Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is Almost Here!

I was expressing my surprise at the inclusion of an old bit of plot stuff that I had thought was not entirely valid anymore (must've missed the 2e reference, guess I have to re-read all my books. Again. Oh darn :P), I certainly didn't expect things to erupt into this whole Drow debate. My poor unsuspecting match landed right in that powder keg...

Back to the topic of WotR, I'll admit that I haven't seen much of the advertising (backed the game right away, never really paid attention to any further promoting) so I can't speak to whether or not they're showing a bias towards evil. I can say that from my experiences with the beta I am really impressed by how much they allow you to play with whatever style you want! Gone are the days of 'must be this alignment to choose this conversation option', although there are some locked behind the Mythic Paths which makes more sense anyways (you literally do not have the necessary powers to make that choice!)

I especially appreciate all the little touches regarding character choices. Play a dhampir? Expect someone to comment on your teeth, or mention how pale you look. Worship Cayden Cailean? Get his blessing when defending a tavern from assault. There are so many little touches and references to your early choices that really make your character come alive. My Urgathoan Inquisitor kept seeing happy little moths the further she went down a certain Mythic Path! The game won't be perfect (obviously, not possible) and it won't be for everybody, but it's clear that it's a real labor of love and I'm personally very invested. If I can just decide what class I want my Gold Dragon Path character to be....

Honestly I'm kind of suprised that the game has been allowed to rewrite things so much since from what I'm hearing some of the changes actually change background outwith the ap (Unlike Kingmaker where most of the changes were self contained to it's story.)

Thinking back on some of the Owlcat streams.

I do remember that they did a race between Paladin and Lich. With twitch viewers overwhelmingly voting lich. How overwhelming you might ask? The paladin was given a speed boost, swapped with the lich, and the lich was stunned. But the lich still manage to win. It easily had 3x maybe even 4x the votes.

Its possible that they used that experience to design some of the trailers.

Honestly I'm kind of suprised that the game has been allowed to rewrite things so much since from what I'm hearing some of the changes actually change background outwith the ap (Unlike Kingmaker where most of the changes were self contained to it's story.)

As any adaptation, you have to go with what best works for your medium and what interests you as an artist. The same changes could have happened at any particular GM's table, it all depends on what they want to do with regards to the story.

In the grand scheme of things, this is still Wrath of the Righteous. So far, I haven't seen anything in the beta that conflicts with what I know of Golarion. Some of it may be an attitude or take on certain Lore I wouldn't have gone with as a GM, but I can't say its wrong.

Things.

Things i feel are important:
(1) keeping the main plotline
(2) at minimum, kingmaker-level loyalty to PF1 rules/character options
(3) mythic! I mean, Wrath of the Righteous.

Things i feel can be changed as appropriate for the new medium:
(1) Everything else.

Things i’m particularly excited about:
(1) Looks like a lot of new classes etc relative to kingmaker(!)
(2) Smite Evil not being pointless

(Posting as someone that bought kingmaker, will 100% be buying WotR, and may or may not be buying DLC or future games in the series depending on this one)

Guess I should get back to playing Kingmaker and try to get beyond the prologue before this arrives!

PC Gamer just released an interview with the studio head. What made a lot of sense to me just now was that he said the decision to go with Lich as one of the mythic options was borne out of one of the studio's playthroughs prior to development. So, of course turning into a Lich in the Lawful Good campaign was an idea made by a player at a table. Suddenly, it makes so much sense.

Will be interesting. In previous experiences with RPGs that support ‘evil’ approaches to the main quest, i usually find that acting evil just locks you out of a bunch of game content (NPCs stop liking you) with minimal new content to compensate. I hope that’s not the case, because there’s definitely not a lot of games where you get to play as a lich, so that sounds pretty tempting to do at least one playthrough that way.

It's a weird case of customers saying they want one thing but not actually wanting it. Folks are quick to push/request/demand content from video game developers that allow "greater freedom of choice" and "more options," which includes options for evil characters in RPGs... but a lot of the actual play feedback shows that the vast majority of gamers go for the good side. Which is a nice thing to hear about us all, considering that the bad side is often so much more vocal online... but I can certainly empathize with the developers who spend 50% of their time building a good side playthrough and 50% of thier time building an evil side playthrough, only for them to see feedback that 90% of the players only did the good side.

