Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

[AwesomeButton]

Alright. I've been playing through 3.0 and have really been enjoying the subtle changes and increased difficulty that I've found so far. I'm about to reach Defiance Bay and wanted to get those who have the full expansions opinion: is it worth buying at the full $25 dollar price? Also bearing in mind I most likely won't be replaying PoE again for several years to come. Does it add a lot to the experience? Will I finish it and still want to play through the rest of the game?

Just wanted to see if I could get some thoughts on the matter.

I'd say it's worth it, the quality is better than the base game in every department.

BTW, Florian Gheorghe I remember I used to play BGII and Grim Fandango with a dictionary. Real time with pause.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

The best thing about BGII was the sense of wonder. The game was just overwhelming.

funny thing is that by the time it came out I managed to finish Fallout 2 but I could never finish BG2. I always thought it was to difficult for me. Maybe now it's time to finally finish it.

Trimis de pe al meu Galaxy Nexus folosind Tapatalk

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

Alright. I've been playing through 3.0 and have really been enjoying the subtle changes and increased difficulty that I've found so far. I'm about to reach Defiance Bay and wanted to get those who have the full expansions opinion: is it worth buying at the full $25 dollar price? Also bearing in mind I most likely won't be replaying PoE again for several years to come. Does it add a lot to the experience? Will I finish it and still want to play through the rest of the game?

Just wanted to see if I could get some thoughts on the matter.

I'd say it's worth it, the quality is better than the base game in every department.

BTW, Florian Gheorghe I remember I used to play BGII and Grim Fandango with a dictionary. Real time with pause.

Yeah it's strange that although I loved the game Fallout was more appealing to my teenage era. In my country I was not aware of Dungeons & Dragons and of course I was more attracted to the post apocalyptic setting.
Anyway I think Pillars of Eternity has a lot of work to do in order to reach the greatness of BG2. Thaos is not at all as interesting as Jon Irenicus. I know it should compare more to BG1. But I didn't play BG 1 at all and probably never will.

 

[Prime Junta]

Thaos is not at all as interesting as Jon Irenicus.

I don't get the love for Irenicus. The voice actor was great obviously, but other than that and his Tom of Finland fashion sense I thought he was your standard muhahaha-I-want-to-be-a-god-evil-wizard-antagonist.

 

[Roguey]

You'll get no villain's exposition from me!

*writes down all his motivations in a diary that gets left behind*

 

[Infinitron]

What exposition BG1's plot requires is also revealed in letters and diaries (Gorion's and Sarevok's). Perhaps players are more accepting of "exposition dumps" when they're delivered in that form? Ken Levine had it right all along.

 

[Roguey]

If only Eric had listened.

 

[Rivmusique]

Thaos is not at all as interesting as Jon Irenicus.

I don't get the love for Irenicus. The voice actor was great obviously, but other than that and his Tom of Finland fashion sense I thought he was your standard muhahaha-I-want-to-be-a-god-evil-wizard-antagonist.

But he fell because he couldn't get no elf-poon. Relatable.

 

[Athelas]

Bioshock owns

I don't think characters monologuing their life stories while they're in the process of bleeding to death on dozens of portable audio recorders they then leave behind is a very good way of handling exposition.

Thaos and Irenicus actually exhibit the same flaws - the whole structure of 'villain shows up in the beginning of the game, then you repeatedly chase him down, only for him to escape each time and leave you alive, until you face him at the end of a game' is just a really poor fit for an RPG and feels like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon. Black Isle/Obsidian games typically had the antagonist remaining unseen for the majority of the game while the player character pieced together clues about him/her, which is both more logical in terms of the villain's motivation and also works way better in terms of pacing (i.e. you're not chasing down a known villain, so there's no issue with doing tons of side quests).

 

[Roguey]

Ha, that's funny I've seen later Bioware games criticized because they don't have an antagonist you meet several times throughout the story unlike BG2 (even here).

Once it was brought up I started paying more attention to how often it happens in story-driven RPGs.

 

[Infinitron]

What exactly was Irenicus doing in Spellhold anyway? Just waiting for you to show up again so he can do more....experiments?

 

[WhiteGuts]

They really should've looked more at New Vegas when making PoE. It's the game where they got most things right. And the whole "3D FPS vs 2D iso" aspect is irrelevant since both game share the same structure, overall.

 

[Infinitron]

both game share the same structure, overall.

O_o

 

[Roguey]

You must be thinking specifically of Dragon Age because ME didn't do that.

Yeah, I've seen it levied at Origins and II (you don't even meet Meredith until the very end of Act 2).

They "corrected" it for Inquisition.

 

[Prime Junta]

They really should've looked more at New Vegas when making PoE. It's the game where they got most things right. And the whole "3D FPS vs 2D iso" aspect is irrelevant since both game share the same structure, overall.

They don't share the same structure at all. FONV is an open-world game where the content is systemically driven (faction mechanics etc), P:E is a narrative-driven closed-world with scripted content. None of the IE games were systemically-driven open-world games.

 

[Roguey]

Remember early on in PoE's development when Josh said his goal was to have it be as open as Fallout's "find a water chip."

 

[Prime Junta]

Remember early on in PoE's development when Josh said his goal was to have it be as open as Fallout's "find a water chip."

I don't actually. Interesting if he did say that. It would've been a rather a different game.

 

[Infinitron]

I wouldn't call it FO:NV "systemically driven". It's just Fallouty.

Remember early on in PoE's development when Josh said his goal was to have it be as open as Fallout's "find a water chip."

