|
Calico Heart posted:Yeah, I think going into the game thinking "I'm going to try being as moral as possible in a completely immoral world" leads to a really fantastic and singular experience. I really liked how Verse started having begrudging respect for you, and even loyalty because of it - which underscores what the Scarlet Chorus is about : disdain for authority and might-makes-right. It also shows that non-Verse members of that tribe are super hypocritical. At the same time Barik got super sulky and hated you for not being evil and pure ideologically. Plenty of interesting stuff happening, I'm glad they had that path. But still, the best playthrough is the 'choose a side' playthrough.
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 11:10
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 23:30 |
|
|
Currently going through my second playthrough. Doing things behind Kim's back just feels wrong... 
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 11:24
|
|
|
dex_sda posted:As much as I like Obsidian, I feel they have been doing the "same old formula" since New Vegas. The only real step outside of that was Tyranny, which was excellent, but according to both Avellone's rpgcodex rant (which was just a hosed up thing all around lmao, both by obsidian assuming the truth of some of his statements, and also the fact that avellone of all people went to a loving alt-right infested hellhole to air his grievances) and the lead Tyranny designer the idea itself and some of the setpieces/characters were Avellone's, so that helps explain why some of that magic would be gone now. Call Avellone ego-driven and pretentious all you want, there's a big reason Disco Elysium has him at the top of the Thanks list in the credits and the ZA/UM guys had him beta test the game: the guy is a visionary, probably the closest thing western games had to the japanese game auteurs like Miyazaki/Taro et al before ZA/UM came along. Pillars 2 is way better than Pillars 1. I say that as someone who found Pillars 1 to just be awful, especially when it came to the writing. Now, Pillars 2 might have some issues and the ending (and general main plot, really) is divisive, although there's certainly a coherent point to it, but is overall a much better product and experience. But it was Pillars 1 that sunk Pillars 2 before it even came out. Reports are that Pillars 2 didn't make its budget back.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 11:27
|
|
|
I remember being 'well it is okayish' with Pillars' writing, but few years down the road I can't remember a single loving thing happening in the game. Forgettable and bland. I think you're right it torpedoed PoE2 totally.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 11:33
|
|
|
I remember a while back someone on Reddit said they invested in Pillars 2 and made back something depressing like 25% of what they put in. Really, really sucks as I think 2 is just a wonderful time.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 11:36
|
|
|
Neuronyx posted:WHAT IN THE ABSOLUTE poo poo It came out today and you heard nothing because all the reviewers got the game at the same time as everyone else, so they're rushing to play enough to review it. Also this was done on a Kickstarter budget so there's no real advertising to speak of. It's maximum Shenmue, it is like a love letter to fans of the originals, and the magic is still there. You can still open capsule toys, ask strangers dumb questions, and play a thousand minigames. The only thing that's a little lame is they didn't implement throws in the fighting engine, but I'm playing on the hardest difficulty and it feels a lot like Sekiro where you have to watch body language and look for openings in combo patterns. Oh and it's the same voice actor as the original and his voice and delivery are identical after 18 years so that's trippy.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 12:08
|
|
|
PoE2's factional / political writing and world building is as good as, maybe even better than, New Vegas'. It's characters are really well done, it's world fun to explore, it's main plot poorly paced but thought provoking. It's so much better than PoE1, even just from a narrative standpoint. The fact that they added a turn-based mode (which, IMO, makes the combat actually fun to play) is icing on the cake. Anyone who bounced off of PoE1 should consider it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 14:58
|
|
|
I didn't check out PoE2 due to being turned off by the first game but if it's enough to merit praise in the DE thread of all things I think I should probably give it a go
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 15:04
|
|
|
I bounced off PoE1 like nine times before I finally slogged through it, and that was purely out of a desire to Make Number Go Up. I got into PoE2 instantly and actually cared about the story. I haven't tried the turn-based mode yet but I might do that sometime. I'm just worried it'll make the game take 400 hours to complete.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 15:06
|
|
|
