On the road to... Pillars of Eternity 3

[SchroedsCat]

7 hours ago, Sven_ said:

If they can improve on Wrath, that's gonna be a very very good game. I've seen (German) people arguing even its writing was better than in PoE, but I think to a big extent that may be because the same people thought PoE in tendency to have too much  prose // generally be too wordy.

From what I heard, it might also be that the more wordy prose was simply not very well translated. Can only talk about hearsay, I play everything, save for Daedalic adventures, in English.

 

[xzar_monty]

13 hours ago, kanisatha said:

I know it's off-topic, but do you suppose the "cheesiness" of some of the writing in P:Km is the result of everything having first been written in Russian and then being translated to English? In the most recent AMA for P:WotR, the devs mention how the English translations from Russian often don't come across the way the writers intended and that this is a continuing source of much frustration for the writers.

This question brings up two separate points that I think I must address to answer you.

1) There is cheesiness strictly related to content -- and this was my main thrust when I brought up how cheesy some of the writing is. In P:K, most dialogue trees are very simplistic and straightforward: what you basically have to do is click every possible option to see all possible content. There is almost no subtlety; in other words, choosing to click one particular option rarely makes other options unavailable like it does in PoE and Deadfire. In P:K dialogues, you are quite often not even given the opportunity to have a viewpoint or a strategy related to the person you're talking to, you just have to click all the options and that's it. The most common exception to this is that sometimes, in the end, you get to make a choice that affects your alignment or is restricted by your alignment. So in this sense, when compared to PoE and Deadfire, this type of content in P:K is so simplistic that it qualifies as cheesy.

This type of cheesiness is made worse by the fact that the narrative itself so hopelessly simplistic. The lines between good and evil tend to be very well defined, especially because the narrator / commentator Linzi is telling her story from a clasically naive "We the marvelous heroes in this world of evil!" viewpoint. So even if I, as a player, personally have ambiguity about whether I'm doing the right thing or not, Linzi doesn't have any: her journal entries underline that I am a hero and we "did the right thing with that awful wizard" (note: not a direct quote, but faithful enough in style), and so on. I think this is also cheesy.

The characters are also cheesy. Linzi is exaggerated in her naivety. Valerie is exaggerated in her humorless posturing. Amiri is exaggerated in her butch warrioriness. And so on. I wonder if you agree with me on this: many of the characters are so exaggerated that they look like comic stereotypes. And this is, inevitably, cheesy.

2) More directly related to what you're talking about, there is also cheesiness on the level of language irrespective of its content, and I am certain that this is not helped by the fact that the writers are Russian. Or, to be more precise, not helped by the fact that their command of English is lacking. There are grammatical errors in the game. There are even some spelling errors. There are word choices that immediately betray an inexperienced and/or clumsy writer(*). Like, using too many adjectives or adjectives that are way too obvious. And if memory serves me right on this point, using far too many exclamation marks! It doesn't look good! So yes, the language itself is not quite right and greatly contributes to the overall cheesiness. Translation from Russian to English is no different from other translation jobs, but what a lot of people don't appreciate well enough is that all good translation is difficult and translators often aren't as educated as they should be (translation is one of the very few areas where I have no qualms about claiming expertise: I know what I'm talking about).

But this particular language problem doesn't explain all the language problems. For example, Nok-Nok was entirely written by Chris Avellone, and I'm pretty sure he wrote in English. But Nok-Nok is still cheesy, although it's cheesy in a way that appears to know that it's cheesy -- and this is one of the reasons why I sometimes wonder just how much of a parody the whole game possibly is.

So, after all this, I think the answer your question is yes, but the whole issue is more complicated than that. Good question, by the way.

 

(*) In fairness, it has to be said that some of the word choices in Deadfire seem to betray a writer who's trying just a bit too hard. You know, there is the sense that the writer is thinking, "I must make this sound literary." But I didn't mind this very much. It was not a problem for me. I know there are other opinions.

Edited May 16, 2020 by xzar_monty

[xzar_monty]

1 hour ago, SchroedsCat said:

From what I heard, it might also be that the more wordy prose was simply not very well translated. Can only talk about hearsay, I play everything, save for Daedalic adventures, in English.

 

Some of Obsidian's translations, sadly, were simply awful. Like they were done by a company that had no idea what it was doing.

If you @SchroedsCat play game in your own language that is English language and is done from translation from different language perhaps maybe Spain language, and then when you play you see the English language in game is like this, will you SchroedsCat will you be happy playing game?

[Guest 4ward]

well, i picked up pathfinder kingmaker several days ago; the game flew under my radar, i didn’t know what pathfinder is in the first place and then learned that it’s derived from d&d. Why Obsidian  didn’t simply make a pathfinder rtwp like owlcat is beyond me. The sales numbers prove that Owlcat is on the right track.

I’m pleasantly surprised that a small team with no former experience in this particular niche genre, succesfully captured the spirit of the old IE games. If you truly liked BG, chances are you’ll like this game more than any other since 2002.

