Game News Solasta: Crown of the Magister Released

[lukaszek]

played long enough to create party and experience intro, characters are ugly indeed

 

[Brickfrog]

Dynaheir was Rashemi and IIRC, the only vidya depiction of Rashemen we ever got was in Mask of The Betrayer, in which all the (human) locals seemed pretty white, so that's my headcanon.

As someone well-versed in the (occasionally stupid) FR lore I can confirm Rashemis are supposed to be 100% white. This of course includes the Wychlaran (their witches). Their culture is meant to mirror early shamanic/tribal Scandinavia to an extent. Dynaheir being black (and ugly as fuck) was early Bioware autism, although to be fair, they had little source material to work with, so they literally made up shit.

That, sir, is a mongolian. Not white

 

[TheMathmos]

Reading a few comments here hoping to get a sense of the quality of the game...

(Hated Larian's itemization and overall systems. Hoping for something different.)

...

Learned that this forum really, really cares about token empty symbolism and am no wiser about anything having to do with the actual game.

Off to read trash steam reviews.

 

[Rincewind]

I read this whole pointless thread from start to finish (my fault), and still don't know fuck about the game... Great job everybody.

 

[oscar]

The sneakiness with which they fuglified the characters is more bizarre and inexplicable than the pronouns (what feel like a last minute guilty tack-on, and quite irrelevant considering how gender neutral the setting is). Now everyone has fetal alcohol syndrome and a slack jaw (what meshes uh interestingly with the zoomed in character portraits during dialogues).

But ultimately an RPG lives or dies by its combat. Give us juicy tense turn-based combat and most of us could forgive just about anything.

 

[Brickfrog]

Enemy models look pretty good for the most part yeah? Kind of weird that it's just the humans that look fucked up lol

 

[Saark]

It can bother you, you can still play it because it is otherwise a good game, and you might want to consider pirating it to discourage developers from doing such things later on. It's a win-win, you get a good RPG and the devs get the necessary feedback so they can justify not including such shenanigans in their future projects.

Imagine thinking that people who are bothered by shit like pronouns are the majority and actually have any sort of power or control by voting with their wallets. You're fucking delusional if you think you outnumber the SJWs who are not only eating this shit up, but are also numerous enough to cause significant harm to titles that show any semblance of non-conformity. I'd rather pay for a quality game even if it means I'll have to facepalm once or twice about some fairly obvious cultural or political reference in a game.

The Codex is the place to air these grievances. You'll get auto-banned from ResetEra, in particular, for even questioning the decision.

I don't care about anyones hateboner for SJWs or any cultural or socio-political statement a dev might or might not make within their game. I care about RPGs and how they play, how good the writing is, if theres meaningful choices and consequences. Is the combat good? Is there meaningful character progression both in terms of its strength within the boundaries of the rules, as well as within the narrative? Those are the things that matter, not whether or not theres too many black people in the game, whether characters look worse than Oblivion NPCs or whether some of them identify as male while looking female.

People who care about graphics or whatever shitty SJW pandering the dev had to do to release a good game can go die in a fiery car crash. If you're not supporting a dev who clearly understands the people they created a game for, and you refuse to support them due to some perceived slight against biology, then you're just as much of a waste of oxygen as the people who think there are more than two genders.

You know the codex has declined when Volourn of all people is one of the least retarded people posting in an RPG discussion thread.

 

[Dexter]

There's not even an agenda here. Pronouns exist, always have. And in this game you can select yours.
Good, more options - not that I ever cared much for cosmetic stuff.

Might as well have a Checkbox with "the 14 words" or some Commie shit, and it won't let you create a character and play the game without checking it. Does any of that exist within the game world? Does any of it even make any sense in it? Who cares, if a very Modern Woke Coastal "religious practice" that practically didn't exist until ~5-7 years ago made it in, anything is fair game. It's "more options" after all and "cosmetic".

