The writing in this game is average

[Hamster]

By the way, after playing a bit more, I've finally realized why, despite liking the writing overall, something was bugging me about it. It's rather subtle, but it's the fact that magic doesn't feel like it belongs in this world, despite characters ostensibly being able to cast magic. The setting feels much more historical than magical. Which makes sense considering who made the setting (Sawyer). And a historically-iinspired setting for an RPG would be great, but it is a problem when magic is a major part of the game. Magic felt much more like a part of everyday life in PS:T and even the BG games. Even with characters that feel grounded in the setting, like Durance, this is apparent - his history involves making the Godhammer bomb, essentially a machine, not necessarily magical.

Yes, character system presents a standard high fantasy world with godlikes, wizards and stuff like that, while writing in the game itself goes in different direction. I think they should have gone all the way with either a game of thrones approach (magic extremely rare) or forgotten realms approach (magic everywhere), instead of somewhat awkward middle of the road approach. But i am still early in the game, maybe i will change my mind later...

 

[Jaedar]

Having reflected on the game for a bit after completing it, I've come to realize that my biggest complaints with the game are all writing-related: the main quest, its negative impact on the setting and the way a lot of the side quests exist just to make up the numbers.

(Spoilers below for each of these complaints that cover the whole game, including the ending)

Spoiler

1. The Watcher's Motivation: The game does a poor job of conveying why chasing down Thaos matters so much. While Maerwald alludes to madness stemming from past awakenings, and companions refer to the PC's fitful sleep and worry about descent into madness, the game does a piss-poor job of giving this the sort of urgency it requires. The ending slides mention that the visions of the past life stop after dealing with Thaos at the end -- something to be grateful for, but during the course of the game, I never saw the visions as a problem that needed solving; on the contrary, I was actually looking forward to each vision since it helped me understand what was going on. The visions themselves should have been written to emphasize the Watcher's apparently fragile mental state to address this dissonance.

2. The Ham-fisted Past Life: The game channels elements of PS:T and MoTB so clumsily that the whole past life nonsense in the game could have been removed entirely and the narrative would have been better for it. I initially thought it was neat allowing me to define my relationship with Deionarra#2, but I now feel it was a mistake. The Watcher's past life should have been set in stone without player input to build a sense of mystery that is eventually uncovered. Instead, by allowing me to influence the past life, the Watcher comes off as a dumb religious sheep, utterly blinded by the charisma of a man, and one who needs to be told the same thing over and over again before believing it.

This was especially apparent in the Watcher's motivation in Act 4. Apparently he wanted to hear the answer (regarding the gods' nature) from Thaos himself at all costs. The final interactions and its underlying motivation didn't come off to me as what the writer probably intended. The whole past life and relationship with Thaos had to be handled and written far more elegantly for me to share the PC's reason of "I want to hear the answer from Thaos himself." The game gives the player the choice of making the Watcher's motivation in Act 4 a personal one, a heroic one (save the souls), an evil one (aid Woedica), and so on. Of all these motivations, the personal motivation of wanting to hear from Thaos was the one that resonated least with me, which only highlighted that the writing was not up to par to do justice to the attempted personal aspect of the story. The PC's sense of betrayal was something I had no personal investment in since I was merely told about his relationship with Thaos, aided by visions that provided snippets of the past.

3. The Damaging Impact of the Ancient Civilizations Trope on the Setting: For 1.5 acts, I was enthralled by the game and the various questions that the lore posed:

• There was the mystery behind the Hollowborn. The game at that point provided no answer as to whether the affliction was caused by animancy, the Gods themselves or through other means.
• Speaking of Gods, the game invited debate on whether Waidwen was truly Eothas, and Magran's involvement in the conflict made me chomp at the bits to figure out the underlying mysteries.
• At that point, through Eder and Durance, the game also invited one to think on questions of faith to these Gods.
• And finally, animancy itself posed a great moral conundrum. Did it cause the legacy? If it did, should it be allowed to fix it? If so, how much leeway should it be given before drawing a line in its quest for a cure?

