Game News Pillars of Eternity II Fig Update #6: Voice Acting Stretch Goal, Q&A Stream

[Infinitron]

Tags: Aarik Dorobiala; J.E. Sawyer; Obsidian Entertainment; Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

There was no Pillars of Eternity II Fig update last night. Instead, Josh Sawyer showed up on Obsidian's Twitch channel (along with community manager/henchman Aarik Dorobiala) for an hour-long Q&A session. I was busy freezing my ass off in a tent at the time and haven't yet watched it, but evidently it was quite interesting. I'll post the archived stream here. If you don't want to watch that, a kindly soul on Reddit has provided a transcript of the most important questions.

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Some of the changes Josh intends to introduce to the Pillars of Eternity formula have been well-received on our forums while others are more controversial, but discussion has been mostly dominated by his decision to experiment with replacing the concept of per-rest abilities. With this new system, most spells and abilities will be per-encounter, but with the option to be greatly strengthened using a limited "Empower" resource that is replenishable on rest. Given the fate of the first game's experiment with per-encounter spellcasting, I expect this to be a controversial topic during the game's beta.

Moving on to today, the Fig campaign hit $2M in funding a few hours ago, unlocking the AI Customization stretch goal. The latest update announces a new stretch goal. If the campaign reaches $2.4M, the amount of voice acting in the game will be "doubled". It's not a very interesting stretch goal, but given recent events maybe that's not such a bad thing, and there's more coming up soon.

Once again, we're blown away by the support and backing we're receiving from fans of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. It's a thrill for our entire development team to be able to continue to improve and add to the game as we continue to reach our crowdfunding stretch goals.

In addition to localizing Pillars II into Korean, our stretch goal announcement for $2.4 million is to place additional voice-over audio into Pillars II for a variety of characters, both adding voices to some previously unvoiced characters, and expanding voice sets for characters with already limited voices. While this won't mean every line of dialogue or text is voiced, it will significantly expand the amount of spoken-word dialogue in the Pillars II experience.

In developing Pillars II, our aim has always been to include as much voice acting as we can. Voice acting brings new depth to characters, enriching the player experience and drawing people further into the game world. With this new stretch goal, our aim is to deliver more consistent voice acting in conversations throughout your journey in the Deadfire Archipelago. Hitting this stretch goal will allow us to fully voice more conversations, more characters, and offer more player-character voice sets to choose from.

As an added bonus, we wanted to announce a new add-on for all of our campaign backers: the Pillars of Eternity hardcover guidebook, Volume II. Below is an image of the guidebook from the Pillars I campaign -- we hope our fans and backers will get as much enjoyment and knowledge from the new edition as they did from the first!

Finally, please stay tuned to the backer channel today, as we will shortly be bringing you a video from Design Director, Josh Sawyer all about multiclassing and some other nifty improvements to the core design in Pillars II!
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Interestingly, when the update was published the new stretch goal was briefly for an increased level cap of 20 instead of voice acting. Not sure what happened there, but I guess now we know that's coming up too at some point.

 

[agris]

I was busy freezing my ass off in a tent at the time and haven't yet watched it

IDF deployment?

 

[Turok]

This is the general consensus about the stretch goals in the campaing right now:

"Extra VO seems like a waste of money, more in-game content would have been better. Like, mega dungeon or more quests."

"I understand and think it's awesome that you want to hire your friends and previous coworkers to make the game feel more "alive", but please understand that this is a GAME, not an audiobook"

"So, you are really asking for millions of dollars in order to make "more" voice over (which we cannot really quantify) , more translations, portraits and one character. Seriously, development costs are really expensive or you are really doing something wrong here. I love the genre, I supported the first game and yet I am thinking to quit. You don't really need my money and I don't want to invest on "more" voice over."

This last one is funny

"Feargus, how about having a "minimal voice" game option?"

Actually people want a option to remove the VO

jeje.

 

[BlackGoat]

One of the most irritating parts of the first game was trying to read the descriptive text saying shit like "So and so blinks their eyes and adjusts their pants" while the character is already reading the dialogue that I haven't even gotten to yet. After awhile I just turned the sound off whenever I was in a voiced dialogue

 

[Invictus]

The new update on multiclasses actually made me grin; everytime Sawyer said "balance" another one of his hairs turned gray
All kidding aside I think he is the prefect guy for that sort of thing, I actually had forgotten about multiclassing because I almost never had that on the IE games but had quite a lot half elves fighter thieves or elven fighter mages (who could use elven chainmail to be able to cast spells and I always had them using longbows)
Yeah I think Pillars is moving along nicely

 

[Turok]

Is kickstarter or Fig??? i mean the title of this post.

 

[tdphys]

So is engagement an active power now? Not some auto-aggro

 

[Drudkh]

All i hear from that Q and A session is that he's doubling down on the engagement penalties.... Oy vey... i suppose i'll just save myself the torture of the atrocious combat and just play the game on easy mode this time.

