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Wirdjos
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Posts posted by Wirdjos
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Tried to just edit my last post and the time ran out while I was typing.
I have go, but I'll give you more examples later if you would like.Post as many as you want (it's always interesting to find another view of things). But I might disagree on some or even all of them for my own reasons.
The other examples of P:T subverting the traditional D&D ruleset that come to mind are the alignments that shift with your actions, the classes that cannot be chosen when you start the game but can be changed basically at any time, and characters that actually resist being used like secondary main characters. All of these things asked to you reexamine the way you were likely familiar with playing a game and did so in a way that served the story. The shifting alignment is a more logical and realistic way to approach alignments. Whether a person is good or evil is really an appraisal of their actions, not something that's decided at birth. This was emphasized by having items that were only usable by certain alignments and by a certain story shift involving Carceri. This served to back up the story element that revolved around question "What can change the nature of a man".
The way classes work is also somewhat more logical. It is easier and more natural to be a middling fighter than mage or thief, so you start there. Again, people can change their profession more or less at whim, even if that makes them a poor example of said profession. This served to point out TNO's huge amount of knowledge gained over many lifetimes, even if that knowledge may be locked up or just subconscious.
The fact that there were may items that companions refused to allow you to remove made them seem more like their own person instead of another character you could have created that happen to have dialogue. This mechanic further interacts with the story in the cause of Dak'kon when you learn more of his backstory.
All of these mechanics are defensible choices because they serve to help the player 'play' the story. These mechanics make P:T a story that is better played than read and thus make it a better game than book. I was choices like those about that made me feel that P:T was brillant even if they didn't add to the fun I had while playing it.
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Some of the things I really liked in P:T did involve taking an accepted rule, subverting it and then showing you what the game would be like if the rule were that way. So first you have a basic D&D game. When you start playing, everything is familiar, or at least you expect it to be. Then you die. You consider restarting because it's what you normally would have done. Only nothing bad happened. In fact, it might have been for the best as you're healed and in a familiar place again. This suddenly changes the way you look at death.
To be honest I considered the immortality thing to be a detraction from the game rather then something new and awesome. The few times i've encountered where it's progress to die (like your tomb or the Githyanki killing you) could either be replaced or made little sense (if you are dead how do you hear the Gith conversing after?). Combat wise it's one of the driving wedges between you and enjoyment of the actual gameplay. Without any real way to fail at any particular combat it instead heightens the feeling of combat being a grind or detracting from the actual "game" itself. I remember one of the interviewers who spoke to Chris brought up that there was too much combat in Planescape. That, of course, isn't actually true but there's a reason he thinks that. Outside of combat it also makes little internal sense. Supposedly, when you The Nameless One died you either became a different incarnation or you just lost your memory. Neither of those things is even remotely displayed when you die in game thus there is no "conflict" or option for failure. I remember back when I was sucked into WoW during The Burning Crusade expansion my raiding guild had spent a *considerable* amount of time trying to kill Kael. So for that very first kill when we had finally killed the bastard after many, many deaths everyone quite literally cheered on Vent. I'll never forget that feeling of accomplishment. Never. But, if WoW had "held our hand" as it were and never had allowed us to actually die and fail I guarantee there would've been no enjoyment to speak of for "finally" killing him. Even visual novels allow for failure.
I actually disagree that the immortality quirk totally prevents failure. Using your WoW example, when Kael defeated you, you died. This meant that you had to deal with some punishing mechanic and the loss of any supplies used during the battle. When TNO dies, he is transported to the beginning of the area and is not returned any supplies used during the battle. Also if TNO failed to defeat an opponent, that opponent would not have left nor would have TNO bypassed the opponent. TNO was equally able to continuously bang his head against a difficult battle as your WoW character was.
In retrospect, I kind of like the fact that it felt like there was too much combat in P:T. Like I've mentioned before, this didn't make the game more fun, but it did feed the game's impact. The fact of the matter is combat was simply an impediment to TNO's goal. You could play it differently, but the driving force of the game's story is finding out who TNO was and how get back his immortality. Anytime you have to fight you have been held back from your goal and maybe even lost answers those people could have given you. In this way, poor combat (along with the massive amount of experience you can gain just from conversations and memories) could be another way that P:T twists traditional D&D rules (in videogames) to prove a point. Conversations and memories are more important to your goal and so those two are more important than combat. For this reason and in this game, if combat can be avoided, it should be. I appreciate that the mechanics support this.
I'll post more examples of twisted mechanics and such when I have more time.
