the problem with making a narrative non-combat "rpg", in reality a digital gamebook, is that the game relies entirely on the player liking the writing and characterization.

>>3938091
Yes, I know.
Both of these are uninteresting. One is standard D&D and the other one is trying so hard to be enigmatic, like a shitty spy movie.
Disco Elysium really had something special to it.

>>3938096
do you know? you asked a very very dumb question.
>Am i being unfair or weird about not liking any of the disco likes?

>>3938100
It's not entirely dumb, I refuse to give them a shot, I played like 20 minutes of each and had to stop. At that time, Disco Elysium is at best to Garte and Kim. I was hooked. I just don't know why here I was so against them, am I tainted by knowing what happened to the original team?

>>3938101
it's just a book game, bro, you're acting like the form or style is sacred or imparts something, maybe the devs of these games are too. some books don't grab you, some are aping other authors too much, some settings aren't your vibe.
i think a lot of people for some reason expected disco elysium to be a revolution of design in the "crpg" space but it was also a product of being in the right time and place and hitting a certain generation. could the exact team replicate it? probably not, not many authors produce multiple great works.

>>3938087
Mate. Your arguments are "I don't like it".

>>3938165
I know, I just want to know if anyone else feels that way. My argument is that it's impossible to make a disco elysium like honestly

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>>3938087
>two
hold on to your butt. zero parades is one of these five.

>>3938087
>Am i being unfair or weird about not liking any of the disco likes?
Please stop crowdsourcing your opinion. You're allowed to dislike things even if they're "objectively" good.

That being said, I've tried the Ebb demo, never even of heard of the other one. I didn't actively dislike it, but I found it a bit boring/uninteresting. I like the idea of actually having combat, but it wasn't enough to hook me. It ended up reminding me of why DE's skills are so fun; as well made as the skill system is it wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable without unconventional skills. Being able to spec into Conceptualisation, Electrochemistry or Inland Empire is great. The skill list feels tailored to the game they're making, and the character of Harry. Using regular DnD stats isn't as impactful IMO.

>>3938087
>anyone else feel weird about them?
I'll say the same thing I said before, DE was an attempt to copy Torment and it failed at that, so copying DE is lazy. They are obviously doing it for a quick buck, not because there is something in DE worth copying.

>>3938096
>Disco Elysium really had something special to it
But the writing sucked.

>>3938203
>DE was an attempt to copy Torment and it failed at that
retarded take
also DE >>> PST both as an artsy project and plainly as a playable game

>>3938236
didn't even realize Ebb came out today. anyone play it?

>>3938087
It's literally sovl vs sovlless

>>3938594
I played the demo and I don't get the hype, I also never played Disco Elysium so maybe that's why.
You always get those voices in every conversation but it's just bloat and it seems you can do everything out of order but there are no gameplay consequences.
Two examples:
- You can find out the guy in the morgue in the beginning is actually a lich, which is a big deal since they are outlawed or something, yet you can't tell him that you know.
- You can find out more about the guy fleeing from the scene you need to examine before you even meet your first companion but there is no way to give him that information during the first conversation the suspect comes up or later by talking to him.
I could go on, but I don't think that's good writing or good interactivity.
Since you don't know anything about this fantasy world when you start the game but your character is expected to know some fundamental things, there is also too much explanation for every fucking detail, e.g. if you really want to understand more about the politics in relation to the fantasy races. I think I've talked to this one hobbit half an hour to absorb all information, but was it worth it in the end? I don't think so, that's when I uninstalled the demo.

>>3938594
I got it. It's fun if you've ever stopped to think about the metaphysical and societal ramifications of various DnD tropes and spells. I think you really need a background of dnd TTRPGs to really "get" it.

>>3938087
DE is not a cRPG. It’s a point and click adventure game. Hope this helps.

The problem with the games you listed is that they attempt to be something else. That's exactly why Disco Elysium is peak soul, because it didn't just try to be the spiritual sequel to Planescape: Torment.