Unfortunately, revelations in Act 2 and beyond provided these answers:

• There is an ancient civilization that was capable of great feats.
• One of these include the construction of a machine that is conveniently responsible for the Hollowborn epidemic.
• Gods themselves were the result of the civilization's great and numerous feats.
• What other rabbit out of a hat did this civilization pull? Find out in the expansions and sequel! (I'm being deliberately facetious here to convey my disappointment at the setting creators resorting to an ancient civilizations trope to explain away a lot of the mysteries and moral ambiguities that were present in the initial acts of the game's setting.)

Even worse is that one can complete Durance's side quest, leading to Durance finally realizing that Magran might have been intentionally scheming with Woedica to stop Eothas, and that Magran wanted Durance dead -- the whole conversation was wonderfully handled, only to hear 10 minutes later from Deionarra#2 that the gods are not real with no foreshadowing that even alluded to this in all the hours before. It truly was a wonderful bit of deus ex machina stemming from the ancient civilizations trope that effectively undermined what was, at that time, a wonderful conclusion to a companion's side quest.

4. The Reveal Behind the Gods Happened Too Soon: The main quest placed more emphasis on following a wild goose chase rather than organically introducing the player to the lore and setting of Eora. As such, the lore books (both within and outside the game) and infodump NPCs and companions were my main sources of understanding the world of PoE. Thus, most of my understanding of how the Gods operated was based on second-hand information (barring Wael) and there was no glorious interaction such as Myrkul's from MoTB.

Hence, when the big reveal about the Gods happens towards the end, what should have been a "pull the rug out from under the feet" moment ended up being a flat one since I've had precious little encounter with the Gods up until that point. In my mind the reveal should have been saved for a future entry, but the game could still have had arcane clues foreshadowing questions regarding the Gods' nature. In turn, this could have raised doubts in the player's mind regarding the nature of the Gods while playing through PoE, and this would have fit in nicely with questions of faith in the Gods that was heavily discussed during Eder's and Durance's side quests. In any case, one cannot even use this revealed information to make any choices. The game drops this huge reveal on you and then the concluding choices roll along without providing you with actions that specifically make use of this potentially devastating bit of knowledge which make me question why that reveal even took place in the first game.

Moreover, despite name-dropping numerous other nations, there's precious little information on their religious beliefs (barring theocratic Raedceras) to predict how they might react to discovering the truth. The reveal should have taken place after exposing us to other parts of Eternity's setting through future games to have a far bigger impact. The scope of the setting introduced in PoE was far too small for the potentially gargantuan nature of the reveal.

5. The Side Quests Suffer from a Detached Narrative: From a mechanics perspective, the quest design is fantastic: I was able to slaughter many quest-related NPCs and the game reacted as expected, and I think nearly every quest in the game offered numerous solutions. The issue I have with the quests is how they are written, and how they connect to the main quest or engage with the setting.

Barring some of the animancy and hollowborn-related quests, a lot of the side quests come off as very boilerplate. It feels as if the writers drew from a repository of side quest templates and then forgot to tailor the template to the setting. Even the ones that are unique in their setup -- such as the deadlock between a lioness and a bear in Act 3 -- are written in such a dull and detached manner that the whole experience comes off as passive despite giving me the option to make active choices in how the quest concludes.

Another issue was that the factions seem shoehorned-in since the Main Quest does not interface with them in any meaningful manner except in Act 2. In fact, a broader complaint would be that the quests themselves (both main and side quests) rarely display the interconnectedness that made New Vegas' quest design so special. The conflict between the 3 factions in Act 2 seemed a pale imitation of the inter-faction conflicts of New Vegas.

As an Obsidian fan, I was least concerned about the main story, the setting and the side quest narratives in the leadup to the game's release, and was confident that these elements would end up excellent. They didn't. Hopefully Serpents, AoD and even Witcher 3 (despite an open-world shift) will have no problems putting together a better narrative than on display here since the bar has been set so low by Eternity. Given my expectations for Eternity, this has to be the most disappointed I've been at the narrative in an Obsidian game.

