PIllars of Petrified Shit

Even the original Dragon Age is better than this.

I always had a taste for cheese, and the rare flavour that's different from your run of the mill wrpg or classic jrpg is always worth a try in my book. And speaking of hijacking the thread how about that ELEX? I have a repack sitting on my HDD for a couple of days now but I haven't really had the chance to dig into it.

ELEX is a different beast from these types of RPG. Its essentially Gothic 3 with guns.

I know. I'm just wondering if it's any good.

Well, would you say we're starved of variety? I'm just constantly reminded that I could be doing much better things with my time; good games never give me that feeling, but cheese definitely does esp. in videogames. Haven't played ELEX simply because it looks like an unmitigated clusterfuck.

Hopefully it's fun when it comes out without all the shitty drama they got.
Pillars 1 started good, but the city part was pretty boring.
Gonna pirate at least to see if I like it, before I buy.
latest update was 3 days ago

These update videos always suck ass. You'd think that since this is their analogue to big-budget marketing they could spice up their presentation a bit, but the chick sounds like she's reading off a MS Powerpoint slide. That being said, note the majority of the shite companions from the first game returning, and minor improvements to UI and animation, but none where it actually counts. If the environments are mostly pre-rendered, how come they look like such hot shit? Also 100 bucks says they'll remain unchanged come release.

Can one ever have enough of variety?

What a disappointment this game was. At least I got to take Obsidian's dick out of my ass after playing it.

La-de-da-de-da, supposed to be an intellectual conundrum but isn't. Variety for variety's sake is a self-defeating pursuit; better to foster an environment where everybody has the capability to do their own thing, let variety be a byproduct of said creative process. Also, odd that I'm actually posting instead of playing videogames.

It may be a self-defeating pursuit and I dare you to find a correlation between facing new circumstances or challenges and stagnation but it's sure as hell a fun one. Enjoy your unsalted turnips all day erry day.

Maybe the relation to stagnation is unclear, but I can sure as hell find correlation between it and hedonism. The thing about seeking out new circumstances is that you won't be shaped by them in the way the people who faced them on a day-to-day basis are; you're dipping your toes in the water like a dude who swims with his life jacket on. I'd argue that it's difficult to empathize with a perspective that's truly different from yours, simply because your worldview has not been warped physically and mentally by said perspective. Thus, the idea of seeking it out for its own sake is the domain of the self-identified 'intellectual' who holds Karl Marx in highest esteem don't ask me why, but this is the one box most of them WILL tick.

I don't really like RTwP so I came at it with low expectations. Being a mind delving pistolero who looks like Zorro was a novel experience so I got to enjoy it for what it was.

I really love how you have to explore the world to learn more magic in that game. I rolled with a full mage party. Pretty cool that it was a viable tactic.

Why do people even care about anything Obsidian after Avellone left? Sure, he didn't do everything there but him leaving and the reasons behind just shows how the studio is in rapid decline and will never develop anything worthwhile again.

Because Avellone's writing skills are questionable at best no matter how much the Codex sucks his dick. Compare 2 characters he wrote - Kreia (TSL) and Ulysses (NV). Both the same archetypes with the same inherent purpose, and written in the same shoddy manner. Kreia works because in the context of Stat Wars, psych 102 is like a breath of life whereas Ulysses is the low point of the shittiest New Vegas DLC and a joke of a character, despite interacting with the PC in nearly the same manner as his spiritual predecessor. The best writing in Obisidan games are often credited to others e.g Joshua Graham in Honest Hearts is Gonzalez' writing and he went on to work on Horizon: Beyond Dawn, but still.

Not to say that Obsidian hasn't bled most of its talent, but painting Avellone as hot shit only makes you look like an idiot.

>ignoring that Obsidian also has Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky working on some dream project right now

The best part about Pillars of Eternity was Durance, the belligerent, sexist, racist, raving priest. He was such an unapologetic piece of shit to you and everyone around you, it was actually really refreshing. He isn't in the sequel.

