#hokay we got some designs now its just time to.... time to......

[smovs]

and one for Sora, too. [Riku] [Kairi]

[goombasa]

Thoughts on the Super Mario RPG Remake

So hey, guess what I got for Christmas?

Okay, so, to give a bit of context to this, the original Legend of the Seven Stars on the Super Nintendo is one of my favorite games of all time. I played it backwards and forward and I've probably played through it start to finish more than any other game on the SNES. I love the world it created, and felt like one of the first big proper expansions to Mario's universe, rather than just being an incidental new place where the game was taking place. I love the new characters we were introduced to, particularly Geno and Mallow, and I was always disappointed that we never saw them again. I mean, I get WHY we didn't, the game was made by Squaresoft pre-Enix merger, and as such, most, if not all of the game's original characters were the property of Square and not Nintendo.

Oh, and of course I love the fact that this would be the impetus for other Mario-themed RPGs down the line, including Paper Mario, its sequel, the Thousand-Year Door, and the Mario and Luigi series… not that either of those series are in particularly good shape these days. But this was the start of it all.

So imagine my surprise when Nintendo announced during the Nintendo Direct in June of 2023 that there was a remake of this game in the works for the Switch, AND that it was going to be released later that same year, just in time for the Holidays!

I never thought it was going to happen, but it was happening. One of my most favorite games of all time, was getting remade, from the ground up, and brought properly into the third edition! Holy crap! AND GENO AND MALLOW WERE COMING BACK, BABY!

But… the more that I thought about it, the more my excitement died down. How would the gameplay hold up? Were they going to change a bunch of stuff about the game? Would they add a bunch of superfluous fluff? Who was even making it? It wasn't made by Nintendo or Square-Enix, but by a third party called ArtePiazza, a studio that up until this game came along, I hadn't actually heard of before. I was worried, and that worry was only exacerbated by how much this game meant to me personally.

Thankfully, all my worry was for nothing. This is not only a very faithful remake that makes changes only in what I personally consider the right places, but also a reminder of how much these older games tended to be better about respecting a player's time.

And now I'm gonna talk about it all.

The Developer

As it turns out, ArtePiazza has a long history of working with Square Enix, and were actually the primary developer behind a lot of the remakes of classic Dragon Quest games, as well as the CG designs and scenario designs in others, so they definitely know what they're doing when it comes to RPG remakes. It's not really surprising that I hadn't heard of them before, as they were more a background studio that offered assistance rather than main development.

This isn't the first remake they've been responsible for, like I mentioned, and I definitely think they did a great job with it, but I kind of wish I knew a bit more about the studio as a whole now, but information on them is a little bit on the sparse side, aside from the list of projects they've worked on which mostly consists of the Dragon Quest series, and a small handful of other RPGs here and there.

The Story

Hokay, so, this is a Mario game, but it's an RPG. That basically means that you have a very typical RPG setup, and at no point does it feel like the game is treating itself very seriously. I say that as a positive, because the story is paper thin here, basically an excuse to have Mario and friends go all over the place in this weird and wonderful world that has been created here.

The story itself wasn't really changed at all from the original. It is as close to the original as possible while at the same time altering some of the weird mid-90's quirks of the script. Most of the changes are minor, like removing the Bruce Lee name drop just before the Bowyer fight, and a few of the names of certain characters and enemies were changed. The only one that I kind of wish they hadn't changed was Mack, the first commandert of Smithy's forces that you fight in the game. His name was changed to Claymorton in the remake, which does make sense, it's still a pun on his weapon of choice, but in the original, he was known as Mack. You know, as in Mack the Knife? Pun on the song? Because he's a sword, but still… kind of a knife?

Okay, I get why they changed it.

Point being, if you are a fan of the original, nothing here is going to ruin any sort of memories you have of the story, simple as it is. Whatever changes they made are negligible and it retains the same flow, and most of the sillier moments are preserved perfectly here in the remake.

The Characters

Like the story, there's not a huge amount of characterization here, so if you were expecting the remake to suddenly give more depth to anything here, you're going to be disappointed.

At the same time though, none of these characters really needed much in terms of depth. Their designs and personalities are more than enough to carry the game. The villains barely get much of an introduction in this game, simply showing up at designated points to be the antagonist for that particular chapter of the story, and yet every single one of them has such a striking design and an interesting personality (for the most part; the aforementioned Claymorton is about as generic as it gets, save for his design and pogo-sword gimmick) that I don't think ‘depth’ is every really an issue. Entertaining is probably the best way to describe the characters here. Even the most minor of characters manage to leave enough of an impression that you are never going to mistake one person for another as you journey across the Mushroom Kingdom here.

This is something that carries over beyond Smithy and his gang to the one-off minor villains you run into, like the fame-hungry Punchnello, the underwater pirate Johnny, and of course the completely detached from reality Booster and his Amusement Tower.

Also, you fight a sentient wedding cake at one point, and the ending to that fight is legitimately hilarious.

And then there are the playable characters. Mario is given more of a mischevious bent in this game, and I was really surprised to see that they kept in some of the less flattering moments for our hero. There's a point where Mario's ready to just deck a child in the face for basically saying he isn't as good as Geno. And there are the many moments where Mario, rather than just recapping past events to other characters will just mime his way through what's happened, basically playing every character at once, and it's fantastic. This was one of the first times in the series where Mario had a lot of character beyond just being a heroic jump man and I think it did a very good job at conveying that character.

Also, you can make Mario say some real mean things to people in this game and just be a dick, which doesn't really have any sort of consequence, as most of the ‘yes/no’ questions, you do have to eventually agree in order to progress, so there's generally no reason NOT to make Mario talk negatively at least once or twice, just to see the other character's reactions to him just flat out refusing to be a hero for once.

Princess Peach is how she always is. She spends the first good chunk of the game in her usual role as a damsel in distress, and even after she joins the party, she doesn't really get a chance to shine on her own. Mechanically she's one of the most important party members, but in terms of personality, she really doesn't stand out much once she joins your party. I kind of feel like she had more dialogue before she was rescued than after. It's not a terrible portrayal, but you can definitely tell that this was written during a time when Peach's role was mostly to be the damsel, and the fact that she was part of the main party was enough to celebrate, whereas steps have been taken in future games to give her a bit more personality, and to make her a more active element in the story. It's especially noticeable when you compare Peach to Bowser's portrayal.

Bowser is fantastic in this game. This was the first time Bowser was shown to be anything more than just a big, evil brute in the games. Back in 1996 this was pretty unprecedented, and it really made Bowser into the more endearing, well-loved semi-villain that he is today. Like, yeah, Bowser is evil, but at the same time, he's also a bit of a dork with self-confidence issues who thinks he's way smarter than he is, and it's just… it's just so great. It's to the point where, even in RPGs where he is the main villain, Bowser is just as much comedy relief as he is an antagonist. It's the same here. After defeating him early in the story and then slowly watching his forces dwindle down to nothing as he tries in vain to defeat smithy on his own, Bowser is just a delightful curmudgeon to have on the team… even if, in terms of mechanics, he was actually the character I ended up using the least throughout my playthrough.

