Pathfinder: Kingmaker

[Name_Here]

I have no idea what you mean. I'm offering you a different point of view. There is no debate. At all. If you don't like opinions that aren't your own, maybe you don't actually like public forums?

Absolutely love them. Have had this particular discussion too much to actually enjoy ones where people try to defend the ME3 ending. Which is like people defending the Star Wars prequels even the best of the defenses are nonsense.

[Kaptin Keen]

Absolutely love them. Have had this particular discussion too much to actually enjoy ones where people try to defend the ME3 ending. Which is like people defending the Star Wars prequels even the best of the defenses are nonsense.

As with the ME3 ending, the Star Wars prequels are entirely decent movies in their own right. They only look as bad as they do when you compare them with the originals.

And on that note, the originals are nowhere near as good as we think they are. What's his name - George Lucas? - was just as mind-bogglingly bad a character and dialogue in the 70's as he is today. It's a work of great imagination, decent story, and outright abysmal characters and dialogue. Throughout the iterations.

Now, please note that I did not defend the ME3 ending - saying it's adequate is not high praise. Neither am I defending the prequels.

[Kish]

That's ridiculous. Of course it's a defense of something awful to respond to the observation that it's awful with "[it's] entirely decent." You don't have to declare something wonderful to be defending it.

[Aotrs Commander]

I hated the ME3 ending (even before the revision) with the void-cold fire of a thousand frozen suns, but I also liked the prequels. More than TFA (and I've haven't watched any SW since, because TFA was just... Alright.)

I will now wait for your heads to explode.



In the meantime, since I STILL have not played yet (I figure I might as well wait for the to finish decided what ehy're going to do with kingdom management first), I take it no-one has been playing the... Prequel? Midquel? expansion, then, since we're mostly talking about ME3's ending?

(I mean, shows how bad it was to a lot of folk that people as still fracked about this many years later, but...!)

[Kish]

Not I. It's not the kind of DLC I'm interested in.

[Kaptin Keen]

That's ridiculous. Of course it's a defense of something awful to respond to the observation that it's awful with "[it's] entirely decent." You don't have to declare something wonderful to be defending it.

No - let's be real. Saying it's 'less **** than you feel' is hardly an ironclad defense. No, it's an attack. See? I'm not defending the games at all. I'm attacking those who get so tightly wound over something that, in all honesty, is just mediocre. Average. Slightly dull and uninventive.

Which of course is disappointing for a game series that was otherwise quite excellent.

[Narkis]

I hated the ME3 ending (even before the revision) with the void-cold fire of a thousand frozen suns, but I also liked the prequels. More than TFA (and I've haven't watched any SW since, because TFA was just... Alright.)

I will now wait for your heads to explode.



In the meantime, since I STILL have not played yet (I figure I might as well wait for the to finish decided what ehy're going to do with kingdom management first), I take it no-one has been playing the... Prequel? Midquel? expansion, then, since we're mostly talking about ME3's ending?

(I mean, shows how bad it was to a lot of folk that people as still fracked about this many years later, but...!)

Yeah, I loved the base game but I have almost zero interest in this DLC. Is there anyone who actually found the premise appealing?

[Aotrs Commander]

Yeah, I loved the base game but I have almost zero interest in this DLC. Is there anyone who actually found the premise appealing?

*raises hand*

I mean, yeah, maybe? But these days I very rarely get anything without doing some research around it, unless I've been following stuff very closely (like I do with PDX dev diaries).

[Serenity]

I'm curious about it, but my current playthrough is considerably too far into the game to have the chance at trying that one out yet.

