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Nachtigallerator
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Post by Nachtigallerator »

Voss wrote: If you don't give a shit about Tolkien canon, the story isn't that bad. Not award winning by any means, but far more fleshed out than Shadows of Mordor.

I've yet to come across anything I'd regard as a 'shocking twist.' The first overlord reveal had me laughing my ass off, but that was about it. The traitor was expected (and a little obvious), everything else so far has been consistent with their Alternate Universe narrative.

There are actual people to interact with this time, which is a big improvement, and the tension between his initial allies and Talion slowly realizing that his aims and his ghost buddy's aims aren't exactly congruent are pretty well done. (Though so far he doesn't seem to act on that).

My biggest problem is Talion starts off making a stupidly bad deal (which is driven home in every dialogue with Celly), and is far too passive about everything. It sort of fits, since he's dead, but he has no agency at all, and just follows along in everyone's wake, pursuing their goals, regardless of what the beings in question are (and there is a surprising variety), what they want or why.

Game-wise it is a significant improvement. More environment variety, more ability variety, more enemy variety (the tribes help, as do the trolls), and while the game is still throwing tutorial shit at you in the second act, they don't do the 'you must kill 30 ghuls with a full bar or you can't progress at all' mission bullshit that the first game did.

They did change up some things with no explanation. I was desperately trying to get the cursor centered for 'last chance' attempts (both giving and receiving) several times and failing before I realized that the game wasn't doing that anymore. It just hadn't explained it. It was just a matter of not touching anything until the big circle converged onto the little circle. I actually though the mouse icon was bugging out.
I've always liked the game as a fan fic, so the noncanonicity of it has never bothered me (and LotR feels a bit too catholic for my tastes anyway). My problem is actually exactly that there's a lot more story in this game than in SoM, where most of the game was just freestyle orc farming or fun sidequests with no direct relevance to the overall plot (go Torvin!). In writing far more story content than before, they've revealed the weaknesses in their writing to a far bigger extent than previously. Talion was always a bit of a doormat for more forceful people to walk all over, but you could sort of buy into the heroic/pragmatic dichotomy between him and Celebrimbor there. But his interactions with Shelob and Celebrimbor in Act I feel like a bad fanfic - Talion shows far too much understanding for the creepy spider lady who just abducted his partner and extorted the ring of power that he himself wanted to make at the end of SoM, and apparently doesn't even consider that Celebrimbor has a reason to pissed of at her. And Celebrimbor just turns into a downright jerk with no patience or finesse while he previously could be shrewd about getting Talion to go through with his plans.

This is going to be the model for their interaction in most later quests, too - Talion on one side, Celebrimbor on the other, and all the conflict never leads to a resolution, they just end up doing whatever the quest targets say for no explained reason. They bitch at each other a lot here (and Eltariel joins in later for a three-way bitchfest) but you never see them resolve it in a way that would explain why they still work together. I don't want to spoiler, but you'll probably see about half of the big twist of Act IV coming from a mile way, anyway. The other half makes about zero sense.

Mechanically it's doubtlessly a great improvement, though some of the new mechanics have been taken too far. The modular skill system where you switch between upgrades makes sense for the elemental blast attacks, but with a lot of other skills, that tactical choice is fake. You don't have to chose between having your Shadow Strike Chain or being able to Shadow Brand - if you have more than one of them unlocked, you can freely switch in the middle of battle, so you actually have both abilities whenever you want them, if you can be bothered to fiddle around in the menu. They should've made most of the upgrades cumulative and just toned the broken ones from SoM down so you can no longer get unlimited power quite so easily.
Last edited by Nachtigallerator on Fri Oct 13, 2017 12:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Voss »

Talion shows far too much understanding for the creepy spider lady who just abducted his partner and extorted the ring of power that he himself wanted to make at the end of SoM, and apparently doesn't even consider that Celebrimbor has a reason to pissed of at her.
I didn't take that as understanding. I took that as half innately being a sucker (which honestly is what got him possessed in the first place), and half being obsessive about the fate of the Gondorians. He didn't give a shit about super powers or armies, just about seeing the people safe.

