Divinity Original Sin: An Exercise in Burying Diamonds in Shit.

[WarpedMind]

Not in the mood for cheese? That excuse has more holes than this fine slice of Gorgombert!

 

[veloper]

Combat is the game.

The devs should have gone with a more roguelite design for this game, so the player can get to the fun part quicker. Less story is better, because stories in games suck.

And how is the problem supposed to get any better with an attitude like that?

You dont get better at doing a thing by deliberately avoiding it.

That doesn't compute. The player cannot get better at the story, the story is what it is. Here's a great suggestion for you: pick a movie you don't like and try watching it over and over again until you like it. Me, I'll stick to trying to avoid crap.

You seem to be deliberately missing my point.

WRITING is a skill like any other and in order to get better at writing and learn to tell good stories, you have to actually write and try to make good stories and learn from your failures.

If writers need more practice to become good enough, let them practice at home. A commercial product should be good for what it is. I don't pay to beta test and I don't pay to proof-read either.

Saying "Less story is better, because stories in games suck," only results in a stagnant cycle where developers put a lot less effort into actually writing their story-lines for games because they know it'll suck anyway and only catch flack for it. As a result, their writing skills will still suck because they never put any effort into improving it. And as a result, they put a lot less effort into actually writing their story-lines for games because they know it'll suck anyway and only catch flack for it. Etc, etc.

I dont know about you, but I prefer my motivations for playing a game to be of a higher standard than "Ook! Strong man kill thing! Strong man get reward!"

Sounds good to me actually, only what's really happening is that we gamers lower our standards for various reasons, BUY the games anyway and then the game studios can keep doing what they always did.
If we can't even give devs flack for it, that's like giving a terrible students A pluses on their tests, hoping that will encourage them to improve. Not going to work.
I'm going to keep calling shitty videogame stories shit.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

Not in the mood for cheese? That excuse has more holes than this fine slice of Gorgombert!

UGH. Not going to clarify what this is about to re-activate someone else's trauma.

 

[DoPo]

1. Mages are Gods. There's very little reason not to roll double mages and then getting two more mages for your party. Mages can use all the battlefield-altering and status inducing effects and deliver both the spikiest and most consistent damage in the game. Your warrior might be useful, but not as useful as a mage that can summon a warrior (of preferred element) and then go to town with status effects, damage, debuffs, buffs and what not.

Not entirely true - mages are pretty useful in the beginning, as they have a lot of versatility, but they are caught up by the other classes. Warriors in particular sort of suck in the beginning purely because they don't have the AP, not because they can't participate anyway, however, they do swing for a lot of damage later on, moreover, they soak the hits intended for mages. The summons don't really surpass a warrior in terms of usefulness - the only thing summons are better at than warriors is expendability. The warrior's abilities also help them deal with the battlefield. The rogue is probably one of the weakest in the game, but only because they need some setup - level up stealth and they do damage on par with warriors. They also have more utility skills to boot, which can be invaluable depending on situation. The rangers are actually of of the most powerful classes in the game with their special arrows - they are pretty much mages, but they have no cooldowns on their spells.

Back on release the mages could become stupidly powerful due to some exploits in the game, however, I've heard that's been fixed. It only worked with a limited amount of mages anyway, as it was exploiting the skill book trick[footnote]there is a merchant who sells a boot that raises attributes and that gives you skill points and it was supposed to have a limited supply of them. However, it actually restocked every time you levelled up, so you could get more of them than you were supposed to.[/footnote], and even then the amount of extra stats was limited. You needed, I believe, 27 Intelligence to hit the sweet spot but whatever the actual number was, it was rather hard to get two mages up to that amount, let alone more.

 

[Jandau]

Agreed wholeheartedly with the initial post. I tried to get into the game three times. Never made it past the first town. It was just so utterly boring. I don't mind reading, but there was nothing to read. Or at least nothing even remotely interesting. You know what RPG had a ton of reading? Planescape: Torment. That game made you read a ton, but it was bloody fascinating. Or Baldur's Gate 2 - definitely more generic than Planescape, but presents the generic setting with quality writing and interesting plotlines. Divinity? It's not only uninteresting, but also terribly written (as in, both the form and the content of the writing were shoddy). And the game insists on you enduring through all that drivel. Thank the gods that Pillars of Eternity came out not too long after and pretty much did the same stuff, only much much better...

 

[Zhukov]

Not in the mood for cheese? That excuse has more holes than this fine slice of Gorgombert!

Actually, it goes, "Not in the mood for cheese? That excuse has more holes than this slice of fine Gorgombert!"

Trust me on this.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Not in the mood for cheese? That excuse has more holes than this fine slice of Gorgombert!

son of a bitchhhh, that line had to have played over 10000 times in my one playthrough of the game. sweet jesus.