Also, I really hated the character progression system. In their attempt to avoid "Dump Stats", they created an ability score system that was mushy and generally unsatisfying, constantly hamstringing your choices based on decisions you made at the beginning of the game with the character creator before you even had a chance to understand what they meant. Created a lithe rogue who specializes in stealth? Well, you didn't put enough points into Might, so your character doesn't have the strength to actually break into a castle. Wanted to play a diplomatic character? Well, you should have put more points into Resolve at the beginning of the game instead of Intellect, moron, because now you can't settle this situation with the Religious fanatics peacefully.

Yeah, that holds water. Think you contain your powerlevel and we can go back to crpg talk?

To be fair having the PC as a super specialized caster is all you need.

Like I said, I don't know why - it just seems like a pattern with all those self-taught 'philosophers'. Besides, this thread is nigh dead; I've uninstalled the damn game and am now in the process of DLing Divinity OS2. Hopefully, a fresh install will mean less show-stopping bugs.

As for Tyranny, all you need is Spectral Blur, Mirror Image, Polished Arms (with Sigil of Volcanic Magic) and you've got yourself a showstopper. Goes perfect with most any melee build, though you can get the most mileage out of Duelist.

Tell me more.

Also, does the sequel have harem routes too?

Live a little.

Yes.

Oh man, you've never seen it in action, or you'd take back those ill-informed words. Goes like this - I set up the three buffs and then charge the PC into 4-6 enemies and every time THEY attack, they get riposted (their attack+my attack) along with a wave of fire that goes 3 ranks deep, thanks to volcanic weapon. Auto-attack isn't even necessary, you can just park the character in the middle of them enemies and watch them all die in 10 seconds. That being said, I like your spells, though I generally prefer sticking to max 2 schools on my spellcasters, for consistency.

In all fairness concussive followed by stone spike and phantom bolt outright killed 99.9% of the shit out there. Interrupt effects, cool down refresh and accuracy/spell crit are broken. Especially on moonman sigil's missing health bonus damage.

Nothing like a wide arsenal to deal with any, and I do mean any type of defense your target may have. I also had some shit that exploited stacked effects/afflictions.

Don't play Obshitian games

Also why do their games have so fucking long loading times? I remember I tried out Tranny and it was atrocious, even T:ToN was better than it

Eh, my reasons were more along the lines of internal consistency than making a pure mage PC like you did. I hesitate to use the word roleplay because that opens up a gate of faggotry. e.g it would be dumb for Sirin the Archon not to know and cast her own sigil, even though the majority of spells there suck unless paired with a school like Atrophy. Incidentally, armor penetration+accuracy means you never have to give a shit about any defenses, even when using a dagger.

Tyranny never got optimized cause Paradox has got a skeleton crew on it. Pillars did get optimized and is much better now performance-wise, than launch. Still a shit game.

Not true. I forgot the exact formula but they have a DR system not too different from FO(2) in which you have both damage resistance and damage thresholds and fairly distinct types of armor - certain metals and suit styles being much stronger against pierce compared blunt for example. The DR vs DT system also changes how certain armors behave versus nukes compared to dots for a different example.

Unfortunately you can pretty much ignore that if you throw enough differently colored shit at them because they're bound to be soft against something.

It still suffers massively from a million loading screens for damn near everything. That alone made me stop playing after messing around in the fortress you get

Unity and bad optimization

Yeah, you're kind of right that I completely ignored it once I found out I could. The armor penetration you get from the Power tree's stance combined with polished arms means you ignore at least 8 armor/attack. If it's in combination with the mage tree upgrades (25% bonus elemental damage/talent) it gets even more hilarious. Also no armor defends against crush damage, so you can use crag weapon from stone school for guaranteed damage if you've the need.

Pity that the greedy chinks didn't translate the latest patch that seems to have added a fairly substantial chunk of content to the first game.

Tranny had worse problems than optimization. When I tried playing that I had hoped I could at least literally play an edgelord and psssh nothing personnel kid everyone in my path and I couldn't, because there was no dialog for that or it pissed everyone off and thus made it impossible to get quests. Without SJW shit, it still falls short but it would have been acceptible yet semi-forgettable. It has all the special snowflakes in the book - 15 yo genius manipulator, faceless edgelord, genderless super lord with gender neutral name, lesbos and fags dragging you into their problems and I forgot the others because why wouldn't I? Who gives a shit. Very nice, good concept that's rare or never done before ruined by bad execution and liberal garbage.