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>>3938087
I played the Ebb demo, and it has the same problem a lot of soulslikes have - misunderstanding the thing they copy.
The guy liked DE because of talking skills, he said as much in his dev posts, but instead of making something he himself finds interesting or fun, he just copies DE or takes straight from D&D where he's unsure what to do. We got politics, straight man sidekick to idiot MC, the skills are BLATANTLY copied (Con is just Shivers, Dex is H&E coordination etc.), and the MC has to have amnesia even though there's really no good narrative reason for it (the reason is the admittedly cool intro). The most interesting part of the demo was talking to the imp lawyer, simply because it was something not copied.
DE works mostly thanks to the relationship between Harry and Kim, instant hook of a murder mystery and intriguing, internally coherent world. Political dressing and the quirky shit is just a bonus and jingling keys for the normalfag audience. Ebb dev decided to just copy the keys.
I'll pirate and see whether he improved things from the demo or is it still just as uninspired. Art is nice I guess.

>>3938662
Yeah, I'd say that DE was made with true love of PS:T, which means an awareness of its flaws, and a desire to say something to the world. These games are made with the mind to cash in on a "style".

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Having extremely low strength in Esoteric Ebb is pretty funny

>>3938696
>imperial vs metric "humor"
Kurvitz would never

Ebb has a strong presence of cute girls and I like that.

>>3938696
50" = precisely 1.27 meters

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You're not the boss of me, game
I'm not setting foot in that fucking tea shop

>>3939729
>roleplaying with a DM who thinks too highly of himself simulator
innovative

>>3939708
can you make fuck with them?

>>3938087
What made DE work was good writing and interesting, unique worldbuilding. Ebb and ZP just copied surface-level elements instead:
-talking skills
-quirky dialogue options
-stylish presentation
-dice rolls

also the narration in the ZP demo might be the worst voice acting I've ever heard in a video game lord almighty

You guys voted for the Freestriders, right?

>>3940226
I'd rather vote for an azgalist gnome than for these jews

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>>3940226
When it came to a fair and nuanced portrayal of capitalism and liberalism, my expectations for a 2026 game that takes after Disco Elysium and modern D&D were basically nonexistent. Still, I pumped DEX and sided with the Freestriders at almost every opportunity, expecting to roll my eyes at caricatures of greedy fat cats in top hats. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Revolutionary Freestriders actually do have the potential to be the best choice for Norvik.

First of all, look at their competition. Doing both the main quest and the Norvikian Resistance side quest will show you that the nationalists were entirely compromised by the Freestriders before the elections even began. If you talk to Snurre, he'll tell you that the Azgalists have sold out the revolution to be respectable suckdem reformists. The Arcanists and the Greens aren't real. The Freestriders basically win by default.

Now, you could say that it's the game's way of portraying the overwhelming nature of capitalism that subsumes and perverts all alternatives as per Mark Fisher, but the Freestriders aren't portrayed as simply the only option – the game frequently portrays them as the GOOD option. Hell, their origins lie in opposition to warmongering magocrats who nearly wiped out all of humanity. You have to perform some pretty impressive mental gymnastics to believe that that the Freestriders were the bad guys in that situation.

(I know that some people, especially those leaning towards nationalism, may point at scenes such as high DEX telling you to import infinity immigrants, but there's some room for nuance even here. DEX broadly aligns with but does not represent the Revolutionary Freestriders – it's a personified impulse to grab everything that isn't nailed down and profit now, damn the consequences.
That whole scene was well-written enough that I wouldn't even consider it a strawman, especially since you can give a pro-capitalist reason to tell DEX to shut up.)

(cont)

>>3940680
There are two wrinkles that make them suspect, sure – their role in the main plot and their cooperation with the Golden Horde, as per >>3940653 But after both of these twists, the game goes on to cushion them! The Golden Horde is, in fact, SUBVERTING the principles of the Revolutionary Freestriders by using their pull to stop all trade with the halflings whom they're currently oppressing. The best outcome of the conversation comes from telling the angel ambassador that free trade is non-negotiable and the international community will continue to supply the halfling resistance. Further conversations with Viira show that the grip of the Golden Horde Jews on Halfling Palestine is not as strong as they like to project, and that the Revolutionary Freestriders will continue to use free trade to undermine the Golden Horde.

