Editorial RPG Codex Retrospective: Roguey fights for social justice in Josh Sawyer's Icewind Dale II

[Sacred82]

Gurl, I knew you were trolling when you mentioned the "difficult" combat.

Combat in IWD2:

- cast all buffs available

- rape everything with a smile on your face

- rest as soon as the first buff wears off.

Or just cast ultra-broken summoning spells like Animate Dead and let your goons finish everything off. I never bothered with Heart of Fury afterwards since I value my lifetime; so I missed out on a mode with simply overbloated HP and damage numbers, which as we know is everyone's favorite kind of diffculty.


Oh but this

These aren't just your run-of-the-mill legitimate rapes either, but systematic monster rapes that result in pregnancy; that old xenophobic subtext revealing white men's fear of The Non-White Other invading their homes and taking "their" women.

is fucking priceless and silences all criticism.


I am indeed haunted by the idea that one time the testosterone-fueled but suppressed many-tentacled denizens of the deep may one day rise up and take back what is theirs from the effeminate white man. ;_;

 

[wergle]

I think Roguey has successfully driven away all the feminists from this website. Nice job!

Because the burning need to battle windmills would keep them here to battle with the overwhelming contingent of local sexists, right? This site does not have any mainstream importance and nobody would really consider undertaking the useless task of proselytizing the feminist creed here. Roguey is just being Roguey.

I meant to say that, ironically, Roguey is part of why there are so many misogynist assholes on this forum.

 

[crawlkill]

That's when either Larping skills, or Mondblut's "I don't need voiced stat-sheets" detachment come in handy.

I point you at Roguey's sig:

"An awesome game with a crappy ruleset would be a better game if it had a better ruleset. Again, why grit your teeth and accept fundamentally dumb systems and their dumb adaptations into different media when such things clearly could be designed and executed better?"

similarly, a game with a solid ruleset that has no main character and no party would be better if it had those things

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

I don't mind. I'm old enough that all the first games I played were party based with all characters created by the player and no personality whatsoever. The first Jagged Alliance changed that, and for CRPGs, BG introduced me to the "One main character plus talkative followers" concept. BG2 expanded on it and I came to like it well enough even if it felt strange at first (the romance part will forever remain a mistery to me), and I'll always be pissed at having party members leave or betray the party instead of the stable team I was used to. Now I can play both, but PS:T excepted, I prefer the "fully player's created party".

Wizardy 8, on top of being the shit, did a nice job of giving just the necessary amount of personality to my created characters.

 

[crawlkill]

my first RPG was...BG1, I think? And I got Fallout 1 for my (one-digitth) birthday. so I definitely missed the era of "pick a portrait, roll stats, pretend this game has tactical depth" being standard (and missed IWD1, so it was only more of a surprise when it showed up in IWD2). I don't see how the non-interactive party can ever be "better," though. I feel like the deepest criticism should be "the interactive party could've been a lot better."

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

I don't see how the non-interactive party can ever be "better," though.

I don't really know, probably because I feel more affection for the (hopefully) perfectly-balanced and reliable party I spent hours re-rolling than the ragtag one made of characters created for me and gathered along the way. That, and the voices in my head are sweeter and have a better elvish and dwarven accent than any voice actor(ess) can ever hope to achieve. Even though Sir-Tech came pretty close.

 

[crawlkill]

c'mon. you liked Desert Ranger #3 more than Minsc? more than Yoshimo? more than Tiax and Quayle? more than Morte and Dak and Nordom? more than Myron? I even liked most of the Dragon Age 1 NPCs, but I won't pretend other people should've. there've been plenty of annoying written-and-voiced NPCs, but the numbers comparison (=combat) part of cRPGs (since Fallout, anyway) is almost always ultimately easy, even with a hugely suboptimal character/party. give me good writing, even with bad writing mixed in, over the satisfaction of having optimized my single-player game numbers better than someone else who also succeeded but -slightly less easily.-

 

[Lord Trousersnake]

my first RPG was...BG1, I think? And I got Fallout 1 for my (one-digitth) birthday. so I definitely missed the era of "pick a portrait, roll stats, pretend this game has tactical depth"

So no games before BG had tactical depth? If you didn't play them then what the fuck do you know.

And prattling on about the superiority of the likes of Quayle and Dragon Age just makes it sound like you've got a poster of Gaider over your bed. A big one. I get it, you're a storyfag, no need to piss over games you are clueless about.

