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clyde

Bioware-esque RPG

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I get confused between Pillars of Eternity and Divinity Original Sin and I think there were some others. 

 

Are these games similar in pace and narrative/battle relationships as Dragon Age and Mass Effect?

 

i might have asked this before

 

i'm looking for something that is character-driven narratively, has a quicker battle-dialogue-battle-dialogue pace than Persona 4, and doesn't have all the side-work of Dragon Age 3.

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I'm not familiar with Divinity or Dragon Age (beyond a demo), but I believe any similarities are slight.

 

Pillars of Eternity, Dragon Age, and Mass Effect all let you pause the action to deliver commands to your characters, but in Pillars that amounts to: "Click on a command while action is going on," or "Click on a command while action is paused."  You are never controlling a character directly to swing a sword, move, etc.

 

Conversation in Pillars is also intentionally denser than the Bioware wheel-based conversations.  It's closest to New Vegas or Shadowrun-style.

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Nearly all the things newer Bioware RPGs are known for are things I dislike. The worst was pruning down the dialog responses into a 6 direction UI. That isn't too bad, but the right hand 3 options always mean "Progress/leave dialogue" and the left 3 are "Exposition please". Or the good/evil meter in Mass Effect, with colour coded responses.

 

I don't know which games exactly have character driven narrative so I'm going to have a guess. (spoiler is just garbage I wrote before I got what you meant)

 

 


ME1, is the thing that moves the story forward the magic telepathic thing from the start or the great evil of the reapers or the character of Saren? Or is it Jože Shepard's recruitment of people?

ME2, is about recruiting people 90% of the time it felt like. It had you attack some base at the end but it's still character driven? Or not?

ME3, almost like ME2 but with lots of extra shit to do on the side? 

 

DA1, the companions aren't as well developed as ME, story is about magical zombies invading, so not character driven?

DA2, companions are better developed, all the shit happens because Hawke did a thing so it's character driven?

DA3, didn't play

 

Correct me here please, I really don't remember much of these games. I know combat wise, ME1 was it's own thing, ME2+3 did combat pretty good and nearly always split up stuff into Combat encounter->2 party members banter->Combat encounter, until you reach the "Big Exposition&Dialogue" room, which triggers the Boss combat encounter.

 

Divinity: Original Sin is its own special thing. I wouldn't compare it to Bioware's or Obsidian's games. The plot starts with you being magical detectives/cops/judge dredds, investigating a murder. You do things but the story/world building is all over the place. The 2 main characters have dialogue, but I think you choose both sides of each conversation if you're singleplayer? I've only played it coop, just ended the winter realm map so I haven't finished it yet. All the companions you can find aren't exactly bland but they don't have much function beyond gameplay. Their story is just 1 quest you do at a point. They don't really jump into convos all the time or anything. It's a really good game tho! The combat/battle pacing is nowhere near any other game, the combat difficulty, quest design, everything really, keeps suprising me. I have no idea what to expect at any point story/combat encounter wise because it does not give a crap what the norms are. It'll sometimes flounder and make you slog through a few combat encounters with no payoff, but also sometimes a huge one. It's a really weird RPG game, pacing wise. My feel for this is probably way off due to playing it coop over a period of a few hours per week. Also, 100% not character driven.

 

Pillars of Eternity, it's supposed to be a spiritual successor to Baldurs Gate 2, which is probably when Bioware started doing/creating the style that's really evident in ME/DA. POE's main story is a bit very vague. Something bad happens to you/the player character, then you try to figure out how to fix it because you don't want to die. So I guess it's character driven?
 

 

I'm really rambling so sorry for this but I just figured out what you meant by character driven. You mean the gameplay, the player's desire to play is because of the characters' stories, right? Not the story being driven by characters? In all the Mass Effects they got this going hard, the first Dragon Age not so much, but the 2nd one is Mass Effect level.

 

You can read the Divinity:Original Sin bit above but it is 100% not character driven. I don't care what happens to any of the characters that have popped up and I doubt it'll do anything that interesting with them. The story is a rollercoaster of what'll happen next so I'm still going to finish it.

 

Pillars of Eternity, it's not as character driven as Bioware's stuff. They managed to make all the characters you can recruit to your party likeable and/or interesting. They only have one "quest" where you help them with their problem and those have the big highlight moment but it isn't anywhere near Bioware's cinematic style since it's isometric. Might be worth checking out.