But then there are the newcomers, Geno and Mallow. I love them both, from an aesthetic point of view. Mallow, being a little cloud creature does fit right into the Mario world without issue. Geno's a bit more unique looking, but his role as the guardian of the Star Road fits right in with the occasional character guarding a super powerful area or relic or long lost power source that seems to crop up, even in the regular platformers now and then. And as they aren't really Mario characters, at least not in terms of the main canon, the writers did have a bit more freedom with these two, though not a huge amount was done with that freedom. Geno is about as static as Mario, Bowser, and Peach, though he's certainly a talkative character. I never really got much of a vibe for his personality though, as much as I enjoyed his design. Mallow is unique amongst the main cast of the game in that he's really the only one of the five that has something resembling a character arc. Orphaned as a child, wanting to find his real parents, and learning to be more confident as a result. It's really simple, much like most other subplots in the game, what few there are, but it does give his character more agency in the plot beyond the shared goal of wanting to stop Smithy from taking over the world.

Speaking of Smithy, can I just say how much I love the idea behind him. He's an alien blacksmith who literally forges the enemies that you fight, making sentient weapons that are completely loyal to me. It's an intriguing idea for a villain and I kinda love it. It almost makes me a bit disappointed that he just exists to be a villain. We don't know anything about him, what he does, where he comes from, whether or not he's done this to other worlds and so forth; Like I said before, we don't really need all that stuff for this to be a great game and an enjoyable story, but the fact that I'm not disappointed and yet I'm still asking these questions about the villain does tell me that I think he's at least an interesting force, especially with how much he's built up over the course of the story before you finally confront him. He might be one of my favorite Mario villains just for his concept alone, and that extends to his minions, all of whom are based around various weapons, their names a pun on the weapon they're based on. It's great stuff.

What the characters lack in depth or complexity, they more than make up for by just being absolutely off-the-wall strange, and I am here for it.

The World

Exploring the world in this game is a pretty straightforward experience. Folks tell you where to go and what to do, and then you do it. You pretty much will never find yourself wondering what you're supposed to do next, and that's without the need of a waypoint or a radar or even anything to really remind you of what you should be doing, though the remake does give you a handy journal function to remind you of recent events and any interesting information that you've gleaned from talking to people.

While the original didn't have any journal or fast travel functions in it, moving around the map was fairly snappy (actually much snappier than in the remake) and the areas and dungeons were small enough that revisiting them for whatever reason never felt like much of a chore. However, adding in modern sensitibilities and accessibility options for the convenience of the player is something that I will always welcome, especially since they slowed down traveling on the map quite a bit for the remake.

But that's about the only thing that feels like it's been made slower. Mario no longer needs a button held down in order to run on the overworld, running is just his standard mode of movement in this remake, and his speed is a very happy medium between his walk and run speeds from the original, and it works perfectly for getting around quickly enough and avoiding enemy encounters, not that you'll really want to, as combat is really fun, but I'll get into that later. Platforming also feels better in this version as well. The original wasn't bad perse, but the sprite-based isometric layout of the game combined with the strange ascent and descent speed of the jump could make platforming a bit tricky. And yes, the game does have platforming, usually in optional mini-games

While the areas themselves are small and even somewhat linear in their layout, the isometric layout of everything does make exploring worthwhile, and of course there are always hidden treasure chests and enemies to keep a lookout for. There are even invisible treasure chests scattered all over the world, with a particular NPC in the game that will even tell you how many hidden treasures in the world you haven't found yet, how nice of them! You can find a bunch of stuff just by talking to the individuals and poking around in every nook and cranny, whether it's directions to a hidden treasure room in the forest maze, a challenge to hit a certain number of consecutive bounces using your jump attacks, or hitting a button in Booster Tower that opens up a completely new screen in the previous area. And that's to say nothing about the rush that you get when you grab an invincibility star and just plow through a ton of enemies in the overworld.

And you get Experience Points for it!

The Combat

The combat is fantastic, from all angles, and is probably the part of the game that was both the most heavily altered, and the the most improved in this remake. And make no mistake, it was already pretty solid to begin with. The timed hits mechanic, where you can push a button to either increase the strength of an attack or defend yourself against an incoming attack or spell and potentially eliminate all damages if your input is timed well enough.

However, the old game, for as good as it was, could be somewhat vague about what you could and could not block, and also what the timing was for certain attacks. It also limited you to only using three out of the five characters at a time and you couldn't change characters mid-fight. Also, Mario always has to be in your party, so party composition couldn't be super varied. The remake addresses most of these issues, and in pretty decent ways.

First off, if an attack is unblockable, it will say so in the corner when the attack name is announced. Then, whenever an attack is used against you, or you use an attack, an exclamation point will apear above the character's head, letting you know when you should be hitting the A button. While decent timing will get you a small bonus to damage or defense, if you perfectly time the button press you'll either completely eliminate any damage you take (defending) or you'll dish out extra damage AND cause a small shockwave that will cause a small amount of damage to all other enemies (attacking). It's a smart system, and encourages you to learn the tells for both your enemies and allies. to maximize your offense and defense.

Oh, and that exclamation point? It doesn't stick around all the time. After you've successfully gotten a few perfect hits and blocks, the indicator will stop appearing. However, if you start missing the timing frequently on the same attacks, it will come back to help coach you into properly hitting that sweet spot. Depending on your team composition, you'll also get bonuses to certain stats if you manage to keep a combo chain going of successful attack and defense. And speaking as such a big fan of the original, I actually needed that help getting the timing down. With the new 3D models, the animations are far smoother, and also a lot quicker too, leading to the timing feeling a lot trickier. This game also has a lot more attacks that can be blocked with a button press, and I'm not sure if they could always be blocked in the original, or if the timing was just that strange. To be fair, the timing on these particular magical attacks (Diamond Saw, Bolt, Storm), they're really tricky to get down, even with that helpful little indicator.

The ability to switch in party members from idle during battle is also more of a boon than I thought it would be. In the original game, you were stuck in combat with whatever characters you had in your party, and generally I never switched out specific party members, save for some very specific fights. I'd almost always go with Mario, Bowser, and Peach, and end up leaving Geno and Mallow behind. It isn't like the game ever forces you to use them again anyway. But in the remake, you can swap out a character without wasting their turn, something that becomes very useful for characters afflicted with status ailments or knocked out, or when you just want to experiment with other characters' abilities against certain foes.

