Super excited for PoE 2, but the writing seems to be getting.... awfully cliche

Personally - I liked it more when Dominus was the bad guy.

Act 4 was eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech.

Gods and stuff - fuck that, honestly.

PoE 2 story at the first sight looks kind of lame.

I mean I killed eldritch beings, gods and multiplanar beings. Now you will demote me to a random peasant and make me fight a blood golem or some shit and think I'll be invested? You take me for a Took?

Cliche is fine. It works for the world of poe. As with anything it's the details that matter, the broad strokes just set the theme and the aesthetics. Poe is a grimdark arpg, cliche is part of the package. Besides most players won't or don't care.

I agree with you OP, trailer dialogue was super cringe I wish I could just hear the epic music.

I like PoE storytelling, worldbuilding, characters, voice acting and monologues quite a lot.

PoE 2 is probably hiding most of that. It's a big draw in my opinion. Ava already showed her character similar to PoE 1, I doubt that PoE 2 will not deliver on the general narrative side of things.

"

KZA wrote:

PoE's original writing/voice acting was some of the best I'd seen in any game/movie/story ever back when it was just 3 acts and Dominus was the final boss. Everything the Gemling Queen said was pure gold, Nessa was great, "God saw fit to drown my father. I was taught God loved me... well he's got a funny way of showing it, doesn't he?" and much much more. Act 4 was pretty good too with Malachi's dialogue, and the forsaken masters had a lot of amazing stuff to say.

At the time, the main competitor was Diablo 3, where the writing felt like a cliche scooby-doo cartoon. I figured the difference stemmed from Diablo being a corporate product riding the coattails of its predecessors, while PoE was made by three passionate individuals in a garage.


Unfortunately, in the lastest PoE 2 trailers, while the gameplay (which, of course, is 99% of what matters) is looking absolutely amazing, the writing feels like it was created by a hired team just trying to get the job done.

"Are you ready to fulfill your destiny?"

"I will end it, and no exile will stop me!"

And the voice acting amplifies the issue with its over dramatization.

Oh well, just as long as they don't have someone say "And now you will taste my TRUE POWER!"

Am I alone in thinking this?

Getting? It's been a mix of brilliant and really uninspired for a while now.

The writing in Diablo IV is leagues beyond anything PoE has seen in years (yes, even with my questionable contributions). Both in macro and micro. Pun very much intended. Don't @me because you won't change my mind on this one. Yes, you know who you are.

You can tell the devs of DIV put a huge emphasis on world building and immersion, especially after the joke that was Diablo 3's writing.

But who cares, really? Most serious PoE 1 players skip the dialogue and consider the entire campaign a tutorial. Do you really blame GGG for not putting a high emphasis on that aspect for the sequel?

I think PoE 2 is going to be a slick intersection of PoE 1 and D3 -- and not always in the best of ways. A LOT of fun to play, plenty of variety, great mechanics...but maybe lacking that minimalist approach that made the writing of early-to-mid PoE 1 so special. Also, you talk about the three guys in a garage but it was Edwin McRae who did most of the truly cracking dialogue in early PoE 1, and later...someone else who wrote the excellent Betrayal/Syndicate voicelines. Rory K? I don't recall their name. We butted heads over my sword's design but I was happy to praise his writing chops for that one league. Maybe he also did Heist, which had some good dialogue too?

Izaro's writing was straight-up next level. So many unforgettable one-liners and nuggets of wisdom.

But for all those spikes in wordsmithery, there have been plenty of...not so awesome exposition dumps and cartoon villain level moments.

That said, I'm always happy to be wrong and if PoE 2 turns out to be a dialogue and narrative masterpiece, fuck yeah. It's just not something I expect from Chinese-owned-and-aimed games, which tend to highlight spectacle over nuance.

PS I haven't watched the latest PoE 2 trailer because I've already decided I'll try it once it's open to all, so why ruin any surprises? So if you say the writing is clichéd, I'll take your word for it.