As some other people have already said, there's nothing "cosmetic" about it, it's declaring political allegiance with a current day social movement that doesn't have any reason to exist or be included in said setting (or in entertainment more generally). It's a loyalty oath/pledge of allegiance "Do you genuflect to the agenda" checkbox. If you are a rational person that believes biology is a thing and humans are a sexually dimorphic species, and do not approve of the proliferation of the sort of mental illness at work that is doing untold amount of damage in the real world, and think the brainwashing and mutilation of children is evil of course you're going to have an issue with it.

Imagine missing out on the best D&D video game adaptation in years because of a menu option without any consequence whatsoever.

"Thas rite!"

I don't get it. What's the problem here?
Sure, the faces are not exactly AAA, but that was to be expected, no?
The hairstyle? Man, I wish I had hair that would allow stuff like that (not that I like that style, but I'd love to have the sturdy hair for it).
Honestly grasping at straws here...

Show me some actual woke bullshit, which typically comes in the form of cringe writing, and I'll laugh about it with you.
But this ain't it.

Having every tribe and small province/town/outpost of a couple of people and characters you meet be a multi-ethnic Captain Planet-resembling cross-section of modern society, as you might perhaps expect to find it in certain parts of Metropolises today doesn't make sense in the context of the fantasy world as it is presented. And "racism" would be completely normal for the people living in it with constant dangers right outside the city walls and genocidal species / hostile or outright evil races and organizations like the Drow or the Red Wizards of Thay or man-eating spiders. "Racism" wouldn't be a concept that the people in such a world would come up with, talk about or be concerned/preoccupied with (just as it wasn't in ours until very recently). They'd have much more pressing matters like surviving and making sure they don't get invaded by some hostile tribe, ending up as a human guinea pig in magic experiments done by insane sorcerers, enslaved or become a snack for various predators above them in the food chain.

The problem isn't "black people existing" or entire provinces of different people or species in regions of the world where it makes sense, it's that a multi-ethnic enclave that has apparently made a black woman their Guard Captain feels like taking the piss, similar to how the Netflix Witcher series decided to put together a crowd/mob where you had Mongols, Arabs and all sorts of black people gathered together as "town folk" in the Medieval town of Blaviken:

You can have this sort of demographic representation in the likes of Shadowrun or something like "Bright", it doesn't make any sense in a Medieval Fantasy setting.

Bringing up Dynaheir actually defeats the point and perfectly highlights why this is retarded, since she was a wanderer from a far-away land (Rashemen) on her "journey of self-discovery" (dajemma) with her manservant/bodyguard Minsc, found herself in that part of the world far away from home and got into trouble, leading you to meet her. This actually makes sense in the setting and is proper world-building. She wasn't the Commander of the Flaming Fist or Mayor of Beregost, which was unexplainably a multi-ethnic town, even though it looks like a small European village from the Middle Ages, it suddenly has the demographic likeness of the most cosmopolitan parts of Modern day New York or Paris (not even the 1950/60s versions of said).

Economic pressure is the only thing they understand. One day they'll cave in to us, if we stop buying their trash.

More people will buy a game because of dumb shit like that, than people who will decide to not buy it. Why would they care about the opinion of people who dont even buy their game, while the SJWs do? When did we stop playing and judging games based on their writing, amount of meaningful choices and consequences and underlying RPG systems, and instead became just as deplorable by politicizing a fucking hobby?

I don't buy, play or watch things unconditionally and never have. There seems to be a group of people that hold the belief that "there are RPGs, therefor they are good, therefor they must proliferate and do well, and we have to make sure they do so!". If "they" for instance decided to make only "My Little Pony" or "Barbie Adventure" RPGs from now on for some retarded reason I wouldn't support them either and ultimately look for something else to do in my free time, while Infinitron would be posting the 55th "Barbie Farmhouse Adventure" KickStarter Update and the newest MLP Trailers to Hype everyone up and others whined about "supporting developers that still make RPGs". I started to play RPGs because they were good and some of the best quality entertainment that gaming had to offer out there a few dozen years ago. I'm not "tied" to them as a concept with my unconditional support. As long as there's still some good shit to play (having fun with Dungeon of Naheulbeuk at the moment, which doesn't have any of these problems and frankly seems to simply be the much better game) I appreciate them and they'll continue to get my patronage. But as soon as that starts to change and they mainly become vessels for making progressive (or other) political points, they're all filled with mental illness or written by Woke Valleygirl types, so does my interest in and support of them.