As for their role in kicking off the main plot, well, yeah, it's a pretty bad look. However, even here, if you talk to Meriadoc Moonwatch in the epilogue, he seems genuinely surprised by the whole thing, indicating that the whole thing was orchestrated by a cabal within the Freestriders as opposed to the entire faction, meaning that, once again, all you have to do is commit to the other ideal of the Revolution – free speech – to expose the corrupt oligarchs.

All in all, Esoteric Ebb may have the most positive portrayal of capitalism and liberalism in a modern RPG. This is a very, very low bar, but I was impressed nonetheless.

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>>3940681
>All in all, Esoteric Ebb may have the most positive portrayal of capitalism and liberalism in a modern RPG.
Frankly, this goes for all right-leaning ideologies
The game never tells you you are a fucking retard for adopting INT's statistics-backed megafascism or STR's urge to create a nationalistic state where positive masculinity can flourish, and Urth is seen as a good, reasonable man despite him being MosesHitler

>>3940690
oh yeah, I rocked Future Patriarch for most of the game and pumped INT alongside DEX so I got plenty of dialogues with my inner proto-neoreactionary.

also, after writing my posts, I decided to check out what rpgcodex has to say about the game and what do you know, the lead dev is a regular, even going as far as to take feedback from them. That explains A LOT about the writing. Best of luck to him.

So for the bugbear, the orc, the angel, and the sphinx, what are the best starting stats in order to maximize my flirt chances with them?

>>3940690
The setting is feudalism. Ask any communist and they'll tell you that capitalism was a progressive force, raising millions out of poverty, allowing for massive industrial, medical and scientific breakthroughs. The modern left-right divide doesn't work when looking at a game like this, with a setting that is arguably as close to feudalism as it can get for fantasy.

>>3938091
this is why I found Ebb even better than Disco, the writing hits my sense of humour perfectly, low int/wisdom is genuinely hilarious

Max Charisma, everything else balanced. Easy-peasy, and everyone loves me.

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>>3941827
Same
I don't care if it's reddit or whatever, i found the game really fucking funny.

>>3941832
ha ha
ha

>>3938101
Lack of voice acting for Esoteric Ebb and having a very slow introduction I think, the dude you get introduced to not being your partner and not getting a companion until a fair bit later (on top of the combat being kind of just bullshit checks ngl). Haven't played the spy game, mainly due to not trusting nu-ZAUM

>>3938620
>you can do everything out of order but there are no gameplay consequences
It's much more of an indie game than Disco that's for sure.
>>3938647
This also pretty much, it's actually really funny and engaging political/meta commentary in a DnD micro-world with a much better explanation for WHY you're playing an OC setting. It is a lot more word salad, in the same way that PST is word salad, but it's not at the player's willingness to probe the characters and instead found in the player's willingness to check out loretabs

>>3939713
I think it's fitting the skill with delusions of grandeur would make an unprecise error like that one

>>3940226
>>3940680
>>3940681
>>3940690
>retarded non-arcanists voting for the inferior pick instead of myself

>>3941830
Yeah that's retarded. All the mental related stats should be useful for dialogue.

>>3941907
I just enjoy that inches to meters have an exact conversion factor, rather than a rough approximation

>>3939729
Actually DM, it is the "I'm going to build a harem" campaign.

>>3942082
Upplind Hagginshags didn't necessarily use the Paris mètre étalon to arrive at his definition.

>just got to the ending
Holy, kino. Not as good as Disco, but honestly as a much more politically heavy rendition of the formula it was good. Some funny moments too, though still you can tell it's an indie game (a few errors in word usage or as anons pointed out the conversion of units among other things.) I did enjoy the setting

>>3942401
Secured any dates?

>>3942408
Secured three of them even though sadly, the only monster woman who could be flirted with rejected me

>>3942509
Bugbears are monstrous enough

>>3942511
Ah, but she can't crush me with her toes. I like her also, despite not being one of the civilized races

>>3938087
>genre of glorified VNs for pretentious and autistic redditors

>>3942509
She is volcel femcel. You should not be surprised.

>>3942581
Why are you on /vrpg/

>>3942699
He likes RPGs, not CYOA stat games.

