Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition released for Linux & SteamOS, now downloads!

Quoting: BeamboomThe writing, perhaps. Problem is, the Shadowrun games look so outdated and technically dull, so I never got motivated to bother reading the "walls of text" as they were thrown towards me. I'm sorry but text adventures just doesn't cut it in 2015.

I thought the Shadownrun games looked quite nice. The character models left something to be desired, but the 2D backgrounds were beautiful IMHO, particularly in Hong Kong. As for text, I'll happily ready pages upon pages of well written text rather than listen to a bunch of voice acted fanfic-level writing, which is the level I'd put D: OS's writing at. I would have much rather Larian had spent some of the money they did on voice acting to hire a decent writer instead. Then again, I quite enjoy reading, I'm weird like that.

On the plus side, the D: OS port seems to be a really good port, at least on my machine (after a year and a half it damn well better be), and the Steam Controller support is great, though I went back to m&kb after giving it a whirl for about an hour since m&kb is intrinsically a superior control method for an isometric game.


Last edited by Keyrock on 26 December 2015 at 12:52 pm UTC

[quote=Keyrock]

Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: BillNyeTheBlackGuyThe writing, perhaps. Problem is, the Shadowrun games look so outdated and technically dull, so I never got motivated to bother reading the "walls of text" as they were thrown towards me. I'm sorry but text adventures just doesn't cut it in 2015.

I thought the Shadownrun games looked quite nice. The character models left something to be desired, but the 2D backgrounds were beautiful IMHO, particularly in Hong Kong. As for text, I'll happily ready pages upon pages of well written text rather than listen to a bunch of voice acted fanfic-level writing, which is the level I'd put D: OS's writing at. I would have much rather Larian had spent some of the money they did on voice acting to hire a decent writer instead. Then again, I quite enjoy reading, I'm weird like that..

Honestly, HBS could have easily chopped up Shadowrun: Dragonfall's dialog and added voice acting to appeal to the papamole consoles players, but the game story would have been as crappy as Divinity: Original Sin's story and dialogue. Thankfully they didn't do that.

Also, I don't really like Divinity: Original Sin graphics. I know appeals to the people who like that cartoony-realistic style from World of Warcraft or League of Legends, but I never found that art style appealing.

I was surprised by the split-screen message when selecting a single player game. Turns out that starting the game with a controller, with a 2nd controller plugged in allows you to play local coop. The game switches between a single screen but when the two players walk away from each other it switches to a vertical split screen.

Not only I hadn't seen this functionality for local coop before, but it's also the first crpg with local coop I've known, amazing!

I hope it becomes a standard.

Quoting: BeamboomBaldurs gate: The games from around 2000? Seriously? Well then you can't have a single interest in anything related to graphics or modern game production values, and we are too far apart in preferences to even discuss it. :)

[...]

Icewind Dale: Again a title from the stone age. :p

The games made with the Infinity-Engine are optical also today on a very high level. The gameplay and storytelling are nevertheless very good, but 2D-graphics don't getting old the same way as older 3D-titles. You should give them a try and recognize that there is no further problem having fun with them, for days and months if you are willing to. And don't judge people about their preferences in games. :)

Quoting: KeyrockI thought the Shadownrun games looked quite nice. The character models left something to be desired, but the 2D backgrounds were beautiful IMHO, particularly in Hong Kong.

I agree that the environments were nicely designed, but "dated" in the sense that these games could just as well have been released 15-20 years ago and looked the same. Art is timeless, and great artwork is featured in these games. But since their environments are so interesting (way more interesting than a fantasy-themed scenery ever will be in my personal opinion) it sucks hayballs that the camera view were stuck in the birds eye perspective. Again - this was something we were used to if we go back fifteen-twenty years ago, but I expect more today!

Quoting: KeyrockThen again, I quite enjoy reading, I'm weird like that.

So do I - but then I will read books, not start a game. Games are an interactive audio/visual media. Therefore I both expect audio and video content as well as my input to matter. To have the "actors" hold up text signs for me to read takes us back to the age of silent movies (if we compare with other media).

Quoting: KeyrockOn the plus side, the D: OS port seems to be a really good port, at least on my machine

I agree - it is!

Quoting: BillNyeTheBlackGuyHonestly, HBS could have easily chopped up Shadowrun: Dragonfall's dialog and added voice acting to appeal to the papamole consoles players, but the game story would have been as crappy as Divinity: Original Sin's story and dialogue. Thankfully they didn't do that.

