Game News Pillars of Eternity Released

[deranged]

...and expert mode goes off... Now let's see if it is good for what it is.

 

[Tigranes]

Played expert from the beginning. It's fine. Not using it is also fine. Just take a look at the options screen, which lets you individually turn on/off all the expert mode options, and see what you want.

 

[tuluse]

No aoe highlights in expert is a real kick in the crotch. It's annoying for no reason.

I like all the other things it does though.

 

[Tigranes]

IE games were like that. You work it out. Flames can be a bitch at the start, but it would be way too easy with AOE markers - which is why I suspect people thought it was so OP, because it became a no-brainer when you knew exactly where it would go. Things like chill fog with a basic radius range, you get an intuition for it.

 

[tuluse]

IE games were like that. You work it out. Flames can be a bitch at the start, but it would be way too easy with AOE markers - which is why I suspect people thought it was so OP, because it became a no-brainer when you knew exactly where it would go. Things like chill fog with a basic radius range, you get an intuition for it.

IE games didn't adjust AoE sizes based on attributes. Which can change during an encounter!

 

[Jasede]

Yeah, in IE it was easy. Kind of like in DOTA 2, really. You use them a few times and then you "feel" the AoE. With changing AoE sizes that's blatantly impossible. Hell, you had to become very familiar with AoE ranges for the fun solo wizard playthroughs.

 

[Irenaeus]

Nice comments, Tigranes. I'll think about playing the game on expert once or IF I get too confortable with combat.

 

[Roguey]

IE games didn't adjust AoE sizes based on attributes. Which can change during an encounter!

Isn't the extra-range party friendly?

 

[tuluse]

IE games didn't adjust AoE sizes based on attributes. Which can change during an encounter!

Isn't the extra-range party friendly?

It's still less than ideal because I want to use the extra range to actually hit the enemies.

 

[Septaryeth]

The story is nice, but did anyone found Act III to be almost irrelevant to the first two Acts, and shorter as well?

Spoiler

Apart from how it turns out we are saving the world after all, and not just for the dead babies,
that info dump "powerful ancients built this and that, everyone's life has been a lie!" at the end is almost Olympic-dive worthy, felt almost too convenient.

 

[Tigranes]

Act 3 is shorter, which sucks because Twin Elms is the best area in the game, but pacing-wise for the whole plot works well. It's a climactic point.

Spoiler

You're not saving the world, you are doing it for the dead babies, and the final decision you make is basically what you do with the dead babies. You're not deciding the fate of the gods, and you're not even deciding whether you tell everyone gods don't exist - after all, that'd be asking for an Iovara-like fate.

 

[Septaryeth]

Spoiler

I would argue that stopping Woedica from eating all the dead babies and reign supreme is equivalent to save the world,
but I guess it's fair to say that the focus is still about the dead babies, given you have the choice to support Woedica as well.

I just found it weird how everything seem to only snowball after Delegman's one sentence, "gods are not real.", then everyone suddenly start panicking. There are still a lot of questions yet to be answered. For example, how do priests and paladin obtain their power then? So how much influence do these man-made gods have exactly? What's the "other plane" that the ancient people found?

I'll probably replay that act a few more times to look at the story more closely.

Is it good or bad that they didn't actually leave it to the players to decide whether to announce about Iovara's truth, despite the fact you claim you can/you won't in the game?

 

[zeroprometheus]

Well the whole Sanitarium area is bugged to hell (on latest patch) and my progress has been halted... until patch. The whole area went aggro on me on first floor. Well done Obsidian. They sure had a lot of time to expend writing all those backer soul descriptions, but I guess a few 'minor' things slipped through the cracks.

 

[Tigranes]

Defiance Bay Sanitarium? Worked fine for me and I just did it today.

 

[zero29]

Well the whole Sanitarium area is bugged to hell (on latest patch) and my progress has been halted... until patch. The whole area went aggro on me on first floor. Well done Obsidian. They sure had a lot of time to expend writing all those backer soul descriptions, but I guess a few 'minor' things slipped through the cracks.

had that, too. seems to be tied to the flesh constructs, make sure you kill'em all before talking to azo again.