That said... while it's frustrating on one level, I think making an RPG open to as many different styles of play as possible is worth it in the end. Even if only 10% of the players go evil, the game is better for being that diverse in its options.

That said... choices like this SHOULD be tough. Best case scenario, being an evil character locks you out of the good side options but unlocks the evil side options that the good side don't get to play with.

It's a weird case of customers saying they want one thing but not actually wanting it. Folks are quick to push/request/demand content from video game developers that allow "greater freedom of choice" and "more options," which includes options for evil characters in RPGs... but a lot of the actual play feedback shows that the vast majority of gamers go for the good side. Which is a nice thing to hear about us all, considering that the bad side is often so much more vocal online... but I can certainly empathize with the developers who spend 50% of their time building a good side playthrough and 50% of thier time building an evil side playthrough, only for them to see feedback that 90% of the players only did the good side.

That said... while it's frustrating on one level, I think making an RPG open to as many different styles of play as possible is worth it in the end. Even if only 10% of the players go evil, the game is better for being that diverse in its options.

That said... choices like this SHOULD be tough. Best case scenario, being an evil character locks you out of the good side options but unlocks the evil side options that the good side don't get to play with.

It also encourages multiple playthroughs. Ill definitely go the angel mythic path on the first playthrough. If I want to see the most content I can by doing a second playthrough I'd do an evil path just to see how different the story plays out.

It's a weird case of customers saying they want one thing but not actually wanting it. Folks are quick to push/request/demand content from video game developers that allow "greater freedom of choice" and "more options," which includes options for evil characters in RPGs... but a lot of the actual play feedback shows that the vast majority of gamers go for the good side. Which is a nice thing to hear about us all, considering that the bad side is often so much more vocal online... but I can certainly empathize with the developers who spend 50% of their time building a good side playthrough and 50% of thier time building an evil side playthrough, only for them to see feedback that 90% of the players only did the good side.

That said... while it's frustrating on one level, I think making an RPG open to as many different styles of play as possible is worth it in the end. Even if only 10% of the players go evil, the game is better for being that diverse in its options.

That said... choices like this SHOULD be tough. Best case scenario, being an evil character locks you out of the good side options but unlocks the evil side options that the good side don't get to play with.

i’d argue there’s demonstrably plenty of market demand in computer games for players to be ‘the bad guys’. One of my favorite games was Dungeon Keeper way back when; probably wasn’t a market dominating product, but Blizzard games were market significant, and they had ‘bad guy’ campaigns that are well loved. GTA isn’t my cup of tea, but they’ve put out what are effectively some of the most successful CRPGs ever, and there’s basically only ‘bad guy’ content there.

I think the common issue is “real choice” is difficult to implement; you aren’t going to write a whole new storyline based on every possible combination of player choices because it isn’t possible, so they end up having either superficial effects (“NPC X isn’t there anymore. Because i let him die.”) or slight change to ending or content locked out. But being locked out of content isn’t fun. So the more enjoyable versions i’ve played didn’t pretend to support ‘real choice’ and had dedicated campaigns for both good and bad or just supported bad.

Edit: to clarify, i will likely try to play through as a lich even if the content issue is frustrating (it would be on a second play through, which i rarely do), as that’s a kind of a dream come true.

i’d argue there’s demonstrably plenty of market demand in computer games for players to be ‘the bad guys’.

I'm not trying to argue though, or suggesting that people who like playing bad guys are "doing it wrong."

Just thinking about articles like this one.

Yeah I think that is more a problem for Mass Effect. Because as the article states, "what if I can't romance half the crew" is a huge part of how players think.

(Probably also has to do with what the options are. Being evil is one thing, being a jerk is another.)

The Mass Effect series was great, but the ‘bad guy’ options were exactly what i look at as a pointless implementation. “You can be a bad guy! But it’s worse in every way than just picking the ‘good’ options!” Where the whole point of being evil is all the tempting benefits; wealth, power, immortality(!), convenience, often the easy road, and/or for the admiration and respect of your peers.

Well, except for that one Renegade option.

Will be interesting. In previous experiences with RPGs that support ‘evil’ approaches to the main quest, i usually find that acting evil just locks you out of a bunch of game content (NPCs stop liking you) with minimal new content to compensate. I hope that’s not the case, because there’s definitely not a lot of games where you get to play as a lich, so that sounds pretty tempting to do at least one playthrough that way.

I imagine that for lich specifically they have addressed this issue in a... rather novel way, considering it has been hinted heavily that