What is here described as ‚cheesy‘ is exactly how chars work in the old games. They’re for the amusement of the player and don’t try to portray some boring ‚real‘ type. Exactly like, say, Minsc or Khalid. Like when you give Harrim a command and he’s like ‚oh no i think i will die‘. The voice-acting is superb and i find the chars interesting and funny.

The story is motivating me much more than, say, the story in the pillars games. Combat is rewarding; sometimes my party is toast but then i change the strategy and tactics during combat slightly and reward myself with winning the battle (like in the battle against tartuccio or the wild dryade or the goons from the tech league). Sometimes the enemy screws your party by ‚chaos‘ and then you have to counter that. I find myself using potions much more, like the invisibility potion or alchemical fire or simply healing potion. The game also effectively addresses the rest-spamming and save-scumming complains from the old games. You have resource management (though there’s unlimited ammo) and the impression of an adventuring day; it’s open world but more concise just like the writing, you don‘t get lost, the story areas are marked.

I seriously don’t understand why anyone would want to nitpick on this game and crticize it. While i’m not that far in the game, so far it’s basically the true successor of BG. I’m glad they’re working on another one. Avellone will be on it again and i hope Inon Zur will help with the music score. Only idiocy are the attacks of opportunity but i guess i’ll have to live with that in modern rtwps.

[Sven_]

4 hours ago, ArnoldRimmer said:

Most of dev costs seem to be reinventing the wheel... I'd be happy to get a new game using the current deadfire engine as is. Just new quests etc. Obviously that takes time too but if they didn't change the engine and combat system probably not as much.

Agreed. It makes you wonder how Black Isle was seen as "profitable", even making "a lot of money" given that none of the games they had ever developed on their own had the sales success of Baldur's Gate... so it comes down to budgeting/expectations. 

Obsidian HQ saw what Original Sin 2 had done for Larian and thought they could replicate it by bumping it all up to the max. Whilst that is not completely unreasonable, it's a different scenario than for the first PoE right from the bat.

And then the game failed to live up to that.

And suddenly it's game over.

Bummer.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Sven_

[SchroedsCat]

3 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

If you @SchroedsCat play game in your own language that is English language and is done from translation from different language perhaps maybe Spain language, and then when you play you see the English language in game is like this, will you SchroedsCat will you be happy playing game?

I still remember the days of Schw. Tr. d. Le.en.-W. in Oblivion. So yeah, still played it. With rolling eyes and clenched teeth. But I played it. 

[anameforobsidian]

7 hours ago, ArnoldRimmer said:

Most of dev costs seem to be reinventing the wheel... I'd be happy to get a new game using the current deadfire engine as is. Just new quests etc. Obviously that takes time too but if they didn't change the engine and combat system probably not as much.

I think they could make a few mechanical changes to make fights more interesting, but  I would love a relatively focused mid level campaign like White March with the current engine.  Maybe 15 years from now, another team will discover how good prebaked isometric images look.  Or maybe there will be a rush to copy Disco Elysium.

[xzar_monty]

The problem with copying Disco Elysium is that you actually need a pretty good writer. Obsidian haven't any writers of that quality, at least so far.

One hour of playing Disco Elysium will reveal that the charm of the game is in the writing, not the combat or the graphics or the companions or anything like that. It's the writing. And it has to be good, if you want to copy it.

[etno]

What I would like to see in PoE 3:

1. Keep the voice acting to PoE 1's level, it's expensive and means less dialogue & stuff to read. 
2. While the sidequests and factions in PoE 2 were good an' all I would like a stronger & longer main plot next time.

3.  More books to read, like in PoE1. 

4. While I hope they would keep refining the isometric RPG style, if this cannot be done, please make sure the alternative has tactical combat. 

[nouser]

1) abilities influencing dialogues. dumb characters need to be made fun of.

2) if your character behaves in a way that  angers a party member, they should react and in some extreme cases even become hostile. this happen in poe 2 , but is too rare. maia does not even attack if you tell her you sacrificed kana.

3) combat  misses needs to be a little more detailed., a miss is not to be restricted by a dodge,  it  should also be represented by a block animation (a character blocking an enemy weapon) , or a weapon hitting weakly and harmlessly a character (hitting armor, for example).

4)deities should react in dialogues if your character behaves in a way that displeases them.

5) keep factions, as they are always very important for the story.

 

 

 

[Morrydwen]

Are we going to get a POE 3? I damn hope so!

I don't like a single bit of what I am seeing from BG 3. Turn based combat and idiotic camera controls.

[xzar_monty]

10 hours ago, Morrydwen said:

Are we going to get a POE 3? I damn hope so!

I don't like a single bit of what I am seeing from BG 3. Turn based combat and idiotic camera controls.

In my view, the short answer is probably no.

I also think I won't be getting BG3. Turn-based combat is enough to put me off.

Well, there's Wrath of the Righteous to look forward to...

[Sceptenar]

The XBOX Live event mentioned the new Obsidian RPG Avowed which is set in Eora. It's probably the closest thing we'll see to a Pillars 3.