 

[Jasede]

Actually stopped playing for now because the long loading times make Defiance Bay unplayable for me. Which is weird. In BG 1/2 I remember having to wait 2 minutes or so for an area to load, but now even 30 seconds feels way, way too slow.

 

[Rivmusique]

When I played the sanitarium I got a bug where all the animancer's in the building went hostile as well. That was in gog's release version though. Also, lots of bodies disappeared and untargetable models in a 't' pose just appeared standing all over the place.

Just reloaded a save right

Spoiler

before you fight the patients/constructs

then cleared the floor in a different order and it didn't occur the second time.

 

[deranged]

So far the atmosphere is top-notch. I would prefer it if there were no voice-overs, at all, but with the amount of detail present I'm not complaining. I think I'll restart with a goody paladin.

 

[dukeofwhales]

Actually stopped playing for now because the long loading times make Defiance Bay unplayable for me. Which is weird. In BG 1/2 I remember having to wait 2 minutes or so for an area to load, but now even 30 seconds feels way, way too slow.

Baldur's Gate would keep the areas cached in RAM (if you had enough) so while the initial load was slow, returning to areas would be pretty speedy. No such luck here, which is a pity because I wouldn't care if PoE used all 6GB of my RAM if it meant faster load times. No doubt Unity is to blame.

 

[Ninjerk]

Actually stopped playing for now because the long loading times make Defiance Bay unplayable for me. Which is weird. In BG 1/2 I remember having to wait 2 minutes or so for an area to load, but now even 30 seconds feels way, way too slow.

Baldur's Gate would keep the areas cached in RAM (if you had enough) so while the initial load was slow, returning to areas would be pretty speedy. No such luck here, which is a pity because I wouldn't care if PoE used all 6GB of my RAM if it meant faster load times. No doubt Unity is to blame.

Easy there, chief. Whatever you do, don't post that on SA or they might actually do it.

 

[Visbhume]

I'm still at the beginning, but I like the lore about the failed eoathian (?) messiah, it seems to have been inspired by real-world peasant rebellions and millenarian revolts.

 

[dukeofwhales]

I wouldn't care if PoE used all 6GB of my RAM if it meant faster load times. No doubt Unity is to blame.

Easy there, chief. Whatever you do, don't post that on SA or they might actually do it.

I wouldn't mind - it's not like I'm doing anything else when I'm playing, might was well use all the resources available if it wil improve performance.

 

[AngryKobold]

No such luck here, which is a pity because I wouldn't care if PoE used all 6GB of my RAM if it meant faster load times.

NEVER encourage incompetent developers to eat up all the RAM they want.

 

[Oarfish]

No such luck here, which is a pity because I wouldn't care if PoE used all 6GB of my RAM if it meant faster load times.

NEVER encourage incompetent developers to eat up all the RAM they want.

What else is it there for? Consuming available resources to make something more responsive is perfectly reasonable. Many optimisations exchange memory use for speed. This isn't demoscene wanking.

 

[AngryKobold]

No such luck here, which is a pity because I wouldn't care if PoE used all 6GB of my RAM if it meant faster load times.

NEVER encourage incompetent developers to eat up all the RAM they want.

What else is it there for? Consuming available resources to make something more responsive is perfectly reasonable. Many optimisations exchange memory use for speed. This isn't demoscene wanking.

For many purposes. Too bad making your life miserable is none of them. And you say: "this isn't demoscene wanking." May you drown in poorly written software, faggot.

Developers having no pressure for minimizing memory and CPU usage are bound to waste both. In development environment optimizations are not welcomed until there's a very particular issue that requires it. For that reason it's essential to demand compatibility with x86 limitation.

Incompetent developers happily waste resources, eventually producing a resource hog with no optimizations added. No optimization will ever appear, for they don't even know what they don't know.

Guess what, after last ten years I see very little of competency in Obsidian work.