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Thread: Pillars of Eternity ..
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2020-09-17, 12:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2009
Re: Pillars of Eternity ..
I would. I don't know why production values are important for this comparison. Each game chooses its style of presentation. The only thing that matters then is how well the game works in its chosen presentation. Sure, some presentation style don't require a staff of 300 asset creators but that doesn't mean the game is "worse" just because of the chosen presentation.
Take a game like GRIS for instance. The game was made by I think 3 or 4 people. Clearly this game has lower production values then, say, Witcher 3. But what would GRIS gain from looking like Witcher 3? Nothing of course.
Or take Dust, a retro shooter. What would Dust gain from looking like *insert modern shooter here*? Absolutely nothing!
It matters if a game tries to conform to a certain aesthetic but fails - be it because of lack of talent, lazyness or lack of budget.
But is that the case for PF KM? For me at least it isn't. I like how the game looks, it has a large variety of monsters, the sound design is solid and the music is excellent.
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2020-09-17, 12:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Pillars of Eternity ..
You cannot "refute" a subjective claim. For me, it is one of the best RPGs of the decade. For you, it's not. There is nothing that can be said that will make either of us change their mind, and my intention was never to try. It is a matter of taste, after all. On my end, the reason for this conversation is twofold:
One, I wanted to explain that while some of the game's flaws are universally agreed upon, not all of them are. And more specifically, the "difficulty spikes" in the game (including ambushes and all) I don't consider to be a flaw at all, but instead a deliberate design choice, a feature, and one of the very reasons I liked the game so much. And that if Owlcat decided to fix this "flaw", then their next game would be less appealing to me personally, perhaps significantly so.
And two, I'm hoping that if someone who hasn't played the game is reading this exchange they might decide that it sounds like their cup of tea and give it a chance.
You seem to be valuing 3D games more than isometric ones. Which is fine, but it is not the same criteria I would use at all. For instance, I cannot accept that Witcher 2 and New Vegas have the same production values as the rest of the games in your list, or even higher than Kingmaker. Both had a much smaller budget than the rest, and ran into some of the same issues with Kingmaker, ie a buggy release that was later patched. New Vegas, while one of my favorite games, came out in 2010 so I wouldn't exactly count it among RPGs of the past decade. The Witcher series definitely qualifies, and I consider them the other games at the top of my list (along with Kingmaker, Disco Elysium and nothing else). But Skyrim and Mass Effect 2 do not deserve to be considered greatest of the decade. They were both a major step down over previous games in their respective series, and had significant flaws in areas that used to be their strengths.
I don't think it is a coincidence that, with the exception of Witcher 3, no game with "high production values" would make my cut as one of the best. Production values and a high budget are no guarantee of quality, and a low-budget indie game can very easily be better than them. Just like a Hollywood blockbuster can very easily be a worse film than an indie film despite costing much, much more.Many thanks to Assassin 89 for this avatar!
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2020-09-17, 01:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Pillars of Eternity ..
That is not a metric of worth.
They spend "a lot of money" on creating "triple AAAAAAAAAAAAAA" games and that means absolutely jack-diddly-squat.
Now, if you want to argue that the story-writing teams from Bioware-before-it-sucked and CD Project Red were more accomplished that those on Owlcat (and who were, to be fair, adapting from a story already written in the advanture path), then that's more debatable. But that's nothing to do with production values.
"It has better graphics/more voice acting" is not a measure of a good RPG. Graphics long ago reached the level of "good enough."
(See: Planecape: Torment.)
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2020-09-17, 01:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2020
Re: Pillars of Eternity ..
Thanks for the correction.
I value good games and 3D games are more prevalent than isometric ones. If you don't mind I would like to add Disco Elysium and D:OS2 on the list (Should D:OS2 considered a 3D or an isometric game?).
Anyway, thanks for the discussion. I concede that some of the flaws I see in Kingmaker may not be flaws at all but are there by design. Still don't like them, though; I hope in WotR they will scale the difficulty better while keep it challenging for people that want that kind of experience.
A story-writing team has to be paid. It certainly has to do with production values - even if some developers choose not to invest much on it.
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2020-09-17, 02:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2014
Re: Pillars of Eternity ..
I have! It's brilliant. All the joy of wandering around in Skyrim, but with an actual plot and likeable characters. A word of warning though: the story is pretty ruthlessly bleak at points. It's very good and never gets into "misery-for-misery's-sake" territory, but if you're having a bad day certain story beats won't help.
Recently it's been released on Steam and has a full fledged expansion tacked onto it. I'm slowly poking my way through it a second time now.
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2020-09-17, 03:54 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Pillars of Eternity ..
Oh, don't worry, I played it =)
Then I heard there was an expansion, and downloaded that - but it's not a new story, it's more quests and stuff for the original one (as I understand), meaning I'll have to play all of it again, and I don't have the patience for that. Sadly.
Oh - and of course now Deadfire is on sale. So should I buy it, or not? oOLast edited by Kaptin Keen; 2020-09-17 at 04:11 PM.