I don't actually. Interesting if he did say that. It would've been a rather a different game.

What Josh actually said:

Also, a new interview by the good folks over at GameBanshee just posted by Feargus in the comments...
http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/109792-project-eternity-interview.html

Buck: You've stated that you're taking an open world approach with the game, but will there be some areas where a more linear design makes more sense? When do you think a linear approach makes the most sense?

Josh: I'd like to avoid linear sequences whenever possible, but there are usually a few choke points the player will have to go through even in open games. For example, you have to get the water chip and deal with the Master in Fallout. There are a lot of ways to actually do those things, but you can't avoid dealing with them in some way. That's as "linear" as I'd like to get.

 

[Athelas]

You don't have to get the water chip or be even aware of the Master's existence to finish Fallout 1.

 

[Infinitron]

You don't have to get the water chip or be even aware of the Master's existence to finish Fallout 1.

You know, logically you SHOULD have to find the water chip even after defeating the mutants. The vault isn't safe yet! Is there some unique endgame text or something if you don't? Otherwise it could be classifiable as a plot bug.

 

[WhiteGuts]

They really should've looked more at New Vegas when making PoE. It's the game where they got most things right. And the whole "3D FPS vs 2D iso" aspect is irrelevant since both game share the same structure, overall.

They don't share the same structure at all. FONV is an open-world game where the content is systemically driven (faction mechanics etc), P:E is a narrative-driven closed-world with scripted content. None of the IE games were systemically-driven open-world games.

New Vegas is as narratively-driven as PoE is. The factions system is part of it, not the overreaching structure upon which the game is built. And there are similar mechanics in Pillars anyway.

The point is, narrative is scattered all across the Mojave in NV, which makes exploring the world so interesting.

 

[Prime Junta]

New Vegas is as narratively-driven as PoE is. The factions system is part of it, not the overreaching structure upon which the game is built. And there are similar mechanics in Pillars anyway.

The point is, narrative is scattered all across the Mojave in NV, which makes exploring the world so interesting.

In my opinion that blurs the distinction between different styles of RPG past the point of meaningfulness. There are a bunch of ways in which you can structure cRPG's.

• Linear (the IWD's, the SRR, etc.)
• Hub-and-spoke (the KOTOR's, VtM:Bloodlines, Jade Empire etc.)
• Open-world (all the Fallouts including FONV, Arcanum, all the Elder Scrolls, all the Gothics, Witcher 3 etc.)
• Narrative/Chapter-driven (Pillars, BG1-2, NWN OC, NWN2 OC, MotB, Witcher 1-2 etc.)

Of course there's wiggle-room there -- in the hub-and-spoke model you can have a fair bit of freedom in each hub, or in each chapter of a chapter-driven game, or you can have crises in an open-world game that change the world state, or you can structure a hub-and-spoke game into chapters etc. -- but the general pattern still holds. It is IMO erroneous to classify Pillars structurally with the open-world games. It belongs in the narrative/chapter-driven box.

 

[CptMace]

What exposition BG1's plot requires is also revealed in letters and diaries (Gorion's and Sarevok's). Perhaps players are more accepting of "exposition dumps" when they're delivered in that form? Ken Levine had it right all along.

Don't act stupid man, you're not.

 

[Athelas]

You don't have to get the water chip or be even aware of the Master's existence to finish Fallout 1.

You know, logically you SHOULD have to find the water chip even after defeating the mutants. The vault isn't safe yet! Is there some unique endgame text or something if you don't? Otherwise it could be classifiable as a plot bug.

It's definitely a bug/oversight and no, there is no dialogue reflecting that you skipped getting the water chip. The other thing I mentioned however, that you can easily finish Fallout 1 without ever meeting the antagonist, isn't, and it shows how differently Fallout 1 was structured compared to the IE games, or even most open-world RPG's which, despite their open world, are still structured mostly linearly, which is why I find that comment from Josh rather odd. The people who backed PoE would obviously prefer a somewhat prominent narrative.

New Vegas is as narratively-driven as PoE is. The factions system is part of it, not the overreaching structure upon which the game is built. And there are similar mechanics in Pillars anyway.

The point is, narrative is scattered all across the Mojave in NV, which makes exploring the world so interesting.

In my opinion that blurs the distinction between different styles of RPG past the point of meaningfulness. There are a bunch of ways in which you can structure cRPG's.

• Linear (the IWD's, the SRR, etc.)
• Hub-and-spoke (the KOTOR's, VtM:Bloodlines, Jade Empire etc.)
• Open-world (all the Fallouts including FONV, Arcanum, all the Elder Scrolls, all the Gothics, Witcher 3 etc.)
• Narrative/Chapter-driven (Pillars, BG1-2, NWN OC, NWN2 OC, MotB, Witcher 1-2 etc.)

Of course there's wiggle-room there -- in the hub-and-spoke model you can have a fair bit of freedom in each hub, or in each chapter of a chapter-driven game, or you can have crises in an open-world game that change the world state, or you can structure a hub-and-spoke game into chapters etc. -- but the general pattern still holds. It is IMO erroneous to classify Pillars structurally with the open-world games. It belongs in the narrative/chapter-driven box.

Isn't Dragonfall technically hub-and-spoke? Since you only have to do missions (the equivalent of spokes) to raise money to contact that person to continue the plot (forgot the specifics). Conversely, I don't think Bloodlines qualifies as hub-and-spoke since you unlock the hubs linearly and in the same order.

 

[CptMace]

I really don't see the difference between Linear and Narrative/Chapter-driven.