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You're essentially a killer for hire who is capable of making some very bad decisions throughout the game(at least two of them involve essentially dooming the entire world,) but at least you don't work with NAZIS!!!
The worst thing about Eiger is not so much the massive chip on her shoulder, it's the fact she's supposed to be the ultimate special forces badass yet in an actual fight is fucking useless.
This thing is a big part of what makes the shadowrun race war thing so hamfisted. Everyone's gonna know metahumans used to be people and yet all kinds of inappropriate prejudices are applied to them - everyone knows elves can't be trusted, man after they threw out the metas the food got a lot worse in the area etc. It would have been more understandable if the racism was presented more in terms of these people just freak me out or maybe they're demons and whatnot, they have bad genetics, whatever. But no, all kinds of prejudices that do not make much sense in context will just be transferred straight over to metahumans with little consideration of whether or not it makes any kind of sense. I don't mind a race war metaplot but I do mind when it's done this lazily.
The worst thing about Eiger is not so much the massive chip on her shoulder, it's the fact she's supposed to be the ultimate special forces badass yet in an actual fight is fucking useless.
The worst thing about Eiger is not so much the massive chip on her shoulder, it's the fact she's supposed to be the ultimate special forces badass yet in an actual fight is fucking useless.
i distinctly remember that in dragonfall the human supremacists would share these pamphlets that targetted the human insecurities. 'are you toiling in some corp in a dead end career because the elves above you are gonna live for 2000 years and are never gonna retire? have you been passed over for a job because orcs and trolls are just stronger than you?' etc. makes sense to me. its a world ruled by corporations where everybody is just meat to throw in the grinder. of course there's race wars based on actual problems of today rather then esoteric 1 drop rule bullshit.
I stand corrected. I still think Shadowrun racism is lazy and uninspired. Cartoon evil racism can be fun if it's properly embedded into the setting - The Keep is one hilarious and moody example of such - but shadowrun racism feels bolted on even if it was there from the start. It's like someone was putting together a jigsaw puzzle and just slapped on a piece from another puzzle with superglue and declared it finished.
if you're impressionable enough then sure you'll fall for the 'dragonfall has good writing' meme and contribute to the decline by simping for a mobile game
tyranny is a boring pc game, which is already far above dragonfall
It's a solid game if you play with high difficulty. The only obvious flaw with the combat is the cover mechanic, which is rather ambiguous when it comes to letting you know from which angles you're getting the cover bonus. The writing is pretentious and woke, while I found the story to be a bloated mess. Thankfully there are no cutscenes. Visuals aesthetics and music are generally good.
Dragonfall has the flat out best writing ever for a CRPG. or at least on par with Planescape Torment. If you did not like it then I question if you have ever played the game before.
So, I saw multiple individuals here claiming that Dragonfall has superb writing - and I obviously disagree. From my perspective, there are multiple problems with the writing in this game:
1) The illusion of choice - most dialogues in this game allow the character to say multiple things, yet all of them boil down to a single thing.
This is my favourite - and it repeats itself multiple times in Hong Kong. You have several options, and you know that you'll barely start the sentence before being interrupted.
And all of this before even going on to a first mission. They don't even add a flavor to the character.
2) Pushing agendas, sometimes forcing my character to voice an opinion or pass a judgement without necessity, sometimes forcing him to act insufferably emotionally.
I can either say his work is 'helpful', 'filling a vital need', or call him out for his questionable approach to humans; I can't be indifferent; I can't even tell him "Don't worry, I'm a racist too", just some cringe nonsense.
"You're going to regret it." - is he going to flagellate her publicly?
"Inexcusable" - so...? Will he remove her from the team? (Spoiler: he won't.)
"We need you more than ever" - but... why? I barely even fought alongside her; besides, Blitz+Dieter+Glory would suffice.
Why I don't have the option to say nothing? "It is what it is"? Why do I have to voice my opinion, even when it's not necessary?
I can't say "I won't help you", I must add "he deserves it".