And by far, the biggest quality of life improvement to the game's battle mechanics were with its special weapons. The system itself remains unchanged, you have a pool of flower points that is shared by all your characters that they use to utilize their special attacks. In the original game, these were, by a large, kind of useless, at least in my opinion. Apart from some specific fights, all I would use special attacks for was for Peach's healing abilities (which makes her super powerful in this game, she can basically keep everyone hale and hearty all on her own so long as you don't let her get KOed). It is true that plenty of enemies in the game have weaknesses to elemental attacks that party members have in their special attacks (Mario's fireballs, Mallow's thunderbolts and snowy powers, and so forth… also Mario's jump attacks count as their own element too), but there was very little indication about whether or not using a special attack on an enemy was actually affecting them any better than your regular attacks. Add in the fact that powering up the special attacks required more involved button inputs (pressing the D-pad in a clockwise rotation, rapidly pressing the attack button, holding it down and releasing it at a certain point, etc.) and sometimes I just wasn't sure if I was even using them right.

The remake on the other hand, gives you plenty of ways to know just what would be best to use against your enemies. First, when you use Mallow's Thought Peek ability (Psychopass in the original game), you not only get the enemy's remaining HP total, but also a list of everything they're weak against, including status ailments as well, which can also encourage you to use all those items and spells that inflict statuses on your enemies rather than just having those collect dust. When you use an attack that hits an enemy's weakness, or a resistance, it will TELL you that, letting you know that, yes, you are doing something right. And those special attack inputs I mentioned before? The game gives you a visual cue that not only makes it very clear what you're supposed to do, but gives you visual feedback on how well you performed the action, so you're always sure exactly how well you're performing them.

I don't want to say that the original was terrible in this aspect, but the original never really made special attacks feel like a necessary piece of the puzzle beyond healing abilities, and some early game fights that benefited from Mallow's screen-hitting attacks. It was balanced in such a way that using your regular attacks was still perfectly optimal. In the remake, not only was I more often switching out party members to change up my strategies during fights, but I was using special attacks a heck of a lot more often because I could be sure that it was something that would be effective this time around, which in turn made both Mallow and Geno feel much more helpful overall. This is actually the reason why I ended up using Bowser much less than I did on the SNES version, as he is a useful tank, but I found Geno's status as a glass canon and Mallow's ability to cover and reveal multiple weaknesses to be a lot more useful compared to Bowser's interesting but underutilized ability to inflict a lot of status ailments. Combat just doesn't last long enough to make status ailments useful to use.

I would even go as far as to say combat overall feels much faster  than the original. Not that it was slow before, but the animations just feel much snappier and more fluid and the lack of really needing to think too hard about what you're doing from turn to turn means that most regular fights are going to be over within three turns. The game's balance is just perfect in this regard, especially if you're new to RPGs. Speaking of which…

Breezy Mode

Look, the original Mario RPG was not hard. At all. And that was by design. It was built to be an RPG for people who didn't play RPGs but were familiar with Mario as a series. Combat was simple, the numbers were kept small, the level cap was very low, and the timed hit button presses kept people engaged and alert during combat, rather than just encouraging them to mash the attack button the whole time to get through the fights quicker. You're never confused on where to go, the few puzzles the game throws at you are very easy to figure out and dungeons are relatively small, quick affairs with only the occasional gimmick to spice up a boss fight here and there, such as Bowyer's ability to lock down a button.

I've gone on record in this post saying that accessibility options are a good thing, and I mean that. More options and more difficulty settings will always be a good thing, and there, it is no different. I just personally find it funny when a game that is already built to be easy and accessible goes even further and gives you an option to make the game even easier. It's a good thing, to be sure, and it's especially helpful for those struggling with the timed button presses. Heck, if that was all this mode did, it would have been a perfect accessibility option in general, but it also decreases the EXP needed to level up, and decreases the overall battle difficulty, lowers the HP for all enemies and bosses while still keeping the story the same. They took an introductory RPG and made it even easier to get into for anyone who is even remotely curious about the genre, and with how many RPG series are transitioning into more active combat systems and leaving the old turn based systems behind, I think this is a great way to introduce the concept of how these older RPGs functioned to people who just didn't grow up with this era of games.

The Post-Game

So, this is basically the biggest thing that was added to the game. As faithful as the remake is, one thing I'm very glad to see being added is a little bit of post-game content. There's not a lot of it, but it is there, and I felt compelled to talk about it.

The original game had no post-game. At all. In fact, there wasn't even anything after the credits, which was the style at the time. Games would usually just end, and stay on their THE END screen until you reset or turned off the console. Here though, after beating the main story, you unlock a brand new questline that will take you back to past locations to rebattle harder versions of bosses you fought during the main story, like Booster, Punchnello, and Johnny, and these fights do something very interesting: they really dial up the gimmicks. I mentioned before that gimmick fights weren't really all that prevalent in the main game. I mentioned Bowyer, but off the top of my head, there are also the two fights against Belome where he'll either eat one of your party members (the first fight) or clone your party members to fight alongside him (the second fight), and the second phase in Johnny's fight which turns into a one-on-one duel with Mario. However, each of these extra fights dials up the gimmickery quite a bit, to the point where they can feel somewhat like puzzle fights, as each one has to be fought in a very particular way.

You fight Booster, and if you let him finish his work, he'll drive a train into your body, dealing max damage to everyone on screen, basically guaranteeing a party wipe if you don't interrupt him and take out the snifsters, who are going to be encouraging him the whole time. You fight Jinx, who will instantly KO a party member if you fail to land a properly timed attack. You fight Punchnello, who has built up his defenses so high that the only way he can be hurt is by turning his bombs around towards him. There's even a rematch with Johnny that is once again a one-on-one with Mario, but this time you can't even use items, meaning that surviving the fight is going to be down to learning how to defend properly against all of Johnny's attacks. All of them CAN be blocked, but he has some pretty annoying timing for all of his attacks.

This all culminates in a rematch with the game's hidden superboss, a Final Fantasy inspired villain known as Culex. You fight him in his original 2D form during the story if you find the key to his door, but during the rematch, he has achieved a perfect 3D form, and man oh man, is he a challenge, well worth it if you're craving something that's actually pretty difficult in a game meant to be more welcoming to new players.

What I like about these fights is that they are essentially tests to see how well you've mastered the game's timed hit mechanics, and it makes you feel good for properly mastering them. Even if you're at or near max level (which is pretty easy to do in even a casual playthrough), these bosses will challenge you. You even get some new equipment for each of the extra bosses, usually super-powerful golden weapons for party members that didn't really have an ‘ultimate’ weapon the way that Mario and Peach did (the Lazy Shell and the Frying Pan respectively). You don't really have a reason to use these weapons since at this point you've basically done everything else in the game at this point, but the fact that there is a tengible reward for doing this post game stuff is always fun. And your ultimate reward for beating all the extra bosses and then defeating Culex? You gain the ability to fight Culex as much as you want, and see how fast you can beat them. It's not the greatest reward, but the fact that the developers went out of their way to include something to do after the credits roll in a game that initially just ended after that? I think that's really cool, especially considering just how much tougher these fights are compared to everything else in the game. It's just nice to see something that challenges you and your knowledge of the game's mechanics beyond what is usually required during a basic playthrough.

