Pillars of Eternity

[Hotfreak]

Planescape:Torment. God what a shit game!

[Hryme]

Who made you the judge of what kind of games belong in the current gaming landscape? You are a decent writer but your arrogance makes you intolerable, I get that you have your preferences, but stating them as facts and insulting people with other views calling them hipster gamers makes you sound like a total douchebag.

[Ultrazen]

/shrug. Witcher for me, suffered from horrible combat and movement, to the point where I lost interest in it every time I tried to play. POE suffered from the typical D&D problem of being one shot at low levels unless you managed to pick the exact skill set that would prevent it. In general the balance, scaling, and timing was bad, and felt forced into a combat style that didn’t gel at all with the mechanics of the skill system.

The reality is, both games had huge gaping holes mechanically, that get glossed over by whatever tolerance you happen to posses. Some people love minutiae, some people hate it, there’s plenty of room in the world for every permutation of design. As they used to say in the car business, there’s an ass for every seat.

TLDR: They both sort of sucked in various ways, which doesn’t preclude you from loving them if you have the tolerance for that particular shortcoming.

[Scotch_Lufkin]

Switching gears a bit, has anyone seen or played anything of the console version? As dumb as it may sound, I’m wondering if this would be fun to play again on my HDR TV in 4K?

[Vic_Davis]

@TemplarGR

Yes, many of you enjoyed Pillars. Plenty of people are enjoying Justin Bieber, that doesn’t mean Bieber’s music is above criticism

Bieber? That hurts :) Besides just being a little mean, I’m going for;

Ad Hominem
Bad Analogy
and maybe some Straw Man.

See this link below:

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html

[ShivaX]

@Desslock

@Mysterial

The NPCs that are just “soul text” were backer rewards. They’re all irrelevant although some of them are entertaining to read anyway.

My NPC cries every time someone doesn’t read his backstory.

My less good parties often murdered him for his armor.

[Desslock]

@ShivaX

My less good parties often murdered him for his armor.

You are truly soulless! The curse is real!

[malkav11]

Wait, the backer NPCs drop gear?

[Desslock]

@malkav11

Wait, the backer NPCs drop gear?

I didn’t buy a Holy Avenger and Vorpal Sword for nothing. Did I?

[ShivaX]

@malkav11

Wait, the backer NPCs drop gear?

Most people do in the game. Typically just regular stuff, but Desslock has plate before you can get it iirc so he… uh… get’s murdered in the corner sometimes.

[robc04]

@ShivaX

Most people do in the game. Typically just regular stuff, but Desslock has plate before you can get it iirc so he… uh… get’s murdered in the corner sometimes.

That’s hilarious! I never even thought to murder Desslock! Maybe I need to do a Desslock murder run!

[Fifth_Fret]

Maybe I meant open! The experience is much tighter in BG2, still.

[Desslock]

@robc04

That’s hilarious! I never even thought to murder Desslock! Maybe I need to do a Desslock murder run!

Wow, I tried to make him a cool NPC, and instead I just made him a prize turkey.

[AntediluvianArk]

So uh, where does the Desslock NPC hang out? Asking for a friend.

[Fifth_Fret]

I had no idea about this Desslock strategy! Where do we murder him? Find him, I mean. Find him.

[marxeil]

@TemplarGR

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.

This has a TON of useless text and exposition ;)

[John_Reynolds]

@Desslock

My NPC cries every time someone doesn’t read his backstory.

You have no idea how many times I’ve tried to kill that bastard, just out of spite. :D

[Desslock]

@John_Reynolds

You have no idea how many times I’ve tried to kill that bastard, just out of spite. :D

He’s happy to have the attention heh

[quarryman]

So I decided to give this one more shot and picked it up yesterday on Xbox one. Put about 6 hours in so far.

Controls work well put load times really break immersion. Its not that they are THAT long but that there are so many of them. Every little floor for each building. Each floor in dungeons. And on the main map. And there doesn’t seem to be any caching of previous loads - go back through a door you just came out of and the load time is exactly the same. Really badly optimised in that area.

I’m considering stopping playing altogether as I’ve heard the load times just get worse.

[Scotch_Lufkin]

I really don’t understand why consoles aren’t using SSD’s, honestly.