xzar_monty

Yeah, I think it was Hylea's Talons that I seriously looked at, given that I was playing a monk. Maybe I even bought them, I'm not sure, but I think I did. So, what do you get if you sink the ship? (Is that a spoiler?)

Now that I've done my playthrough and won't be doing another, I would be really interested to know what kind of loot you get if you sink the Deck of Many Things. I'm positive you're not going to get everything it carries (surely?), so this would be a really interesting piece of information. Incidentally, I thought the Deck of Many Things perfectly exemplified the problem of items in these two titles (PoE & Deadfire), where balance was so important for Obsidian. I thought such a special ship was a superb idea, so I went on the Deck, checked what they had and found that there was... nothing. Even at the point where I had way more money than I knew how to spend, I think I only considered one item worth spending money on -- can't remember what it was. Again: this is a result of the way the game is built, I am not complaining, the game is great, no question, but this is a drawback.

Fair enough, my "any kind of investment" was too broad a statement, so your criticism is justified. I was talking about the kind of investment that a private person might want to make with what he regards as his "extra" money. The point still stands that ultimately there are no safe investments, although some (like the government bonds you mentioned) are a lot safer than others, so it stands to reason that when you invest in the sense I just defined, you must be able to take the hit of losing all that money. There are many things that are reasonable from a private perspective but would prove disastrous for the economy as a whole if they became common practice (btw, I personally like this paradox). For instance, the economy would crash if everybody stopped borrowing money, even if not borrowing money is generally speaking, for an individual, a smarter idea than borrowing money. The economy would also crash if everybody wanted to empty their bank account and get all their money in cash, even if every individual is perfectly within their rights to do that (although I don't know about all countires). I find that I have no opinion on the PoE vs. Deadfire question: I liked them both a lot, but I have no interest in playing either anymore (it really is extremely rare for me to do more than one playthrough of any game). I find that also have no opinion on the Deadfire vs. P:K question: I am currently playing P:K and enjoying it a great deal, although it has to be said that there are SO many things that could be a lot better -- let's just say that the "flaws", so to speak, were not this obvious in either PoE or Deadfire. They were both very solid, once the bugs were ironed out (which obviously took a lot longer than it should have -- I only did my Deadfire playthrough over a year after the game was out).

The most reasonable standpoint for any kind of investment at all is to only invest money you can stand to completely lose. But yes, this particular case is probably going to cause some concern. And doesn't this now rather definitely prove that Deadfire bombed in a big way? That's a shame, because it's a good game.

The story is about the Nazis searching for the lost ark. With or without Indiana Jones, the Nazis find the ark, open it, and die. The plane is an incidental detail. The ark did end up in DC, but Indy was supposed to deliver it to a museum to get it studied, and it ends up in a warehouse, so Indy couldn't even get that part done. Indy is a prop in the story which folds the way it folds completely irrespective of him. But it's still a good movie. You could hardly get a better example of a meaningless protagonist than the first Indiana Jones movie. Calling it a bad example is just, well, uninformed.

You are responding to something I did not write, which is neither constructive nor fair. I wrote: "the psychology [in LotR] is much more refined [than in the Hobbit]". I think this is obvious, and it would take a lot of effort to not see it. However, the psychology in LotR is, again quite obviously, not refined as such, or "complex", as you say. It is quite basic, yes, and I never claimed otherwise. But it is much more refined than in the children's-storylike the Hobbit. LotR deals with questions of mortality, duty, moral failure etc. (that is, plenty of stuff you will not find in the Hobbit), although on a fairly basic level. Bringing up Jung and Freud in this is unnecessary, because I would personally avoid both and don't find that kind of psychologizing to be interesting at all.

A case in point: Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first Indiana Jones movie. If you remove Indy from the film, nothing changes: the Nazis still find the ark, open it, and are destroyed. Indy is a completely needless character in the story. But it's still a good film.

Not only is it a wall of text, but the first sentence starts on a very bad note: "when we compare the setting of pillars of eternity with baldurs gate, there is no comparison." That doesn't make much sense, does it? "When we move from a to b, there is no movement." Right. (I didn't read the post to the end, I have to say.)

No. Your comment is needless hyperbole. There was no hate in the post, there was criticism. One of the very unfortunate recent developments in discussion culture is precisely this: when someone else criticises something you happen to like, it is often called hate. It's generally unnecessary and doesn't improve discussion at all.