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Sawyers saying less bestial, which I'm happy about. Keep em humanoid I say. Please no furry stuff.
I fear the bolded as well, but I'm looking for less humaniod races myself. While Osvir's second post was a little too bestial for me, I thought the first post was fine. The whole Star Trek logic of so many races looking almost exactly like humans always kind of bugged me. I'm still interested to see what Obsidian comes up with whatever stance they've taken.
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If you claim that these things make P:T a failure as a game, I wouldn't really argue with you. If you were to claim these things mean it would have made a better book than game, I would argue with you.
Out of curiosity why? I often see many Planescape fans liken the game to a visual novel (to which I often wonder if they've played any of the good ones). If you cut out the atrocious combat, the lame fetch questing and the non-choices wouldn't you have a much, much better game by any stretch of the imagination? If your car's bumper is hanging off of your car as you are driving wouldn't just removing it be a far safer and wiser option then leaving it on to do potential damage to a) the road b) other cars/drivers and c) your own car?
The reason I said that had to do with somewhat with spoilers and such, but here we go.
Some of the things I really liked in P:T did involve taking an accepted rule, subverting it and then showing you what the game would be like if the rule were that way. So first you have a basic D&D game. When you start playing, everything is familiar, or at least you expect it to be. Then you die. You consider restarting because it's what you normally would have done. Only nothing bad happened. In fact, it might have been for the best as you're healed and in a familiar place again. This suddenly changes the way you look at death.
I have go, but I'll give you more examples later if you would like.
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If you claim that these things make P:T a failure as a game, I wouldn't really argue with you. If you were to claim these things mean it would have made a better book than game, I would argue with you.
Maybe not, but using Adventure game mechanics would have served the story far better than using D&D 2nd edition did.
The only reason I would argue with you here is the amount of joy I got each time I saw a D&D mechanic turned on its head. Non-static aligment that affects the gameplay, great. Ability to change class on a whim, awesome. Death can actually be something I actually want to happen, amusing and brillant. It didn't make for the most fun game experience I've ever had, but I did enjoy questioning the ruleset I'd simply accepted over the years. That couldn't have been done without 'working inside' the ruleset.
It might have made a game that I would play again and again for the game mechanics, but it would have weakened the impact of times I did play it.
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Torment was more linear and has fewer choices i give you that, but not in the degree you seem to think. I have completed the game with all classes.Sure, even with fighter if you want to have interesting dialoge options you have to raise your inteligence and wisdom at least to 16. And its true that the combat was the worst of all IE games except BG1.But in a game where the optimal way to finish it was to not combat anyone and finish the guests through dialoge and the end goal is not to kill an army but to rediscover who you are it make sense that the most important stats to be inteligence and wisdom. Like it or not the game was all about the story and the writing and not for combat. I understand if you want a combat focus character the game is not for you, but in what the game wants to achieve it does. And for most people who have played it its one of the best cRPG games of all time on par with BG2. Its not "overrated", it may not be the kind of game you prefer
You said what was wrong with the entire game without even knowing it. It has nothing to do with being combat oriented or not. I don't care if every single objective in PE can be cleared without drawing a weapon one single time. But to quote you "...in a game where the optimal way to finish..." is wrong, wrong, wrong. There is no "optimal" way to play a well made balanced RPG, that's the whole point of why I don't like PS:T. Creating your own character, making your own choices, and progressing through the game on your terms, not the games or the Developers terms. That is a "good" Role-Playing Game.
There is nothing wrong with a forced stealth situation, or a forced diplomacy/investigation section, or even forced combat. But when 50% + of your game is forced diplomacy/investigation you had best be making an adventure game or you are doing it wrong.
I think you are being a little rigid with genres here. P:T had a very specific purpose. You weren't playing someone with a poorly developed/inconsequential past and you weren't playing yourself. You were playing a specific, already developed character so that you could decide how he dealt with a past he didn't remember or necessarily feel responsible for. Restricting the player in this way had a point. TNO was restricted in this way and if you were to play his role, you needed to be restricted in the same way. Most of the ways P:T deviates from traditional D&D can be explained as specific choices meant to cause you to question those mechanics which the game expected you were familiar with. This is one of the reasons I think the game is brillant. This might mean that P:T is not a traditional RPG. Whatever the case, it should not be judged in exactly the same way as BG or IWD.
However, I do agree with a bit of your basic point. P:T was interesting, it was exciting, it was thought provoking. But I did not think it was fun, at least in the same way BG was. The constraint restrictions the game placed on you, purposeful though they were, were stifling. Combat was difficult and uninteresting at the same time. If you claim that these things make P:T a failure as a game, I wouldn't really argue with you. If you were to claim these things mean it would have made a better book than game, I would argue with you.
