Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2 Pre-Announcement Thread

[Doktor Best]

What i meant is that the revelation of the nonexistence of god was very poorly established. How did they disprove god "with science" in a sense that they could absolutely incontestably rule out his existence? Basically they would have needed to reach omniscience to achieve this, which would have put themselves in some sort of godlike position.

The game basically assaulted the player with that established fact without explaining jack shit and didnt even give him the ability to question or to inquire. It was really lazy storytelling.
Up until to the point the game tells me exactly how this was achieved it will be nothing more than a belief.

Also what i am pretty sure about is that the sequel will discuss the question wether gods stop being gods only because they were man made.

 

[Infinitron]

How did they disprove god "with science" in a sense that they could absolutely incontestably rule out his existence? Basically they would have needed to reach omniscience to achieve this, which would have put themselves in some sort of godlike position.

Fenstermaker's Folly You're a computer scientist. Can you say "fantasy version of the Halting Problem"? (Anthony Davis Pass this on.)

Inb4 the Engwithans solved P=NP too

 

[santino27]

While I agree there are many aspects of POE that could stand to be improved upon in the sequel, I mainly want a more interesting story (yes, yes; storyfag alert). While some of the philosophical musings that went on were interesting, I felt most of the time like my character only cared because the writers assumed he did. (You're part of this! Look, a memory from a past life! You care!) Even with the choices available, I didn't feel like I had much agency in the matter.

But I also freely admit to not delving nearly as deeply into it as others.

Anyway, I'm curious to see what they do with POE2

 

[Orobis]

While I agree there are many aspects of POE that could stand to be improved upon in the sequel, I mainly want a more interesting story (yes, yes; storyfag alert). While some of the philosophical musings that went on were interesting, I felt most of the time like my character only cared because the writers assumed he did. (You're part of this! Look, a memory from a past life! You care!) Even with the choices available, I didn't feel like I had much agency in the matter.

This was my biggest gripe with POE as well. The lack of a good hook. I struggled to keep my self motivated to beat it and couldn't make it past act 2. Throw me a freakin' bone give me something to keep me interested.

 

[Kaivokz]

While I agree there are many aspects of POE that could stand to be improved upon in the sequel, I mainly want a more interesting story (yes, yes; storyfag alert). While some of the philosophical musings that went on were interesting, I felt most of the time like my character only cared because the writers assumed he did. (You're part of this! Look, a memory from a past life! You care!) Even with the choices available, I didn't feel like I had much agency in the matter.

This was my biggest gripe with POE as well. The lack of a good hook. I struggled to keep my self motivated to beat it and couldn't make it past act 2. Throw me a freakin' bone give me something to keep me interested.

I also had a similar feeling in PoE; I absolutely didn't care that I was "awakening" -- I bear no responsibility for things people with my soul did in the past, so fuck that. Maerwald seemed to go crazy because he felt deep regret for the things his past incarnations did, but what the fuck? Am I really supposed to have "past soul guilt"? Even if I do, how will erasing the voices get rid of my guilt? Does Maerwald attack you because he was weak and gave in to regret (as he seemed to be doing), or did the other personality forcibly take over? If it was supposed to be that I was just hearing shit tons of voices and it was going to drive me mad because I couldn't focus, or that other personalities were sometimes taking control of my actual body (e.g. when I went to sleep, etc.), I might have felt some urgency, but that didn't seem to be the case. It seemed less like I was schizophrenic and more like I was just becoming aware of memories associated with whatever constitutes the soul in my body, which the universe gives us no reason to think is associated with our personality at all (since we seem to have a very clear and distinct one, separate from whoever had our soul in the past). And not really with our identity either, other than as some sort of memory storing device, but there seem to be clear breaks in the continuity of memory that correspond with being put into a new body, so...

All that said I think the universe is great; Waidwen's legacy, hollow born, wichts (their origin story), the Godhammer, the nature of the gods and souls. Lots of potential there.

 

[Infinitron]

or did the other personality forcibly take over?

That's how it looked like to me. I think the idea is that the Watchers' ability to perceive souls makes them particularly vulnerable to being taken over by their own past souls. Like something that you can't stop obsessing about once you've noticed it, but wouldn't have cared about if you couldn't see it.