Just a slight fact correction

Spoiler

It's not that the gods aren't real, it's that they were made by humans(well, kith). The question should then have been if this is a truth worthy of being spread and whether or not it matters in the first place. Sadly, the game ends before any such thing can really take place.

 

[Athelas]

By the way, after playing a bit more, I've finally realized why, despite liking the writing overall, something was bugging me about it. It's rather subtle, but it's the fact that magic doesn't feel like it belongs in this world, despite characters ostensibly being able to cast magic. The setting feels much more historical than magical. Which makes sense considering who made the setting (Sawyer). And a historically-iinspired setting for an RPG would be great, but it is a problem when magic is a major part of the game. Magic felt much more like a part of everyday life in PS:T and even the BG games. Even with characters that feel grounded in the setting, like Durance, this is apparent - his history involves making the Godhammer bomb, essentially a machine, not necessarily magical.

Yes, character system presents a standard high fantasy world with godlikes, wizards and stuff like that, while writing in the game itself goes in different direction. I think they should have gone all the way with either a game of thrones approach (magic extremely rare) or forgotten realms approach (magic everywhere), instead of somewhat awkward middle of the road approach. But i am still early in the game, maybe i will change my mind later...

I'm still not very far in the game, but I think the checklist approach of Kickstarter stretch goals ended up being detrimental, namely having to design the story around such things like the two major cities, the stronghold and the not-Forgotten Realms setting that were promised. Despite the freedom of publishers, this game in some ways represents Obsidian's most conservative and restricted design approach to date, ironically enough.

 

[Darth Roxor]

raedric knows you met kolsc because the world of poe has twitter

 

[Athelas]

No, he just isn't stupid enough to assume to believe the people who murdered their way past his guards have nothing to do with Kolsc. NPC's shouldn't be written as omniscient.

 

[Nryn]

Just a slight fact correction

Spoiler

It's not that the gods aren't real, it's that they were made by humans(well, kith). The question should then have been if this is a truth worthy of being spread and whether or not it matters in the first place. Sadly, the game ends before any such thing can really take place.

Thanks for catching that -- I meant to write what you corrected.

Spoiler

But it does raise the question of where the setting wants to go next. I'm hoping that Iovara's role in the first game means that the player can answer that question in future games. Of all the possibilities, the one I'm most curious about is what if the player decides that the propagation of that truth is vital? Though chaotic, it's brimming with possibilities that subvert the tropes found in typical fantasy stories.

But on the other hand, I'm also careful about not getting my hopes too high since the existence of the ancient civilization could end up allowing the writers to manufacture numerous other far less interesting conflicts.

 

[Jaedar]

Just a slight fact correction

Spoiler

It's not that the gods aren't real, it's that they were made by humans(well, kith). The question should then have been if this is a truth worthy of being spread and whether or not it matters in the first place. Sadly, the game ends before any such thing can really take place.

Thanks for catching that -- I meant to write what you corrected.

Spoiler

But it does raise the question of where the setting wants to go next. I'm hoping that Iovara's role in the first game means that the player can answer that question in future games. Of all the possibilities, the one I'm most curious about is what if the player decides that the propagation of that truth is vital? Though chaotic, it's brimming with possibilities that subvert the tropes found in typical fantasy stories.

But on the other hand, I'm also careful about not getting my hopes too high since the existence of the ancient civilization could end up allowing the writers to manufacture numerous other far less interesting conflicts.

The epilogue is incredibly vague in regards to what happens to the PC.

I suppose we'll find out in the expansion pack they're already working on?

 

[Darth Roxor]

plz buy the dlc to find out what happened

 

[Jaedar]

plz buy the dlc to find out what happened

I backed the game, I am pretty sure I get it for free

 

[cfisher2833]

raedric knows you met kolsc because the world of poe has twitter

Impossible! If they had twitter, there would have been a quest where you join a party of blue haired ogres to find Firedorn Lightbringer's gravestone and smash it to bits! Fight the patriarchy!!!

