Why PoE has the worst(or possibly best) game setting in the world.A lolthread.

This is a serious (sort of) outlook on the WTF qualities of Path of Exile's game setting as you progress through the game itself, worth the read if only for the lol.

Okay, i have NO idea what what GGG were huffing when they designed the game past act one, but i want some too!

First of all Act 1.

It's amazing, ain't no other word for it. It's gritty, it's brutal, it's very you-against-all-odds and it really brings the feeling and pressure of being an exile in monsterland. You're stranded on a beach butt-naked with a stick and a lolgem having to murder /or just skip about/ your way up to the nearest craphole to take shelter from the nasty weather.So you're crawling up the beach, zombies and butt-firing crab monsters making your day miserable when you finally see a door and you're all like:
-Cool, i found the tow...WHAT THE HELL IS THAT BIG ASS ZOMBIE THING SHUFFLING TOWARDS ME HAVING SPIKY BITS ALL OVER?!
tl;dr you make hillock regret ever being coded into the game, you browse the shops in town realizing you can't afford to buy a bloody shield made from two planks nailed together and you go forth to find some more things to murder.
So you're going up and about the beach, sticking it to yet more zombies and butt-crabs and then...cannibals.
BLOODY CANNIBALS! THEY ARE AFTER MY DELICIOUS ASSMEATS AND GOO...precious gooooo.
And if you're mad enough you can even fight a crazy man-eating wizardboner that summons ice(cream) from the ground!
Then you come across the boundless wonder of halitosis made manifest in the form of a glyph...riiiiiight...okay...screw it, i've seen weirder crap than that.
Next is a cavern choke-full of our favorite butt-crabs, Squirmy things, ghosts, alarmingly bigger Squirmy things and what appears to be beholders that fart lightning at you. Cool.
So you lolstomp (or not, if you're crap) you way up the Prison. And what a grand prison it is, packed full of the shambling corpses of the former inhabitants, evil necromancers making you regret not having picked up an aoe skill and at the end - the father of all bleeding mutant roid-raging meatslabs of all time!
<fast forward through irrelevant crap>
Merveil's dead, great, phew, this was hard, especially with the fact that i fought her with zero cold resists because my brain fsagadbnhgihurr'd, i can't WAIT to see what's waiting to bum my, well...bum silly in act two.

Aaaaaand then...act 2...for real?
THAT is act two? For serious...aw SON OF A B<technical difficulties encountered>

Act 2 or GGG's Imposing Giant Middle Finger of Kek (now with +45% quality).

So, i got to murder a legion of ass-firing crabs, hordes of zombies, the father of all mutants, the mother of all wraeclastian sea monsters...and now this?
Really? I get to run through a (not so) enchanted forest with throngs of poop-flinging monkeys chasing me?
<heads up kids - the things they are throwing at you ain't rocks.THEY...ARE...NOT...ROCKS!>
But, okay, i've already spent some odd 30 minutes lolling about getting here, i might as well go on.
So after i brave the army of, yep, MONKEYS (for some reason), walking boulders and giant fuzzy-wuzzies i get the rare privilege of murdering a...tree...for (yet again) some unknowable infernal reason.
Yep, that's right, we get to murder a tree so that we can go into a ruined vaalish sex-dungeon just because we need to push a set of balls off a pathway so that the act boss can make any sense at all, and even then it just...doesn't. The Vaal Oversoul does NOT make sense, but that's for another topic.
And the drop-bears! BLOODY DROP-BEARS RAINING DOOM UPON MY SKULL! DOOM!
Again - tl'dr, pyramid, totems, blah-blah, act boss dead.
And we start thinking:
-Okay, act 2 was a complete loljoke compared to act one, surely GGG can't possibly make act 3 WORSE than act 2, right?
Rig...DURRRRRR WRONG!

Act 3...at this point it's not even funny any more.

