DeepOcean
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2012
- Messages
- 7,404
Well, I left my character right before the last fight, just waiting for the will to come and finish the game. Played Act 1, Act 2 and most Act 3 and as I'm more in the mood of sperging on the codex than finishing the game, I was thinking why I felt so indiferent towards the plot of the game, so much so that I don't have the desire to try to end the story.
There is much debate about the combat and gameplay in general but as I played the game for some time, it didn't take long for me to realize that I wasn't on PoE for the combat, the combat on PoE is unsatisfying and repetitive but that didn't stop me liking games like Torment where underhelming combat would be a praise. Okay, on the best of the times I was bored and on the worst of the times I was furious with the pathfinding that is all that I care to say about PoE's combat and PoE enters on the long list of Obsidian RPGs that have crap combat but... hey... it isn't that the competition on the RPG genre is doing much better, isn't InXile and Bioware?
Maybe they spread themselves too thin with all those promises on the kickstarter... two cities, one mega dungeon, epic game lengh or whatever and I don't want to shit on Obsidian, some of my favorite games were their work (while I sometimes cursed all the family generations of the maniacs that had the brillant idea of filling maps with Guls, lions, spiders, witchs, wolves, boars, bettles and the endless trash mob army that for sure would have eaten the whole population of Guilded Vale and Dyford village if they didn't just wait for the player to be utterly decimated.)
What surprised me wasn't that the combat would be weak, I sort of suspected that but the story too? Now that hurt mah feelings Obsidian, a good game can't have weak gameplay and a weak narrative too.
So, where I begin?
PoE has a new setting and all new settings need introductions. You don't start throwing names, titles, places, factions and concepts and just assume the player will care a single bit about them. Guess what, I could care less about fictional people, their fictional culture and their fictional problems, being fictional, that mean they don't exist so why should I care about them?
Why should I care? That is the most important question any narrative that have any hopes of grabbing people should answer. So, how make people care about fictional people and their fictional problems? By making things very personal. You could spend pages and pages telling me what a watcher is and I wouldn't care a single bit but make things personal and I will accept it.
Okay, how to make things personal? Many ways. One method is threatening the very life of the player's character, MotB did that on a brillant way, casual fags be damn, the spirit meter was an incredible narrative tool. When you are at the very beginning of a story, you just go with the narrative dream and when you see that the life of your character is under threat you feel the visceral feeling of needing to save him.
Another method is to dump the player into the world but have a guide to connect the player to the world, a character that is the connection, that have opinions about things he sees and his own goals, that make the abstract concepts of the setting/narrative feel... real, personal. When you start the narrative, you don't have any goal or any objective as you don't know the setting and what is going on, it is important to have a fascinating character with goals so his goals become yours, at least on the beginning. Morte, Safiya and Kreia did this very well. His goal must be something strong and on some way connected to you.
There is another way too, to immerse you on the ordinary life of the world and experimenting the world as a common person would do. You absorb the setting by experience, by working and by belonging to the very same institutions with their contradictions that make the cultural life of the world. You don't need strong characters, the player absorb the setting because he is living the setting, the feeling Bethesdards call immersion because you are living the dream of immersion on a new life... again making things personal. Morrowind do this.
Did Obsidian with PoE done anything like that? No, you don't have a guide as the tutorial companions die on the tutorial and Aloth and Eder aren't good introductory characters as both don't have clear and interesting goals for you to make your own. Dwarf lady tells you to go to Caed Nua and that is it? Aloth and Eder go with you because... why not? It isn't their will that propels you until you form your own opinions on the setting, they just passively go with you.
Bioware is known to attach some organization as quick as they can on the players, like the grey wardens of DA:O and the specters of Mass Effect but its not only to make the player feel special but to make the player feel he belongs to something, to a institution and ground the player into the setting as the goals of the institution, at least briefly, become their own. Bioware knows the benefits of attaching an organization with the player, even if they are very juvenile on their writing.
You don't belong to anything on PoE, sure there are reputations and factions in the game but a reputation system and two simple fetch quests per faction is hardly something that alone makes you feel you understood and belong to that faction now. I didn't understood the Crucible Knights and the Dozens, I mean, sure, intelectually I understood them but I didn't care a single bit. The Crucible knights are boring generic fantasy warrior order and the Dozens are even worse, they aren't a faction, they are a concept the writer or didn't had time to flesh out or will to do so. And common... not a single companion belonging to both organizations?
The Watcher... man, the concept of the Watcher is very interesting but that is the problem... its just a concept floating on the player's mind but lack anything to make it real... personal. Abstractions and story concepts are the beginning of you creating a narrative but should not be the narrative itself. It is here that Maerwald, that is on my opinion, the biggest mistake Obsidian did. Maerwald is the only other Watcher alive that you know when you arrive at Caed Nua, he should be a companion, he would be perfect as an introductory character, the kinda of character the player needed to understand what being a Watcher means. It should be his goal to hunt the leaden Key, so his goal becomes yours if you choose to.