You forgot the part where the JRPG guy fucks his anime body pillow after he's done with the game.

He forgot the part where JRPGs are actually still designed to be fun diversions for their target audience, and not to push "diversity" and declare fealty to divisive political agendas.

 

[Mortmal]

Give them some slack on human characters ,on one side you have classic art done by someone who probably learned painting technics in beaux arts school .

Then on other indie rpgs you have amateurish garbage , that's what humans are looking in kotc2 , now thats fucked up :

Really i''d rather commit seppuku rather than using that on my VTT sessions .

 

[Karwelas]

So, to clean the thread a bit from shit that is overflowing it...

I played Solasta in EA and I have to say that it was pretty interesting piece of stuff as far as I got (which was getting the titular Crown and boss fight before it). The combat was pretty challenging at times and I had to get it twice or thrice sometimes - especially when I fucked up placement of my units during planning ambush or so. Quality of it was pretty decent, all things considered. But what I cannot grasp around my head is how the fuck they "released" this game with fucking six base classes, one of which is fucking ranger, class that was continuously raped by every D&D edition after AD&D 2e, skipping over bard, sorcerer or fucking druid - which are at least not fucking useless. I get limiting certain range of things for the release, but holy fuck, if i want someone to hit shit at distance, I will just make DEX bow fighter if anyone at fucking all.

 

[thesheeep]

You can have this sort of demographic representation in the likes of Shadowrun or something like "Bright", it doesn't make any sense in a Medieval Fantasy setting.

That's where you are wrong.

Medieval doesn't mean that everything has to be carbon copied from real world medieval settings.
Maybe that's what you would like to see - but there sure as hell is no obligation to actually do it that way.
Historical accuracy is not a goal here - because THERE IS NO HISTORY that could be gotten right or wrong. Again, unless I am mistaken, the setting is entirely their own.
Castles, armors, swords, knights, the general "level" of technology/science? Cool, that's medieval enough for me if no historical accuracy to the real world is claimed.

Saying that magic is fine, but people of different skin tones living together normally is not is just pure insanity.

You might of course be right that the rest of the setting in their game is depicted as one of strong distrust or even direct racism between differently colored humans (say, a Witcher-like setting) - in which case that guard captain would indeed be an odd choice.
But I have yet to see any proof of that.

 

[Dungeon Lord]

It is 2021!
Why do I need to rotate and move and fight the camera always?

 

[Thac0]

Quality of it was pretty decent, all things considered. But what I cannot grasp around my head is how the fuck they "released" this game with fucking six base classes, one of which is fucking ranger

This could be the official Codex review of the game, sums up all of my feelings about it

 

[Saark]

I don't buy, play or watch things unconditionally and never have.

Well, as long as you also don't judge games unconditionally for having an additional set of pronoun choices in their character creation and still give the game a fair short... nevermind. Hypocrisy, thy name is you. But hey, good for you for having a blast with a game that you can certifiably say is better than the game you never played, simply because of one negative piece of "wokeness".

Which isnt to say that Dungeon of Naheulbeuk isn't a good game, it certainly is. The problem with that line of thinking is that you're judging one game based on its actual gameplay, and another by its graphics and a third set of pronouns, as if that somehow tarnishes the entire game. I'd understand this kind of response if this was another case of bending the knee to the entire leftist agenda, but I'vet yet to come across a single instance within the game where I felt like some agenda was being pushed.

 

[Dexter]

Medieval doesn't mean that everything has to be carbon copied from real world medieval settings.
Maybe that's what you would like to see - but there sure as hell is no obligation to actually do it that way.
Historical accuracy is not a goal here - because THERE IS NO HISTORY that could be gotten right or wrong. Again, unless I am mistaken, the setting is entirely their own.
Castles, armors, swords, knights, the general "level" of technology/science? Cool, that's medieval enough for me if no historical accuracy to the real world is claimed.

Saying that magic is fine, but people of different skin tones living together normally is not is just pure insanity.