Gromnir: Fantasy is an interesting category. As I said, it's simply silly to assume that fantasy is "dumb". However, in reality, it has to be said that the overwhelming majority of fantasy is probably just very, very bad literature, not worth anyone's time. But this is not fault of the genre as such, it's just that there are so many bad writers working in it(*). I think a decent parallel would be women's romance literature: it is not a dumb genre, you can do worthwhile stuff in it, but this almost never happens -- the overwhelming majority of books written in that genre are rubbish, just like in fantasy. Too many cliches, too much formula and just too much bad writing. I once took a concentrated effort to read R. A. Salvatore and get acquainted with what he does, and his errors were just astonishing, even on the level of the language (!) he uses. For instance, he used the word "fascist" in his Forgotten Realms setting. Apparently it didn't occur to him that making a reference to 1920s Italy is probably not a good idea if you're writing about the Forgotten Realms. His editor didn't notice or care, either. As for LotR vs. the Hobbit, I would definitely vote for LotR. I agree that the prose style of LotR has problems (but not as many problems as the dialogue), but LotR still wins the Hobbit hands down, if you ask me. The world is much more interesting, and the psychology is much more refined. But then, the Hobbit is a children's book, and in that framework it's definitely excellent. (*) Modern exceptions are very rare, but not nonexistent. For instance, The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch's debut novel, is almost flawless, and it even manages to bring a couple of new(ish) things into the genre. It's unfortunate that the next two books are nowhere near as good.

I know that this assumption exists, but it's frankly silly. There's no point even arguing about it, except by maybe pointing out that there's not much internal consistency in calling for realism in fiction. Also, "realist(ic) fiction" doesn't exist. Ernest Hemingway, for example, has been praised for his realism, but this is a misconception. Look at any Hemingway story and notice that nobody in the real world speaks like Hemingway characters. The reason is that Hemingway characters are meant to engage the reader, and completely realistic talk rendered into a story would nearly always be very boring.

I understand the British gutter punk part, but where's the Chaucer in it? I don't think it's meant to be any existing accent. I suppose they wanted to create something entirely new, like Burgess did for instance, but I wouldn't call that a resounding success; it looks rather forced.

To answer your first question: no. Why would it be? Or, rather, by which criteria? I agree that internal consistency is key, and I also think PoE achieves it successfully enough, so the OP's point is not particularly good, in my view. He can obviously have the opinion that the soul question is dumb, nothing wrong with that, but I don't think he's got a good argument to back it up. (Incidentally, J. R. R. Tolkien, in his letters, argues extremely well for the importance of internal consistency in fantasy.)

No.

I would almost certainly reload my save, like I did in Baldur's Gate II, for instance. So, in this regard, P:K does not differ from the greatest classic in the genre. I don't see a problem here, at all.

You have finished the game quite a few times, yet you'd say it'd take a lot of goodwill to call the game good, or even decent? That's just astonishing. I like the game rather a lot, at this point, but when I've finished it once (if that happens), I'm pretty sure I'll never play it again. You are not making your argument very well -- I am not saying that there isn't a proper argument in there, only that you are not being very clear. Can you give me two concrete examples of the kind of decisions that you think the game fails in? "Just how should people approach encounters" is too vague, as there are so many kinds of encounters. The game doesn't seem to suffer from any conceptual problems that CRPGs in general wouldn't suffer from.

How did it fail to help players differentiate between legitimate mistakes and cheesing? I don't think that it did. What you are saying has no objective ring to it, in my view. I find it quite odd that apparently you have finished the game but you still think it would take a lot of goodwill to call it even decent. This begs the question: why do you spend time doing something you don't like?

To me, that's a total non-issue. I don't see a problem at all in what you say.

I agree there should be an option to retreat from combat. That's a weakness, for sure. I think the dice roll thing is just fine, no problem with it at all. I've got failed skill chekcs and at least one secret door I didn't find that I'm pretty sure is there (from the way it looks on the map), but that's all right, that's RPGs for you.

Ahem, why was it a mistake? An obvious mistake, even? Are you implying that things depending on skills should be either impossible (because you just aren't skilful enough) or trivial (because you have enough skill and there's no check)? That sounds foolish.

Could you name some of these balancing issues or difficulty spikes? I haven't noticed any. As for where I am in the game: I just went after a certain character who appeared to have betrayed me, and next I'm going to go after a certain barbarian, who did not. I see nothing laughable in calling the game great, although I am not sure yet whether I would do so. I would not call either PoE or Deadfire great, although they were definitely both good, and I enjoyed them a lot. (Two games that I would call great: Baldur's Gate II, NetHack. Ultima V for its era, too, but that era has long since passed.)

Ok, thanks for that. I bought D:OS from Steam, installed it, tried it for ten minutes, found that it was completely uninteresting, got my refund (for a game that had been played for less than an hour) and never looked in that direction again. I have played maybe a total of five different titles within the past 20 years (that'd be BG, NWN, PoE, P:K and IWD, sequels included), and of those five, I would say two were a waste of time (IWD, NWN). The other three were good and enjoyable.

You made me curious. So what are those other games?

That's a fair question, but given that there's essentially no discussion anymore, does it matter?

I know that Mask of the Betrayer exists, but I haven't played it, no. I don't think I can go back to NWN, even if there's a good campaign.