I played 30 hours of PoE1 because I kept telling myself “maybe the NEXT location will have interesting characters with interesting stories and won’t just be a static lore dump that doesn’t seem connected to me or any of the other lore dumps” and then I got TPKed by a dragon five times in a row and realized the game actually wanted me to learn their stupid arcane Pathfinder-but-not rules system and gave up on the whole game. I played 20 minutes of PoE2 through an overwrought, purple-prose introduction before I finally got to character creation where I realized that a) it was the same world as before, so more static dumps of info, but the intro made it clear they were going to be as wordy and self-satisfied as possible; b) it was the same system but with improvements so even what I’d picked up through play previously didn’t matter and I’d have to learn their stupid arcane system to progress; and c) I was playing the same character and still had absolutely no attachment to that character or reason to really give a poo poo at all. I stopped playing then and probably will never touch it again. DE, by comparison, made me deal with a new rpg system but made it pretty simple and clear; dropped massive amounts of world lore on me but made it integrated into interesting conversations in a way that encouraged me to engage; and gave me a blank slate who still had enough interesting baggage and background that I became attached to him.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 15:07
|
|
|
PoE1's Kickstarter NPCs littering the map with their varying-in-quality backstories was a horrendous decision.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 15:23
|
|
|
At a certain point those NPCs were what kept me going because I love love love horribly written fanfiction so it was like heroin for me
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 15:34
|
|
|
I was just so bored with PoE from minute one. Honestly none of those "CRPG revival" games grabbed me at all even though I continued buying all of them based on nostalgia like a sucker. Although I don't think I even booted up PoE2 or Divinity 2, based on this thread and word of mouth maybe I should give those a go.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 15:41
|
|
|
All the hate for the backer NPCs in POE was super overblown. You never had to interact with them in anyway whatsoever, and they were sign-posted so that you could avoid them easily.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 15:59
|
|
|
Regardless, it made the whole experience feel like Disneyland, with a load of tourists gawking around the actual NPCs.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 16:12
|
|
|
Fangz posted:Regardless, it made the whole experience feel like Disneyland, with a load of tourists gawking around the actual NPCs. nah you're missing their main benefit, which was that in earlier versions of the game they didn't draw aggro from anything else on their maps, so they were basically early game loot pinatas that could give up some pretty handy things (like full plate or fine weapons) well before you were supposed to be able to find or afford that kind of loot. of course that was eventually patched out so i guess now they're just another forgettable NPC in a game full of them. i never had a hard time ignoring them or the other random backer garbage (like the gravestones or whatever they were) but apparently a lot of people had a hard time mentally filtering them out to the point that it's a pretty common pain point PoE1 is a modern update on the original baldur's gate and you have to enjoy plot-lite dungeon crawls with a lot of mechanical complexity to enjoy it. PoE2 takes the same formula and adds a much more compelling story, but the crunchy dungeon crawling rules are still in play, so if you don't like that it's still going to be a hassle.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 16:24
|
|
|
As a counter-opinion, POE 2 is about as subjectively good or not-good as POE1. It's still dry as gently caress, your character is a non-entity and the characters exist entirely to showcase the devs' precious lore instead of lore being there to enable interesting characters. The character system feels really fiddly and also kind of inconsequential at the same time and I never felt that hell yeah I got a cool ability can't wait to use it. If you, like me, found out playing POE that you liked Baldur's Gate 2 despite the RtwP combat and not because of it, POE 2 will do nothing to change that for you. Except it's worse in a way, because BG2 is real-time AD&D and POE2 is kinda like real-time 4E: in Infinity Engine games the fiddliness of managing six characters from a turn-based system in real-time was compensated by the fact that half of them would probably be auto-hitter fighter types; in POE everyone gets abilities but the game wants you to just kinda let them use all of them on their own, which, in my view, is kinda like making an FPS where the AI is the one shooting and you just WASD. And the turn-based combat is a slog because the monsters on the map were placed for RtwP trash mop-up gameplay and what's a relatively quick fight in RtwP lasts, well, quite a while in TB. I mean, some of you might still like it, I dunno, but if you didn't love POE1 get it at a steep discount. Or better yet, grab Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Hong Kong, those are great.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 16:30
|
|
|
Sometimes I feel like the weird-man out. What I expected from POE 1, based on its Kickstarter, was exactly what I got. A fairly dry/generic fantasy game that harkened back to the dry/generic Forgotten Realms setting, but with the writing quality and general reactivity of an Obsidian game. I got exactly that and loved it. Then I got the second game and loved that even more. Neither game is as well written as Disco, but in my eyes they're by far the best products produced out of this "old RPG revival" phase of RPGs.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 16:35