And sure enough, I have to judge - knowing her for, like, a month to make things even better. My character can't say "What's done is done", he must compulsively react to any story someone says.
And a crossover: three options for calling someone a lunatic.
I wonder how those writers act in their lives. Let's say someone tells them he rides a bus without a ticket. What are the dialogue options for this writer?
a) Me too, I hate supporting the totalitarian ticket system and its adherents.
b) What you're doing is inexcusable, I hope someone will stab you to death and play around with your blood.
c) It's not too late to change your ways! Repent, and you will be forgiven!
It feels like they barely had any normal human interaction in their lives.
3) Issues with people writing odd things, behaving in a strange way, or things that don't exactly make a lot of sense to me. For example:
a) Lockdown mission - and there are multiple problems (in this mission, there is an unaccessible building, where bioware was mass produced; there was some sort of an accident two years ago, and communication was shut; turns out, there is one survivor):
-> Heiner went to the sewers to kill a basilisk and fell. He had a keycard to a room with snack bars; why didn't he give it to Rex knowing that the mission was dangerous (they seemed somewhat sane yet)?
-> Heiner had problems with eating lab-grown organs that could be transplanted into metahumans (called by him 'cannibalism'); they were unable to access any other food, no one else could access (and benefit from) those organs, their supply was effectively infinite (or, in other words, the organs weren't scarce for them), and they probably weren't diseased in any way (as lab-grown). It's strange; if someone has problems with cannibalism, then they are usually related to some sort of 'desacration' of the body or disease-related problems.
-> What were the hellhounds and the basilisk in the sewers eating? I know they were magical beasts, but they most likely ate Heiner (because keycard was inside the basilisk). Besides, hellhounds had to eat in Shadowrun Returns, feeding them was a part of a mission (The Royale Apartments) - so they most likely still had to eat, yet they didn't have access to neither organs nor snacks; they were unable to eat anyone for more than a year, and the lab was quite sterile and hermetically closed from the outside world (so, probably not even rodents were present in the sewers).
b) MKVI mission - in a lab, there was a dead scientist who probably overdosed on something; what was the purpose of his journal? It wasn't for scientific purposes, as the language was imprecise and the journal contained irrelevant information; so, most likely, he wrote it for himself; then why did he keep notes on laboratory stuff inside? It's not exactly wrong; it is just odd. Normally, I would expect such things to be written in mails (which most normal games did - Bloodlines and Underrail, among others). It's like an accountant writing about the newest Excel update in his personal journal.
c) The fellow from the Humanis Policlub, right after becoming a part of Beckenbauer's organization, writes this in a mail:
Did the writers have a stro - uh, a mental lapse while writing it?
d) APEX: Adrian Vauclair ordered it to pursue and remove anyone who learns about Feuerschwinge's real fate; he seems to be a fan of the metahumanity, who considers dragons to be a 'danger' to the metahumanity. But if, for some reason, the general public would learn about Feuerschwinge (like in the news), APEX would effectively need to commit quite a genocide. Some might say, 'Oh, but it only killed deckers' - in 'One Year Later', however, if you set APEX free, the main character remarks that whenever he passes by a turret, it starts shooting in his direction - and he effectively had to cut himself out of the matrix.
e) Trial Run:
-> Jana does not have any problem with frying a guard with electricity (she herself suggests that possibility), yet she seems terrified when it turns out 'cameras' were actually bombs destined to whack someone; also, she starts calling herself 'murderer'.
As you can see, she does not exactly act like a die-hard pacifist. However, after it turns out she did take part in planting a bomb:
-> Mission turns into a bloodbath, yet a person using the apartment (where a bomb was planted - and the carnage occured just behind a corner) does not have a problem with using it as a safe place about one hour later.
Stop nitpicking, in a world of Cuckfinder: Shitmakers and Divinity Original Turds and Bear Sex 3 and Starfilth, Dragonfall does indeed have excellent writing.
Stop nitpicking, in a world of Cuckfinder: Shitmakers and Divinity Original Turds and Bear Sex 3 and Starfilth, Dragonfall does indeed have excellent writing.
