AoD: This game feels very on the rails. Am i playing it right?

[V_K]

There's also the midway-ending where you become the king of undead IIRC. It's supposed to be a sorta bad ending, but you don't technically die.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

There's also the midway-ending where you become the king of undead IIRC.

ahaha lol never got this, actually,

 

[V_K]

And if you want to talk about endings vs. gameplay systems, you can look at Daggerfall, for example. It had a shitload of both.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

And if you want to talk about endings vs. gameplay systems, you can look at Daggerfall, for example. It had a shitload of both.

 

[hell bovine]

There's also the midway-ending where you become the king of undead IIRC. It's supposed to be a sorta bad ending, but you don't technically die.

Another one is when you anger the Lady of Pain. It has a certain irony to it; the Lady of Pain ending TNO's eternal torment, and the cutscene is amazing. You can also goad Lothar to do the deed, but you get no cutscene. But both are technically a way to break the cycle, whereas the undead king ending results in an eternal stalemate.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

There's also the midway-ending where you become the king of undead IIRC. It's supposed to be a sorta bad ending, but you don't technically die.

Another one is when you anger the Lady of Pain. It has a certain irony to it; the Lady of Pain ending TNO's eternal torment, and the cutscene is amazing. You can also goad Lothar to do the deed, but you get no cutscene. But both are technically a way to break the cycle, whereas the undead king ending results in an eternal stalemate.

Ok, maybe I was kinda wrong about it.

 

[Absinthe]

That's not true, moderate success can be achieved if you don't go the full retard route of destroying cities and murdering head of states left and right. Also the Praetor route has quite the different endings so you can't really use it as an exemple of strict railroading. It is quite possible to leave the game with Antidas in a stronger position that the one you found him with, if you destroy maadoran and bomb al-akia for exemple.

Destroying Maadoran and bombing Al-Akia just leaves Antidas in the same-old position, and ultimately profits the IG more, who are the ones who win if you destroy Maadoran and kill Meru. Antidas's struggle is one to become emperor, and it is one you can never help him achieve, even if you sign up for it. Gaelius can win, Serenas can nominally win, Meru can win, Paullus can win, but Antidas cannot win unless you count becoming Thoragoth's stooge as a "win".

Blatantly false, running the kingmaker scheme is the only way to make Carrinas confident enough in his position to betray Paullus to Meru in the first sword ending. So while it's widely different from what we're lead to expect in Act 1, you can't really say that plot thread goes nowhere.

Your definition of "blatantly false" is dubious as fuck, mate. The potential consequence you are talking about is tangential at best to the direction that plotline was supposed to go.

If you murder darista and gaelius (which can be done without combat if you pumped critical strike) you can still be an assassin for ganezzar's branch. I think the point of the AG questline was that Boatmen as an independent force was a thing from bygone era and now all the guild heads are joining lords. It's stated from the start in Teron.

And yet you can help maintain the Assassins' Guild as an independent force as a Merchant, but not as an Assassin.

The fuck are you talking about, poisons are sold by regular merchant and you just need 2 dot in alchemy to craft your own.

That's the garbage rat poison. There are 3 severities of poisons for the outpost: 2 alchemy (weak poison), 4 alchemy (moderate poison), 6 alchemy (strong poison). AG gets the 6 alchemy poison for free courtesy of Coltan, making the outpost fight a cakewalk, although you get less loot due to the missing enemies, but no one else can obtain that poison without their own alchemy skill. The poison you can buy at the normal market is weak poison.

Cite us a game where we can hire assassins to resolve any quests we want at any times. Unrealistic expectations shouldn't be a basis on CnC criticism.

Fuck off with this shit. That's an argument in favor of never doing better than the average derivative trash that passes itself off as an RPG. Moreover most RPGs are combat sims so hiring others to do your killing for you generally goes against the spirit of that (although having hirelings join the party is a thing in a number of RPGs). VD made an entire organization whose MO is "pay us and we'll kill the people that need killing for you" in a game with non-combat routes but never gave the player an option to personally avail himself of their services even though they should be an obvious (if expensive) solution to your problems.

While combat heavy, AG has its share of impersonate and stealth check.

This is some seriously apologist shit dude. AG is pretty much 90% straight combat and maybe 10% actual assassination work, and I might be overstating the 10%. AG is actually more inclined to pigeonhole you into direct combat than the Imperial Guards.

Btw the vast majority of your complaint is discussing plotpoints and writing quality, from a very passionate viewpoint (regarding Antidas and assassins for exemple) and not really adressing the structure of the game, which has its faults, true.