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2020-09-17, 11:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2019
Re: Pillars of Eternity ..
Gah!! I've been trying to figure out which of the RPGs in my backlog to start and now I have to add this to the list (Have PoE2, Age of Decadence, Disco Elysium and Octopath Traveller to choose from, in the last few months finished up Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Persona 5 Royal, Divinity: Original Sin 2 and just finished FFVII Remake this evening). Looks interesting though, I'll have to give it a try.
Last edited by Dire_Flumph; 2020-09-17 at 11:19 PM.
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2020-09-18, 12:13 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
Re: Pillars of Eternity ..
It absolutely does misery for its own sake. When random extras are wandering about the city saying "I just don't see the f---ing point" - and it's not a plot hook, you can't even talk to them - that's not my idea of sunny optimism.
I also seem to have missed the "likeable characters". I mean, they're OK, but nothing really sets them above Skyrim's.
Apart from the bleakness, what gets to me is a level of incoherence in the world that goes way beyond suspendable, if that's a word, disbelief.SpoilerThere's a war on, an army is besieging the city you're in - but if you want to attempt some ops against it, or simply to take a stroll out of the city, not only will no-one stop you - there's no sign of an army there, and no-one has heard anything about it. I can't rationalise that."None of us likes to be hated, none of us likes to be shunned. A natural result of these conditions is, that we consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound." - Mark Twain
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2020-09-18, 02:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2014
Re: Pillars of Eternity ..
As someone currently running through it now, I would say to. I'm somewhat less fond of the DLCs, at least as far as I've seen, because they seem like fairly lengthy distractions from what I really want to be doing, but I like the core game. Pillars of Eternity and its sequel are definitely meant to appeal to a sense of nostalgia for older computer RPGs, but I don't think that's a bad thing, and I think they've made improvements in their own right:
- The chanter class, whose mechanical setup makes the party bard really stand out from the wizards--something that was not my experience with Baldur's Gate, where the bard features were irrelevant most of the time and bard characters were mostly just wizards that could fire a bow.
- Mechanically, the ability scores are intuitively similar to those of D&D, and keep mostly to a similar scale, but apply in ways such that every class can benefit from all of them (if not totally equally among all classes). Your wizard and rogue both want Might, not just your fighter, because it adds percentage to all damage, even spells or Sneak Attack.
- Having XP divorced from combat was described by someone else on this thread as "grinding without leveling" as opposed to grinding for levels, but I feel like it's more akin to how Winthur was talking about having non-scaled enemies; it gives you an incentive to work to circumvent difficult opponents and helps you feel like you've accomplished something significant when you do. Deadfire is very much an improvement over its predecessor in this regard as well, as the stealth system is more usable and there tend to be more options available to solve things without clearing out a level.
- I think even the roleplaying has improvements in it compared to its sources of inspiration. As others have mentioned, there's much philosophizing thrown at you, but you don't have to just listen to it. The dialogue tends to offer significant retorts, jocular commentary, or the ability to just end conversations brusquely.
I'll note that, as others have said, the tone is rather different between 1 and 2. I think that's somewhat inevitable. The first game is all about uncovering a mystery whose nature is fundamental to the setting. In the second game, with the player having already discovered it, it would be difficult to recapitulate that same sort of feeling.
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2020-09-18, 02:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2006
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Re: Pillars of Eternity ..
I think one place where Pillars really struck gold is the disposition system. It lets you give your character a consistent attitude, one that's recognized by NPCs, without boiling it down to "good" or "bad". Or two alignments that totally aren't good or evil, except they actually are (Paragon/Renegade, Open Palm/Closed Fist).
Last edited by Morty; 2020-09-18 at 02:58 AM.
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2020-09-18, 04:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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2020-09-18, 04:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Pillars of Eternity ..
The amount a writer is paid does not equate to whether or not they actually any good (see: movies and television), or whether they ever WERE any good and now are not - hell, half the time it doesn't even CORROLATE.
(And if I was particularly cynical - and I AM - I would note that, as in almost everything else in life or unlife, whether or not you get highly-paid for your abilities relies as often on not on you getting matey with the right clique that happens to be the big one running things.)
The idea that "if you spend more money, you automatically get a better product" is dangerous, on both the producer and consumer levels; while in hypotheticals, it might be the case, in practise it virtually never is in the modern age; for example, one only has to look at the current state of the industry to see exactly how that has been turned into a tool for making a small number of already-rich people even more so, at the expense of their own staff and customer base.
So I'll take Kingmaker and its ilk and their production values over anything EA, Ubisoft, Activation (including Blizzard), SquareEnix and Bethsada have done in the past ten years (literally have; including, the, what, three games total I bought from all of those companies combined in that time (five if you count Starcraft 2 as three.))
Oh, I know, I'm just treating that idea with the utter contempt and derision it deserves.Last edited by Aotrs Commander; 2020-09-18 at 05:15 AM.
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2020-09-18, 01:01 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2014
Re: Pillars of Eternity ..