>>3942688
>volcel
She's quite literally a femcel entirely, a volcel has more cerebral reasons than misandry though she was fun enough to interact with

So i'm playing Esoteric Ebb and probably finish around 70% of the game at this point. explored all the 3.5 locations that city have. Go through all the City Below and now going to do undercoast. I would say this game is basically everything that Disco fans trying to persuade you Disco was. You can even actually roleplay as evil racist chud without feeling an absolute a joke, because Esoteric Ebb isn't actually trying to portray you as pathetic as possible in this game, compared to Disco, where commie dev basically forbid you outright to keep being chud if you choose a chud thought(like...-1 mental health for choosing a chud options, really? And for what? Bonus stats for drinking alcohol you don't going to drink, if you self-respecting nazi, or just wish Harry the best.)

>>3944773
I'm not a fan of Disco (or rather, I think it was an unfortunate marriage between revolutionary video game design and an overrated story that hogged most of the spotlight), but Harry being a pathetic fuckup retard is kind of the whole point. You're looking at a broken world through the eyes of a broken man, and his infatuation with radical beliefs is nothing more than cope that excuses or valorizes his failures. Yes, Kurvitz is obviously a biased baltoid commie (the baltoid part is more important here, IMO), but at the same time, the narrative he was going for wouldn't work if Harry's turn to fascism or liberalism could lead to something coherent. Which, again, just goes to show how limited the scope of Disco really was.

Still, it's one of those things where I have to give it to Disco over Ebb. The fact that the protagonist of Ebb is an incel living with his mother does get callbacks/development, but it's not used nearly as well narratively. It comes off as one of those things the devs thought he had to have because he was aping Disco.

>>3944786
I disagree a little bit. Sure, a Harry a broken and pitiful man. But nothing in this game makes him look that bad as choosing a fascist path.

Also, you forgetting one more part, other character representing this ideology are pretty pathetic also. Well at least he did portray this way the 2 white characters. Gary wasn't literally just straight "evil ugly retard"(he soo much of a caricatural strawmen, they don't even give him a name!) like Mr. Lorry "Racist" Driver, but still pretty dishonest and slimy, and trying to hide his true believes. Rene and the Kurvitz's wife's boyfriend manifestation was much more good representation of nationalistic ideals, but...again, they are black and i think i don't need to explain that how it not really count because of it.

>Ebb is an incel
He is a fakecel achtually. There was a chick he was simping and even participating in dwarf-commies protests with her because of that. Anyway, i dunno why it's a bad thing to make Cleric backstory making him more closer to the target audience of the game. Or why coping a quirky-chungusy behavior of Harry is a bad thing, it's works somewhat okay.

The discussion in this thread perfectly encapsulates why these interactive media experiences aren't good games. It's all political and psychological character analysis intermixed with bad humour.

>>3944991
it's not even a good visual novel in my opinion and the writing is all over the place, the developer really needed a good editor

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I was pleasantly surprised by the Zero Parade demo, I hope the final game will be good.
Travelling at night is the one I'm really looking forward to tho, because I love the Secret Histories setting and lore.

>>3944801
>spoiler
He is, because he has a clear Lack of Ladies despite having some level of game. His obsession with women is largely due to his absentee single mother though, but I digress. A fakecel is one who claims incel for the credit but actually gets female attention. Ragn has to work for attention, but he's not gifted it outright despite his rippling physique and designator city janitor status. He's certainly no truecel though

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Honestly, loved it. Great game overall, alot of the commentary surprised me. It's quite contemporary in a sense, the game addressed topics like what it means to be a man, the doomer mindset and displeasure with the status you, young men being disillusioned and attaching themselves to anything that can give them a reason to exist. Haven't really seen a game cover these issues in such a way. It gives an answer which reminds me of NV, look toward the future, and let those in your life carry the burden with you.

The humor was pretty hit and miss imo though, makes it very clear dev is a zoomer. There was a bussy joke, I recall a deus ex reference, strength rep looks like gigachad of course, some other stuff like that. I did like the pseud Jung/Nietzsche guy though.

There is some much in this game, it would take forever to cover it all. In a way, I kinda like the game more than Disco, its strange.

