|
Let him have the painting. I just don't know why the protagonist would care beyond 'valuable item I would hopefully own once the inheritance is sorted'. If you were raised as a servant, even a favored servant, that woman didn't act like your mother. In fact, she might have regarded you as a danger to her biological son getting to be heir if she'd been aware and alive. If she was alive during your childhood, you probably barely had contact with her, since presumably you grew up among commoner kids of the rest of the staff? Hamlin calls her your step-mother but I can't imagine our protagonist would care about a woman who is apparently long death and not even related to us. And if we're meant to assume there was a good relationship, Hamlin couldn't possibly know/seem reasonable in making the assumption, so that'd just be more bad writing. I personally have an excellent relationship with my stepmother, but she did do the actual work of raising me 
Psykmoe fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Jul 1, 2022 |
#
?
Jul 1, 2022 14:30
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 11, 2024 06:58 |
|
|
Piss off, Hamlin. It takes a delusional level of gall to follow someone into their ruined home and then be like "by the way, I took a job to steal what may be a very personal memento of your family."
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2022 21:55
|
|
|
I vote we
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2022 23:13
|
|
|
You know, I wonder if the devs ever read that interview some bioware people gave in which they said that, at some point extremely late in the development of BG1, someone pointed out that pretty much all the recruitable thieves were (A) assholes, or (B) evil, or (C) both, and that would put a Good party in trouble, eventually, with the intra-party strife and force leaving with reputation changes. So they made a personally loyal thief character and Imoen was born. Here we just get a mean rear end in a top hat. SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Jul 3, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2022 23:17
|
|
|
let him have it because really, why piss off the thief, you gotta pick locks somehow
|
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2022 23:21
|
|
|
I just finished the game. Hold on to your hats boys and girls, we are going to some really stupid and nonsensical places.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2022 23:17
|
|
|
TheGreatEvilKing posted:I just finished the game. Glad to hear the game didn't beat you! Now all that's left to see is if it beats us instead.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2022 05:15
|
|
|
TheGreatEvilKing posted:I just finished the game. Between this and ATOM, which was the more unpleasant? From the LPs, Black Geyser seems a little smoother, but maybe it's entirely different in-game and like gently caress am I shelling out for either one of these masterpieces. Just morbidly curious.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2022 13:15
|
|
|
Disregard the MonarchEggsAisle posted:Between this and ATOM, which was the more unpleasant? From the LPs, Black Geyser seems a little smoother, but maybe it's entirely different in-game and like gently caress am I shelling out for either one of these masterpieces. Just morbidly curious. ATOM, 100%. Black Geyser is boring and stupid, but ATOM is viscerally unpleasant to play. Welcome back! Last time I asked goons to opine on whether we should give Hamlin the possibly valued memento of our dead stepmother who we never met, and the general consensus was "eh, whatever, this is stupid." Therefore...   : Wonderful to hear you say so, Inta Rume. We get a cutscene where Hamlin walks up to the painting, and the game fades to black before rerendering a new area sans the smokin hot Lady Espen.  TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Time to nope out of here and get back to the exciting fantasy adventure plot of delivering our real birth records.  I guess we helped him in the blackout cutscene. Also not pictured: a random encounter with some scorpions and me misclicking the destination to the market town.  I'm not an art expert, but don't you roll up paintings for transport? Or is he carrying the frame?  : Well, let me help you with it. I don't see how you can manage it on your own. : Where are you delivering the painting? I'm super confused because we literally have a document that says our mother is Clea somebody. Did Rothgor the devil-god kill all the editors? : All right, see you later then.: Yes, come find me later in Greybark Square.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 If you pick the bottom option he gets all snooty and starts whining about the value of bloodlines. I really don't know. : I found these. I hope it's sufficient. : What do you mean? These must be what you asked for. It's all I could find. : A moment, please. Boy, come here. I have a task for you. We get a cutscene of a little kid running off.  Oh, huh. Ok, the game kind of answers my question of "how do you know it's not a scam". : How do you know your records are forged and mine are real? That's good that he doesn't ask us to provide witnesses or anything. : What about Espen's son, Aldnar? As the eldest, won't he make a claim to the estate? : Is there anything I have to do as a noblewoman? : What do I do next?: A timely question! Knowing his majesty would wish to be informed of these developments at once, I sent a scribe to request an audience for you. Here he is now. : Looks like my luck has finally changed!Scribe: I don't know about that. But I really don't think you should make him wait. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
  : Yes, I take after my mother. : Hmph. A clever ruse that, hiding in plain sight in Espen's house. : What exactly does this title entail?: To maintain the roads under your demesne, answer the petitions of your serfs should you eventually acquire any, to provide a levy of troops in times of war in the number I deem suitable, and the usual taxes and tithes. gently caress you. : The estate is truly beggared then? So, can we have them back? The entire point of nobility is that the nobles administer the things the king does not have the bureaucracy to administer. : Am I not to inherit even the house and land on the main estate?The house is also thoroughly wrecked and probably a money pit to rebuild.  This sounds cool and like a great motivation to go out and do things for the king - you conquered Lord Treason Man's estate and now it's yours and you can do cool things. This will never come up again. : The only thing that will be taxing is having to talk to you again.This is obviously a dumb loving idea, but I'll show it off anyway.   This aggros the entire royal guard. The guard have swords that deal slashing damage. Inta is immune to slashing damage.  We don't have the spells to actually win this fight, and we get ground down by the royal guard even though honestly our companions should probably desert us around this point. I guess we earned them death sentences too? It's kind of amazing they don't try to plead for mercy or leave or anything.  This fight is actually winnable! The king himself wades into the melee and you can murderize his rear end. From what I've read on the steam forums, this breaks the game as the main quest can't progress and the entire city goes hostile. Per the developers on said forums, you need to do the king's quest here to unlock the rest of the areas in the game. It would have been entirely plausible for this to just end in a game over as you get cut down by bowmen in the rafters or something.  The correct way to proceed is to kiss the king's rear end. : As Your Majesty sayeth, so shall it be.Having a noble title opens up a lot of poo poo and worst case scenario we can just marry a rich merchant or something.  : Yes, Your Majesty. : Woohoo! Look at me now, mama, I made it.: Ugh, when did they start breeding halfwits out there in the countryside? : Yes, Your Majesty. : Oh, yes, one last thing. You'll need a signet ring with your family crest. There's a coal-eater over on Market Street whom many of your ilk visit for such titles. You know, I don't hate this line. : Did you say something, Dwarf? : No, Your Magnificence. Just a cough. From all the coal dust.: Of course.: Dismissed.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
