Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire + DLC Thread - now with turn-based combat!

[ERYFKRAD]

Time to find a new trend!

There's also the Codex tradition of playing something for 1000 hours and then calling it shit. Just ask Sarissofoi about Battle Brothers, or whoever it was that had that bug up his ass about Darkest Dungeon.

You disgrace your join date, the tradition is to play it 7 times to find anything worthy.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I've been quietly, and slowly, playing this game. 27 hours in over the course of 1.5 weeks, which is incredibly slow of me when it comes to an RPG, but more on why I can only play this game in short bursts later. I've gotten to the point where I must make way for Ukaizo so here are my onions of the game so far:

The plot in this game sucks. I can't get into it. Making it focused on the gods is a big mistake since the gods in PoE, or any other game for that matter, were never interesting. They added an incredibly lame hook of losing a part of your soul to Eothas to "try" and make it more personal, but this is a failure of a hook and Obsidian writers put no effort into it. I really don't care about my video game soul and it doesn't have any mechanical implications so I cannot get invested in the idea of getting it back. A plot that isn't a personal one is already a massive failure for me. PoE1 was much better in this regard, that game understood that making the conflict personal is the best way to get the player to care.

The writing is pretty bad. The game doesn't really do big info dumps on you often, and when it does, I can safely just skip a few pages of descriptive text that doesn't add anything to the experience. There's a lot of bullshit, infantile derp in it though, much of what I expect from Obsidian or any western writer for video games by this point. After I finished Maia's quest she wanted to tell me how blue she felt for assassinating an innocent person. Then she does a complete 180 and tells me that she wants my dick if I buy her bird some shark meat. Such a poor lack of grace on the writer's part. That may have been the lowest point for me. Otherwise it fluctuates between tolerable to just plain boring.

Alright, in to the actual part that I care about: the gameplay, and why it's hard for me to play this game for long periods of time. I like the inclusion of sub-classes and multiclassing. These are good new additions. I feel like the combat itself is less of a clusterfuck than it was in PoE1 where I was constantly getting raped by the engagement system until my Druid was strong enough to just blow everything up. I like the idea of sailing your ship with a crew, and up to a point I feel like it is well realized, but the ship-to-ship combat is embarrassingly bad and I see no reason why anyone would want to partake it. I always just board the vessels. I think you get better loot that way too, and you want that (trash) loot for gold that you sorely need. What fucks me up the most in this game though is that how the content is stretched way too thin for my tastes. Tiny dungeons and tiny encounters littered all over the archipelago. The dungeons are always on the small side and include 1 or 2 encounters more often than not and it feels really bad playing the game when you have to go through constant loading screens to get to this small bite sized content. It is incredibly tedious to sail around the world chasing after single encounters or small 20x20 dungeons. It feels grindy and this wears me down and makes it hard for me to get really invested in the game. I would've preferred less individual stuff to do but make each quest and dungeon more meaningful. I get it that they wanted to give you a sense of sailing the seas of discovery, but the end result, disregarding the intention, is just unsatisfying.

Graphics and art wise, this may be one of the best looking games out there. PoE1 was already really good looking, but this is so much better looking. The art department at Obsidian really need a nice salary bonus. Say what you will about anyone else working there, but these guys really know their craft. Oh, and the music sucks cock. Fire Justin Bell already.

Anyway, back to the game. Hopefully I'll get to the DLC stuff soon, I think I'll enjoy that much more than the base game.

 

[Safav Hamon]

A plot that isn't a personal one is already a massive failure for me. PoE1 was much better in this regard, that game understood that making the conflict personal is the best way to get the player to care.

Personal storylines in RPGs are shit.

They should focus entirely on political drama and faction conflicts in the next game.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Personal storylines in RPGs are shit.

 

[Lacrymas]

It depends on how the game is structured. I don't know if DF would've worked with a personal storyline just due to all the sailing around and doing random tasks for random people. It should've focused on the factions, yes.

 

[Safav Hamon]

A good roleplaying game shouldn't force feed you motivation.

If you want to tell a personal story, you're better off writing a linear adventure game with a predetermined protagonist.

 

[Lacrymas]

If establishing your motivation is the same as "force feeding" it, then no, it should do that.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The more usless purple prose written by someone who took writing classes, and voiced by someone who was grabbed off the street, the less space for the player's imagination to work.

 

[Safav Hamon]

If establishing your motivation is the same as "force feeding" it, then no, it should do that.

As long as that background doesn't entail rescuing your kidnapped sister Imeon or saving your soul from an evil wizard.

The best RPG storylines are about politics, intrigue, conspiracies, mysteries, conflicts, ect. Throw the player into world changing events, and let them decide for themselves which role they want to play in it.

 

[Sizzle]

 

[Hobo Elf]

If establishing your motivation is the same as "force feeding" it, then no, it should do that.

As long as that background doesn't entail rescuing your kidnapped sister Imeon or saving your soul from an evil wizard.

The best RPG storylines are about politics, intrigue, conspiracies, mysteries, conflicts, ect. Throw the player into world changing events, and let them decide for themselves which role they want to play in it.

