Eternity Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire + DLC Thread - now with turn-based combat!

[Sabotin]

No, I think you need a bad reputation, mixed won't work. I had both colors full and the ship didn't spawn.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I like the VTC shareholder meeting. One of the few sections of the game where the dialogue gives you more than the minimum obligatory flavor, and doesn't feel written on the quest dialogue assembly-line. Also there is no "silly vs serious" clash of writing styles which permeates the game.

 

[FreeKaner]

The game is p. good and the writing is above average except the companions. Even amongst companions Eder, Serafen and Maia are fairly good. Ydwin and Rekke are very interesting as well, sidekicks in general seem to be much more interesting backgrounds moreover.

 

[Riddler]

The game is p. good and the writing is above average except the companions. Even amongst companions Eder, Serafen and Maia are fairly good. Ydwin and Rekke are very interesting as well, sidekicks in general seem to be much more interesting backgrounds moreover.

And the main quest is hardly a shining example of good storytelling...

 

[Haplo]

The game is p. good and the writing is above average except the companions. Even amongst companions Eder, Serafen and Maia are fairly good. Ydwin and Rekke are very interesting as well, sidekicks in general seem to be much more interesting backgrounds moreover.

Whatever happened to the Prophet of Dumpsterfire?

 

[FreeKaner]

The game is p. good and the writing is above average except the companions. Even amongst companions Eder, Serafen and Maia are fairly good. Ydwin and Rekke are very interesting as well, sidekicks in general seem to be much more interesting backgrounds moreover.

And the main quest is hardly a shining example of good storytelling...

I honestly completely phased out the main quest, the main quest for me is the factions and fate of neketaka. Eothas is just a natural disaster and global warming.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

I honestly completely phased out the main quest, the main quest for me is the factions and fate of neketaka. Eothas is just a natural disaster and global warming.

I honestly completely phased out PoE2, the main games for me are made by smaller studios. Obsidian is just a natural disaster and global warming.

 

[Lacrymas]

I kind of forgot about PoE2's existence, it bores me quite fast for some reason and I've been playing other games. I don't have the urge to fire it up and the frequent loading screens turn me off entirely. I've decided to buy an SSD lately to speed up everything and I'll try it with that to see if it's somehow better with faster loading screens.

 

[Maculo]

My main gripe against the main quest was the meetings or council with the gods. I hated the art, the dialogue, and the logic of the scenes. The gods appeared cartoonishly bad. It is one of the few instances where I can recall "show, don't tell" backfired. I think I would have been more satisfied if those scenes were entirely cut out and with no replacement scenes/dialogue. In contrast, I thought the interactions with Eothas and Rymrgand (have not played BoW yet) were relatively decent. Eothas taking a volcanic eruptions, a tsunami, and several krakens to the face was entertaining. I would have preferred if the other gods spent less time talking to the PC and more time causing natural disasters to try and stop Eothas. Hell, I think the gods threatening to drop another moon on the planet is a better plot hook than chasing after your soul.

Where I thought PoE2 shined was the side content. Exploring all the various islands and dungeons kept me intrigued.

 

[FreeKaner]

It is one of the few instances where I can recall "show, don't tell" backfired.

Jesus this again, "Show don't tell" refers to a literary convention in written text. Show in this case refers to writing descriptions of people and situations, as opposed to tell which in a lot of fiction books was straight telling like "He was a mean man with a bad temper and reputation for always taking revenge" instead of writing about situations in which such traits can be displayed. "Show don't tell" isn't "don't do lengthy descriptions" and in fact whenever someone uses this idiom talking about video games they invariably imply "Tell don't show".

 

[Grunker]

You mean you like the narrator?

It's like she went to acting school and only learned the melodrama voice before dropping out

 

[2house2fly]

The game is p. good and the writing is above average except the companions. Even amongst companions Eder, Serafen and Maia are fairly good. Ydwin and Rekke are very interesting as well, sidekicks in general seem to be much more interesting backgrounds moreover.

The expanded sidekick dialogue in the DLCs is pretty good, with the exception of Konstanten who becomes a near-legendary Kazuwari fighter with a dead dad and estranged sister for some reason. I prefer the base game version of him where he's just a dude with big hands who likes adventuring

 

[MajorMace]

I would have preferred if the other gods spent less time talking to the PC and more time causing natural disasters to try and stop Eothas.

Yeah. Seems like they went with the cheapest and least annoying way to handle the main quest narration, and I suspect POE1's reactivity is the reason. I can see how they would, from the get go, decide to handle the gods chit chat via pure narrative sequences - as it made it much easier for them to put flavour reactivity there, like Wael's Ultimate Spell of Scrolls Annihilation and the like.
Which is a shame, because most of these poe1's reactive bits were very lacklustre - even for flavour standards - and I think more in-game gods related disasters would have achieved the same goal, narratively speaking, in a much more satisfying way. Drop that moon already.