What a weird claim. That's like saying that a good story can't be told in a movie - it must be told via a book.
Of course good stories can be delivered via acting, animations and even the environment. And regarding the "papamole console players" mudsling... Oh come on.

Quoting: BillNyeTheBlackGuyAlso, I don't really like Divinity: Original Sin graphics. I know appeals to the people who like that cartoony-realistic style from World of Warcraft or League of Legends

You talk about artwork, not graphics. A common mistake. The artwork can be any style from realistic, cartoonish, dark, childish, explicit, adult, all styles imaginative - the graphics can still be outdated or high tech or whatever.
I talk about the graphics, not the artwork. The visual effects, the animations, the "technical specifications" if you like. The artwork in Divinity is very average - very predictable for a fantasy RPG. No more no less.

Shadowrun (or Bastion, Expeditions: Conquistador, Legends of Aethereus or most other comparable RPGs available on Linux) all offer a dated graphical output. Like I say in the reply above, it could just as well have been released fifteen-twenty years ago and been the same.
Now I'm not saying Divinity is a tour de force in regards to graphics - it's not in any way - but at least I'm not unsure if I play a mobile game or a PC game.

Quoting: throghThe games made with the Infinity-Engine are optical also today on a very high level.

With all due respect, but they are not. They are on the level of average mobile games today.
But hey I'm not here to put down all and any other games and favourites around here. I just want to express my excitement for a RPG released that finally was on the technical level I've been missing. Now let's hope some games on that level but a more interesting sci-fi/steampunk setting (or really, any other style than fantasy) is released. That's the next milestone for me. :)

Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: KeyrockThen again, I quite enjoy reading, I'm weird like that.

So do I - but then I will read books, not start a game. Games are an interactive audio/visual media. Therefore I both expect audio and video content as well as my input to matter. To have the "actors" hold up text signs for me to read takes us back to the age of silent movies (if we compare with other media).

But games have budgets and independent studios, in particular, have to work with rather limited budgets. Voice actors don't work for free, their services can become rather expensive when your game has a lot of dialogue. If budgets were unlimited then I would like to have everything voice acted also. But given the limited budget of smaller studios, I'd much rather do a lot more reading of quality writing than listen to voice actors read cringeworthy lines. I mean, the attempts at humor in D: OS are pretty damn ham-fisted, to put it mildly. If you feel a developer's money is better spent on voice actors than quality writers, that's your prerogative. I'd much rather have high quality writing in text form.

As for the look of the game, I'm not keen on D: OS's particular brand of stylized art. I mean, the graphics are nicely high res and the particle effects are nice, I just don't much like the art style. I honestly found the Shadowrun games more pleasing to the eye.


Last edited by Keyrock on 26 December 2015 at 8:05 pm UTC

Quoting: KeyrockBut games have budgets and independent studios, in particular, have to work with rather limited budgets. Voice actors don't work for free, their services can become rather expensive when your game has a lot of dialogue. If budgets were unlimited then I would like to have everything voice acted also. But given the limited budget of smaller studios, I'd much rather do a lot more reading of quality writing than listen to voice actors read cringeworthy lines.

Keyrock, let me just introduce this reply by saying that I believe we in essence are quite in agreement - it's just our priorities as gamers that differs.

And the above quote is why I'm no fan of indies. They can only offer what they can offer and many of them go well beyond what the budgets realistically could do, but it's not enough. Video games today are not something made in a basement by a couple of buddies. It just isn't. For me, indie games are like the free "ebooks" available for Kindle & co by unsigned writers.
Sorry to say so, but they are crap. Some of them have a good idea for the book, some have good segments or plots, but oh my god how they need an editor and a professional publisher to push them to go that extra mile to polish the product. They are not what they could have been. It's the exact same with "indies".

Quoting: KeyrockI mean, the attempts at humor in D: OS are pretty damn ham-fisted, to put it mildly.

It's quite primitive. But then again I'm so used to crappy dialogue and poor plots in games that I hold my expectations low in that regard, and I'm easily charmed by the way they don't take themselves or the genre too seriously in this game.

Also, I'm quite forgiving as long as it delivers on more important parts (to me):
When I sit down to do some gaming it's to participate. To take part in a story, a setting, and shape that story myself. The main story becomes almost just the framework of my personal story within that frame. If a game is too linear, the story need to hold exceptional qualities for me to keep going. And not many games manages to do that.