 

[Angthoron]

The epilogue is incredibly vague in regards to what happens to the PC.

I suppose we'll find out in the expansion pack they're already working on?

What I didn't like about epilogue is the clarity about the followers.

Spoiler

Does it mean mai waifu GM won't be in the expansion? LAME

 

[Thal]

Having reflected on the game for a bit after completing it, I've come to realize that my biggest complaints with the game are all writing-related: the main quest, its negative impact on the setting and the way a lot of the side quests exist just to make up the numbers.

(Spoilers below for each of these complaints that cover the whole game, including the ending)

Spoiler

1. The Watcher's Motivation: The game does a poor job of conveying why chasing down Thaos matters so much. While Maerwald alludes to madness stemming from past awakenings, and companions refer to the PC's fitful sleep and worry about descent into madness, the game does a piss-poor job of giving this the sort of urgency it requires. The ending slides mention that the visions of the past life stop after dealing with Thaos at the end -- something to be grateful for, but during the course of the game, I never saw the visions as a problem that needed solving; on the contrary, I was actually looking forward to each vision since it helped me understand what was going on. The visions themselves should have been written to emphasize the Watcher's apparently fragile mental state to address this dissonance.

2. The Ham-fisted Past Life: The game channels elements of PS:T and MoTB so clumsily that the whole past life nonsense in the game could have been removed entirely and the narrative would have been better for it. I initially thought it was neat allowing me to define my relationship with Deionarra#2, but I now feel it was a mistake. The Watcher's past life should have been set in stone without player input to build a sense of mystery that is eventually uncovered. Instead, by allowing me to influence the past life, the Watcher comes off as a dumb religious sheep, utterly blinded by the charisma of a man, and one who needs to be told the same thing over and over again before believing it.

This was especially apparent in the Watcher's motivation in Act 4. Apparently he wanted to hear the answer (regarding the gods' nature) from Thaos himself at all costs. The final interactions and its underlying motivation didn't come off to me as what the writer probably intended. The whole past life and relationship with Thaos had to be handled and written far more elegantly for me to share the PC's reason of "I want to hear the answer from Thaos himself." The game gives the player the choice of making the Watcher's motivation in Act 4 a personal one, a heroic one (save the souls), an evil one (aid Woedica), and so on. Of all these motivations, the personal motivation of wanting to hear from Thaos was the one that resonated least with me, which only highlighted that the writing was not up to par to do justice to the attempted personal aspect of the story. The PC's sense of betrayal was something I had no personal investment in since I was merely told about his relationship with Thaos, aided by visions that provided snippets of the past.

3. The Damaging Impact of the Ancient Civilizations Trope on the Setting: For 1.5 acts, I was enthralled by the game and the various questions that the lore posed:

• There was the mystery behind the Hollowborn. The game at that point provided no answer as to whether the affliction was caused by animancy, the Gods themselves or through other means.
• Speaking of Gods, the game invited debate on whether Waidwen was truly Eothas, and Magran's involvement in the conflict made me chomp at the bits to figure out the underlying mysteries.
• At that point, through Eder and Durance, the game also invited one to think on questions of faith to these Gods.
• And finally, animancy itself posed a great moral conundrum. Did it cause the legacy? If it did, should it be allowed to fix it? If so, how much leeway should it be given before drawing a line in its quest for a cure?

Unfortunately, revelations in Act 2 and beyond provided these answers:

• There is an ancient civilization that was capable of great feats.
• One of these include the construction of a machine that is conveniently responsible for the Hollowborn epidemic.
• Gods themselves were the result of the civilization's great and numerous feats.
• What other rabbit out of a hat did this civilization pull? Find out in the expansions and sequel! (I'm being deliberately facetious here to convey my disappointment at the setting creators resorting to an ancient civilizations trope to explain away a lot of the mysteries and moral ambiguities that were present in the initial acts of the game's setting.)

