The story is not compelling

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

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maquino85#7657 wrote:

Was there a consistent story? Felt like each act was a different unrelated story. I didn’t care that much, notice, or expect much else since poe1’s story was just as idiotic and pointless. Just click thru dialogues and ignore everything because there’s no point to any of it

we chasing the evil that moves to the east, it corrupts and destroys everything in its wake. it spawns in temperate climate, crosses the desert, we gotta loot ancient aztec artifacts and we end inside a mountain but the evil escapes anyway. we have been doing this for last 27 years man. keep up!

Oh but it gets away and so we start needing to clear a bazillion random maps and shit. Because reasons. Now it all makes sense.

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Tyrsonjsp#2390 wrote:

I think they should get a pass because the game's not done yet and the story is decent.

I think POE had a great story, it just took the entire game to really understand and appreciate. With POE2 it isn't really clear yet who the real villain is yet and that's intentional.

So, PoE 1 act 1~4 wasn't great story. Serviceable "you go smite bigger and bigger evil". Act 5 onwards (which was a whole new major version change in patch numbers) made an interesting twist but was then stretching "you go clean up your mess and fighter a still-bigger evil". Character voice lines (which were added much later) make Act 5 a good story. What do your characters think when they see "God" manifest and why do they beat him up?

It's at the endgame with Searing Exarch and Eater of Worlds when there's an interesting conflict - it's the 4th iteration or so of the endgame story. Even then, that conflict isn't explored properly as it's just backdrop for why your loot is coloured one way or another. Then you add the leagues and that's where the story comes to life. By necessity each league is silo'd in story but it's not hard to imagine how they interweave.


Now, PoE 2 kinda relies on you caring about the lore to be compelling. The oversimplified version of the story is "ok, you're chasing after an evil that's growing". Go deeper and act 1 is getting to know who the Ezomytes are: what is this culture where Einhar and Thane Jorgin grew up in? Act 2 is picking up where the Heist league left off: who are the Faridun that Nenet represented? What is the source of their inferiority complex? Why does Adiyah blatantly look down on them? Act 3 is meeting Viper Napuatzi and Doryani in life. Reading Jiquani's diaries. If these character names mean nothing to you, then there's not much the story has to offer.

I think if you want a compelling story every step of the way you should try a CRPG. ARPGs usually have lots of lore, but the lore is hinted at sporadically and is almost never the main focus. It doesn't have to be to make it a good ARPG. Lore in ARPGs is mostly something that is there if you want to delve into it, but usually you can skip past it easily to do the main focus: Kill monsters and gather loot.

Path of Exile 1 and 2 has quite a bit of lore to delve into but you would have to really dig for it (interactible clicks, reading item flavour text etc). Some of the PoE lore has gotten so fragmented by expansions/atlas reworks that you would have to look for it outside of the game through people that took notes of them at relevant times to get the full picture.

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arknath#4740 wrote:

I think if you want a compelling story every step of the way you should try a CRPG. ARPGs usually have lots of lore, but the lore is hinted at sporadically and is almost never the main focus. It doesn't have to be to make it a good ARPG. Lore in ARPGs is mostly something that is there if you want to delve into it, but usually you can skip past it easily to do the main focus: Kill monsters and gather loot.

Path of Exile 1 and 2 has quite a bit of lore to delve into but you would have to really dig for it (interactible clicks, reading item flavour text etc). Some of the PoE lore has gotten so fragmented by expansions/atlas reworks that you would have to look for it outside of the game through people that took notes of them at relevant times to get the full picture.

Out of every isometric arpg i played (Diablo, Torchlight, Titan Quest, Inquisitor Martyr, Van Helsing, even Brotherhood o
f Steel ffs). PE 2 so far has the least interesting lore, and the game story quality is just bellow the average

For me, it's less about the story and more about the storytelling. In my own preference, I really like the storytelling style in PoE1 and Dark Souls. They don't feed it to you. They give you little bite size pieces, and your imagination fills in the gaps.

I do really miss the romance that was in PoE1. I might post about that separately, but I think PoE1 is probably one of the most romantic games, ever.

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RickyDMMontoya#7961 wrote:

Chase the gooey beast around, always arriving just a moment too late!

Yeah. PoE1 had a great story with a whole bunch of stuff going on. First you're just trying to find Dominus and get revenge on him for exiling you but you run into a bunch of complications along the way (siren, ancient Vaal automaton, etc.) Then you kill the Beast because it's responsible for ancient cataclysms that wiped out the Vaal and the Eternal Empire, travel back to Oriath, and liberate the Karui from a corrupt templar who's possessed by a mad god before taking on the cannibal god of the Karui. All in the first half of the game.

Then you find out that the Beast was actually the one thing keeping the gods asleep and now you have to use what's left of it to put them back down.

The first half of this game is just "Get revenge on the guy who tried to execute you, turns out he's been manipulated by the Beast who's actually alive, then spend 2 acts chasing the Beast. Oh and also the guy who made the beast shows up to infodump but it's a completely different voice actor for some reason."

if I've understood the story correctly, the hooded one is Tyrael, right?

I don't think the cutscenes are in the game yet. Nor have we seen the last 3 acts. Someone mentioned act 3 as filler content and I kinda agree.

Also the atmosphere in Act 2 is great. The city being the caravan and the mal nourished slaves made the atmosphere feel great in act 2.

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yngwie84#7256 wrote:

if I've understood the story correctly, the hooded one is Tyrael, right?

Yep, and we are currently chasing wannabe Diablo

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hboi#6131 wrote:

Also the atmosphere in Act 2 is great. The city being the caravan and the mal nourished slaves made the atmosphere feel great in act 2.

I don't disagree. But atmosphere is not story.