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

[Lacrymas]

It's not bad game design, it's a gameplay choice the devs have to make and it's equally valid. You just have to know what kind of game you want to make.

 

[Quillon]

Why not? Who cares if a meteor is coming

I do. It bugs me whenever a game does that.

It's bad game design not to let me do so.

That's a non-issue since almost no one does it since FO1. And its fair to expect a narrative around that freedom of play, instead of "you need to catch up with Eothas as soon as possible and get your soul back, yo"

 

[Lacrymas]

This would've been avoided had Eothas' business been concluded by the end of act 1 and then the narrative going with the factions, but alas.

 

[2house2fly]

They should have had him be weakened by the attack at Ashen Maw and no longer able to make it through the storms. Then for the entire rest of the game he's on your timetable, because he needs you to turn the storms off

 

[aweigh]

how dare u guys think u can write a better story than woke professional devs!!11

 

[Efe]

you can too.
there is a chris avellone inside all of us.
you just have to choose to feed him instead of the balance man.

 

[Quillon]

 

[drgames]

Kingmaker's genius is in its simplicity. Most stories struggle with one major element: making reader/player care about what happens. PoE is the best example.

Does player care about the MC being a Watcher? Probably not. Unless he carefully reads, analyzes and digests all sources available to him (and majorty certainly doesn't, because it's a bloody video game), player probably fully understands "what is this Watcher thing?" mid-chapter two. By that time there's no drama, no tension related to this issue.
Does player care about gods and their nature? Why should he? Before act 3, game barely hints that its gods are different from usual fantasy pantheon.
Does player care about villain and the entire hollowborn plot? Probably not, because it's rather cliched, classic RPG adventure with expected twist here and there. And it starts in worst possible way, with weird terms and bombastic narrative thrown at player before he learns most basic things about the setting.

Compare it to BG1. In that game, main story is revealed only in later arcs, when player is already immersed in the setting, has connection to its characters nad MC, and it doesn't use weird/oversophisticated expressions to explain yourself. And it uses clear, tested hook:

"You're progeny of the god of murder, and your half-sibling wants to kill you and claim the divine inheritance" Simple and powerful. Good use of cliches, everything is understandable, works as a justification for PC's adventures.
"You're a watcher. You hunt a guy who has some connection to your past soul and now makes children soulless husks for his goddess" raises so many questions I don't even know what to start.
"You're a watcher. You died, god took part of your soul and now rampages through some exotic archipelago. Other god ressurrected you to stop him" is even worse in that regard.

Meanwhile, Kingmaker uses most basic, yet powerful hook.
Chapter 1: You adventure and claim land for yourself.
Chapter 2+: You develop and defend that land.

Boom, it works. Works, because it uses simple means. You care about the story, because the story isn't about some foreign concepts and overblown dangers, but about your deeds. You don't care about Caed Nua, because it came to you relatively effortlessly. You don't care about Dyrwood or Dreadfire Archipelago, because it's a foreign, strange world you have no connection with. You care about your barony in P:K, because you carved it up yourself in chapter I. You don't care about Eothas running rampant, because you don't know what it means, what's really bad about it. You care about Vordekai, or Iorvetti, or Lantern King, because those bastards dared to go against fruit of your labours. You don't care about being watcher, because it's a title given to you. You care about being baron/king, because you earned that title.

This guy fucking gets it. I am actually playing the game right now in my first serious playthrough. No matter the amount of lore/story/side quests/dialogues the game throws me, I do not care because it is like reading fucking Wikipedia articles. It is so boring. And the main quest is so fucking stupid:

Why did the gods choose me to hunt down a giant as tall as a mountain?

Couldn't the gods deal with Eothas themselves? They did it already once, they can do it again.

What makes them think that I can have any chance? I am not the only Watcher, they could use somebody else. Is it because part of my soul is in the adra statue? But is it enough to justify it?

Why the god treat "kith" like useless shit? Why are they so powerful, and yet so childish?