Trailer writing is trailer writing. We know very little of the game's writing itself beyond some samples of character quips from gameplay demos that, notably, tend to not include the bits where someone is Talking Plot. Frankly we know very little of the plot itself, beyond "Creepy Critter is wandering the land spreading corruption and madness and we'd really rather it didn't."

Feels awfully premature to be judging the quality of the final product based on a one-minute trailer meant to flash and pizzazz an announcement consistsing of eight numbers.

As for this hogwash...

"

lupasvasile wrote:

Unfortunately, people are devolving. They need spoon fed stories, anything easy to catch and digest, otherwise they're not interested.

How many hours a week do you work? How many other games do you play? I still haven't found time to properly finish Baldur's Gate 3 inamidst all the other junk I've got going on. If I need to go on an archaeological expedition prospecting for a thousand hours to mine the slightest, tiniest nugget of Plot Relevant Information, then I'm going to largely just watch a YT video breaking it down sometime, the same way almost everybone did/does for Elden Ring. The people who delight in sifting through the sands to glean the tiniest morsel of worldbuilding lore are welcome to their fun, but creating a Main Plot Throughline that's easily followed by people who have numerous other obligations and cannot spare Doctoral Dissertation level focus and attention towards uncovering the deeply hidden plot of a video game primarily aimed at killing monsters and taking their stuff is not "devolution."

It's giving people something to get them invested enough to give a snot about the rest of your scavenger-hunt plot malarky. If there's nothing interesting being laid out in the open for just playing through, why should anyone care about all the stuff hidden behind four-digit hour counts?

"

lupasvasile wrote:

From what I've seen of POE 2 so far, GGG is determined to bring the game to the "masses", and as a side effect the story and lore will take a massive hit. The "masses" need Diablo IV (mediocre and cliche as all hell) type of story to care.

Do you want "the masses" to keep paying for your game?

I always hate this hipster douchecanoe "it's gone mainstream, maaaan!" bullshit. Getting mad that devs are trying to make a version of the game that shares its essential spark with a broader audience, convinces that broader audience to cherish the thing the devs and their original playerbase also cherish, is a Jerk Move. Especially when The Thing You Like is largely untouched and being preserved rather than outright replaced.

Besides. The mega-popularity of Baldur's Gate 3 should, by itself, say something about this common assumption that 'The Masses' are too stupid to understand or appreciate proper writing.

God I hate this gatekeeper garbage.

is there a place we have to sign up to participate?

"

stoop1414 wrote:

is there a place we have to sign up to participate?

Nobody knows yet. You can sign up for an e-mail newsletter, and people who were signed up to that newsletter received a survey allowing them a small chance at at early, extremely small/limited closed beta, but beyond that we do not have any firm knowledge of how the process will work.

Given that the term is "Early Access" and not "Beta" however, I feel it's a highly reasonable guess that there will be a method to purchase access, i.e. a Supporter Pack that grants access to the EA game. There may be a lottery system as well, and people with a large amount of lifetime spend may receive an invitation a'la the Fall of Oriath beta, but I would be willing to stake a dollar on the primary access point being an EA Supporter Pack, similar to other Early Access games in a sense where you buy into the beta so your name is on a document somewhere saying you acknowledged and are okay with the unfinished state of the game.

That's the bit that will be important - that GGG can provably point to where anyone in the PoE2 EA acknowledged that unfinished game is unfinished and Stuff Happens during development.

"

1453R wrote:

How many hours a week do you work? How many other games do you play? I still haven't found time to properly finish Baldur's Gate 3 inamidst all the other junk I've got going on. If I need to go on an archaeological expedition prospecting for a thousand hours to mine the slightest, tiniest nugget of Plot Relevant Information, then I'm going to largely just watch a YT video breaking it down sometime, the same way almost everybone did/does for Elden Ring. The people who delight in sifting through the sands to glean the tiniest morsel of worldbuilding lore are welcome to their fun, but creating a Main Plot Throughline that's easily followed by people who have numerous other obligations and cannot spare Doctoral Dissertation level focus and attention towards uncovering the deeply hidden plot of a video game primarily aimed at killing monsters and taking their stuff is not "devolution."

