How are the writers planning on creating a more compelling story for POE2?

[Messier-31]

Good lore exposition: "Zoinks Scoob, like that's McGeezer Butterscotch, the famous and powerful wizard and stuff."

Bad lore exposition: "My family comes from the Helluvafaraway town, which lies on the banks of Donotcare river, famous for their blueberry muffin pie eating contest held annualy on the day of summer solstice, and badgers are really common there"

[Rolandur]

Good lore exposition: "Zoinks Scoob, like that's McGeezer Butterscotch, the famous and powerful wizard and stuff."

Bad lore exposition: "My family comes from the Helluvafaraway town, which lies on the banks of Donotcare river, famous for their blueberry muffin pie eating contest held annualy on the day of summer solstice, and badgers are really common there"

 

...and he likes turtles.

[Gromnir]

from the recent twitch stream, josh mentioned how faith would continue to be an addressed theme in poe2, but we would get additions and changes, such as a new important focus: "colonialism."

 

 

john 11:35

 

*shrug*

 

colonialism?  serious?

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Micamo]

Hahaha, yes, that was one of my questions!

 

Anyway, I thought it'd be clear to everyone that "Adra, but more powerful" is *not* the point here. The point is you can make healing potions from it so that gives the imperial powers a motivation to expend a lot of blood and treasure fighting it out, both with each other and the locals.

[blotter]

In the twitch Q&A, it sounded like Sawyer said, "Potions of, not youth, but vitality." That could be interpreted as healing potions, sure, but the fact that he wanted to differentiate between potions of youth and what these potions provide suggests to me that he may have meant vitality in the sense of increased longevity through bolstered long-term health rather than vitality in the sense of hit points. Unless they plan to retcon the fact that potions of regeneration/endurance were already craftable without adra of any kind, tying luminous adra to healing potions would hardly account for the sudden interest in it.

[Gromnir]

"Potions of, not youth, but vitality."

 

so, little blue potions... of vitality.  *wink*  gotcha.

 

regardless, am hopeful somebody pulls josh back from the brink.  have colonialism be the poe 2 thematic focus the same way faith were in poe would be terrible. am oglala and even Gromnir is groaning at thought o' seven or eight companions trying to be evocative and compelling while sharing setting lore and opinions 'bout colonialism.

 

even in the mission(1986), the colonialism were secondary.

 

 

'course maybe obsidian will go for an avatar (2009) approach.

 

*shudder*

 

am not seeing good coming from this news 'bout shift in theme.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Gfted1]

Healing pots? Sweet.

[Gromnir]

Healing pots? Sweet.

not healing per se.  is 'bout "vitality."

 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[blotter]

"Potions of, not youth, but vitality."

 

so, little blue potions... of vitality.  *wink*  gotcha.

 

regardless, am hopeful somebody pulls josh back from the brink.  have colonialism be the poe 2 thematic focus the same way faith were in poe would be terrible. am oglala and even Gromnir is groaning at thought o' seven or eight companions trying to be evocative and compelling while sharing setting lore and opinions 'bout colonialism.

 

Heh, magical viagra potions... I hadn't made that connection but I can definitely see a bunch of rich old bastards sending out their armies to butcher and enslave people by the thousands if it brought them closer to those. 

 

As for the concerns about colonialism as a thematic focus, the Q&A does go into the Watcher's potential role in shifting the balance of power within the area and I'd hope that the dynamics of the area itself allow these themes to be explored through more natural methods than companion info-dumps.

 

Taking cues from Avatar would be grotesque, but Huana culture seems to have enough wrong with it that they won't automatically get propped up as noble savages who can do no wrong. The Battle of Algiers film might be a more interesting place to draw inspiration from; I couldn't find to handy video to post here, but Prince Aruihi sounds like a likely source for some variation of its "Give us your bombers, sir, and we'll give you our baskets" line.

Edited February 9, 2017 by blotter

[PugPug]

 

When characters can die permanently, writing for them becomes a risky use of time. Permadeath and story are not very compatible.

Developers tend to understand how "Quick load" button works

 

 

 

If they are including the button in their design decisions, they may as well not have permadeath at all.

 

 

...Did we play different games? Most of the expositional dialogue was optional. If you exhaust each character's dialogue tree to hear their entire life story and then complain they talk too much, well, that's on you.

 

I think the point is that we want the story, just not so much at once. Baldur's Gate 2 was better at breaking it up into bite-sized chunks.

 

It's also possible to say more with less. I realize they must write dialogue the way the character speaks, but in broadcasting, we learn to strike words and phrases that can be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence because there is only so much on-air time to say it. Or change things like "police said the suspect then fled the scene of the crime on foot" to "police said he ran away." So there may be some gains there without sacrificing quality as well.