From that list of want to plays, and excluding Octopath Traveller cause I know nothing about it, I'd recommend Age of Decadence, Enderal, Disco Elysium, and PoE2 in that order. That said, Age of Decadence has some pretty rough edges, Enderal is Skyrim-but-better (with a lot of Skyrim's flaws still), and Disco Elysium is gloriously bizarre. All of them are excellent games and definitely worth your time.
Fair, but that's just one of the stock NPCs random lines. It's no magically happy kingdom (and much bleaker than Skyrim), but it's no Warhammer Fantasy either. Given all the troubles going on both in the play area and implied beyond it, some depressing townsfolk are to be expected.
I have fonder memories of Enderal's NPCs, but mostly because I have no memories of Skyrim's NPCs. Enderal is no Witcher III, but it's not bad, especially for a fan project.
Spoiler: Spoilers for veti's eyes
While you're totally right, it is immersion breaking that you can walk out of the city while it's under "siege", I seem to remember an enemy siege camp on the docks that gets real bothered by you trying to visit them. And a bunch of the nearby dungeons start having Nehrimese soldiers as an enemy type? It's been a long time since I played.
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2020-09-18, 02:10 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2009
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Re: Pillars of Eternity ..
About AAA writing, I think Skyrim might be one of the worst. It's hard to define, but I felt that many of the quests were simply nonsensical, repellent, meaningless, and/or given by repellent people.
Some examples (many fit in multiple categories):
- Repellent: being a cold-blooded murderer for a child who isn't in danger.
- Given by repellent people: the Thieves Guild.
- Nonsensical writing: kill Paarthurnax (they aren't in the conditions to make requests and this won't help them anyway), become a Werewolf (this guild is right beneath the Sky Forge, you join to swing a sword, but you are forced to grow claws. Shouldn't this be a wizard/Hircine thing?), kill Alduin (which you have already beaten into submission, only this time you are stronger and have great allies)
- Meaningless: collect those Nirnroots (no payoff), save the Mages Guild (negative payoff: the real cool guys steal your artifact), kill the Dark Brotherhood (uhm, they're dead, is that all?), find the jagged crown that will never ever come up again, win the Civil War but there will never be a king...
What I find especially bad is that these missions often grant access to a faction. You either bend and do them, or you lose a fair lot of content.Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2020-09-18, 03:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2014
Re: Pillars of Eternity ..
I mean, I'd argue that "root out the death cult/assassin's guild that runs around meddling in Imperial politics and murdering innocent civilians" and "get rid of the reality-tearing maelstrom in your guild hall" are reasonably meaningful objectives. They're not terribly satisfying ones, since they avoid a negative rather than implement a positive change (and, as you mentioned, the Psijics swagger in to take the benefit once you've done literally all of the work), and the game tends to only show the most superficial of reactions to one's accomplishments, but the objectives themselves are meaningful.
Now, the Civil War/Jagged Crown quests are famously incompletely-written and are terrible in many ways. There's almost no sense that there's an ongoing conflict, the scale is pitiful, there's no sense of tactics or strategy to it in spite of all the bending over maps people do (why does taking Fort Sungard force Markarth to capitulate? It doesn't control the supply lines to the city, and Markarth is so well-fortified that it could probably last through a years-long siege if it had to), andthe crownany strategic asset you gain for a side does nothing whatsoever. Also, there's no New Vegas-style Wild Card ending where you seize power for yourself, even though there are a whole host of reasons why that should be a viable option.
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2020-09-19, 12:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
Re: Pillars of Eternity ..
I actually quite like the setup with Aventus and Grelod. It's basically an audition for becoming an assassin, after all. If you're not willing to murder Grelod, who would you be willing to kill for pay? The "destroy the DB" option gets more flak, but it is possible to view it as making sense: you get the opportunity to kill Astrid, and that convinces the officer guy that you've got what it takes to take down the whole bunch of them. It's easy to imagine ways in which it could be made a lot more fun - say, if you had to ambush the assassins as they went out on missions - but budget.
The Thieves Guild are unpleasant, but then... they're thieves. The TG quest is awful, true, but not for that reason. I wish the thieves had more individual personality, and that their plotline made some kind of sense, and that becoming guildmaster was worthwhile in some way - but I'm fine with them not being nice people.
As to the Mages Guild - I find it hard to get upset about the psijics nicking the Eye. It's not as if I could use it anyway, it was just cluttering up the place and posing a security threat to the whole planet. I do get to keep the staff, which is pretty cool.
The rest I basically agree with, and could probably harp for some length on many other shortcomings in the game (including, for instance, every daedric quest)... but there's a whole separate thread for that if we want to go there.
Having said that, I'm still playing Skyrim. There are plenty of mods that put in much better content than the base game, and I still get a good deal of pleasure from them."None of us likes to be hated, none of us likes to be shunned. A natural result of these conditions is, that we consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound." - Mark Twain
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2020-09-21, 04:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Pillars of Eternity ..
As the Fates will it - I've bought Hades instead. Seems to be the most well-reviewed games in human history (at least according to Steam). Seems nice so far.