>>3946210
>look toward the future, and let those in your life carry the burden with you
non-answer, convenient for the status quo.

>>3946226
The game doesn't particularly care to give an answer for what the solution for the status quo is. The game basically beats you in the face with the fact that your vote doesn't mean anything, there are troubling times ahead, and that there is no correct choice. Like Disco and Planescape, it's ultimately an introspective journey.

Dev kinda hinted at a potential sequel maybe? But it could've been tongue in cheek too.

>>3946234
it's ultimately masturbation. non-wisdom attempting to position a technological problem as an individual one.

>>3946247
>ultimately masturbation
Eh, so be it. Ultimately, it achieves it's goal of depicting the failed cleric as a young man who is lost in the word and doesn't know what to believe in for themselves or society.

>>3946251
yeah, it's depression fodder. nothing insightful.

>>3946247
>>3946253
You act like you have an actual answer instead of being a pseudo-intellectual jaded cunt
>Oh no, this game does not provide an answer on how to best deal in life like a self help book
Are you retarded

>>3938087
Discord Elysium is not an rpg, it's a glorified visual novel. Fuck off.

>>3944773
I thought it was funny how if you have high enough intelligence to pass a certain check, the game explicitly affirms the truthfulness and merits of scientific racism. Also my first time seeing a game make such a convincing case for enlightened absolutism/fascism in the face of foreign encroachment.

>>3946832
>if you have high enough intelligence to pass a certain check, the game explicitly affirms the truthfulness and merits of scientific racism.
People think it don’t be like it be, but it do.

>>3946281
lmao, sorry for spitting on your masturbatory societal ghost pain, anon.
if you think i'm calling for an "answer" though, i'm not, i'm saying the "problem" is itself a shitty construction that doesn't even understand cause and effect.

>>3939713
>>3941907
You're both brainlets, Dexterity is simply guessing the height, it's not an accurate measurement.

>>3938087
The fact that most complaints involve "they don't don't have voice acting" shows how low IQ this board has gotten.

>>3947164
>You're both brainlets, Dexterity is simply guessing the height, it's not an accurate measurement.
You are the brainlet. In this context, I was correcting the intelligence check, not the dexterity check.

>>3947171
Brainlet, the checks are independent of each other, they are both giving their opinion on the height independently.

I think jannies start to ban the threads on this game on /v/ now, or at least they seem to suddenly stop being created, oh well.

Is this game actually have a time limit and a "game over" ending if you fail it or what?

I manage to get to the 7 day, by constantly spamming short rest,(Since 99% of the things you can do in this game you basically guaranteed to clear before/on the 5 day, that supposed to be the actual finale day as i get it.) but the game doesn't seems to really care about this.

I mean, okay it's kinda does, since devil lawyer, goblin bard and merfolk-landlond are now multiply and currently in 2 places at the same time. Do i get some weird bug or what?

>>3947245
>I manage to get to the 7 day
I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to do that.
You can fail the quest since there are only like 3 things to see the ending
>Go to the lower underground and fight the troll
>activate the pillar
>enter it
>when you leave it, you are at election day
So i guess shortrestmaxxing somehow fucked your game?

>>3947273
Maybe. I also essentially did everything i could to do, including troll slaying and snail-mage freeing, but at the same time skip releasing the freestriders noble guy. So maybe this fucked the game scripts somehow.

Guess i forced to finish the game normally, if it decide to cockblock me from seeing fail state ending like that.

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>>3947178
>the checks are independent of each other, they are both giving their opinion on the height independently
I love it when you morons on this board are so desperate to argue about something, anything, they can't even remember what they're arguing about or why. Just a creature of pure, unthinking reflex.