He should suffer with his condition while he travels with you so when he finaly succumbs, it would be far more stronger than random crazy NPC doing crazy shit and somehow you should be afraid of that happening to you when you know very well as you being the protagonist without spirit metter... no chance of that happening. He should take the place of Lady Webb and the character that propels you foward until you go on your own.
Act 1 is a mess, Act 2 starting when you arrive at Defiance Bay is a really strange division of acts but that isn't the problem. Thaos remain a contemplative villain, almost a zen buddhist and when he fnaly acts at the end of act 2... man I could see that from miles and worse... he killed people that I didn't care, that belonged to factions I didn't care and there is a riot on a city I didn't care. Funny, Thaos send those trash mob assassins after you but they are just trash mobs, there isn't even banter between you and them.
Eder is too passive and distant, he should be the guide for Guilded Vale instead. When you arrive, you find him on the temple of Eothas wanting to grab the remains of the dead priests from the ruined temple, once he has them, you go to the cemitery and he buries them himselft. You should see by yourself that he is a broken man with a broken faith, he wouldn't need to tell you anything, you would just see.
Having nothing to do, he asks you to help him on something, he is working with Kolsk for sometime as he figured out as being an Eothasian, Roderic would want his skin and he sure want some payback for the dead priests. Would be pretty easy to tie him up to pretty much most of the important Guilded Vale quests and give them meaning with a personal touch.
Aloth is from Aedyr? Is Aedyr important for this plot line in particular? No? So, no, he isn't from Aedyr, he is from Defiance Bay and lived most of his life in the city. He knows pretty much every district and please... the writer that invented this character, have his other personality making something more amusing than cursing people with a... scotish accent, ireland accent?... that shit isn't remotely funny, make his personality make him dress up like a woman on the middle of a party on the palace to make the SJW crazy or something, please anything more interesting than poor attempts at jokes.
Anyway...
TL;DR: Whatever method of organizing the writers you are employing now Obsidian, this game suffered badly from lack of an unified vision that knew what companion background was needed, when each companion should show up and what they should do. If you don't have the money to make big companion quests, fine, attach them even on minor ways to sidequests or something to give them some action. Make the companions pro active, with opinions and important, relatable, goals, instead of passive douchebags.
There is much debate about the combat and gameplay in general but as I played the game for some time, it didn't take long for me to realize that I wasn't on PoE for the combat, the combat on PoE is unsatisfying and repetitive but that didn't stop me liking games like Torment where underhelming combat would be a praise. Okay, on the best of the times I was bored and on the worst of the times I was furious with the pathfinding that is all that I care to say about PoE's combat and PoE enters on the long list of Obsidian RPGs that have crap combat but... hey... it isn't that the competition on the RPG genre is doing much better, isn't InXile and Bioware?
Maybe they spread themselves too thin with all those promises on the kickstarter... two cities, one mega dungeon, epic game lengh or whatever and I don't want to shit on Obsidian, some of my favorite games were their work (while I sometimes cursed all the family generations of the maniacs that had the brillant idea of filling maps with Guls, lions, spiders, witchs, wolves, boars, bettles and the endless trash mob army that for sure would have eaten the whole population of Guilded Vale and Dyford village if they didn't just wait for the player to be utterly decimated.)
What surprised me wasn't that the combat would be weak, I sort of suspected that but the story too? Now that hurt mah feelings Obsidian, a good game can't have weak gameplay and a weak narrative too.
So, where I begin?
PoE has a new setting and all new settings need introductions. You don't start throwing names, titles, places, factions and concepts and just assume the player will care a single bit about them. Guess what, I could care less about fictional people, their fictional culture and their fictional problems, being fictional, that mean they don't exist so why should I care about them?
Why should I care? That is the most important question any narrative that have any hopes of grabbing people should answer. So, how make people care about fictional people and their fictional problems? By making things very personal. You could spend pages and pages telling me what a watcher is and I wouldn't care a single bit but make things personal and I will accept it.
Okay, how to make things personal? Many ways. One method is threatening the very life of the player's character, MotB did that on a brillant way, casual fags be damn, the spirit meter was an incredible narrative tool. When you are at the very beginning of a story, you just go with the narrative dream and when you see that the life of your character is under threat you feel the visceral feeling of needing to save him.
Another method is to dump the player into the world but have a guide to connect the player to the world, a character that is the connection, that have opinions about things he sees and his own goals, that make the abstract concepts of the setting/narrative feel... real, personal. When you start the narrative, you don't have any goal or any objective as you don't know the setting and what is going on, it is important to have a fascinating character with goals so his goals become yours, at least on the beginning. Morte, Safiya and Kreia did this very well. His goal must be something strong and on some way connected to you.
