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

[BBMorti]

OK, let's go over these one by one. Roguey, feel free to join in.

fleeting story

"Two demons somehow raise a bunch of disparate monster armies and duke it out and also here's a magical artifact from one of RA Salvatore's stories" is more interesting than the Ten Towns' battle against the Legion of the Chimera, whose backstory is much more fleshed out and detailed?

dull characters

How were they any duller than in IWD1? The villains were certainly more interesting.

long fucking dungeons without variation.

But this is the biggest howler. IWD1's greatest flaw is that it was much more monotonous and poorly paced. Go to dungeon, get to bottom of dungeon, defeat boss, climb back out, return to Kuldahar. Go to dungeon, get to bottom of dungeon, defeat boss, climb back out, return to Kuldahar. Go to dungeon, get to bottom of dungeon, defeat boss, climb back out, return to Kuldahar.

IWD2 kept you moving through the world and through various towns and town-like places instead of sending you back to the same town all the time. Because it didn't rely on one single town for its non-combat "down time", it could afford a variety of interesting non-combat areas like the Black Raven monastery, the time loop puzzle in Dragon's Eye and the ground level of the Severed Hand instead. Some of these weren't always implemented as well as they could have been (personally I think the complaints have been exaggerated) but they broke up the game's combat slog routine and that was so important.

A bad story doesn't become interesting, no matter how fleshed out and detailed it is. A dungeon can easily be more varied even though it is the fifth you visit between returning to kuldahar.

 

[Zed]

I wasn't giving reasons to why I didn't like IWD2 in comparison to IWD, but to why I didn't like IWD2 in general. IWD shares many faults, and have many faults on its own. But I think it's a better game, overall. In short: because I have fun playing IWD, and I don't have fun playing IWD2.

I could try and explain why I think IWD>IWD2 specifically, if you are so keen. Here's a list of things I think IWD did better than IWD2.

Encounters. You could say IWD2 has better balanced classes and in theory better combat, but IWD had a better pacing of combat and more smaller-scale encounters, which is something I prefer to fighting abstract "legions of orcs". Fighting barrels isn't very fun either. IWD felt more varied, and also more suitable for a smaller party (which is how I prefer to play IWDs).

Music and art. Highly subjective of course, but I find IWD to be warmer, both in visuals (more wooden elements, higher contrast, less brightness) and sounds (more acoustic and flute-y music). This creates a better contrast to the chilly environments, as if you're on the inside looking out. Cozier.

Interface. In IWD2, portraits are small and tucked away in comparison to other IE games. IWD is artistically superior with better colors, textures and feel. IWD2 shares the same functions, but uses worse layout. For instance the stupid circular menu mashed together under the portraits, or the dialogue window under the skillbar. IWD had a better, centralized text window.

Emergent story. You say IWD2 has more backstory and detail. Probably true. But I don't think this creates a better story from a game perspective. What matters in these games is creating a story framework for the player to set up his/her own milestones. "I want to catch up to the bad guy; I want to beat this dungeon and see what happens." This is better handled in IWD. I wouldn't have any problems trekking through Ice Temple if I felt like something interesting would happen if I did. As it is, I think many players aren't even thinking about why they're in the Ice Temple to begin with. Thus, Ice Temple (and other parts of other dungeons) are not only boring as hell gameplay-wise ("room filled with X"-encounters/worst puzzles of any IE game), but also uninteresting from a story-perspective.

 

[Abelian]

We are planning to have a narrator for the game.

In before Kevin Michael Richardson is announced to have started working with Obsidian.

That's Bioware-style, bro: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001773/

IWD/IWD2 narrators weren't very good either

The hell you say:



"Our tale begins here."

Until you posted that imdb link, I never realized that the narrator of IWD was Charles Emerson Winchester III from M*A*S*H.
Also, the Kath Soucie info blew my mind (although I'm only familiar with half of the roles).

 

[aleph]

Polish narration is much better:

My ears... I heard this claim before but I think you have to be Polish to agree, something amazing must happen when you understand what is spoken. I opened a video with the polish version of the game, and between hearing the character voice and the polish kobolds I had to shut it down.

I personally found the narrator for the werewolf island part of the (English) game to be something.

I don't speak polish, but I find the polish narrator amazing and quite fitting for a fantasy game.

 

[Abelian]

I can still remember the first time I heard the BG1 prologue. The music played an essential role in enhancing the atmosphere.

 

[Infinitron]

Yes, all of the IE games had exquisite music-voice synchronization in those sequences. That's something worth pointing out to Obsidian in case they've forgotten.

 

[uaciaut]

The few cartoon characters I recognize from that picture were all pretty shitty/annoying and Aerie has the worst V/A in BG2. Only Imoen was more irritating.

Aerie was well voice-acted, the character was designed to be annoying. It's not the actor's fault.

 

[Dermi]

Polish narration is much better:

My ears... I heard this claim before but I think you have to be Polish to agree, something amazing must happen when you understand what is spoken. I opened a video with the polish version of the game, and between hearing the character voice and the polish kobolds I had to shut it down.