It's giving people something to get them invested enough to give a snot about the rest of your scavenger-hunt plot malarky. If there's nothing interesting being laid out in the open for just playing through, why should anyone care about all the stuff hidden behind four-digit hour counts?

I'm busy enough, yet I do not agree with you here; at least not in POE's case. And I will explain why.

First break down the whole thing in 2: the active story you are part of, and game world lore.

The story itself is quite easy to follow, and super obvious, if you just listen to the dialogue (or read it if that's faster for you) of the NPCs. But the vast majority of people don't even have patience for that. They all want big Diablo like cutscenes, because "faster". No matter how busy you are, if you have a hobby at least respect it to some degree. Again, the story is straightforward, and easy to pick up, if you wish it.

The world lore however needs a bit of investment on your part, but since it's optional it's up to you if you want to pursue it or not. In some games I pursue it in others I just ignore it and only focus on the main story; depends on how invested I am. You do not need the world optional lore to understand the main story, and I will stand by that whenever wherever.

"

1453R wrote:

Do you want "the masses" to keep paying for your game?

I always hate this hipster douchecanoe "it's gone mainstream, maaaan!" bullshit. Getting mad that devs are trying to make a version of the game that shares its essential spark with a broader audience, convinces that broader audience to cherish the thing the devs and their original playerbase also cherish, is a Jerk Move. Especially when The Thing You Like is largely untouched and being preserved rather than outright replaced.

Besides. The mega-popularity of Baldur's Gate 3 should, by itself, say something about this common assumption that 'The Masses' are too stupid to understand or appreciate proper writing.

God I hate this gatekeeper garbage.

Mainstream is a double edged sword. Since not all people are alike you cannot expect to make something appeal to everyone, or close enough, and also expect it to be groundbreaking. You heard of the saying "jack of all trades, master of none".
Not saying everything has to be divided, but most developers fail miserably when trying to cater to as many as possible. Maybe I'm wrong, and GGG fond the secret formula; ofc there's no perfect, but who knows maybe they get close enough. At the same time, some aspects of POE 2 might suffer because of this. We will see.


In conclusion, looping back at writing: POE 1 writing and story are remarkably good.....if only one pays a bit of attention......yet we all know what world we live in: everything must be fast, because we have no time. By this logic, more than half of us should not be playing games at all.

Poe story was always kinda terrible tbh...

The bulk of it is told on sources outside the game, a bad start

But the whole thing is just plain bad, most of the bad guys have very little character(mostly standard power quest weve seem a billion times) and seem to be on a competition on who gets the highest bodycount. Really, most players arent interested in the story simply because the game only makes a token effort to tell a story, i remember that by the end of my first playtro, i could only name piety among the villiains, simply because shes a recurring and is mentioned a lot, but if you ask me why she does villianous stuff, i have no clue. Every other villiain in the original story feel completely interchangeable, just a bunch of same-ish only distinguished by different ranks. The game does have good and intriguing individual pieces of lore, but they dont merge into a greater whole, wraeclast is just an amalgam of a bunch of cliches from horror and no-man's land settings that already were used on hundreds of better stories(misterious corrupting artifacts, goverment using people for experiments and being corrupted by said artifacts, people being punished by turning into guinea pigs for an experiment for power, goverment start of getting rid of undesirables and the list of indesirables mushrooning out of control... tell me you never heard of any of those before)

Even if you try to compare with games like dark souls where you have to work a bit for the story, dark souls is still miles above poe because: 1)The story is actually interesting, and 2)The story is told in-game, you dont need outside sources to understand at least the general picture

Also, the story on poe also feels like its trying too hard to keep the tone dark. At some point, it crosses the line and go from shocking and into pointless. Death of people and genocide are less tragedies and more just statistics and bodies on the street are less disturbing and more "yawn, more nobodies". Its REALLY hard to keep into the mood the devs seem to be aiming for. So the game indeed becomes just about killing and looting monsters, the story and the enviroment are too dark for one to take seriously, so the whole thing tends to just fade in the background