He trusted her because she kept showing him truth. I expected that to go somewhere, actually, and was disappointed that the first act wasn't about building an army to take her on after she got whatever she wanted out of being used as an infallible oracle.
And Celebrimbor just turns into a downright jerk with no patience or finesse while he previously could be shrewd about getting Talion to go through with his plans.
They sort of try to lampshade that at in Act 1, but they're passing comments that are easy to miss. And bullshit, of course. But basically they blame his general attitude (of fuck people, build my army!) on putting even more of himself into Also the One Ring.
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Post by Nachtigallerator »

But he defends her against the actually pretty reasonable assertion that she cannot be trusted after this - the fact that she's suddenly nice to Talion and just Talion shouldn't make her trustworthy. What if she's just trying to break up the team? Likewise, Celebrimbor's insistence on just bludgeoning Talion when it's clearly not working is bizarre. Basically Talion and Celebrimbor act so estranged from one another like they hadn't been a two-man, body-sharing terrorist insurrection for the last few months, and that's just weird.

And I did hear that comment, and I didn't go into it because it was, as you said, bullshit. The new ring is not on the power level of the one, and Celebrimbor made at least three of those back when he knew less about ringlore without going off the deep end. I think the appendix described the New Ring as being equal to the nine - what makes The Bright Lord so formidable is probably the fact that rings are power multipliers, not power additives, and Celebrimbor had the powers of a sorcerer-king to begin with. So using the New Ring as justification for derailing the characters like that is just lazy.
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Post by Voss »

It is a reasonable assertion that she can't be trusted. But he's desperate and she keeps telling him the truth. So the first time, yeah. Reasonable stance. Second time, sure, she's probably plotting something. After free assistance #5, shut the fuck up already.

It isn't that she suddenly embodies the goddess of kindness, but her assistance is consistently pointing in the direction Talion wants, and he's fixed on that goal (for the duration of that chapter, anyway), so Celly bitching serves no purpose and seems increasingly insane and irrational- to the point that of the three of them, he seems like the bad guy.

Which is actually pretty consistent with the flashback missions and the Bright Lord DLC for game #1. Celly is just as power mad as Sauron, his jackboots are just made of light.
Basically Talion and Celebrimbor act so estranged from one another like they hadn't been a two-man, body-sharing terrorist insurrection for the last few months, and that's just weird.
This isn't that weird. Talion basically gets kicked in the head that there are people beyond Mordor, and maybe he should do something beyond a murder spree because he has nothing better to do. Celly is increasingly shrill and indifferent about anything but 'murder Sauron' and 'raise army,' and Talion gets repeated reminders that he's fucking dead, Gondor isn't and that probably matters more, and his ultimate fate is probably a really bad one.

The game isn't even close to subtle about this.
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Post by Nachtigallerator »

The games are kind of two-faced about Celebrimbor's brand (haha) of evil - yes, the DLC spells it out crystal clear, but that also requires him to be a very calculating liar towards Talion through the main game, who sells his own lust for power as nothing but pragmatism with a composed facade. Now in reality that is probably due to the DLC being scripted out way after the original game and not a pre-planned prequel to that degree. But in War, he's suddenly becoming really ineffective at manipulating Talion despite playing him quite well in Mordor. Which yes, may be the emotional breakdown of a power-mad narcissist who just lost his new artifact of power and isn't in the driver's seat of his current body. That's plausible. But that doesn't change the fact that it gets really grating to listen to that all the time even in Acts II and III without it getting a resolution.

I think at least part of my problems with this stems from the fact that having Talion alone isn't satifying to me as a player - like you said, he's kind of a sucker and I'm not entirely convinced there's still a personality somewhere in his undead brain. They worked for me when they were a team, now having them constantly bitching at each other and then just going on to do the thing anyway was aggravating. Sigh.

