Eternity Pillars of Eternity + The White March Expansion Thread

Wow, then the whole thing is even more of a mess. I guess you won't end up like Mearwald because it's something completely unrelated? Is every Watcher going to end up like him or is he a special case? Or every Watcher has to resolve "soul guilt" to not end up like him? The writing in PoE is a particularly intense case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.

 

How many times have we talked about this now? Six? Seven? And I swear it's always the same idiots asking the same question.

The Watcher and Mearwald are both Watchers and Awakened. The latter is always a problem (Aloth and Maneha being two different explorations of that), but it becomes worse for Watchers as the visions of their past life/lives seem to take a more vibrant, lifelike quality, which ultimately leads to being unable to make the difference between the past life and reality. Once the Awakened soul is put to rest thanks to the answers they received, the visions disappear.

 

That's why

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Adaryc

from TWM2 who is also a Watcher, but not Awakened, has a much easier time with his condition.

 

This whole story is not that bad, the game just features a very uneven and fairly uninspired narration. For the reasons that have been discussed already.
So I wouldn't consider someone who got confused with that Watcher/Awakened diference an idiot, the game is not that clear on the matter, since among the few people you cross who happen to be awakened in the base game, one is a watcher, and it happens during the whole let's tell the player what a watcher is, which is although poorly done ironically. The other one is a companion and there's only one soul he has to deal with, which just throws us back to some schyzophrenic dual personnality thing. Well that's the box I put Aloth in as soon as I met him.

 

In this, I usually separate between the story and storytelling. "The story" is the overreaching plot, the plotlines themselves and the core meaning that wants to be conveyed. "Storytelling" is the act of telling that story, the narrative pacing, the way it is all conveyed to the reader or listener.

The story of PoE is perfectly fine. It is not amazing, but it's perfectly fine, and I think that it's solid as solid can be, really.

The storytelling, however, is pretty bad.

What grates at me is that it's only pretty bad because of a couple of key transitions that were clusterfucks, such as how the concepts of Watcher and Awakened is conveyed, the reason why you were going insane and how (it is not at all clear that it's because you're specifically an awakened watcher, and given that you're still an awakened watcher but is seemingly fine after the conclusion of the game makes this even more confusing), and the way you move from one narrative focus (Personal; Awakening/Insanity) to another (Greater; The Hollowborn & The Leaden Key).

 

Story =/= plot, though. Story is the events that happen, f.e. "the hare jumped down the hole, then the snake slithered in there", while the plot is why something happened, f.e. "the hare jumped down the hole out of fear, then the snake slithered in there so it can eat the hare". PoE has a story in this most basic of definitions, something happens after another thing, but it struggles with the plot part. Maybe the lack of mastery in storytelling (i.e. how the narrative is conveyed) is the reason for this, but Obsidian never really had a problem with that before. I dunno.

 

There is a bit of lack of npc agency in the story. Sarevok and Irenicus, for instance, are both shown taking in-game actions even when the player character is too weak to effect them.

I don't know how it is in the White March, because i haven't played it yet, but there are a few places which stand out to me in the main-game as effective pieces of story-telling. The whole dyrford village arc which manages to create mystery and intrigue and also helps create the impression that there are self-motivated npcs in the game. I also think the intro is pretty good because its immediate concern is in creating a late-night campfire atmosphere. And atmosphere is important for getting an emotional response from the player; without which fails to get them involved with the story.

Otherwise the game can feel a little flat; even though it's still obvious that it's a well-made game. Like, on this play-through I beat down the front door of Raedric's castle and in the first courtyard there was 20 or 24 of the keep's guard loitering about. It would have been a small embellishment for those guards to say, 'raise the alarm,' or, 'fools are storming the keep,' or anything, really.

 

I have to take back my skepticism over the Barbarian. It could just be that Hours of St. whats-his-face is overpowered at this level, and the fact that i enchanted it vs. kith just before doing the cult of skaen but she now has the highest damage contribution for my party. The tenser's transformation wizard already got supplanted by my elemental wizard, though, on the strength of chill-fog quietly racking up thousands of points of damage; so I've also got to surrender the point that wizards are pretty dangerous, too. I like how fire elementals absolutely will not move on top of chill-fog, that's a nice touch you don't often see.

The ogres on level 3 of od. nua were a bit of a pain in the rear, though. Because I'm so reliant on limited spell-casting and they would keep knocking my fighters over whilst their buffs durations ran out.