As for the ME3 ending--again I state that it was not only aggressively mediocre in general form, but nonsensical in both premise (We're gonna kill you with synthetics before you can make synthetics that will kill you) and in the context of the games thus far, with any foreshadowing for this reserved for after-the-fact DLC; to say nothing of the way it spits on any efforts made in achieving the golden ending for Rannoch, and generally makes your vitory feel hollow-to-nonexistent. Not least in the originally shipped versions of the ending, where any choice destroyed the Relays, and the Endor Holocaust inferences drawn from that; but even with that patched out, Destroy carries too high a price to feel like victory, the Illusive Man is a walking testimonial to why Control is an insane idea, and as lovely as Synthesis is made to sound, you're still killing yourself to fix a problem that doesn't exist in a very vague way that probaby shouldn't be implemented so cavalierly--and in every case, you're basically achieving what villains want.

If what you mean by all that being the ending is that you can get decent, if unspectacular ending from turning off the game after Shepard collapses activating the Crucible, then sure, I agree with that, but if you need to ignore most of the ending to get a good ending, than it's pretty definitionally a bad ending.

Of course, all of these problems arise in no small part from the original sins of ME2, which, for all it's amazing character work, failed at being a sequel to ME1. Martin Sheen's Illusive Man is a good character (if sometimes written nonsensically), but to be frank, he should probably never have existed (given how massively different Cerberus is in ME1), or if he did, in a much less central narrative role. As it stands, putting Cerberus so front and center in two both required their big distracting role in 3, and pulled so much focus away from the Reaper plot in 2 that 3 had no choice but to drop the Crucible concept in Shepard's lap at the start, since ME2 had failed to lay any groundwork for uniting the galaxy against the looming threat of the Reapers or figuring out how they might be stopped for good. And once 3 had, of necessity, built itself around assembling a magic 'I Win' button, the developers felt they had to build a twist and a painful choice into the simple goal of ending the Reaper's galactic genocide to make it less cliche and obvious--and so we end up with the utter mess that is the Star Child. ME3's ending was epically bad, but it might well have been better if ME2 had itself had a better story.

[Aotrs Commander]

I'm curious about it, but my current playthrough is considerably too far into the game to have the chance at trying that one out yet.

As for the ME3 ending--again I state that it was not only aggressively mediocre in general form, but nonsensical in both premise (We're gonna kill you with synthetics before you can make synthetics that will kill you) and in the context of the games thus far, with any foreshadowing for this reserved for after-the-fact DLC; to say nothing of the way it spits on any efforts made in achieving the golden ending for Rannoch, and generally makes your vitory feel hollow-to-nonexistent. Not least in the originally shipped versions of the ending, where any choice destroyed the Relays, and the Endor Holocaust inferences drawn from that; but even with that patched out, Destroy carries too high a price to feel like victory, the Illusive Man is a walking testimonial to why Control is an insane idea, and as lovely as Synthesis is made to sound, you're still killing yourself to fix a problem that doesn't exist in a very vague way that probaby shouldn't be implemented so cavalierly--and in every case, you're basically achieving what villains want.

If what you mean by all that being the ending is that you can get decent, if unspectacular ending from turning off the game after Shepard collapses activating the Crucible, then sure, I agree with that, but if you need to ignore most of the ending to get a good ending, than it's pretty definitionally a bad ending.

Of course, all of these problems arise in no small part from the original sins of ME2, which, for all it's amazing character work, failed at being a sequel to ME1. Martin Sheen's Illusive Man is a good character (if sometimes written nonsensically), but to be frank, he should probably never have existed (given how massively different Cerberus is in ME1), or if he did, in a much less central narrative role. As it stands, putting Cerberus so front and center in two both required their big distracting role in 3, and pulled so much focus away from the Reaper plot in 2 that 3 had no choice but to drop the Crucible concept in Shepard's lap at the start, since ME2 had failed to lay any groundwork for uniting the galaxy against the looming threat of the Reapers or figuring out how they might be stopped for good. And once 3 had, of necessity, built itself around assembling a magic 'I Win' button, the developers felt they had to build a twist and a painful choice into the simple goal of ending the Reaper's galactic genocide to make it less cliche and obvious--and so we end up with the utter mess that is the Star Child. ME3's ending was epically bad, but it might well have been better if ME2 had itself had a better story.