So, King Velianrick has his own manual entry. The manual posted:King Velianrick is the steadfast ruler of Isilmerald. A fierce warrior in his youth, the man evolved into a shrewd and fearsome leader after taking the throne. His father, Sigismund, was the military mastermind who first consolidated the regions which now make up our nation. Wait if Rillow are naturally greedy, why are we resistant to the curse of greed? Granted, I'm cringing at "natural avarice" because that sounds suspiciously like anti-Semitic garbage that's not really the Rillow, they're a hosed up mishmash of Asian stereotypes. Alright, so that dwarf the king is talking about isn't just any dwarf, he's Tolbard the blacksmith, whom we've met. He also has a manual entry for some reason. The manual strikes back posted:The Dwarven Blacksmith of Isilbright is something of a legend in the kingdom, and by many called the greatest craftsman of the realm. Tolbard is personally responsible for the design and forging of the armor and weapons of the Brightguard –the King’s chosen military officers, who also act as his bodyguard– as well as Velianrick himself. He is also one of the few who knows how to smelt and create alloy from super-hard Rilvite ore, which he uses to craft the war golems used by the mages of Wardenhaft. Unsurprisingly, the smith is not known for his patience or kindness. A gruff, uncompromising fellow, Tolbard is a perfect specimen of his race – focused on his craft above all else, with no time for palaver or japery. So yes, Tolbard is a super hard core craftsman who personally armed the king, his bodyguard unit, and knows how to make war golems. The king basically did the equivalent of calling him the n-word in front of a court that's supposed to be full of intrigue. If Tolbard went over to the rebels - who, remember, control the kingdom's mines - he could probably personally poo poo out enough war golems to turn the tide of the war. The game is trying to make it seem like Velianrick was a cool king who got cursed by the evil gods and is now a raving moron because he does poo poo like this. Of course the manual throws in loving racial determinism. Moving on!  These guys are trying to fix a golem but then swear at us when we tell them we're not good golem fixers.  This guy shows up as we leave.  : Well met. Do you and I have some business?For what it's worth I legitimately didn't know there was a Rillow war until I reread the manual. That seems... kind of important? Fengrir: I hope we do, milady.  We can of course shoot off our mouth like a drat moron but I'm not going to do that. The blacksmith at the Garden (spoilers) has armor and weapon upgrades we could use to get Inta and Helgenhar to that critical "immune to weapons" threshold. : I will be glad to visit if, as you say, my travels take me there. : But she's Rillow, just as we are. : Good day, Fengrir.Fengrir: And to you, milady.  TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:Fengrir: Hey, fellow RIllow! Congrats on being nobility, and I'd like to invite you to visit the Garden of Delights, which is our wacky collection of tents that is either a city or an outpost or uh something.  I take the opportunity to rest at an in. I have no idea what hiring guards does - do you get jumped at an inn? Do I want to know?  Tolbard apparently didn't hear that the king is saying racist poo poo about him.  : I hear you're the smith to see about a signet ring. : I'm the scion of House Espen, so I'll be needing a ring with my family crest. : I know it. Business is slow. Come see me soon and I'll have it for ye.But... wait. The kingdom is at war and he's the guy responsible for all the weapons of the royal guard and golems. I assume "business is slow" is a lie, right? : Oh, 'n if you haven't tried it, I'd recommend a drink at the Crooked Haggler while ye wait.Huh? The Crooked Haggler is where we picked up Bjalla and made those guys wet their pants. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
I'm serious! The last time we talked to this guy we made fun of him for saying "ho" and the manual claims he's not one for japery! It's not like you can't gate the main quest behind raising money, Baldur's Gate 2 literally did that by having the Shadow Thieves charge you an exorbitant sum to help them win their gang war. After wandering around pointlessly the psychic journal updates to tell us Hamlin is back.  : Maybe not the best place for a rendezvous. Good job turning down the armed escort, idiot. : Yea, looks like.I honestly kinda regret not hitting on Hamlin here because this game's romance - the one romance I saw - had me and my friends on Discord in stitches about how stupid it was. : You really know how to build a man's confidence. Anyway, do you mind if we join forces again? : That makes sense. By all means, come along.: I am grateful, Inta Rume.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
So, I had a spiel about how Hamlin's quest line wasn't finished, but it turns out they added the resolution in a patch. Whether we can finish it is an open question, because in my test playthrough the game bugged out and repeated this dialog in Act 4. However, remember how Fjora told us to come back later for Helgenhar's quest?  That's it! We finished Helgenhar's entire quest line already! I went back to Fjora just before hitting the final boss and it's not done yet, and it turns out that's the entirety of Helgenhar's quest. Why? The game is still in active development and it honestly looks like the developers are still desperately trying to add things to make this seem like a real game.  It's telling! If you go over to the Steam forums the devs are constantly promising - and to be fair, are delivering on - that they're going to add more features such as strongholds, more companion quests, less tedious quests, etc. Of course, we're about to do a companion quest that fucks us over hard later and the main quest that is supposedly "complete" makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Onward!  We have the opportunity to go beat up people for Baflodac (*snicker*) but then I realize it's a Black Geyser sidequest and even the devs admit they suck. Now, this raises the question of "why have them?" Masquerada: Songs and Shadows is an isometric RPG that keeps you pretty well on the rails and doesn't have any sidequests at all, and it's legitimately a good game. There are a lot of sidequests in Black Geyser. If they had cut them down to a few interesting sidequests it would have been a lot better than tripping over some dude who needs 20 bear asses and promises to pay you in GREED.  We have to gently caress around until the ring is ready so I chat up Bjalla here. : What are you hoping to achieve for yourself in the near future? : Very well, what sort of a favor? Wait, I thought Hamlin's achievement was "the shady one"? : Yes, I'm willing. What do you need? Wait, you're a student? I thought you were supposed to be an infamous archmage? Earlier in the game posted:Huh. I guess "Darling of the Court" isn't the same as court mage. : Perhaps I can retrieve the book for you, since i haven't been banned. As far as I know. : Then how do you propose we get our hands on this book? : You're a capable woman, Inta Rume, I'm sure one of your many talents applies here. What are you good at, sweet-talking? Invisibility? The one hundred percent discount?: Anyone with magical ability could apply to the college and become a student, though that seems rather boring. Alright, it's time to go do dumb bullshit to salvage Bjalla's ego. Remember, this court darling joined us as a level 3 dumbass despite being supposedly infamous. : Alright, let's go get that book!: Excellent! I knew I could depend on you, Inta Rume!TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 Siracca is still a buzzkill.  : Now will you tell me what about that portrait was so damned important? "This is the Guild of Thieves, sometimes called the Thieves Guild". : Where are you from, Hamlin? : Quite a distance from the Deroni forests to Isilbright. : What made you decide on Isilbright? Why is "woman" capitalized? This isn't the only time the game does this. I navigate back up through menus to end the conversation. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 The librarian won't let us in and we can't sneak in because of the sword ghosts. I will say the sword ghosts are kind of neat.  A patch added bags of holding, which I need to grind for so we can loot all the things.  This is the guy we need to see about Bjalla's thing. Are you ready for a Harry Potter reference? : Mendelroth. : ... : Why does it look as if you two are about to stab each other?: Look, I can hardly be blamed if a wandering goat- Oh for gently caress's sake. The joke is that this is just like Dumbledore's brother Aberforth, who was arrested for "practicing inappropriate magic on a goat" because he was a goat fucker.   : All right, what exactly happened to this goat of yours?: It was abominable! I've seen horrid misuses of magic in my time, but never -: The spellbook contained a transcription error from an earlier-: Aldebarth was a gentle creature, and so clever! Smarter than many of my students- : Just like a married couple.: ... : My name is Inta Rume, Lady Espen. I've been admiring your lovely college. : My title is Lady Espen, but you may call me Inta Rume. I've been taking a tour of the college. : I am keenly interested in arcane lore, and as everyone knows, Wardenhaft's library is the best in the land.: That is well and good, but we can't have any old soul stumbling in here and getting their dirty paw prints all over our rare works, hm? Excepting faculty - which you clearly are not and never will be - the library is restricted to students, or someone with a special dispensation.: You could also enter as a guest of someone currently enrolled. I don't know whot's going to help you with that, unless I see Bjalla in my office in a state of extreme contrition. : How would one apply for this dispensation? : And? Can you find such a good reason? Wow! Creativity! : Rid us of these resilient rodents and I shall submit your dispensation forthwith. Maybe if you hadn't done more damage to that loving goat then you've ever done while in this party we wouldn't be in this situation. : That's all? I can take care of your rat problem however I see fit? Huh? : Yes, if that's what needs to be done, I'll do it.: Ugh. I feel sick.Aren't you supposed to be a canny survivor? : Godspeed. Now we can go down to the sewer and talk to the giant rats.  : A talking rat. How did this happen? Were you cursed by some wicked sorcery?Marie: Not precisely. Marie: My little sister and brother and I were nosing about in the sewers and found a delicious syrup at the outflow of a drain. It must have been a magic potion, for soon after we grew much smarter, and now we're even able to communicate with big folk. Why is there a manhole in the magic academy cellar? Crumblick: Not that it's helped at all. Beans: I miss my dolly! Marie, Crumblick, and Beans. Consistency is hard. Did one of the developers have an ex named Marie they despised?  : You'll have to leave this cellar. Doesn't seem like much of a hardship, really.Marie: But we can't go back to the sewer. We're orphans you see, and the other rats don't understand us now, they hate us. Beans: And they're all so much bigger and uglier, and I've got a bad leg.  : You all need to calm down. Listen to me! : The secret to surviving as a rat is to never stay in the same place long. Visit the kitchen and fill your bellies, then spend a couple days around the dorms. Later move to the dining hall, then the gardener's shed and so on. You get the idea. (Shady Dealings) : You don't have to go back to the sewer, but there must be somewhere else that's safe and warm. What about the kitchen? (Bargain and Persuasion)Marie: Yes... yes, it's not too far. I think that would work. Beans: Do they have grain at the kit-shun? Crumblick: Yes, they have all kinds of food there. Beans: Hooray! Marie: Thank you so much, Madam. I promise you won't ever see us again. You know, we could stack the three of you in a trench coat and you'd be a more interesting party member than Siracca. Please? Crumblick: As long as you don't ever visit the kitchen.  The rats disappear down the sewer manhole because consistency is hard but making GBS threads out drunken ramblings about "Rothgor the devil-god" is easy.  : It is done. You shan't see those rats in the Wardenhaft cellar ever again.: Excellent!: Here is your dispensation. I had it prepared against your success. : Whatever is going on between you two has nothing to do with me.: Then I trust you need never bother me again.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 Trials of the White Elves is the only thing we're allowed to take from the library.   loving riveting. I don't know why two tribes of not-snow-elves stayed with the guy who tried to genocide them because he wanted to play God, but I don't care. Let's get back to Bjalla and sow the seeds of an extremely stupid scene later on.  : Hello. You wanted to talk?: Acquiring Trials of the White Elves was the first step. Thank you for helping me. : I have to admit I'm impressed, first that you were able to learn anything about spellcraft from people like Mendelroth, and second that you're taking on Trials of the White Elves. I don't know if I've ever fought a beast so dense and intimidating as that tome.I dunno game, it's written at maybe a seventh grade level? It's not trying to do anything literarily interesting and it fails to read as myth because it shits out a ton of extra words. It's certainly not an interesting story. A bunch of elves go to Ice Jail and then the Bad Man feels bad because he just wanted some friends.  Oh I guess she took that as hitting on her. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 Bjalla levels up and we see a triumph of game design. Arcane Studies here powers up your Elevated energy spells, and the only casters that get it are wizards. Thus there is almost never a reason to use Siracca aside from an extremely dumb reason later that will progress directly from this quest. It also means that the skills have exactly one right answer because one of the four increases your ability to dump out nukes and healing spells while the others do literally nothing. I can count the number of prodigy prompts I've encountered on one hand.  We go back to Tolbard and he gives us our expensive 350 gold ring for free.  A little boy comes up to us and calls us Lady. If we comment on it Hamlin gets pissy even though he explicitly asked to stay in the party so we can use our noble influence to protect him. Weirdly of the party members I can think of, the two who are proudest of being commoners are the thief and the necromancer  Also the King summons us immediately by sending a small child instead of a royal guard detachment. Whatever! We give him 10 gold to drop GREED (unless you're going out of your way, the main drawback is that store prices go up) and wander back to the castle.  I cut the escort.  : Today I announce that by royal decree, Lady Inta Rume shall accompany an assemblage of diplomats and other wise friends of the crown to Deron-Guld and bear solemn witness as our most trusted and celebrated diplomat, Sir Gideon Rauche, extends the hand of peace to our deluded enemy.: Lady Inta Rume enjoys my utmost confidence, so let no lord nor lady speak a word against her.But, why? He literally called us a halfwit. : Now go forth with the royal blessing and the full weight of my authority, brave messengers. Let no one stand if your path nor lead you astray from your duty. Stand brave and do the good work of Isilmerald and let a lasting and prosperous peace be the fruit of your noble efforts. Somehow the King decides directly contradicting him is one hundred percent fine and doesn't deserve execution now. Noble: At least it's no loss if she's killed. Noble: What a joke. Noble: Why not send them a basket of fruit? Would do as much good. Noble: Like as not, Deron-Guld will send their heads back in a crate.   This immediately loads us into a new area.  The game wants you to pay attention to its dialog, but I want you to pay attention to the cart horses.  Oh no an evil mage and some robbers.  I really don't understand this diplomatic mission plotline at all. We get saddled with a comical idiot. It's not like we're a threat to the king because if we were he could have just...not raised us to nobility. He doesn't need a reason to crush the rebels because the rebels have literally scattered the corpses of his men all over the merchant's roads and committed an act the Record Keeper described as "an attack on the crown."  : Ah, but we are no mere bandits, milord. We represent a much greater power.Rauche: What, are you ambushing travelers on behalf of Deron-Guld? Because that is exactly where we're headed. : Enough! We're not thieves. We are here for you, sir. Lay down your arms and kneel before us and I offer you a swift death.Has this ever worked?  : How are you different from bandits again? : Right, but *why* do you want to kill everyone?: Our god demands it. There will be no peace until Velianrick is thrown down and Isilmerald fallen. Christ shut up. Rauche: That is not how one goes about achieving peace, sir. Believe me, negotiation and compromise is my life's work. You know, it's funny, because I remember a talk by Dennis Ross where he points out that the most important thing in negotiation is leverage, and we have absolutely none. Dennis Ross is a real life diplomat who worked for the US. These writers have never left a basement in their lives. : Silence! It's a pity you will never witness the world that is to come, but it cannot be helped. Shoot.  : He's dead! Now to the rest. Kill every last one of them!Rauche dies as he lived and then these guys die in like a minute.  No one told the modelers. : What's the significance of the tattoo? As soon as we get some hand of mercy and healing mist scrolls for Bjalla you are out of the party. Forever. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Anyway, we have the King's Missive. I'll go over it in detail next update, but it's basically "I want all your money and land in exchange for nothing because of GREEED! Also, no compromise!"   When I said pay attention to the horses it's because they're on a bizarre animation loop where they go from grazing on the dirt road to rearing up like this while having absolutely no reaction to the cultist battle. I really don't know why they did this, but I suspect it involves the Unity asset store. Next Time Treason railroad! Choo CHOOO!
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2022 17:10
|
|
: Why do these people hate me so much, even though I take every opportunity to denigrate them and their culture that I abandoned? It couldn't possibly be...
: We're intelligent talking rats! Are your expectations subverted, player? Isn't this creative, that we're engaging with the trope of lazy game developers?
: Inta Rume sucks!!!!
: Nooo! I am an ineffectual unfunny diplomat cariacature!
|
I'm in awe that the game continues to have low effort writing that also somehow manages to get worse as it progresses.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2022 17:44
|
|
|
Wait, so they had the forethought to have later NPCs recognize that the player character is a Rillow, but they didn't think to do the same for the scenes around recruiting Siracca? 
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2022 17:55
|
|
|
Wow, it's almost as if everything was written without any real oversight and not gone through a couple of editor passes afterwards to be consistent.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2022 17:57
|
|
|
Goddamn Siracca is like those minority group exemplars who show up on fox news, only worse. And why can't we adopt the the three educated rodents?! They were the best thing so far in this game!
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2022 17:59
|
|
|
"Not one of the better crates" is Achewood-tier 
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2022 18:24
|
|
|
Does this game even have a plot?
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2022 19:00
|
|
|
So, why are we doing this? The kings an obvious rear end in a top hat who took the slightest excuse to take all our poo poo, we can’t believe that doing his bidding is going to work out for us.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2022 20:24
|
|
|
why did we have the option to piss off the king to start a fight that breaks the game could the devs have just... not done that? would think it would be simpler to have the king snark back instead, but  or just not including the line in the first place ...incidentally, is there a point we can off the king without breaking the game?