I'd be interested in seeing how a full martial party plays out but i have a feeling that it would drive me a little insane. Even with priests, some fights im just constantly trying to suppress confusion and domination so that the barbarian doesn't ko my party. Sounds like you would use up a lot of scrolls trying to deal with that nonsense. Or, I dunno, I guess you could stealth passed a lot of stuff and count the game as beaten too.

Should be a little easier now that I've got access to fourth circle priest spells for this party, at least. And this time I'm not trying to cure a party with Durance's 9 dexerity having ass.

 

Bloody shame about that Barbarian's dumped Int stat, though. Were he a highly intellectual individual, he'd own face and simultaneously knock everybody down in a large radius....

Carnage really is the Barb's best ability. Although Int also affects other stuff, like Heart of Fury radius.

 

I might have blanked on Heart of Fury if you hadn't pointed it out. An aoe attack that also triggers carnage too? Sounds kinda strong.

Barbarian in general has been much more enjoyable to play with than Fighter. I don't miss trying to micro-manage Eder's knock-downs when a wizard or a priest generally does the same thing a little bettter. And the endurance ability fighters get hasn't been relevant either with a lay-on-hands and athletics giving so many free heals.

You're right though, I should have paid more attention to the recommended star next to int on character creation. The character is also a meadow folk so the racial ability is also suffering from a reduced duration. Conan wasn't exactly stupid either, so I can't even use the excuse that it's a misnomer.

 

You can retrain his attributes, so nothing is stopping you from having high int.

 

Oh.

I figured that would just be feats and skills.

I guess you don't get to retrain companion attributes? Nah, it doesn't make sense. Then the only downside to having them is you have to shrug off when Eder flirts with Aloth on the basis his split personality is cute.

 

You can't retrain companion attributes, yeah, but you can retrain yours and the hired adventurers'.

 

So I've gotten far enough to start thinking about enchanting The Hours of St. Rumbalt with a lash. I've killed the adra dragon, but all other challenging encounters are still good to go. I'm playing a fairly tanky offensive Fighter, so no elemental abilities. Should I go fire, shock or corrode? Freeze seems to be resisted by a fair amount of enemies, so I'm fairly certain it's not the way to go.

 

I don't think it matters that much, but if you have Stormcaller on one of your other characters it reduces shock DR by a certain amount, so you might want to go for that. If not (i.e. you don't have a ranger/cipher/chanter) go for whatever you think is cool, though I've seen most builds going for either burn or shock.

 

Think about it. Would it make sense to retrain companion attributes?

 

Why would it make less sense than to retrain /your/ attributes? There's a lot of stuff in this game -- any RPG for that matter -- that doesn't make sense when you think about it too closely. It would make minmaxers happy, and purists probably wouldn't want to retrain anyone anyway. This IMO is just Josh being pig-headed.

 

Yes, so I can have characters with the stats I want them to have, and still benefit from doing their quests, and some mild amusement in hearing their banter and interjections during quests.

 

Meh, like I said, many of PoE's companions are some of the most boring and uninteresting people ever put in an RPG, so it's no big loss. It would've been good to be able to retrain some of them, though, like Pallegina and Hiravias, because of their unique powers, or Durance due to DEX of 9 lololol.

 

Fortunately, you don't have to suffer their ineptitude anymore with this editor.
Just remove some XP (with cheat engine) and pay for retrain if you are afraid it would be like cheating.

 

It's funny how I see people saying that PoE's combat is good and its story is shit, and then I get people saying the exact opposite. This proves PoE is truely balanced.

 

It all depends on your point of comparison. Compared to Divinity: Original Sin for example, the Pillars story is fucking Dostoevsky.

 

There are two approaches to evaluation: relative and absolute. If we go by the latter, PoE disappoints because it unsurprisingly fails to live up to the Platonic ideal of CRPGs. Yet if the former is to be believed, PoE is an excellent CRPG—not quite the best, but greater than most of its peers, in terms of combat and writing. To argue that Hiravias, for example, is less intriguing than, say, Faldorn, is sheer dogmatic nonsense exacerbated by the Codex's protracted puberty rites.

 

BG's companions are barely more than stat sticks, so no, it's not appropriate to compare Hiravias to Faldorn. I'd rather have BG's companions than PoE's, though.

 

Retraining companions is pure barbarism. NPCs have stats that represent who they are, that's why it's called an RPG. If autist paradise is what you're after, fucking play MS Excel and leave RPGs alone.