Atheosis

No, it's entirely possible for Planescape: Torment to stand as good or great based entirely on its story. Because Planescape: Torment is unique. PS:T is the ONE super-freakish exception to the rule because it managed to have a story that transcended gaming itself (it can compete with classic literature) No other RPG can (or ever has) succeeded on story alone. There are others. Not that it even matters when it comes to PoE since the gameplay is pretty damn good as well. The story is just better.

Best RPG in a decade, flaws and all.

Totally a legitimate preference. Both games are great. But rating D:OS with it's weak story, world, and lore higher that PoE because of it, when PoE's combat and loot is quite good overall? Makes no sense. I don't get how anyone doesn't rate story and setting as the #1 thing in CRPGs, but I guess we all have our preferences.

Very valid point. Also the lack of bonus stacking makes resting at the stronghold really sub-optimal relative to resting at inns, and to me it seems like it should be the opposite by the point you have purchased four or more structures with rest bonuses. It just doesn't make any sense really.

PS:T's gameplay was terrible lol. But generally speaking, PS:T is the exception to most rules whenever we have one of these rating-discussions. Its gameplay doesn't matter. It gets a pass because of the sheer, unmatched strength of its story alone. It simply can't be used as an argument here for anything. More to the point: PS:T's story isn't "good". PS:T's story is the best. It transcends its medium. The three games we're discussing on this thread, though, do not produce this phenomenon, and therefore must be judged on more than just their stories. Planescape Torment is the only old IE game with a better story than PoE. They all have better stories than DA:I or D:OS.

It's not. We're comparing 3 games with wildly varying strengths and weaknesses, and who's to say which strength and weakness will matter most to a reviewer? DA:I DA:I's combat and UI is an insufferable chore, but its lore is pretty darn good and has the unfair advantage of having been slowly built up over the course of 3 games. Its stronghold is really *really* fleshed out. Its game world is dull, its quests are MMO garbage, and its loot itemization is soulless. I can agree with you that it doesn't deserve to be rated higher than PoE. Divinity Original Sin Its combat is so fun, deep and multi-dimensional that I can totally understand someone giving the entire game a 9 because of it alone. But it also does a fairly decent job with its puzzles. And it's an overall good looking game. Its story is poorly written, its lore is... wait... does D:OS even have lore? Its Co-op mechanics are *great*. And even without playing the game co-op, the party control is rather good, and unique. You can send half your party out to do one thing, and the other half to do another thing. The crafting mechanic in D:OS is better than PoE's. D:OS's Pocket Plane is better than PoE's stronghold. And the environment interaction.... there's nothing in either game to even compare here. As a Gamer, I *wish* I could use the environment to make my spells do special sh*t in PoE and DA:I (and a bunch of other games I've played), but I can't. The extra dimension isn't there in those games. PoE The lore...yeah, what about it? It may be good, but lore can't stand on its own. It needs a good delivery system or people won't emmerse themselves in it. As it happens, PoE dumps its lore on you way WAY too quickly and in the most obnoxiously hamfisted manner imaginable. Obsidian did not heed the old advice of: "show me don't tell me". And PoE's Plot? Yes. better than the other two games. PoE's combat? Give me a Break. It's NOT good. It's Ok. It's tactical only if you want it to be. But lets not pretend you can't just mindlessly auto-attack your way to victory in about 90% of the encounters in the game. because you TOTALLY CAN. PoE's combat suffers from Obsidian-itis. I've never played an Obsidian game with good combat. And PoE doesn't break that mold in the slighest. Character Building? PoE is the Best of the 3. There's no denying that. 11 classes, 6 attributes, a talent system that allows for true diversity.... the other two games don't come close. The stronghold? yeah, I've said enough about that already. The games Visuals: I'm Bias. in my mind, the Infinity engine style of hand painted 2d environments is how all games should be done. And of the three, only PoE does it that way. So PoE wins out. Pacing? Well, bugged or not, it has a problem. A problem that the other two games don't have. You can hit the cap halfway through the game, thus reducing your motivation to play on. BG1 lost points for this, and PoE does too. So what's the end result? The end result is this: ??? Each game has just enough strengths and weaknesses to justify any reviewer who chooses to rate one of them a point higher than another or vice versa. 1) How anyone could find the Dragon Age lore even marginally bearable is beyond me. Dragon Age writing has been the worst ever created by Bioware throughout the whole series. I agree with your other points though. Again, my point is Van Ord rating it higher than PoE really reveals what kind of RPG player he is, and he just isn't much of one really. He like flashy gameplay over depth and content. 2) I clearly didn't enjoy it as much as you. It's fun but at times it feels very predictable since certain combinations of elements are so obviously better than everything else. I can see why some would prefer it over PoE combat, but virtually everything else about the game outside of that and possibly graphics is markedly inferior, especially the world, the story, and the lore. And I really like D:OS. 3) I was talking about the story. It's just vastly better than the other two games. Everything else can be chalked up to personal preference I suppose, but the writing is quantifiably better from the perspective of traditional literary technique. It's better than the BG games too. Basically DA:I and D:OS are on par with the worst forms of throw away fantasy novels, the BG games are on par with much of RA Salvatore's D&D stuff, and PoE is more on par with Michael Moor**** or Glen Cook.

