|
Took to looking down on the commoners easily, hasn't he? E: update on previous page.
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 17:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 18:36 |
|
|
Some of the optional party members, while annoying, make up for it with their humorous banter and/or the advantages they bring to Crusade Mode. Daeran & Lann imho fall into this category, Camellia not so much. I’m in the camp with Cythreal on her- I don’t like being forced to work with an insane serial killer- it doesn’t matter how attractive she is. And there are other characters in the party who can do everything she does, so until we pick them up and don’t need the extra xp from her quests… then again, I only have this knowledge from meta gaming- I understand it’s worse for the unsuspecting newbie player.  I too would be ok with Horgus though, if not for his questionable parenting. That’s enough said about that. New demons- Babau- slimy red skeletal humanoid creatures employed as elite soldiers and assassins by the abyss. A long standing archetype from Gygax D&D. We’ll be seeing a lot more of these as the game goes on. You can find one in a remote area near the Desna Temple in the Market Square if you want an early game challenge.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 17:29
|
|
|
achtungnight posted:I understand it’s worse for the unsuspecting newbie player. On one hand, I'm not sure how 'unsuspecting' players could be after even ten seconds having her in the party, but from what I hear, she was pretty obviously evil in the beta (I won't know, never played it), yet players still got surprised by how evil she was, and it's still happening. To which I have to ask: how?! Is the helfussy really that good it's made people blind and deaf? I mean, don't get me wrong, I fully admit my standards are not in line with most people's, I am fully onboard the 'I need no laifu 'cos Wendy mai Wrathfu' train and all that, but even so I'm not sure how Owlcat could make it any more obvious that CamCam's bad news for everyone around her.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 18:08
|
|
|
CommissarMega posted:On one hand, I'm not sure how 'unsuspecting' players could be after even ten seconds having her in the party, but from what I hear, she was pretty obviously evil in the beta (I won't know, never played it), yet players still got surprised by how evil she was, and it's still happening. To which I have to ask: how?! Is the helfussy really that good it's made people blind and deaf? I mean, don't get me wrong, I fully admit my standards are not in line with most people's, I am fully onboard the 'I need no laifu 'cos Wendy mai Wrathfu' train and all that, but even so I'm not sure how Owlcat could make it any more obvious that CamCam's bad news for everyone around her. My guess is that a lot of these people expected to be able to fix her like most games do (indeed how you can with Wendy and others in this game!) and were taken aback by Cammy being the kind of sociopath who can't be fixed but is happy to try to make you think she can so you'll keep her around and give her more opportunities for murder.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 18:14
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:My guess is that a lot of these people expected to be able to fix her like most games do (indeed how you can with Wendy and others in this game!) and were taken aback by Cammy being the kind of sociopath who can't be fixed but is happy to try to make you think she can so you'll keep her around and give her more opportunities for murder. Well, the thing is that most of what I saw right after Wrath's release is not "Whaaat, I can't fix her?" and more along the lines of "Whaaat, the pretty half-elf's evil?!" Speaking as a cishet guy, I guess it really is true that a pretty face makes us lose all reason 
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 18:24
|
|
|
Daeran and upcoming guy we’ll meet later are easily my favourite companions. Cammy is very funny for the effect she has on people that think they can fix her or are shocked she’s a monster, but she’s pretty flat as a character compared to a lot of the other party outside a few cool permutations of her story. Absolute god monster in gameplay though and I took her with me to the end of the game as Trickster. Not so much Retribution Angel Demon or Aeon.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 18:29
|
|
|
CommissarMega posted:Well, the thing is that most of what I saw right after Wrath's release is not "Whaaat, I can't fix her?" and more along the lines of "Whaaat, the pretty half-elf's evil?!" Speaking as a cishet guy, I guess it really is true that a pretty face makes us lose all reason Don't look at me. I zeroed in on the Chaotic Neutral lady we won't be meeting for a long while yet who you can either redeem to Chaotic Good or corrupt to Chaotic Evil. >_> But being exclusively into f/f romances my options in video games tend to be very tightly curtailed regardless, so that helps narrow things down.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 18:30
|
|
|
I kept her in my first playthrough despite the shock in act 3. At that point I was all in on the "how far are they willing to write this monster" crazy train
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 19:06
|
|
|
Killed her when it made sense in my Angel run, let her live in my Maximum Redemption Azata run.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 19:16
|
|
|
Those Babau are no joke. They're the source of a fair number of reloads both here and in the Market Square. On top of damage reduction, they also do a ton of damage; they start stealthed (and will likely beat your perception) and have access to sneak attack, and, like most demons, have spell resistance to stop offensive casters from hurting them. I honestly like Mellia a lot as a character from a writing perspective, explicitly just because the game sets up the sort of question of "how did she keep getting away with this," followed by no small number of players very eagerly answering that question. Yeah it turns out you get away with a whole lot of horrible poo poo when you're conventionally attractive and have enough money/privilege to keep the people who would otherwise stop you away! One of her go-to lines on I think selecting her is "I am useful, am I not?" She 100% knows she's getting away with it, knows why and how she's getting away with it, and in plenty of playthroughs, she's entirely correct. In a genre filled with vague evil characters you can "cure" with your magic romance dick, Mellia stands out as someone who not only can't be "cured," but knows you're going to try to do just that, and uses it to continue being a genuinely awful person. She's utterly terrible and, if you let her, plays you like a fiddle. It's great!
