Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

Watcher's Keep was probably the best part of BG2. For dungeon-crawl fags it's great.

 

I'm seriously beginning to think the Obsidian forums might be more cancerous than BSN. The BSN can be written off pretty easily as Twilighters and romance schlock connoisseurs, even by a casual observer, but someone might take those Obsidrones seriously as some type of "hardcore gamer."

 

I think that the game initially was going to be BG3,before they decided to make it an expancion. All the problems in the game were because of that. examble: the encounter in the oasis with the Tethyrian general was out of the blue.But if the game gave you the chance to explore Tethyr,has the capital of the region as a BigCity like BG2 and you could witness the political fanctions and the tensions because of the Bhaalspawn, it could be a very good game, maybe on par with BG3.

 

I don't think there is any way a game with Cain and Avellone as main contributors can be bad.

I also don't think there is any way it won't be hugely flawed

 

someone recommend Chaos Chronicles to that guy.

 

I've just got to hand it to VD - awesome interview. Finally had something worthwhile told to us through these interviews.

 

Yeah. Completely different, yet both awesome.

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/62937-criticism-of-the-concept-art-shown-so-far/

 

Why did I miss this? Watcher's Keep is fantastic, fuck you guys. ToB was generally horrible, but Watcher's Keep was one of the best dungeons in any RPG ever - tons of cool ideas, brilliant loot, fine puzzles, great encounters and every level felt like its own plane with its own secrets.

 

Actually, a turn-based open world, faithful D&D3.5/Pathfinder MMO filled with dungeons, open world PVP and dungeon PVP, as well as each new patch adding new dungeons, is about the only kind of MMO I can think about that I would consider awesome to play.

 

The only thing I hated in Watchers keep was the level with those different elements/the chromatic daemon. I also remember some map where you had to fight of waves of enemies in some kind of minigame style ( ? ) that I didn't like and for that reason didn't finish and didn't approach the last boss there.

 

The different elements level was the only level I disliked as well.

 

I thought it was like ToB: a boring slog from combat to combat. Tedious when the dungeon feels like a theme park, not something someone once built for a purpose. Durlag's Tower had lots of difficult trials, puzzles and lore to hold it all together. This one didn't give me that feeling.

 

It didn't? Gave me the prison-gone-wrong feeling aplenty, and the story of the Helmites getting cold feet and sending you in their stead was pretty good. I was always interested in finding out what lay beyond the next corner, what madness I might find next. Each level was its own take on the madness that plagued the tower. Only the first level was sane in some form.

 

How the hell was the place a prison? It was a god-damn circus in there. Freaking all sorts of stuff in there that didn't really feel like a dungeon... You got prisoners running around killing everyone (Lum the Mad) ... Durlog's Tower did it right. Watcher's Keep was a rushed Durlog's Tower meant to placate those who realized what a POS most of TOB was.

 

If a dungeon has some main theme running through it's nice, but Durlag's tower actually felt more boring to me. It was all doppelgangers this, doppelgangers that.
I say fuck it. A mega dungeon is a multi-leveled unrealistic underground maze full of hostile creatures who, to be interesting and challenging and fresh every level, realistically would never habit it; it is supposedly a "legendary" place everyone knows about but which must be unlooted just because players want loot; a place of absolutely ridiculous devices and types of transportation (even in Durlag's Tower was that chess game... who in his sane or even insane mind create anything even remotely close to that?) because PUZZLES. Yeah, sometimes you can get away with that, maybe it would take place in Underdark or such, but come on. For me, these sorts of places always were the carnival of combat, horror and insane design, a place you make for players to just get easy on roleplaying and roll the dice, see the limbs fly and grab the treasure, and feel satisfaction with that. It's a place to rest for players, for DM, and it's a place to rest for *me*.

 

^Then at least make the combat challenges difficult. The first few levels can be easy, but then make it what it's supposed to be: a hard-core tactical challenge. I will play that and enjoy it.

 

Well, it's all opinion.

You liked the theming and thought they did it well. I didn't. That's all.

And theming is really important to me. You know, like how in Donkey Kong Country 2 every song is monkey-like, how in Persona 4 everything is yellow and up-beat (dialogue, music, characters, colors) vs how in 3 everything is morose and "blue", which was its color. Durlag's Tower was built around a theme and stuck to it. I think you feel the same about Watcher's Keep and it's not that you're wrong it's just that it didn't give me that sort of vibe. Perhaps some more lore could have helped to maintain a better sense of cohesion.

Speaking of theming and all these jRPGs, this is another thing Obsidian has in common with a lot of the jRPGs their developers like: they place extreme importance on theming. Everything in Mask of the Betrayer is about love in some fashion, everything in Torment is about the Nameless One and, well, his torment, everything in KOTOR 2 is about Kreia and betrayal in some way or another.

I really like that about Obsidian... I wish them well, even though I think they are bad at making the actual combat in their games entertaining. Really bad.

 

Well, F:NV was a definite improvement over F3. Which is polishing the worst biggest turd, but still. Apart from that Sawyer himself hasn't really a bad track account with IWD2 and F:NV (Ignoring NWN2 since that would be not entirely fair)

 

If the combat in Dullsville turns out good, it'll be because of Josh, not so much Tim. Other factors: not having to improve someone else's shit system (kotor's d&d-lite, 3pointfail D&D, new Fallout) or cater to a larger, console-oriented audience (Alpha Protocol, Dungeon Siege, South Park). This is a never-before-seen situation for them: coming up with their own system while catering to BG/IWD fans.

Plus most of those other games sucked because they didn't have enough Josh.

Anyway, funny things happening: Rob Nesler throwing a fit over negative criticism:
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/62906-update-34-first-art-update/page__st__160#entry1288395
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/62906-update-34-first-art-update/page__st__200#entry1288718

I disliked him the moment I saw him mugging for the camera with bottles of liquor. Disliked him even more when I found out he was an artist from inXile, who consistently churn out products with ugly art. His response is laughable especially when held up to Josh's cool demeanor in the NeoGAF thread where they tore the art a new asshole denizsi-style. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if one of them was denizsi.