You might of course be right that the rest of the setting in their game is depicted as one of strong distrust or even direct racism between differently colored humans (say, a Witcher-like setting) - in which case that guard captain would indeed be an odd choice.
But I have yet to see any proof of that.

Put people together, leave them to their own devices and let a few hundred or thousands of years pass as in "Solasta" under that level of "technology/science" and (given that they didn't fall prey to local fauna) you have tribal species/ethnic alliances and provinces forming and sprouting up around the place, each with their own conflicting goals and interests. You'll have strife and paranoia (founded or unfounded) and outright hostilities between the various factions and power centers, especially if they are also in danger and threatened through outside factors. They'll all want the bigger piece of the pie and mainly know about each other from what their respective leaders tell them, rumors, military or other conflict between them, prejudices and superstitions and their vivid imagination, unless there's a much greater external threat, which might lead to some cooperation. You will never find the composition of people of Modern cosmopolitan cities outside of specific meeting places like taverns or markets in major travel or trade hubs, in which case you might meet people from all over, but sporadically and they usually don't live or are "at home" there. This is even true of modern day Metropolises where people of like get together and Ghettos or "X-towns" (Chinatown, Little Italy/Havana/Haiti etc.) are forming. The kind of demographic makeup you sometimes see depicted as "normal" in these settings lately would only be possible if the world had things like mass transportation/transit systems, industrialization, mass media/communication, mass immigration, modern infrastructure like roads, trains or planes, social security systems and had mostly conquered hunger and dangers that nature and the environment around them pose (in which case you'd lose the sense of adventure and discovery), and weren't as commonplace even a few decades ago in our world. Even in that case they would feel somewhat exaggerated, much more likely and believable in a Post-apocalyptic or zombie survival game based on the end of the Modern world that had all those things.

 

[Achiman]

What I got from this thread is to try out Dungeon of Naheulbeuk.
Also, if you think that adding pronouns is needed in RPGS kill yourself please.
Deliberately making women ugly for the same shit agenda is also cancerous.

 

[Dexter]

But hey, good for you for having a blast with a game that you can certifiably say is better than the game you never played, simply because of one negative piece of "wokeness".

I played the Demo back in 2020 which already had the stench of that kind of stuff to it that I could smell from the Store presentation alone. It was probably among the most broken and "Eh" things I tried. In contrast, I also played the Demo of Naheulbeuk later that year and was immediately somewhat fond of it. Also discovered UnDungeon by a small Ukrainian Indie developer the same way, which also made a much better impression and I'm looking forward to.

These kind of games/properties usually come along with a bevy of "design decisions" representing different pillars of Modern Western "Enlightened Progressive thought", like ugly and armored up "stronk" female characters in charge of Traditionally male institutions (Muh Feminism), a bizarre obsession with forced "diversity" (as re-defined in the past dozen years as opposed to "biodiversity") when it doesn't make sense and comes at the expense of logical world building and verisimilitude (Muh Racism), distracting social commentary about real-world as opposed to in-setting issues to point out that something "is okay" and random Virtue signalling with things like Pronouns, Flags (Muh LGPPQ), so it's not very hard to notice and I'm not very surprised how it turned out. It marks and dates them pretty well.

 

[thesheeep]

Medieval doesn't mean that everything has to be carbon copied from real world medieval settings.
Maybe that's what you would like to see - but there sure as hell is no obligation to actually do it that way.
Historical accuracy is not a goal here - because THERE IS NO HISTORY that could be gotten right or wrong. Again, unless I am mistaken, the setting is entirely their own.
Castles, armors, swords, knights, the general "level" of technology/science? Cool, that's medieval enough for me if no historical accuracy to the real world is claimed.

Saying that magic is fine, but people of different skin tones living together normally is not is just pure insanity.

You might of course be right that the rest of the setting in their game is depicted as one of strong distrust or even direct racism between differently colored humans (say, a Witcher-like setting) - in which case that guard captain would indeed be an odd choice.
But I have yet to see any proof of that.