 

[Kaivokz]

or did the other personality forcibly take over?

That's how it looked like to me. I think the idea is that the Watchers' ability to perceive souls makes them particularly vulnerable to being taken over by their own past souls. Like something that you can't stop obsessing about once you've noticed it, but wouldn't have cared about if you couldn't see it.

It took over and he attacked, but not before Maerwald seemed to have a mental break. So it's not clear that the other persona 'forced' Maerwald out, per se, or if Maerwald checked out (like a normal crazy person) and the other personality stepped in. There's no indication in the whole game that you're losing your mind. At least not that I could see. So the question is: why did Maerwald go crazy? Guilt? Incessant nagging? Some physical quality of his soul awakening and changing his brain structure? Depending on the answer, you have more or less motivation to "stop" your awakening.

 

[Infinitron]

There's no indication in the whole game that you're losing your mind. At least not that I could see.

The indications in the game are the bad dreams you have when resting (possibly missable if you always slept at inns in towns?). Plus, you know, seeing visions of people being horribly tortured can't be that great for you. But you weren't as far gone as Maerwald, the steward says it took him many years to reach that stage.

I'm pretty sure it was more than a conscious sense of "guilt" that drove him mad, but beyond that, the exact mechanics are up for speculation I guess.

 

[Kaivokz]

The indications in the game are the bad dreams you have when resting (possibly missable if you always slept at inns in towns?). Plus, you know, seeing visions of people being horribly tortured can't be that great for you. But you weren't as far gone as Maerwald, the steward says it took him many years to reach that stage.

I'm pretty sure it was more than a conscious sense of "guilt" that drove him mad, but beyond that, the exact mechanics are up for speculation I guess.

That indicates that you were having bad dreams; that you were becoming aware of what happened in your past lives. There's no reason that necessarily leads to madness. Maybe it's just assumed by the writers that such imagines will drive you mad, but you can slaughter hundreds of humans, elves, dwarves, orlans and aumaua over the course of the game, not to mention dragons and other assorted beasts, including floating mindflayer-esque creatures that try to dominate your mind and kill you. You can sacrifice a companion to a pool of blood or send a little girl to be eaten by a ghoul so you can have more power. One of the first sights you see is a tree with dozens of innocent people hanging from it. If none of that drives you insane, but seeing scenes of torture does, well...

My impression was that Maerwald was just a broken dude who couldn't deal with the memories of his past lives. One difference, I suppose, is that he had opposing sets of memories, e.g. of a Glanfathan who raped a woman in a war, and also of the resulting child. But it still seemed like the guilt was what drove him over the edge. I think the story would have been better if your motivation was made to feel more immediate or urgent in order to give you a concrete reason to pursue Thaos.

edit- One of the ending slides reads:

Spoiler

In time your visions invaded your waking thoughts, as they had for Maerwald, and took over your mind.

You would spend the remainder of your days wandering the streets of Defiance Bay, raving at passersby and fleeing the phantoms in your mind.

So I guess the assumption is that you'll simply go mad from the memories, and that they will somehow take over your mind. I'm still not convinced that this is necessary from what they've told us of awakening. Anyway, if you are going to go insane eventually, regardless of what you do, they should have driven that point home.

 

[Infinitron]

That indicates that you were having bad dreams; that you were becoming aware of what happened in your past lives.

Well actually it's more than just dreams, your companions also say you're convulsing in your sleep, and that you look unhealthy, etc.

My impression was that Maerwald was just a broken dude who couldn't deal with the memories of his past lives. One difference, I suppose, is that he had opposing sets of memories, e.g. of a Glanfathan who raped a woman in a war, and also of the resulting child. But it still seemed like the guilt was what drove him over the edge. I think the story would have been better if your motivation was made to feel more immediate or urgent in order to give you a concrete reason to pursue Thaos.

He would have no reason to feel guilt about something that he personally didn't do. Being a Watcher made him vulnerable to being taken over by those souls, and the dissonance of that might create a sense of "guilt", but only after he was already schizophrenic-crazy anyway.

I suppose somebody whose soul was 100% composed of innocent people who had done nothing wrong or traumatic in their lives might find it easier to be a Watcher, or at least be less dangerous.

