Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[Lacrymas]

Not talking about the whole thing, am asking how is any given line is bad? to the statement "bad long writing". It can be bad cos its long but I don't think its both bad and long.

Can you make a distinction between these excerpts of two poems? Which, if any, is good or bad? -

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

’Twas about seven o’clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem’d to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem’d to say-
“I’ll blow down the Bridge of Tay.”

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers’ hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
“I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay.”

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

I am the Earth,
Thy mother; she within whose stony veins,
To the last fibre of the loftiest tree
Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen air,
Joy ran, as blood within a living frame,
When thou didst from her bosom, like a cloud
Of glory, arise, a spirit of keen joy!
And at thy voice her pining sons uplifted
Their prostrate brows from the polluting dust,
And our almighty Tyrant with fierce dread
Grew pale, until his thunder chained thee here.
Then, see those million worlds which burn and roll
Around us: their inhabitants beheld
My spherèd light wane in wide Heaven; the sea
Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire
From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow
Shook its portentous hair beneath Heaven's frown;
Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains;
Blue thistles bloomed in cities; foodless toads
Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled:
When Plague had fallen on man, and beast, and worm,
And Famine; and black blight on herb and tree;
And in the corn, and vines, and meadow-grass,
Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds
Draining their growth, for my wan breast was dry
With grief; and the thin air, my breath, was stained
With the contagion of a mother's hate
Breathed on her child's destroyer; ay, I heard
Thy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not,
Yet my innumerable seas and streams,
Mountains, and caves, and winds, and yon wide air,
And the inarticulate people of the dead,
Preserve, a treasured spell. We meditate
In secret joy and hope those dreadful words,
But dare not speak them.

 

[Quillon]

Can you make a distinction between these excerpts of two poems? Which, if any, is good or bad?

Nope. Seems like busy work and I'm no expert on poems

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

I think they are both not good.

 

[Jimmious]

There is no "objectively good" poetry, which is something that goes for almost every art form. There are people that enjoy vastly different things, simply put.

 

[Lacrymas]

Nope. Seems like busy work and I'm no expert on poems

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Spotting bad writing in the micro structures like these takes experience and knowledge. Even if someone tells you "here's an example of bad writing in specific lines" you wouldn't "believe" them because it's going to be all the same to you, even to the point of saying ridiculous things like "but I like it, there's no bad art, it all comes down to taste". This is not derogatory or said in a bad way, nobody is born able to do these things, it requires effort and "training".

 

[Jimmious]

That's a load of bollocks, sorry mate. Art is art and people like different things. To think that you have some special training that gives you the ability to see the truth in texts/poems or whatever is a sign of narcissism, nothing more than that. It's exactly what "art appraisers" in a gallery would say because they have some theoretical superior knowledge.
No, it's not like that. Art is for everyone and by everyone and poems that have literally 3 words can be better than poems with the best vocabulary and 100 lines of text, for some people. Music that sounds like noise for some people is majestic melody for others. It's just like that.
Also EVERYONE is born with an ability to appreciate art, just in different ways.

 

[Quillon]

For me to call a piece of writing bad it has to stand out, shouldn't belong in a game's setting, or should just not be a believable conversation etc. I didn't see this in PoE. Otherwise I already decided on the whole story put together is bad after my first playthrough 2.5 years ago. And its bad cos its unnecessarily long and descriptive and not cohesive etc but writing itself isn't, at least to me.

f.e. There is a difference between an unnecessarily long dialogue and unnecessarily long dialogue that's badly written.

 

[Jimmious]

(I enjoy arguing with Lacrymas a lot, just because he puts effort in expressing his opinions even if I disagree 100% with them)

 

[Lacrymas]

That's a load of bollocks, sorry mate. Art is art and people like different things. To think that you have some special training that gives you the ability to see the truth in texts/poems or whatever is a sign of narcissism, nothing more than that. It's exactly what "art appraisers" in a gallery would say because they have some theoretical superior knowledge.
No, it's not like that. Art is for everyone and by everyone and poems that have literally 3 words can be better than poems with the best vocabulary and 100 lines of text, for some people. Music that sounds like noise for some people is majestic melody for others. It's just like that.
Also EVERYONE is born with an ability to appreciate art, just in different ways.

Have you ever read any book dealing with art in any serious way? A dissertation perhaps? A philosophical treatise on art? If you haven't, then how can you make such statements when you don't know how art is even being talked about?