It's been a really long time, but I don't recall it being bad. Not that it much matters since that game's story made it great all on its own.

Depends on what kind of game it is. Some games are designed from story on up, and they can and do sell well if done properly. Nobody lost money on Planescape: Torment. Read the original design doc for Torment. It was very much designed with gameplay as a huge factor, moreso than what we actually ended up with. Being able to rip off limbs and use them as clubs? Yes please. What is your point? Both it and PoE were built story first and gameplay second, but in both cases gameplay was also a priority and came out quite good as well.

Actually Feargus already said the first expansion will be split into two parts, so they can drop the first one pretty soon. Probably a matter of 2-3 months max, not 6-9. http://www.pcgamer.com/pillars-of-eternity-tabletop-rpg-and-card-game-in-the-works/ So one story split into two acts? Sounds cool, though I would hope the second act wouldn't take too long or that will kind of suck.

It's entertainment. I want story and characters; I'm not going to shell out 45 bucks for very pretty crap. I don't go see Michael Bay movies, either. ^ This. And again PoE's gameplay is very good. It has it's flaws but so do the other games in question.

The gameplay is awesome too though. Also are you an avid CRPG fan? I'm just curious, because I feel like saying that is just weird when talking about this genre. Fallout 3 and Skyrim were heavily undermined by their poor writing and story. So was Mass Effect 3 when the end hit. So are the Dragon Age games. I just don't get how a person can rate a game in a story-driven really highly when the story part falls flat.

Honestly I just don't think Van Ord is a real CRPG player. He gets saddled with them as Gamespot's resident RPG reviewer, but the dude gave ME 3 a 9 too. He just really prioritizes shiny graphics and action combat over good writing and quality setting creation. And no I didn't hate ME 3, I just thought it was an action game with uneven writing and RPG elements. My favorite thing about it was the MP in fact, which I found very telling. It just wasn't a 9 as far as I'm concerned, but it fits Van Ord's track record as a reviewer. I think he liked Divinity: Original Sin more because of the flashier spell effects and nothing more. It's just who the dude is, and I tend to ignore his reviews because of it.

No it's not Obvious? If we only rated RPGs on story, lore and world, maybe you'd have a point. But last I checked, Gameplay matters in a game too. And I imagine someone from Gamespot who experienced Divinity Original Sin's combat and environment interaction (for example) would probably argue that on those points alone we suddenly go from Obvious, to not-so-obvious at all. Also, I've yet to meet anyone who's played Both DA:I and PoE and came to the conclusion that PoE did its stronghold better (for example again) Personally, I think DA:I is damned for its 100 hours of collection quest tedium. Divinity Original Sin, on the other hand, has enough endearing qualities to compete on totally equal footing with PoE, and perhaps even beat it out. When everything else is good to great in each game in question, yeah the story and setting are most important and PoE >>>>>> those two games in that area. Honestly I don't mind the 8 score. I wouldn't even mind a 7 or a 6. Van Ord has his own personal tastes. The issue for me is that I find his taste in games in consistently bad with him consistently underrating my preferred games while overrating many games I find to be tripe. Again this is an issue of personal taste of course, and I find Van Ord's taste in games to be horrible.

It was conjecture based my generally understanding of how these kinds of games are made. I'd be very surprised if there isn't a plethora of unfinished material they can draw from to add 20-30 more hours of content.