Even worse is that one can complete Durance's side quest, leading to Durance finally realizing that Magran might have been intentionally scheming with Woedica to stop Eothas, and that Magran wanted Durance dead -- the whole conversation was wonderfully handled, only to hear 10 minutes later from Deionarra#2 that the gods are not real with no foreshadowing that even alluded to this in all the hours before. It truly was a wonderful bit of deus ex machina stemming from the ancient civilizations trope that effectively undermined what was, at that time, a wonderful conclusion to a companion's side quest.

4. The Reveal Behind the Gods Happened Too Soon: The main quest placed more emphasis on following a wild goose chase rather than organically introducing the player to the lore and setting of Eora. As such, the lore books (both within and outside the game) and infodump NPCs and companions were my main sources of understanding the world of PoE. Thus, most of my understanding of how the Gods operated was based on second-hand information (barring Wael) and there was no glorious interaction such as Myrkul's from MoTB.

Hence, when the big reveal about the Gods happens towards the end, what should have been a "pull the rug out from under the feet" moment ended up being a flat one since I've had precious little encounter with the Gods up until that point. In my mind the reveal should have been saved for a future entry, but the game could still have had arcane clues foreshadowing questions regarding the Gods' nature. In turn, this could have raised doubts in the player's mind regarding the nature of the Gods while playing through PoE, and this would have fit in nicely with questions of faith in the Gods that was heavily discussed during Eder's and Durance's side quests. In any case, one cannot even use this revealed information to make any choices. The game drops this huge reveal on you and then the concluding choices roll along without providing you with actions that specifically make use of this potentially devastating bit of knowledge which make me question why that reveal even took place in the first game.

Moreover, despite name-dropping numerous other nations, there's precious little information on their religious beliefs (barring theocratic Raedceras) to predict how they might react to discovering the truth. The reveal should have taken place after exposing us to other parts of Eternity's setting through future games to have a far bigger impact. The scope of the setting introduced in PoE was far too small for the potentially gargantuan nature of the reveal.

5. The Side Quests Suffer from a Detached Narrative: From a mechanics perspective, the quest design is fantastic: I was able to slaughter many quest-related NPCs and the game reacted as expected, and I think nearly every quest in the game offered numerous solutions. The issue I have with the quests is how they are written, and how they connect to the main quest or engage with the setting.

Barring some of the animancy and hollowborn-related quests, a lot of the side quests come off as very boilerplate. It feels as if the writers drew from a repository of side quest templates and then forgot to tailor the template to the setting. Even the ones that are unique in their setup -- such as the deadlock between a lioness and a bear in Act 3 -- are written in such a dull and detached manner that the whole experience comes off as passive despite giving me the option to make active choices in how the quest concludes.

Another issue was that the factions seem shoehorned-in since the Main Quest does not interface with them in any meaningful manner except in Act 2. In fact, a broader complaint would be that the quests themselves (both main and side quests) rarely display the interconnectedness that made New Vegas' quest design so special. The conflict between the 3 factions in Act 2 seemed a pale imitation of the inter-faction conflicts of New Vegas.

As an Obsidian fan, I was least concerned about the main story, the setting and the side quest narratives in the leadup to the game's release, and was confident that these elements would end up excellent. They didn't. Hopefully Serpents, AoD and even Witcher 3 (despite an open-world shift) will have no problems putting together a better narrative than on display here since the bar has been set so low by Eternity. Given my expectations for Eternity, this has to be the most disappointed I've been at the narrative in an Obsidian game.

I agree with almost everthing you have written here. The game is a good one but these issues among other things prevent it from ascending to higher echelons of rpg elite. I enjoyed the plot of BG 1 and 2 far more even though they were a lot more simplistic.