Anyway, best of luck with the uruks to you. I think my gripe with the game is kind of specific, most people appear to like it like that.
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Post by Longes »

Voss wrote:Lack of organized religion and freedom of sex isn't... lack of evil. I'm not sure why I'd even have to explain that. That they can live on their old territory is not the same as keeping it or their government. For one there is definitely a larger government being imposed on them, and generally you can execute or kill their leaders leaving them without 'their' government. Unless you side with them explicitly, they definitely end up with a new absolute ruler and new justice system, and a military that will smash their faces in at minor provocations.
My point is that there is no more 'evil' in Tyranny than what you'd expect from a conquering army. You are not playing as the villains, you are just a dude handling frontier justice.
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Post by Omegonthesane »

Longes wrote:
Voss wrote:Lack of organized religion and freedom of sex isn't... lack of evil. I'm not sure why I'd even have to explain that. That they can live on their old territory is not the same as keeping it or their government. For one there is definitely a larger government being imposed on them, and generally you can execute or kill their leaders leaving them without 'their' government. Unless you side with them explicitly, they definitely end up with a new absolute ruler and new justice system, and a military that will smash their faces in at minor provocations.
My point is that there is no more 'evil' in Tyranny than what you'd expect from a conquering army. You are not playing as the villains, you are just a dude handling frontier justice.
Counterpoint: the amount of evil you'd expect from a conquering army, generally speaking, makes you the villains.
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Post by nockermensch »

Longes wrote:
Voss wrote:Lack of organized religion and freedom of sex isn't... lack of evil. I'm not sure why I'd even have to explain that. That they can live on their old territory is not the same as keeping it or their government. For one there is definitely a larger government being imposed on them, and generally you can execute or kill their leaders leaving them without 'their' government. Unless you side with them explicitly, they definitely end up with a new absolute ruler and new justice system, and a military that will smash their faces in at minor provocations.
My point is that there is no more 'evil' in Tyranny than what you'd expect from a conquering army. You are not playing as the villains, you are just a dude handling frontier justice.
  • The Disfavored believe in collective punishment and think the tiersmen are little better than animals. If the Disfavored have their way, they'll torch the entire village that was supporting the rebels/stockpiling iron in Act 1 (and possibly put the population to the sword as an afterthought).
  • The Scarlet Chorus are more equalitarian, but their boss is a bona-fide monster that absorbs people's minds through torture. You'll notice Nerat will impale every single person you send to him during a Chorus run.
What's missing from the game is stuff that could cause PR nightmares: There's no option of romancing your party, but this a game where you unlock powers by leaving your followers absolutely terrified of you, the chance of romances looking unconfortably rapey was probably too much. Also, with a single notable (and skippable) exception aside, you don't hurt children. Also, there are deer and other wild-life running around, but you can't even interact with them.
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Post by Chamomile »

My issue with the evil in Tyranny is that you don't get to do a whole lot of it. You're mostly just an enabler for other people to be dicks.
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Count Arioch the 28th
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

So for fun I picked up a balance romhack of Breath of Fire 2 called Fresh Fire, and I just finished it up.

The good: Equipment and character stats have been rebalanced. Spell lists have been updated (Sten having Warp at level 12 is a gigantic help during a time when the game makes you walk back and forth between two very distant cities). Dragon spells now take a fixed amount of AP (but do not do the same damage they did before, it's a function of wisdom and level), which means the spells Ryu does get can be used without hamstringing yourself.

