S.H.O.D.A.N.
Learned
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Not according to the English dictionary.
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Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD
- Thread starter Grunker
- Start date
Not according to the English dictionary.
Eisenheinrich
Scholar
This is really mindboggling. For a game that allows full display of genitals, has a roster of companions all hitting on you and is full of sexual innuendo, why in the hell would you *checks patch notes* "alter Mintharas camp outfit to make it slighlty less revealing"?
What the fuck? Why is this even a priority at this stage of patching when she STILL has a bugged out romance.
What the fuck? Why is this even a priority at this stage of patching when she STILL has a bugged out romance.
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Pulp fiction based on cheaply produced pulp magazines means basically run-of-the-mill, low-quality literature, the predecessor of modern superhero comics. It's the slop of its day
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Someone wanted to cockblock Minthara stans
Eisenheinrich
Scholar
Yes. At the Literature Codex we all know decline started with the pulps.
Well, guess jokes on me then because I gave her undergarments to beloved Shadowheart. This is the weirdest flex of prudery yet, especially in a game that is marketed around being horny.
S.H.O.D.A.N.
Learned
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I know what pulp is. I disagree with the notion that pulp equals slop.
Conan is pulp. Conan is not slop.
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It goes further back to those lowbrow adventures Homer told around campfires about a simp war at Troja and then with the further adventures of a guy trying to get home
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Eisenheinrich
Scholar
Fucking Pulp discussion ... let's drop some truth bombs here for the broader context. So many discussions here are peak examples of the retarded "It was cool when I was a kid" take.
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug and people glorify things in the past because they were easy to impress kiddos and now they can't enjoy it anymore because they grew out of it.
The whole "the pop cultural entertainment will never be as good as compared to when I was young" is an old stance and can be observed through many generations. It's also cheap, rosetinted bullshit.
Like, just read in here how people boldy claim that the BG2 beginning was this humble, basic dungeon crawl when in reality you met djinns, portals to other dimensions, a cloning facility, dryad sex slaves, golems, Duergar, a Cambion and what not in that place, all topped off with an epic mage duell once you reached the surface.
The only thing that made it "humble" is the technical limitation the IE brought with it back then. Shit would look crazy made with today technology.
People are stupid.
Coming back to pulps. Yes, that was slop. Yes, there were certain authors like Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, that are famous today and well remembered. Not because pulp is generally good literature, but because they were ahead of the curve of most other pulp authors that are forgotten today and rightly so.
They are like 1 percent out of 99 percent sloppy pulp drivel. Same with cape-shit movies and movies in general. And music. Most entertainment is slop. Has been forever. But good capeshit-movies exist and they will be remembered well for a reason.
Fucking hell, these discussions.
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug and people glorify things in the past because they were easy to impress kiddos and now they can't enjoy it anymore because they grew out of it.
The whole "the pop cultural entertainment will never be as good as compared to when I was young" is an old stance and can be observed through many generations. It's also cheap, rosetinted bullshit.
Like, just read in here how people boldy claim that the BG2 beginning was this humble, basic dungeon crawl when in reality you met djinns, portals to other dimensions, a cloning facility, dryad sex slaves, golems, Duergar, a Cambion and what not in that place, all topped off with an epic mage duell once you reached the surface.
The only thing that made it "humble" is the technical limitation the IE brought with it back then. Shit would look crazy made with today technology.
People are stupid.
Coming back to pulps. Yes, that was slop. Yes, there were certain authors like Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, that are famous today and well remembered. Not because pulp is generally good literature, but because they were ahead of the curve of most other pulp authors that are forgotten today and rightly so.
They are like 1 percent out of 99 percent sloppy pulp drivel. Same with cape-shit movies and movies in general. And music. Most entertainment is slop. Has been forever. But good capeshit-movies exist and they will be remembered well for a reason.
Fucking hell, these discussions.
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copebot
Learned
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- Dec 27, 2020
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- 387
What's weird is that BG1/2 follows the standard screenwriter advice for Hero's Journey plots to a tee, even throwing in scenes that are otherwise unnecessary just to fill the structure of the plot. The good part of Standard Screenwriter Advice is that it teaches writers to humanize the villains and to TRY to make the villain so compelling that the viewer is legitimately tempted to sympathize with them before going back over the brink to return their sympathies to the hero. BG1/2 do this well with their intro sequences, making sure you know who the villain is, contrasting them with the player, and dropping hints here and there about their motivations.