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 20:47
|
|
|
Yeah the angle they try with 'but she's a powerful ally' as an excuse to give her bullshit a pass is kind of... not effective? I already stack every permanent and temporary buff on the main character that even on normal difficulty it feels like I already am a demon wrecking ball. Nah, think I'd rather just put down the problem early.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 20:54
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:Those Babau are no joke. They're the source of a fair number of reloads both here and in the Market Square. On top of damage reduction, they also do a ton of damage; they start stealthed (and will likely beat your perception) and have access to sneak attack, and, like most demons, have spell resistance to stop offensive casters from hurting them. Yes, this line very much sticks in your head. It's been a year since I played WotR, but I can still recall this very well. And the thing is, she can be very useful indeed. WotR's party members are mostly at least serviceable, with the notable exemption of one very late recruit, but she can easily be turned into a powerhouse with little investment. I think she works quite well on a meta level, and being able to get rid of her at several points in the campaign (besides dismissing her from camp) is good game design by Owlcat.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 20:58
|
|
|
For me, the Cammy line that sticks in my head is "~THE WORLD IN CRIMSON!~", because she sounds like she's having more fun than should be appropriate in a demon slaughter 
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 21:05
|
|
|
CommissarMega posted:For me, the Cammy line that sticks in my head is "~THE WORLD IN CRIMSON!~", because she sounds like she's having more fun than should be appropriate in a demon slaughter For me, it's "The pain is ex... cruciating!" when she's badly injured as Cammy realizes mid-sentence that she shouldn't give away that she's getting off on this.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 21:26
|
|
|
RevolverDivider posted:Cammy is very funny for the effect she has on people that think they can fix her or are shocked she’s a monster, but she’s pretty flat as a character compared to a lot of the other party outside a few cool permutations of her story. This. The "I can fix her" deconstruction is very interesting on first playthrough, but it's the only interesting thing about her. Daeran did the whole "I am a sociopathic rear end in a top hat and I love it, you are not going to change me" thing much better.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 21:29
|
|
|
Can an Aeon "fix" Cammy (via the power of reality editing)? I'm curious.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 22:30
|
|
|
Quackles posted:Can an Aeon "fix" Cammy (via the power of reality editing)? I'm curious. Not really. The best an Aeon can do is either prevent her from ever existing in the first place, or getting her committed to an asylum as a child.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 22:31
|
|
|
Sounds like the LP format (text, no VA) doesn't do favours to Cammy. How is the voice acting in this game, in general?