I also like giving this analogy: If you have to get a serious medical surgery done, who are you going to turn to? A surgeon or the shopkeeper across the street? It's the same thing with art, you can't expect the shopkeeper to have an equally valid or competent opinion on art like someone who was educated on the subject. I'm sorry, it just doesn't work that way, I know this means nothing to you and "art can be appreciated by everyone equally", so that's all I can realistically say.

 

[Jimmious]

Have you ever read any book dealing with art in any serious way? A dissertation perhaps? A philosophical treatise on art? If you haven't, then how can you make such statements when you don't know how art is even being talked about?

But you again get into the same fallacy that is the opposite of my logic: I don't believe in experts in art. Of course any book or dissertation would be an interesting read but that wouldn't mean that it would "set the rules". After all new expressions of art are always frowned upon from the older generations...

I also like giving this analogy: If you have to get a serious medical surgery done, who are you going to turn to? A surgeon or the shopkeeper across the street? It's the same thing with art, you can't expect the shopkeeper to have an equally valid or competent opinion on art like someone who was educated on the subject. I'm sorry, it just doesn't work that way, I know this means nothing to you and "art can be appreciated by everyone equally", so that's all I can realistically say.

No it absolutely isn't! Art is not a methodical procedure that will lead to a result that can be a success or a failure. That's not how art "works".
In a surgery, a mistake might kill the patient. In art a "mistake" might create a masterpiece, something new, something bad.. who knows?
The point is that artists are not working towards "perfection" but towards something that expresses their feelings and thoughts.

I understand you are really into literature.. Do you not consider any modern writers with much "rougher" language, good?

 

[Sizzle]

That surgeon analogy doesn't really completely work - a bad surgeon will be caught after a few botched surgeries, while a "bad" art critic can continue bullshitting for a long, long time without any repercussions.

To put it more simply - art is highly subjective. Medicine isn't.

 

[Lacrymas]

Both of you aren't correct, though. The knowledge and appreciation of art is not a birth-right or something that falls from the sky. The mere assertion of the opposite shows ignorance of the way art is being seriously talked about and this conversation can't really proceed. I might sound elitist or a snob, but that's not my intention, it's simply the way it is. I wouldn't ever dream of giving opinions on sculpture for example, because it's not my area of expertise.

There is no such thing as an art critic in the way there's a musicologist, a painting historian or other such scientific discipline. Going to an art critic for art analysis is ridiculous. Yes, the surgeon example is an extreme one, but it illustrates a point, the shopkeeper is woefully inadequate to perform surgery, just like he's woefully inadequate to give serious opinions on art ("I like it" isn't a serious opinion), but he's going to be competent at picking good fruit or vegetables.

Here's a very good dissertation I've been reading recently, just to show you what I mean by what I'm saying.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

(I enjoy arguing with Lacrymas a lot, just because he puts butthurt in expressing his opinions even if I disagree 100% with them)

Fixed.

 

[Quillon]

(I enjoy arguing with Lacrymas a lot, just because he puts effort in expressing his opinions even if I disagree 100% with them)

My experience with Lacrymas so far is that he always defends some point of view which is related but not actually what I'm attacking, vice versa. To him, if a thing is overall bad, every individual part of it must also be bad, except if MCA has a hand in creating that individual part. Tell us how great a character Grieving Mother is, Lacrymas!

 

[Lacrymas]

My experience with Lacrymas so far is that he always defends some point of view which is related but not actually what I'm attacking, vice versa. To him, if a thing is overall bad, every individual part of it must also be bad, except if MCA has a hand in creating that individual part. Tell us how great a character Grieving Mother is, Lacrymas!

Let me quote myself to prove that this isn't the case -

In the end, PoE's parts add up to more than their sum, true, but they don't add up to anything near the sum of BG's parts, even less BGII's parts.

I don't think this is true, it's actually the opposite. PoE is less than the sum of its parts, kinda like D:OS1. They just don't complement each other very well and it's a janky experience from start to finish. You have a very expansively imagined world, but it's very boring to explore in practice. You have a very well patched together character building system, but everything feels a bit samey with a different flavor, the difference comes from the archetypes rather than the classes. Ranged DPS, Melee DPS, Tank (I'm generous in including this, it's just a Melee DPS without the DPS part), Support (this includes all the spellcasting classes who are not built to DPS), that's it. My priest of Skaen plays in the exact same way as my barbarian, even down to the sneak attacks, because there's no reason not to pick those up. The majority of encounter design is also abysmal, so whoop-di-doo. The awful 3D models contrast horribly with the competent, if generic, 2D backgrounds, they don't create a unified art direction, feels like two different games in one. The smaller and less numerous maps aren't populated with anything, so the content is even sparser and more claustrophobic than in BG1.

