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

[Grunker]

It certainly did compared to the Infinity Engine games. And Alpha Protocol was even worse.

 

[Infinitron]

It certainly did compared to the Infinity Engine games. And Alpha Protocol was even worse.

Sure, but apples and oranges.

JES isn't the only writer. Hopefully he won't object if MCA and others start dropping massive loads of text on him.

 

[Infinitron]

Earlier post: http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...rid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=119#post407851261

rope kid
Feb 3, 2001

Warte nur! Balde
Ruhest du auch.

the black husserl posted:

So is this game going to have Deus Ex/Alpha Protocol style cinematic conversations with three/four choices, or is it going Baldur's Gate style conversations?​

On a basic level, IE-style. However, a lot of IE conversations had false choice/BS options that I would not want to reproduce today. If there are six genuinely different ways to respond to a node that don't get washed out as soon as the reply is selected, by all means, write away, writers.

 

[Roguey]

Text-exposition is shit. I want to play a game, not read it. Bioware still does the info-dumps in dialogues, guess what it is fucking boring.

Please don't take that questionable statement out of context, he's talking about how it presents information. Though I'd still say it's kind of dubious because they still dumb things down for the inattentive.

 

[Infinitron]

Roguey
I don't think "the black husserl" was really talking about infodumps, though. He was talking about "small talk" in general. Little bits of dialogue that add to the world's verisimilitude.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60018-free-concept-art-and-model-previews-to-wish-you-luck/

Oh yes, make it happen.

That bastard never ceases to amuse me.

 

[Roguey]

Those are infodumps. Useless made-up trivia as Lesi would say, the disease of geek pride and boring whiteys with no interesting culture of their own.

 

[Infinitron]

Those are infodumps. Useless made-up trivia as Lesi would say, the disease of geek pride and boring whiteys with no interesting culture of their own.

How is it a "dump" if it's just a sentence or two?

 

[Roguey]

Those are infodumps. Useless made-up trivia as Lesi would say, the disease of geek pride and boring whiteys with no interesting culture of their own.

How is it a "dump" if it's just a sentence or two?

"But really, in that case, you've essentially just turned an NPC into an encyclopedia (especially if it's literally something like asking an unnamed character how to get to a location)."

 

[Infinitron]

Those are infodumps. Useless made-up trivia as Lesi would say, the disease of geek pride and boring whiteys with no interesting culture of their own.

How is it a "dump" if it's just a sentence or two?

"But really, in that case, you've essentially just turned an NPC into an encyclopedia (especially if it's literally something like asking an unnamed character how to get to a location)."

Derp, that's still not an infodump.

Anyway, I suspect that Sawyer has gotten too used to voice acting. Listening to infodumps is a lot less annoying than reading them. When it's text-only, you can skim.

 

[Grunker]

 

[Gozma]

Commies generally want to force you to live only in the world where they have colonized all the words

 

[Brotherman Bill]

Reported Roguey.

 

[Roguey]

Derp, that's still not an infodump.

Anyway, I suspect that Sawyer has gotten too used to voice acting. Listening to infodumps is a lot less annoying than reading them. When it's text-only, you can skim.

It's information without emotional content, which he says is shit and I agree.

Reported Roguey.

What did I do..?

 

[Infinitron]

Aww, underneath all that cynicism, Roguey just wants to be emotionally engaged. And so does Lesifoere I'll bet.

 

[Cosmo]

If you know how to make living and breathing characters, you can make them say what you want. You just a have to make them preoccupied by how things that you want to communicate are affecting their lives, like in torment where it was everytime a matter of realistic points of view on a significant and dynamic world.
Of course no one wants gossip monger/encyclopedia/banner headline characters.

 

[Dexter]

Morrowind had impersonal Info-dumps, in fact it was one of the main reasons why I couldn't bother playing it more than a few hours, but Bethesdas dialogue in general is shit:

Most Infinity-based games used common sense when it came to dialogue and there were just a few extra lines for flavour or information and that was rather good.

The minimalistic approach of say Diablo or "Bioshock" as that image says might somewhat fit in Shooters and ARPGs where derp people just want to get back to clicking things dead, but isn't exactly preferable in any way.
I thought one of the main reasons for choosing NOT to go with voiceovers was the freedom it gives when developing dialogues and the lack of "I want to be a dragon" options?

At this point it just seems like Sawyer-dicksucking and defending everything he says, no matter how wrong he may be xD

 

[Infinitron]

Dexter Morrowind's dialogue isn't even supposed to be "dialogue". NPCs literally are just a source of information, except when they have quests.

 

[Roguey]

The minimalistic approach of say Diablo or "Bioshock" as that image says might somewhat fit in Shooters and ARPGs where derp people just want to get back to clicking things dead, but isn't exactly preferable in any way.

I prefer being engaged in gameplay (not necessarily combat) to passively reading things in games myself.

I thought one of the main reasons for choosing NOT to go with voiceovers was the freedom it gives when developing dialogues and the lack of "I want to be a dragon" options?

Those Torment options are a mess tbqh and Bioware didn't do anything of the sort. Here were their writing guidelines for BG2 from their post-mortem:

1. No modern day profanity. This excludes lesser profanity, i.e. damn, hell, bitch, bastard.
2. Each of the dialogue nodes (dialogue piece) spoken by an NPC should be limited to two lines. Only in VERY RARE circumstances are more than two used
3. All character responses should be one line when they appear in the game. There should be no reason for them to be longer than this.
4. Try not to use accents in dialogue. For certain characters (Elminster, sailor types) it is all right, but for the most part it should be avoided.
5. When using player choices, try to keep the visible number to about three. Two or four are all right, but only when really necessary
6. When an NPC talks directly to the main player, this should be noted for scripting purposes. Other dialogue should be included for when someone other than the main player talks to this character.
7. Random dialogue should be avoided, or at least used sparingly. Commoners should have only a few random dialogue lines, but there should be several different commoners to talk with

Bolded relevant rules. Though it is noted in the article that they did bend/break some of these rules and the guideline wasn't even set in stone till near the end of the project.

 

[Infinitron]

The black husserl ragequits: http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...rid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=120#post407862657

I understand, but I don't think this game is going to be anything like the old infinity engine games, where entering a town and clicking on the million npcs and seeing their neat names and dialogue options was one of my favorite parts. It's not "mundane exposition" to me - I don't need every dialogue to be super cool and exciting and I liked the idea that I was just a strange adventurer who needed to ask questions.

Good luck with this new game, from reading the kickstarter I thought P:E was going to feel a lot like Baldur's Gate, but from reading this thread it seems that only the isometric perspective is really staying. Not trying to be too much of a whiner - people seem to be really into the new ways and if they don't want "boring infodumps", they shouldn't have them.

Let's see if/how Josh appeases him.

 

[Data4]

Holy shit... That Lord of the Flies guy is either the best troll in the world or he's the very model of the type of person I fantasize about punching in the neck repeatedly for sport.

 

[Jack]

Man people are complaining about my username in Obsidian forum, what's the big deal with it?

It's Italian. Nobody likes Italians.

 

[Volrath]

Oh, so Sawyer is VD. It's all starting to make sense now.

 

[Infinitron]

Latest graph:

Oh, so Sawyer is VD. It's all starting to make sense now.

 

[Infinitron]

The issues raised here have spread to the forum:
http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/60623-please-dont-ban-exposition-from-dialouge/