Without a personal hook all of those are meaningless things and only serve to fluff up the world around and then the plot ends up being little more than a history book. I want to feel like my character has a place within the world with his own agenda and using the factions available should serve to help that agenda. Take Gothic for example: You're free to explore the different factions and their conflicts and given even some degree of freedom (within reason) of how you wish to express and conduct yourself, but you have a personal quest (short term: get strong enough and up the social hierarchy so people stop bullying you, long term: escaping the penal colony) and thus you join the one of the factions and eventually get pulled in to their conflicts not because you necessary care much about them, but because it's necessary for your own quest. All of this also tied in with the mechanics of the game, so it works well as a motivator for the player.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

which is why a good RPG narrative doesn't force feed you motivation.

Like the one where a God nicks your soul and you have to chase his ass, or you die, or worse, become a cat? No force feeding here, no siree.

 

[Safav Hamon]

I never claimed Deadfire's story was good.

Which is why the next game should focus entirely on politics and factions.

 

[Lacrymas]

I doubt there's going to be a next game. At least not an isometric RPG. Prepare for PoE3: Elder Scrolls.

 

[Reinhardt]

or worse, become a cat?

Worse?

 

[Prime Junta]

You disgrace your join date, the tradition is to play it 7 times to find anything worthy.

That’s what the Codex likes to tell itself.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

or worse, become a cat?

Worse?

See, if your character dies, he'd never have to interact with PoE Text ever again.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

A plot that isn't a personal one is already a massive failure for me. PoE1 was much better in this regard, that game understood that making the conflict personal is the best way to get the player to care.

Personal storylines in RPGs are shit.

They should focus entirely on political drama and faction conflicts in the next game.

How the hell did this comment get more positives than negatives beats me.

the best storylines for RPGs are:

PST, MoTB and Deus Ex. Two of these are purely personal. FFS.

 

[Sailor Woedica]

Red Dead Redemption 2 was one of the best rpgs ever and that game was super personal!

 

[Immortal]

The gods of Eora, including Eothas, are incredibly powerful and stubborn. Being pushed around and ignored by the gods was supposed to feel annoying and irritating, but the resolution to the story wasn't supposed to be unsatisfying. My hope was that the gods' increasing desperation and reliance on the Watcher would give the player a sense of satisfaction and that Eothas' willingness to listen to the Watcher's opinions about how to leave things would give them a sense of place and purpose between Eothas, the gods, and mortals.

Oooouh, I missed this little morsel. Apart from how this reasoning is pretty non-existent in the actual text, it also undermines itself in literally the very first conversation in the game, Berath makes it perfectly clear they don't need you and they can find someone else, then turns you into a cat or something if you refuse. Either a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing or incompetence in developing and implementing the ideas they have.

But the god's don't know what Eothas is planning at that moment.
They still think he might be wanting to return to the fold up to Hasongo.. So in that reality where they toss your ass back on the wheel. They probably regret it 2 months later and all start giving Berath shit for being such a cunt.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Red Dead Redemption 2 was one of the best rpgs ever and that game was super personal!

I like Sailor Woedica, or should I call you Alex. I was also thinking to give RDR2 as an example. What if the existence of a personal story is secondary to whether or not the player cares? What if concieving (without impegrating the air if possible) and drawing an interesting main character is the main prerequisite to getting the player to care about that character?

BTW, the more I play on PotD, the more excited I get about the turn based mode. Even if it's half-assed, it will still improve the experience immensly, imo. I note that the further I increase the difficulty, the more similar combat plays to a TB game. I have the same concerns as in a turn based game - who will act before whom, how much time will his action take, will something else have happened or not have happend by the time a certain effect appears or disappears.

 

[AwesomeButton]

This is just bad. If you don't have the senses to feel how bad it is, I am sorry for you:

"A dizzy spell overtakes you. The stars blur out of their normal positions. When your focus returns, each of the celestial bodies cracks open, one by one, their light bleeding together.

The stars converge to form a series of winking eyes.

Greetings, pal.

The words spells themselves out in the stars. Beneath the winking eyes, the crescent moon slowly widens and rotates into a grin.

-Wael?

While you're looking around, try not to think too hard about what's 'up' here. Some secrets are worth keeping.

The largest of the eyes winks."

 

[Quillon]

You have too much senses. Criticize something substantial about the game that won't require a microscope to see whatever it is that you are seeing buried in the text.

 

[Delterius]

This is just bad. If you don't have the senses to feel how bad it is, I am sorry for you:

"A dizzy spell overtakes you. The stars blur out of their normal positions. When your focus returns, each of the celestial bodies cracks open, one by one, their light bleeding together.

The stars converge to form a series of winking eyes.

Greetings, pal.

The words spells themselves out in the stars. Beneath the winking eyes, the crescent moon slowly widens and rotates into a grin.

-Wael?

While you're looking around, try not to think too hard about what's 'up' here. Some secrets are worth keeping.

The largest of the eyes winks."

I like it.

 

[Sizzle]

Eh, it's very Alice in Wonderland-ish (Cheshire Cat), but there are much worse instances of writing in the game than that example.