In summary, the fact that you were disappointed in a game so many people told you was the best game ever likely stems from a different definition of 'game', not a collective delusion.
(Not that you claimed people who liked it were delusional and thank you for not doing so. I'm just trying to explain the difference between the hype and game you played.)
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That's the whole point of his character. He is supposed to be a broken person now.
You can show loss and brokenness in a character while still maintaining the personality of the character quite distinctly (see below). Ignus has thoughts of fire... and that's about it. If that isn't an example of a one-sided character I don't know what is.
Now this right here is the beauty of P:T. I hated Ignus the first time through because he was a pain to talk to and didn't add anything obvious to any of the dramatic moments. After finishing the game and listening to the end boss comment on the crazed wick, I decided to go back and talk to him a bit more. Turns out his backstory is difficult to get access to, but the whole "Ignus isn't a person anymore" thing does serve a purpose and reflects on the central theme. That's about the most I can say without giving the game as a whole away.
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I loved that your companions had a say in PS:T. Like when Dak'kon ran into another of his people and they got into a fight, or when Fall from Grace argued with a shopkeeper.
Your party should definitely be able to get you favors / better dialogue options, but should also be able to alienate some people. I realize that this is a bit off topic, but I generally agree with your assessment and wanted to add to it.
Speaking of P:T, I wanted to mention the time when a party member was actually translating for you and if you understood, you could call him on his deceptive translation. It really made it feel like there was another person there and not just clone of your character. Allowing companions to act without the player's control can be frustrating, but if done right, make the characters come to life.
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I think you nailed the redesigned armor. Like a couple of other people mentioned, I imagined her more feminine with redder hair, but I think your image is much more honest. She really looks like a blonde in the party art and as hard as a full plate wearing servant of the faith would be. Really amazing art, Staples!
Edit: Just took a look at your art blog and realized you did your forum portrait too. Crackerjack work!
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Spoilers maybe? Don't read further if you're playing P:T for the first time and don't want any information on the ending.
You shouldn't if you don't want to - it's also explained clearly, except you already missed it since you are in Curst. If you want spoilers, I will tell you her story, because I actually remember it, whereas I can't even remember who the BG characters you listed are.No, I do know what little they gave me of Deionarra's backstory it's just they gave you so very little it's hard to make any real connection to her character. Second hand sources of information really doesn't help either. One of my biggest beefs is you can't go back and ask her ghost about her father, the stone, etc. It's has to be the biggest waste of a slightly different romantic foray ever. Like much of your companion history and a lot of even the memories I have found it seems to be up to me the player to basically fill in the blanks. There's what 6+ unique ways that people point you to Lothar and yet Deionarra who has her own damn theme can't get periodically undated dialogue options? Reminds me of the difference between a Tad Williams fantasy novel and a Brandon Sanderson novel. Tad spends reams of paper describing an experience to you. Sanderson *shows* you in 3 sentences. So much wasted writing... tch.
As far as Deionarra goes, did you finish the game? I thought the point of her character was that you weren't supposed to care about her if YOU as the player didn't care about her. That far I agree with Solonik, but you don't miss really that until the very last battle. Deionarra didn't really have much of a personality. That's what I learned from her backstory. The incarnation that actually knew her really didn't like her and you're free to feel the same way. I just felt sorry for her. All she does is test the real aligment of the player which is one of the things that makes P:T a really great game. It plays with the idea of aligment, both in D&D and in the real world. By allowing you to make decisions that affect your aligment and then adding in gameplay mechinics that make that relevent, the player gets a chance to question the effect of morality on the world at large and, more importantly, on the individual.
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Incidentally, you don't need to use blood magic to save the kid. The optimal ending for that quest is getting a bunch of mages together, going into his head and fighting the demon. Everybody wins.
Hmm, is that even possible?
You might not use blood magic, however exposing your body and soul to the Dream Realm, the Veil is not a great idea, especially for somone who's roleplaying as a follower of the Maker, for demons are drawn to you. They seek to use you as a gateway to this world.
Depends on how you look at the situation. The demon has used Conor as its gateway. Conor is wildly unprepared and thus unable to resist the demon. You could enter the Fade to kill the demon that has clearly already learned how to pass into the world or you could simply close this particular gateway and end this one situation without risk. However, the later would mean that you've left a demon that knows and yearns to cover over as strong as you found it. It would also assume you understand possession and the Fade perfectly, which you do not.