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 22:48
|
|
|
Gun Jam posted:Sounds like the LP format (text, no VA) doesn't do favours to Cammy. I quite liked it. There are several characters with really food voice actors, including several of the big antagonists, and imho most of the cast. Also, the soundtrack is amazing.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 23:06
|
|
|
Is "fixing" companions something that's common in rpg's? I can barely think of any examples, but there are plenty of games I haven't played.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 23:17
|
|
|
In my own experience, Cammy got benched because her voice acting grated on my nerves. I didn't put any more thought into it than that, since I have an autism-fueled life-long disgust of certain voices (Norm Macdonald comes to mind, his voice grates enough that I always wanted to punch him in the face whenever I heard it) so her eventual reveal just ended up justifying my dislike. I kept her around only to see the end of her storyline in a single playthrough. Now she dies the moment she reveals herself. As far as I'm concerned, trading Aravashnial for her wasn't worth it in the least.Poil posted:Is "fixing" companions something that's common in rpg's? I can barely think of any examples, but there are plenty of games I haven't played. It's fairly common, yes, there's a number especially in tabletop-esque cRPGs. BG2 is the most notorious of that niche - you can "fix" Jaheira, Viconia, and Aerie - helping over the trauma of losing her husband, making her more suited to surface life, and helping heal her trauma, respectively. Notably, you don't get to "fix" Anomen in that game - you only reinforce his holier-than-thou attitude or disillusion him. RelentlessImp fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Mar 10, 2024 |
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 23:18
|
|
|
I feel a good deal of the early game companions can be built to be absolute shitwreckers, mostly because they are given to you early enough that you can mold them. The later companions all come with the caveat that 6-8+ of their levels is already set in stone and there's not a whole lot you can do to counter that because of how little wiggle room you are given to unfuck their build.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 23:19
|
|
|
Poil posted:Is "fixing" companions something that's common in rpg's? Not just companions, but situations in general- it's a player-centric genre, players expect to do things that centre on them doing things to fix things. In BG 3 you resolve the situation between the gobbos and the tieflings, in Rogue Trader you choose how to save the population of a planet, and while we haven't resolved Act 1 yet, I think it's not spoilery to say that we save Kenabres at some point. Fixing things from unwinnable battles to your companions' issues through companion sidequests is the bread-and-butter of games like these, and Camellia being decidedly irredeemable is kind of a breath of fresh air, depending on your viewpoint.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 23:22
|
|
|
At it's most egregious - Bioware loved to go to this one, and WotR does it with one particular companion as well - you get a "redemptive romance." That is to say, your romance with them turns into you playing therapist through all their problems, and you're rewarded at the end with sex and a vague alignment change. And this "help them through their issues" thing ends up being locked behind the romance specifically, leading to the jokes about your Magic Healing Dick. Which is gross for like, a thousand different reasons. Please do not conduct real life relationships like this. Please do not gently caress your clients.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 23:32
|
|
|
Poil posted:Is "fixing" companions something that's common in rpg's? I can barely think of any examples, but there are plenty of games I haven't played. Mass Effect 2 is the first thing that comes to my mind.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 23:36
|
|
|
It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that she's evil; I mean, even if you don't notice what abilities are available to her, you don't hand someone a magic item that hides their alignment because you need to conceal their horrifying devotion to neutrality. But Owlcat has included a lot of characters in this game (and Kingmaker, if you'd already played that) that are evil but either a) express it in ways that a player can understand and deal with or b) can be made less evil by your actions. What's surprising about Camellia is that she doesn't fall into either of those categories. (Or, at least, it's surprising if you manage to miss all the hints the game has been dropping on you.) But yeah, it would also be a mistake to underestimate the willingness of heterosexual men to make excuses for the hot half-elf.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 23:38
|
|
|
To be fair, when Black isle first did player-driven romances in Baldur's Gate 2*, the whole Magical Healing Dick™ thing served as a good climax (hurr) to the romance subplot, especially with characters like Jaheira and Viconia- you go through hell with them, have both emotional and physical catharsis, wake up new people. I vaguely remember them being done well, and I don't begrudge the game those elements. I do begrudge the rest of the CRPG game industry for not innovating though, or even not doing what BG2's expansion did and continued the romance post-shagging, with various romance-specific challenges and obstacles for your characters to face- hell, if you romanced Aerie (for some reason) you had a baby to take care of! Instead, at most we have games like Mass Effect 3 which seem to think that the romance continues at the butterflies-in-the-stomach sort of way even in the midst of existential annihilation. Magic Dick indeed. *At least, I think they were the first, as opposed to pre-plotted storyline romances like you'd see in a JRPG.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 23:40
|
|
|
As a generality, I like video game romances. They're pretty much never great literature, but I tend to consider them good popcorn fun and a bit of wish fulfillment given my record with relationships in real life. But yeah, there's some very troubling issues that creep into a lot of them, especially regarding gay romances when you hit things like how Traynor in Mass Effect 3 was written by a dude (and my God does it show with how painfully juvenile and aimed at a male audience it is, even if I actually adore Traynor's character and relationship outside the specifically romance bits), or Josephine in Dragon Age Inquisition who is bisexual but never once mentions the PC's gender or pronouns at any point. I harp on Bioware a lot and praise Bioware a lot, because LGBT romances in big-budget character-driven games are still vanishingly rare and don't leave me spoiled for choice, but that company did a lot of good and a lot of bad with regards to long-term effects on the genre. Aerie is a particularly interesting example of a story misunderstood by the community, I feel, because the correct move in her relationship is to not sleep with her the first chance you get. The correct thing to do is to realize that Aerie's moving too fast before she's mature enough and emotionally ready for a really serious adult relationship, turn down her advances, and get with her again in the expansion when she's a much more stable and mature individual who's ready for something like this. Far from your dick healing her, thinking with your dick will actually end the romance early on a bad note. I'll dig into my romance of choice in this game when she joins the party, and why she's genuinely one of my favorite video game love stories I've yet seen. While her and her romance can be seen as problematic and evocative of the Healing Dick, I think the specific context of the character and relationship put her in a very different light. There is one romance in this game that I think is egregiously poorly handled, but that's more due to the context of the romance and I'll discuss that when we meet the character in question.
|
|
#
?