If, on the other hand, I am left unshackled by the main story I'm a lot more forgiving, if I can have fun and get my gamer fix of that "illusion of freedom".

Yes, I love franchises like Fallout and GTA for that exact reason.

Quoting: KeyrockIf you feel a developer's money is better spent on voice actors than quality writers, that's your prerogative. I'd much rather have high quality writing in text form.

I'd then much rather have no story (or pay no attention to it), but fantastic freedom and just plain FUN in the games. If I have to choose between the two.

Quoting: KeyrockAs for the look of the game, I'm not keen on D: OS's particular brand of stylized art. I mean, the graphics are nicely high res and the particle effects are nice, I just don't much like the art style. I honestly found the Shadowrun games more pleasing to the eye.

I agree! Shadowrun has an excellent style - and a universe I really wanted to delve into. That's why I felt like banging my head into the monitor in despair of what it could have been, had they applied that very universe, artwork and atmosphere onto a more modern engine and way to deliver a story.

So yes - Shadowrun is a product that had huge potential, a masterpiece never unleashed due to technical foundation being too weak to carry it (and undoubtedly limited budgets are to blame).


Last edited by Beamboom on 26 December 2015 at 11:32 pm UTC

Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: KeyrockBut games have budgets and independent studios, in particular, have to work with rather limited budgets. Voice actors don't work for free, their services can become rather expensive when your game has a lot of dialogue. If budgets were unlimited then I would like to have everything voice acted also. But given the limited budget of smaller studios, I'd much rather do a lot more reading of quality writing than listen to voice actors read cringeworthy lines.

Keyrock, let me just introduce this reply by saying that I believe we in essence are quite in agreement - it's just our priorities as gamers that differs.

And the above quote is why I'm no fan of indies. They can only offer what they can offer and many of them go well beyond what the budgets realistically could do, but it's not enough. Video games today are not something made in a basement by a couple of buddies. It just isn't. For me, indie games are like the free "ebooks" available for Kindle & co by unsigned writers.
Sorry to say so, but they are crap. Some of them have a good idea for the book, some have good segments or plots, but oh my god how they need an editor and a professional publisher to push them to go that extra mile to polish the product. They are not what they could have been. It's the exact same with "indies".

I disagree. I would argue, for what I consider to be a quality game, indies have delivered far more than AAA in recent years. Gaming has become big business and more than ever publishers are looking to make as much money as possible and since gaming is no longer a niche hobby but fairly mainstream, they are looking to reach as broad an audience as possible. They do this by dumbing down streamlining games so that they are as "accessible" and appeal to as wide an audience as possible. It's like the old saying about menus at a restaurant: "If the menu at the restaurant has a hundred different dishes you can be sure none of them are particularly good." It's because those restaurants don't specialize, they don't focus on a single palette, they try to make something that will appeal to everyone and so they make 100 mediocre dishes instead of 7 or 8 really good ones. Gaming used to be more specialized when gaming was still niche, and some indies still are, but AAA are all trying to appeal to as many different palettes as possible and are pumping out soulless, homogenized tripe. And sure, the games tend to look nice, because the suits know that bling sells, but the games are devoid of personality and depth. AAA games these days are Michael Bay movies. Sure they have pretty explosions and great effects, but the stories are more hole than plot and the characters are cardboard cutouts. There is nothing wrong with liking Michael Bay movies, if that's what does it for you then by all means, enjoy them, but I like something with some substance and depth, not just flash on the surface.

Take for example Fallout 4. Nevermind the game being buggy as all hell at launch and Bethesda getting a free pass from 99% of the press like always, we'll disregard this for now. The game is relatively pretty and has a giant sprawling open world with tons of stuff for you to do. It even has arguably the best shooting mechanics of the first/third person games in the series (not that that's much of a feat). Yet that game is a hollow shell. It's a Fallout game in setting, but setting only. That game is barely a RPG. The character system has been stripped down to almost nothing, the dialogue system is a joke, truly meaningful choices are almost non-existent. Just about everything that made the Fallout games great, and I'm talking Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas here, is gone, the soul of the series has completely been ripped out and discarded in favor of making a shooter with a Fallout coat of paint because shooters are popular. Remember how in Fallout games you could often approach problems in many different ways and find different and creative solutions? You choices now are shoot your way through the problem or shoot your way through the problem. But hey, they shoehorned in crafting and a really tedious and clunky base building mechanic because those are all the rage these days.

