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Personally, I think it's now safe to say Disco Elysium is better than Planescape: Torment.

Harthwain

Magister
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
4,688
Educational system is not the same as the country is it?
Still, communism gets primarily mentioned in two areas: philosophy and history. While in philosophy it's not shown as bad, the history doubtlessly discredited the idea, because of all the shit communists did. At least this was the case of my educational system.
 

Skdursh

Savant
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Messages
734
Location
Slavlandia
Hot tip relevant to insights into your social life: The "friend" that told you to come here probably doesn't actually like you all that much.
 
Self-Ejected

Lim-Dûl

Self-Ejected
Joined
Apr 11, 2022
Messages
388
In the mind of the 4chinner this thread produced a boundiful harvest.
 
Joined
Aug 27, 2021
Messages
698
Wizardry 7 isn't an RPG because you're forced to play a specific role of 1-6 people dropped off on a planet all confused as to what the fuck is going on. There's not even different selectable backgrounds for my characters!

The only RPG ever to exist was called alpha protocol. It was a game where you play as a man who people call Michael Thorton, but that's not your name really, your real name is anything you want! You play as a guy who people think is maybe a special agent or training to be or something maybe. But this illusion is quickly stripped from the game when you realize your supposed super special secret agent guy has no idea how to use firearms or how to defend himself in hand to hand combat.

You have many choices throughout the game, like how much eyestrain are you willing to put up with for a small amount of xp and a shitty consumable? Or, how much eyestrain are you willing to put up with to silence an alarm?
 

Ryan muller

Educated
Joined
Oct 10, 2021
Messages
162
The real problem that nobody wants to mention is that it fundamentally lacks role playing.
I know this is a concept that's made fun of -- "haha you play the role of Mario so it's an RPG!" -- but the problem is right there in the joke: You must play Mario. And in DE, you must play a detective. There is no other way to go about the game. You can be a shitty detective and different types of detective, but you are always(..eh..) a detective.
In Planescape Torment you must always play The Nameless One, yes. But these are very clearly different in their expectations. To quote Avellone himself:
Players should be able to play an RPG the way they want, and they don’t need my moral judgments getting in the way of how they have fun. I also am not a fan of pre-determined attitudes and alignments for players-my hope is that at the end of the game, they’ve answered the question, “What kind of character am I really, and how did that depart from what I thought I would be?” I always considered Torment a sort of role-player’s experiment, where each incarnation of the Nameless One had the potential to be a different personality and a different type of gamer
In DE, you are assuming a character with a very predefined role and are shackled to it. In my NHL example from the first page, it has this issue aswell where you must play as a hockey player. In many cases where you think "This isn't an RPG, but I can't place my finger quite on why", it likely comes back to this. Well, why isn't Borderelands an RPG? Because you must -- always, absolutely required to -- play a Vault Hunter with certain social and story expectations put upon the player that you aren't allowed to deviate from.
Consider Morrowind, where the strongest shackles placed upon you are never even confirmed to exist -- the game never tells you whether or not you're actually the Nerevarine.

This isn't to be confused with given a general purpose or a goal, but that you're given one and specifically required to go about it in a certain way that restricts the player's freedom to play the game he wants in an unreasonable manner within the confines of the game itself.

And, perhaps to some extent, this is an argument against many RPGs -- most typically ARPGs -- being considered cRPGs rather than their own separate but related genre. After all, what do Witcher 3 and Wizardry 7 really have in common? There's an interesting argument here for the first Witcher game because you have amnesia, and the lines definitely blur.
Harry has amnesia in DE either and the narrative used it as the initial push to the player to insert his moral philosophies and thoughts.

The problem with the "he has a pre determined past therefore it isnt an rpg" is that most eletronic rpgs have to rely on predetermined character backstories or professions anyways as they have to tie such character to the in going narrative.

In fo 2 you always would start as a tribal with limited knowledge on technology which had a hard relationship with your aunt.

In new vegas you always would nena courier with an specific job at delivering the platinum chip

In Baldurs gate you would always be Gorion's ward,etc..

An rpg is all about flexibility to have control over your character's mentality and body

And besides not having a combat system, DE is pretty reactive when it comes to that. You have the ability to solve quests by punching your way out of a situation, you can be a schizo cop that will talk to objects in order to solve problems, you can have extreme caution to absolutely anything to the point of paranoia,etc...

Your actions do affect the gameplay and how the characters will see you, those actions who can be a result of your dialogue choices, but mainly a simulation of your character sheet.

If not, because of how flexible DE's dialogue is its easier to roleplay a character than WIZ, since WIZ 6,7 and 8 mainly rely on your own thoughts because of how few actual dialogue choices there are on those games


Meanwhile i can literally run the entirety of DE as a fascist cop who kick the hell out of commies and keep bragging about how jewish culture destroyed revachol.