I mean, at the end of the day, it's much cheaper to draw a few characters and put any dialogs and narration over them rather than designing optional screens/levels and encounters - when you design a game with reactivity to the previous one in mind, that is. I assume this is where Deadfire reveals itself as very unambitious, at least on this matter.
The consequence is rather dramatic, as your powerful super-beings of soul energy who serve as gods are imprisonned in these irrelevant conf calls. Not that tough after all hey.

 

[Maculo]

It is one of the few instances where I can recall "show, don't tell" backfired.

Jesus this again, "Show don't tell" refers to a literary convention in written text. Show in this case refers to writing descriptions of people and situations, as opposed to tell which in a lot of fiction books was straight telling like "He was a mean man with a bad temper and reputation for always taking revenge" instead of writing about situations in which such traits can be displayed. "Show don't tell" isn't "don't do lengthy descriptions" and in fact whenever someone uses this idiom talking about video games they invariably imply "Tell don't show".

Okay, and did you view the god council scenes as a clever way to display the gods, their traits, etc.? I do not view "show don't tell" as "no lengthy descriptions," because a lengthy description would not have saved the scenes either. PST had lengthy descriptions and it was good. In contrast, Obsidian trying to craft scenes in which all the gods are on display and being wacky was a fucking low point.

 

[FreeKaner]

There is a problem with this game that no one has talked about yet. That's the game tries to sell you the idea that animancy is progress and the opposition to it is mostly with safety concerns. However to me animancy looks a little more than soul eugenics that helps no one but instead uses a weird combination of psychology and genetics with experimental testing that resembles more Nazi Germany or Imperial Japanese research.

 

[FreeKaner]

It is one of the few instances where I can recall "show, don't tell" backfired.

Jesus this again, "Show don't tell" refers to a literary convention in written text. Show in this case refers to writing descriptions of people and situations, as opposed to tell which in a lot of fiction books was straight telling like "He was a mean man with a bad temper and reputation for always taking revenge" instead of writing about situations in which such traits can be displayed. "Show don't tell" isn't "don't do lengthy descriptions" and in fact whenever someone uses this idiom talking about video games they invariably imply "Tell don't show".

Okay, and did you view the god council scenes as a clever way to display the gods, their traits, etc.? I do not view "show don't tell" as "no lengthy descriptions," because a lengthy description would not have saved the scenes either. PST had lengthy descriptions and it was good. In contrast, Obsidian trying to craft scenes in which all the gods are on display was a fucking low point.

I do not mind the Gods because I do not expect them to be a Zoroastrian or Abrahamic representation of omnipotence and omnibenevolence. They are human devised and barely functional Norse/Egyptian/Greek gods that revolve around ritual and duty, as were the old pagan religions. It's Thaos' mistake to assume they would be about morals and judgement.

 

[Maculo]

Or the fact that the game makes a huge deal about the significance of Luminous Adra only for the end focus to be the lost city and the soul engine.

Also, it would have made more sense imo if the main drive behind animancy was militaristic and not scientific.

It is one of the few instances where I can recall "show, don't tell" backfired.

Jesus this again, "Show don't tell" refers to a literary convention in written text. Show in this case refers to writing descriptions of people and situations, as opposed to tell which in a lot of fiction books was straight telling like "He was a mean man with a bad temper and reputation for always taking revenge" instead of writing about situations in which such traits can be displayed. "Show don't tell" isn't "don't do lengthy descriptions" and in fact whenever someone uses this idiom talking about video games they invariably imply "Tell don't show".

Okay, and did you view the god council scenes as a clever way to display the gods, their traits, etc.? I do not view "show don't tell" as "no lengthy descriptions," because a lengthy description would not have saved the scenes either. PST had lengthy descriptions and it was good. In contrast, Obsidian trying to craft scenes in which all the gods are on display was a fucking low point.

I do not mind the Gods because I do not expect them to be a Zoroastrian or Abrahamic representation of omnipotence and omnibenevolence. They are human devised and barely functional Norse/Egyptian/Greek gods that revolve around ritual and duty, as were the old pagan religions. It's Thaos' mistake to assume they would be about morals and judgement.

That's fine, but I find the scenes to be the low point in the main quest, even more so than the ending. Outside of "here are the wacky gods" I do not know what the point was. We had scenes in which the gods conjured tidal waves and krakens, but for some reason that was not the focus. It seemed like an excuse for the writers to write something.

 

[Parabalus]

There is a problem with this game that no one has talked about yet. That's the game tries to sell you the idea that animancy is progress and the opposition to it is mostly with safety concerns. However to me animancy looks a little more than soul eugenics that helps no one but instead uses a weird combination of psychology and genetics with experimental testing that resembles more Nazi Germany or Imperial Japanese research.