The Future

If I haven't made it clear at this point, this is a fantastic game. The original is a fantastic game, and it isn't often that I find a remake that can stand toe to toe toe to toe with the original, and while there are differences between the two, they mostly balance each other out. Both can be played and enjoyed easily, and while the remake does have a lot of very helpful quality of life improvements, the original version's more deliberate timing with its more limited animations still makes it very fun to play, it's just a different feeling.

I hope this game continues to sell well, and my biggest wish is that this means that the future for classic style RPGs will continue to be strong, or maybe we'll see some more new Mario RPGs that are quick, snappy and simple like this one, rather than these strange pseudo-RPGs that the Paper Mario series has turned into, or the drawn out, boring slogs that the Mario and Luigi games became.

But between this remake, and the upcoming remake of The Thousand Year Door that's supposed to be coming out some time this year, I have hopes that Nintendo is using these to guage interest for another original Mario RPG game.

I'm also hopeful that we might be seeing Geno and Mallow in games beyond the one they originated from. I'm not going to pretend that I know the details of whatever agreement Nintendo and Square Enix reached to make this remake a reality, but I'm hoping there was enough wiggle room for Nintendo to actually do something with the characters and concepts contained therein. At the very least, maybe Mallow and Geno will be able to appear in games outside of their origin in a form that's a bit more than just a glorified PNG, or a little background element cameo. Again, because I don't know the details of the agreement between Square and Nintendo for these characters, I can't be sure if this is just really wishful thinking on my part (game publishers are notoriously controlling over the IP that they own, with Nintendo being cited as the biggest example when it comes to their characters), but hey, I never thought we'd ever get a remake of this game, let alone one as polished and fun as this.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end of this post, it ended up a lot longer than I actually meant it to be, I just couldn't help myself and needed to gush as much as possible about a remake of a game that I have held dear to my heart since childhood, and I hope that this is a sign of more RPGs of this nature from Nintendo, or featuring Nintendo characters.

Who knows, with all of these remakes, remasters, re-releases, and smaller scope games that are coming out for the Switch as of late, this might be the year that we get some ideas about what Nintendo's next console is going to be, and what sort of games might be on it. That might be something to talk about down the line.

[artistsoftheapocalypse]

Hey there, Sketchy fans! It's a new week here on AoTA, and that means its time for...

! _ ! SKETCHY SATURDAY ! _ !

[ FAQ :: Sketchy Record ]

:: Lead Artist ::

Loor :: They / Them :: @solesurvivorpaigeargot :: Ko-fi

:: Supporting Artists ::

Halk :: They / Them :: @tarberrymentats :: Ko-fi :: Commissions :: Shop Bex :: They / Them :: @bexatomarama :: Ko-fi :: Commissions :: Linktree Kal :: They / Them :: @fanthings :: Ko-fi :: Ao3 Blossom :: She / Her :: @theartofblossoming :: Ko-fi + Commissions :: Twitch Sunflower :: He / They :: @actualsunflower :: Paypal :: Commissions

:: Mods ::

Noct :: She / Her :: @hope-of-the-wasteland

HOLY HELLO, everybody!

Before we dive in this week, I'm gonna put a reminder; even if you're a long time participant with us, please always read the prompt thoroughly. We really appreciate it, thanks.

Loor here, once again leading this lovely crew of people to get into some sketchy goodness! And like many people on this website, me and this crew got a soft spot in our hearts for Spooky Season-- and I'm not just talking about Halloween. It seems that around this time of year I always learn about some new fun tradition, so for our first prompt of October? We're gonna play with one of mine: Face Painting!

This week, we will be focusing on the faces of requested Fallout characters, and then adding some festive face paint!

Read the guidelines below if you'd like to join in!

To send a VALID Sketchy Saturday Request, please send the following information as an ASK to our ASKBOX [ @artistsoftheapocalypse ]

The CHARACTER you'd like sketched up ---- All Fallout characters welcome ---- Ghoul? Cool! ---- Super Mutant? Super neat! ---- Sentient Deathclaw? Boss!! ---- Failed Enclave FEV Arachnid experiment left forgotten for a century? FUCK YEAH. ---- YES THAT MEANS OCS SHOW THEM TO US

The desired MOOD of the composition ---- This should be very general, like goofy, scary, bubbly, or mischievous ---- Maximum three adjectives, [ descriptive words ] please.

One of the FACE PAINT PALETTES from the selection below ---- Not sure which one you want? Send in 'Dealer's Choice!' And the artist will choose for you ---- Please, do not request specific patterns or designs. That will be left up to our artists.

IF YOU SEND IN AN OC!!! ---- Send in your request ask FIRST ---- THEN send your character's reference information to @solesurvivorpaigeargot , via their Tumblr IM, please. ---- If you've sent in a given OC before, YOU DO NOT NEED TO SEND THEIR REFERENCE INFO TO US AGAIN!

Hokay? Hokay, let's see what we've got for face paints!

SO! To recap!

-Character [ One ] -Mood [ Up to three Adjectives ] -Palette [ One or Dealer's Choice ]

That's it!

As always, please be kind and respectful with asks sent to the blog, as they will be seen by our entire team. Please take the time to proofread your ask, as information scattered across multiple asks makes more work for us. Please consider donating to our hardworking volunteers, as they have made the continuation and growth of this event possible. All their stuff is linked above <3

Thank you so much, and we look forward to sketching with you this weekend!

This prompt was scheduled to post at 8:00 PM, US Pacific Time, on September 30th, 2021.

We are currently taking requests.

Requests will close on October 1st, 2021 at 6:00 PM, US Pacific Time

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[daedricsheep]

like i was saying, what's the issue with saying the government is evil? i agree that the racism and oppression should get a nod, but acknowledging that police and soldiers simply follow the orders of their masters and protect the interests of the wealthy and powerful also seems important to note.

hokay, so, i’m going to start on the pretense that we are confining the term “the government” to the United States for the purposes of not getting too distracted, however much of what i’m going to say is very “Intro to Public Administration” esque, so the general theories can be applied in many other places. Also, i’d like to point out that if I explain the obvious please don’t take that as condescension. I do my best to ensure we’re all on the same page, and so long as we all know why we’re using what terms we are, it saves time and emotional labor in the long run.

My problem (certainly not THE problem, just where i’m coming from, that being from the perspective of someone very engaged in the development of decision-making structures) with saying the government is evil is... well that it isn’t. It can’t be. It can’t be good either. “The government” is comprised of 3 branches, 9 supreme judges 535 congressmen and women, 1 president, countless administrative bodies, 50 states, each of those with their respective administrative bodies and legislatures, and thousands upon thousands of localities and their respective administrative bodies and legislatures.

“Good” and “evil” are  value judgments. A value judgement is an assessment of how appealing something is on a morale basis. An administrative structure or a legislative structure cannot embody that which is “evil” by anyone’s standards. Why? Offices and administrations, be they bureaucratic, wheel-and-spoke, or whatever kind of structure, are simply that, structures for doing things. A government is simply a structure of organizing offices and their responsibilities for the purposes of running a nation.

