@arbitrarywater said:
@artisanbreads said:
@arbitrarywater: do you not feel at all that the quality is not there? These games all walk the walk when it comes to cRPGs and I've been happy to see the genre revived, but I really do not see the overall quality being there, especially in regards to story. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm just curious. I think Divinity OS is the best as far as mechanics but the story and world are just dreadfully boring and poorly executed. I know you have love for the genre. I just do not see the same quality level. If these games had good enough stories to pull you through them and didn't have the flaws each have had, to varying degrees, I think you would be getting through them.
I guess my response to that would be to question how many old-school CRPGs managed to nail the balance of interesting mechanics and good story back in the late 90s and early 2000s, because I can only think of a handful that didn't have serious problems on one end or the other.
In regards to the last few years of kickstarted stuff, I really enjoyed Pillars of Eternity's sort of subdued story and writing. It's a tad overwrought at times, suffers from the curse of lore-dumps, and not all the companions are winners, but as a whole I found it to measure up quite well. The combat in that game is sort of messy, but it's at least messy in the same way Infinity Engine combat was messy. As for Divinity, yeah, the story is pretty forgettable generic fantasy tripe (even with all the tweaking that they did for the Enhanced Edition,) but the combat and systems interaction stuff is fantastic and the intentionally goofy writing isn't terrible (though it wouldn't be enough on its own.) Wasteland 2 is the one I have the most problems with (especially in terms of overall polish and it imitating the wrong parts of old RPGs, as previously mentioned,) but I still played like half of that game before getting distracted by something else.
Maybe my standards are lower than yours, or maybe we come to these sorts of games for different things. I've always been more of a mechanics guy than a story guy, which is why stuff like The Age of Decadence left me a little cold (That game is super interesting, but I would hesitate to call it "good") but I'll be more than okay if Divinity Original Sin 2's story continues to underwhelm as long as the combat is still good.
I think you're definitely right saying that those old cRPGs aren't perfect. I don't mean to hold them up as such.
However, I think some of these games mechanically have not progressed (Divinity OS aside, which has simply outstanding combat and cool systems, no doubt). Beyond that I think it's story and writing where these games have really fallen flat for me. I think old cRPGs really have much better stories and writing in them that kept me going through them even when there were rough patches with mechanics or what have you. I have gone back to them as well so this is not just nostalgia speaking for me.
PoE is one that I did really not enjoy in that regard either, pretty much for the reasons you bring up. It felt very forced with the lore dumps and did not have interesting characters to pull you through the narrative really. To me it almost seemed like they based the story and a lot of the narrative around telling you about the lore of the game rather than delivering something interesting on its own. Though by the end a couple companions were interesting. Mechanically it was totally fine in an Infinity way, but in modern times the story better be there if you are basically just making an Infinity game again.
I really can go either way with story and mechanics, but I think some of these games are going back to an old style which is cool but not bringing the story focus that is key to this style most times, especially if you are making a game that looks like an Infinity engine game in 2016. I can like an RPG with a sub par story if the rest around it is good enough but for this style I think they are not remotely delivering on story which to me seemed to be a key part of the revival of this style of RPG. It was in my mind at least (hey, new RPGs are all big open world and graphics and showy, lets get back to the basics of RPG mechanics and a good story). I think I do have higher standards I suppose for this classic cRPG style given what I see out there as feedback for some of these games, like I said Divinity OS being praised at all for story and then I have seen PoE held up as well and do not agree with that.
@frytup: I will probably check Divinity OS II out either way. I hope the story is better but even if it isn't, as I said I find Divinity OS mechanically, especially in combat, fantastic. I played the last one almost as if it was XCOM or something at some point just hurrying from fight to fight because I so enjoyed the combat. Also I have seen I can make a lizard man, which I am a sucker for.
Serpents certainly looks old as hell so I see how you could bounce off of it. The developer is now making another very intentionally retro Cyberpunk game that looks really cool and it's interesting how far they will lean into that. Anyways, I am not sure I will like it either but I just find the initial story pitch so awesome. I love Greek myths about gods descending to the mortal realm and taking mortal form and have thought it'd be cool to see in an RPG.
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