3023

I’m watching this thread but have not yet bought it. So not everyone :)

3024

This is out today on Xbox One and PS4. It includes both expansions.

I was looking at the achievement list to see if there was anything interesting. This fits:

Relative Pacificism Complete the game killing fewer than 175 creatures and NPCs (100 GS)
Super Murderer Complete the game killing 1200 or more creatures and NPCs (100 GS)

Two competing achievements. I would think most people are not likely to get either of those achievements, right? Is that pacificism one even possible?

3025

With the stealth mechanics so limited, I don’t know how you kill fewer than 175.

3026

I got the 1200+ kill one maybe 2/3rds of the way through the game being a completionist explorer. It’s not that hard.

Going sub-175 would be tough, yeah. Possibly a one-character run with a stealth emphasis? (There are achievements for winning with one character, also.)

3027

I’m going to be contrarian and say that after trying to replay BG2 a few years ago, none of the characters hold up favorably compared to more recent RPGs (basically, from DA:O and NWN2 onwards.) Not being able to initiate conversations is a big deal, and the party banter, which is often silly and off-tune, doesn’t make up for it. There are good character concepts there but the execution is very dated.

(I loved BG2 when it was released, and still remember the epic battles fondly.)

3028

In my opinion, Pillars of Eternity was a very disappointing game. Having grown up with Infinity Engine and Fallout games, i wanted so badly to like this game. But i couldn’t get into it. I think this was for 2 reasons:

  1. IE-styled games have aged quite badly. Back in the day, with 3D so underdeveloped and voice acting almost nonexistant, this style was a perfect compromise for what they attempted to accomplish: A party based CRPG. But today, we don’t have the limitations of the past. We can have perfectly detailed worlds in 3D and voice acting is mandatory at this point. There is no need for huge walls of text, or a 2D RTS interface that ruins the immersion. I think modern games have spoiled us with their rich immersive and beautifully detailed worlds, and we can’t really immerse ourselves in this type of game anymore. At least i can’t.

  2. Pillars of Eternity emphasized some of the worst aspects of the old formula: It has a TON of useless text and exposition, the graphics are as unimmersive as they can be, the game is really slow and loves to waste your time, and the battle system is a chore to learn and to play. Why use a DnD type of combat system and its assosiated clunkiness? These types of systems were never designed for CRPGs. And while you can excuse BG for those faults because that is what Bioware could do with the state of tech back then, you can’t excuse PoE in the same way. It is a design choice. And it is a bad one.

You can’t expect me in 2015 to complete the campaign of Witcher 3, and then play Pillars of Eternity. I just can’t do it. You want me to go from the incredible experience of a state of the art RPG to the bland ancient relic of experience Pillars of Eternity offers? At first i am looking at incredibly designed characters and stellar voice acting, with no walls of text to ruin my mood, and next you are asking me to care about the past of some random npc PIXEL BLOB that i can read through a wall of text because i am a “soulreader”?

Pillars of Eternity commits the cardinal sin of gaming, which is that it doesn’t respect the player’s time. I am pretty sure you could cut 3/4 of text and the game would lose nothing. You could speed the walking speed. You could speed the combat. You could have a less complex character creation screen full of useless shit like character backgrounds of a world you don’t know or care about. Why should i care what type of paladin order my character belongs? Will it really make a difference in game? No? Then why should i study the orders details and choose one before i get to play? Why you are wasting my time with meaningless fluff that give only the illusion of choice?

In the 2010s, you don’t immerse players in RPGs with stupid complex systems and useless exposition, you immerse them with beatufilly designed worlds and characters and dialogue. Show, don’t tell.

Pillars of Eternity was really overrated in my opinion and i don’t care about its sequel at this point. And this comes from and old-time BG fan.

3029

I don’t understand the text complaints. A few taps of the spacebar and your time is your own again.

3030

Do we count action-adventure games like Witcher 3 as the same genre as isometric RPGs? In my mind those two types of games are very different. I prefer isometric RPGs as I just don’t enjoy action gameplay anymore.

3031

I didn’t read all the soul text I will admit and I think from a design point it was probably a poor choice since I felt like I had to initiate dialogue with stand around npc’s so I wouldn’t miss any quests. And maybe there was some meta story being told by the stories…which were actually quite well written. If that was the case then I missed it. It would be cool if there was one but I would bet not.