Basically, Josh plans on wasting all this time implementing frivolous micro customization into the games class system when the combat will still be rubbish and simplistic/repetitive on a fundamental level where the pre battle set-up/positioning means everything again. What a dick.

 

[Sensuki]

So is engagement an active power now? Not some auto-aggro

Nope.

 

[Tigranes]

Making engagement more selective will make it easier to hit the right spot between pointless and never-can-move, so it's a good decision.

More generally, I don't mind engagement, but I don't think it'll ever be great - it seems inherently unsuited to the thorny problem of making space and proximity matter in this kind of RTwP. I almost wonder if the best you can do is just play up the 'get near and you get hurt' stuff like blade barrier.

 

[Zed]

Infinitron had written "Kickstarter update". I fixed this for him. Let's laugh and point.

 

[Infinitron]

The problem with engagement isn't its functionality, but its ubiquity. Everything engages, so you're constantly wrestling with it. That turns it from a tool for creating SPECIFIC interesting combat situations ("Oh shit, a fighter! This guy can engage! Pull out the CC!") to a GENERAL nuisance that players just try to avoid as much as possible (ie, by never moving). That sort of "crippling over-generalization" is an issue with several of PoE's systems (crafting, interrupts), and PoE2 seems to be looking to fix it.

 

[l3loodAngel]

There are no quotes in Venezuela after Chávez nationalized them.

 

[Turok]

True.


Jajajaja

 

[tdphys]

The problem with engagement isn't its functionally, but its ubiquity. Everything engages, so you're constantly wrestling with it. That turns it from a tool for creating SPECIFIC interesting combat situations ("Oh shit, a fighter! This guy can engage! Pull out the CC!") to a GENERAL nuisance that players just try to avoid as much as possible (ie, by never moving). That "crippling over-generalization" is an issue with several of PoE's systems (crafting, interrupts), and PoE2 seems to be looking to fix it.

Yeah.. but if it's not "ubiquitous" ( which I hate ) then the "passive" ability means you have to rely on finicky mechanisms like proximity to get "engagement". If my fighter is surrounded by xaurips... which 1,2, or 3 get engaged? Why would this randomness be remotely controllable or fun? It needs to be targeted, like if you hit something, then they're engaged. If you want to engage more then one, then let the previously hit one stay engaged like a queue...

 

[hilfazer]

The problem with engagement isn't its functionally, but its ubiquity. Everything engages, so you're constantly wrestling with it. That turns it from a tool for creating SPECIFIC interesting combat situations ("Oh shit, a fighter! This guy can engage! Pull out the CC!") to a GENERAL nuisance that players just try to avoid as much as possible (ie, by never moving). That "crippling over-generalization" is an issue with several of PoE's systems (crafting, interrupts), and PoE2 seems to be looking to fix it.

Yeah.. but if it's not "ubiquitous" ( which I hate ) then the "passive" ability means you have to rely on finicky mechanisms like proximity to get "engagement". If my fighter is surrounded by xaurips... which 1,2, or 3 get engaged? Why would this randomness be remotely controllable or fun? It needs to be targeted, like if you hit something, then they're engaged. If you want to engage more then one, then let the previously hit one stay engaged like a queue...

There's no need for randomness, engaging targets should start from the one directly in front of you (especially the one you are targetting). If the engager can engage 2 targets then 2 targets closest to 'directly in front of engager' would be engaged. The only problem is when 2 targets are equally distant but only one can be engaged but it's rare.


It's a pity Josh misunderstood a question about bashing. Or maybe he's just not aware. I don't blame him, he does not need to know about every single detail.

And the problem is this (quote from forums.obsidian.net):

Using shields without bash doesn't influence your attack speed at all. But if you use a shield with bash you will only hit with your main weapon every second time. So you were right.



Bash - as it is in 2.03 - is a huge disadvantage and should be removed or buffed with some effect like a short stun, a very high interrupt chance and duration or something like that.

As it is now, it's not even worthless - it's a punishment!

 

[CyberWhale]

Japanese VO and anime portraits plox.

 

[duanth123]

The problem with engagement isn't its functionally, but its ubiquity. Everything engages, so you're constantly wrestling with it. That turns it from a tool for creating SPECIFIC interesting combat situations ("Oh shit, a fighter! This guy can engage! Pull out the CC!") to a GENERAL nuisance that players just try to avoid as much as possible (ie, by never moving). That sort of "crippling over-generalization" is an issue with several of PoE's systems (crafting, interrupts), and PoE2 seems to be looking to fix it.

If they're going to turn it into an infrequent mechanic, then they might as well make it root the opposing character. That way your char won't be butt raped if you so much as twitch a muscle while he is selected and at the same time JES can kit classes with specific counters that could avoid or mitigate the engagement root.

With the fighter having opportunity to select perks in response thereto

With the best part being, it will then be easier to port PoEII to consoles.

Spoiler

 

[oneself]

I was busy freezing my ass off in a tent at the time and haven't yet watched it

IDF deployment?

Infinitron is a joo?