 

[crawlkill]

So no games before BG had tactical depth? If you didn't play them then what the fuck do you know.

yes. "my first RPG was BG1, which did not have any tactical depth" means "in the 15 years since then I've never once launched a game released before Baldur's Gate, which had tactical depth." please, tell me about how toaster repair and Bard's Tale 99 barbarians, 99 barbarians, 99 barbarians and 99 barbarians made for a compelling tactical experience. I missed that.

the difference between "create one character with a place in the world, suffer through shitty decisionless combat because the illusion of agency is present in the narrative and the dialogue is good" (BG1+2+Torment) and "create six characters with no sense of place in the world, suffer through shitty decisionless combat with no illusion of agency in the narrative, with good dialogue but a lot less of it" (IWD2, maybe 1 too? dunno?) is...well, reading comprehension. if you at any point feel challenged by an Infinity Engine game, you're, well...challenged. they're not the kind of rigorous numbars!!! optimization experiences that need you to fine-tune a six-man party to complete. you can just throw whatever six characters you want at them with some basic notion of party balance (or even without, it's just a little easier if you can cast Haste, so to speak) and reasonably anticipate success. so the value of "designing your whole party" is...zero. meanwhile, the lost value of your party having no personality is, well, whatever value you would otherwise place on your party's having personality.

I long for the days when this thread was about rape at least that implied that there are humans in the world who can maintain erections

 

[gromit]

I don't know about you guys but IWD2 villains got stuck in my mind, those brothers looks and voice was so badass !

Sistahrrr

 

[Lord Trousersnake]

bizarre rant

Biodrone detected.

Not sure why you're going on about not being "challenged by an Infinity Engine game" if we're discussing games before BG. Clearly you don't have much of a clue about anything so there's not much point debating with you. Will refrain from doing so in future. And before lecturing anyone on reading comprehension you may want to take another look at that glistening internet turd you just laid.

Have fun with DA3.

 

[Midair]

Combat can have an addictive effect that does not have much to do with how deep or difficult it is. If the intermittent reinforcement is done right, it can provide more motivation to keep playing than a cliche story can.

btw, I join the puritan movement against hate scum in the news forum.

 

[St. Toxic]

Combatfags have always been dull and boring people.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

A bunch of accounts which were created yesterday, arguing with each other. Drog is losing his touch

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

c'mon. you liked Desert Ranger #3 more than Minsc? more than Yoshimo? more than Tiax and Quayle? more than Morte and Dak and Nordom? more than Myron?

As I said, PS:T is an exception, but for the rest yes. I did like some of the interaction in BG2, and some guys like Tiax were hilarious (but came too late in the game so I only took him in for the lulz) but I liked my first ID, Dark Sun or World of Xeen parties more. I recently played "Avernum : Escape from the pit" and "Avadon" and liked the first one's party approach way more than the second (as on all other accounts btw).

When replaying a game... now, that's a different story. Then, I may like a BG2-like approach more than re-rolling another party from scratch (I even used, or tried to use, some NPC mods for ID 1 & 2 ) . I'm weird like that.

Combatfags have always been dull and boring people.

War. War never changes.

 

[Krivol]

I'm just playing ID 2 and... it's a broken game. First of all you can't have fun with character builds, because most of DnD feats and skills are not implemented to ID2 - RTwP could not handle them correctly. Secod thing are fights. I just finished ID1 and fights were more fun - trash mobs I killed with simple clicking, but in ID2 you just fight dozens of trash mobs, and again and again and again, without any good story or fine characters behind that. It's like whole game of Xvarts' village over and over again, but those bastards are though, so you have to buff yourself, and waste even more time.


I got bored in Goblins' Stronghold (pretty early) and IIRC ID2 is the only IE game I finished only once. What a shame...

 

[Mrowak]

I'm just playing ID 2 and... it's a broken game. First of all you can't have fun with character builds, because most of DnD feats and skills are not implemented to ID2 - RTwP could not handle them correctly.

Actually most are... in fact there are more of them than in any IE game. In comparison ID 1 is a baren wasteland of character customization.

Secod thing are fights. I just finished ID1 and fights were more fun - trash mobs I killed with simple clicking, but in ID2 you just fight dozens of trash mobs, and again and again and again, without any good story or fine characters behind that.

Funnily enough you've described my experience with ID 1. Are you sure you are not confusing games?