Honestly, I think one of the problems was that the setting was completely new. Some of the revelations didn't really have impact because I didn't internalize that they even mattered. I think Pilllars would have been better off if it had been set during Saint's War, possibly on the side opposing Waidwen. The sequel would have been more dramatic as you had seen the consequence of killing a god and would have try to solve the mistakes of your former pc. And this would have made the revelations in act 3-4 even more dramatic since you would've had time familiarize the setting in this is how the things are matter. If you had an entire game to get used to the importance of souls, then encountering Waidwen's Legacy would have been a lot more staggering.

Also this game tries too hard at being art. Some of the dialogue is very tangled. It's like they used a many big words they possibly could fit into a conversation. The dream sequences were shite compared to finding out about TNO's past incarnations. The difference was that here you get to make an arbitrary choice of what your past self's motivation for commiting a certain action was whereas in Torment you found out what other incarnations, in essence other people, had done in your situation and how this might relate to you and your future. Also I couldn't care less about the ghost woman, about who she was and why should it even matter. By the time I encountered a dream sequence I had already forgotten what dialogue option I had chosen in the one before it.

 

[Seaking4]

Isn't the expansion supposed to take place before the end game? Or has something changed?

 

[Angthoron]

Isn't the expansion supposed to take place before the end game? Or has something changed?

No idea, the epilogue leaves the PC's fate ambiguous so could be either way.

 

[Jasede]

One thing I want to mention because I just found this:

I saw some people bitching about the words/languages used in this game. Like, they said they just randomly sprinkled accent marks around. Lo and behold, I, in-game, found two books going into detail about the languages used in the game, explaining all the accent marks and how to pronounce the sounds, concisely and in detail. I like things like that.

 

[Hobo Elf]

The difference was that here you get to make an arbitrary choice of what your past self's motivation for commiting a certain action was whereas in Torment you found out what other incarnations, in essence other people, had done in your situation and how this might relate to you and your future. Also I couldn't care less about the ghost woman, about who she was and why should it even matter. By the time I encountered a dream sequence I had already forgotten what dialogue option I had chosen in the one before it.

Arbitrary to you. I was glad that I was finally given the possibility to RP exactly the kind of character I've always wanted to play in an RPG. I thought it was a genius way of making character building an on going thing that you yourself kept writing as the game went on, rather than something that was decided upon completely from the very beginning.

 

[Shadenuat]

I played a bit of my own group on PoTD with all helpers On. Now I think PoE would be way cooler game if it used SoZ's system. There are many little things, especially for paladins and clerics, even for backgrounds (I found Aristocrat dialogue option with Cosc, many paladin choices in first village). It's just that characters I play for some reason never get those

It would be weird of course since NPCs will talk to Watcher but since companions don't matter to the plot anyway if you'd play this one like SoZ it would give you lots of new stuff to pick in dialogue window.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

I can't read the writing in this game because it keeps wanting to throw voice overs at me then have descriptions during the voice overs and I'm not smart enough to do both at the same time. I literally have to reread the whole thing every time there is a voice over. It would be cool if they had actually pauses in between the talking to give people a chance to read it.

 

[hiver]

I played a bit of my own group on PoTD with all helpers On. Now I think PoE would be way cooler game if it used SoZ's system. There are many little things, especially for paladins and clerics, even for backgrounds (I found Aristocrat dialogue option with Cosc, many paladin choices in first village). It's just that characters I play for some reason never get those

It would be weird of course since NPCs will talk to Watcher but since companions don't matter to the plot anyway if you'd play this one like SoZ it would give you lots of new stuff to pick in dialogue window.

I kinda find funny this dichotomy in party based games where you are still supposed to be an individual character.

It would be nice if one would design a low fantasy, low magic real party based rpg, where you would make a party and take care of it as a your team. More then specific individual personal issues.

Speaking of which:

 

[Angthoron]

The difference was that here you get to make an arbitrary choice of what your past self's motivation for commiting a certain action was whereas in Torment you found out what other incarnations, in essence other people, had done in your situation and how this might relate to you and your future. Also I couldn't care less about the ghost woman, about who she was and why should it even matter. By the time I encountered a dream sequence I had already forgotten what dialogue option I had chosen in the one before it.