There is another way too, to immerse you on the ordinary life of the world and experimenting the world as a common person would do. You absorb the setting by experience, by working and by belonging to the very same institutions with their contradictions that make the cultural life of the world. You don't need strong characters, the player absorb the setting because he is living the setting, the feeling Bethesdards call immersion because you are living the dream of immersion on a new life... again making things personal. Morrowind do this.
Did Obsidian with PoE done anything like that? No, you don't have a guide as the tutorial companions die on the tutorial and Aloth and Eder aren't good introductory characters as both don't have clear and interesting goals for you to make your own. Dwarf lady tells you to go to Caed Nua and that is it? Aloth and Eder go with you because... why not? It isn't their will that propels you until you form your own opinions on the setting, they just passively go with you.
Bioware is known to attach some organization as quick as they can on the players, like the grey wardens of DA:O and the specters of Mass Effect but its not only to make the player feel special but to make the player feel he belongs to something, to a institution and ground the player into the setting as the goals of the institution, at least briefly, become their own. Bioware knows the benefits of attaching an organization with the player, even if they are very juvenile on their writing.
You don't belong to anything on PoE, sure there are reputations and factions in the game but a reputation system and two simple fetch quests per faction is hardly something that alone makes you feel you understood and belong to that faction now. I didn't understood the Crucible Knights and the Dozens, I mean, sure, intelectually I understood them but I didn't care a single bit. The Crucible knights are boring generic fantasy warrior order and the Dozens are even worse, they aren't a faction, they are a concept the writer or didn't had time to flesh out or will to do so. And common... not a single companion belonging to both organizations?
The Watcher... man, the concept of the Watcher is very interesting but that is the problem... its just a concept floating on the player's mind but lack anything to make it real... personal. Abstractions and story concepts are the beginning of you creating a narrative but should not be the narrative itself. It is here that Maerwald, that is on my opinion, the biggest mistake Obsidian did. Maerwald is the only other Watcher alive that you know when you arrive at Caed Nua, he should be a companion, he would be perfect as an introductory character, the kinda of character the player needed to understand what being a Watcher means. It should be his goal to hunt the leaden Key, so his goal becomes yours if you choose to.
He should suffer with his condition while he travels with you so when he finaly succumbs, it would be far more stronger than random crazy NPC doing crazy shit and somehow you should be afraid of that happening to you when you know very well as you being the protagonist without spirit metter... no chance of that happening. He should take the place of Lady Webb and the character that propels you foward until you go on your own.
Act 1 is a mess, Act 2 starting when you arrive at Defiance Bay is a really strange division of acts but that isn't the problem. Thaos remain a contemplative villain, almost a zen buddhist and when he fnaly acts at the end of act 2... man I could see that from miles and worse... he killed people that I didn't care, that belonged to factions I didn't care and there is a riot on a city I didn't care. Funny, Thaos send those trash mob assassins after you but they are just trash mobs, there isn't even banter between you and them.
Eder is too passive and distant, he should be the guide for Guilded Vale instead. When you arrive, you find him on the temple of Eothas wanting to grab the remains of the dead priests from the ruined temple, once he has them, you go to the cemitery and he buries them himselft. You should see by yourself that he is a broken man with a broken faith, he wouldn't need to tell you anything, you would just see.
Having nothing to do, he asks you to help him on something, he is working with Kolsk for sometime as he figured out as being an Eothasian, Roderic would want his skin and he sure want some payback for the dead priests. Would be pretty easy to tie him up to pretty much most of the important Guilded Vale quests and give them meaning with a personal touch.
Aloth is from Aedyr? Is Aedyr important for this plot line in particular? No? So, no, he isn't from Aedyr, he is from Defiance Bay and lived most of his life in the city. He knows pretty much every district and please... the writer that invented this character, have his other personality making something more amusing than cursing people with a... scotish accent, ireland accent?... that shit isn't remotely funny, make his personality make him dress up like a woman on the middle of a party on the palace to make the SJW crazy or something, please anything more interesting than poor attempts at jokes.
Anyway...
TL;DR: Whatever method of organizing the writers you are employing now Obsidian, this game suffered badly from lack of an unified vision that knew what companion background was needed, when each companion should show up and what they should do. If you don't have the money to make big companion quests, fine, attach them even on minor ways to sidequests or something to give them some action. Make the companions pro active, with opinions and important, relatable, goals, instead of passive douchebags.
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I am disappointed. 
but if you mean the execution and impact in the plot Komrade its 
; For Example Pelegrina your compagnion and someone who should be your mentor if you are Paladin the way Keldor was in BG2 caring about muh animancy and country not her over of her own honour, 
that is.