|
|
|
Calico Heart posted:World of BitD is also pretty fun. I was three games in before I realised there are no horses in the world and everyone used goat-drawn carriages.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 16:36
|
|
|
Chomposaur posted:I was just so bored with PoE from minute one. Honestly none of those "CRPG revival" games grabbed me at all even though I continued buying all of them based on nostalgia like a sucker.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 17:24
|
|
|
Someone else was mentioning how they got Disco Elysium and promptly forgot Outer Worlds existed. Same here DE had me hooked the moment I saw inland empire was a skill. The writing for it is better than anything I’ve seen in a game. I just hope it gets the recognition it deserves.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 17:56
|
|
|
I've bounced off Baldur's Gate 2, Pillars of Eternity, Outer Worlds, and both Divinity: Original Sin games ("bounced off" might be a little harsh for D:OS -- I have like 40 hours in each, but I never felt motivated to complete them). What Disco Elysium taught me is that my problem with CRPGs is mainly the combat. There's just too much of it, it takes too long, and winning doesn't feel rewarding.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 18:09
|
|
|
Thoom posted:I've bounced off Baldur's Gate 2, Pillars of Eternity, Outer Worlds, and both Divinity: Original Sin games ("bounced off" might be a little harsh for D:OS -- I have like 40 hours in each, but I never felt motivated to complete them). What Disco Elysium taught me is that my problem with CRPGs is mainly the combat. There's just too much of it, it takes too long, and winning doesn't feel rewarding. Or it's the writing, it being not good. Either way, try Unavowed. You might dig it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 18:22
|
|
|
dex_sda posted:As much as I like Obsidian, I feel they have been doing the "same old formula" since New Vegas. The only real step outside of that was Tyranny, which was excellent, but according to both Avellone's rpgcodex rant (which was just a hosed up thing all around lmao, both by obsidian assuming the truth of some of his statements, and also the fact that avellone of all people went to a loving alt-right infested hellhole to air his grievances) and the lead Tyranny designer the idea itself and some of the setpieces/characters were Avellone's, so that helps explain why some of that magic would be gone now. Call Avellone ego-driven and pretentious all you want, there's a big reason Disco Elysium has him at the top of the Thanks list in the credits and the ZA/UM guys had him beta test the game: the guy is a visionary, probably the closest thing western games had to the japanese game auteurs like Miyazaki/Taro et al before ZA/UM came along. in fairness to Avellone, every major place to talk about video games is infested with the alt-right
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 18:39
|
|
|
Its Coke posted:in fairness to Avellone, every major place to talk about video games is infested with the alt-right You know, that is a good point. Still shouldn't have aired the dirty laundry, but at the same time if even 50% of what he claimed was true I can't really blame him for wanting to speak of it.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 18:43
|
|
|
dex_sda posted:You know, that is a good point. I kinda do. A public internet forum is never the best place to air grievances and it will never not seem petty to me. If he was super concerned about lovely business practices there are other, better, places to voice those opinions.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 18:46
|
|
|
Megazver posted:Or it's the writing, it being not good. I think I would have liked Disco Elysium a lot less if it had interrupted my exploration every 5 minutes to make me fight thugs/spiders/Cuno/my own literal inner demons. I'll check out Unavowed, though. Looks neat.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 18:50
|
|
|
chaosapiant posted:I kinda do. A public internet forum is never the best place to air grievances and it will never not seem petty to me. If he was super concerned about lovely business practices there are other, better, places to voice those opinions. I agree, I'm just saying sometimes emotions get the better of you. It's real lovely when it happens, but it's not like he was actively violent or anything and he mostly didn't have any bad words for his actual coworkers so I'm more inclined to give him a pass I think it's that Empathy skill check being too high
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 18:53
|
|
|
Thoom posted:There's just too much of it, it takes too long, and winning doesn't feel rewarding. yeah, as i get older i realize i don't have patience for or interest in anything that feels like grinding or fighting trash monsters or doing anything that isn't capital "I" important to the story. even in games where the combat is actually well implemented and thought out (like the souls series) i find myself often just looking for the fastest way to get from a bonfire to the next boss, because the boss fights are what's actually cool and good and everything between them is just a boring game of resource management and attrition. i guess that's one of the things i think DE does well, it makes almost every conversation you have feel important to what's happening. there was very little that felt like filler; even stuff that seems unrelated like the two old guys bitching about bocci ball end up having relevance to the plot.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 19:07