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2022 20:41
|
|
|
...is the talking rat named Beans meant to be a Discworld reference? Because I'm going to be really mad if it is. This dreck doesn't get to refer to much, much, much, much better writing.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2022 21:39
|
|
|
There are ways I could see fixing up some of these. - The king's main forger having nothing to do in the middle of a war? Supply disruptions means he has no material to work with for the projects that actually need his personal attention. They could farm him out to assist with more mundane repairs, fittings, or crafting, but there's still plenty of blacksmiths available for that (and probably not enough material to keep them occupied either) so it doesn't really matter. So they choose to lock him down instead since he's a national asset and may as well be safe in the meantime. Doesn't really explain why you're let in to see him, but maybe that can be waved away as the forgemaster throwing a hissy fit out of boredom and the nobles have enough dumb requests involving non-important things like jewelry that it keeps him quiet enough. Given the fact that there's a noble uprising and it's supposedly got quite the number of sympathizers, I'm not too sold on that reasoning. - The "special dispensation" that we needed to kill rats for? Stick in an alternate solution that shows that any kingdom noble has the right to tour the facilities, but no one ever uses that right because why would nobles want to visit a school? That's getting way too close to the commoners. It can re-contextualize the rat quest as a time-waster he sends you off on because he knew Bjalla would hate it! He's banking on you both not knowing enough about the rules to question it, while making it minor enough that he can skate by a punishment if you find out later. Find that information, and you can actually skip the quest entirely by calling him out on it. - The king buttering us up in court? Assuming he talked trash about you when no other nobles were listening (I'm willing to assume the king doesn't even acknowledge guards even if it knocks his supposed canniness, and I'm unable to tell these character models apart enough to know who is or isn't a noble), he's playing you up now since a king willing to utterly rip apart some random noble going on a mission he's authorizing is proooobably a bad person to be following. Better to sell that he really is sending a good person for the job, honest! The, uh, better people are doing other, more important things of course. - The king sending us? He personally wants this mission to fail, but feels he needs to make a token effort at diplomacy to prove to the nobles that he's the good guy here and the other side is all the bad men doing all the bad things, honest. We literally have nothing to offer him, but you're a noble and look like a fighter-type so you get thrown under the bus (cart?). The demand list is a good point for this, as it contrasts his talk there with what he really thinks about negotiating. - The note that the diplomat (and by extension the king) has no leverage? The devs could add in talk earlier throughout the campaign (back as far as the opening treason room scene if they wanted!) about the revolting areas not having the food supplies to keep up a war of attrition either. Unless I'm remembering incorrectly (and I could be, I am not going back to check in detail), they've only talked about the mining regions rebelling directly, so it wouldn't be a stretch to say that farmland on the other side of the kingdom's defenses. The kingdom can't sustain a war without raw materials coming in though, so both sides have reasons to compromise if neither can secure the wins necessary. Can't do anything with the rest of it with only tweaks, and even the "leverage" thing feels pretty flimsy. The starting point for negotiations offers no real concessions, any diplomat should have recognized that their own side isn't actually interested compromise so why bother keeping up the charade for what is probably a death sentence, and why not actually put reasonable demands (which would undermine the king treating this as a doomed mission done as political hedging) so they're more likely to believe it! You may as well on the off-chance that someone gets to return from the mission and can give some information on the state/resources/preparedness of the enemy. Finding a way to communicate all of this in a way that lets readers connect the dots and trust that any unexplained holes in the story/plans are due to characters/the player acting with incomplete information rather than the devs not thinking things through means it'd take more than surface-level tweaks. Stuff like the gods choosing Inta because Rillows resist the curse while also talking about how materialistic they already are undermine that credibility quite a bit, and that has nothing to do with any of the other things mentioned here. Cooked Auto posted:Wow, it's almost as if everything was written without any real oversight and not gone through a couple of editor passes afterwards to be consistent. It all comes down to this. There's a reason I've only really done editing in my spare time and not writing. Making all the pieces of a story fit together is hard, much less building the entire world that exists behind it. I won't fault writers (individually or as part of a team) for writing inconsistent or contradictory plot points, falling back on problematic stereotypes, having too much fluff because they figure it'll be easier to cut down rather than build up later etc. etc. It's all a ton of work, and the longest I've managed to go with a story written on my own is about 20 pages long as a result. I do have a problem if they can't find someone else (because this shouldn't be done by the writers) to buckle down and sort out whether everything is consistent, followed by if it's problematic. For something as text-heavy and expansive as an open-world RPG, building a good process for revisions is more important than the actual writing in my opinion. It won't be good enough on the first, twelfth, or fortieth pass because the story itself won't be done yet. Accept that and plan accordingly for the review process.
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2022 22:48
|
|
|
The dark, dark truth of writing is that doing it by the seat of the pants is a recipe for disaster, witnessed here, and that there's no substitute for a solid vision for the end product, hard work, and probably a formalized outline. If it's larger than ten pages, it needs a plan, bonus point for pulling a Zola and keeping character sheets and doll of the characters and tossing them when they die. Oh yeah, the reason proper nouns come up with initial capital letters is because it's the way it's done in modern German and habits die hard, I imagine we might see dialogue formatted the German way, or perhaps Austrians have their own way of doing it?
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2022 01:54
|
|
|
Does Baflodac have Bafomdads?
|
|
#
?
Jul 4, 2022 05:15
|
|
|
Get on the Treason Train! Choo CHOOOOOOOO!!!!!! Welcome back! Last time we met a turboracist king who sent us on a really cool diplomatic mission to go treat with the rebels who literally murdered our father in front of us. Then we got ambushed by a bunch of moronic Satanists who declared there would be no peace because their god demanded it, murdered the real diplomat and then got turned into blood splatters by an angry elephant and some randos she met. Now, let's see what exactly our vast diplomatic skills were supposed to accomplish?  This guard stops us at the door and tells us there's plague quarantine. Helg is upset with bad manners and Hamlin is annoyed we didn't just... climb over the walls of a loving rebel city. The guards arbitrarily send the caravan back while we are allowed in and Hamlin whines about being called our servant.   Let's take a look at this missive, shall we? From the Genius Mind of King Velianrick posted:Most Honorable Lords, Ladies, and Rebels Against the Crown of Isilmerald. In other words, get hosed Deron-Guld!  I immediately go shopping.  Where Isilmerald has war golems, Deron-Guld has a bunch of giants. I think the solid steel robots are probably better but what do I know?  With these scrolls for Bjalla there's a good chance we never need Siracca again!  Sadly for the LP, I think they patched this quest. : Is this where Beline used to live? : Yes, and who are you? Wait, aren't you... Yes, she used to work with you at the estate! You must be her! I like how she's not in any way mad her hometown launched the assault that murdered her sister. : Beline told me she was sorry about declining your gift before she left. I came to bring it back to her resting place. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
I'm sorry, everyone. I reloaded this a bunch of times, and every time I passed the persuasion check. This is not an automatic reply. If you fail the check, Winona basically says "but it's really pretty and I want to keep it" and you can never ask her again, meaning that she deliberately consigns her sister to an eternity of torment wandering the Espen estate. It's hilarious and I'm mad I can't show it off. Oh well.  We can make unfunny antivax jokes.  Anyway, we need to tell the guards that we're here with the message and we go into full cutscene mode.   Fun fact: there is a known issue with massive loading times. The devs' actual advice is "make sure you install the game on an SSD."   This man is about to completely confuse the hell out of me and it's not my fault. : Indeed I have, Lord Frelsi, in the form of this letter. And may I extend His Majesty's most felicitous greetings. : Thank you, milady. I'm sorry, what the gently caress are you doing here? I know he's a high ranking rebel, but we'll get to this. : I don't bandy insults with outlaws and patricides. : You- How- I ought to-! : Lord Aldnar, your temper serves you better on the battlefield than in council. We all of us have more pressing questions to attend to.Why is Aldnar in command of anything? Keep this question in mind.  : To see whether any of you are ready to give up this foolishness before Deron-Guld is overrun. (Bargain and Persuasion)The game assumes you didn't read the terms because you're not actually allowed to answer honestly without talking about the ambush. : Perhaps convening this council was ill advised.Lady Thora: Well, things have gotten a little out of hand... Lady Solveig: Like Lord Aldnar, I am most curious to know how you came by your noble title. I had never heard your name before today, Lady Inta Rume.  