Animancy is the infant stages of becoming Engwith-like though? It is progress in that regard.

 

[2house2fly]

There is a problem with this game that no one has talked about yet. That's the game tries to sell you the idea that animancy is progress and the opposition to it is mostly with safety concerns. However to me animancy looks a little more than soul eugenics that helps no one but instead uses a weird combination of psychology and genetics with experimental testing that resembles more Nazi Germany or Imperial Japanese research.

There are plenty of characters who are hostile to animancy, and the Engwithans- the great animancers of the past- are established as horrific monsters. "Animancy as progress" is just a point of view of some people within in setting

 

[Popiel]

There is a problem with this game that no one has talked about yet. That's the game tries to sell you the idea that animancy is progress and the opposition to it is mostly with safety concerns. However to me animancy looks a little more than soul eugenics that helps no one but instead uses a weird combination of psychology and genetics with experimental testing that resembles more Nazi Germany or Imperial Japanese research.

Games heavily implie that it's this way because of the workings of Hand Occult (mainly) and Leaden Key, these two organizations actively try to sabotage attempts at refining animancy into true science, one on par with Engwithan acumen.

 

[AwesomeButton]

You mean you like the narrator?

It's like she went to acting school and only learned the melodrama voice before dropping out

I don't think it's down to talent, because I find the same actress great as Ydwin. More probably the Narrator's terrible tone has to do with inaccurate direction on the part of whoever was responsible for directing the voice actors on the style. I wouldn't be surprised if this was to be Justin Bell again.

The expanded sidekick dialogue in the DLCs is pretty good, with the exception of Konstanten who becomes a near-legendary Kazuwari fighter with a dead dad and estranged sister for some reason. I prefer the base game version of him where he's just a dude with big hands who likes adventuring

The ~narrative designers'~ graphomania continues, I see.

Yeah. Seems like they went with the cheapest and least annoying way to handle the main quest narration, and I suspect POE1's reactivity is the reason. I can see how they would, from the get go, decide to handle the gods chit chat via pure narrative sequences - as it made it much easier for them to put flavour reactivity there, like Wael's Ultimate Spell of Scrolls Annihilation and the like.

They could have had pure narrative sequences and still provide reactivity, just like it's done in the ending slides for example - which paragraphs appear is decided by some ingame flags being set. The gods' sequences have absolutely no redeeming features as they are right now. And the fact that they keep giving the player options about what to say and it doesn't matter one bit what you say is downright insulting. I wish they were cut out from the game completely and I can't imagine how could anyone watch through these and think "that's ok, we did a good job".

 

[Prime Junta]

There are plenty of characters who are hostile to animancy, and the Engwithans- the great animancers of the past- are established as horrific monsters. "Animancy as progress" is just a point of view of some people within in setting

I would even say that in P1 animancy was presented as fairly unambiguously awful. There was the business with Raedric, the friendly fellow in the sanitarium and the horrid experiments he was doing, finding out where wichts came from, and so on and so forth. The only remotely sympathetic animancers we met were either en-statued or dead and hanging from a tree. Aloth made a lot of sense.

It's only in Deadfire that we saw some of the other side of it, notably with Pallegina's companion quest.

I.e. I honestly don't see that the games were trying to "sell" animancy as unambiguous progress.

 

[AwesomeButton]

There is a problem with this game that no one has talked about yet. That's the game tries to sell you the idea that animancy is progress and the opposition to it is mostly with safety concerns. However to me animancy looks a little more than soul eugenics that helps no one but instead uses a weird combination of psychology and genetics with experimental testing that resembles more Nazi Germany or Imperial Japanese research.

Josh has talked about this - the presentation of animancy was something they wanted to change with regards to how it was in Pillars 1. His impression is that people's impression was that animancy is mostly something evil and pretty much the equivalent of "necromancy but with souls". Hence the "animancy can allow us to teleport and cure diseases" the storylines.

 

[MajorMace]

They could have had pure narrative sequences and still provide reactivity, just like it's done in the ending slides for example - which paragraphs appear is decided by some ingame flags being set. The gods' sequences have absolutely no redeeming features as they are right now. And the fact that they keep giving the player options about what to say and it doesn't matter one bit what you say is downright insulting. I wish they were cut out from the game completely and I can't imagine how could anyone watch through these and think "that's ok, we did a good job".

True. I guess they aimed for "that's okay, we did *something*" - which is why I think there was no ambition whatsoever there. It's not even failing at this point, it's not trying at all. Which is worse.

 

[Parabalus]

PoE1 presentation of animancy was pretty flattering IMHO. All depictions are Galileo-like.