 

Also, Tyranny just released, it's better in tons of ways than Pillars of Eternity, plus the story makes you antagonise a lot of people FAST. Party members are a lot less trustful of you, to start with at least, than in nearly any other RPG listed here. Maybe check it out before trying POE+expansions? Tyranny is more expensive though, since it just came out.

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Yes, I an asking for games where I'm motivated to play because of the characters' stories.

This is useful information.  I feel like there might be shorter games that do this stuff too, but I'm not sure. It's not a requirement, but if y'all know of anything that hasn't been mentioned, please feel free to mention it.

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It sort of sounds like Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Shadowrun: Hong Kong on what you're looking for. Both are shoter with a good focus on characters. They can be a bit wordy though.

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Narratively those two Shadowrun games are much tighter than either of Obsidian's games. I think you'll probably like Dragonfall or Hong Kong more than POE/Tyranny but I'd still recommend trying em. The 1st Shadowrun game, Returns isn't that great.

 

D:OS 100% no go, don't even bother. 

 

Have you played Fallout: New Vegas?

 

Torment: Tides of Numenera is coming out in the next 6 months, the characters will hopefully be something special, only the gameplay loop isn't going to include all that much combat as nearly every other game mentioned in this thread. Or a least, the devs have said it won't.

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I started playing New Vegas, but it was too soon after Fallout 3 for me to have an appetite for it. To be honest, I'm really trying to get a recommendation for my wife; this morning she was asking me what was available in this vein for her to play. It seems that she is ready for another game of this ilk. She doesn't like distopia settings so Fallout is a no-go. She also played the first Shadowrun all the way through, but says the sequels aren't what she is looking for. I'm thinking that she might want to play The Witcher 3 based off the little I know about it. It seems like it would be kinda Mass Effect ish in a fantasy environment and that she can romance multiple characters (which she seems to enjoy a lot in Bioware games). 

I'm getting a lot out of these suggestions too and running them by her. 

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Romancing multiple characters in W3 is a super good idea.

 

The 1st Shadowrun wasn't even that great, certainly not for characters. Dragonfall DC is pretty slick. It is a dystopia. But so are most RPGs.

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The Witcher 3 is superb, but it's very different from Mass Effect and Dragon Age. The protagonist is kind of a loner and doesn't travel with a party of fellow adventurers that banter back and forth. While it lacks most of that sense of camaraderie that develops over the course of a typical Bioware RPG, what it does have is the most well-realized open world I've seen in a video game.


I tend to hate open world games, and came to loathe the open world aspects of DA: Inquisition, but I genuinely enjoy all the time I spend in The Witcher 3's world doing side-quests and such. They're written with so much more care than I'm accustomed to in this kind of game and that makes all the difference for me. The game also supports playing with Polish voice acting and English menus and subtitles, which I prefer since I found the protagonist's English voice grating.

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10 hours ago, pkirkner said:

The Witcher 3 is superb, but it's very different from Mass Effect and Dragon Age. The protagonist is kind of a loner and doesn't travel with a party of fellow adventurers that banter back and forth. While it lacks most of that sense of camaraderie that develops over the course of a typical Bioware RPG, what it does have is the most well-realized open world I've seen in a video game.


I tend to hate open world games, and came to loathe the open world aspects of DA: Inquisition, but I genuinely enjoy all the time I spend in The Witcher 3's world doing side-quests and such. They're written with so much more care than I'm accustomed to in this kind of game and that makes all the difference for me. The game also supports playing with Polish voice acting and English menus and subtitles, which I prefer since I found the protagonist's English voice grating.

 

I think they get around not having companions in Witcher 3 with having a bunch of interesting characters in the game, i think its the best choice so far!

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I was craving the same sort of game last night, and ended up finishing The Witcher 2, as well as installing Baldur's Gate Enhanced. I have yet to play Baldur's gate, but maybe it fits the bill?

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divinity original sin is a great gameplay game with an okay story

 

but it's a REALLY great gameplay game

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It's quite aged at this point, but I've been playing through Anachronox off and on for awhile and it scratches the Mass Effect itch fairly well for me in terms of exploring a space and talking with people.  The combat is JRPG style, and if someone mostly wanted to just explore and talk, combat difficulty can be turned down to easy.  There are also some minigame sections, but if you fail, you can elect to just skip them rather than beating your head against them.  It's a game that's incredibly friendly to players who just want experience the story and characters, given its age. 

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