Why is it still not possible to turn off the narrator?

[xzar_monty]

You could make the Aliens argument for Deadfire too; after the revelation that the gods aren't true gods it's appropriate for us to see them in the cold light of day and demystify them a bit

 

Yep, good point. I would agree. However, I am not entirely sure whether the demystification really works. Wormerine presents some of the reasons in his comment right above.

[Triple - A Foxy Lad]

Maybe shouldve copy pasted that horrible flesh monster from the end of akira. Thing something horrible and faceless in line with the librarians might have worked. If eyes are the window to the soul, makes sense that waels would be 'shut'.

 

rymrgand benefits the most from overexposure imo. hes great fun, exactly the sort of thing the setting was missing up until now.

 

Beraths incarnation works pretty well. helps that their appearance is kithlike and has been long established in lore.

[Verde]

 

I personally had bigger issue with graphics - imagination is always more powerful, and I found PoE1 way ofpresenting Gods much more impactful and intimidating.

would have been cheaper to implement as well. sometimes laziness is the best judge.

Totally agree with Wormine here.

[Guest Blutwurstritter]

I had the impression that is more concise and to the point. The PoE II writing often leaves me with the thougth: "What was the point of this text passage ?". Pathfinder Kingmaker is also not overloaded with words from made up languages/accents  which makes it easier to understand. I am not a native english speaker so i lack the natural intuition of a natural user. I think Pathfinder Kingmaker hits a comfortable level of sophistication for me. Pillars strikes above it quite some times which can be tiring.

Overall, the writing in Deadfire II is good but i don't think it is "better" than the writing in Pathfinder: Kingmaker. I also find it hard to quantify "writing" and separating it from the content so i guess i prefer the story/tone of Pathfinder: Kingmaker which influences my opinion in this regard. I don't think that the writing style of  PoE II would improve Pathfinder: Kingmaker or vice versa, so i'd say to each his own. 

 

 

 

 

To answer your question, I prefer the writing of Pathfinder Kingmaker. But i am not sure if one person makes a people.

 

Ok. Why? I'm genuinely curious.

 

[xzar_monty]

Ok, fair enough, good answer. I absolutely accept that words from made up languages may irritate some people in Deadfire. I quite like most of them, but if you don't, I do take your point.

 

Also, if you are not a native English speaker (or at native level), the clumsiness of some of the writing in P:K may not be apparent. And again, fair enough. It's comparable to music, in a way: if your ear isn't that well trained, you might not spot that something is out of tune. And nothing wrong with that: when I read Swedish or Spanish (and to a lesser degree, French), I often can't tell whether something is stylistically good or not. I just don't know the language well enough to tell the difference. You can absolutely "fool" me with badly written Swedish, Spanish or French prose.

Edited February 8, 2019 by xzar_monty

[thelee]

Ok, fair enough, good answer. I absolutely accept that words from made up languages may irritate some people in Deadfire.

 

Merla! They are postenago.

[xzar_monty]

 

Ok, fair enough, good answer. I absolutely accept that words from made up languages may irritate some people in Deadfire.

 

Merla! They are postenago.

 

Ekera.

 

I like the fact that if you know anything about the languages spoken on the northern shores of the Mediterranean, you can pretty well infer what they're talking about.

 

The most unsuccessful coinage in my view is "fampyr". It's like a huge sign saying, "We wanted to change words just for the sake of changing words." It doesn't work at all.

[thelee]

The most unsuccessful coinage in my view is "fampyr". It's like a huge sign saying, "We wanted to change words just for the sake of changing words." It doesn't work at all.

 

 

I'd like to introduce you to my friend, the Gul. Oh how do you pronounce it? It's pronounced "ghoul." No, it's different, I swear.

[Triple - A Foxy Lad]

I had the impression that is more concise and to the point.

I cant agree with this, but u may have highlighted something ill get to at the end. Km waffles hella much and includes words and arcs that do nowt to further any particular theme, just take up time. paragraphs are frequently way too long. Could have slashed word count by good 20% i suspect.

 

Outside of cutscenes, deadfire mainly hews to the bullet-point-esque structure used by baldurs gate 2, which km aint adopted yet.

 

While poe's now jettisoned the overly exhaustive dialogue trees that marred durance and gm, those dialogue trees have migrated to km. valeries one of the worst offenders for this. u can ask about her whole backstory then her sidequest just replays the whole thing without adding a great deal. might as well have just had the sidequest and made her cagier in the beginning.

 

i think the issue u may be describing with deadfire aint one of concision but *density*. It does cram hella information into small spaces, which is compounded by - as u say - unfamiliar terms and metaphysical/political preoccupations that km aint burdened with. Km easier to read bcs it conveys simple information at length. Deadfire much fussier and offers fewer opportunities for less invested folk to catch up. you take ur eye of the ball, u can have little clue about what flavour of soul shenanigans is going on.