Thats an rpg
 

Zeriel

Arcane
Joined
Jun 17, 2012
Messages
13,378
You quoted that post without understanding it, pretty impressive.

"You work for G&I power & light as an electrician" is clearly more stringent and defined a role than "You were born an orphan and came from this one town, now you can be any of these classes and roles". That's specifically what they are talking about and outlined.
 

Ryan muller

Educated
Joined
Oct 10, 2021
Messages
162
You quoted that post without understanding it, pretty impressive.

"You work for G&I power & light as an electrician" is clearly more stringent and defined a role than "You were born an orphan and came from this one town, now you can be any of these classes and roles". That's specifically what they are talking about and outlined.
Except i did, hence why i used both fo vegas and 2 as an example.

One in which you have a predetermined job which influences directly at which choices you can have at the narrative (you simply cant deny involvement with the whole hoover dam conflict as you are the courier and the job must be completed)

And Fo2 even go as far as to give you specific relationships with specific characters as well as your backstory limits what could be canonical to your character (tagging science and energy weapons makes no sense as a huge example)

OP also went specifically into defining those things as things who makes Roleplaying inherently not a thing, while i stressed the fact you still have control over your character's ethics, morality and mentality, hence why exactly like Planescape, DE used amnesia as a plot device.
 

Ryan muller

Educated
Joined
Oct 10, 2021
Messages
162
And i also like to stress out how my whole point is structured around the fact he did considered Planescape an rpg


A game in which your character had predetermined choices in the past, very specific relationships to multiple characters and those are extremely important to the mainplot, which tries to implement roleplaying by using amnesia as a plot device to give you the option to be a completely different person with a whole new ethical inclination and understandment of the world around you, you know

Exactly like DE does.
 

Delphik

Guest
The real problem that nobody wants to mention is that it fundamentally lacks role playing.
I know this is a concept that's made fun of -- "haha you play the role of Mario so it's an RPG!" -- but the problem is right there in the joke: You must play Mario. And in DE, you must play a detective. There is no other way to go about the game. You can be a shitty detective and different types of detective, but you are always(..eh..) a detective.
In Planescape Torment you must always play The Nameless One, yes. But these are very clearly different in their expectations. To quote Avellone himself:
Players should be able to play an RPG the way they want, and they don’t need my moral judgments getting in the way of how they have fun. I also am not a fan of pre-determined attitudes and alignments for players-my hope is that at the end of the game, they’ve answered the question, “What kind of character am I really, and how did that depart from what I thought I would be?” I always considered Torment a sort of role-player’s experiment, where each incarnation of the Nameless One had the potential to be a different personality and a different type of gamer
In DE, you are assuming a character with a very predefined role and are shackled to it. In my NHL example from the first page, it has this issue aswell where you must play as a hockey player. In many cases where you think "This isn't an RPG, but I can't place my finger quite on why", it likely comes back to this. Well, why isn't Borderelands an RPG? Because you must -- always, absolutely required to -- play a Vault Hunter with certain social and story expectations put upon the player that you aren't allowed to deviate from.
Consider Morrowind, where the strongest shackles placed upon you are never even confirmed to exist -- the game never tells you whether or not you're actually the Nerevarine.

This isn't to be confused with given a general purpose or a goal, but that you're given one and specifically required to go about it in a certain way that restricts the player's freedom to play the game he wants in an unreasonable manner within the confines of the game itself.

And, perhaps to some extent, this is an argument against many RPGs -- most typically ARPGs -- being considered cRPGs rather than their own separate but related genre. After all, what do Witcher 3 and Wizardry 7 really have in common? There's an interesting argument here for the first Witcher game because you have amnesia, and the lines definitely blur.
Harry has amnesia in DE either and the narrative used it as the initial push to the player to insert his moral philosophies and thoughts.

The problem with the "he has a pre determined past therefore it isnt an rpg" is that most eletronic rpgs have to rely on predetermined character backstories or professions anyways as they have to tie such character to the in going narrative.

In fo 2 you always would start as a tribal with limited knowledge on technology which had a hard relationship with your aunt.

In new vegas you always would nena courier with an specific job at delivering the platinum chip

In Baldurs gate you would always be Gorion's ward,etc..

An rpg is all about flexibility to have control over your character's mentality and body

And besides not having a combat system, DE is pretty reactive when it comes to that. You have the ability to solve quests by punching your way out of a situation, you can be a schizo cop that will talk to objects in order to solve problems, you can have extreme caution to absolutely anything to the point of paranoia,etc...

Your actions do affect the gameplay and how the characters will see you, those actions who can be a result of your dialogue choices, but mainly a simulation of your character sheet.