Governments are built for the purposes of doing things relevant to running a country. What does that entail? A lot, depending on how specific you want to get, but let’s broaden the scope to include its most essential functions as we know them today:

Developing policy

Legislating policy

Enforcing policy

This is all a very long way to say that a government is, at its core how a decision/policy gets made. After that, the decisions and policies themselves are subject to far more than just the government. But in a world of robots, this would end here. Unfortunately, humans are fallible.

These fallible qualities lead to influences on the types of decisions we make and what the results of those are likely to be, but not how those decisions are made. at the root is still a system through which decisions are made, regardless of what those decisions are.

That’s why I don’t believe a value statement can be ascribed to something like “the government” because it doesn’t exist in the same realm of emotions that dictate good or bad. Just like a building can’t be good or bad.

Now, i would be intellectual dishonest if i stopped there.

We can criticize how this government is built. To follow the building metaphor, we may not like the bricks, or the foundation, the location, the height, the contractor, or the people that reside within it, but none of these have to do with the framework, which is the heart of the building itself. The poles that ensure it stays aloft, or the fact that it’s so tall they designed it to have a little give to the wind at the top. Some of these can be changed, and others (like the location or contractors) can be acknowledged as bad decisions that we can actively avoid repeating if we continue to build upwards or outwards (though it’s easier to go upwards).

There is massive inequality in the world right now. There are uncountable deaths that could be prevented with better social policies. There are ways that powerful people can influence what decisions are being made that should be nowhere near the process, but these are subject to value statements. These are where are focus should be. The people that would convince others that it’s a good thing price gouging exists, or that money = speech, or that racial profiling and mandatory minimums are essential for law enforcement, these people are evil, and they’re abusing holes and cracks that have built up over years.

When i got my boat, a little 8 foot Optimist, it was in awful condition. It might have sailed for a few hours before sinking to the bottom of the lake. The mast was a stairway banister and the boom was a broomstick handle. I patched the holes, got a new sail, waxed the whole thing, sanded the rudder and the handle, made sure the dagger board wouldn’t fall apart when i dropped it. It wasn’t structurally sound. I was allergic to the paint. Literal blood and sweat went into that boat. I couldn’t wait to take my friends out on the water.

I want to fix my home. I want to make it a home for everyone.

I didn’t want to get into the pros and cons of capitalism. There’s too many and not the focus here. I will admit that capitalistic structures have adversely effected the integrity of the people in our government, but the government itself cannot be good or evil. It simply is what it is used to do. Some structures are more effective or efficient at doing certain things. Democratic structures tend to be the best so far at protecting human rights. Doesn’t mean perfect, but the best we’ve got, so before we throw in the towel before democracies actually get out of their teenage level of self-awareness, I want to see how far we can take it.

[symbianosgames]

Games Have Too Many Words: A Case Study.

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

In this chapter, I unwisely critique the work of my betters.

I recently wrote an article about how video games have too many words. We designers don't properly edit our writing to make sure our words are worth a player’s time reading them.

I want to do a case study where I go through a wordy game, step-by-step, and show what it's doing right and wrong and how it could be doing better. Most game criticism frustrates me. It tends to deal with generalities and floaty ideas, instead of dirtying its hands with specifics that could actually help make for better games. This is my chance to egotistically provide a different approach.

This breakdown will be long and gritty, but I'll try to include a lot of solid pointers. I'll throw in some jokes along the way.

The Subject

Let's look at the very beginning of Pillars of Eternity, developed by Obsidian and released in 2015. This game was a huge hit, critically and financially, taking advantage of a shortage of quality Baldur's Gate-style, gritty, isometric-view, story-heavy titles.

I really wanted a game like that, so I bought it. I finished it in a little over 20 hours. The combat was fine, though really chaotic and hard to follow. (The best description I read was "clusterf***y".) The story was OK, but the game is loaded with words, many of them written by Kickstarter backers. I ended up getting through all the conversations in the back third of the game by typing the '1' key as fast as I could.

I did play Pillars until the end, which is rare for me. Overall, it was pretty good. It made a lot of money, and the crowdfunding for the sequel is doing quite well.

I don't usually like being negative about the work of other sincere, industrious creators. Luckily this game got enough cash and acclaim that its creators can comfortably ignore the nattering of a non-entity like me.

This is how I picture the devs of Pillars of Eternity. They walk everywhere with big clip art watermarks floating over their chests.

"So What's Your Complaint?"

Too many words.

Pillars of Eternity wants to have a really elaborate world and story, which is fine. It wants to have a creative game system, with new, innovative sorts of character classes and spells, which is great.

However, it doesn't do a good job of communicating stuff to the player, because there's no editing and care in giving out information. The game just floods the player with text, important bits buried in gushes of irrelevant detail, practically training the player to think that the words aren't really important. (Again, I played a huge chunk of the game without reading anything but the quest log.)

To illustrate this, I'm going to go, step by step, through the introduction and character creation, the stuff anyone who tries the game is sure to see. Let's see what the game thinks is worth the player's time and how good a job it does splitting up vital knowledge from static.

"So What? You're Just Scared of Words, You Sub-Literate?"

No, I have a problem with the pacing. The human brain can only absorb so many random facts about game systems and lore at one sitting. This stuff needs to be carefully paced out, or it'll just slide off of the brain.

But character creation in this game floods the player with tons of facts, both about the game and the world. I came out of it feeling numb and confused, and almost none of it stuck.

So. You start the game. You pick your difficulty. And then you begin the eleven (!!!) steps of character creation.

I. Introduction.

A pretty graphic and some basic text saying what is going on (you're on a caravan going to some fantasy town, you feel sick), read by an old guy. About 140 words. It's fine.

II. Pick Your Sex

And now the troubles begin. You need to choose whether you are male or female. Here's a description:

Describing the sexes is about 160 words total. But look, it mentions a bunch of different countries. Let's mouse over one of them and see what their deal is.

Yikes! That's a lot of words. All the descriptions together are about 330 words, much of it references to random game locations the player has no knowledge of. "Ein Glanfath" "Dyrwood" "Glanfathan" "Ixamitl" "Naasitaq" How can anyone get anything coherent from this tangle? This is literally the second thing the game shows you.

Seriously, try this: Read the description of "Eir Glanfath" above. Then close your eyes and count to ten. Then say everything you recall about Eir Glanfath. I'll bet you retained very little. And that's setting aside whether this stuff is actually necessary to play the game. (Not really.)

And, worse, it's all irrelevant to the actual choice the player has to make, because the vast majority of players will know whether they want to play a man or a woman before they even launch the game. If a woman only ever plays female characters, telling her, "The men of the Derpaderp Tribe of Sirius XII are in charge of all of their basket-weaving!" isn't going to turn her head around.

My Friendly Suggestion - Go through all these random facts and see if there are one or two of them the player MUST know. Pluck them out and put them in the Introduction. Cram the rest of the lore in books the player finds in the game world. Then make Male/Female be a toggle in the next screen.