Changing the lead writer's plot idea between 2 and 3 didn't help, either, I suspect...

[Kish]

No - let's be real.

Sure, as soon as you feel like acknowledging the obvious fact that you defended both Mass Effect 3 and the Star Wars prequel movies. You could also apologize for the blatant attempts at controlling the terms of debate and setting them to "everyone agrees Kaptin Keen's opinion is actually objective fact," but I don't expect that. (Or the former. I expect more off-the-wall assertions supported by off-the-wall assertions.)

On a less Kaptin Keen note, the problem I have with the ending of Mass Effect 3 is that they decided the whole game series was about upholding a philosophical point--that biological and synthetic life cannot coexist, only merge into cyborgs or have one enslave or annihilate the other--which was not only stupid, but contrary to some of the best parts of the series before that: the history of the Geth-Quarian war, EDI. We got to the end and suddenly that rambling Reaper at Rannoch, whose inaccuracies Shepard was able to point out at the time, was supposed to have been stating unassailable philosophical truths.

[Kaptin Keen]

Sure, as soon as you feel like acknowledging the obvious fact that you defended both Mass Effect 3 and the Star Wars prequel movies. You could also apologize for the blatant attempts at controlling the terms of debate and setting them to "everyone agrees Kaptin Keen's opinion is actually objective fact," but I don't expect that. (Or the former. I expect more off-the-wall assertions supported by off-the-wall assertions.)

No. Please stop trying to inform me what I've said and what my opinions are. That's inane, insulting and unproductive.

In case I haven't been entirely and absolutely clear before, let me try again, in very clear language:

ME3 ending is mediocre. This medium isn't precisely characterized by enormously well crafted plots, and ME3 is squarely middle of the road. Let's say maybe slightly below, primarily because Serenity can actually argue a point, and I have to agree.

Star Wars prequels are ok movies in their own right. By no means great - but in all crushing honestly, neither are the original movies. They're all made by George Lucas, and his strenghts and weaknesses are clearly unknown to me, or he'd hire someone else to correct his more greivous mistakes.

Both of these, game and movie, are hated not because of what they are - but because of what they are not. For not meeting unrealistic expectations.

And now, here's what: You get the final word. Enjoy. I'm decisively done with this discussion.

[Name_Here]

As with the ME3 ending, the Star Wars prequels are entirely decent movies in their own right. They only look as bad as they do when you compare them with the originals.

They are all terrible. Couldn't get through The Phantom Menace of a recent rewatch. Did get through a viewing of Attack of the Clones but that was only because the group I was with was having fun pointing out how terrible it was. Revenge of the Sith I remember being alright but one halfway decent movie out of three is a ridiculously terrible batting average.

And on that note, the originals are nowhere near as good as we think they are. What's his name - George Lucas? - was just as mind-bogglingly bad a character and dialogue in the 70's as he is today. It's a work of great imagination, decent story, and outright abysmal characters and dialogue. Throughout the iterations.

So the prequels are good just not when compared to a movie you claim has a decent story and outright abysmal characters and dialogue.

Kinda sounds like the prequels are terrible movies if they can't even meet that lofty bar.

Now, please note that I did not defend the ME3 ending - saying it's adequate is not high praise. Neither am I defending the prequels.

You seem to already be having this discussion with another poster so I won't get into how when you insert yourself into a conversation to say how a thing isn't as bad as people say it is you are in any sense of the word defending the subject of the conversation.

[Kaptin Keen]

I'm decisively done with this discussion.

Oh, look. I guess I'm done with this discussion.

[Kish]

Revenge of the Sith I remember being alright but one halfway decent movie out of three is a ridiculously terrible batting average.

Honestly, I think it's the worst of the three wretched movies. It brought us "if you have a problem with the idea of letting your loved ones die and not even mourning them, you'll go from zero to mass slaughter of children in five minutes," "Jar-Jar Binks is responsible for the rise of the Empire," and "if you burn a fallen Jedi who you ostensibly care about nearly to death and then, instead of either helping him or finishing him off, lecture him sanctimoniously and then walk away, leaving him to be picked up and restored to being a highly dangerous Sith cyborg, that makes you a good Jedi."

