Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pre-DLC Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Jezal_k23]

I always have a "IT'S A TRAP!!!!!!" knee-jerk reaction to seeing that shade of red on the floor, before I realize that in this specific location it's nothing. Does this happen to anyone else?

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

They could've let you explore a siege camp with both Disfavored and Scarlet Chorus soldiers in it or something like that before beginning the Conquest thing, so you can acclimate to who is who and who you are up against. You should start next to an NPC that can begin the Conquest immediately to accommodate repeat playthroughs. Not caring about who you kill or capture is pretty telling how trivial the choices are without context. A lot of the Conquest choices matter later, so it isn't something that will be forgotten the moment it ends.

Three weeks ago I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly. But after playing the opening of Deadfire, there is something incredibly jarring about hopping from normal gameplay to character creation. Once you’re controlling your little avatar on the screen, the game needs to start immediately. Walking around, then talking to an NPC then choosing your history and creating your character build is how Deadfire starts and it really doesn’t work.

The game shouldn’t fake you out like that, so this prologue/character creation stuff needs to be totally distinct from the ordinary gameplay. I’m sure there’s a way to convey the right amount of info in the very beginning. Personally, I felt like conquest mode itself taught you a lot about the factions in a more dynamic way than having NPCs lore dump all over you once the game gets started. Resolving those little conflicts conveys a lot, but perhaps this would be more palatable if the consequences were a lot more limited. That said, IMO I thought many of the major consequences were well telegraphed: for example, if you think you might want to rebel, don’t kill the rebel queen—that doesn’t take any metagame knowledge.

Honestly, if they had turned the little vignettes in Conquest into the meat of the actual game, it might’ve had a stronger story. That’s present day Obsidian in a nutshell: even when they have a great idea they rarely know what to do with it.

aweigh that’s potentially true of any choice in an RPG with far reaching consequences, even when players have formed more of an emotional connection to the world and the story. I think people don’t feel invested in their choices made during Conquest mode because the factions are fundamentally unsympathetic. Not sure if providing more context would really fix the problem. Personally, I really got into it because I viewed the choices as being about my character, and not the factions or the broader world. But if you look at it as creating a world-state I can see how it would make people feel very disconnected.

 

[aweigh]

It also has a lot to do on the value you/one places on branching story nodes in and of themselves. I place much more value in the amount of ways an RPG allows you to play through the game, how your different builds allow different tactical choices, etc, or how a simple thing like a day/night cycle can open avenues for different utilization of skills. Branching story nodes don't really interest me that much, as I tend to think that it usually ends up diluting game play beats.

When I see something like Conquest mode I don't immediately think "incline", I mostly think about how they could have better spent that development time, and I know I'm not the only one. Taking Tyranny as the example I was much more impressed by the first instance of being able to straight-up murder a story-important NPC in conversation (the Bitter-Jokes or whatever his fool name was) and the game acknowledging this as part of your character development (both gamefied and story-fied); much more so than by the Conquest mode.

Also Tyranny is still the only RPG I've played where you can dead-ass murder a baby in its crib!!!11 GOTY \m/

 

[FreeKaner]

Kyl Von Kull exactly. Conquest mode teaches you about the world and the factions in it and it does this in an impressively fluid way. You learn all about what sort of values Disfavored and Scarlet Chorus hold, to what degree they carry these values and how they represent them in action. You also learn about the regions you are invading that you will see in person, you learn about how Archons play into this and how strict Kyros is, all in a short sequence that's part of character creation. On top of all of this all the choices you made have an effect on the game world that you can tangibly see. People complain about info dump then miss when such seamless methods of introductions to world are presented.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Deadfire introduction is brilliant because they managed to retcon save importing into integral part of the lore, ie, your save is your soul in the cycle. Pretty clever, that.

And yes, Tyranny is incredibly fluid and seamless in how it spams you from the start with wikipedia entries posing as dialogue.

 

[FreeKaner]

It's satisfactory from a logical point of view in integrating a metagame and crossgame fuction but it would be better to just create and import at start, I don't think it needed a justification.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

It's satisfactory from a logical point of view in integrating a metagame and crossgame fuction but it would be better to just create and import at start, I don't think it needed a justification.

Right, that I can absolutely agree with.

 

[Orbito Sol]

Pardon me for digging up the Tekehu thing, but it honestly took me several pages to realize he was talking about his fish dong haha.

deadfire is one of those games with very modulable types of play
if you don't read or read absolutely everything, if you play on normal with AI and fast speed combat or if you play on potd with slow speed combat etc etc

Also, at the moment, I don't know how one could not set the speed to fast and quickly rush to the end past the level 15 or so. It's just too boring, the only redeeming aspect being exploration, but this only works on the first playthrough, really.
I thought like replaying through the game with different companions during the first playthrough, but the last third or fourth of my game just completely killed any motivation. Better wait for proper updates, and also dlcs to add some much, much needed content at high level.

Once the patch Josh promised comes out (that fixes PotD difficulty) game should have immediate replay value. The thing that killed my motivation is some of the quest bugs that make quest uncompletable, hopefully those will be fixed by then.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Is it possible to edit the text in city screens as strings or are those pictures? Specifically asking about the info at top right corner because I want to edit the demographics data to a less modern statistics form, one that's entirely text and doesn't have on point numbers and percentages.

I'll have to look in the xml where all the strings are. I doubt the population and such numbers are really kept as numbers and have some logic attached to them, I guess they just switch one string with another based on the player's actions.

We should do a codex fundraiser for you. And I am serious.

