Baldur's Gate... dot com. Remake/update? - by Shadowcat
ZylonBane on 4/12/2012 at 21:24
Quote Posted by dethtoll
For someone who's telling me I missed the point you sure missed the point of why I don't like the game.
Yeah, your point seems to be "Reading is hard". Which is deliciously ironic, considering how much you bitch about games that don't offer subtitles.
Infocom must be spinning in their grave.
june gloom on 4/12/2012 at 21:30
Actually, no, I just prefer to have some standards in what I read. PST's writing is just plain bad, there's no way around it. If I wanted to read a shitty fantasy novel, I'd go to the library.
And are you seriously telling me in 2012 that it's okay if a game doesn't include subtitles? Is inclusiveness that much of a threat to you? Because that's what you're implying here.
Jason Moyer on 4/12/2012 at 21:33
The only thing I'm not getting is why you keep referring to it as fantasy, when it's more removed from the fantasy genre than something like Vampire Bloodlines is. Or, I guess for a better example, Thief.
june gloom on 4/12/2012 at 21:41
Planescape isn't fantasy? Are you kidding me?
I think it's time for me to disengage -- we could argue all day over the quality of Planescape's writing but if you're going to tell me that a fantasy RPG set in a fantasy setting that's part of a fantasy tabletop franchise that draws a lot of inspiration from a series of fantasy novels isn't fucking fantasy we've moved out of the realm of opinion vs opinion and into reality vs neckbeard, and it's time for me to go.
TTK12G3 on 5/12/2012 at 00:17
Quote Posted by dethtoll
Planescape isn't fantasy? Are you kidding me?
I think it's time for me to disengage -- we could argue all day over the quality of Planescape's writing but if you're going to tell me that a fantasy RPG set in a fantasy setting that's part of a fantasy tabletop franchise that draws a lot of inspiration from a series of fantasy novels isn't fucking fantasy we've moved out of the realm of opinion vs opinion and into reality vs neckbeard, and it's time for me to go.
Beware the neckbear?
Renzatic on 5/12/2012 at 00:44
PLANESCAPE KILLED MY GRANDMA!
Actually, Deth does have a point here. It goes out of its way to subvert the D&D norms, but it's still very much within the fantasy genre.
Though it's more Jim Henson's Dark Crystal style of weird fantasy than it is Tolkienesque.
ZylonBane on 5/12/2012 at 01:24
Quote Posted by dethtoll
PST's writing is just plain bad, there's no way around it.
And yet, it's widely regarded as having very good writing. Funny, that.
gunsmoke on 5/12/2012 at 22:45
It has to be fantasy. What else would it be? Fantasy is like metal. There are a bunch of sub-genres. High Fantasy, Arthurian, etc. like Nu Metal, death metal, doom metal, etc.
VanBurenPhilips on 6/12/2012 at 23:13
Torment's one of my favourite games and possibly the best RPG I've played, but I have no problem conceding that it's pretentious in places. It is a bit, but not nearly enough to put me off playing it. dethtoll is obviously a lot more sensitive to such stuff than... anyone else on Earth. Except maybe my old friend Alan, who dismissed the film La Haine as a load of pretentious bollocks the moment he saw the billboard graffiti bit. Some people are just hypersensitive to this stuff.
Saying the prose is terrible, that's just personal taste and I'm not going to harangue anyone for that, I'll just disagree & put it down to bad taste ;) But full of exposition... that one's a bit baffling. Exposition-heavy relative to what? Paperboy? Certainly not other RPGs. I abandoned several other games around the same time and/or of similar type partly because of such things, because that's exactly what I hate about game writing. NWN: every NPC had about 8 pages of life story monologue to tell you on your very first meeting with them. KOTOR: the introductory action sequence is peppered with pace-killing infodump conversations, and just after it there's a fuckin huuuuuuuuge one before you get to explore & do stuff, and it contains reams of exposition on places, plots and villains you haven't even laid eyes on yet. That is "just plain bad" videogame writing. Torment's writing really doesn't contain much lengthy exposition, nearly every conversation has some interactivity, and some purpose in terms of puzzle-solving or overall progress. As for the prose... like it or don't, but that's not what's great about the game's writing IMO and I don't believe it's the reason it attracted so much praise for being a great game. It's the integration of interactivity & RPG mechanics into written sequences - even better and more ambitious than Fallout, for me. It's often ingenious, as in the tattooist's translation sequences and Dak'kon's codex puzzle. Some of the storytelling is superb even when the interactivity is relatively light, eg the Ravel sensory stone sequence and many of the flashbacks about companions in your past lives (juxtaposed with your current relationships to them). Can you really cite many examples of better interactive storytelling than these? PS:T's the best example of interactive fiction I know outside of yer actual 'Interactive Fiction' (aka newfangled text adventures), and it's arguably better than most of those. Even if you don't like the prose, it's hard to imagine someone passionate about games not getting anything out of the actual game design.
Oh and it's definitely fantasy.
henke on 7/12/2012 at 17:10
Well the iPad version is out and it's nine freakin' bucks which is a bit more than I'm willing to spend to satisfy my curiosity about this game. Will wait for a sale.
