Pillars of Eternity Beta Discussion [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Sensuki]

BG has better exploration and non-linearity

The bandit camp quest is one of the better ones in the game, almost by mistake - as there are a lot of ways to find the bandit camp and a lot of ways to complete it (and by that I mean you can stealth in, steal the parchments and kill no one, or you can just bulldoze your way in etc etc)

My personal favourite is the get taken there by one of the named bandits, fight Tazok, charm Tagousz Khosann with the Cloak of Algernon and have him kill Tazok off screen, then Tazok never appears in the final fight

 

[tuluse]

Wait a minute. Do you mean to say that FR in BG is archetypal and dull but RF is IWD is suddenly original and exciting?

Early game Icewind Dale has more interesting writing/situations/content than early game BG.

These sidequests might as well be "collect 10 ooze samples."

Friendly Arm Inn quests are designed to get on the right path to advance the story (go to Beregost and do this, go to Nashkel and find that). Beregost and the fair are pretty cool areas.

 

[Zed]

new Obsidian splash?
https://instagram.com/p/z1CvHKpx8z/

 

[Roguey]

BG has better exploration and non-linearity

Low content-density black-clearing is awful. This is IWD with more content off to the side. I'm sticking only where NPCs tell me to go so I don't burn out like DraQ.

Friendly Arm Inn quests are designed to get on the right path to advance the story (go to Beregost and do this, go to Nashkel and find that). Beregost and the fair are pretty cool areas.

Beregost, really? Sidequests include:

Buy a book and give it to a guy.
Kill 4 spiders in someone's house and return one along with boots and wine.
Kill some guys for a witch or kill her. Maybe she would have explained her motivations if I did what she said.
Kill a gnoll and give someone his sword back.
Kill a hobgoblin and give someone his boots back.
Kill an ogrillon and give someone a note.
Kill four half-ogres.
Kill evil necromancer.

Neither the content nor the writing that goes along with it have anything of interest.

 

[Jaesun]

BG has better exploration and non-linearity

The bandit camp quest is one of the better ones in the game, almost by mistake - as there are a lot of ways to find the bandit camp and a lot of ways to complete it (and by that I mean you can stealth in, steal the parchments and kill no one, or you can just bulldoze your way in etc etc)

My personal favourite is the get taken there by one of the named bandits, fight Tazok, charm Tagousz Khosann with the Cloak of Algernon and have him kill Tazok off screen, then Tazok never appears in the final fight

The truly sad thing is, this is the ONLY(?) well designed area in this regard in the entire BG game.

If only the rest were more like it.

 

[tuluse]

Beregost, really? Sidequests include:

I was thinking of Beregost and the fair as one combo area, also years old memory playing tricks. Now that I think more, there is very little that ties the fair and Beregost together.

Buy a book and give it to a guy.
Kill 4 spiders in someone's house and return one along with boots and wine.
Kill some guys for a witch or kill her. Maybe she would have explained her motivations if I did what she said.
Kill a gnoll and give someone his sword back.
Kill a hobgoblin and give someone his boots back.
Kill an ogrillon and give someone a note.
Kill four half-ogres.
Kill evil necromancer.

Neither the content nor the writing that goes along with it have anything of interest.

You can recruit a bard too, Garrack (?). Compared to "here's 3 wilderness areas in a row, have fun killing xvarts", sounds like Beregost is positively filled with fun stuff to do

 

[prodigydancer]

Early game Icewind Dale has more interesting writing/situations/content than early game BG.

You're joking, right?

IWD early game is running petty errands around Easthaven and killing orcs in a cave. Wow, that interesting! Then you deal with packs of goblins in Kuldahar Pass. Excitement level rises! Then comes Kuldahar (OK, it's a neat little hamlet) and then dungeons in the Vale of Shadows. That would be an hour of clearing undead but you need to restealth your thief scouting for traps so make it 3 hours...

 

[Weirdstuffinspace]

don't bother. roguey hasnt even played bg1

 

[Seari]

BG1 is only enjoyable for me with bgt and scs.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Problem with IWD is that it's an ultra-linear dungeon romp, you can burn out quickly in those if you don't really enjoy combat. BG has a much more adventury feel, with much more freedom and one of the best designed cities when it comes to iso RPGs.

The truly sad thing is, this is the ONLY(?) well designed area in this regard in the entire BG game.

If only the rest were more like it.

BG is light on C&C and multiple pathways but the city itself has a few quests that (can) involve things other than murdering people like thief guild quests, steal the telescope quest, help priest get his child's body back (does involve some reactivity actually from an earlier choice you can make), the whole finding Balduran's gear thing etc.

don't bother. roguey hasnt even played bg1

Probably reading gamebanshee area by area walkthrough when alt-tabbing from Skyrim

 

[Infinitron]

Wait a minute. Do you mean to say that FR in BG is archetypal and dull but RF is IWD is suddenly original and exciting?