He gave Dragon Age Inquistion a better score with its laughable story and cartoonish world. That's the point. For that matter he gave Divinity: Original Sin a better score despite again having a vastly inferior story and vastly inferior world. Dude has bad taste, or simply doesn't play these kinds of games for the story and setting which is just bizarre. Well... on a technical level, both games are better than PoE. I don't really agree. Not that I even see the point one way or the other. Better story, better world, better lore...it should be obvious which game is the better RPG.

And then people complain about the game being too easy. It's too bad that Obsidian made a system so vulnerable to min maxing.

He gave Dragon Age Inquistion a better score with its laughable story and cartoonish world. That's the point. For that matter he gave Divinity: Original Sin a better score despite again having a vastly inferior story and vastly inferior world. Dude has bad taste, or simply doesn't play these kinds of games for the story and setting which is just bizarre.

I have no idea where you got these ideas. The expansion almost certainly will not take a year. You have to understand that a lot of material was not used in the main game and was simply put aside (this is standard in the industry generally). The good bits will almost certainly be fleshed out and used in the expansion. I bet nearly half the content of the expansion already exists in varying degrees of completeness.

You will almost certainly be able to transfer characters. Why would anything else be necessary?

"A meaningless poem was willingly changed by a backer, and now Obsidian is dead to me. I need therapy."

You're missing some utterly gigantic ones here: A) Relations between Bioware and WotC broke down for various reasons, to the point that Bioware felt that they had to develop their own IP, rather than continuing to work with WotC's IP. This is what lead directly to the development of Dragon Age etc. B) CONSOLE CONSOLES CONSOLES! A big part of why CRPGs in this style were less popular is that they didn't work well on consoles, and consoles were and still are the largest part of the market (even with CRPGs like Skyrim - which is far better on PC, imho - you see far more sales on consoles). That's not bad behaviour or stupidity, that's just realism on the part of pubs and devs. C) Really putting the final knife in, WotC messed around with the licensing for the D&D IP, continually changing it's mind about what could be done with it and by whom, until in 2007 (some say 2005) it signed a RIDICULOUS 10 or 15-year lock-in deal with Atari, who, as it turned out, had zero interest in making D&D-based games, rather they just wanted to lock the license up. (It took a lawsuit to fix this - in 2012 WotC succeeded in getting the IP back - but this is why there are no "real" 4E games, despite the ruleset being absolutely perfectly suited to tactical turn-based play, moreso than any other edition). Also 3) Is only half right - ALL games which didn't have a mass audience were neglected in the early '00s. It had nothing to do with whether they "required too much thought" - if you were perceived as niche, you got ditched by the main publishers. And not being good on consoles meant you were niche. To be fair, too, Pillars IS niche, but thankfully we now have funding models which support that kind of game. A) Had no impact on the topic at hand since Bioware had already moved away from 2D isometric rpgs. B) Consoles were huge back when IE games were being made. Nothing changed on that front. C) You seriously overestimate WotC's impact on the genre. The industry as a whole moved in a different direction. If they had wanted to keep making IE-style games WotC was not even remotely necessary. Fallout had nothing to do with that license and it disappeared too.

I do. The industry dictates whether games like this get made. Reviews influence sales. Kickstarter is a last resort (and leads to irritating tombstones and NPCs) Opinions are opinions, but if I had read this particular review I might not have bought the game. [edit] you can be as facetious as you like, this is a serious issue if you want to enjoy games like Pillars in future. It's an outrage, I tells you. The industry has nothing to do with these kinds of games getting made or not anymore. So screw them and their mainstream review sites. Dragon Age Inquisition better than PoE? Rofl...

Van Ord is a terrible reviewer with very bad taste in games. I'm not at all surprised by this.

Bioware lost it's soul a long time ago. They could never make this kind of game these days, not that they would ever want to or EA would let them.

I don't think they're all that much cheaper to develop. The big difference is in the distribution costs. Back when you had to manufacture physical copies of a game and it added huge overhead to every game no matter the development costs. They are much cheaper to develop. The amount of artists alone, and the cost associated with them, required to make a full fledged and detailed 3D world is absurd. Where do you think a game like GTA 5 invests its 100 million dollar budget? Design? I thought you meant cheaper relative to the old 2D crpgs. Obviously they are much cheaper to make than AAA 3D action games, especially open world ones like GTA V.