 

[Sizzle]

But without your companions, there would be no one and no way to even know this was happening to you. That's why it was handled so poorly. It's like the movie "Dude, you don't look so good.", but without any payoff.

As for the visions, they're very frequent right at the start of the game, then they're absent for the majority of the game, and only reappear again at Twin Elms.

 

[Infinitron]

As for the visions, they're very frequent right at the start of the game, then they're absent for the majority of the game, and only reappear again at Twin Elms.

Yeah, I've considered the possibility that the torture visions aren't random. It's possible that they appear to you in places where those things actually happened. Twin Elms was a major site of Thaos' Inquisition, he killed Iovara there. Maybe Defiance Bay was an easy-going cosmpolitan place even in the Engwithan days (although it does have Teir Nowneth, so it wasn't uninhabited).

 

[Sizzle]

Don't know the lore perfectly, but I always got the feeling that after the very beginning (so - Gilded Vale and areas around it) they forgot about the visions and only added them to TE to remind the player that, yes, he can still see dead people.

It could have been explained by the PC having more control over his powers, but he barely does anything with them (at least in the main campaign). An approach resembling the spirit-eater curse from MoTB and how it was handled there - ingrained in almost every aspect of the game, and gave you unique ways to handle quests - would have been much better.

 

[Orobis]

Don't know the lore perfectly, but I always got the feeling that after the very beginning (so - Gilded Vale and areas around it) they forgot about the visions and only added them to TE to remind the player that, yes, he can still see dead people.

It could have been explained by the PC having more control over his powers, but he barely does anything with them (at least in the main campaign). An approach resembling the spirit-eater curse from MoTB and how it was handled there - ingrained in almost every aspect of the game, and gave you unique ways to handle quests - would have been much better.

The primary reason of the PC's soul reading powers was to read the backer NPC's. Apparently there is a quest that one of the backer NPC triggers that will lead you to a secret cache of weapons, armor and a sage which will further enhance your powers and give more explanation on why you have said powers. When you eventually find the hidden cache, the guardian will ask you a 3 part riddle. The answer to this riddle is hidden in one of the Backer NPC stories they tell you when you soul read them. This 3 part riddle the guardian asks is randomly generated every time you reload the game, so you're going to have read the soul of every backer NPC in the game thoroughly to solve the riddle. Good luck.

 

[santino27]

Don't know the lore perfectly, but I always got the feeling that after the very beginning (so - Gilded Vale and areas around it) they forgot about the visions and only added them to TE to remind the player that, yes, he can still see dead people.

It could have been explained by the PC having more control over his powers, but he barely does anything with them (at least in the main campaign). An approach resembling the spirit-eater curse from MoTB and how it was handled there - ingrained in almost every aspect of the game, and gave you unique ways to handle quests - would have been much better.

The primary reason of the PC's soul reading powers was to read the backer NPC's. Apparently there is a quest that one of the backer NPC triggers that will lead you to a secret cache of weapons, armor and a sage which will further enhance your powers and give more explanation on why you have said powers. When you eventually find the hidden cache, the guardian will ask you a 3 part riddle. The answer to this riddle is hidden in one of the Backer NPC stories they tell you when you soul read them. This 3 part riddle the guardian asks is randomly generated every time you reload the game, so you're going to have read the soul of every backer NPC in the game thoroughly to solve the riddle. Good luck.

I read them all TWICE for double the rewards.

 

[Orobis]

I read them all TWICE for double the rewards.

You should really put that in a spoiler tag bro.

 

[Trashos]

Spoiler

I don't remember anyone saying that there is no (conventional) god. They said that the *known* gods are man-made, not that there can't be other pre-existing gods that created mankind.

Well, hopefully not.

 

[Kaivokz]

Spoiler

I don't remember anyone saying that there is no (conventional) god. They said that the *known* gods are man-made, not that there can't be other pre-existing gods that created mankind.

Well, hopefully not.

Spoiler

You can never prove that there wasn't a prexisting God, or gods, who created everything. That's the point. Even if we have good reason to think t0 was the beginning of the universe and X was the initial moving event, you can say: yeah, but what if God caused X at t0-1?