Just finished Ebb
Well worth the time and money
Unabashedly a disco ripoff but it shines as something more than that
Sadly probably the only good "disco like" we'll ever get

This will be the peak Disco-like: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2915730/Travelling_At_Night/
Can't wait for it to butcher open the peculiarly schizoid condition of RPG players who haven't yet encountered Secret Histories

>>3945602
Travelling at Night seems like it'll play more to developers' strength than their previous games

Then again, I thought the same thing about Mask of the Rose and that was apparently a huge failure

>>3949061
1. Mask of the Rose was Failbetter, which has produced nothing of worth since Kennedy left.
2. Despite being a Kennedy loyalist, I'm somewhat concerned about what I've seen of Travelling at Night so far. His writing has always been obscurantist, suggestive rather than explicit. Great in heavily stylized games that are designed around "pithy microtexts", not nearly as well-suited for traditional RPGs (and whatever people may say of Disco-likes, they still have that RPG DNA when it comes to dialogue).

>>3947588
It's incredible how low your reading comprehension is. Let me try to dumb this down for you. The first two DC checks are just reacting to the narrative comment, Dexterity guesses the height to be 50 inches, Intelligence to be 2 meters. The third comment, by DEX, is reacting to the comment by INT and since INT is assumed to be more knowledgeable in the context of the game, DEX capitulates that their guess was wrong, but is dismissive. Do you get it now?

>>3942699
reverse accusation, typical commie

>>3950544
>It's incredible how low your reading comprehension is.
Follow the reply chain. I posted an exact conversion between inches and meters, primarily because I find it amusing that there is a precise ratio between imperial and metric units of length, as opposed to other units of measure for which there are only approximate conversion factors.
Secondarily, the implication was that because 50" (1.27m) and 2m are significantly different (50" doesn't even round off to 2m if rounding to the nearest meter. 2m is more than 50% greater than 50"), one of the two estimates provided by DEX and INT is clearly wrong.
>since INT is assumed to be more knowledgeable in the context of the game
INT isn't taking a fucking micrometer and measuring to be precisely 2.00000 with six sig figs and proving DEX wrong, it's an egghead providing an unrealistic estimate using a cumbersome unit and then spilling spaghetti everywhere with irrelevant trivia about the origin of the meter.

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>>3938087
A gay communist game where you get an instant game over any time you try to do the main quest, or attack anything would be shit.

People loving dialogue checks to this extent, wanting to form a new style of game around them, is crazy to me. PS:T was a mistake.

>>3951703
streamlining your product to capture a niche is an uncontroversial win with no downsides whatsoever. An ARPG with good gameplay and a bad story that constantly gets in the way is always going to be flawed. A narrative-driven RPG with a good story but horrible gameplay is always going to be flawed. It's possible for both to be good, but for devs with limited resources or no interest in certain aspects of traditional CRPGs, the idea that you don't *have to* follow the same old design was a great revelation.

>>3951703
you were a mistake but thankfully your parents are aging and this will be all over soon

>>3951707
>An ARPG
almost no ARPG has a story to speak of.
>but horrible gameplay
are you saying this style of game has no gameplay?
>>3951727
my parents have been dead since 2007.

>>3951753
it will be your turn soon

>>3951754
and?
are you actually afraid of dying, or is it more about aging?

>>3951757
I'm looking forward to having less parasites like you around

>>3951763
i don't live in a welfare state, sorry.
are you okay? something bothering you?

>>3951765
my wife left me

>>3951766
congratulations. trade up.

>>3951753
>almost no ARPG has a story to speak of.
I have to mash skip on a bunch of dialogues every time I do a new season in Path of Exile. The Diablo series, Grim Dawn, the Van Helsing games, etc, all have quests, dialogues, sometimes cutscenes, in-game or otherwise.
The story, as per the famous John Carmack quote, is expected to be there, but I've increasingly come to prefer the old school roguelike approach where I'm just dropped in front of a dungeon and told to get moving. Something like Path of Achra is a good example of what I'd consider a number crunching opposite to the Disco model.
>are you saying this style of game has no gameplay?
no. I didn't say that. I wrote, I quote, " A narrative-driven RPG with a good story but horrible gameplay is always going to be flawed". Do not put words in my mouth.
The games that follow the Disco model have gameplay that adequately performs its task, which is to be as simple and, for lack of a better word, as non-intrusive as possible while still honoring the player's choices in character creation and development.