III. Pick Your Race

OK, we're into solid fantasy RPG territory now. Here are six races to choose from:

You've never heard of three of the races. This is good. Pillars's desire to create new, weird things is one of its good points. Each race has about fifty words of description:

Now, this is a description of a "dwarf." But, if you have even the slightest familiarity with fantasy, you know what we're talking about here: Standard-issue, Tolkein dwarves. Short. Stocky. Like digging holes, gold, and ale. Grumpy. Scottish accents. We get it. All you need to say here is, "Strong, durable, great warriors."

For each of the races, the description mainly says the lands they live in. Let's be clear. This is useless information. If I tell you dwarves come from New Jersey, whether or not you've heard of New Jersey, this tells you nothing about whether you want to be a dwarf in your adolescent power fantasy.

It's a total cliche to say, "Show, Don't Tell," but this is a PERFECT example of why this is a key concept in writing. If I say, "Dwarves come from New Jersey," and you've never even heard of New Jersey (or dwarves), you won't care. But if you go to New Jersey, look around, and see nothing but dwarves, you'll instantly be all, "Oh, I get it! I'm in Dwarfland!"

But it gets trickier. This is the first choice you make that has actual impact on the gameplay. There are six statistics in the game, and your race affects what you start with. Each statistic description is 50 more words. Let's take a look at one:

What "Might" means is important information. The player needs this. This text needs to be punchy and clear. Something like, "Improves damage from all attacks. Gives a bonus when healing. Helps intimidate people in conversation."

And this description does that, but messily and with lots of extra words. Pillars tries to do a lot of things differently from other RPGs, so it needs to be extra-clear about the surprising stuff. Having the strength skill also improve spells and healing is neat, but it's also really unusual. ("Dwarves are better wizards? Wut!?")

My Friendly Suggestion - Editing pass. Shorter and clearer. Ask, "Why does the player need to know this?" If you don't have a good answer, save this lore for much later.

IV. Pick your Sub-Race

This is where the seriously over-designed quality of Pillars starts to show up. Picking a race isn't enough. You have to pick your sub-race:

So about 160 words (not counting rollover text), to learn about the woods dwarves and the mountain dwarves:

None of this lore has anything to do with the actual game.

What bugs me here is that this choice has gameplay significance. One choice gives you resistance to Poison and Disease (though you have no idea how serious these conditions are or how often they appear in the game), and one gives you a bonus against "Wilder" and "Primordial" creatures (though you have no idea what on Earth those are, let alone how often they show up in the game).

Giving a player seemingly high-impact decisions with no ability to tell which one is correct is stressful and confusing.

My Friendly Suggestion - Ditch sub-races. Instead, give Dwarves BOTH of these bonuses. This creates more distinction between the races and getting multiple bonuses helps the player feel more powerful instead of confused and stressed.

"Cutting Out Lore? What Is Your Problem With Lore In Games, You Jerk?"

Lore in games is great, as long is it's not thrown at the player too quickly and without any gameplay context that makes it mean something.

If you love lore, I want you to get lore, but in a way that spares the people who find huge dumps of it grueling. There are ways to make everyone happy!

Anyway, let's keep going. There's a LOT more screens to go.

V. Pick Your Class

Hokay! At last, this is the big one! This makes a huge difference in your play experience. Here are your eleven choices:

One of the coolest things about Pillars is that they tried to make some weird classes unlike anything in other games. The cost of creativity, however, is that you have to be extra-careful when explaining to the player the weird stuff they've never seen before.

When I started the game, my eyes were instantly drawn to "Cipher". That sounds neat! And here is the description ...

Yikes.

The main description of the class is four long sentences, but only the second sentence actually says much about what the class does. Then a very vague description of the powers, which involve something vitally important called a "Soul Whip," with no explanation of what that actually is. Then a bunch of algebra.

That's about 120 words, for one class. You have to go through all of it to get a vague idea of how the class plays. The other ten class descriptions are comparably complex.

This is just too much stuff to muck through, too early, for a choice so important to the play experience. Bear in mind that we are still less than halfway to actually playing a game.

My Friendly Suggestion - For each class, only show the stat bonuses and two or three carefully written sentences describing what it's like. Move all the weird lore and mathematical formulae to a different tab that can be opened by those who care. When the player starts using the class in the game, bring up some tutorial windows saying the key details of how to actually use it, like what a "Soul Whip" is.

VI. Pick Your Class Details.

If you're a priest, you have to pick your god. If you're a caster, you have to select a spell or two from the starting list. For the Cipher, the list looks like this ...

The spell descriptions look like this ...

Again, a ton of reading, referring to statistics, distances, statuses, damage amounts, damage types, etc. that mean nothing because you've never actually played the game.

My Friendly Suggestion - Lose this screen entirely. Pick one basic, useful ability (the best one) and give it to the character automatically to get through the tutorial. Then, after the first bunch of fights, have the player meet a trainer and be able to choose new abilities in an informed way.

VII. Edit Your Character Attributes.

Figure out how many points of Strength, Constitution, etc. you have. The game, to its credit, says which ones are most important for your class. Standard RPG fare.

VIII. Pick Your Culture

IF YOU'RE JUST SPEED-SCROLLING THROUGH THIS ARTICLE, STOP HERE AND READ THIS!!!!

Yeah, I know you aren't reading all of this. This post is wayyyyy too long and gritty and nit-picky and tedious. But reading this article takes much less time than actually picking through all of these windows in the game. Which is too long. That is my main point. Now scroll to the end and call me an idiot in comments.

Anyway, yeah, pick some country you're from ...

Each of the 7 contures has about 70 words of description.

None of this has anything to do with playing the game.

This is the most unnecessary step in the whole process. When making an RPG character, you need to build two things: Its stats/abilities and its personality.

Knowing your character is from "The White that Wends" tells you nothing about its abilities, and it's a lousy way to determine his or her personality. If you read the description of "The White that Wends," and learn that people from there are mean and selfish, that's still not the way you want to player to create a mean, selfish character. You do that by giving play options in the game that are mean and selfish and letting the player pick them. Show, don't tell.

My Friendly Suggestion - Lose it entirely.

IX. Pick Your Background.

Choose from one of nine backgrounds.

The main thing this affects is that, every once in a while, it will open up a new dialogue option. This never makes a big difference.

My Friendly Suggestion - There's a real lost opportunity here. Once again, "Show, Don't Tell." Instead of having me declare that my character is a Slave or Aristocrat or whatever, why not, once you’re in the game, make every conversation option for all of these different nine backgrounds available to me when the game starts.

Then, if I keep making the "Aristocrat" pick, start removing the other options, so that I end up always talking like an Aristocrat. Then my character's personality emerges organically from the sort of dialogue choices I make in the actual game.

X. Choose Appearance and Voice.

Standard appearance editor and list of different voices. It's fine.

XI. Choose Your Name.

Gladly.

XII. The Game.

And, finally, the games starts with the tutorial. Which begins with a long conversation. Which I barely pay attention to, because my stupid brain is tired.