The question should always be: how much does our evidence support believing that there are gods (in the traditional sense)? I'm not an expert in pillars lore, but it doesn't seem like we have any more reason to think there are traditional gods if we are living in Eora than we do living on Earth.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Orobis]

 

[Roguey]

Josh subtly lets goons know that he's not going to give in to their anti-Vancian whining, considering he's on the record as someone who believes sequels should feel like their predecessors:

You can certainly make everything be encounter-based, including how consumables work. It's going to feel a lot different.

 

[Infinitron]

Josh subtly lets goons know that he's not going to give in to their anti-Vancian whining, considering he's on the record as someone who believes sequels should feel like their predecessors:

You can certainly make everything be encounter-based, including how consumables work. It's going to feel a lot different.

That Khizan guy is getting p. edgy in there.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/sh...=17931&perpage=40&pagenumber=14#post460213290

sassassin posted:
Do you ever feel like you've wasted your time working things like this out for an in-game culture?

Did it make the game better or more enjoyable for players? Or was it just masturbation?
​

No more than writing lore books or item histories. Most of that background work is for a minority of players. You can certainly world build without designing languages, but those settings tend to have plain English names for everything or there isn't any rhyme or reason to why anything is named a particular way.

Eora takes its basic inspiration from the Forgotten Realms, which in turn takes its inspiration from Middle-Earth. FR has things like the Thorass, Dethek, and Espuar alphabets (some of which were used in the Gold Box series for various puzzles) but isn't especially consistent with regards to naming. Tolkien was interested in languages (and developing constructed languages/conlangs) from a young age and that came out in his ME writing. When a familiar reader sees a name like Barad-dûr or Glorfindel, they can intuit the culture that it's from. When production designers created Glamdring for the LotR films, they had it inscribed it in the Sindarin language using Cirth runes. 99.9% of viewers won't see or appreciate it, but a small group of people will really appreciate it. And if an artist is either going to throw a bunch of random ad hoc runes on something or use writing that is developed for the world, I don't think there's anything bad about going the high detail route. If nothing else, it establishes a consistent visual style.

It's also worth saying that it took me about as long to write this post as it did for me to design the Engwithan alphabet, so this isn't really a huge investment of time. I'm not doing any of this to the level of depth (or with the level of knowledge) that Tolkien did.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The primary reason of the PC's soul reading powers was to read the backer NPC's. Apparently there is a quest that one of the backer NPC triggers that will lead you to a secret cache of weapons, armor and a sage which will further enhance your powers and give more explanation on why you have said powers. When you eventually find the hidden cache, the guardian will ask you a 3 part riddle. The answer to this riddle is hidden in one of the Backer NPC stories they tell you when you soul read them. This 3 part riddle the guardian asks is randomly generated every time you reload the game, so you're going to have read the soul of every backer NPC in the game thoroughly to solve the riddle. Good luck.

Can confirm. It's also worth adding, that the parts of the riddle are only visible if you are reading the backer stories while standing on your head and balancing a cup of coffee on your feet.

 

[Immortal]

Don't know the lore perfectly, but I always got the feeling that after the very beginning (so - Gilded Vale and areas around it) they forgot about the visions and only added them to TE to remind the player that, yes, he can still see dead people.

It could have been explained by the PC having more control over his powers, but he barely does anything with them (at least in the main campaign). An approach resembling the spirit-eater curse from MoTB and how it was handled there - ingrained in almost every aspect of the game, and gave you unique ways to handle quests - would have been much better.

The primary reason of the PC's soul reading powers was to read the backer NPC's. Apparently there is a quest that one of the backer NPC triggers that will lead you to a secret cache of weapons, armor and a sage which will further enhance your powers and give more explanation on why you have said powers. When you eventually find the hidden cache, the guardian will ask you a 3 part riddle. The answer to this riddle is hidden in one of the Backer NPC stories they tell you when you soul read them. This 3 part riddle the guardian asks is randomly generated every time you reload the game, so you're going to have read the soul of every backer NPC in the game thoroughly to solve the riddle. Good luck.

Considering Obsidian couldn't even be assed enough to proof read / spell check.. I highly doubt it..

Also what happens when the riddle master asks you about the original Firedorn Poem?

 

[Orobis]

Also what happens when the riddle master asks you about the original Firedorn Poem?

He can't. Questions will only pertain to the backer NPC's that can be soul-read. If memory serves the firedorn poem is read from a headstone?