedly camping was kind of annoyingly passive. I wasn't particularly fond of Aloth and Hiravius. Aloth for being just a bit too ridiculous as fantasy version of Steve Martin in "All of Me" and Hiravius for being kind of annoying.
The backstory was fine I thought, with the fabricated gods conceit being no more ridiculous/full of holes than Bhaal predicting his own death and trying to resurrect himself by preparative boning. It was really just that the main plot had the PC intersecting with that backstory in a fairly haphazard fashion. Really the PC can discover the Leaden Key conspiracy by either investigating animancy to find a solution to their ongoing madness issues and discovering a mysterious group is sabotaging animancy or by investigating Thaos directly. The story kind of flip flops between these two motivations without ever really fleshing out either or integrating them into a single motivation.
The investigation of animancy basically amounts to you finding animancers and them telling you that you're fucked. It would have been far more interesting if you had to engage in various quests to facilitate research on your condition and in the process discovered that some of the more spectacular animancy failures had suspicious causes, leading you to investigate this mysterious Leaden Key. Unfortuneately, this would break the rule that the primary villain (or his subordinate if you want a twisty final act) has to screw over the PC at the beginning of the game. So you decide to cure your madness by tracking down Thaos.
Unfortunately, investigation of Thaos is kind of silly because the game never gives you a compelling reason to do so. For all the PC knows, the biawac which awakened your watcher soul might have been an unintended side effect of his ritual, but even if he intentionally caused it there is no reason to believe he was even aware that it would have that effect on you or that he would know how to fix it. Sure you know immediately that all of these things are connected, but that's mostly through metagame knowledge, which tells you that when a PC encounters a mysterious stranger, gets magical AIDS and learns about an existential threat to the land (i.e. the Hollowborn) as a whole at the beginning of the game, then all three of these things will turn out to have the same cause.
All of this leads to the low point of the trial at the end of Act II, where some industrial strength Deus ex machina is necessary to slam together all of the poorly integrated plot threads and send you off to Act III with an artificial sense of urgency.
My guess is that they decided very early that the basic plot was leading up to a trial in Act II and kind of worked backwards from there to fill in the gaps, meaning they had to make Act II very faction focused rather than working on an interesting investigation and shoehorn in Lady Webb as a substitute for a robust Leaden key investigation and to connect the Leaden Key with the faction/trial stuff.
Edit: Also, I think on average the writing is pretty good. I think if Act II wasn't so disjointed I would upgrade the writing to very good.
The backstory was fine I thought, with the fabricated gods conceit being no more ridiculous/full of holes than Bhaal predicting his own death and trying to resurrect himself by preparative boning. It was really just that the main plot had the PC intersecting with that backstory in a fairly haphazard fashion. Really the PC can discover the Leaden Key conspiracy by either investigating animancy to find a solution to their ongoing madness issues and discovering a mysterious group is sabotaging animancy or by investigating Thaos directly. The story kind of flip flops between these two motivations without ever really fleshing out either or integrating them into a single motivation.
The investigation of animancy basically amounts to you finding animancers and them telling you that you're fucked. It would have been far more interesting if you had to engage in various quests to facilitate research on your condition and in the process discovered that some of the more spectacular animancy failures had suspicious causes, leading you to investigate this mysterious Leaden Key. Unfortuneately, this would break the rule that the primary villain (or his subordinate if you want a twisty final act) has to screw over the PC at the beginning of the game. So you decide to cure your madness by tracking down Thaos.
Unfortunately, investigation of Thaos is kind of silly because the game never gives you a compelling reason to do so. For all the PC knows, the biawac which awakened your watcher soul might have been an unintended side effect of his ritual, but even if he intentionally caused it there is no reason to believe he was even aware that it would have that effect on you or that he would know how to fix it. Sure you know immediately that all of these things are connected, but that's mostly through metagame knowledge, which tells you that when a PC encounters a mysterious stranger, gets magical AIDS and learns about an existential threat to the land (i.e. the Hollowborn) as a whole at the beginning of the game, then all three of these things will turn out to have the same cause.
All of this leads to the low point of the trial at the end of Act II, where some industrial strength Deus ex machina is necessary to slam together all of the poorly integrated plot threads and send you off to Act III with an artificial sense of urgency.
My guess is that they decided very early that the basic plot was leading up to a trial in Act II and kind of worked backwards from there to fill in the gaps, meaning they had to make Act II very faction focused rather than working on an interesting investigation and shoehorn in Lady Webb as a substitute for a robust Leaden key investigation and to connect the Leaden Key with the faction/trial stuff.
Edit: Also, I think on average the writing is pretty good. I think if Act II wasn't so disjointed I would upgrade the writing to very good.
Last edited:
hiver
Guest
That is what i am thinking, half way through the game. And it didnt even look like another biawac.
Dont fucking tell me it was intentional...
Because Thaos couldnt have known i will come out of that cave just in that moment or that it will be "me" at all. Thats completely retarded.... and its still better then W2.
Seaking4
Learned
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2014
- Messages
- 362
PoE makes me think that maybe being finished and polished is not so important in the grand scheme of things.Pillars is in fact their most polished and finished RPG release to date.
That doesn't necessarily mean it's good.
It's well reviewed and it's selling well (relative to other Obsidian games that aren't called Fallout). So I'm sure Obsidian believes it's pretty damn important in all schemes.
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2009
- Messages
- 10,143
Well reviewed I'll grant you, but selling well? doesn't seem like it. Unless you have some information I don't.
hell bovine
Arcane
It's tough to compete with the beauty that are Vivec's sermons: "My love is accidentally shaped like a spear." :DI have nothing against RPGs made in proper not post but western and christian setting like LOTR and Narnia but it pains to see Elder Scrolls* having far more interesting Theology and setting than this game from supposedly
*Yes its mostly Micheal Kirkbridge work but those copperhead fuckers could ask him not Josh to do Cosmology for them.
But as it is, I've actually started to skip all dialogues about gods and souls in PoE, they are just boring to read.
- Joined
- May 29, 2010
- Messages
- 36,709
Looking at Steamspy, It's selling much faster than Wasteland 2 and somewhat faster than Divinity: Original Sin.
Bonerbill
Augur
300,000+ is a good number for most games. Games like Dark Souls and Original Sin had the same numbers during their release.
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2009
- Messages
- 10,143
Interesting, considering Divos was #1 for like a month, but poe fell out of top 5 in like a day.
Inconclusive. They said that they made a lot of money from the combined launches, and skylines sold ridiculously well.
Like there can't be two skies above the world, that there can't be two Dak'kons. It happend only once in the history, sadly.
(T:ToN, please don't suck, please don't suck, please...)
Bonerbill
Augur
Divinity wasn't going against other sales juggernauts like GTAV. Last early summer was a dry period for "mainstream" games.
Well, what is your conclusive evidence that it is not selling well then? So far there seems to be more evidence that it *is* in fact selling well. Paradox said that "if Skylines hadn't already broken our previous sales records, then Pillars certainly would have."
Perkel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 16,259
That's the joke.
Writing is good but people trying to complain about worse writing here and there. It isn't PST but it writing is better than lets say BG2.
It will be interesting to see what Inxile will do with TToN. Being beated by newbs would sting like hell Obsidian and 'dex would be dancing in flames furiously fapping itself.
Still is in top 10 along with Skylines.
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