All that said, I really loved the isometric presentation and the environments. This year I’ve played a lot of Fallout 4 and recently Skyrim (I also had a terrible ESO pvp addiction that I finally broke this spring but that’s another sad story.) and I have to say that PoE was a really wonderful palate cleanser even beyond all the nostalgia from the BG series. It does take some effort to grok the systems and I still have to play most combats out at slow speed but I eventually got it. And the lore and thought that went into the world is really top notch. I backed PoE 2 without hesitation and can’t wait to sail my own ship around.

3032

Yeah, but then, why are you playing this game? It is an rpg, if you aren’t reading the text, then you disconnect from the lore/story. Then what remains? A boring rts-light with clunky combat and complex rules you have to study for hours because apparently it is more fun rolling dice instead of just controlling a character yourself?

If you ignore the writting in an rpg, you might as well play a proper strategy or action game.

3033

Witcher 3 is an RPG, not an action adventure. Only a hater would call it an action adventure. I have seen plenty of those in hipster places like the rpgcodex, but they are just hating it because it is more popular than their niche trash and can’t play the “cool kid” anymore.

Why it is an RPG you ask? It has all the usual elements of an rpg game and only differs in that the character is pre-established and not your own creation. But other “tru-rpg™” games like Baldur’s Gate offered pre-build characters as well. You didn’t have to make your own. As for the action elements, this is a valid point, as true rpgs should never let player ability influence avatar ability, but even PoE allows that, as it is still real time and thus faster reaction times and better mouse positioning influence a battle. Only turn based rpgs are true rpgs, in that sense.

3034

Fine, it is an action-rpg. I am not a hater. I am aware Witcher 3 is a great game. I just question that you compare two games with so different gameplay saying that one is far superior. I would say it offers a different kind of entertainment.

3035

Why must a game be fully voice acted? That just isn’t reasonable for a story heavy game. And I was fine with reading it. I enjoyed the game and the story immensely. It’s just not the game for you. I also thought the graphics were really good and enjoyed many of the maps. Kind of surprised you didn’t like them.

The only thing I agee with is that the combat system takes some getting used to and for me, isn’t that great.

Games like this is why I am a PC gamer. I am glad games like the Witcher exist, but I want the PoEs as well.

3036

I really could not disagree with most of this more strongly:

  1. Infinity Engine games look much better than their 3D contemporaries and the style is still beautiful with updated graphics technology (including being entirely rendered in 3D) today while being far more readable and usable than, for example, the later Dragon Age games (and the first one only managed to compete with a zoomed out view that was functionally almost identical to IE-style isometric view).
  2. Voice acting is not mandatory or even particularly desirable in many cases - it’s much more expensive and difficult to edit or change than text and really harms the quantity and sometimes quality of narrative in games. And to me, at least, it does little to enhance the game. I read far faster than people can speak so I’m usually skipping past the voice acting in any game that lets me, and frustrated or bored if they don’t.
  3. The amount of background detail and exposition is, to me, hugely immersive in a way that 3D environments and voice acting aren’t, and Pillars really shines on that count in particular.
  4. Tactical party-based combat of some kind is very desirable and enhanced greatly by complex systems and lots of character building choices. I didn’t get on very well with Pillars’ combat but that’s because I feel that the real time approach doesn’t mesh well with that level of complexity and leaves things difficult to parse and control in the moment. The solution, IMO, is to switch to turn-based combat, not to switch to a more direct combat style or simplify.

Obviously you don’t have to have the same priorities I do, but the idea that these things are “ancient relics” rather than a different and equally valid approach to RPG design is pernicious, obnoxious, and utter bullshit.

3037

Well, I enjoyed the writing. And I love the combat, which oddly enough did not require hours to master. And not everyone is going to react as negatively across the board as you are when it comes to the game.

3038

It’s like comparing the new Doom to a Rainbow Six game. . .sure, both are ‘shooters’, but they sure play differently.