The only way I could see a "you're the bad guy" RPG working is if you give characters sensible choices they want to choose, or manage to convince them that torching a village and raping all the womenfolk is for the greater good. Sadly, pulling off a villainous protagonist that isn't Donte levels of edge requires the kind of writing talent Obsidian doesn't have anymore.

But sometimes over the top edge is pretty funny. Take SCM RPG for example. This game takes itself semi seriously and for all it's worth, it's pretty entertaining. When games try too hard to focus on realistic situations that they cannot portray very well due to personal politics and/or isolation from the actual world it becomes tedious, boring and just bad.

I played through it (Without the expansions) and it was pretty underwhelming.
The characters suck (except for Durante), the plot is meh and the setting is boring.

Avellone left over it, since his characters (Grieving Mother, who very clearly is missing a fuckton of content and Durante) had their content cut since all the other characters were shitty and they decided to level the playing field.
Those two were the only interesting characters, although Grieving Mother was cut to shit so badly it was pitiful.

The other characters like the faggot elf Aloth are so bad and tripe its not even funny. They just mixed two tropes "I was a spy all along, but I guess I'll work for you now." "I have multiple personality disorder" and called it a day, there is nothing interesting going on.

Tranny was even worse, there was literally nothing of value there, the characters all fucking sucked major cock and I couldn't bring myself to complete it, and I am a huge CRPG fan.

Avellone left and Obsidian is pretty much dead, a fuckton of talent left them too because their leadership is awful.

Slightly related, Numerana also was pretty fucking mediocre.

He's a SJW hack that got most of his glory by helping make a mediocre VN in infinity engine. Get over it.

But parodies where you're the "bad" guy have been done to death already. I want an honest to God serious story set in the bronze age that portrays the setting as realistically as possible (or as realistically as you can get within a fantasy setting), where people behave according to ancient morality and you get punished for trying to act like a cucked leftist.

IIRC every single writer that worked on New Vegas has left the company. I can't imagine what pushed that faggot Sawyer to chase away the only reason people gave a shit about Obsidian to begin with.

PoE2 will be as well, as will Wasteland 3. These people lack the skill to make good cRPGs anymore.

What level are you at? Cause you can drop everything at level 8 and go do the expansion content.
If that doesn't hold your interest then just wait till the sequel, or go play original sin 2, which shits all over PoE.

They never had any. Their past successes were flukes or just stood out because no competition.

A good cRPG needs good writing, and you can't have good writing if you're slurping socialist dick and shoahing all your talented writers because they won't do the same.

wut?

D:OS2 isn't nearly as good as people say.
The gameplay is fun for what it is, but jesus christ I find the writing tedious.
The lighthearted, comedic tone is really dull and it lacks any sort of interesting or memorable characters.
That kinda is what the main draw for an RPG is for me, and it just doesn't work for me at all.

Kotor 2, Alpha Protocol, Mask of the Betrayer and New Vegas all had pretty good writing, at least at parts.
Its what kept them going, since the gameplay was usually bad.
Now they just have shitty writers left and suddenly there are no redeeming qualities in their games.

Yeah, Larian can't write for shit, and this is made worse because they constantly try to make their games funny but fail miserably.

shameful

Then why in Angband so perfect?

having any hope for this series, you poor poor bastard

it would make sense if you let your minions to rape and plunder villages you conquer to keep them happy, not for "the greater good" stuff

what about underrail?
also, didnt they fix wasteland 2?

Underrail is not a proper RPG, it's a dungeon crawler first and foremost. It has no direction, poor writing and exploitable mechanics. You can restart the game to gain arbitrary amount of money, equipment and experience. Setting is somewhat curious, but game falls flat very quick. Wasteland 2 is garbage as it was garbage. It had good moments here and there, but overall it's a lackluster experience with lots of unexplored cool plot points that could make it so much more than it is.