I personally found the narrator for the werewolf island part of the (English) game to be something.

I don't speak polish, but I find the polish narrator amazing and quite fitting for a fantasy game.

The guy from this video is actually narrator for dream sequences only. There is also a second actor voicing "normal" narrator and he sounds like this:



IMHO he's better at this job than his English counterpart.

Plus, while BG1 translation was the first big Polish localization I would hardly called it the best - they had many cheesy voices and some were so amateurish it was almost painful to listen to them. They improved a lot with BG2 (with a few exceptions).

 

[bonescraper]

Reinstalling BGPL. And to think that i considered buying the "enhanced" editions at one point...

 

[aleph]

Plus, while BG1 translation was the first big Polish localization I would hardly called it the best - they had many cheesy voices and some were so amateurish it was almost painful to listen to them. They improved a lot with BG2 (with a few exceptions).

The german version of BG1 was not much better

 

[AN4RCHID]

Holy shit Josh aged like 20 years since his last video.

 

[Infinitron]

http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/76137431236/what-are-the-average-life-spans-of-the-races-in-pillars

inertia-atomsk asked: What Are the average life spans of the races in pillars of eternity?

I don’t have the docs in front of me, but humans are pretty standard, dwarves and elves are longer-lived but not as much as in a lot of A/D&D settings (I think elves top out around 350). I don’t remember the aumaua lifespans, but orlans are shorter-lived than humans.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Glad Elves aren't living 10,000 years. Hopefully they show signs of aging as well.

 

[Zed]

Holy shit Josh aged like 20 years since his last video.

stress. designing a game for scrutinous assholes does that to you.

 

[Excidium]

Yes what a harsh life of a game designer who gets to work on one of his dream projects.

 

[Zed]

another one

"Do you think it is important for attributes to allow certain archetypes? For example, a clumsy and physically weak wizard, yet she deals tons of damage with her spells. The priest who's outstandingly accurate with his spells, but is not a master in sleight of hand and pickpocketing (Dexterity). Similarly, should increasing the damage he deals with spells (via attribute) also increase the number of items he can carry?"

 

[garren]

Does he have 3 holes in his nose?

 

[Zed]

how topical. Josh on IWD2:

 

[Ninjerk]

1st similar video: Big Bang theory

 

[J1M]

Have they mentioned which UI API they are using for the game interface in Unity?

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Some of these weren't always implemented as well as they could have been (personally I think the complaints have been exaggerated) but they broke up the game's combat slog routine and that was so important.

Funny...the reason I hated those areas was because they broke up what was generally a decent dungeon-crawl for the purpose of shoehorning in half-baked puzzle/"adventure" content. Variety for its own sake isn't necessarily a good thing, especially when the content changeup doesn't mesh with the core systems. Turns out the Infinity Engine, made primarily for party-based crawling, doesn't handle thing well like luring enemies into traps, as featured in the monastery trials. And that being able to click on a Ranger or Druid's tracking skill to solve a "Lost Woods" style puzzle for you isn't all that interesting.

It also didn't help that most of those areas played terribly, especially the temporal loop, which ranks alongside places like the Black Mountain Clan, Hollywood Sewers, and the Temple of Trials in the cRPG hall of shame.

To me, pacing in a dungeon-crawler (or any sort of combat-centric RPG) is all about variety within the tactical challenges rather than adding some extraneous non-combat elements. The time to complain about pacing is when I've just gone through three floors of nothing but meleed00ds that were all dispatched via extremely repetitive tactics (why hello there IWD1).

In fairness to the devs, I understand that there is a lot of pressure from the masses, as well as the gaming media, to add in variety to games where it might not belong. Even if your game has deep, interesting systems and rock-solid content in which to utilize them, there's always going to be some jerks who clamor for more (meaningless) variety, oblivious to the fact that maybe a dedicated dungeon crawl might not be to their liking.

 

[Infinitron]

Well, I disagree.

BTW another "pacing area" that I forgot to mention is the Yuan Ti temple in Chult, which was sort of like a greatly expanded version of the fake enclave in Dragon's Eye in the first game. IWD1 needed more areas like that.

 

[Space Satan]

By the way - why the hell IWD1 works fine on modern PCs and IWD2 had this horrible performance problems and stuttering and other shit. It's not like engine changed that much.

 

[Infinitron]

By the way - why the hell IWD1 works fine on modern PCs and IWD2 had this horrible performance problems and stuttering and other shit. It's not like engine changed that much.

Might have something to do with OpenGL support (removed in the sequel)

This might help: http://bitpatch.com/ie_ddrawfix.html

 

[Rivmusique]

To me, pacing in a dungeon-crawler (or any sort of combat-centric RPG) is all about variety within the tactical challenges rather than adding some extraneous non-combat elements. The time to complain about pacing is when I've just gone through three floors of nothing but meleed00ds that were all dispatched via extremely repetitive tactics (why hello there IWD1).

The sequel massively improved on this as well. Far less 'select-all, auto-attack' fights.