 

This does mean that poe's approach risks narrowing its audience where km casts a wider net. whether its worth obs doing such is kind of up to them. i guess theory is u offer specialised experience to committed, trope-savvy crowd, rather than more digestible experience to wider, but more fickle crowd. Sort of like difference between, say, Al Stewart and Coldplay.

[bringingyouthefuture]

Is anyone familiar with the Pathfinder Kingmaker PnP campaign?  I am always wondering how much of the writing came from that vs being original?  Or even how much of the writing in KM is mostly descriptions from the Pathfinder game books?  I have a feeling that a large portion wasn't written by the design team.

Edited February 8, 2019 by bringingyouthefuture

[xzar_monty]

 

The most unsuccessful coinage in my view is "fampyr". It's like a huge sign saying, "We wanted to change words just for the sake of changing words." It doesn't work at all.

 

 

I'd like to introduce you to my friend, the Gul. Oh how do you pronounce it? It's pronounced "ghoul." No, it's different, I swear.

 

 

Indeed. I agree that it doesn't work. However, it's part of the beauty (and utter messiness) of the English language.

 

Let's look at the old linguistic joke. How do you pronounce ghoti?

 

Well, first of all, "gh" as in enough. Then, "o" as in women. And, finally, "ti" as in emotion. Thus, "ghoti" is pronounced "fish". Can't argue with that, can you?

[house2fly]

 

 

Ok, fair enough, good answer. I absolutely accept that words from made up languages may irritate some people in Deadfire.

Merla! They are postenago.

Ekera.

 

I like the fact that if you know anything about the languages spoken on the northern shores of the Mediterranean, you can pretty well infer what they're talking about.

 

The most unsuccessful coinage in my view is "fampyr". It's like a huge sign saying, "We wanted to change words just for the sake of changing words." It doesn't work at all.

it works because you won't see a fampyr and automatically assume "I should cast a sunlight spell for bonus damage. Maybe I should eat garlic to boost my defenses" etc.

[Wormerine]

I think the point about Obsidian's use of language is quite interesting. I consider myself pretty fluent in english but PoE1 was the first game in a while when I had to play with a Dictionary at hand. There were quite a few discriptive words, which meaning I could only guess. Much less so Deadfire. Well, except Serafen. I had to read some of his lines couple times on me first playthrough.

 

Something I noticed about Bioware games is that they stick to a very basic language. I wonder if it's a concious policy and if it something done with non-english native speakers playing games in english in mind.

[algroth]

 

I had the impression that is more concise and to the point.

I cant agree with this, but u may have highlighted something ill get to at the end. Km waffles hella much and includes words and arcs that do nowt to further any particular theme, just take up time. paragraphs are frequently way too long. Could have slashed word count by good 20% i suspect.

 

Outside of cutscenes, deadfire mainly hews to the bullet-point-esque structure used by baldurs gate 2, which km aint adopted yet.

 

While poe's now jettisoned the overly exhaustive dialogue trees that marred durance and gm, those dialogue trees have migrated to km. valeries one of the worst offenders for this. u can ask about her whole backstory then her sidequest just replays the whole thing without adding a great deal. might as well have just had the sidequest and made her cagier in the beginning.

 

i think the issue u may be describing with deadfire aint one of concision but *density*. It does cram hella information into small spaces, which is compounded by - as u say - unfamiliar terms and metaphysical/political preoccupations that km aint burdened with. Km easier to read bcs it conveys simple information at length. Deadfire much fussier and offers fewer opportunities for less invested folk to catch up. you take ur eye of the ball, u can have little clue about what flavour of soul shenanigans is going on.

 

This does mean that poe's approach risks narrowing its audience where km casts a wider net. whether its worth obs doing such is kind of up to them. i guess theory is u offer specialised experience to committed, trope-savvy crowd, rather than more digestible experience to wider, but more fickle crowd. Sort of like difference between, say, Al Stewart and Coldplay.

 

 

To me the biggest offender regarding Kingmaker's verbosity relative to Pillars' is that in Kingmaker much of the lore, discussions, backstories and so on are rarely more than dressing, whereas I've found a lot to dig into thematically in the story and setting and specific character arcs and conflicts in Pillars. In a way I feel that Pillars' verbosity, with Durance and GM for example, is far more justified given their immediate relationship with the kind of ideas and imagery being conveyed than anything I've so far seen in my Kingmaker playthrough. However, given my preference for rather verbose writers this isn't usually as big an issue with me as it may be with others (heck, I've been streaming all these games in full and reading every bit of dialogue and description out loud), so even in Kingmaker I can't say I've really been bothered by this beyond a more general disinterest in the game thus far.

 

I reckon Kingmaker's writing has worse problems than its verbosity, myself. I mentioned the lack of interesting themes or ideas, for one... The episodic structure so far has been rather problematic too. The writing is all manners of inconsistent, showing several moments where syntax just takes a nosedive (I recall a few sections during the Troll Troubles quest where even the descriptions sounded like they were being written down in troll-speech) or where completely neutral, standard responses are worded in the strangest ways (replying to Regongar's desires of bloody, gruesome revenge with a chirpy "Thank you for your answers!" when a "Let's talk about something else." would have served the same point whilst being far more appropriate to the tone of the conversation for example), and so on...

