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Just finished MOTB


ramza

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and if you've gone chaotic evil and been sucking every available spirit in the game, increasing your hunger to the max, it means you're pretty much screwed until the next [Devour Spirit] dialogue option.

 

I thought that made it even better, since if the 'mundane enemies' supplied your needs enough you could easily afford to be 'good' and skimp on eating plot-central characters, gaming the system. As it is, the experience of avoiding death and carrying a crippled character for the last 2 hours does have an impact when you're deciding whether to suck this guy's soul out in a main plot dialogue.

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There was an easy way to cheese out of it. Suppress, travel from Mulsantir to for instance Ashenwood & rinse and repeat until both your spirit meter was full and your hunger meter empty. Drawback of this method was watching an eternity of loading screens.

The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.

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It's also the lame way of doing it. :lol:

 

I think in the end, the Supressing path was the least interesting one. Unfortunately it was sort of set up so that you could just treat the meter as a non-issue this way. It's probably my biggest beef with the Spirit eater mechanic, the ultra good way of doing it is just kinda boring.

 

Giving in to the hunger and becoming a devouring monster however, was a lot of fun.

Listen to my home-made recordings (some original songs, some not): http://www.youtube.c...low=grid&view=0

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See, I disagree. Using surpress and refraining from eating souls gives "good guy" players a chance to experience the game in a satisfying way. Sure, the less than optimal good ending isn't terribly exciting. However, if you play your cards right, the Dudly Do-Right ending is excellent. Most folks who are dedicated to playing a good guy find rewards outside of extra gameplay bennies. By the way, a lot of folks who like to play the "bad guy" find enjoyment in acting... well... evil. It's nice that you can find rewards going to either path and, even better, those rewards are quite different.

 

Frankly, you can mix it up a bit without a lot of problem. The spirit meter is more of a nuisance than a real problem with even a little bit of planning. I could have done without the spirit meter as an in-game mechanic, but I believe the design team wanted that aspect of the story to be more visceral to the player. In that regard, they did a good job.

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It's been quite some time since I've played the game, so I might be remembering the term incorrectly. From what I recall, surpress is when you supress your hunger. Is that not right? I used to gather a bunch of spirits next to me and use that to lower my hunger as much as possible. Anyhow, like I said, I might have things mixed up. I have, however, seen all of the game endings and the vast majority of the dialogue, most of it in game. I especially like the ability to lay souls to rest. That was pretty awesome and the in game rewards were a side benefit. The real reward for me was feeling like my character had done something good and noble. Beats the hell out of real life where a lot of the time I'm too small and petty to remain above the fray. RPGs should allow us to do things that are outside of our reach in real life, and MotB is excellent in that it really offers more to the player than a simple "dark side/light side" approach. In fact, you can really approach things in a variety of ways within the game to win.

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I went through it with a ranger/spirit shaman/shadowdancer type...

What I liked was figuring out the little bits and pieces that actually altered the future of your companions.... even within the good/evil variety of endings there were a few different results of what happened to them..

"Cuius testiculos habeas, habeas cardia et cerebellum."

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I wasn't a big fan of the spirit meter either, it was a cool idea, but the execution was annoying at best.
Short of cheating, it wasn't possible to game the system. To me, that's a successfully implemented design idea. The hunger IS the drive of the story, and a gameplay mechanic intended to put pressure on the player is tailored around that drive.

 

How is that "annoying at best"?

 

 

Is there actually a good ending for Kaelyn? Even wiping out that floating skull doesn't lead to anything even remotely nice.
The tragedy of blind idealism... I thought you guys liked "dark" stories? Edited by 213374U

- When he is best, he is a little worse than a man, and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast.

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So disappointed in SoZ after playing MOTB. MOTB didn't have good gameplay, but at least it had other awesome things to compensate with. All SoZ had was cool character creation and music. I guess it was doomed to begin with, being stuck with the NWN2 engine and all.

Hadescopy.jpg

(Approved by Fio, so feel free to use it)

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I agree with numbers man.

 

I liked the fact that the spirit meter provided an actual game mechanic that directed the player. The one thing I hate about a lot of RPGs is that the world is pretty much static outside of when the player triggers stuff. Basically, the world waits for the player. I like the idea that just sometimes, the world forces the player to do something with some sort of sense of urgency, because it makes for a more consistent and plausible game world. The best example of this I can think of off the top of my head is Fallout. While I find the water chip restriction a bit too artificial, I do like that if you take your time, the settlements of the area are eradicated by the mutant threat. No happy ending for them, because sometimes **** just happens.

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@Purkake Exactly.

Did you get all the pieces of the mask? There are actually 4 different ending: the "all is well" one, the "I screwed up so now I'll stay here forever" one, the "selfish" one and the "I eat babies" one.

No, I only got 2 or 3 pieces, I have no idea where the other ones were. I got to stay and guard the place forever, but it was presented as some kind of reward.

Edited by Wrath of Dagon

"Moral indignation is a standard strategy for endowing the idiot with dignity." Marshall McLuhan

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It would have been fine if sleeping and traveling didn't screw it up so much. Having to worry about my spirit energy every second, makes it hard to enjoy the rest of the game.

I enjoyed it much more because of that.

 

^That sounds like poor game design. No player should ever be constrained by the choices they make.

:)

 

Well if it were done properly, MOTB would have given the player some mechanism to completely reset/circumvent the curse so you wouldnt get frustrated.

Except there is - Supress.

Edited by Mera
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It would have been fine if sleeping and traveling didn't screw it up so much. Having to worry about my spirit energy every second, makes it hard to enjoy the rest of the game.

I enjoyed it much more because of that.

Well, then you are weird.

 

I generally find timed challenges to be frustrating.

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