Arbitrary to you. I was glad that I was finally given the possibility to RP exactly the kind of character I've always wanted to play in an RPG. I thought it was a genius way of making character building an on going thing that you yourself kept writing as the game went on, rather than something that was decided upon completely from the very beginning.

To me, the game does exactly what you say it doesn't, sets a role that was predetermined. I don't know if you've completed the game or not, so I won't spoil too much, but the whole past thing is completely railroaded. There's no difference in the outcome no matter what you choose, because what you choose are cosmetic options. Towards the end, even the cosmetic options get stupid, like the response to Iovara's question as to why you betrayed her. I was looking at the response options and couldn't shake the feeling that every single one of them was stupid and taking away any chance of having the character feel as "my" character. Sure, you can't give all the options in the world to please everyone, but with options like "I don't know, I just did it" and "[Asshole] There can be no assurances", I just don't know.

Bottomline is, your character is railroaded to be a traitor, an idiot and a sheep. There's no influence on your part on this. Fuck, you aren't even given a decent enough non-shit motive that derives from your previous choices (play your cards right and get a unique result of having been duped into betraying her instead of actively being a lying piece of shit).

So yeah. The whole "past life" plot is useless, and prone to falling apart. It has some good moments, but overall, it's something that shouldn't have been. And it even takes away from the ending:

Spoiler

When you're walking towards the final confrontations, you revisit a few frozen scenes from your past life's memories. Scenes you've seen already, and scenes that don't really do much. They're not scenes or people from the choices you've made, like in the Witcher 1 finale, nor the final talk with your companions a-la Torment. They're just... eh. Reminders of the plot. Thanks game, I remember.

 

[Ninjerk]

The difference was that here you get to make an arbitrary choice of what your past self's motivation for commiting a certain action was whereas in Torment you found out what other incarnations, in essence other people, had done in your situation and how this might relate to you and your future. Also I couldn't care less about the ghost woman, about who she was and why should it even matter. By the time I encountered a dream sequence I had already forgotten what dialogue option I had chosen in the one before it.

Arbitrary to you. I was glad that I was finally given the possibility to RP exactly the kind of character I've always wanted to play in an RPG. I thought it was a genius way of making character building an on going thing that you yourself kept writing as the game went on, rather than something that was decided upon completely from the very beginning.

To me, the game does exactly what you say it doesn't, sets a role that was predetermined. I don't know if you've completed the game or not, so I won't spoil too much, but the whole past thing is completely railroaded. There's no difference in the outcome no matter what you choose, because what you choose are cosmetic options. Towards the end, even the cosmetic options get stupid, like the response to Iovara's question as to why you betrayed her. I was looking at the response options and couldn't shake the feeling that every single one of them was stupid and taking away any chance of having the character feel as "my" character. Sure, you can't give all the options in the world to please everyone, but with options like "I don't know, I just did it" and "[Asshole] There can be no assurances", I just don't know.

Bottomline is, your character is railroaded to be a traitor, an idiot and a sheep. There's no influence on your part on this. Fuck, you aren't even given a decent enough non-shit motive that derives from your previous choices (play your cards right and get a unique result of having been duped into betraying her instead of actively being a lying piece of shit).

The past-life subplot felt shoehorned in. I want to point out, though, that TNO is railroaded, too. The difference for me is that TNO's goals make sense to me. I have a hard time identifying with someone who railroads themselves because "faith."

 

[Angthoron]

The past-life subplot felt shoehorned in. I want to point out, though, that TNO is railroaded, too. The difference for me is that TNO's goals make sense to me. I have a hard time identifying with someone who railroads themselves because "faith."