As far as I can tell nothing you say here really matters. : I am Lord Espen's heir by Clea Wellgrave, once a servant in his house. Though Aldnar is the eldest, he forfeited his title when he killed my father.: You'll forfeit more than a title if you don't watch your tongue, swine.Why are they keeping Aldnar around? He has no title because both his father and the king revoked it. He has no lands. He has no army. His only successful military operation was a tactical success in that he destroyed Lord Espen's estate, but a complete strategic failure because he tarnished his reputation as a patricide, he killed a bunch of persuadable nobles who were debating going over to the rebellion, and he presumably got a decent amount of men killed storming the walls. Lord Talin: Easy there, Lord Aldnar. You may continue your spat when the council's business is finished. What exactly does he contribute to the council? When he defected Lord Espen was alive, so presumably he didn't bring in fighting men. It's not really clear if he's a veteran of the Rillow war or not, because as far as I know the Rillow war is only mentioned briefly in the manual and the manual... goes places.  At this point Lord Frelsi has left the room with the missive, which literally just says "give me all your poo poo or die, there's no negotiation allowed". : His Majesty is ready to negotiate an agreement than balances Deron-Guld's vast wealth and Isilbright's military prowess (Bargain and Persuasion).Lady Thora: Spoken like a true diplomat. : His terms are quite strict: increased taxes, installation of a garrison of loyal troops in Deron-Guld, and a public disavowal of the rebellion by all members of the War Council (Bargain and Persuasion) We can, uh, infer this. It doesn't really matter. Maybe I should have taken the latter option? Lady Cythine: That'll be the day! Lady Solveig: Strict, she says, more like extortionate.  I should have taken the last option but the lure of using persuasion skills got me. : His Majesty is promising to relax taxes in return for a larger share of ore and a bigger military commitment from Deron-Guld to protect the kingdom from her enemies (Bargain and Persuasion)Ok, now we're lying and kinda trying to change the terms here. Lord Gaenor: That all *sounds* good. I wonder if we could see it in writing. Lord Zander: Ugh. I already know what promises are worth.  So why didn't it to the class and have them interrogate us instead? : Get on with it!Lord Gaenor: Yes, let's have it, Lord Frelsi. : King Velianrick's demands are as follows...: The disarming and demobilization of our army.Lord Talin: No! Lord Gaenor: That is not going to happen while I sit on this council.  Well, no, what I meant was, your units will be disbanded and the men subsumed into the royal army. We even were told this from the beginning of the game! The First Update posted:
I assume we're not just going to leave all the men lying around, especially as there was a Rillow War mentioned in the manual and never mentioned in the game again.  ...poo poo.  Ok, when we come back with the Royal Army I'm having them make you clean all the horseshit. Lady Solveig: As if the beggary to which we've been reduced is not enough. Well you have the finances to raise an entire rear end army to rebel against the king, so I'm not exactly sympathetic. Lord Talin: He may as well try and milk a stone. The thread was discussing how the King is trying to make it seem like diplomacy broke down, but the game told us earlier that rebel forces made it all the way to the outskirts of the royal capital! He doesn't need this to justify mobilizing the royal army and crushing the rebellion. He does NOT need to convince the unaligned nobles, because Aldnar just murdered a whole bunch to satisfy a petty vendetta and now the rebellion can't be trusted. Instead of say, removing Aldnar from command and putting him on trial to win public opinion, they're doing... whatever the hell this is.  I don't even understand the point of this. Shipping overland is expensive at medieval technology, and I don't think there's a river between Deron-Guld and Isilmerald. Looking it up there's not, you have to march to a lake. : Outrage upon outrage! The game at least makes it clear that the terms are deliberately provocative and insulting.  I mean, you guys also dragged a bunch of people into a civil war against the king, what did you expect? Lord Gaenor: Has Velianrick gone mad? That is the only answer that makes sense to me. : That is all. Lords and ladies, what say you? Can we go home now?  I'm not sure if you get around this by telling them Rauche was killed or that the terms really are poo poo.  Uh, no, we explicitly opened with "kneel before the king or... you DIE!"  Again, why are you here? You have single-handedly hosed over the entire cause of Deron-Guld with the murder of your own father and all those potentially supportive nobles. Lord Gaenor: Lord Aldnar is right. This is a travesty and I will not partake of it! Do the others respect him? Why? Blythe called him out as a hot-tempered idiot, and that is absolutely NOT the person you want commanding your forces because they can be provoked into doing something stupid. As we saw.  Not sure why he gets a portrait. Sidequest maybe?  When the royal army sacks the city you will be spared.  I... I don't know why you think this. Is it because you're stupid? That's not a joke by the way, half the nobles in the game have been portrayed as useless buffoons. The king literally wrote a letter saying "give me everything you possess and I will not negotiate on this matter".  I can't blame Zander here because Frelsi didn't read THAT part. As it stands we have a letter from the king stating that the terms cannot be changed by anyone.  The game almost wants to comment on the uselessness of the nobility but decides against it. Lord Talin: Whatever the council's feelings on these matters, no decisions may be made without every member's participation. Is that why Aldnar hasn't been booted out? Everyone trusts the man who looks like an untrustworthy angry criminal who also used your soldiers to murder his own father and squander the rebellion's support? : Lord Talin is right. Let's adjourn for now and think on these matters privately.: Lady Inta Rume? Would you attend me in my chambers please? The game is trying to do something with Frelsi but doesn't have the writing chops to pull it off. The Manual, on Lord Frelsi posted:Lord Frelsi is a highly ranked nobleman from a long line of aristocracy, and the current governor of the rebel city of Deron-Guld. Long a fixture of the royal court at Isilbright, Frelsi was a trusted advisor to the king and past master at navigating the capital’s intrigues. He now acts as the de-facto leader of the rebels’ War Council, though technically all who sit at that table are equals. The game is trying to make Lord Frelsi seem like a highly competent man who started the rebellion over legitimate grievances and never wanted it to come to blows. The problem is that none of this writing makes sense. He's supposed to be trustworthy because he's an old friend of our father's, but none of that is mentioned! The conspirators in the beginning don't mention him at all, even though you'd think someone would say something like "Your old friend Lord Frelsi is a trustworthy man, why would he do this"? : Thank you for your kind words. Your compatriots didn't seem to be particularly open-minded about the missive from Isilbright. : Aldnar is a bastard. Being one myself, I know better than most. : I should tell you; I knew your father. He was a good man. Stubborn and wrong about who he supported, but a good man nonetheless.Remember, Frelsi doesn't know about the Treason Meeting.  : I had expected some surprise, but not outright hostility.: Well, you see... I reached out to your father as the rebellion began. I believed he would understand the reasons behind our cause. Wait, what? How did this happen? The Very First Update posted:If Lord Espen declared for the king, why was this happening in his house? Now, we can guess what happened - the weird Satan cult guys who killed Rauche and converted Aldnar intervened here and ambushed the messenger because they want the war to continue.  Wait, hold up. Aldnar organized a unit of conscripts into a force capable of marching from Deron-Guld to the Espen Estate - which is very close to the capital - without being detected by royal scouts, organized these men who had not fought together into a cohesive army that outnumbered the bodyguard forces of at least five powerful nobles, and managed to storm a defended castle with them? : My father killed your messenger? That seems unlike the man I once knew. We don't have the option to tell Frelsi that he was still debating going over to the rebels at the meeting in the beginning OR about the people who ambushed Rauche. We don't have a full picture, Frelsi doesn't have a full picture, and at this point the king's kind of hung us out to dry. The game wants us to believe Frelsi's trustworthy because he's an old friend of our father's - and I'll give it to you straight, Frelsi is on the level. None of this Satan cult poo poo is any of Frelsi's doing. Of course, we can't tell Frelsi that Aldnar is into Satan garbage even though he was bragging about it like an idiot to his father before killing him.  : Aldnar murdered our father in cold blood. That many troops on the road and no one noticed them missing? ...and this was OK? Wouldn't all of these troops answer to the actual lords they swore oaths to? If Frelsi was a longtime advisor to King Velianrick, wouldn't he have fought in the Rillow War? Did Aldnar provide his own contingent of troops? Where did they come from? Why didn't they discipline Aldnar for misusing their troops? What is Aldnar bringing to this War Council aside from his own sword and poor impulse control? Are there other Satanists on the war council? Why can't we tell Frelsi that Aldnar basically bragged about worshipping Satan? Deron-Guld has a temple of Alnarius, they're not ALL Satanists. : Well, he is dead now and there is nothing to be done about it.Unfortunately, we're railroaded into being a loving idiot. Now, admittedly, we have little leverage, but we are here as an emissary of the King, who has entire armies and golems mobilizing to crush the rebellion. : What you say is true. But you must understand...: The King sent you here as an insult. Yes, and? I get it, but there's another message too. You killed Lord Espen, but you didn't destroy his house. Second, Espen acknowledged us as his legitimate heir in his last will. We can of course tell Frelsi none of this, presumably because we're a scullery maid and all the snooty nobles are mad that we used to be a commoner.  