The inclusion of 2 Big Cities, while good on paper, creates a schizophrenic picture in which the game doesn't know what to do pace-wise. DB is also too close to the start, so there is no mystery or anticipation for its arrival, unlike BG1. PoE reveals all its secrets in the first 30 minutes of the game, there is nothing more to see or to look forward to after that, even from a gameplay perspective, as well as from an artistic one. I've been playing the same way from start until level 12, the biggest change in the entire party was access to DAoM pots and the cipher's Amplified Wave. I can go on and on, and on. PoE is sterile and lifeless, created out of obligation to adhere to KS promises and some misplaced desire to be both BG and not-BG, with seemingly no understanding of how BG was made or what it even is, fueled only by surface thoughts/memories of it. It also suffers from a hefty scoop of lack of creative talent in many areas.

 

[Quillon]

My experience with Lacrymas so far is that he always defends some point of view which is related but not actually what I'm attacking, vice versa. To him, if a thing is overall bad, every individual part of it must also be bad, except if MCA has a hand in creating that individual part. Tell us how great a character Grieving Mother is, Lacrymas!

Let me quote myself to prove that this isn't the case -

In the end, PoE's parts add up to more than their sum, true, but they don't add up to anything near the sum of BG's parts, even less BGII's parts.

This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad.
This part is good but its bad.

This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad. This part is good but its bad.

 

[Lacrymas]

No. This is the run-down of that post -

Good things: Expansively imagined world, very well patched together character building, competently drawn maps.
Bad things: Boring to explore that world in practice, every character build plays like one of 4 archetypes, the maps are generic and barren.

 

[Quillon]

And you don't even see what you just wrote?

Good things: This part is good, this part is good, this part is good.
Bad things: But its bad, but its bad, but its bad.

Also you're experiencing your barbarian wrong. Every attack cleaves, any other class shouldn't give you the same feeling, let alone a priest.

 

[Prime Junta]

Oh, Lacrymas, don't ever change.

Spoiler

:me reads rest of the thread

Huh, some people actually can't tell which one of the poems is any good. I did not expect that.

Spoiler

The first one is hilariously awful doggerel. The second is ... not to my taste, but it's at the very least competent.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Let's keep it simple: Which criticism applied to PoE can't be applied to the IE games BG and IWD?

Uhm, I already listed the differences? The delivery and most of the writing is worse. The 3D models are an eye-sore in the worst way, there is no unified art direction. The dungeons are bland (I can't stress this enough, PoE's dungeons are soul-crushingly bad) and samey compared to IWD (BG is a different beast, but Durlag's Tower is better than everything in PoE). The combat system is absolute trash compared to both after around 9th-10th lvl, too fast and clusterfucky, too frontloaded, the outcome is decided in the first 5 seconds, you use the same spells and abilities each time, the ones you don't use are garbage. Terrible encounter design in the base game and up to almost the entirety of WM1. The companions might as well not exist, they are both wet rags and inconsequential, offering nothing that can't be done better by adventurers. The maps are even samey-er than BG1 with even fewer things to see, they are absolutely barren in terms of content and are smaller, so they feel claustrophobic. Defiance Bay or Twin Elms can't compare to Baldur's Gate (the city), they are both smaller and lifeless, BG is situated in a very good spot in the story, there is anticipation for its arrival and feels like a reward, DB feels like punishment. There is no variety in terms of character styles, all classes play the same in the same roles, Melee DPS, Ranged DPS, Tank (I'm generous), Support. It's not-BG1 in the worst possible ways.

The question is "what criticism of BG1 and IWD can apply to PoE?", outside of the maps in BG1 being kinda empty and the quests being basically the same kind of fetching.

KotOR2 = MotB > Alpha Protocol >> New Vegas >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> PoE.

Since we aren't playing chess or Tetris, the gameplay is not the only element in existence and KotOR2 is good despite its unfinished and unpolished state. PoE's gameplay is bad after a certain point either way and that is all it can offer because everything else is bad.