What is the difference whether the gods are artificially created or not? they are still fucking gods.

Who thought it was a good idea to turn arrogant morons into gods?

Since the gods clearly do not care the well-being of the kith, why don't they use them as an army against Eothas? With the power they hold, they can easily convince anyone to join their cause, by reason or by force.

 

[Roguey]

This is why I think I also love cyberpunk, you are rarely saving the world in cyberpunk.

Just about every cyberpunk crpg has you saving the world.

 

[pomenitul]

To be fair, I can't think of another game whose initial hook is overcoming the runs.

 

[aweigh]

unity awards? lmao

what is that, like the razzies?

 

[Roguey]

In MoTB you *must* care about the PC being spirit eater, why? Because hold Zeit's beer. The Spirit meter. The game mechanic that forces you to consider what plight you are in and in the same fell blow also makes you allot resources carefully and manage them. A genius I tell you

Ziets hates the spirit meter now.

 

[The Great ThunThun*]

In MoTB you *must* care about the PC being spirit eater, why? Because hold Zeit's beer. The Spirit meter. The game mechanic that forces you to consider what plight you are in and in the same fell blow also makes you allot resources carefully and manage them. A genius I tell you

Ziets hates the spirit meter now.

Too late. He already made a great mechanic, he can hate it for all I care.

 

[2house2fly]

Why did the gods choose me to hunt down a giant as tall as a mountain?

They need a mortal to do it, and you already know their big secret which gives you an advantage- if they pick someone else and their origins come up then they could get unpredictable.

Couldn't the gods deal with Eothas themselves? They did it already once, they can do it again.

They don't want to get too involved in the world because the gods' voices raise mountains and churn the seas, all that shit. Later in the game when they find out Eothas intends to break the Wheel and halt the cycle of reincarnation they try, but the adra titan is very durable. Also, as is clear from the premise of the main quest, they did not deal with Eothas already once.

What makes them think that I can have any chance? I am not the only Watcher, they could use somebody else. Is it because part of my soul is in the adra statue? But is it enough to justify it?

They could use someone else, and if you refuse the call of adventure at the start of the game they do.

Why the god treat "kith" like useless shit? Why are they so powerful, and yet so childish?

If you're suggesting that having access to power precludes childishness then I must congratulate you for managing to avoid several years of US news.

What is the difference whether the gods are artificially created or not? they are still fucking gods.

Several characters in the game say this, and indeed one of Eder's endings in the first game has him come to this conclusion.

Who thought it was a good idea to turn arrogant morons into gods?

Probably another arrogant moron.

Since the gods clearly do not care the well-being of the kith, why don't they use them as an army against Eothas? With the power they hold, they can easily convince anyone to join their cause, by reason or by force.

They don't know Eothas's intentions so they don't know whether he needs to be stopped. In any case, as is clear from the premise of the main quest, raising an army to fight Eothas won't necessarily work. When they find out his intentions it's essentially too late to raise an army to stop him anyway, as he's already on his way to Ukaizo and any force with enough power to bring him down could also break the Wheel, fulfilling Eothas's goal for him.

 

[111111111]

I re-downloaded the game for the new dlc and tried to play through the first island.

Uninstalled before finishing berath's conversation...

Something about this game is really repulsive

 

[Jenkem]

started the forgotten sanctum today... the island it appears on is the one I named 'Josh Sawyer'

 

[2house2fly]

I re-downloaded the game for the new dlc and tried to play through the first island.

Uninstalled before finishing berath's conversation...

Something about this game is really repulsive

The intro is very bad. It's like they read a book on what not to do when making an intro, but someone had covered up the "not"

 

[Quillon]

I re-downloaded the game for the new dlc and tried to play through the first island.

Uninstalled before finishing berath's conversation...