3039

Because much of the dialogue is about things that the game could show you instead of describing to you. I didn’t finish PoE, but i played it for a bout 10 hours. Writting up until then, and i don’t believe this changes later, is in the style of a novel. It is very verbose and tries to explain to you things that you can’t see, while a well designed modern crpg like the Witcher 3 shows to you almost everything and only dialogue needs to be written/voiced, plus item descriptions. Take for example the small peeps into people’s past you do when you speak to most npc, in a game like the Witcher 3, you would just watch these set pieces, instead of having a wall of text describing them. In PoE, the text goes somewhat like this (not real example, i don’t recall any of this shit so i made up an example): “You see NPC X and NPC Y standing close to each other, with swords on one hand and shields on another, shouting to each other and being ready for a fight… bla bla bla bla”. On Witcher 3, it would just show you in-game. Thus, no need for text or voice acting.

As for the maps and the graphics, they were decent for a 2D game. But they are not as immersive as the graphics in a game like Witcher 3 or Dragon Age Inquisition or Skyrim. You don’t really feel like you are part of the place, you always feel that you are playing a computer video game. Back in 90s this wasn’t so bad because we didn’t have an alternative. Now we do have an alternative, which is what makes PoE graphics archaic in comparison.

Look, i understand that PoE has its audience and i am not saying it is a “hot garbage” game, because it really is not. If it was released back in '99, it would have been an instant classic like BG2. All i am saying is that it is archaic and doesn’t really belong in today’s gaming landscape.

Which is something i didn’t expect myself to say, as i was really into this project from its announcement. But the end result reminded me of why rpgs aren’t made like in the 90s anymore.

If you enjoyed it, then that is fine, really, it is a well made game given its type. But it is indeed overrated on places like Metacritic, it received tons of praise yet the game is really a niche game for a niche audience and pretty divisive among RPG fans: Some swear by it, others like me were dissappointed. It doesn’t deserve something higher than 80 for that reason, in my opinion. Yet it has an 89 score on metacritic, and a 8.3 user score. Seems the fans were more accurate than professional critics on this, a 8.3 is closer to what this game deserves in my opinion.

3040
  1. IE games look better than their 3D contemporaries because back then 3D was in its early stages and hardware couldn’t do many of the things it can do now. 3D games now, like the Witcher 3, wipe the floor with the graphics of 2D games like Pillars of Eternity. You can’t tell me with a straight face that this isn’t true. And the difference will only get bigger with each teraflop and gb of vram that gets added to the average gpu. So yeah, 2D games from the 90s have aged much better, but that doesn’t mean that 2D style is better in 2017.

  1. Voice acting done well in a well designed game is pretty easy to do. And it is imperative for immersion, which is something important for an RPG game. How can you feel that you are playing a role and immerse yourself in that role when the game feels like party based RTS with visual novel sections? You can’t. It is always apparent that you are playing a gamey game, and it ruins the immersion. Which ruins an RPG, you stop becoming the role you are playing, and you are just playing a commandos type game in a fantasy setting.

  2. As i replied above, “show don’t tell” is the key. Immersive games like Witcher 3 show, archaic games like rpgs in the 90s tell. And in 2017 the excuse of weak technology is not there so it is harder to justify the archaic approach.

  3. On this, we agree on. Tactical party based combat is not bad by itself, it is a design choice and depending on the game it is really fine. It wouldn’t suit a game like the Witcher 3, but it definitely would suit a game like Dragon Age, if Bioware wasn’t incompetent and didn’t ruin everything. But yes, as you correctly conclude, tactical based combat can’t really be done in real time, it needs to be turned based. Which is why Divinity Original Sin is a better game than PoE, it has much better combat. PoE combat is a chore, hard to control and chaotic.

3041

I finished POE recently, and it was a bit of a slog. But it’s flaws are much simpler than I think most people claim: filler content.

There is a ton of filler content with little quality. This makes the game big and long, but also fairly dull. I don’t think the flaws are really with the combat or the writing, or the Infinity Engine style, or the characters.

The only criticism I do agree with is the exposition-heavy world building. I still have no good understanding of the world of Plllars, despite an absolute ton of information being dropped on me about this Republic or that kingdom.

I am playing through Tyranny right now and actually loving it. Many of the issues above have been fixed - the exposition is light and you are shown more than told (and the dialogue tool tips help a ton). The content is much smaller but much less of it filler. I find it much more engaging as a game.

I think Pillars tried to recreate BG1 rather than BG2. In this they succeeded far too well, because BG1 is full of filler content, and I vastly preferred the tighter (but smaller) BG2 experience.

3042

Or maybe they dismiss it because it’s a mechanically shallow game with boring skill tree and abilities and progression curve that would better fit a 20 hour game, not a 200 hour one.