Oh the joys of role playing.
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I was going to comment on the quality of the clip, even in the content of that game alone, and realized I might have missed your point, OP. It almost sounds as if you personally would stack the aforementioned clip up against the most dramatic, best written text based moment and the latter would come up short due to its lack of voice acting. So what I'm asking is, was the intention of this thread to state how awesome the writing/acting in DA:O was or a defense of full voice acting in games?
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It'd also be nice if you could "solve" the stupider of these encounters by beaning the guy over the head and leaving him in the hands of the local law enforcement.
This! So much. I'm replaying Baldur's Gate as well. I'm not halfway through and I'm already sick of my Lawful Good paladin turning random bandits into chunks when they should be in jail. I would really like multiple ways to solve even little problems like street crime.
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I posted this reference in another thread eariler on and I don't think anyone got it. I'm glad to see so many likes on the original comments and a response. Warms my heart.
As for real content, I like the idea of a great event as it starts a chain of changes off in the world. I hate being the only one in the game that doesn't know what's going on. I always imagined that the event would be an explosion of power or the appearance of a god. Just something that would change everything.
Good evening. Stay indoors.
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Depends how detailed the NPC sprites are going to be and how in depth their animations are. If you can clearly see what they look like and what they're doing there's not a great deal of need to describe that.
I'd be happiest if this were the case. However, if I can't see how the scene is meant to be painted from the sprites, then I would prefer P:T's action describing text.
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Thanks for the article, Jasiek. I don't think you'll get a whole lot of traction with DLC related ideas here. It's become a rather dirty word which I find rather sad. I'm actually fond of DLC in princple and would prefer it over a traditional expansion pack, especially in a project like this with so much fan participation. In my ideal model, the game would be out for a few months to allow people to get in a full playthrough and then the 'FreeLC' model explained in the article would be used to basically poll for and create the content people actually want to see an no finiancal loss. Think crowd funded patches that address content issues instead of bugs. I agree DLC has been massively abused in the past, but that doesn't have to be the case now.
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I would like to see mix of new and typical fantasy monsters, just like they did with races and classes.
This is the sort of thing I would prefer. Better yet, I would like to a handful of same-old-same-olds with a twist. Take some of those well known D&D creatures based on mythological begins and make them more like their source material. Or take a creature and fully flesh it out, imagine its biology and change its image based on that. I'm really found of things that are both familiar and new at the same time.
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The disadvantage comes in the form of possible lack of depth. With apparently no family or friends or background of any kind, the character can feel like little more than a walking set of statistics pretending to be a character. Torment would not have worked anywhere near as well as a story if your character didn't have a very richly defined background, for example.
Torment was brillant in terms of this background vs blank slate issue. TNO had a rich and important back story that drove the plot forward, but due to the amnesia he was experiencing he wasn't really the same person as the one that did all those important things and the game bothered to point this fact out. I tend to feel uninvolved and uninvested if I'm making decisions for a predefined character. I didn't feel that with TNO.
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My first playthrough (which I only finished a few days ago) involved high intelligence and wisdom with a mage. I really enjoyed playing it, but the end game really kicked me around. Still made it through happily. I think those two stats help with the story and first time through I'm not sure you should be focused on much else.
Not to hijack your thread, but maybe someone could point me towards a very thorough walkthrough so I could pick up some of the dialogue I know I've missed?
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Adding my thanks to the pile. I can't imagine watching all of this in one sitting, but I was sad I missed it.
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I just wanted to say thank you for keeping paypal open. I don't know why it took me so long, but I just doubled my pledge. I couldn't let that hardcover art book go!
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Sorry if this has been answered somewhere else, but if I donated via kickstarter say $100 and now I wanted to up my pledge to the $250 tier, is there still a way to do that? Also when is EOB? I'm in the UTC- 05:00 timezone.
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Based on the livefeed, I think we did it. I think we hit 4 mil.
Edit: Beaten. But too excited to care!
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I wonder where the cats will be since we'll reach that 4 million
.Everywhere. The answer is everywhere.
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Magic and the Economy
in Pillars of Eternity: General Discussion (NO SPOILERS)
Posted
I'm with Jojobobo. I think the reason that this isn't relevant to P:E is that any form of Vancian or limited cast magic isn't terrible useful in industry. However, I like were your head is at. Dragon Age had hints of this and jammed the repercussions of such possibilities into your face without restraint.
And Osvir! I'm disappointed in you. You posted here and didn't mention the Avatar world's use of firebenders to power electric plants and such. Tsk.