Put people together, leave them to their own devices and let a few hundred or thousands of years pass as in "Solasta" under that level of "technology/science" and (given that they didn't fall prey to local fauna) you have tribal species/ethnic alliances and provinces forming and sprouting up around the place, each with their own conflicting goals and interests. You'll have strife and paranoia (founded or unfounded) and outright hostilities between the various factions and power centers, especially if they are also in danger and threatened through outside factors. They'll all want the bigger piece of the pie and mainly know about each other from what their respective leaders tell them, rumors, military or other conflict between them and their vivid imagination, unless there's a much greater external threat, which might lead to some cooperation. You will never find the composition of people of Modern cosmopolitan cities outside of specific meeting places like taverns or markets in major travel or trade hubs, in which case you might meet people from all over, but sporadically and they usually don't live or are "at home" there. This is even true of modern day Metropolises where people of like get together and Ghettos or "X-towns" are forming. The kind of demographic makeup you sometimes see depicted as "normal" in these settings lately would only be possible if the world had things like mass transportation/transit systems, industrialization, mass media/communication, mass immigration, modern infrastructure like roads, trains or planes, social security systems and had mostly conquered hunger and dangers that nature and the environment around them pose (in which case you'd lose the sense of adventure and discovery), and weren't as commonplace even a few decades ago in our world. Even in that case they would feel somewhat exaggerated, much more likely and believable in a Post-apocalyptic or zombie survival game based on the end of the Modern world that had all those things.

Or - and I know this sounds crazy, but bear with me here - people in a fictional setting do not behave exactly like real-world people have historically.

This isn't some "alternate history" where you'd need to justify things with a "this could actually have happened" explanation.
Nothing from our world, society or knowledge necessarily applies.
All that has to be achieved in this kind of fiction is internal consistency. Not consistency with our world. And you cannot disprove internal consistency here with "this wouldn't have worked in our world".
No shit. This isn't our world. Which is kind of the point.

Also, we are putting WAY too much thought into this game's setting right now.
I wouldn't even ask the writer of a game that is a lot more story/setting driven than Solasta to put this much thinking into the background lore.

 

[NJClaw]

Please stop engaging in conversations about this topic with people who can't even accept the existence of black people in video games when they literally came from another world through a magical portal.

 

[Mortmal]

I read this whole pointless thread from start to finish (my fault), and still don't know fuck about the game... Great job everybody.

There's the other thread in general rpg,yeah the dusty subforum part no one read . An old thread with lot of info, but no one noticed the game so far cause it was not controversial. However they had that spark of genious, the pronouns ! Now everyone will speak of they, and now more codexers also noticed there's black people in it so 2X outrage , butthurt maximized.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

patiently waiting for you guys to demand more representation of white people in all those fantasy asian RPGs

 

[Tacgnol]

I read this whole pointless thread from start to finish (my fault), and still don't know fuck about the game... Great job everybody.

Read the GRPG thread. It's far more focused on the gameplay.

This thread seems to have unofficially become the containment thread for complaints about the games (admittedly) hamfisted representation and the unnecessary pronoun shit.

Pointless virtue signalling devs gonna virtue signal I guess.

 

[Thac0]

patiently waiting for you guys to demand more representation of white people in all those fantasy asian RPGs

That is why you play Japanese rpgs, there everyone is white already.

 

[gurugeorge]

I'm one of the biggest racists and haters of wokeyness here, but I recognize the difference between wokeness that's heartfelt, malicious social engineering and wokeness that's just ritual genuflection to social norms ("Please don't hurt me, look I'm a gud boi, I'm doing the thing!").

Not that the latter is entirely weightless and blameless in sociological terms (it still has some impact just by blandly reinforcing the Narrative), but surely on a fucking gaming forum we can recognize and acknowledge quality in gaming despite that sort thing? You know, in the actual gameplay?

Woke sewage is a constant anyway, you can't avoid it, so if you're so dainty you can't stand the sight of a Negress in a videogame, you're going to have slim pickings altogether in modern-day videogaming I'm afraid - you might as well pack your bags or slit your throat (in Minecraft ofc ).

 

[Thac0]

you can't stand the sight of a Negress in a videogame, you're going to have slim pickings altogether in modern-day videogaming I'm afraid

That is why you play Japanese rpgs, there everyone is white already.