Mar 10, 2024 23:52
|
|
|
The earliest example of this sort of romance I can remember was in one of the Gold Box games. Strictly hetero, of course; I think you couldn't even get the character of the "wrong" gender to join your party. But whether you'd get together with the character did depend on things that happened in the game, even if the writing tended to be perfunctory just for reasons of text space in old video games. (Please turn to entry 231 in your journal for the remainder of this paragraph.)Cythereal posted:Aerie is a particularly interesting example of a story misunderstood by the community, I feel, because the correct move in her relationship is to not sleep with her the first chance you get. The correct thing to do is to realize that Aerie's moving too fast before she's mature enough and emotionally ready for a really serious adult relationship, turn down her advances, and get with her again in the expansion when she's a much more stable and mature individual who's ready for something like this. Far from your dick healing her, thinking with your dick will actually end the romance early on a bad note. I thought that was a really clever move. The BG2 romances were a little clunky, but they clearly spent some time thinking about who the different people involved were and tried to make them all different experiences, almost like people have different personalities and treating two different people in the same way might have different results. I also have to confess that I didn't actually hate Aerie either as a character or a party member. Yes, this is mildly blasphemous.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2024 00:06
|
|
|
Delayed romance is still romance and that’s usually fine with me when given good reason. It’s this whole “you can’t help x and that’s wonderful!” attitude I don’t get. Why is that glorified? It’s like they say- there’s no accounting for taste.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2024 00:13
|
|
|
Cythereal posted:I'll dig into my romance of choice in this game when she joins the party, and why she's genuinely one of my favorite video game love stories I've yet seen. While her and her romance can be seen as problematic and evocative of the Healing Dick, I think the specific context of the character and relationship put her in a very different light. I'm sorry, but you can "fix" (if that's the right word) that character without romancing her, so it's imho not a case of magically healing dick/vagina in any case?
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2024 00:15
|
|
|
achtungnight posted:Delayed romance is still romance and that’s usually fine with me when given good reason. It’s this whole “you can’t help x and that’s wonderful!” attitude I don’t get. Why is that glorified? It’s like they say- there’s no accounting for taste. Because too much of the time that whole thing is about taking an evil baddie and making them "good," which 1) plays hard into a specific fantasy about taking a bad girl and making her good and wholesome which can be, let's be real, kinda hosed up, and 2) removes the idea of a person's agency and life story into "they just need a good dick to make them a better person" which, again, loving laundry list of why that's hosed up. Or, if you will, a lot of it ends up entangled in some pretty bad patriarchal ideas of "proper behavior" for women. Some people like that Camellia is a twist on the usual genre staple. Some people just frankly like an evil baddie and that's it; she's all red flags, and they're a bull. Some people like the writing aspect of challenging you with a character that you can't "redeem," you either accept her at her worse, or...well, deal with it, in some fashion. Some people like that she annoys other people who get more then a little too wound up about their waifus. There's a ton of reasons for it. Torrannor posted:I'm sorry, but you can "fix" (if that's the right word) that character without romancing her, so it's imho not a case of magically healing dick/vagina in any case? Yeah we'll get into it more as we approach it in game (this thread has been careening a lot into talking about stuff that is like multiple days of gameplay time away) but I actually hold that the NPC in question defly avoids the "heal her with romance" thing, even if it looks a lot like it.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2024 00:36
|
|
|
idonotlikepeas posted:I also have to confess that I didn't actually hate Aerie either as a character or a party member. Yes, this is mildly blasphemous. Massive hateboner community had on Aerie is still a mystery for me.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2024 00:44
|
|
|
The big difference with Camellia is that, unlike basically all the other characters mentioned here, she doesn't have any sort of trauma, ideology or circumstance that has caused her issues. She is just legitimately mentally ill, and no amount of therapy or romance is going to "fix" her. Hell, the "good" end to her romance in the slides is that she runs away, because she knows that she's going to be unable to resist attempting to kill you as well at some point. Which does a decent job of showing just how unfixable she actually is, even with someone she cares about. Cythereal mentioned it already, but the True Aeon ending has her parents sticking her in an asylum as a child. Szarrukin posted:Massive hateboner community had on Aerie is still a mystery for me. Personally, it's always been the Jaheira romance that has bothered me far more than anything to do with Aerie. There's problems with it on like four different levels. Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Mar 11, 2024 |