Three things:
1) Nitpicking? Quite a lot of people wrote here about Dragonfall pushing an agenda - without exact moments and screenshots, of course. What more do you expect, a ten-page essay? The thorough dissection of each mission, of every text, every dialogue?
2) What's so bad about Kingmaker's writing except for some unfortunate characters and easily skippable monologues? I found some problems with it, but they were quite sparse - I could voice my ideas, I didn't have to judge people unless it was logical (the main character was ruling the kingdom, so certain decisions had to be made). It didn't bother me in any way - unlike Dragonfall's. Usually I don't have problems with insufferable people if I can ignore them - and I can't ignore the main character if I want to play a game. Besides, I found the main plotline to be very well written.
3) I would expect a game with 'excellent writing' to have at least serviceable editing.
It's a solid game if you play with high difficulty. The only obvious flaw with the combat is the cover mechanic, which is rather ambiguous when it comes to letting you know from which angles you're getting the cover bonus. The writing is pretentious and woke, while I found the story to be a bloated mess. Thankfully there are no cutscenes. Visuals aesthetics and music are generally good.
Stop nitpicking, in a world of Cuckfinder: Shitmakers and Divinity Original Turds and Bear Sex 3 and Starfilth, Dragonfall does indeed have excellent writing.
Three things:
1) Nitpicking? Quite a lot of people wrote here about Dragonfall pushing an agenda - without exact moments and screenshots, of course. What more do you expect, a ten-page essay? The thorough dissection of each mission, of every text, every dialogue?
2) What's so bad about Kingmaker's writing except for some unfortunate characters and easily skippable monologues? I found some problems with it, but they were quite sparse - I could voice my ideas, I didn't have to judge people unless it was logical (the main character was ruling the kingdom, so certain decisions had to be made). It didn't bother me in any way - unlike Dragonfall's. Usually I don't have problems with insufferable people if I can ignore them - and I can't ignore the main character if I want to play a game. Besides, I found the main plotline to be very well written.
3) I would expect a game with 'excellent writing' to have at least serviceable editing.
Stop nitpicking, in a world of Cuckfinder: Shitmakers and Divinity Original Turds and Bear Sex 3 and Starfilth, Dragonfall does indeed have excellent writing.
Three things:
1) Nitpicking? Quite a lot of people wrote here about Dragonfall pushing an agenda - without exact moments and screenshots, of course. What more do you expect, a ten-page essay? The thorough dissection of each mission, of every text, every dialogue?
2) What's so bad about Kingmaker's writing except for some unfortunate characters and easily skippable monologues? I found some problems with it, but they were quite sparse - I could voice my ideas, I didn't have to judge people unless it was logical (the main character was ruling the kingdom, so certain decisions had to be made). It didn't bother me in any way - unlike Dragonfall's. Usually I don't have problems with insufferable people if I can ignore them - and I can't ignore the main character if I want to play a game. Besides, I found the main plotline to be very well written.
3) I would expect a game with 'excellent writing' to have at least serviceable editing.
To be perfectly honest, at first I wanted to argue that the writing (or, to be precise, the editing or its lack thereof) is the only subpar element of this game, it's one of my favourite all-around games. In most RPGs it's hard to pick the writing apart, as the stories tend to be quite simple. Even in Planescape: Torment most of the quests and dialogues were mundane; it's the oddity of the world that was the point of the game. There, most of the stories are not so banal - and so I would expect an editor to point out the problems and correct them, yet I saw no polish to the writing; everywhere I looked, there were some more-or-less subtle problems, including several runs that didn't make sense (Trial Run and Lockdown).
For example, in the Trial Run, I think writers were simultaneously trying to show:
a) Luca Duerr lying to the player about planting the bomb.
2) The run going south, resulting in a carnage.
Yet it resulted in a disconnect between the beginning and the end of a mission. I don't know how to make this mission properly - maybe add a stealth element, maybe hiding bodies - but I think it was a very poorly thought-out mission. The same applies to the Lockdown mission.
