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Pillars of Eternity Thread [Pre-Expansion]

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Well, alright, maybe I was arrogant about POTD. Level 3 Rogue & Aloth slumming it out in Eothas temple dying many, many times.

Restarted as the same character, but I'll wait and see how standard XP progression works before console command'ing it downwards. Also want to try soloing the Valewood encounters, though I expect I may not be able to do that with the bears.

Whats with people playing party based games solo, and constantly complaining how SP RPGs are not party based?

Seriously.

What are you on about? I thought I was levelling up too quickly with PC and Aloth (will pick up Kana and Pallegina later), so console'd to reduce XP. I soon found that I may have been hasty so now I'm going in with normal XP progression and enjoying myself.

The game is too easy with 6 players, which is the real problem and why I go with 3-4.
 

hiver

Guest
I see a lot of folks trying to play solo here and complaining of this and that, and i see a lot of people complaining how they cnanot play with a party in AoD.
wasnt connected to you xp reduction or those other details.

Just speaking generally - i find that funny to notice, as some sort of perverted silly trend.
 

Jarpie

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 30, 2009
Messages
6,603
Codex 2012 MCA
I've been wondering if removing accuracy from perception affected the NPCs/enemies as well and thus affecting the difficulty especially later in the game.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
I see a lot of folks trying to play solo here and complaining of this and that, and i see a lot of people complaining how they cnanot play with a party in AoD.
wasnt connected to you xp reduction or those other details.

Just speaking generally - i find that funny to notice, as some sort of perverted silly trend.

Right, fair enough.

How did people feel about the ending? I loved it, and I thought the endings of companion quests & main quest really reveal that the writing was very clearly and carefully woven in a thematic way. It doesn't do it the same way Torment does it, but like Torment, what really matters is the thematic questions and not 'what happens to this world now does the bomb hit or not':

The point is that the story is very tightly wound so that all the different kinds of problems many different people (including yourself) have in the world, the chickens come home to roost in the final actor as you understand the similarity binding them together. That similarity, of course, is foreshadowed throughout the entire game in the scriptures of Wael you find throughout the world: what is an answer without a question? What does struggle mean - your struggle against Thaos, all of 'humanity' (& other races)' struggle against their own lives and disasters like the Legacy, Thaos' struggle against the 'false gods' - what do they mean when you understand that nobody can guarantee an answer for you?

When Thaos asks you at the end, why would you want a world without the gods? You can give a number of answers. This isn't just flavour text. Through it, he (the game) is asking: what did your journey and your struggle mean, and that of Eder for his brother, Sagani for Persoq, etc., mean? Can you find meaning when the game does not throw you a Nice Happy Ending, and can characters find meaning in a world without gods?

This is why I thought Iovara's relationship with you is also revealed appropriately. On its own it's not a particularly powerful conceit - here's this woman you've never met and she just had some investment in your decision in a rather lackadaiscal way - but the fact that you understand the Apostate, just like the Grand Inquisitor, is also searching for an answer - an answer which, after hundreds of years, you can never find. The fact that you can only give the Apostate some rather stupid reasons ('I didn't like you') or choose to keep silent was another nice touch. It would be thematically inconsistent to give her 'closure' by just visiting her and saying a couple of things after all those years.

The one weak point is the Gods revelation can be pretty jarring, "oh hey wat" after what is a very religious world and a religious story. I like that they tried, though - and Durance's story is important here, too, the fact that Magran cannot 'see' him. I would have preferred an ending where Durance ends up broken, though, and not a happier 'I'm ma own man' Durance. I wonder if this was one of the things changed from MCA's 'darker' original drafts. But then, we also get that with Dak'kon.
 
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Tigranes

In my ending, Durance killed himself burned upon a pyre kindled by his own broken staff after not getting any response from Magran after everything that happened. I thought that was pretty cool, but I'm also sure I didn't complete his questline as it was bugged for me (one of his visions didn't trigger the appropriate quest text, so the quest didn't progress).
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Whoa, that's awesome. I suppose I was too dutiful in my conversations with him. I wonder if it's controlled by your dispositions and/or your actions, or solely on making sure you get through all the 'talks'.
 

Haba

Harbinger of Decline
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Land of Rape & Honey ❤️
Codex 2012 MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
The writing was a let down, but mainly because I had higher expectations and the few good parts raised the bar way too high for the rest.

I liked the fact that you could choose your own motivations in the soul flashbacks and the game actually reacted to it. That'd be a pretty good mechanic for any RPG that wants to let the player craft their own history. Would be even better if that was used to branch of into completely different scenes instead of minor flavour changes.

Act II ending was a giant spit on the face, though ending text alleviated it somewhat. Act III was much better in writing and quest themes, yet I don't like the
direct dialogue with Gods and the poorly paced reveals. That should have been done in a way that still leaves room for interpretation, i.e. leaving doubt about whether Gods are man made or not.

Ending slides were well written, but they were also VERY disappointing. Many of the choices I was painstakingly considering were not referenced at all. The writing didn't leave any great mysteries unravelled nor did it build interesting places or characters up for possible sequels, which is a shame.

Antagonist
was crap, his motivations were shit and the fact that a single antagonist was behind it all is retarded.
 
Joined
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Messages
5,869
Whoa, that's awesome. I suppose I was too dutiful in my conversations with him. I wonder if it's controlled by your dispositions and/or your actions, or solely on making sure you get through all the 'talks'.