 

But probably the single worst aspect so far has been the approach to the character choices and the interpretation of alignment which is just all over the shop. I absolutely loathe how every choice seems to respond to the most newbie and numbskulled interpretations of each stance, from "playing evil" equating being a sadistic murderhobo, "lawful good" being synonymous to acting like a trigger-happy zealot ("you must die because your race is evil", gee, I wonder what what reminds me of...), "neutral" being equivalent to "entirely apathetic", and so on. In my playthrough I'm trying to act as a mediator and a good ruler and so on but most of the time the "mediator" option, i.e. a stance of true neutrality, is offered only alongside the immediate assumption that you just don't care (want to find the truth behind a conflict between two tribes without pre-eminently taking either's side? Just choose "I don't care about your squables, I only care about X"). It's not like I'm opting out of taking sides because I'm genuinely interested in resolving this conflict peacefully... Christ, I couldn't offer shelter to the trolls in the Narlmarshes in my kingdom because somehow that's a *chaotic-only* action, *how* is it chaotic to wish to introduce civilization to an uneducated, barbaric species exactly?! What I loved about Pillars and Deadfire's approach to choice is that the choices you made could be given several justifications and that several options actually felt like good and interesting posibilities, and when they weren't it was easy to understand why a compromise had to be made; Kingmaker's feeling like the exact opposite to this, where most choices don't feel satisfying and very often the one path you'd like to opt into is inaccessible because it's either not been scripted in or is locked behind some completely arbitrary requisite like alignment. Seriously, this game is dumb as a bag of rocks half of the time, and it shocks me that the people I often see criticizing the writing of Deadfire would hold this as a counter-example of all things.

 

(Rant over.)

Edited February 9, 2019 by algroth

[Aoyagi]

I for one do appreciate colourful language as well as the fact that so much of PE2 is voiced - and that English (as in England) accents aren't too rare, unlike in PE1. Feels much more relatable to me, haha.

 

Of course, there can be too much of everything, but PE manages to throw in fancy words regularly without coming across as pretentious. And I'm clearly not eloquent enough to consider that flowery language as my own!

 

Edit: Turns out the narrator has a pretty good voice for a sidekick.

Edited February 9, 2019 by Aoyagi

[xzar_monty]

I think the point about Obsidian's use of language is quite interesting. I consider myself pretty fluent in english but PoE1 was the first game in a while when I had to play with a Dictionary at hand. There were quite a few discriptive words, which meaning I could only guess. Much less so Deadfire. Well, except Serafen. I had to read some of his lines couple times on me first playthrough.

 

Something I noticed about Bioware games is that they stick to a very basic language. I wonder if it's a concious policy and if it something done with non-english native speakers playing games in english in mind.

 

That's a good question, and I suppose our only answer at the moment is that we don't know.

 

I appreciate the ambition shown at the level of language in PoE and Deadfire, and for the most part, Obsidian pulls it off very well. (In the English original, that is; the translations into other languages appear terrible, although I cannot comment on all of them.)

 

I suppose one could say that PoE and Deadfire attempt to raise CRPG language from the level of pulp to decent literary quality, which in itself is something worth applauding. What's even better, they succeed. Some of the coinages in PoE (duc, gul, fampyr) don't really work, in my opinion, because they are so close to the original that they simply appear forced. But that's a minor problem.

Edited February 9, 2019 by xzar_monty

[Cartoons Plural]

anyone who feels entitled to this option needs to stop playing the game and go outside for a few years

[Verde]

anyone who feels entitled to this option needs to stop playing the game and go outside for a few years

That's a long time to stay outside.

[protopersona]

anyone who feels entitled to this option needs to stop playing the game and go outside for a few years

My you're rather hostile. I don't see how asking for this is entitlement. I personally don't care about the narration, but I'm not bothered if people want the option to turn it off. I'm not even sure why you care about it strongly enough to call people out like that.

[xzar_monty]

He has called people out for not having an avatar. So there you go.

 

Again, I agree, this is not about entitlement, I haven't seen any sense of entitlement here. There's talk about having an option.

[Boeroer]

Well...

"Why is it still not possible?"

comes with some entitlement vibes I'd say.

Edited February 12, 2019 by Boeroer

[xzar_monty]

I stand corrected there -- you are right. I hadn't looked at the title in ages, only the discussion (which is mostly ok).

[Verde]

Well...

 

"Why is it still no possible?"

 

comes with some entitlement vibes I'd say.

We're gamers Boeroer, each of us is a special snowflake

[Boeroer]

I stand corrected there -- you are right. I hadn't looked at the title in ages, only the discussion (which is mostly ok).

I agree.

 

We're gamers Boeroer, each of us is a special snowflake

I don't doubt that...

[merkmerk73]

I was ambivalent about her over the original guy until He Waits In Fire and then I was sold that she was amazing