In BG3, the villains are just Bad, and only one of the side-villains really has a sympathetic motivation (that isn't really that sympathetic; Raphael wants to be the bestest Lawful Evil ruler in Hell ever). They had some opportunities with the Act 2 villain, who probably could have carried the whole game by himself if they cut more things, but they also made him lame. It's as if they had one writer who understood that his daughter could be a hook for making him sympathetic, but then the progressive crimestop module had them make the daughter's lesbo lover into his phylactery. It completely undermines any dramatic tension.
When the final act villains are introduced, it's made clear that they are just evil with no redeeming value, which again is something a good writer can brush up -- a competent professional would throw in a "We're not so different, you and I!" scene to contrast with the murderhobo player, like the memorable scene that does this in MGS3 -- but as far as I know, that doesn't happen.
The game is at its absolute best in the dialogue-free exploration and combat sections. It is at its worst where it Plots at you a lot, although the gith subplot is probably the best out of all of them just because it follows the basic rules of storytelling.
In BG3, the villains are just Bad, and only one of the side-villains really has a sympathetic motivation (that isn't really that sympathetic; Raphael wants to be the bestest Lawful Evil ruler in Hell ever). They had some opportunities with the Act 2 villain, who probably could have carried the whole game by himself if they cut more things, but they also made him lame. It's as if they had one writer who understood that his daughter could be a hook for making him sympathetic, but then the progressive crimestop module had them make the daughter's lesbo lover into his phylactery. It completely undermines any dramatic tension.
When the final act villains are introduced, it's made clear that they are just evil with no redeeming value, which again is something a good writer can brush up -- a competent professional would throw in a "We're not so different, you and I!" scene to contrast with the murderhobo player, like the memorable scene that does this in MGS3 -- but as far as I know, that doesn't happen.
The game is at its absolute best in the dialogue-free exploration and combat sections. It is at its worst where it Plots at you a lot, although the gith subplot is probably the best out of all of them just because it follows the basic rules of storytelling.
fantadomat
Arcane
Yes,this game have one of the worst quest designs i have seen. Their point connectivity is a total mess. People ignore your actions and just react in weird way. Also the quests are super unclear and boring to boot,the worst is that they spawn many chapters.
A good example is companion quest of the vampfag. I play around and just keep him in the camp,he have nothing to say all around,some meaningless dialogue,i assume that it will develop in chapter 3. In the middle of chap 2 i meet the devil chap twice,then i get message that vampfag quest had progressed. I am all "the fuck i shappening?!",go and talk to him,he is butthurt but tells me that it is ok since we will do devil's quest and get good points for him and he will ask him something next time. I do his quest and them meet the devil chap in chapter 3,with the vampfag in the party,neither of them even reacts to me doing his quest and am let without reward or vampfag question lol. The game is filled with such retarded shit. Also too many meaningless NPCs with one line dialogue that serve no purpose,feels like JRPG townpeople writing lol.
copebot
Learned
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Sure, it was slop, but all those things that you mentioned served the purpose of characterizing Irenicus and shaping the protagonist's motivations. The player wants revenge, but Irenicus wants revenge, too (against someone else entirely). Every single vignette there shows hints of the character of Irenicus that only start to make sense later in the game. It is also a completely different context for the protagonist because, if you played BG1, you know you are the hero of the Sword Coast, you are already powerful, and the strange ways of powerful wizards are not entirely foreign to your experience.
That also shows how little it takes in terms of writing to make sense of a random walk through the Monstrous Manual. By contrast, BG3 just dumps the random page flips on you without much in the way of relating it to a classic plot structure.
Should video games focus on storytelling? No, not in my view, they should focus on other things. But when games try to tell a story and the story sucks ass, it's fair to compare it to another one in which the story sucked, but it sucked in a relatively professional manner.
Eisenheinrich
Scholar
Probably I guess? Sure I didn't give a fuck about this when I was playing it being 12 years old.
430am
Educated
If you legitimately think of the fact that games when we were kids were much better than today in terms of innovation, gameplay and writing is attributed to nostalgia glasses, you've been smoking crack out of your fucking gourd.
Like what? I've been trying to get people to name some to have a try if they're really THAT good and not retarded capeshit, but so far nobody can make a consistent point towards anything other than the Dark Knight and Spiderman with Toby Maguire. Some mention Watchmen but I couldn't handle it.
fantadomat
Arcane
But exploration is boring,there is no actual shit to find,the itimization is dogshit and the whole maps are filled with boxes and barrels that make no sense. It would have been cool if you just stumble upon some cool dungeon with pure combat and a nice powerful weapon at the end,not a +1 garbo weapons that could cast magic missiles once per long rest or gives you one rage if you lose half your health in one hit.