I would imagine it's merely a matter of going through all the talks, but now I'm glad I didn't!

Anyway, I liked the ending structure, but I felt that story-wise it was a bit of a cop-out and a juvenile solution to the "do gods exist" problem. Also the fight itself was laughably easy and anticlimactic (playing on Hard) -
I two-shot Thaos after petrifying him and CC'd the two statues by spamming a level 1 spell (slicken)
. That should never happen, I wish higher level enemies had resistances to lower level spells.

The hardest fight in the game for me was the Ogre Druid hunt in that cave, I tried it at level 8 and got my ass handed to me, came back two levels later and won easily. It's kind of sad that level trumps everything in this game, feels a little MMOish.
 

Haba

Harbinger of Decline
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Codex 2012 MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
Tigranes

In my ending, Durance killed himself burned upon a pyre kindled by his own broken staff after not getting any response from Magran after everything that happened. I thought that was pretty cool, but I'm also sure I didn't complete his questline as it was bugged for me (one of his visions didn't trigger the appropriate quest text, so the quest didn't progress).

I actually got a happy ending for everyone, but you can fuck up quite badly by taking a single "wrong choice". Like Grieving Mother returning to Birthing Bell or Defiance Bay ending up in permanent martial law. Really ham-fisted how certain choices have obvious and instant bad outcome (not destroying the machine in Heritage Hill).

Biggest surprise was Aloth, I thought I'd done his quest but apparently there was still a something cooking... He replaced Theos as the Leaden Key leader.

Oh, and I also got 7 different colours gods to choose from
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Act II ending was disappointing because it was so similar to the NWN2 Trial, but it was basically a Dragon Age style scripted sequence.

I didn't mind the antagonist, although normally such a design would leave me underwhelmed, because
Thaos' own struggle is again a mirror against everybody else, and he is an important part of that thematic cast. He, more than anybody, especially because he knew the 'truth', makes his own iron determination his answer without a question. A determination which, as the PC is able to point out at the end, is ultimately predicated on fear and uncertainty about humanity's ability, his ability, to do without the gods. This effect would have been diluted if it was a group of people.

Great Deceiver the final fight is not a pushover depending on the party. E.g. pre-1.03 Slicken is ridiculously powerful, and my Cipher was suddenly rendered useless by the enemies' high Reflex and Will saves (about time anything had high saves). Without a wizard I had no real way of disabling these enemies, though my entire strategy for that party (Cipher, Eder, Durance, Sagani on Hard) was predicated on disabling everybody thus far.
 
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the final fight is not a pushover depending on the party. E.g. pre-1.03 Slicken is ridiculously powerful, and my Cipher was suddenly rendered useless by the enemies' high Reflex and Will saves (about time anything had high saves). Without a wizard I had no real way of disabling these enemies, though my entire strategy for that party (Cipher, Eder, Durance, Sagani on Hard) was predicated on disabling everybody thus far.

This was 1.03 Slicken (which is still op), but while I agree with you that a Wizard makes every boss fight trivial because of Petrify (it's a ridiculous spell that should be reworked), I think your Cipher could just spam Amplify Wave and keep everyone CC'd anyway.

Also I see you're choosing to play with 4 which makes things harder of course, but that's a self-imposed limitation (even if I agree with it and will probably try a PotD run with)
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Huh, didn't think of Amplify Wave, but my experience with the final fight was that unlike all the other fights, everything my Cipher could throw was resisted most of the time. I eventually had to reyl on a couple of lucky dice rolls on Confusion & Paralysis scrolls. I'll see how it goes this time, taking Aloth. But the genearl point definitely stands that it's stupid how there are no hard immunity enemies and not more enemies with higher saves.
 

dieu

Learned
Joined
Aug 14, 2013
Messages
54
Oh, and I also got 7 different colours gods to choose from

[ending spoilers]


Seventh ending is choosing no god and jumping down (atheist)
That+s+perfect+thanks+have+this+_c979dd9bab6e88fdcd0f6c40f3ad5c43.gif
 

AN4RCHID

Arcane
Joined
Jan 24, 2013
Messages
4,728
dafuq am I supposed to do at the Od Nua boss fight? It's one-shotting most of my party right out of the gate so I don't even have a chance to use gud spells.
 

Frusciante

Cipher
Joined
Aug 24, 2012
Messages
716
Project: Eternity
Finished act 2 in 25 hours. Actually liked the ending, don't see the problem there really. I do find act 3 so far much more interesting than act 2 so far. Twin Alms is a very interesting place, glanfathans remind me of native americans.

Is act 3 as long as act 2? And is act 4 a full blown act or only a short ending act?
 
Self-Ejected

Irenaeus

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera
Finished act 2 in 25 hours. Actually liked the ending, don't see the problem there really. I do find act 3 so far much more interesting than act 2 so far. Twin Alms is a very interesting place, glanfathans remind me of native americans.

Is act 3 as long as act 2? And is act 4 a full blown act or only a short ending act?

I think you are the first person I hear praising the ending of Act 2.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
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Djibouti
there's nothing wrong with the ending of act 2, i found it to be an excellent comic relief

that was its purpose, right?
 

Answermancer

Educated
Joined
Feb 27, 2014
Messages
67
Location
Seattle, WA
What is the act 2 in this game? Defiance Bay stuff?

Defiance Bay, story quests, reporting to Lady Webb, choosing one of the three factions to support. Ends with the hearing in animancy.
 

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