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

Sizzle

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2012
Messages
2,471
You have to admire the total incompatibility in tone between Josh's writing and the Deadfire writing team.

It was like that in PoE1, but at least that game had Avellone's good writing to reinforce the themes and lore-building with Durance.

JS admitted that he let the writing/design team mostly do their thing in DF, which is why all the romances are BioWare bisexual, and half of the weapons in the game are swords and sabres.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
If anyone else had written durance he'd be criticized as a loredump
I've played the game a few times and my eyes just glaze over half of what Durance has to say tbh
 
Self-Ejected

MajorMace

Self-Ejected
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Souffrance, Franka
More like the contrast between durance loredumps and others is sharp.
His shtick feels more involved and believable than Edér talking about his own brother's fate.
Durance actually has a standpoint on events, and an interesting one as well - with all his trials shit.
The others, companions or npcs, have almost nothing to offer.

It's still loredump though, and I agree that Grieving Mother is unbearable. I still have no idea what she's about and couldn't have cared less.
 
Joined
May 27, 2018
Messages
77
I like him. He's a rambling drunken priest that doesn't know what he's saying half the time and you don't have to listen (=you can safely skip) more than half the time.
 

Jimmious

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May 18, 2015
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5,132
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Well to be honest, PoE's companions are much more memorable than any other recent RPG at least in my point of view.
Don't tell me that you find Kingmaker's companions interesting or better written for example.
I can't think of a recent RPG that had companions with more "character" than PoE, feel free to say so if you do
 

Jimmious

Arcane
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May 18, 2015
Messages
5,132
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
True DF was decent in that. I wouldn't say they are necessarily better, but certainly more "compact".
Of course you'd get big lore dumps there too, from time to time
 

Sizzle

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2012
Messages
2,471
Well to be honest, PoE's companions are much more memorable than any other recent RPG at least in my point of view.
Don't tell me that you find Kingmaker's companions interesting or better written for example.

Yes and no.

In Kingmaker, the (majority of) characters are these larger-than-life personas, with interesting backstories and "classic" archetypal fantasy personalities (if oftentimes mediocre writing). It evokes the feel of BG much better than PoE ever did.

For PoE, they went the other way and purposefully made almost all the characters "ordinary" people. A character like that can work great - they can be a sounding board for all the strange and messed up stuff in the game and lore, but when the entire cast is composed of such characters, it can quickly get dull.
 

Eisenheinrich

Scholar
Joined
Apr 16, 2018
Messages
806
Location
Germania
For PoE, they went the other way and purposefully made almost all the characters "ordinary" people.

Yeah. Dunno if we played different games but while I agree that PoE 1 companions are more grounded in realtiy as far as character portrayal and depth goes, they're far from ordinaray. I mean, we got:

Mage with split soul, godlike atheist paladin, civil-war-veteran/redneck farmer with a faith crisis, inuit dwarf on a soul hunting quest in a foreign land, soul bound mechanized mass murderer, masochistic and zealous monk, fire worhsipping Rasputin and then some. Deadfires new companions are even more intresting in my book. Minus Xoti, she suffers a lot from the voice acting.

Which doesn't mean I despise Pathfinders companions, quite the contrary. They're much more chliché and lighthearted and I don't mean that in negative way. Both companions in PoE and PF:KM suit their games well. Obsidians take is just more interesting as a whole. Not expescially more fun, but more intresting.
 

Lacrymas

Arcane
Joined
Sep 23, 2015
Messages
17,948
Pathfinder: Wrath
Durance is literally a priest, it suits him to ramble on about whatever god de jour, but among his ramblings he's the only one with an actual connection to the game's events and other characters. His personality and views aren't possible outside of what he has experienced, so that makes him the most technically competent character in the entire roster. Zahua could've gone somewhere, but you aren't given the possibility to argue anyone's worldview, you can only listen and nod in understanding. His methods obviously aren't working since he's like 60+ and with all his self-flagellation he hasn't achieved what he hopes to achieve. Durance is the only one who has a point and a relevant opinion about events to share.
 

Eisenheinrich

Scholar
Joined
Apr 16, 2018
Messages
806
Location
Germania
Durance is the only one who has a point and a relevant opinion about events to share.

If they would be just be delivered in a more compelling way, I'd agree. The stories of the other companions are more connected to the world itself than the game plot.
 

Nano

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2016
Messages
4,648
Grab the Codex by the pussy Strap Yourselves In
Durance is a Fenstermaker character and Grieving Mother is a Carrie Patel character. Only thing Avellone about them is their concepts.
 

Quillon

Arcane
Joined
Dec 15, 2016
Messages
5,214
Durance is a Fenstermaker character and Grieving Mother is a Carrie Patel character. Only thing Avellone about them is their concepts.

Prolly both are at least 75% MCA characters imo. Avellone wrote too much, not too little. And we haven't seen MCA dismissing them as someone else's characters, he's usually quick to point out that kinda stuff.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Durance is a well conceived character that suffered from poor delivery (including whatever editing was done and not done re. MCA).

This may be unpopular but I thought Eder is actually a really well executed character: a Carth that is actually likeable and has a fleshed out, believable personality. He is a middle of the road reasonable guy foil for the PC, but overcomes that to have a down to earth, believable story about the gods schtick unlike Aloths over the top schizo.

He suffered from too much jokey banter in POE2 but his reaction to Eothas, like Durances reaction to Magran, is the few places where the gods stuff gets to deliver something other than loredumps.
 

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