It's all way too much. Too many words, too many irrelevant choices, exhausting when it should be informative. Not that they will listen to me, but it might be an improvement to look for in Pillars of Eternity 2, because the market is not what it was in 2015.

"But Who Cares? The Game Was a Hit, Right?"

The real test of how good a game it is, is not how it sells, but how much its sequel sells. And it is entirely fair to ask what business a pissant like me has criticizing a hit game written by a bunch of big names.

Let's leave behind the idea of craftsmanship and a desire to always keep improving our work.

Lately, sequels to hit RPGs have been selling far worse than their predecessors. Obsidian's successor to Pillars, Tyranny, by their own words, underperformed.

Also, I looked at the Steam achievement statistics for Pillars of Eternity. According to those, fewer than half of players finished the first chapter. Only about 10% of players completed the game.

Now granted, this is not unusual. Most games remain unfinished. But that still invites this question: If the vast majority of players didn't want to experience the Pillars of Eternity they already paid for, why think that they will want to buy more?

Everyone should keep improving, if just for their survival in this mercilessly competitive business.

Video games are a new art form, and there is still so much we have to figure out. That's the terrifying and awesome thing about making them. And now, having already written way too many words, I will take my own advice and cease.

###

The author sells his own flawed, wordy, old-school RPGs at Spiderweb Software. He opines on Twitter.

[symbianosgames]

Games Have Too Many Words: A Case Study.

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

In this chapter, I unwisely critique the work of my betters.

I recently wrote an article about how video games have too many words. We designers don't properly edit our writing to make sure our words are worth a player’s time reading them.

I want to do a case study where I go through a wordy game, step-by-step, and show what it's doing right and wrong and how it could be doing better. Most game criticism frustrates me. It tends to deal with generalities and floaty ideas, instead of dirtying its hands with specifics that could actually help make for better games. This is my chance to egotistically provide a different approach.

This breakdown will be long and gritty, but I'll try to include a lot of solid pointers. I'll throw in some jokes along the way.

The Subject

Let's look at the very beginning of Pillars of Eternity, developed by Obsidian and released in 2015. This game was a huge hit, critically and financially, taking advantage of a shortage of quality Baldur's Gate-style, gritty, isometric-view, story-heavy titles.

I really wanted a game like that, so I bought it. I finished it in a little over 20 hours. The combat was fine, though really chaotic and hard to follow. (The best description I read was "clusterf***y".) The story was OK, but the game is loaded with words, many of them written by Kickstarter backers. I ended up getting through all the conversations in the back third of the game by typing the '1' key as fast as I could.

I did play Pillars until the end, which is rare for me. Overall, it was pretty good. It made a lot of money, and the crowdfunding for the sequel is doing quite well.

I don't usually like being negative about the work of other sincere, industrious creators. Luckily this game got enough cash and acclaim that its creators can comfortably ignore the nattering of a non-entity like me.

This is how I picture the devs of Pillars of Eternity. They walk everywhere with big clip art watermarks floating over their chests.

"So What's Your Complaint?"

Too many words.

Pillars of Eternity wants to have a really elaborate world and story, which is fine. It wants to have a creative game system, with new, innovative sorts of character classes and spells, which is great.

However, it doesn't do a good job of communicating stuff to the player, because there's no editing and care in giving out information. The game just floods the player with text, important bits buried in gushes of irrelevant detail, practically training the player to think that the words aren't really important. (Again, I played a huge chunk of the game without reading anything but the quest log.)

To illustrate this, I'm going to go, step by step, through the introduction and character creation, the stuff anyone who tries the game is sure to see. Let's see what the game thinks is worth the player's time and how good a job it does splitting up vital knowledge from static.

"So What? You're Just Scared of Words, You Sub-Literate?"

No, I have a problem with the pacing. The human brain can only absorb so many random facts about game systems and lore at one sitting. This stuff needs to be carefully paced out, or it'll just slide off of the brain.

But character creation in this game floods the player with tons of facts, both about the game and the world. I came out of it feeling numb and confused, and almost none of it stuck.

So. You start the game. You pick your difficulty. And then you begin the eleven (!!!) steps of character creation.

I. Introduction.

A pretty graphic and some basic text saying what is going on (you're on a caravan going to some fantasy town, you feel sick), read by an old guy. About 140 words. It's fine.

II. Pick Your Sex

And now the troubles begin. You need to choose whether you are male or female. Here's a description:

Describing the sexes is about 160 words total. But look, it mentions a bunch of different countries. Let's mouse over one of them and see what their deal is.

Yikes! That's a lot of words. All the descriptions together are about 330 words, much of it references to random game locations the player has no knowledge of. "Ein Glanfath" "Dyrwood" "Glanfathan" "Ixamitl" "Naasitaq" How can anyone get anything coherent from this tangle? This is literally the second thing the game shows you.

Seriously, try this: Read the description of "Eir Glanfath" above. Then close your eyes and count to ten. Then say everything you recall about Eir Glanfath. I'll bet you retained very little. And that's setting aside whether this stuff is actually necessary to play the game. (Not really.)

And, worse, it's all irrelevant to the actual choice the player has to make, because the vast majority of players will know whether they want to play a man or a woman before they even launch the game. If a woman only ever plays female characters, telling her, "The men of the Derpaderp Tribe of Sirius XII are in charge of all of their basket-weaving!" isn't going to turn her head around.

My Friendly Suggestion - Go through all these random facts and see if there are one or two of them the player MUST know. Pluck them out and put them in the Introduction. Cram the rest of the lore in books the player finds in the game world. Then make Male/Female be a toggle in the next screen.

III. Pick Your Race

OK, we're into solid fantasy RPG territory now. Here are six races to choose from:

You've never heard of three of the races. This is good. Pillars's desire to create new, weird things is one of its good points. Each race has about fifty words of description:

Now, this is a description of a "dwarf." But, if you have even the slightest familiarity with fantasy, you know what we're talking about here: Standard-issue, Tolkein dwarves. Short. Stocky. Like digging holes, gold, and ale. Grumpy. Scottish accents. We get it. All you need to say here is, "Strong, durable, great warriors."

For each of the races, the description mainly says the lands they live in. Let's be clear. This is useless information. If I tell you dwarves come from New Jersey, whether or not you've heard of New Jersey, this tells you nothing about whether you want to be a dwarf in your adolescent power fantasy.

It's a total cliche to say, "Show, Don't Tell," but this is a PERFECT example of why this is a key concept in writing. If I say, "Dwarves come from New Jersey," and you've never even heard of New Jersey (or dwarves), you won't care. But if you go to New Jersey, look around, and see nothing but dwarves, you'll instantly be all, "Oh, I get it! I'm in Dwarfland!"

But it gets trickier. This is the first choice you make that has actual impact on the gameplay. There are six statistics in the game, and your race affects what you start with. Each statistic description is 50 more words. Let's take a look at one:

What "Might" means is important information. The player needs this. This text needs to be punchy and clear. Something like, "Improves damage from all attacks. Gives a bonus when healing. Helps intimidate people in conversation."