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2024 00:46
|
|
|
I don’t think you get what I’m saying, Professor. It’s not the “you can’t fix this character and that’s great” mentality I don’t understand. It’s the whole “Iago did nothing wrong.” “Scar for President!” “Camellia lover for life.” mentality. That’s what I don’t understand. These characters absolutely did messed up stuff. They should not be welcomed. They should be given their just desserts asap. And I’ll take the opposite you mention over this sort of thing any day, especially in real life. Sometimes it’s awful, yes, but sometimes it’s true. And I don’t mean the magic of romance, I mean the magic of friendship and gaining wisdom. Though sometimes I will admit it’s nice if that includes romance. I suppose to make change recognized for the good thing it is, we have to acknowledge the opposite. Maybe even accept it. But I don’t think we need to embrace it. That way lies the same chasm that has impaired us for a long time if not something worse. Please note that a lot of what I say is rhetorical. We don’t need to focus on it here. I have long accepted I can’t change the world. Let’s concentrate on the game. achtungnight fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Mar 11, 2024 |
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2024 00:54
|
|
|
ProfessorCirno posted:(this thread has been careening a lot into talking about stuff that is like multiple days of gameplay time away) I'm trying to not get too annoyed about it since the only previous attempt at LPing this game ended pretty early, but yeah. I'm no stranger to multi-year LPs in the event. We'll get there when we get there.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2024 01:16
|
|
|
Also, it'd be nice if we could leave the sexism at the door. The "girls love bad boys (and want to fix them)" is a ludicrously common trope in all sorts of media. The concept isn't magically limited to a male fantasy. It's perhaps more common in video games specifically, but that's likely more down to them generally being viewed as a boy activity for a long time than anything else. Or do I need to be mean and start pointing to stuff like Twilight and Love Never Dies?
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2024 01:24
|
|
|
Lord Koth posted:Also, it'd be nice if we could leave the sexism at the door. The "girls love bad boys (and want to fix them)" is a ludicrously common trope in all sorts of media. I have to admit that Mass Effect went for equality and had similar amount of girls and boys requiring fix from Shepard.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2024 01:39
|
|
|
achtungnight posted:It’s not the “you can’t fix this character and that’s great” mentality I don’t understand. It’s the whole “Iago did nothing wrong.” “Scar for President!” “Camellia lover for life.” mentality. That’s what I don’t understand. These characters absolutely did messed up stuff. They should not be welcomed. They should be given their just desserts asap. some people just think villains are hot 
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2024 01:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 3, 2024 18:36 |
|
|
Lord Koth posted:Also, it'd be nice if we could leave the sexism at the door. The "girls love bad boys (and want to fix them)" is a ludicrously common trope in all sorts of media. The concept isn't magically limited to a male fantasy. It's perhaps more common in video games specifically, but that's likely more down to them generally being viewed as a boy activity for a long time than anything else. Or do I need to be mean and start pointing to stuff like Twilight and Love Never Dies? Yes, you're right, I should shy away from focusing solely on the gendered side of things. Nonetheless, there's, let's go with, cultural baggage connected to the idea of certain sorts of "redemption" stories, and the cRPG style "romantic redemption" can fall afoul of it. achtungnight posted:It’s not the “you can’t fix this character and that’s great” mentality I don’t understand. It’s the whole “Iago did nothing wrong.” “Scar for President!” “Camellia lover for life.” mentality. That’s what I don’t understand. These characters absolutely did messed up stuff. They should not be welcomed. They should be given their just desserts asap. Sometimes you support a character not being artificially "redeemed" and staying true to their flaws. Sometimes you're just...tired of that storyline, and want something that isn't that. Sometimes you just think villians are hot. Sometimes, while bringing someone to good is a fantasy, so is its opposite of being the one pulled into something darker. Sometimes you think a villianous or antagonistic character is interesting because of the antagonistic side. Sometimes you think a character is good because you're irritated with people who think the character is bad. Sometimes you like a character because of how others in the audience react to them. Point is, there's a ton of reasons for people to like Camellia as a character. And plenty of reasons to dislike her! Hell, you can like her as a character and know that you would despise her as a person. The game gives you a lot of options, which is one of the reasons why the game is so good.
|
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2024 02:40
|
|