Could be my problem as well. Additionally, I'd say that TNO, while railroaded, is still obscure enough to not feel that you've been just this one thing. You have different incarnations - some reportedly good, some insane, some completely evil - and your original crimes are unknown. Here, you know what your original sin is, it's betrayal. And stupidity. And it takes away from the story. Sure, I wanted to know what TNO did to anger the gods and need to become immortal, but then I learned to appreciate that I could imagine it on my own. And now I see what happens when the crime is revealed, and you know what, I appreciate Torment's approach even more.

Also, in Torment I felt that I *wanted* to know the things that TNO wanted to know, because they were obscured from both the player and the character. Here... Not so much. Maybe the story showed her goods too soon. I don't know. It just didn't work for me, and I'm usually easy enough to get along in a story.

 

[Ninjerk]

The past-life subplot felt shoehorned in. I want to point out, though, that TNO is railroaded, too. The difference for me is that TNO's goals make sense to me. I have a hard time identifying with someone who railroads themselves because "faith."

Maybe the story showed her goods too soon.

I've accused the game of showing off Thaos too early (nevermind using him like Saturday morning cartoon villain in Act 2). The biggest problem I have with the past-life story is that it isn't necessary. The invention of gods is interesting enough, I think, depending on where you take it. Obviously you have some heinous shit going on to fuel this particular pantheon, but if you structure the story properly I think you could see a scenario in which the player could say, "Yeah, people really are stupid and need something to believe in" in lieu of actual scientific progress. They could double down on animancy being like nuclear power/weaponry without the upside of nuclear medicine, clean emissions, etc. You just have to have an actual vision for what the analogues are for animancy.

 

[Angthoron]

The past-life subplot felt shoehorned in. I want to point out, though, that TNO is railroaded, too. The difference for me is that TNO's goals make sense to me. I have a hard time identifying with someone who railroads themselves because "faith."

Maybe the story showed her goods too soon.

I've accused the game of showing off Thaos too early (nevermind using him like Saturday morning cartoon villain in Act 2). The biggest problem I have with the past-life story is that it isn't necessary. The invention of gods is interesting enough, I think, depending on where you take it. Obviously you have some heinous shit going on to fuel this particular pantheon, but if you structure the story properly I think you could see a scenario in which the player could say, "Yeah, people really are stupid and need something to believe in" in lieu of actual scientific progress. They could double down on animancy being like nuclear power/weaponry without the upside of nuclear medicine, clean emissions, etc. You just have to have an actual vision for what the analogues are for animancy.

Yeah. I liked the plot with the gods, actually, and I liked the concept of Leaden Key as an organization to silence the truth for countless generations. But it didn't need the past life subplot at all. It doesn't make it more personal, it doesn't make it more important - well, okay, to some it will, but in general, it doesn't really change the impact much, and it adds more and more factors to the story that can either fail or work. I like the quote, "It's not perfect when you have nothing left to add, rather, when there's nothing left to take away". It fits perfectly here. The story needs trimming in many places.

 

[Shadenuat]

Hidden scroll of Wael, come back to priest and like "Your god spoke to me!", but she's like "Right, you have Deceptive (3), go fuck yourself, no reward for you". "Damn" I think, gotta find other way to steal the book for animancer. So I break in, have to slaughter whole temple, no problem. Go back to animancer, "Here's the book", she's like "Omg, there was a slaughter at the temple. What happened?", I like Deceptive (3) "Yeaaah... terribru, hope they catch the bad guys". She's "Yeah... ok thanks for book, here's your jewgold".

Also I worked for mafia (Doenemels), got three new quests because my evil bitch killed the vancian guy for his cool clothes. Noice. Other factions just gave me starting quests and I got locked of others.

Btw I recommend hacking and slashing through Woedica's temple in catacombs to get to final chamber without any mask. There are like 2 or 3 wizards there, a monk with camehameha and bunch of other scrubs. Fighting them straight on on PoTD is better than bounty quests. I had a funny one when I was holding them near door and suddenly enemy monk uses his wounds to make my paladin fly across the room, and then 5 guys rush in in a formation through new hole slaying all my support on the way. Good times.