You don't say. We get the option to call them out as traitors, and Henry VIII would have attaindered all of these dumbasses by now. : Well, so far as I can tell, at least some of you deserve it. One of you in particular. No poo poo! The king has shown that he's willing to promote or demote nobles. With Aldnar's help, the rebellion has shown they're willing to MURDER nobles. Guess which is worse? : So then what is to be done about the missive?: The other nobles and I will need time to discuss a response. The mood at the moment seems... well, rather hostile. I am more inclined toward keeping lines of communication open, despite the King's insult. But there are other, pressing matters which I must also attend to, of more immediate import. : There are bodies piled in the streets of your city. What's going on? : Yes. You'll have noticed on your way into the city that there are very few people out on the streets. Alive, anyway. You'll also have noticed the markings on buildings, denoting houses where the plague has taken root. Nobody is allowed inside those places and nobody out.: A month ago, citizens of Deron-Guld and our soldiers stationed here began to come down with a terrible illness. It is a terrible wasting illness; it begins with coughing and progresses to fever and death. Healers, priests, and wizards alike sought for a cure, but have come up with nothing. This doesn't necessarily mean throwing people into the meatgrinder as my main man Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus would have you know, but considering context it does. In this context... why? Throwing people into the meatgrinder is both a sure way to destroy your own morale and lose support for the cause. Is the king really that bad that people are going to be willing to die in droves to topple him? You certainly don't seem to have popular support as you're relying heavily on conscription.  In other words we can just... go the hell home. The rebellion is hosed. We delivered the terms. They have no fighting men and Aldnar proved the rebels are perfectly willing to just murder nobility. : What is the state of the war against Isilbright?: It is not going well, I'm afraid. Our forces are stretched thin across the countryside. We recently had some sort of sabotage in the iron mines, which has halted production of weapons and trade goods. The war has drawn out too long without many decisive victories and it is hurting morale.Earlier in the game posted:
 Jesus Christ! So a bunch of the townsfolk resent being dragged into this war, the rebel leader admits he has no resources left to fight, they're low on food, they can't produce iron, they're all dying of plague... : What are your duties here? Wait, so you're the commander of the armies? Why didn't you punish Aldnar? Why does no one seem to care that he went rogue? Does he have political support? The Council seemed to barely tolerate him and considered him a hotheaded dumbass.  : You mentioned disappearances? What about all those men on the streets? Seriously, this rebellion's hosed. : I think I have heard enough. What must be done before you can attempt to convince the War Council to move forward with diplomacy? Good! That's where we want you! Surrender!  NO! We don't want you to be able to continue the war! : Can I have some time to think about it? Why not? We've got you by the nuts! I get our character isn't supposed to be a cutthroat diplomat, but this is literally a case of when your enemy is self-destructing don't do anything to stop it. Incidentally, if we tell him no, he just says this.  TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
None of this makes sense. Frelsi basically tipped his hand and showed he had nothing. Instead of going "alright, without royal assistance this city is going to die and you're losing support" Frelsi refuses to surrender. The game decides suddenly we want to help Frelsi because... why, exactly? Even if we despised the king this is not a winning hand. The rebellion isn't standing up on behalf of the common folk, the rebellion is a bunch of rich nobles mad that they have to pay taxes to that poopy ol' King. poo poo, the king promised us we could keep any lands we conquered, if we act quickly enough we might be able to take out a loan to hire mercs and just march into Deron-Guild, making us king of the iron mines. I get what the game is trying to do, Frelsi is supposed to be a good man trapped in an awful situation not of his making, but his response to "your soldiers murdered my father" is "eh, whatever". It's loving baffling!  Why is Lord Espen "my master" instead of "my father"?  I swallow what little remains of my pride and pledge us to continue the game. : Very well. What must I do?: I am still debating what might be done about the plague. But in the meantime, I have a lead on the disappearances that I would like you to investigate. The two may well be connected, as well.How? It's a loving plague!  TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
Might as well turn in the golden conch, but this whole time I begin to wonder. If we go to the king and tell him that possibly the rebels killed Rauche, but also that the Deron-Guld rebellion is on the brink of collapse, will the developers have thought of that in any conceivable way?  : Yes, I brought the golden shell. Well, that's a lot better than we usually do. This choice doesn't matter as far as reward goes - you can be a real dick and get 1 gp, but the nicer you are the less GREED you get. : Farewell, Beline. May you find peace in the next life. : Thank you, my friend. My last thoughts in this world are of gratitude for your kindness.This feels like it should be meaningful considering how she spent all her life yelling at Inta Rume, a trained swordsmen, to fetch and serve drinks, but whatever! It's a ton of XP!  TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 So what happens if we go see the king? Is he not going to let us in? Is he going to be mad and think we deserted? Are we going to get a big choice to help the king for one final push to end this rebellion forever?  Nope! I don't know if this is a bug, but he literally gives the exact same speech he gave last update!  Seriously! Even though that caravan with the horses and teamsters all went back to the capital with the news, apparently no one told the king and he's doing the same poo poo.  The only difference is that we don't get kicked out of the palace immediately. Is this a bug? What a loving joke!  Dammit. Next time: Memba Baldur's Gate? TheGreatEvilKing fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Jul 6, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2022 04:56
|
|
: Whatever the loyalties of, er, the young lord of House Espen, the southern nobles have many legitimate complaints: heavy, some say ruinous, taxation; delayed shipments thanks to the crown's regimen of inspections and checkpoints; the king's insistence that Deron-Guld's military, even the town watch, must be trained in the north. It's quite a lot.
: How can you not have heard? Have you been living at the bottom of the sea? Deron-Guld declared war on Isilbright a few days back, and has already gained a foothold in the south of the kingdom. Militarily, it was quite the feat!
I'm not owned!
: Oh poo poo.
: Well how'd you come by your noble title? I've never heard of you.
: Woah buddy calm down.
: The king's here in good faith, right?
: Waaaah! What do we get out of this?
|
I suppose you could justify us suddenly helping Frelsi as us wanting to help with the plague specifically because the peasants didn't ask for any of this and because plagues tend to spread and we don't want it near our stuff, maybe. As for Aldenar, dude can apparently produce armies out of thin air with nobody noticing, that seems useful. Or maybe everyone's just scared that he'll murder them next if they try to scold him. Maybe they all know he's a Satanist already. Sure would be nice if the actual in-game writing hinted at any of the explanations we've been coming up with in the thread.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2022 08:51
|
|
|
Actually I don't see a contradiction in Rillow being naturally greedy and the curse of greed affecting them less. Due to their higher baseline of greed, the curse must be much stronger before their behaviour is obviously attributable to the curse. To a casual and uninformed observer this manifests as resistance to the curse 
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2022 09:42
|
|
|
So does the whole "forged paperwork" plot point ever get brought up again, because it suspiciously looks like the king forged the paperwork so he could seize the lands. Good lord this game is bad, and I hope you get to bash in the king's head later on. The guy is a massive dick, and I vote you kill him the first non-game breaking opportunity you get.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2022 10:43
|
|
|
It is weirdly incompetent writing that the game forces you to throw in with the group that killed your father. It was literally the inciting incident, and framed as dramatically as this game can pull off. Having Aldnar on the council itself is stupid for the reasons outlined, but also because having him not be there provides much better motivation: you could justify throwing in with the rebels as infiltrating them to find your father's killer. But no, I guess we just join the rebels because the king is a dick and took the property we only just learned we had the rights to anyway.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2022 14:43
|
|
|
Goddamn I just finished rereading this post and it still makes no sense, I hope you end this LP by murdering every noble and starting a dictatorship of the proletariat.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2022 15:01
|
|
|
Randalor posted:So does the whole "forged paperwork" plot point ever get brought up again, because it suspiciously looks like the king forged the paperwork so he could seize the lands. Good lord this game is bad, and I hope you get to bash in the king's head later on. The guy is a massive dick, and I vote you kill him the first non-game breaking opportunity you get. There is a plot opportunity to kill the king. It is gated by a plot decision so mind-numbingly stupid I expect it to lose the vote.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2022 15:21
|
|
|
TheGreatEvilKing posted:There is a plot opportunity to kill the king. There will be voting involved?