Are you planning to add a "donate via paypal" button, anywhere?

I already made a special paypal account in order to link it to the Patreon account. All I need to do is add the paypal button to the site.

 

[TT1]

Infinitron you should give Spiritual Sucessor a shout out

 

[Iskramor]

Orma Stop abusing piracy is wrong rating you tatooed whore xD

 

[Darth Roxor]

pallegina's quest is hilariously dumb

'sup goy, would you divert a train to run over 1 guy instead of 5 people?'

'uhhhhh'

'ok then based on your answer we'll kill this dude here :^) '

 

[J_C]

pallegina's quest is hilariously dumb

'sup goy, would you divert a train to run over 1 guy instead of 5 people?'

'uhhhhh'

'ok then based on your answer we'll kill this dude here :^) '

Where do they find these writers?

 

[Trashos]

The Trolley Dilemma is quite interesting. And yes, I would divert the train. I haven't seen the in-game execution, though.

 

[Quillon]

Deadfire introduction is brilliant because they managed to retcon save importing into integral part of the lore, ie, your save is your soul in the cycle. Pretty clever, that.

The player is the new Thaos!

 

[Jenkem]

You guys are making me want to replay Prey.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

It also has a lot to do on the value you/one places on branching story nodes in and of themselves. I place much more value in the amount of ways an RPG allows you to play through the game, how your different builds allow different tactical choices, etc, or how a simple thing like a day/night cycle can open avenues for different utilization of skills. Branching story nodes don't really interest me that much, as I tend to think that it usually ends up diluting game play beats.

When I see something like Conquest mode I don't immediately think "incline", I mostly think about how they could have better spent that development time, and I know I'm not the only one. Taking Tyranny as the example I was much more impressed by the first instance of being able to straight-up murder a story-important NPC in conversation (the Bitter-Jokes or whatever his fool name was) and the game acknowledging this as part of your character development (both gamefied and story-fied); much more so than by the Conquest mode.

Also Tyranny is still the only RPG I've played where you can dead-ass murder a baby in its crib!!!11 GOTY

Fair enough. In an ideal world I’d like to have my cake and eat it, too, but obviously you need a big budget to do both narrative
C&C and multiple gameplay styles C&C like New Vegas. I agree with you that the latter is generally more satisfying than the former, although I’m very much a sucker for branching narratives. That’s why I wish Tyranny had Deadfire’s quest design because at its best Deadfire is very good at giving you many different ways to solve a problem depending on your build and your play style.

The thing is, Tyranny was very clearly designed around narrative C&C and once a developer has made that decision I’d want them to really commit, giving the player as many story related reasons as possible to replay the game (I wish Deadfire had committed as strongly to always giving you really open ended quests). I don’t say this is what RPG developers should be aiming for above all, but if they do want to put enormous emphasis on a branching story, Tyranny’s a great example of how to do that. Of course, if you don’t give a shit about that, Tyranny is like getting a nice cat when all you really wanted was a doggo.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Yeah Pallegina's quest is the biggest crock of shit not just in Deadfire but arguably in all of Obsidian games combined.

They probably thought it is some devilishly deceptive puzzle, but I could see where it is going the moment dude asked me a first question.

 

[Darth Roxor]

The Trolley Dilemma is quite interesting. And yes, I would divert the train. I haven't seen the in-game execution, though.

Context: some animancer is abducted by angry godlikes.

Pallegina says this animancer is an expert at de-godliking godlikes.

You find the angry godlikes and their kaptin says 'ok lemme ask you some questions and then we'll decide on this animancer's fate :^)'

After which he proceeds to ask you 5 obviously loaded trolley dilemma questions ("Would you abort a child who would live a short life and suffer? :^)", "if you had technology that could be used for both good and evil, would you destroy, regulate or make it widely available? :^)" ) then makes a tally of your answers and says "ok then we will (not) kill the goy based on your answers", after which you can intervene or not.

It's... very dumb.

It also has classic Deadfire confrontational dialogue before entering the kaptin's house - there's a guard outside who says "oi, I cant let you in", then you say "fuck you let me in" and guard responds "ok I'll let you in".

 

[Valtiel]

Finished with 50+ hours in (fuck those guys saying they saw everything in 30h), it was mindless fun honestly, sense of exploration and discovery is very good, itemization: cool, companions: meh, the old one are the worst?, sidequest: ok to good, reactivity: barely non existent, system design: OK, combat: I dunno, seemed ok but playing on hard w no scaling made it outrageously easy. Also shame for the main plot, premise was good, Eothas was promising, but there's barely and ending, I understand that this was just the "middle" game in the series, but they could have done much more and still have hooks for the third one. I'll look for DLC when the game is fully patched

 

[Roguey]

Where do they find these writers?

It's Josh.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The children are writing the quests. That's the problem.

 

[Brancaleone]

It's... very dumb.

Why do you say that, it's easily on par with spammy-spammy Facebook personality-tests.

 

[Reinhardt]

So being underleveled on potd doesn't help much with lack of difficulty. Only Nemnok and Ashen Maw left. My party is level 17 after clearing everything, maybe i'll get one more before the end. Still everything just dies. Only vampires can somewhat screw you up, but it's only 3, i think, locations on the world map and my devoted monk can solo them after eating lobster or just chewing some svef.

 

[fantadomat]

pallegina's quest is hilariously dumb

'sup goy, would you divert a train to run over 1 guy instead of 5 people?'

'uhhhhh'

'ok then based on your answer we'll kill this dude here :^) '

Wait,what?! She had a quest?! What a buggy game!