Mongols used to slaughter settlements that resisted wholesale as a warning to others, who usually tended to surrender peacefully and avoid a sacking.

so what is the best cRPG in this era?

I don't know but you're better off not asking the guy who thinks Underrail is a dungeon crawler.

Why can't Obsidian make good RPGs that sell?

rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/paradox-admit-tyranny-sold-below-expectations-dlc-still-in-the-works.115226/

steamspy.com/app/435150

UH OH, DIVINITY 2 PROVES THAT WRONG

Wow it's like Obsidiots don't want to admit that Obsidian creates generally unlikable and unsellable games

Only because of Baldur's Gate nostalgia

Look, I love DOS2 but you should really get the fuck out.

you might have brain problems
you didnt actually play the game if you think it has no direction. yes, you can import your character, other than that what is exploitable?

agreed

Underrail, Shadowrun Dragonfall, Wasteland 2, Age of Decadence and Dungeon Rats suck ass.

Modern RPGs are fucking awful

Aren't Divinity and PoE fundamentally different games?

Divinity works because it's a fresh game that takes what people liked from ye RPG of olde and gives it better gameplay with less bullshit. PoE literally feels like you're palying Baldur's Gate in 16:9.

I don't know why Obsidian doesn't understand that people don't really want those kind of games now, it's the whole reason why New Vegas was so popular. It took great story and fantastic RPG elements and put them in a way where they can be picked up easily.

I hate their writing, walls of text fucking everywhere. I uninstalled PoE somewhere near the end because my eyes wore falling out from all the reading. And Numanira I uninstalled within the first hour, when I spent like 40 minutes doing nothing but reading walls of text that wore just plain boring.

You could have at least pretended to have some standards.

But how else would he know it sucks ass?

I liked the way Fallout 1 and 2 did it. Doling information about the world in small snippets or its opening cutscenes. Finding out more and more about the world you were in was a reward because they never lore dumped you.

Wasteland 2 has actually decent and difficult combat unlike the Shadowsuck games.

Do you just like arguing for the sake of arguing?

It sucks ass as far as WRPGs go.

I think it's worth one play through, but it has 0 replay value. There's no roleplaying or interesting builds.

I've never played the wasteland games but, honestly, I could say that same exact thing about Planescape Torment and pretty much most story-heavy computer RPGs.

That's okay, 99% of people who played WL2 have never played Wasteland 1.

Also there is a ton of depth and ways to roleplay as The Nameless One. You're severely underestimating PS:T

I played through it once and saw all three endings by reloading to the beginning of the boss fight. I sort of lucked out by choosing and Intelligence guy as my first character but, from reading, it turns out that's the way to dominate all the way through. Its one of those games where there is an optimal build and then less optimal builds to add challenge to further playthroughs. I mean I could play through again to try the more evil dialogue choices but what's the point when the ending is always the same and you only ever have those same party members over and over. What really disappointed me was, after hearing all the praise, how dumbed-down it was compared with Baldur's Gate overall. Size of world, amount of spells, amount of side quests and characters, amount of party members all miniscule next to Baldur's Gate.

Hey, I did the same thing in Deus Ex. Didn't diminish its quality or roleplaying though

That's a little unfair, don't you think? That's the biggest dog in the room at that time, while PS:T is a beautiful passion project that still has enough depth to be satisfying.

But weren't they both Black Isle games? Don't get me wrong, I loved Planescape. I was just arguing that what you said about Warscape can be aid about any of the games from this genre. All in all they are heavily story-driven and linear.

Now you must be drunk. Drunk as a skunk cause that's not even a combination of Wasteland and Planescape.

Also I don't think every single player game with 0 replay value is worth playing once because VNs are complete shit and never worth playing.

I am drunk. Good catch. But VNs are a completely different genre of game. I'm not too drunk to spot your red herring, sir.

fuck this game, playing it was a chore from act 2 onwards. Act 1 was shit too, but on first playthrough, you expected you were just getting a taste, that lots of stuff is going to get unlocked after you progress the story a bit.