[Waski]

 

[Sceptenar]

They're talking about an empire in the trailer, my guess is the setting will be the Aedyr Empire.

[Wormerine]

26 minutes ago, Sceptenar said:

They're talking about an empire in the trailer, my guess is the setting will be the Aedyr Empire.

Forests and Woedica related flags would strongly suggest it. The question is when. After PoE2? Before Woedica's fall from power? Time of Titans?

[Sceptenar]

Well, the Woedica symbols on the banners has the broken crown motif so this would suggest it's after her fall. Although conversations with Eothas in PoE2 seem to indicate Woedica never actually fell from power as the queen of the gods, she was never the queen to begin with, that was all a fantasy to build her up, the gods were always intended to be equals.

[ABearIsHere]

Woedica never fell, she was made that way. This is something that has been clarified pretty extensively in Deadfire and the DLC and patches. Which makes her PoE1 plot more about her finally doing what she's always wanted to do than her regaining a status she effectively never had.

[White.Kelevra]

On 4/13/2020 at 7:30 PM, Elfevivi said:

And you ?

Just make PoE-III 

But - Avowed....oh FP-RPG........................ ( . _____ . )

"I hope, someday, i can continue played moon godlike with tomahawk hair style, and gather a party, in beautiful (and more empruwed) isometric RPG"

[Boeroer]

10 hours ago, Waski said:

 

I think I saw Concelhaut's Draining Touch. 

[xzar_monty]

First-person perspective, not isometric, d'oh. Too bad. Still, interesting to see that Eora is not abandoned. (Not going to try this one, though.)

[Madscientist]

On 5/16/2020 at 2:58 PM, SchroedsCat said:

I still remember the days of Schw. Tr. d. Le.en.-W. in Oblivion. So yeah, still played it. With rolling eyes and clenched teeth. But I played it. 

I played Oblivion in german and it was the worst translation I have ever seen. Some dialogue was not translated at all and that was the best part of it. I never finished Oblivion. Not because of language but because of level scaling. After killing tons of demons I had problems to beat goblins and rats.

PoE1+2 had a terrible german translation too. I played both games in german once and reported all errors to the people who made the translation mod, but later I just played in english. Both games sometimes had exactly the same errors. They just took the same text from PoE and put it into PoE2 which resulted in several errors, such as mentioning DR in PoE2. Looks like they just send text files to a translation company without any context and they did not check the result they got because no one at obsidian speaks german.

Really bad are those translation errors where you can see what it was in the original language. Like they translated a sentence word by word or the original text was some kind of pun. Example from Wild Arms 1: In a hospital you talk to a person and in english it must have been something like: " I am waiting for the doctor since hours. Now I know why it is called patient." In german it makes no sense because the words for ( being able to wait a long time ) and ( a person seeking treatment in a hospital ) are not the same.

P:K had a very good german translation. I did not play it in english.

A very good example is the trails series. In an interview for Trails of cold Steel 3 the devs said they had to change some text so it makes sense to a western audience because some texts would require knowledge of japanese culture to make sense or they are just bad jokes that make no sense in another language. Thats exactly what devs should do, but some idiots complained that the game is censored.

[xzar_monty]

2 hours ago, Madscientist said:

P:K had a very good german translation. I did not play it in english.

This is interesting! Thanks.

Here's my theory as to why: P:K was created by a Russian company for a market that is predominantly English-speaking, so the company itself is already aware that language is important, and I'm pretty sure that almost everybody at P:K speaks at least two languages. North Americans, on the other hand, are notoriously bad when it comes to speaking languages, and clearly Obsidian has/had no understanding about what proper translation actually entails.

So, a Russian company understands the issue and produces quality (although the quality of the English in P:K can sometimes be debated, no question), whereas a North American company has essentially no clue. There is a saying, not entirely true, that if you only speak one language, you don't really speak any languages at all. Simply learning another one will expand your mind an awful lot, and this is something that far too many English speakers are unaware of.

Edited July 25, 2020 by xzar_monty

[wih]

25 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

North Americans, on the other hand, are notoriously bad when it comes to speaking languages, and clearly Obsidian has/had no understanding about what proper translation actually entails.

So, a Russian company understands the issue and produces quality (although the quality of the English in P:K can sometimes be debated, no question), whereas a North American company has essentially no clue.

This theory will have to be expanded probably, because at least Josh Sawyer has some clue : https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/169284230541/the-problem-with-tokens

[xzar_monty]

50 minutes ago, wih said:

This theory will have to be expanded probably, because at least Josh Sawyer has some clue : https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/169284230541/the-problem-with-tokens

What he's writing there does not demonstrate having a clue, although it is not proof of cluelessness, either. What he's talking about is something one obviously has to know if one's going to get involved in something like this. The very basics, meat and potatoes. Does Josh Sawyer actually speak a language other than English? Not that he has to, of course.

You will have to keep in mind that Obsidian's translations (most of them, at least) are demonstratably awful, so Sawyer's understanding of this particular phenomenon is not worth much.