Eisenheinrich
Scholar
Stop putting words in my mouth you fucking freak. Also I won't drag this discussion down to your subjectivism concerning movies.
I clearly stated most capeshit-movies are shit and you already named two franchise outings that are universally acclaimed, proving my point.
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fantadomat
Arcane
Fare enough,still should pretend that it is not a garbage made for braindead pelbs. IF you are least bit intelligent you will notice that it is total shit,same as starwars and capefagz.
copebot
Learned
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All capeshit is necessarily bad because the overwhelming message of those movies and books is that Hubris is Good, Actually, and Humans Deserve To Be Like Gods. This runs counter to the whole literary tradition. Liking capeshit, generally, indicates bad moral character. Any exceptions to this are exceptions that prove the rule.
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We must have seen different movies, all I see is people in spandex kicking the shit out of each other. Back in the day, it was Hercules or Siegfried or any other hero. Capes are just modern variants of that
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Other examples are: Xena, the Original Power Ranger, Adventures of Hercules, etc... . I loved Xena back in the day, but if most adults would watch it now for the first time they'd call it unwatchable trash.
Barbarian
Arcane
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About ULTRA EPICNESS LEVEL ONE meme - BG3 writing is indeed shit, but it seems to me most rpgs from the last 20 years or so suffer from some level of this.
Specially on the "main character is an epic pure and unique snowflake", which isn't necessarily bad. Both KOTOR games and Torment suffer from this, for instance.
Then there are the ones like the recent pathfinder games, where you begin as a level one chump but end the game literally as an immortal and invincible godlike figure.
ITT, these are just rpg tropes that are cemented on the genre. Larian's writing is bad out of its own merit, not because it embraces said tropes.
Specially on the "main character is an epic pure and unique snowflake", which isn't necessarily bad. Both KOTOR games and Torment suffer from this, for instance.
Then there are the ones like the recent pathfinder games, where you begin as a level one chump but end the game literally as an immortal and invincible godlike figure.
ITT, these are just rpg tropes that are cemented on the genre. Larian's writing is bad out of its own merit, not because it embraces said tropes.
Eisenheinrich
Scholar
Totally different from today's slop. People should play TOEE and read Fjodor Michailowitsch Dostojewski after coming back from 12-hour-shift at the assembly line.
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Lets not assume every codexer has a job or a life, some of them are fully dedicated to deep thinking all day long
Barbarian
Arcane
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2015
- Messages
- 8,153
What saves this game is actually the reactivity. Nevermind that quests and characters are retarded, that they react to the player and can be solved in several ways is very entertaining.
Also the game reacting to the effects of spells and abilities was something never actually implemented before I think.
You can also actually use the charm/friends/thaumathurgy and other such spells in dialogue - something which every single D&D game before ignored even though that is how the spells are used in the tabletop game.
Also the game reacting to the effects of spells and abilities was something never actually implemented before I think.
Such as when the goblin priestess tries to daterape you - if you are in on the happenings and cast silence on her before attacking, she can't call the guards.
You can also actually use the charm/friends/thaumathurgy and other such spells in dialogue - something which every single D&D game before ignored even though that is how the spells are used in the tabletop game.
I don't think anybody here thinks "main character is special" is always bad.
Torment gives you an immortal guy with an amnesia and past personalities:
- It spends the entire game exploring this idea. And it's some good stuff.
- You deal with shit left by past incarnations. People you met, stuff you left behind, even traps you left for yourself.
- You learn more and more about yourself, the amnesia aspect is an integral part of the story, not some cheap hook.
What exactly BG3 does with "you have a tadpole in your brain" hook?
- Does it explore some kind of "race against the clock"? Nope. They removed it in rewrites.
- Absorbing illithid tadpoles gives you powers (for some reason). Does it have any consequences in the story? Nope, they removed it in the rewrites.
- Does it explore some kind of "would you deal with the devil to solve this problem" scenario. Nope. They removed it in rewrites.
- Do they explore the alien horror of illithids in the same way Torment explores immortality and past incarnations? Nope, BG3 does everything to undermine it. It has fookin' illithid shirtless seduction in it, FFS. The player has an option to become a good illithid and everything about it is half-arsed. Your love interest will note even voice an opinion when you consider becoming a squid.
On the top of that, you can have a second half-arsed "your special" story, if one is not enough.
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