I don't know how the hell they managed to make a game this boring, because really, that's was it's biggest fault - being boring as shit. The combat wasn't utterly dysfunctional like in Tranny, but it was mindless as fuck with no strategy or creativity needed. Quests were all generic shit, level design was garbage, the setting was never developed into something actually interesting, and the writing was a fucking trainwreck. You had purple prose out the ass everywhere, as if you let a hipster on it and told him to make it 'artsy', story that was horribly paced, and a villain so OP that it didn't even make sense. Given the powers he had, he could have squished you like a bug at any time or, hell, go on and conquer the world if he wanted to – I don't think it was ever actually explained why he didn't use some of his cheesiest powers on player character.

SJW writing actually wasn't that big of an issue – the bulk of it came from the faggot backers that wanted to put their shitty OC in the game. Tranny was much worse in that regard, giving you quests to prep the bull and shit like that.

I don't remember that, hell from what I remember from Tyranny the only SJW thing was some people being fags.

You know, I'd be more upset at the fact that these games are now all filled with garbage writing and virtual signalling if these people were at least capable of making the gameplay good. But at this point, it's as if the genre is dead and buried and an army of rabid dogs have overrun the cemetary and are desecrating the corpses but we can't really do anything about it.

Have you played PoE? It might look like Baldur's Gate at first glance, but there's literally no reason to keep going.

I kept wondering, this place is shit, I want to just fucking leave and go to another country.

Wasteland 2 you can't even go into cover. I thought that was the stupidest thing ever.

In a turn based game with guns, theres no cover bonus?

You can though? WL2 is nearly almost all cover based combat.

Are you seriously considering playing the sequel to a game you can't stand?

Joshua Graham was written by Sawyer, not Gonzales.

maybe I'm just fucking retarded but the original pillars of eternity was such a cancerously boring bookread I wanted to kill myself. There was also some mysterious woman companion that especially made me want to kill myself

Fuck that, good writing can greatly add to a cRPG, but the underlying game mechanics are what makes or breaks it
It's why the Gold Box games are still great, or ToEE is fondly remembered

...

Obsidian was never good. The only current year RPG that is worth playing is Divinity OS2

I remember a campsite really early on with some hunters or something talking like a bunch of creative writing flunkies trying too hard to hit that 2k word minimum that I just gave up.

wew lad, Divinity OS2 is pretty good, but its not comparable to Fallout NV and some of their earlier works

Shit, my bad. Point still stands, though.

Fallout NV was shit and unfinished though.
Like what user?

What game isn't unfinished? Many many games have cut content, Demon Souls for example but no one suggests it was shit for that.
And by earlier works I mean the other Divinity games no Oblivion.

Oh, fuck off. There's cut content and then there's obsidian tier of oh shit, out of cash? better wrap&ship at 40% and consistency or glaring dead ends be damned.

Ask Codex. But as a fellow codexer, I can tell you this much. I didn't play PoE, Deadfire or no.

Apparently the other 99.99% of the userbase did.

Numerana being mediocre was far more egregious to me than PoE. I at expected nothing from PoE and that's pretty much exactly what I got. But sitting through Numerana's unearned callbacks to PS:T (like namedropping Adahn etc.) actually pissed me off.

Most of that is a small group of people circlejerking. The amount of fawning in the average Obsidian thread on Codex makes Katawa Shoujo General #5371 look sane by comparison.

I just glanced at the PoE Deadfire thread. It's mostly following development progress and analyzing design decisions. Standard codex shit. I'm not really hearing any "OH BOY I AM HYPE" stuff there. The RPG Codex Dragon Age Inquisition thread and Mass Effect: Andromeda threads also have around 200 pages, but it sure isn't because people loved the game and all bought it.

Fawning diminished after Pillars of Eternity and Chris Avellone leaving the building.

I'm aware. But its still a problem. Cults of personality like that never end well in collaborative creative products. At best they'll turn the Avellone into the George Lucas of CRPGs as any team he works with starts to revolve around him.

True, although I think the codex cult of personality is less blind. Avellone has taken a lot of shit from the codex for his fuck-ups before and will continue to do so. It's more like an amusing meme and reference to his non-shit writing skills (which are a serious rarity in the gaming industry) than a serious belief in "avellone can do no wrong" or crap like that.