>>3951786
i bet most poe players couldn't even tell you the story, but it does provide a framework to understand how your character is inhabiting the world, for those that want that kind of thing.
>A narrative-driven RPG with a good story but horrible gameplay is always going to be flawed
picking dialogue choices with dice rolls isn't good gameplay, you're describing this style of game.
>non-intrusive
*non-interesting, the interest being entirely on the writing. it's not like selecting a response requires any mastery.

>>3951817
> bet most poe players couldn't even tell you the story
that's my point! In the original post, I wrote disparagingly of an ARPG story that "constantly gets in the way". Nobody is playing PoE because they wanna listen to Sin mumble about this and that. People play it to run around and kill shit and loot shit and sell shit to other people.
>picking dialogue choices with dice rolls isn't good gameplay
it is good gameplay for the kind of game that it is, which is to say - oriented around social encounters, non-combat challenges and fully scripted combat encounters. I wouldn't want something like Path of Exile to have this sort of gameplay, but I would enjoy something like Planescape: Torment much more if it was done in the Disco style.
>*non-interesting, the interest being entirely on the writing. it's not like selecting a response requires any mastery.
the fact that it adequately performs the task it was set up for makes it good. At no point during my playthrough of Esoteric Ebb did I feel inconvenienced by the limitations of the system, which is something I can't say about Planescape: Torment, Fallout, Arcanum, Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines, and many other traditional, non-streamlined CRPGS.

>>3951837
and poe's story is incidental and easily skipped, if it wasn't barely there, people wouldn't be able to be so obviously ignorant of it.
>it is good gameplay for the kind of game that it is, which is to say - oriented around social encounters, non-combat challenges and fully scripted
it's oriented around expressing a narrative.
>the fact that it adequately performs the task it was set up for makes it good.
no it doesn't. a game is good because it's a game where good play is rewarded, an rpg is good because it's a multifaceted interaction between a character sheet and a world built on multiple systems, forsaking that just makes it another genre, a digital gamebook, which is entirely good because you are enjoying the writing. this isn't streamlining a genre and your idea that another genre is better because it lifts that which made these other games worse games, skipping interesting gameplay through dialogue checks, is quite funny.

>>3951786
>The story, as per the famous John Carmack quote, is expected to be there
Unironically, Doom had a better story than 90% of modern games that overly focus on muh (shitty) writing.

>>3938087
Ebb has the soul and is different enough that it feels like it's its own thing. It doesn't live up to disco, but it's not overtly trying to. Based on the nextfest demo of zero parades it felt like a corporate copycat by contrast. It was trying so hard to be disco that it just felt hollow.
So ebb kind of puts the onus on the player to break away from their own preconceptions and take their blinders off while zero parades is asking the opposite.

>>3938108
add to this the studio getting restructured after the game came out, this like VtMB's Troika being dismantled after it came out amplified the legend and impact of the games beyond their worth and I say this as a fan of both

I'm still mad Troika didn't get Fallout 3.

>>3945602
I like the lore and setting as well but got filtered by Hours and Cultist, the gameplay loop was just too tedious for me, so I'm looking forward to this.

>>3946210
>It's quite contemporary in a sense
It's 100% contemporary, all of it. Well, most of modern "fantasy" products are.
But Ebb is completely open about it and I respect that.

>>3953969
Absolutely, great point anon. The game feels intellectually honest, and I respect that. Dev put his heart and mind into the game, and it feels genuine. Exited to see if he will do anything with Ebb in the coming years.

It just surprised me is all, addressing contemporary topics without trying to subvert anything for once.

>>3938087
Good games are rarely for everyone and that's alright. "You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time".

>Both games really want to cast and have Harry but they just can't sell it. I don't feel like both characters are justified in trying to copy Harry,
I didn't get that sense from Ebb. The story is too upbeat, the humor is too D&D focused. Ragn is an inexperienced nerd that can't seem to make friends. Harry is a burnt up detective that pushed himself into a drunken breakdown. Ragn has no accomplishments to his name. Harry has plenty but also a bad reputation. Harry is a character that forgot himself. Ragn is a blank slate.

>>3954565
I wouldn't call Ragn a blank slate, there are parts of his personality you can't change. His family trauma, his attraction to big women or his love in Urth (i saw some people being angry they couldn't call him out for his genocide) are deeply engrained and you can't just go against them