The bad: It makes the game a lot easier overall, almost too easy. The hack uses the GBA version so the color and music is garbled and to my knowledge there isn't a retranslation hack for the GBA like for the SNES version. They overbalanced Nina and Bleu a bit; instead of Bleu being superior in most ways and Nina being extraneous it is the exact opposite, Nina has superior stats and gets decent healing spells along with most attack spells while Bleu... is also there. And as someone who managed to solve the Namanda Bell puzzle legit and gotten boombada (renamed Earthchant) it's disapointing that both Rand and Spar learn it naturally now (along with Jean and Stean learning Chopchop, renamed Thousand Cuts). That being said it's actually a great spell to use against random encounters with a shitload of HP.

Other than that, it's Breath of Fire 2.
Last edited by Count Arioch the 28th on Sat Oct 14, 2017 3:30 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Voss »

nockermensch wrote:There's no option of romancing your party, but this a game where you unlock powers by leaving your followers absolutely terrified of you, the chance of romances looking unconfortably rapey was probably too much.
That would be a good reason, but that isn't why. The Obsidian developers/writers have made a big deal on their own forums (and others, where they bizarrely prefer to answer questions) about how they won't write romance because they don't think they'd do a good job at it. It came up for Pillars and Tyranny both.

Given their preference for bullshit freshman philosophy over believable characters, this is probably also a good call.
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Post by Whipstitch »

RPGs where you're ostensibly the one determining the protagonist's personality are a poor fit for romances in general but at this point a lot of Obsidian fan boys are strident enough about the topic that I'd be cool with including romances just out of spite.
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Post by Stahlseele »

Everybody gets a romance. But not the protagonist character!
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Post by Starmaker »

I'm with Obsidian on this one. Romances in vidya are creepy shit if they're taken at face value; they're essentially porn. I'm very much pro-porn and pro-wish fulfillment in general, but if a game is pretentious enough to claim sincerity, the porn has to go. It doesn't even have to be successful; once they claim "THIS R SRS GAME and also this is how real people behave", bam, instant creepiness just add water.

What I actually want to see is an existing relationship. Give my character a girlfriend from the outset, one who doesn't tolerate bullshit but also doesn't need to be seduced.
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

I played Mass Effect and did in-game relationships but I skipped the awkward sex scenes. I dunno, it just seemed weird.
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Post by Koumei »

I'm all in favour of Obsidian not doing romances in games.
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Post by Voss »

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I played Mass Effect and did in-game relationships but I skipped the awkward sex scenes. I dunno, it just seemed weird.
They are weird. Bioware romances are partly hindered by their dialogue system, where you have to constantly check back for new interactions. But also the gifts and relationship bars make it super creepy.

Effectively you're constantly badgering your potential love interest(s), proposing sex because flowers or behavior they approved of, and generally behaving like Harvey Weinstein. (Can I touch them now?)

In ME and DA inquisition it's extra super creepy because you're explicitly the damn boss, and at least for some of the romance options fraternization rules fucking well would apply. For others (Jack, Merrill) mental competence is an issue, as is age (not explicitly, but they come off as teenagers).


And of course. With the way it's set up the lesson is to do 'romantic' things and force people to like you to achieve the goal (the sex cutscene), not to treat a potential romantic partner as an equal or a person. Just bald manipulation to get what you want.
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Post by Whipstitch »

I'm not saying it's a good idea, I'm saying I hate many of their fans.
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

I thought Merrrill was literally retarded, but I liked how her story arch went. The pride demon realized Merrill had the mind of a child and couldn't be corrupted, but it could prey on the Speaker's fear that Merrill will destroy them all and that she was the only one capable of stopping it.

I tried doing a romance with Merrill because in those days I was into getting as many achievements as possible. It made me feel like a rapist.
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Post by Voss »

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I thought Merrrill was literally retarded, but I liked how her story arch went. The pride demon realized Merrill had the mind of a child and couldn't be corrupted, but it could prey on the Speaker's fear that Merrill will destroy them all and that she was the only one capable of stopping it.
Eh. I think you're mind-caulking a little bit. Can't be corrupted because she's stupid and/or childlike doesn't work. The fade demons just need a vague agreement, and she was ridiculously easy to manipulate.