It's like whole game of Xvarts' village over and over again, but those bastards are though, so you have to buff yourself, and waste even more time.


I got bored in Goblins' Stronghold (pretty early) and IIRC ID2 is the only IE game I finished only once. What a shame...

Again, ID 1 was such a borefest I completed it only once. ID 2 was a vast improvement, IMO.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Actually most are... in fact there are more of them than in any IE game.

That's because other IE games are not based on 3E rules.

 

[Wyrmlord]

First of all you can't have fun with character builds

I dunno, I did.

A deep gnome monk/rogue or a deep gnome monk, for example, can really allow you to have borderline invincibility in the game, particularly with the Empty Body feat. You can just leave that person to draw out all the enemies and have them concentrate their attacks on him, while a spellcaster destroys them with AOE spells, which the monk can keep dodging. That same monk can use the instant kill ability on enemy spellcasters before they have even started the fight.

An aasimar sorcerer or an aasimar paladin/sorcerer can also combine a powerful set of summoning spells, offensive spells, demobilizing spells, and buffing spells, until your buffed sorcerer and five other Pit Fiends are destroying your enemies, while they are immobilized under stunning spells.

And then you can make some really uber cheese solo builds like a Drow Paladin/Monk/Rogue/Conjurer to use spells and monk/paladin abilities for maximum AC. Or go for Aasimar Druid/Monk/Dreadmaster of Bane to combine Air Elemental AC with Monk AC bonus while using Dreadmaster of Bane's increased Will DC for spells like Symbol: Pain and...

Jesus, this must have been one of the most uber-cheesiest games I have played. Up there with NWN1 and NWN2.

 

[Mrowak]

Actually most are... in fact there are more of them than in any IE game.

That's because other IE games are not based on 3E rules.

Which is an improvement in itself.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Depends of the point of view. It's like saying that the writing is better in Bioware's "Hamlet" than in Bioware's "Wheel of time". As an end result, it may be true, but when it comes to the respect of the source material, Shakspeare lovers might be a bit more annoyed than Jordan's.

 

[Mrowak]

Depends of the point of view. It's like saying that the writing is better in Bioware's "Hamlet" than in Bioware's "Wheel of time". As an end result, it may be true, but when it comes to the respect of the source material, Shakspeare lovers might be a bit more annoyed than Jordan's.

I am assuming you are referring to the implementation of D&D into gaming format. All I care is that it works wonders, whereas the precedding implementations did not. Improvement is an improvement. Sure we'd like to see more of it, but that's just wishful thinking. IMO given the scope and the context it was already a huge step in the right direction.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Improvement is an improvement.

Sure, and rape is rape (to bring it back once more in this topic). For me ID2 didn't improve that much over ID1. Character creation is better yes, but it still boils down to the same IE usual RTwP gameplay and I don't see that much of a difference between both titles gameplay wise. Yet I do see a big one as far as implementing the different D&D rulesets go.
I've already had this discussion anyway in one of the ID threads (if they are not merged) and I know some people see a big difference in gameplay between ID1 and ID2. I don't, I just see the bigger D&D failure that is ID2.

 

[Mrowak]

Improvement is an improvement.

Sure, and rape is rape (to bring it back once more in this topic). For me ID2 didn't improve that much over ID, character creation is better yes, but it still boils down to the same IE usual RTwP gameplay and I don't make that much of a difference between both titles gameplay wise. But I do make a big one as far as implementing the different D&D rulesets go. I've already had this discussion anyway in one of the ID threads (if they are not merged) and I know some people see a big difference in gameplay between ID1 and ID2. I don't, I just see the bigger D&D failure that is ID2.

I am almost tempted to ask, what exactly ID2 raped more thoroughly than ID1 did, but I guess you are tired of the same old song.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

I am almost tempted to ask, what exactly ID2 raped more thoroughly than ID1 did

Well, as I said earlier :

no grid, no attacks of opportunity, no 5 foot step, no readied actions (just the usual "fire at will on casters" IE's drill).

I could add more, important feats that become virtually useless like cleave and great cleave, initiative that even if it wasn't broken wouldn't mean shit, crucial movement bonuses turned into laughable speed increases...
3E rules are way, way more complex than 2ed, and totally meant for turn-based combat. 2ed were also made for turn-based combat but since they are simpler, a lot less was lost in translation.

That being said I still like ID2 a lot, like all IE games, I just have to forget harder where it comes from.