Early game Icewind Dale has more interesting writing/situations/content than early game BG.

These sidequests might as well be "collect 10 ooze samples."

Friendly Arm Inn quests are designed to get on the right path to advance the story (go to Beregost and do this, go to Nashkel and find that). Beregost and the fair are pretty cool areas.

The fair is next to Nashkel, not Beregost.

 

[tuluse]

The fair is next to Nashkel, not Beregost.

That'll teach me go off memory instead of looking stuff up.

Though I remember Nashkel being a boring area itself.

 

[Infinitron]

That's because everybody is at the fair.

 

[Grunker]

Firstly, Baldur's Gate is paced leagues better than IWD, that's basic fact. Secondly, IWD has a pretty glorious oldschool P&P aesthetic to the lead-in mystery, true, but the coming-of-age story combined with the "what's going on feeling" of Baldur's Gate holds equal merit. I'll accept an argument lamenting the banality of both story-lines, but praising one and harping on the other shows bias.

 

[Roguey]

IWD early game is running petty errands around Easthaven and killing orcs in a cave.

More interesting than BG's prologue, though BG does do a much better job of teaching you how to play, e.g. there's a very clear "hey dummy, go buy things from the store" moment.

Wow, that interesting! Then you deal with packs of goblins in Kuldahar Pass. Excitement level rises! Then comes Kuldahar (OK, it's a neat little hamlet) and then dungeons in the Vale of Shadows. That would be an hour of clearing undead but you need to restealth your thief scouting for traps so make it 3 hours...

I wrote about this in my retrospective. Still more interesting than wiping out pockets of monsters in the wilderness.

Probably reading gamebanshee area by area walkthrough when alt-tabbing from Skyrim

Unnecessary. I have no interest in trying to be completionist about this at all and almost everything dies easily so far. The win/loss dialogue with the necromancer was pretty bad, but I soon walked into that one on my own.

Firstly, Baldur's Gate is paced leagues better than IWD, that's basic fact.

BG's wilderness maps are slow, empty trash. BG2 did the right thing in getting rid of them.

I'll accept an argument lamenting the banality of both story-lines, but praising one and harping on the other shows bias.

I never praised IWD. I just said it's more interesting than BG's.

 

[Sensuki]

BG's wilderness maps are slow, empty trash. BG2 did the right thing in getting rid of them.

Nope.

 

[Rake]

Firstly, Baldur's Gate is paced leagues better than IWD, that's basic fact.

BG's wilderness maps are slow, empty trash. BG2 did the right thing in getting rid of them.

I don't often agree with Roguey, but 100% this.

 

[Grunker]

BG's wilderness maps are slow, empty trash. BG2 did the right thing in getting rid of them.

Nope.

 

[Ellef]

Almost every single wildnerness area has at least one interesting sub quest or encounter? I'm sorry that the game doesn't give you a quest giver to incentivise each region but this is exploration done right.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

I kind of liked the wilderness areas in a look-at-the-bunnies-jump-around-relaxation type of way, but you've got to be kidding that zig zagging a map until all the black is gone is "exploration done right".

 

[Ellef]

I kind of liked the wilderness areas in a look-at-the-bunnies-jump-around-relaxation type of way, but you've got to be kidding that zig zagging a map until all the black is gone is "exploration done right".

I don't understand your zig zagging complaint, unless you have a better way of exploring a map then moving to unexplored areas?

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

I don't understand your zig zagging complaint, unless you have a better way of exploring a map then moving to unexplored areas?

I assume Livingstone didn't arbitrarily zigzag his way across the dark continent.

But whatever, no point in getting into this thing again, I suppose darkness clearing counts as interesting exploration for some.

 

[Grunker]

They could be a tiny bit more dense, but more dense than that and there's no emptiness at all, removing the feeling of exploring.

 

[Athelas]

Methodically clearing out every inch of those wilderness maps was oddly relaxing...

...until you realize you can never get rid of the black fog of war at the outer edges of the map.

Firstly, Baldur's Gate is paced leagues better than IWD, that's basic fact. Secondly, IWD has a pretty glorious oldschool P&P aesthetic to the lead-in mystery, true, but the coming-of-age story combined with the "what's going on feeling" of Baldur's Gate holds equal merit. I'll accept an argument lamenting the banality of both story-lines, but praising one and harping on the other shows bias.

Context matters. Only one of these was a slamdunk dungeon crawler.

 

[Grunker]

Only of these was a slamdunk dungeon crawler.

My point is I don't see anything wrong with Baldur's Gate's story. It's pretty by the numbers, but the main plot is reasonably interesting. It's good for the same reason Star Wars' plot is good, though not of the same quality, obviously.