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2022 17:30
|
|
|
Regallion posted:There will be voting involved? It's one of the few actual choices so yes, there's going to be a thread vote.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2022 18:26
|
|
|
...And you think we won't go for the stupid option?
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2022 18:34
|
|
|
I mean, the other option might be even dumber. I’m a big fan of how we voted to give Hamlin the painting and he just gets mugged and loses it immediately. I assume the quest will come back up eventually but it would be really really funny if that was the end of that.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2022 18:40
|
|
|
I hate this.
|
|
#
?
Jul 6, 2022 21:01
|
|
|
Keldulas posted:I hate this. Yeah, game looks stupid as hell. On the other hand, LPs like this are fun as hell, at least for me, so I can't bring myself to hate it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2022 00:08
|
|
|
I could think of some way to salvage plot points in the last update. No chance of that this time, the gulf between "being part of treason room" and "not mentioning any of this to Frelsi" is too great. The simple fix of letting you explain what happened would probably change the entire later plot, and reworking treason room changes the story beats for the entire game! The overall story design from this point forward would be better off nuked and started over, even if it'd involve rewriting the original design document. If the plot has to function on the PC being completely unreasonable at a critical point, it's not a good plot since it makes us, the player, into a moron. This is a level of disconnect that really makes me wonder how it managed to get to this point. I assume this isn't written/designed by a huge team, so it's not like bureaucracy should be the excuse.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2022 01:11
|
|
|
I think the way it got to this point is simple: the main part of it is clearly that new locations need to have new quests, side quests and main quests, another part is laziness, putting an agent of the king undercover in the area means making a new character, with a new dialogue tree, stapling it on the traitor-in-chief is easier, and the third is that for all the presentation of nobles as complete fuckwits, for all the game points them out as terrible rulers, it doesn't go as far as saying that maybe they shouldn't rule, or should be pushed to rule better, there's a certain slavish adherence to generic fantasy elements and not ever rocking the boat in there, every element that could be described as original (the orcs' tusks aren't poking out of their mouths, and, huh, let me see) had zero in depth change. Now perfectly generic fantasy works fine, BG1 was perfectly good, but there's a competence level they don't reach.
|
|
#
?
Jul 7, 2022 18:21
|
|
|
Transcendence Welcome back! Last time on Black Geyser, we underwent a terrible liberation from the constraints of such vulgar things as "consistent characterization", "a coherent plot", and of course "good prose" as the game decided we were going to work for Lord Frelsi, the man leading the rebellion that killed our father.  We're back in Deron-Guld, and our instructions are to meet up with a poorly defined "friend" of Lord Frelsi's. I go shopping offscreen instead.  People in the thread have been trying to come up with ways to fix the game and I'll be honest, I don't think you can. I was working on a "can we fix it" post myself.  There are just too many disjointed attempts at narrative threads that kind of explain what the game is going for but are scattered all over the game and compendium. For example, it's kind of clear - if you read the manual and paid attention during the Treason Meeting at the beginning - the king was a good king until he was cursed. The game has no way to convey this, so he just comes across as an irrational power-tripping dickhead who mocks you while stealing your house.  I think the reason we're supposed to be doing all of this is because Lord Frelsi told us he'd negotiate with the king if we did all of this, but the problem is that Lord Frelsi doesn't have any leverage anymore and this is treason. We could just leave. We did that last update.  Of course, the game clumsily shoehorns us into going back and doing Frelsi's nonsense because the king literally never updated after the Rauche update. Not only is it lazy, it immediately snaps the player out of the game as nothing feels real. Characters don't behave like real people, they behave like, well... The Illuminatus Trilogy posted:Joe Malik suddenly began laughing. “I’ve got it,” he cried, “I’ve got it!” Why did we defect to Lord Frelsi? Because the writers made us do it. Why was there a Treason Meeting in front of the Royal Guard? Because the writers made them do it. Why does the king execute us, but not the nobles blatantly defying him in front of the entire court? Because the writers made him do it.  They spent a bunch of time recording voice lines for all these characters instead of cohering their narrative. Frelsi's Friend here is just as nonsensical as the rest of them. : Have we met? : No, but we have seen you and heard of you. Your name carries on the wind, in both dark places and light.Now, this kind of makes sense because Inta Rume got elevated by the king and publicly sent as an emissary, but we keep having to triple-check every statement made by any one of these characters - not because they're necessarily lying, but because everything is contradictory nonsense.  : Perhaps, but how do I know I can trust you? Do you have a name? This is about to get real stupid. : Gabriel? (Intelligence): Clever, clever. Just so. This is idiotic. Remember, Lord Frelsi didn't give us a description at all, and the only way we identify him is - you guessed it - hovering over him looking for the moniker of "Frelsi's friend".  Well, yes. Gabriel Prosser and Gabriel Lorca are two different people, but Gabriel Prosser is distinguished by the rest of the Prossers by his first name and also his 2 ton steel balls. Joking aside, that is how names work - it's a classification system! I don't understand what this dumbass is rambling about, and because nothing in this game is coherent or makes sense it's unclear what we're supposed to take this as. Is this supposed to be the insight of a master spy realizing that a name can hide anything, or is he a blundering incompetent trying to impress us and failing? : Whatever you say. Look, do you have information for me or not?There's also the little matter that in the city ruled by Lord Frelsi everyone claims to be Lord Frelsi's friend, because that's where the power is. Is Lord Aldnar Frelsi's friend? He could fit the description. What about, I dunno, Lady Solveig? : We do.: Perhaps you have heard that the mines have ceased to function? One mine has been left empty much longer than the rest. Forbidden, forgotten, it lay vacant and vagrant. They are desperately trying to invoke someone like Varys from George RR Martin's works but it just fails. You know who this guy actually reminds me of? Jordan Peterson rambling about how women are chaos or some poo poo.  TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 We could go to the mines, but I have a better idea. Does Aldnar have any special dialog for us?  I yoink this quest item in the process, because let's be real, Lord Aflark was probably a traitor and I would also like to burn all the nobles in this city.  Lord Frelsi is teaching this maid to read, which is interesting and characterizes him as someone who might almost be sympathetic to elevating the common folk, but this never comes up again.  It's not perfect, but who knows.  Shut the gently caress up traitor.  That's it. That's all he has to say. It's voice acted and everything, but given the other lords were giving him tacit approval to carry out his quarrel we can't provoke him or challenge him to a duel or anything.  So i give the order to gently caress him up.  Aldnar has an extremely stupid role to play in the plot, so these "Deron-Guld Elite" guards literally just teleport in in groups of three.  I'm pretty sure killing Aldnar here rendered us unable to finish the game, but we avenged Lord Espen and saved all the other morons in this city  The game then spawns what are, as far as I can tell, infinite waves of teleporting guards.  There are two warriors and a cleric. The cleric does bludgeoning damage and the warriors deal slashing damage that Inta is immune to. Thus I literally left the game running to go feed Lugosi the cat and when I got back the battle was still going.  I get that gameplay isn't going to mirror story 100%, but if you have infinity teleporting elite guards why can't you spare people to go into the mines again?  Oh wait, I forgot they put this on both the cleric and spellweavers' class spell list despite them both getting regular healing. Bleh. Anyway, I missed a screenshot of the journal, but the game claims Frelsi's friend was unable to tell us what is in the mines. Keep this in mind.  Bjalla wants to chat about her thing. This WILL gently caress us later but I do it anyway.  : Did the book tell you anything useful? What's next? : How did the diadem come into your possession? The achievement for completing Bjalla's quest is "The Destined". : What does your fancy headpiece do? : What did you find out from Trials of the White Elves? We were literally just at the Hall of Records. The Record Keeper is your friend. Are you telling me that despite having a dwarf expert they don't have anyone on - I refuse to type that proper noun - snow elves? : What do we need to do next? Why a wise old woman? Why not a sage of any gender, or a young researcher traveling back from the snow elf lands, or a mystic who can comm - gently caress it. : That's all I wanted to ask for now.: Yes, all right.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 These guys are leaving because the mines aren't producing any more and they don't have any jobs. It's amazing how neither us nor Bjalla - another noble who owes her position to the King - come up with the idea of just loving leaving and waiting the rebellion out. Also did you notice that commoners almost never get names in this game?  This guy became undead via GREED and then attacks us and dies. We loot all his treasure.  Oh, Aldnar is responsible for leading the armies? Frelsi said he did that and that there have been no major victories. Is Frelsi lying to us? Aldnar certainly hasn't come off as a cunning man, we literally owned him as soon as we stepped into the War Council. Aldnar as soon as we insult him posted:
 Having looted the undead guy we accuse this looter of murder and he attacks us, dies, and drops armor for Hamlin.  Welcome to the first dungeon of Black Geyser!  Some people might remember how Baldur's Gate 1 had a plot point where you had to go into the iron mines to stop the bad men from sabotaging it, and here we are going into the iron mines to stop the bad men from sabotaging it.  This is a dumb puzzle I'll be back to in a bit.  This guy is a friendly talking ghoul.  He wants us to kill all the necromancers and ghouls in the mine and bring him their hearts.  Well poo poo for a magic weapon you can have as many dead Black Geyser NPCs as you like. They'll go to a better world where basic logic works.  The mine is, of course, infested with necromancers and ghouls.  Unfortunately to open the door we need to do the melon puzzle.  : Bjalla, what should I do here?Bjalla is our resident melon expert apparently. Get your mind out of the gutter.  You're not making it easy with that last sentence!  Symbolic like a metaphor huh. : Hmm, what do I know about this plant? (Brewing and Drying)I will never interact with that loving alchemy system and you can't make me, devs!  Suddenly, a third person narrator out of nowhere!  The correct order is 6 -> 4 -> 5 -> 3 as I recall, it's supposed to mimic the seasons and I really do not care. Skipping ahead as all we're missing is "the plant is happy"   : Reach out to grab the melon. : For a moment, it seems that the plant might close around your arm and draw you in. But instead, the fruit in its depths comes free with a gentle *pop*. It doesn't matter what you do here. : Eat it.: You crack the melon open, expecting to find nothing but the sweetest, most succulent fruit of your life. To your surprise, you find a runestone nestled in its delicious depths. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
We can now go through the door of evil magic and reach the lower level of the mines.  It is also filled with ghouls and traps.  There are fanatical cultists who suffer an elephant related accident and get a personal audience with their god.  These necromancers summon more ghouls to harass us. It's very annoying and they die for it.  There are a bunch of weird blood cauldrons and I don't understand why they're here other than to be spooky.  Aside from the necromancers most everyone down here is an autoattack moron.  Somehow the quest concludes despite there still being an entire boss encounter full of hearts left.  : Here, take them. : Yessss! : You are a vile, disgusting creature birthed from Rothgor's personal latrine. I like you.This is the answer that gets you the reward AND dodges greed! See, you brought him all those hearts because you were friends! It's not greedy at all! If anyone wants to see Inta go more greedy I'm happy to oblige, but I'm holding off on a vote until we get to one more incoherent plot point.  This is a hint for a future quest I believe. I skipped most of the sidequests for obvious reasons. : Livvvve. And leave us in peacccce.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 Sadly this is not a weapon and we cannot use a cool sacrificial knife to kill our enemies.  Time for PLOT!  : Next time I will try to be more quiet. So as to not... wake the dead. : The dead are not what should have you concerned. I am. You trespass upon the goddess' sanctuary.Lady it's a fuckin mine.  I want to remind you that this is literally a sanctuary filled with blood cauldrons of dead people. I have no idea what she's supposed to be babbling about, because so far all she's done is destruction and disruption. : Creation, destruction, call it what you want. Are you responsible for the plague ravaging Deron-Guld? Huh? I'm very confused now. What are her purposes? Is she targeting specific people? No. Are you with the guys who attacked us on the road? You dress the same. No. : Are you the one who has been kidnapping citizens of the city? Of course, we can't ask questions like "do you know anything about the plague", "why are you in this plagued city looking for sacrificial victims", "why are you here", "what does Zoria want", "can you help me avoid getting railroaded by Lord Frelsi", or "did Zoria kill the editors". : I need you to leave this place and stop what you're doing here.: I don't think so. I'll be staying. You will too. But... why do you need blood? Is Zoria one of those Aztec deities who needs blood to live? I, uh, don't think so, but who knows with this game. TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 This fight is actually a pretty nasty wakeup call if you're not paying attention. I actually went and did some shopping before coming back here, which is why Inta is carrying the Widowmaker 2-hander instead of her usual sword and board.  The first order of business is to poo poo summons everywhere. There are no arbitrary limits on how many critters you can have out at a time, so we dump a bunch of wolves and spiders into the chokepoint.  The AI loves targeting summons, so here you can see that one of our little spiders has been hit by a confusion effect that would be devastating if it went off on a PC.  Bjalla drops a fireball on the losers. It does very little damage.  Siracca nails the Tattered Woman with a Mindbreak spell, confusing her. The game does not hand out a lot of area effect crowd control so we can only get the Tattered Woman, but I am reluctantly forced to concede that Siracca can be useful. I'm still dumping her when we get the chance.  From there it's just a matter of mopping up and stabbing all the bad people.  We get this presumably holy book.   This is actually foreshadowing. We of course have absolutely no context for this and when we do get context the existence of this book will make absolutely no loving sense whatsoever. For what it's worth, the Goddess of Greed is named "Zornilsa" and you should absolutely not confuse the two.  Also we got the bloodfoam stone for those mutually exclusive fetch quests. If anyone cares comment, otherwise it's going to the witch.  This Zoria titan didn't aggro for reasons so we murder it.  It drops a foot we need for... you guessed it! Another fetch quest!  I've beaten the game and know the whole plot so I don't understand why they are doing this.  : The mine was filled with ghouls and necromancers. I think the necromancers were in some sort of cult. They were the ones kidnapping citizens of the town, killing them and turning them into ghouls.That's a stretch. All she said was she was sacrificing them, does that mean turning them into ghouls?  Wait, what?  You KNEW? Also, what's this about dreams?  Wait, were you trying to get us killed by sending us in without warning us about ghouls and necromancers? Why? You realize that if the party had died down there there would be five more ghouls in the army of evil, right?  Did you tell them there was a vague threat and it turned out to be necromancers? : Let me guess, you need me to go find your missing mercenaries?But wait, there's more! The last update posted:I thought you didn't have the soldiers to investigate this! I know at least one of the mercenaries lives in Deron-Guld, if you don't have the manpower to do this how were you able to dispatch these men? Was this before the rebellion and plague started? : It is good of you to ask.: But first, something for your troubles. Friends will always be rewarded. And there will be more rewards to come.: Now. To the north of here lies a vineyard, past a clearing in the woods. The last we heard, the mercenary expedidtion fought a band of hooded scoundrels and headed towards a vineyard. This next part of the main quest has to be seen to be believed. : Go now. And come back alive.TheGreatEvilKing summary posted:
 The warriors level up and I decide there's only so much Black Geyser a man can tolerate in one sitting. Next Time: Cursed weapons? In MY badly made RPG?
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2022 03:21
|
|
|
I'mma guess that the beautiful daughter is buried somewhere with the snow elves, as it'd require you to read that Proper Name of theirs more often when we're inevitably involved in her release.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2022 03:47
|
|
|
It's all just poo poo! This all reads like the writers don't have a story they want to tell so much as a couple scenes and some overly proper-nouned Lore they want to shove in your face, and they have no idea how to thread it all together, or a sincere interest in doing so. Inta's story thus far is just a bunch of disparate ideas without any actual throughline, because the game doesn't have any idea about what it actually wants its protagonist to be. And she's surrounded by cardboard cutouts. It really is unsalvageable.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2022 05:14
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 11, 2024 06:58 |
|
|
I think I kick-started this back in the day. I've never played it, and now I can happily feel no guilt about playing it, only about being foolish enough to fund it. I need to go read your LP on Encased -- I backed that, too, and also haven't made time to play it. Now I need to get back to PoE 2, and read some good dialog with some plot.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2022 06:44
|
|