If you can't see how I addressed the issues with the structure of the game between all the complaints I had about linearity, the need for more freeform problem-solving, and the ways the C&C structure does not mesh with the storyworld, then I think the real problem is that you are just burying your head in the sand like an ostrich and refusing to acknowledge complaints you don't like.

Also why shill so much for Antidas when he has never been written has anything more than a bumbling retard?

This ain't about Antidas in and of itself. It's about the fact that the entire opening plot of AoD is basically Antidas's faction war and how you are going to play into that with a number of routes for you to be his supporter and yet while every other faction can claim a victory in the end, Antidas is unable to do so. There are a lot of setups happening there for Antidas's faction and Carrinas's push to restore the empire yet with absolutely no payoff to that effect because Vince basically started writing another story after Teron and mothballed the lot of it. That's a definite flaw, no matter how much apologist swill you try to produce to paper over it.

Hell it's even stated during the Al-Akia segment that Meru got possessed after listing to Antidas' advices and opening the star room.

I don't think it was clearly mentioned whether Meru got himself brainwashed. It sounded more like Meru was always a dumbass and this was his reaction to witnessing otherworldly shit.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Spent the last 2 years playing the game, and now you are going to get it

 

[Absinthe]

I've played AoD on occasion since it came out (technically before that, since I played the pre-release demo and combat demo too). For all the shit I give it, it is high on the replay value and it is fun to dick around with builds. Part of my criticism also comes from the way AoD didn't quite live up to the promises and goals it had set for itself before release. These days I tend to fuck around with amusing builds or master-of-all superhybrids, but player foreknowledge is a huge part of that.

 

[samuraigaiden]

Ok, cocksuckers. I know the pasta discussion was abandoned a few pages ago, but I cannot live in a world where people cook pasta wrong so listen up.

Pasta isn’t a creative endeavor. Any creativity you might want to express in the kitchen, you leave that shit to the sauce. Pasta is science. It’s fucking math.

1. Big pan, water up to the middle, strong fire. NEVER change the fire intensity. Strong fire, start to finish.

2. When the water comes to a boil, a handful of thick salt. Not the refined shit, the thick one. Be generous. The pasta water should taste like sea water.

3. Get yourself a fucking timer and mark the time THAT IS INDICATED IN THE PASTA BOX/PLASTIC BAG. I cannot strain this enough.

4. Put the pasta into the boiling salted water and run the timer. DO NOT TASTE THE PASTA. RESPECT THE TIMER.

5. Immediately move it around with a big spoon, preferably wooden. If you don’t do this it’s gonna stick. You don’t need to keep moving it, just when you put it in the water. If you take too long to start moving it your pasta will stick together and be shitty.

6. Once the timer is done, turn off the fire and drain the pasta. RESPECT THE TIMER.

7. Add the pasta to the sauce or vice versa, it’s up to you. I’m not gonna teach sauce making. This time.

Remember the pasta will continue to soften if the sauce is hot, so IT MAKES NO SENSE TO TASTE MID BOIL. If it’s just right mid boil, it’ll be overdone when you actually get to eat it.

If the pasta ends up too done or too tough for your taste, next time add or subtract a minute to the cooking.

I hope this helps y’all eat better pasta.

Btw, AoD sounds like a cool game. I might give it a try soon.

 

[Darth Canoli]

3. Get yourself a fucking timer and mark the time THAT IS INDICATED IN THE PASTA BOX/PLASTIC BAG. I cannot strain this enough.

The only way to eat good pasta is not having a box with indications in the first place.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Fuck timers, I like my pasta al dente

 

[samuraigaiden]

I'm not making my own pasta. It's literally either that or videogames.

 

[samuraigaiden]

Fuck timers, I like my pasta al dente

Dude, if you want it more al dente drop a minute from the timer. Simple. Once you get this right, the pasta will be perfectly al dente every fucking time. That's the point of the timer.

 

[V_K]

Pasta is the kind of food you make when you can't be arsed to do proper cooking. So I can't be arsed to do it proper either, it defeats the purpose.

 

[Skdursh]

Imagine being so inept that you need to follow a rigid list of steps and use a timer just to make fucking pasta.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Fucking bugmen.

 

[madrigal]

That's the garbage rat poison. There are 3 severities of poisons for the outpost: 2 alchemy (weak poison), 4 alchemy (moderate poison), 6 alchemy (strong poison). AG gets the 6 alchemy poison for free courtesy of Coltan, making the outpost fight a cakewalk, although you get less loot due to the missing enemies, but no one else can buy that poison. The poison you can buy at the normal market is weak poison.

You can also buy stronger poison from the alchemist.