|
|
|
I want to say it's lack of time due to work but even when I'm not working my attention span is low when it comes to games I want innovation not repeats of ideas seen 20 times before. Work though it removes most time for gaming at least for me.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 20:01
|
|
|
Time is precious when you have responsibilities, and most games are designed to be time sinks. In that regard, Disco Elysium is very respectful of the player.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 20:03
|
|
|
Thoom posted:I think I would have liked Disco Elysium a lot less if it had interrupted my exploration every 5 minutes to make me fight thugs/spiders/Cuno/my own literal inner demons. I've had a real problem with Authority for a while now and I'd love a chance to suckerpunch that jagoff cop.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 21:01
|
|
|
Freaking Crumbum posted:yeah, as i get older i realize i don't have patience for or interest in anything that feels like grinding or fighting trash monsters or doing anything that isn't capital "I" important to the story. even in games where the combat is actually well implemented and thought out (like the souls series) i find myself often just looking for the fastest way to get from a bonfire to the next boss, because the boss fights are what's actually cool and good and everything between them is just a boring game of resource management and attrition. That's all well and good, but for me this kind of game is something I usually end up not finishing. I love narrative-heavy games in theory, but at the end of the day what I want is something somewhat mindless to engage with while I listen to podcasts. Souls games are absolutely perfect for this, requiring just enough attention with occasional bits of story or boss fights, but mostly reward going through the motions consistently. DE was a nice change of pace, I really had to pay close attention the whole way through, but it is absolutely not what I'm gonna play every night after work. It's a good game, but it's not the be-all end-all pinnacle of RPGs.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 21:24
|
|
|
Ersatz posted:Time is precious when you have responsibilities, and most games are designed to be time sinks. In that regard, Disco Elysium is very respectful of the player.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 21:37
|
|
|
Strudel Man posted:Except for the running around part. That got pretty old, near the end. I never tired of walking/jogging around the map. It's not large and doesn't take long. Most of the time I just walk and soak in that atmosphere. Game is super good on atmosphere.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 21:41
|
|
|
The jogging around would have been a lot better with controller support. The need to spam click bothered me much more than the time it took. I hope they patch that into the PC version when they release on console.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 21:46
|
|
|
Thoom posted:The jogging around would have been a lot better with controller support. The need to spam click bothered me much more than the time it took. I hope they patch that into the PC version when they release on console. yeah, i didn't mind the running but it was a really bad implementation. Even double click and hold would have been better than what they did.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 22:15
|
|
|
I sort of went into gamey finish-quests mode on the final days, which for sure wasn't as cool as the first three days which felt so engrossing and like a real rear end story with new developments and environment changes. The quests and convos remained amazing of course, but the narrative package stopped doling out the moments of character revelation and discovery. Mostly by design since your character had now found a voice, purpose, and was concluding the case. But those first few days were so goddamn magical.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 22:21
|
|
|
The docks are a terrible waste of space and player time, Union boss’s office should have just been in the first door instead of that winding path. The other long walks I didn’t mind quite as much for some reason.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 22:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 5, 2024 23:30 |
|
|
Vichan posted:PoE1's Kickstarter NPCs littering the map with their varying-in-quality backstories was a horrendous decision. I feel like Obsidian HAD to be like, during the idea for this particular thing: "Surely there'll only be, like, three or four of these, right?" chaosapiant posted:All the hate for the backer NPCs in POE was super overblown. You never had to interact with them in anyway whatsoever, and they were sign-posted so that you could avoid them easily. Unless you got the bug where they didn't show up as purple or gold or whatever and instead looked like anyone else.
|
|
#
?
Nov 20, 2019 22:29
|
|