Something about this game is really repulsive

The intro is very bad. It's like they read a book on what not to do when making an intro, but someone had covered up the "not"

When they were saying that it had "cool beginning" a year from release, I was thinking of the game's starting in Caed Nua's ruins, then some port town in Vailia to get a ship before Deadfire but their thought of cool was "moving platforms"

 

[Volrath]

That's like winning the special olympics

 

[drgames]

They mention early on that they destroyed their physical bodies (apparently related to the Abydon/Ondra beef in The White March), so they can't stop him that way.
Later in the game, they try to erupt a volcano and a tsunami upon him. Didn't work.

They killed his incarnation in a famous battle, which I do not recall the name. But why they can't destroy the adra statue?

I know that they use Volcano and Tsuanmi upon him. But that's it? They are gods, they should be more powerful.

 

[Riddler]

They mention early on that they destroyed their physical bodies (apparently related to the Abydon/Ondra beef in The White March), so they can't stop him that way.
Later in the game, they try to erupt a volcano and a tsunami upon him. Didn't work.

First off, did they really mention that their bodies were gone in the base game? I don't recall that.

Secondly, why not just bring down another moon on Eothas? Woedica suggested it as a possibility and it is their existence that is at stake here, without the wheel to siphon off soul power to them they will wither and die.

 

[2house2fly]

He's close enough to the Wheel that I imagine dropping a moon on him without also destroying the Wheel would be difficult.

Is "the gods were able to kill a person but cannot destroy a stone statue the size of a skyscraper" really being discussed as if it's a plot hole?

They are gods, they should be more powerful.

They aren't gods, they're constructs created by the Engwithans a couple of thousand years ago

 

[Popiel]

They aren't gods, they're constructs created by the Engwithans a couple of thousand years ago

Okay, okay. Lore of this world is pretty mediocre, or no, it's just shit most of the time, but let's give what's due. Some characters address this issue and it seems that it just flew way over the heads of most of people who comment on these games. Thaos asks very important question, in finale of PoE1: What is a god? You are writing as if pantheon being created is a bad thing, and it certainly is from in-game point of view (because religion is based on a blatant lie), and, much more importantly, from off-game reasons: because we tend to think of gods as being by definition uncreated or at the very least not a product of manufacture. This is just a point of view and a matter of definition, and much of a real-world bias transported into a fictional universe. Pantheon are gods when you understand what does being a god mean in a certain way, and it's not hard to think of beings that are, as far as we know, immortal, who move celestial bodies, have realms in afterlife, reward for good and punish for bad as gods.

 

[Rivmusique]

One of the new megabosses was much more fun than the other.

Spoiler

Fire Iron Giant felt like a huge health pool to hack through while running across the map every so often to outrange some crazy one shots. Ended up giving Eder a "immune to disengagement attacks" item to make life much easier as I could micro him out of the way of the debuffing cleaves. Thought about using that pet that disables engagement, could probably dodge all melee attacks that way, but thought that might be a little cheap. The health pool was ridiculous, and the boss's own AoEs healed him. Going from Near Death to dead felt like an eternity. Serafen's wild mind dropping a couple of people during an attempt was rough. Don't know why I hadn't already dropped him from the megaboss group, almost guaranteed to fuck you at some point when the fights are that long.

For Sigilmaster I ended up making 2 custom wizards and 2 wizard/ciphers to join my PC wizard and going nuts with spell reflects, interrupts and the occasional missile salvo to rush down the more annoying sigils when vulnerable. Really fun fight while Sigils were up and she had spells, and I didn't mind watching everyone chip away at her with weapons to end it when they'd all gone. Felt a bit dumb for a wizard to have so much HP, but if she didn't rushing her and ignoring the sigils would be a too simple, less fun solution I suppose.

Loved the latest DLC, definitely my favourite of the 3. After SSS I was worried that those 4+ wave fights might show up. I enjoyed them in the arena, when you know that's what you're getting when you choose a "survivor" fight, but getting a surprise wave in a dungeon fight would just annoy me. Glad they thought the same.

 

[Orma]

Did anyone manage to kill belranga? (without exploits i mean, but i think they were fixed already)

I managed to kill all the nests in my last try and eder survived up to that point, but couldnt keep going afterwards.