If not, because of how flexible DE's dialogue is its easier to roleplay a character than WIZ, since WIZ 6,7 and 8 mainly rely on your own thoughts because of how few actual dialogue choices there are on those games


Meanwhile i can literally run the entirety of DE as a fascist cop who kick the hell out of commies and keep bragging about how jewish culture destroyed revachol.

Thats an rpg

The cRPG where you play as a named character with a predetermined look and no control over how he looks, and also has a clear job title, just like how it is in Fallout 2 ofc.
I'll give up not being able to change the character in any way, shape or form and having a backstory but don't tell me my job title at the moment is X (detective)
 

Ryan muller

Educated
Joined
Oct 10, 2021
Messages
162
The real problem that nobody wants to mention is that it fundamentally lacks role playing.
I know this is a concept that's made fun of -- "haha you play the role of Mario so it's an RPG!" -- but the problem is right there in the joke: You must play Mario. And in DE, you must play a detective. There is no other way to go about the game. You can be a shitty detective and different types of detective, but you are always(..eh..) a detective.
In Planescape Torment you must always play The Nameless One, yes. But these are very clearly different in their expectations. To quote Avellone himself:
Players should be able to play an RPG the way they want, and they don’t need my moral judgments getting in the way of how they have fun. I also am not a fan of pre-determined attitudes and alignments for players-my hope is that at the end of the game, they’ve answered the question, “What kind of character am I really, and how did that depart from what I thought I would be?” I always considered Torment a sort of role-player’s experiment, where each incarnation of the Nameless One had the potential to be a different personality and a different type of gamer
In DE, you are assuming a character with a very predefined role and are shackled to it. In my NHL example from the first page, it has this issue aswell where you must play as a hockey player. In many cases where you think "This isn't an RPG, but I can't place my finger quite on why", it likely comes back to this. Well, why isn't Borderelands an RPG? Because you must -- always, absolutely required to -- play a Vault Hunter with certain social and story expectations put upon the player that you aren't allowed to deviate from.
Consider Morrowind, where the strongest shackles placed upon you are never even confirmed to exist -- the game never tells you whether or not you're actually the Nerevarine.

This isn't to be confused with given a general purpose or a goal, but that you're given one and specifically required to go about it in a certain way that restricts the player's freedom to play the game he wants in an unreasonable manner within the confines of the game itself.

And, perhaps to some extent, this is an argument against many RPGs -- most typically ARPGs -- being considered cRPGs rather than their own separate but related genre. After all, what do Witcher 3 and Wizardry 7 really have in common? There's an interesting argument here for the first Witcher game because you have amnesia, and the lines definitely blur.
Harry has amnesia in DE either and the narrative used it as the initial push to the player to insert his moral philosophies and thoughts.

The problem with the "he has a pre determined past therefore it isnt an rpg" is that most eletronic rpgs have to rely on predetermined character backstories or professions anyways as they have to tie such character to the in going narrative.

In fo 2 you always would start as a tribal with limited knowledge on technology which had a hard relationship with your aunt.

In new vegas you always would nena courier with an specific job at delivering the platinum chip

In Baldurs gate you would always be Gorion's ward,etc..

An rpg is all about flexibility to have control over your character's mentality and body

And besides not having a combat system, DE is pretty reactive when it comes to that. You have the ability to solve quests by punching your way out of a situation, you can be a schizo cop that will talk to objects in order to solve problems, you can have extreme caution to absolutely anything to the point of paranoia,etc...

Your actions do affect the gameplay and how the characters will see you, those actions who can be a result of your dialogue choices, but mainly a simulation of your character sheet.

If not, because of how flexible DE's dialogue is its easier to roleplay a character than WIZ, since WIZ 6,7 and 8 mainly rely on your own thoughts because of how few actual dialogue choices there are on those games


Meanwhile i can literally run the entirety of DE as a fascist cop who kick the hell out of commies and keep bragging about how jewish culture destroyed revachol.

Thats an rpg

The cRPG where you play as a named character with a predetermined look and no control over how he looks, and also has a clear job title, just like how it is in Fallout 2 ofc.
I'll give up not being able to change the character in any way, shape or form and having a backstory but don't tell me my job title at the moment is X (detective)
No, but you have an aunt, is a tribal with limited knowledge who canonically cant know about science or economics in any deep way and must save your tribe regardless of your ethics.

Im new vegas you have a job tho, so technically it isnt an rpg anymore according to you?
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
Patron
Joined
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Messages
11,538
Location
Black Goat Woods !@#*%&^
Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
The cRPG where you play as a named character with a predetermined look and no control over how he looks, and also has a clear job title, just like how it is in Fallout 2 ofc.
I'll give up not being able to change the character in any way, shape or form and having a backstory but don't tell me my job title at the moment is X (detective)
Are you still talking about DE vs. PST? The fact that the Nameless One can't produce a pay stub or a social security card doesn't make him any less predetermined than Du Bois.
 

wishbonetail

Learned
Joined
Oct 18, 2021
Messages
671
Finally finished PST not long ago with >1000 frags in my stat. Only thing in common Disco has with PST is a red dialog fonts.
 