And this description does that, but messily and with lots of extra words. Pillars tries to do a lot of things differently from other RPGs, so it needs to be extra-clear about the surprising stuff. Having the strength skill also improve spells and healing is neat, but it's also really unusual. ("Dwarves are better wizards? Wut!?")

My Friendly Suggestion - Editing pass. Shorter and clearer. Ask, "Why does the player need to know this?" If you don't have a good answer, save this lore for much later.

IV. Pick your Sub-Race

This is where the seriously over-designed quality of Pillars starts to show up. Picking a race isn't enough. You have to pick your sub-race:

So about 160 words (not counting rollover text), to learn about the woods dwarves and the mountain dwarves:

None of this lore has anything to do with the actual game.

What bugs me here is that this choice has gameplay significance. One choice gives you resistance to Poison and Disease (though you have no idea how serious these conditions are or how often they appear in the game), and one gives you a bonus against "Wilder" and "Primordial" creatures (though you have no idea what on Earth those are, let alone how often they show up in the game).

Giving a player seemingly high-impact decisions with no ability to tell which one is correct is stressful and confusing.

My Friendly Suggestion - Ditch sub-races. Instead, give Dwarves BOTH of these bonuses. This creates more distinction between the races and getting multiple bonuses helps the player feel more powerful instead of confused and stressed.

"Cutting Out Lore? What Is Your Problem With Lore In Games, You Jerk?"

Lore in games is great, as long is it's not thrown at the player too quickly and without any gameplay context that makes it mean something.

If you love lore, I want you to get lore, but in a way that spares the people who find huge dumps of it grueling. There are ways to make everyone happy!

Anyway, let's keep going. There's a LOT more screens to go.

V. Pick Your Class

Hokay! At last, this is the big one! This makes a huge difference in your play experience. Here are your eleven choices:

One of the coolest things about Pillars is that they tried to make some weird classes unlike anything in other games. The cost of creativity, however, is that you have to be extra-careful when explaining to the player the weird stuff they've never seen before.

When I started the game, my eyes were instantly drawn to "Cipher". That sounds neat! And here is the description ...

Yikes.

The main description of the class is four long sentences, but only the second sentence actually says much about what the class does. Then a very vague description of the powers, which involve something vitally important called a "Soul Whip," with no explanation of what that actually is. Then a bunch of algebra.

That's about 120 words, for one class. You have to go through all of it to get a vague idea of how the class plays. The other ten class descriptions are comparably complex.

This is just too much stuff to muck through, too early, for a choice so important to the play experience. Bear in mind that we are still less than halfway to actually playing a game.

My Friendly Suggestion - For each class, only show the stat bonuses and two or three carefully written sentences describing what it's like. Move all the weird lore and mathematical formulae to a different tab that can be opened by those who care. When the player starts using the class in the game, bring up some tutorial windows saying the key details of how to actually use it, like what a "Soul Whip" is.

VI. Pick Your Class Details.

If you're a priest, you have to pick your god. If you're a caster, you have to select a spell or two from the starting list. For the Cipher, the list looks like this ...

The spell descriptions look like this ...

Again, a ton of reading, referring to statistics, distances, statuses, damage amounts, damage types, etc. that mean nothing because you've never actually played the game.

My Friendly Suggestion - Lose this screen entirely. Pick one basic, useful ability (the best one) and give it to the character automatically to get through the tutorial. Then, after the first bunch of fights, have the player meet a trainer and be able to choose new abilities in an informed way.

VII. Edit Your Character Attributes.

Figure out how many points of Strength, Constitution, etc. you have. The game, to its credit, says which ones are most important for your class. Standard RPG fare.

VIII. Pick Your Culture

IF YOU'RE JUST SPEED-SCROLLING THROUGH THIS ARTICLE, STOP HERE AND READ THIS!!!!

Yeah, I know you aren't reading all of this. This post is wayyyyy too long and gritty and nit-picky and tedious. But reading this article takes much less time than actually picking through all of these windows in the game. Which is too long. That is my main point. Now scroll to the end and call me an idiot in comments.

Anyway, yeah, pick some country you're from ...

Each of the 7 contures has about 70 words of description.

None of this has anything to do with playing the game.

This is the most unnecessary step in the whole process. When making an RPG character, you need to build two things: Its stats/abilities and its personality.

Knowing your character is from "The White that Wends" tells you nothing about its abilities, and it's a lousy way to determine his or her personality. If you read the description of "The White that Wends," and learn that people from there are mean and selfish, that's still not the way you want to player to create a mean, selfish character. You do that by giving play options in the game that are mean and selfish and letting the player pick them. Show, don't tell.

My Friendly Suggestion - Lose it entirely.

IX. Pick Your Background.

Choose from one of nine backgrounds.

The main thing this affects is that, every once in a while, it will open up a new dialogue option. This never makes a big difference.

My Friendly Suggestion - There's a real lost opportunity here. Once again, "Show, Don't Tell." Instead of having me declare that my character is a Slave or Aristocrat or whatever, why not, once you’re in the game, make every conversation option for all of these different nine backgrounds available to me when the game starts.

Then, if I keep making the "Aristocrat" pick, start removing the other options, so that I end up always talking like an Aristocrat. Then my character's personality emerges organically from the sort of dialogue choices I make in the actual game.

X. Choose Appearance and Voice.

Standard appearance editor and list of different voices. It's fine.

XI. Choose Your Name.

Gladly.

XII. The Game.

And, finally, the games starts with the tutorial. Which begins with a long conversation. Which I barely pay attention to, because my stupid brain is tired.

It's all way too much. Too many words, too many irrelevant choices, exhausting when it should be informative. Not that they will listen to me, but it might be an improvement to look for in Pillars of Eternity 2, because the market is not what it was in 2015.

"But Who Cares? The Game Was a Hit, Right?"

The real test of how good a game it is, is not how it sells, but how much its sequel sells. And it is entirely fair to ask what business a pissant like me has criticizing a hit game written by a bunch of big names.

Let's leave behind the idea of craftsmanship and a desire to always keep improving our work.

Lately, sequels to hit RPGs have been selling far worse than their predecessors. Obsidian's successor to Pillars, Tyranny, by their own words, underperformed.

Also, I looked at the Steam achievement statistics for Pillars of Eternity. According to those, fewer than half of players finished the first chapter. Only about 10% of players completed the game.

Now granted, this is not unusual. Most games remain unfinished. But that still invites this question: If the vast majority of players didn't want to experience the Pillars of Eternity they already paid for, why think that they will want to buy more?

Everyone should keep improving, if just for their survival in this mercilessly competitive business.

Video games are a new art form, and there is still so much we have to figure out. That's the terrifying and awesome thing about making them. And now, having already written way too many words, I will take my own advice and cease.

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The author sells his own flawed, wordy, old-school RPGs at Spiderweb Software. He opines on Twitter.