Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Enhanced Edition,writing going to be more serious?

I played the game today and fought a troll, and that got my mind to wandering, and I realized that a lot of the characters and enemies in the game are just one-dimensional stereotypes, with no depth or nuance.

What are Trolls? Trolls are beings obsessed with gold. Specifically gold obtained from extorting tolls from people crossing bridges. I get it. It's a "Three Billy Goats Gruff" reference. But it's a reference that's repeated over and over again (with some minor variations), as if it would be just as funny as the first time.

Even if you assist enemies, they are still single-mindedly in kill kill kill mode. Release the goblins in Luculla mine and they attack you because you are human. Heal Frederick, and he immediately attacks you for profaning a Star Stone.

Related, I find it irksome when a Source Hunter says "oh no we killed an innocent person what have we done" when the dead guys are Immaculates and I simply struck first before they did. It's silly because in this case, they're waiting for a conversation trigger during which they threaten to kill you. If you fail the speech check, a fight starts. If you pass they're friendly... but if you THEN attack the peaceful group, you do NOT get the "you killed an innocent person" thing.

It's not an issue raised on the forums I use - Eurogamer, RPS, Steam mainly. Is this mainly an American complaint?

Between Steam and here I've seen this 'Yahtzee' complaint twice, likely by the same person.

likely, but I don't use steam forums (too full of trolls for my taste. given your comment, I suppose it suits you)

What? If the same rare term gets used in two forums for the same game a couple days apart, it is hardly far fetched to think they may have been made by the same person.
I made no judgment at all on your comment. I've never even seen a Zero Punctuation video, and hadn't heard of it until you mentioned it (the similar Steam forum post mentioning Yahtzee didn't mention that, that I recall), though I got the general meaning from the context.

I feel sorry for Raze having to venture the Steam forums... me myself kind 'has to' do that for another game, and it's a total pain in the butt most of the times.

Having said that, don't hold your hopes up guys. This remains a Larian game, and thus the cheek-in-line will remain.
And that's the way I like it actually, enough RPG's out there who are too serious on themselves and try to be 'dark' and 'edgy' and only fail in the darn boring catagory.

To be fair, I can see how my reply could have been read as dismissive.

Serious does not have to mean edgy or dark though. But I agree that one should not go the "make everything dead serious and gritty" way. That wasn't the problem of D:OS to begin with.... no, D:OS is dark at times, the problem was ye never knew when that was because D:OS itself didn't know.

I always considered this request in a different way. D:OS lacks a primary feature of RPGs, namely character development (player and non player chars). And without that, many of the events and scenes in D:OS had no emotional weight or impact, and worse, no real consequences. Which is where I think this complaint comes from, or better call it an request, for more serious writing.

Some people apparently think D:OS is meant as a joke or parody because nothing you do in the game advances the characters of the player chars. In Larians attempt to make "pick-up" COOP play less problematic, they made the main chars as boring as wooden dolls, and about as complex. Worse, by gamification of the "dual dialog" decisions they made the moral consequences of actions a minigame, instead of leading to character development it lead to silly stat increases that had no further consequences in in-world dialogs with NPC's whatsoever. IN fact in-game NPC's had no awareness of anything you said or decided in those dual dialogs, even if you had them right next to an NPC (So he/she should have heard you).

And this in turn made the events in the game like a theater play where you play 2 parties at once, it broke the 4th wall, and is probably where the complaint comes from that I read here every now and then, and that I also have, namely that the D:OS's writing is all over the place and can't maintain any coherence or even a fitting mood for a scene. And how could it? When killing a civilian leads to a silly rock paper scissor game against MYSELF... that's literally what breaking 4th wall is defined as, and what should never be done in RPG's unless you make them a parody. ;p


TL;DR
To me, when I read "writing needs to be more serious" what people really say in mind is "writing needs to be more coherent to a scenes mood" and "character development needs to be a thing" ;P

Sounds like you hit the nail though... character "development" and deep long-lasting choices that impact you are pretty hard to pull of in a co-op experience. It's rather hard to have super long conversations with teammate with permanent results if that leads to the other player just waiting. Or if you want to give them input, the same happens; you need to give both players a choice, and that may lead to back-and-forth.