The only two points which I would bring up where BG and IWD are clearly better are (both mentioned by you) the maps which are bigger, and the city where BG is obviously better than Defience Bay. Okay, third point - the IWD dungeons are much better than PoE's in the way they exploit the peculiarities of the combat system (the personal initiative roll). Other than that, let's see:

- Writing: in all three games the writing provides the minimum in order to give you a reason to explore further. I haven't yet heard of a case where someone played BG (much less IWD) because the story was keeping them on the edge of the seat. Neither will we hear of such a case with PoE.

- No unified art direction, 3d models look strange on the 2d maps: Hm, they don't to me. Although I do like the IE games' perspective/camera angle better.

- Combat system in PoE is trash: I'm the last one to try to convince you anything but the same. In the IE games the outcome is not decided in the first five seconds, but RNG has a lot stronger influence than in PoE, which you may consider a good or a bad trait. The IE games, just like PoE, can have fun, or boring-easy, or excruciatingly difficult combat, depending on how the player "has made his bed", how much he optimised and how much he roleplayed. Also, looking at IWD and BG, you can arrive at a "winning", cheesed out party and equipment combo just as easily, if not more easliy than you can in PoE.

- Companions: Durance and Eder have more personality than any BG companion, even if we account for the small variance of selection and command responses. There is more intra party dialogue in PoE than in BG. What may be deceiving you in this departament is if you have played BG to death back when there were much fewer games to play, and have very vivid memories, unlike those of the more recent PoE playthrough.

- Actual class variance is small in PoE? But it's just as small in BG/IWD, and classes have far fewer unique abilities than in PoE, especially at the fairly low levels you spend most of BG/IWD. The classes in AD&D 2e can also be reduced to archetypes (just four), just like they can be reduced in PoE.

 

[Jimmious]

Oh, Lacrymas, don't ever change.

Spoiler

:me reads rest of the thread

Huh, some people actually can't tell which one of the poems is any good. I did not expect that.

Spoiler

The first one is hilariously awful doggerel. The second is ... not to my taste, but it's at the very least competent.

Spoiler

I did not even read the poems

 

[FreeKaner]

Subjectivity of tastes aside, there is competency to literature, for me most important part would be the ability to express in words the implied emotion (in a generic sense) of a situation, which is a true test for games often. The emotion can be drown in an avalanche of words if a writer cannot express it, but that doesn't necessarily mean concise is always better, sometimes the flood or indeed sparsity of words can be a tool for expression of emotion.

PoE fails often, but it's not a failure that's jarring, the game's internal consistency holds up even at weaker parts, nothing glares as it doesn't really belong. It falls flat in a lot of areas but what it tries is ambitious and shows promise, I liked what they tried to do and I don't think their inability to execute it better made the result bad. Could it be better? Of course, It could be much better, and hopefully that experience will carry on to second game which is why I am hopeful.

Lacrymas I would also fully agree with your criticism of PoE aside from artsyle of backgrounds. The problem stems from the fact older I.E games seem to escape this precisely critical gaze of yours. Also the fact a game (or indeed poetry) cannot be enjoyable while flawed, I always found games that are a bit haphazard and disconnected appealing for example, following the chaotic nature of reality, "greater than sum of its parts" or "brevity is soul of wit" are too often repeated without proper backing of the case. There are different things to appreciate in a medium like video games, which is why I like mundane personal stories in a vast setting to heroic journeys in an unexplored one, why I like the disconnected nature of "side-quests" as small escapades that don't even overlap often even though it would probably be hard to read that in a book. A lot of arguments to made about books and movies too, and expression of emotion there but that is not the topic I think.

 

[Grunker]

There is no "objectively good" poetry, which is something that goes for almost every art form. There are people that enjoy vastly different things, simply put.

yeah man its like how can you claim la dolce vita is any better than transformers or that der ring des nibelungen is better than



i mean its just different tastes right everyone's is equally legitimate no?

Spoiler

fucking relativist retards

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Things can be objectively good or bad, but in practice when people start playing "I'm so objective" card, it's when they can't back up their retarded opinions.

 

[Jimmious]

There is no "objectively good" poetry, which is something that goes for almost every art form. There are people that enjoy vastly different things, simply put.

yeah man its like how can you claim la dolce vita is any better than transformers or that der ring des nibelungen is better than

.bieber vid.

i mean its just different tastes right everyone's is equally legitimate no?

Spoiler

fucking relativist retards

I am talking about art that is made by artists whose goal is to entertain and express themselves, not to make money from the masses. That's some other level bullshit and it will get very political if I talk about them.