 

[Mexi]

I quite the game when I almost finished the second city seeing that it's linear as fuck on top of being fucking boring. I wouldn't suffer through it. The only reason the Cuckdex likes it is because they like stupid shit. Turn base is an objectively worse system than RtwP, but you still see utter retards come on here and argue a wrong position.

 

[luj1]

Clicking options and teleporting around felt like reading a CYOA booklet. High replay value sure, but boring gameplay

 

[HeatEXTEND]

I quite the game when I almost finished the second city seeing that it's linear as fuck on top of being fucking boring. I wouldn't suffer through it. The only reason the Cuckdex likes it is because they like stupid shit. Turn base is an objectively worse system than RtwP, but you still see utter retards come on here and argue a wrong position.

Clicking options and teleporting around felt like reading a CYOA booklet. High replay value sure, but boring gameplay

Spoiler

You read some of these posts, and you just have to ask yourself, are these people fucking serious? How can anyone be so stupid? Did they drop on their head as a child? Maybe they regularly drink from lead pipes or their house is slowly giving them CO2 poisoning. I just don't know any more. These posts have no rhyme or reason, they are simply dumb. The guys who make these posts are cowards. They know nothing about high powered cut-throat environments of the business world mirrored with a sublime combination of realism and artistic exaggeration into the game world. They are clueless, and still dare complain. Pride and no substance. They can't handle defeat, they are incapable of learning, how dare is there an internal game world logic present here? Why does my 4 int char not have the funny dumb lines like in fallout? Why is every single moronic decision not completely simulated and presented as a viable choice? How else am I meant to compare it to my own life and feel immersed? I just want to know if they were this stupid before their clueless parents had them vaccinated. I don't think so. Mental midgets who prefer the tedium of small animated legs clumsily making their way through the city instead of the patrician comfort of teleportation induced narrative tension. Don't even get me started on the camera. You dumb ass. You fool. You clown. Why does this game not work like a VR simulated reality piece from my wet dreams that are completely devoid of any design temperance or good taste? Just shut the fuck up. Stupid idiots. They are larpers. Playing the game for them doesn't mean engaging with the game world and system, it simply means a one way ticket to escapist lalaland where they are liberated from the necessity to think or engage with problems. They write lines and lines of text pointlessly. The only thing they learned from VD is the autistic style of line by line quoting. Have they ever heard of Hegel? No. The dialectical perfection of AoD is beyond these base animals. Have you killed the Zamedi demon, you pretentious idiot who sullies the name of his great game? Trick question, moron, he isn't a demon, in fact, it could be argued that the player character is the real demon, you just don't get that in other games. Listen to me, I have seen the inside of Meru's hidden library, there isn't even an achievement for that, it's a hidden reward for killing Meru after his mind got infected with foreign entities just like your own got infected with extreme levels of retardation. You cannot even begin to talk to me about this game. I know everything, and you know nothing. Why is there a lockpick check? You fucking moron. If you asked me this in real life I would have my boyfriend beat you to a pulp. I actually don't have a boyfriend but if I did I would have him do that. There should be more reactivity if you play a woman? Maybe true, but did you know that in the thieves guild quest in Teron, Cado berates you for being late if you stop by Linos to tell him about the heist and says he will never work with a woman again? Subtle, but realistic, men often complain to women about things they would tolerate from other men. That's what social reactivity is about, not dressing up in harem clothing to appease loser nerds who just want to have a quick wank before dying to the bossfight because they are too stupid to build their characters properly. Yes, there are proper ways to build your character? Don't like it? Go live in a conformist utopia, you absolute mongrel. That's how life works, you live or you lose, you figure out what is the correct path through. People who complain about this are probably the same sort of a troglodyte that studies STEM or CS as a westerner in the 21st century in hopes of getting a well paying job even though all of your fields are oversaturated and getting outsourced overseas. Go dagger and crit, grab some dodge, max one or two non combat skills. There. Your problems are solved. Moron. Don't ever complain about AoD again. I will kill you.

 

[Absinthe]

HeatEXTEND, stop funny farming. Write like a normal fucking person. And if you want to be funny, try writing an actual joke instead of acting like you're on 4chan or reddit.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

I already spoilered it, put your pants back on. Why did the chicken cross the road? Because there were people blaspheming against AoD, across the road. Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all year

 

[Black Angel]

People who dislikes AoD's teleporting seems like the kind of people who love staring at pixels moving on screen.

Spoiler

 

[Piotrovitz]

Teleporting is fine, especially if the game has early 2000s 3D graphics filled with color palette with all the shades of diarrhoea.

If the game is pretty this is a non-issue - I've recently replayed BG2 a bit, and quests with lots of going back and forth (i.e Jan pesonal quest) did not bother me at all - it gives you some sense of exploration of the city and feeling of taking care of shit on your own.