Truthfully, her story was weird. The mirror obsession was fine, but the pride demon was wacky. It was locked in a cave behind a magic barrier. With other magic barriers blocking the way up the hill - there was zero fucking reason to open them and let it out. And no reason for the tribe not to move on.
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

It very well might be that my perspective is all askew because that game was really bad overall.
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Post by Nachtigallerator »

I think most of the worrisome subtext in Bioware romances stems from the fact that the romancing is coded in such a way that the player is always in full control of the relationship. It's really unusual for a romance option to go after the player character - I can only remember one instance of that - and you have to actively pursue them at every step. If the NPCs behaved more proactively, it would come across as less creepy (minus the facts that you're still in charge, Jack probably has personality disorder and I can't even say what's wrong with Merill). To their credit, you can at least no longer gift-bomb companions in Inquisition. However, I don't think they'd want to change anything truly substantial about their romance plots even if they are aware that those are pretty creepy.

I've been thinking about the way Bioware design games in general, and my current hypothesis is that you're not really intended to roleplay in these games - you're meant to direct the space/fantasy opera in accordance with a pre-formulated script and marvel at the cutscenes and dialog you unlock. Who the PC gets to fuck is one of the obvious and most inviting choices you can leave blank for the player, because it's very easy to seperate that from the main storyline and still gives the feeling of making relevant choices that they market the games on. The player is not meant to identify with how the main character collects gifts or gathers approval points to initiate the relationship - just like you're not meant to identify with obsessively looting/scanning all the containers in people's houses for rare goodies, or fiddling with the crafting systems. That's just the game element that gates the reward - either rare loot or sappy romance dialogue. Building a convincingly interactive story framework is hard (and Bioware has never done that as far as I know) but building NPC plotlines is easy.
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Post by Kaelik »

The only bioware romance I remember which had any real actual tension between the characters and woman temporarily not agreeing to the romance (not just not sexing right now because they are "pure") is Viconia from BG II.

That's probably... the best written bioware romance? Which is still, let's be honest, not good.
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Post by DSMatticus »

Bioware romances feel weird because they are written like gameplay subsystems and not like character dramas. Your interaction with X is not a branching narrative you are encouraged to explore in which one possible branch is romance. It is a minigame you are encouraged to beat so you can unlock the romance, and unlocking the romance is just straight-up better because it's usually all the not-romance content plus the romance content and that's just more content.
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Post by Voss »

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:It very well might be that my perspective is all askew because that game was really bad overall.
It goes downhill in the third act, but I'd argue it's the best DA game, just for having a coherent story and most of the characters have understandable motivations and reactions.

@Nachtigallerator- my reaction was an immediate 'well, of course you aren't supposed to RP them.' Mostly because they're single player games, and there isn't anyone to interact with. The most common thing you get out of companions is repeated lines because you haven't unlocked the next flag for the dialogue railroad.

But it's also the relative lack of choices. No matter how many side quests you dick around with (or not, though that leaves you lower level with worse gear), you're still on the inevitability train to the final confrontation, which is inevitably a very stupid boss fight.

There is theoretically a lot going on the universe, but it's out of reach- the tiny hospital in ME3 is probably the worst of this- you know the place has to be bigger than the 5 rooms you keep returning to, over and over, but only that tiny slice can fit into the limitations of consoles, and there isn't anything to do but the dozen or so side quests time gated by where you are in the scripted path of the main quest. It's hard to feel like it's anything other than a game.

And while gift bombing went away, the pure conversational game that replaces it is worse in some ways. Instead of acting naturally (and picking lines that might say what the summary kind of suggests they say- which is a different issue), it encourages you to create a false persona for your chosen target. If you're after crazy elf girl, you're obliged to talk about freedom and choice and whatever, but if you're after Cass it's duty, honor and blah, blah, even if neither have anything to do with your character or the situation at hand.
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