Not to say I'm not much a fan of the RPS minigame myself, and would see a less intrucive system in the sequel (like just a roll with modifiers depending on your skills, and maybe add a little bonus each time a player fails till they succeed so it's very unlikely it's a one-man-show).

Yeah, and to be honest, the way Larian designed the entire gameplay in D:OS (COOP at all time) it left them only this choice to begin with. For a future game I hope we get a CLEAR pre-game choice that says "Solo" mode because I am not going to support D:OS 2 if it has these silly 0 consequence dual dialogs and character-less dolls as player chars. I want exactly 1 doll that I can roleplay, that is my char. Everyone else in my group better should have a proper written character.... maybe it is a character defect on my part.. but I just *can't* roleplay more than 1 char without throwing myself completely out of the immersion.

This is for me the only really important "feature" that D:OS 2 has to have. Both systems (COOP vs Solo) can exist in the same game.. but to handle both identical is (or rather was) imo a mistake.

It's not easy to write a coherent plot. That's the POINT of written literature, of course (be it video games, movies, books etc.) because if it isn't logical then it doesn't matter what it is. It may as well be random events with no connection. It actually IS a string of random events if the plot doesn't have coherency. There is a technique in literature that is like this - the cut-up technique. The most famous example being William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch. This technique is characterized by randomization of the plot elements. As in, no matter how you rearrange the parts of the "story" it has a logical plot. Though you have to realize that, by using this technique, you have to write the parts in such a way as for them to be self-contained and their chronological order doesn't matter. It's a bit more complicated than this as this is a rough outline, but it helps to illustrate the technique.

Back to D:OS - You can have comedic elements, but they must be set up from the start to avoid sudden mood shifts. D:OS does this. You also have to be careful not to switch genres in the middle of the plot. From a drama to parody, for example. Look at ME3's ending where the genre shifted in the last 5 minutes and it was incredibly bad and forced. It can be done if used carefully and sparsely. Shifting genres can be evocative, I like to use a movie example for this - Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. It's a satirical mockumentary about a serial killer-in-training, but the second half shifts to full-on horror, it was done very well and thought-out. It showed how different a person that you know can be (oversimplification, but you get the idea). It had build-up and the shift didn't come out of nowhere. Another example is Audition, where it starts as a generic kooky asian rom-com, but turns very dark; it was also built-up very well. If the genre shift is *meaningful* and thought-out it's a brilliant move. This, coherency and the triviality of the characters is where D:OS suffers heavily. The plot (however disjointed and illogical it is) isn't moved by the characters, it's moved by Star Stones and Pandora's Boxes, gods and what-not. This placed the characters in the back-burner and it really doesn't matter who or what they are. The mood/genre also changes suddenly with no build-up and it's jarring, takes you out of immersion and breaks the 4th wall really badly. This isn't the problem of comedy, not really. Though serious violence, drama and killing aren't conducive to comedy, that is why most RPGs are "grimdark" and that is one of the reasons why D:OS is so absurd for many people. Look at South Park: The Stick of Truth for an example of how to make a comedy RPG. It is coherent in its genre from start to finish.

My point is, like I said, that it's not easy to write a coherent plot, because you stand on very complicated philosophical, artistic and intellectual concepts that are very hard to explain in a single thread post. They should try this in D:OS 2, though, no doubt about it. Even if it's a comedy RPG it should be continuous in its writing style, genre, characters and plot. Though they already said that it's going to be more serious. That doesn't change anything, it still should be coherent and thought-out in every aspect. The game being Co-op doesn't really have anything to do with this. It is strange how they interact with the rock, paper, scissors thing and it's just thrown in there for no discernible reason, and I think they should either rethink the approach or not have the main characters talking to each other like this. They can have predetermined dialogue, but that goes into different territory with the characters having a predefined personality. There is a lot more to be said on this subject, but I think this is enough for now.