Laz Sundays

Educated
Joined
Jan 12, 2020
Messages
119
Americans are so funny. Stalin, Tito and every other Jozef are just friendly merchants, yet amerifags still put relevance into whatever propaganda/ism was used at the time, bless their bubble. There's only one relevant ism, moneysm. And we're all sucking on it. Everything else is bait to keep you from feeling like a faggot while you're sucking.
 

scytheavatar

Scholar
Joined
Sep 22, 2016
Messages
409
I would argue Shadowrun Dragonfall has better writing than Planescape Torment and surpassed it as a game, since Dragonfall's gameplay isn't great but is still competent and well better than Planescape Torment. Disco Elysium? Nah.
 

ResetRPG

Novice
Joined
Jul 17, 2022
Messages
35
Americans are so funny. Stalin, Tito and every other Jozef are just friendly merchants, yet amerifags still put relevance into whatever propaganda/ism was used at the time, bless their bubble. There's only one relevant ism, moneysm. And we're all sucking on it. Everything else is bait to keep you from feeling like a faggot while you're sucking.
moneyism is just the layman version of dialectical materialism.
 

Szenhidrat

Novice
Joined
Nov 27, 2020
Messages
15
Location
Hungary
Never finished DE so i don't know whether it's an rpg or not. In the first few minutes when "ancient reptilian brain" popped up i alt+f4'd, uninstalled and refunded it. It was too insufferably pretentious and i can only think(or rather not think) how the rest of the writing is. But i can see that these words and everything is engineered precisely not to really tell a story but to give bursts of words/pharses/feelings to make Billy sit in front of the screen and think to himself that this is genius level writing. And altho PS:T is not flawless i never felt like this while playing through it. But it's just my opinion so it can be wrong.
 

The_Mask

Just like Yves, I chase tales.
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The land of ice and snow.
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
An rpg is all about flexibility to have control over your character's mentality and body
It's actually really cool that you can interpret everything as a permanent state of "combat" between your strengths (the aspects of yourself that you invested many points in), and your weaknesses (aspects you haven't invested in). The experience accumulated can result in those "aspects" becoming friendly. Which is, exactly, the gradual process of perfecting oneself in life. (or you can autistically increase your strengths, of course)

Looking at DE from this lens, it is a much better RPG than combatfags make it out to be. And probably better than P:T.

At the same time, however, it isn't an great RPG, simply because I haven't felt that I've ever learned anything valuable from DE, despite the increased personal reactivity. Whereas in P:T when I have the famous conversations with my previous incarnations, and deal with the Practical one, I can clearly see a difference between me at the start of the game, and me at the end of the game, by just debating about Morte. Not to mention the rest of the characters, and aspects of my character.

Bottom line, I think P:T is made as an educational tool. Whereas DE doesn't care what you take from it. And outside of the fun you have with Enola, I can't say the combat is a factor.






If anything, one would hope there are more DE's in the sense of the relationship between developers and experimentation. But DE doesn't feel better than P:T. And I hope I am being objective.
 

Serus

Arcane
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Messages
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Small but great planet of Potatohole
Never finished DE so i don't know whether it's an rpg or not. In the first few minutes when "ancient reptilian brain" popped up i alt+f4'd, uninstalled and refunded it. It was too insufferably pretentious and i can only think(or rather not think) how the rest of the writing is. But i can see that these words and everything is engineered precisely not to really tell a story but to give bursts of words/pharses/feelings to make Billy sit in front of the screen and think to himself that this is genius level writing. And altho PS:T is not flawless i never felt like this while playing through it. But it's just my opinion so it can be wrong.

I never played DE but what you describe is exactly the feeling i got when playing PST. Pretentious and trying too appear as something that it isn't. I had some fun playing it. Mostly because the setting and some quests were fun, never finished it though. Here comes DE that is supposedly similar in some ways, except I have 20 years less patience and a much longer list of games to play.
 

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Messages
12,869
Location
Eastern block
I never played DE but what you describe is exactly the feeling i got when playing PST. Pretentious and trying too appear as something that it isn't.

PST was pretty cool and not pretentious at all. Unlike DE.
 

wishbonetail

Learned
Joined
Oct 18, 2021
Messages
671
I never played DE but what you describe is exactly the feeling i got when playing PST. Pretentious and trying too appear as something that it isn't.

PST was pretty cool and not pretentious at all. Unlike DE.
When i tried to overcome all of the written diarrhea that was Hamrys' the coffinmaker's monologue about pillows I thought that it was not cool. Not cool at all.
 

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