Maybe an even better example is Star Wars: Battlefront. Undoubtedly one of the most graphically impressive games ever made. It looks stunning. It's also an empty withering husk of a game. The game features a shockingly small number of maps, is missing many of the most beloved modes from past titles, has terrible balance issues, unsatisfying gunplay, and downright abysmal respawn problems. It is the posterchild of the style over substance that much of AAA development has become.

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Quoting: KeyrockI mean, the attempts at humor in D: OS are pretty damn ham-fisted, to put it mildly.

It's very simple, to put it that way. But then again I'm so used to crappy dialogue and disappointing stories in games that I hold my expectations low in that regard. I'm quite forgiving as long as it delivers on more important parts (to me):

That's where we differ. The hilariously barebones and poorly written game stories from years past don't cut it for me any more, I expect more from my video game. I expect meaty stories with interesting characters and character development over the course of the game. Would I like to have that in the shiny and lovely to look at package that is AAA game? Sure, that would be great, but outside of CD Projekt RED and Rockstar, hardly any AAA seems to do that these days. They're too busy putting all their resources into shinier graphics and more bombastic stepieces. The indies are generally the place to go for innovation, meaningful stories, and well written characters these days.

I guess my different view likely comes from the fact that I grew up on point & click adventures and RPGs, two of the most story-focused traditional video game genres, and thus I'm generally quite story-focused as a gamer. I still hold Planescape: Torment as the greatest RPG ever made over 15 years after it was released and even though it looks quite dated by today's standards and it had the worst combat of all the Infinity Engine games because the story, characters, and character development in that game are still the benchmark by which all other games are measured.


Last edited by Keyrock on 27 December 2015 at 4:12 am UTC

Keyrock,
I see your arguments everywhere so I'd be a fool if I didn't accept that they hold some merit. I just find myself, over and over again, being disappointed with low budget games. What I've found they can do best are simple concepts. Like all those arcade shooters, platformers, simple puzzlers, that kind of thing. Or the very short games where you essentially just walk around and discover a story. Nice to spice up your gaming mix, but hardly anything you'd want to invest hundreds of hours into. When they try anything more ambitious, they fall short either in length or in technical level. That's a general rule with far too few exceptions.

Much like indie films, really. Typically for indie films are that they can be good at doing technically very simple films, or very short films. Both has obviously to do with budget and thus sheer manpower. When they try anything more demanding, they fall short. And then you got the very very few exceptions that everyone use to prove otherwise, but what I say is true for more than 98% of everything produced.

Of course I too want great stories in my games. Of course. And I'd like to hold BioWare as one source for gripping scenarios and in particular fantastic characters (if a bit too "american" stories, but I've grown used to deal with that).
But I need to be delivered those characters in a modern way, and not have to use my imagination while reading text and staring at a still photo of an avatar. That's so far behind me and I do not look back.

I'm 46 years old and have been into computer gaming since I got my Oric-1 back in the mid eighties. I too grew up with point'n'click adventures. I've been through all those Sierra games, LucasArt, Larry and all that stuff. I wouldn't touch games like that today. The only reason we (I) enjoyed them back then was that we didn't have anything better. Keep in mind: It was the pinnacle of gaming at that time!

And back then all I did was to dream, "what if I could enter this world, what if I could BE there?". Tried my best to ignore the jaggy lines, poor collusion detection, invisible walls, ignore the choppiness of the three-frame looped animations. Used my imagination to think of how it could have been. I even enjoyed the "freedom" of Space Invaders, pretended that one of the bases at the bottom were "my" base.

Today we can get up close and personal. We can actually look at the tables inside a house, and not only that but read the pages on the book that lies on top of that table - it's not a 6x8 pixels white box any more. Today we can "enter" the imaginary worlds - and even more so with the upcoming VR technology. Today we build our own bases in huge virtual worlds - and design the whole thing as we please!

... So why the f* should we settle with the same shit we had to deal with thirty years ago? That's my stance on this whole subject of gaming. I look forward. And I want my games to keep up with the evolution.


Last edited by Beamboom on 27 December 2015 at 11:32 am UTC

If we were talking about BioWare from 10 years ago, I might agree about their writing prowess. The BioWare of today is a shadow of its former self, though still better than the average AAA studio in the writing department, I guess.

I'll happily take a game like Undertale over 98% of the AAA games that came out this year.