So, we're in a giant ruined city, i suppose that's cool, ancient ruins, cool architecture, a GIANT anus in the sewers and...wait, why is that statue moving and why is it firing icicles at me? And why is this place full of zombie contortionists spinning about, exploding bugs and giant unexploding bugs that make MORE exploding bugs?!
Hm, i wonder why GGG even made Sarn when we spend a needlessly large chunk of act 3 running around ancient sewers filled with ancient shit(literally), looking for statues, fighting swarms of alien zombie mutants from the planet Blort and spending a fortune on boot cleaning services?
But then we get to the Battlefront which is cool, then Docks which is also cool and then the Solaris temple.
Where there are pants.
THRONGS OF FLYING PAIRS OF PANTS THAT WANT TO VISIT RIBBONY DOOM UPON MY ALREADY HILARITY-DEVASTATED BUNGHOLE.
What the actual fuck?
Really?
What looks like flying pants?
Come on, just...come on.
But we brave through all that unthinkable content that left me speechless in horror and confusion, we butt-burn the sewer-anus to it's untimely death and we battle our way all the way up to Piety.
Piety.The top bitch of the entire game whose entire modus operandi revolves around jumping into brightly glowing circly power-ups. Wait, did she just say ' it's-a-me, Piety '?!
Bleh, she's dead, i got the keys, time to open the tower and fight Domie.
NOPE! Time to run about a tower thinking 'shit on me...SHIT ON MEEEEE', getting slaughtered by YET EVEN MORE statues, butt-fiddling shielded evangelists(?!), jumping frog things that deathpile on you, BLEEDING MACHINEGUN TURKEY-MONSTERS THAT FU...BALLS TO THIS I'M DONE.

Act 4?

Oh god...OH DEAR GOD NO! NO MORE, NO MORE!

If anyone hasn't gotten it yet - i love the game, i really and truly do. And although this was written in jest it's core is serious. Acts 2 and a good part of act 3 are complete and utter garbage in terms of game and environmental settings when compared to act 1.

p.s. arse-fiddling penis-goblin /try calling your worst friend that, i guarantee hilarity!/

p.p.s Epic keks and chuckles from the comments below:

-leaping chaos vagina
-crackpot chimeral squirrels that slow you down
-doors that slow you down /i died/
-suddenly Act3 becomes cool with titty bitches /line of the century/

Agreed :)

Act 1 feels a lot gritty and intense in terms of the environment and atmosphere.. Act 2 is OK with its dark forests and caves.. Act 3 is just hilarious with flying curtains and stupid statues..

"Welcome to Wraeclast, Motherfucker"

Would make for a good slogan.

so many butts. buttscrast

Why Act 3 sucks:

- rubble clutter
- tolman & clarissa
- dischargers
- leaping chaos vagina
- statues with ice shot
- shield chargers
- dock workers with ice shot
- solaris
- drapes
- curtains
- ribbons
- gues what.. more statues with ice shot
- dischargers + freeze pulsers
- shield chargers, second coming
- arc mages "will spam you from two screens away"
- shield chargers, re-re-repeat

...then suddenly Act3 becomes cool, with titty bitches, whipping miscreation, that lovable rascal Piety.... but then Act3X starts -_-

- more rubble clutter
- shrubbery labyrinths
- knee high walls, that you must walk around
- backtracking
- aviary retch
- big statues... -_-
- arctic breath leapers that slow you down
- crackpot chimeral squirrels that slow you down
- doors that slow you down
- freeze pulsers that slow you down
- even more statues with ice shot that slow you down

...finally you climb on top of that tower, where the final graphic card stress test takes place... then blackness and you restart in the beautiful Act 1. Oh, Act1 how I love you...


PS
I'm totally scared of the announcement that in patch 1.4, Act 1 & 2 will be "improved".

the statues have dicks doe

"

morbo wrote:

...finally you climb on top of that tower, where the final graphic card stress test takes place...

started laughing uncontrollably here.
well done man :)

"

Mareak_The_barbarian wrote:

"Welcome to Wraeclast, Motherfucker"

Would make for a good slogan.

I'm having that printed on my wallet.

Had a nice giggle there, OP.
I agree that the change of atmosphere between Acts is way too brutal for this setting, especially if you look at Act 2. It just doesn't really fit. We go from Zombies and Undead and flying goats to The Jungle Book with exposed skull monkeys? Act 2 just seems too... joyful, or bright, or whatever. Also annoying: in Act 1, the Town is a few stragglers barely surviving, and in Act 2, we get Tribesmen with "Whrat Trroubles you rbring nao?"-Gruest who seem to have no issues with armies of poo flinging monkeys besieging their encampment.
Act 3 also misses this "survival feeling", but other than everything past Piety, it's pretty fine.
Wraeclast is supposed to be this merciless continent, but right now, atmospherically speaking, it's closer to a Supermarket after an earthquake with everyone looting and trying to sell his loot.