[Rynjin]

Oh, look. I guess I'm done with this discussion.

If you're done with a discussion, the typical way to do it is...be done with the discussion.

Stop replying, in other words.

[Kaptin Keen]

If you're done with a discussion, the typical way to do it is...be done with the discussion.

Stop replying, in other words.

Considering that I've stated pretty clearly I'm no longer in this discussion, I'd consider not responding to me. See, this is how I view it: I'm polite enough to respond to anything adressed to me - but I am still very definitely and completely done with the ME3/SW discussion.

That seems fairly clear to me. Maybe I'm just plain wrong, who knows?! oO

[Rynjin]

Considering that I've stated pretty clearly I'm no longer in this discussion, I'd consider not responding to me. See, this is how I view it: I'm polite enough to respond to anything adressed to me - but I am still very definitely and completely done with the ME3/SW discussion.

That seems fairly clear to me. Maybe I'm just plain wrong, who knows?! oO

From an outside perspective, it looks less like politeness and more of a need to have the last word.

If you're truly done with a discussion, the best thing to do is just leave a thread. Without feeling the need to announce it, even. I do it all the time when I'm tired of talking about something.

[Kaptin Keen]

From an outside perspective, it looks less like politeness and more of a need to have the last word.

Really? By not going back to the discussion, I'm trying to have the last word? Please explain to me how that works.

[The Glyphstone]

Since ME3 is entirely off-topic to the thread anyways, howbout we cease all discussion of it, or discussion about the lack of discussion/refusal to participate in discussion, and get back to the focus on the thread?

[Inarius]

*raises hand*

I mean, yeah, maybe? But these days I very rarely get anything without doing some research around it, unless I've been following stuff very closely (like I do with PDX dev diaries).

I'm kind of on the fence about it, I do intend to replay the game and when I do I'll probably give this dlc a run through just to see how it influences the rest of the game.

[Rising Phoenix]

So I finished the game....

Spoiler

Show

Honestly they could have done entirely without the latern king section. It just dragged the came well passed it's welcome period

[Kish]

So I finished the game....

Spoiler

Show

Honestly they could have done entirely without the latern king section. It just dragged the came well passed it's welcome period

Spoiler

Show

I felt game-fatigue by the time I got to it not because of that part, as such, but because of all the annoyingly tough throwaway fights in the House at the Edge of Time leading up to that. Bloody Wild Hunt.

That said, the entire Lantern King chapter is optional. If you'd chosen the "take the Apology to the Lantern King and make amends" dialogue option while talking to Nyrissa, that would have been the end of the game: the Lantern King gets the ending to his setup that he wanted, and you never have to deal with the First World again. For all the other options--I would think it would be easy to guess that either "kill Nyrissa," "break Nyrissa's curse," or "encourage Nyrissa to defy the entity who cursed her" would seriously piss off the entity in question.

[Sloanzilla]

Spoiler: Endgame Spoiler (as above)

Show

Yeah, I actually was wondering if they've tweaked the final 20% of the game to make the fights a little more interesting. Considering a replay, but do not want to fight the wild hunt guys again 50 times in a row. My only other real complaint is that Pitax (the city, not the dungeon) was very poorly designed.

As I understand it, there are three tiers of ending.
1. Ends in the House with N defeated.
2. Ends at the Lantern King but he lives and N gets a sort of tragic redemption.
3. Ends with killing the Lantern King and N being OK if you do like 400 things exactly right (basically, chaotic goodish the whole time)

Couple ending spoiler questions.
1. What happens if you don't solve Linzi's quest? If you do solve it, she becomes the book, so if you don't solve it do you lose your quest journal?
2. Did anyone find those special Good Alignment spells you got at the end to be worthwhile? I was never sure if mine worked.